亠Lid

LIKE A POT OF BOILING SOUP, the pressure building within me fired up an intense heat that tossed the lid off completely. I wept uncontrollably, and I didn’t care if people were watching me. John took me into his arms. I buried my face in his chest, and he led me back to our table. I sat down and hunched over, putting my elbows on my knees and my face into my hands. When I stopped shaking, I looked at John and said once again, “She’s gone.”

“Are you sure?”

“That’s what the woman said. She knew mother’s name. She sounded certain.”

“Did she tell you when, or how?”

I started hyperventilating and could not stop the waves of tears on my face. John rubbed my back, letting me catch my breath. “No, she couldn’t get rid of me fast enough.”

“She doesn’t know she was your mother.”

“She could have asked!” I said loudly. Diners at the tables around us started to look over. John used his body to shield me from view.

“I’m really sorry, Lily.”

“I know.”

“Do you want to go talk to her again? Maybe now that the lineup has died down, she can tell you more.”

“She said I should ask at that cendol stall. I guess my mother used to work there.” I pointed in the opposite direction from the popiah stall, where a man was leaning against his makeshift cart, peering into his mobile phone.

“Are you ready?”

“Give me a minute.”

I took a sip of my kopi ice and winced at the sweetness sitting in my mouth. The crushing heat was starting to weigh on me, and I feared that I wouldn’t be able to stand up. John found a straw for Leo to chew on, and I knew I had limited time before she got bored and started to fuss. A line had formed at the cendol stall, and I waited as the uncle filled bowls with coconut milk, red beans, and pandan-infused tapioca noodles. Auntie Choo Neo tried to make cendol in Sparwood once for Father’s birthday. It was the only thing I heard him say he missed from back home. She used a colander to try to reproduce the green noodles, but the consistency was off.

I still hoped there had been some kind of mix-up, that the old auntie was remembering things wrong, or we had misunderstood each other’s Hokkien. When it was my turn, I ordered a cendol and pulled out the photo of Mother. “Uncle, do you know this woman?”

The man looked at the photo as he arranged the ingredients in my bowl. He nodded, looked at me, gazed down at the picture again, and then stared searchingly into my face. He said he knew her and told me to come back in an hour, when he would close his stall for the afternoon. I reluctantly took the picture back, and we locked eyes like we should know each other but didn’t. The man’s hair was peppered with black, and the wrinkles around his eyes drooped sadly. A cigarette was tucked behind his ear, above his sideburns. I studied him for a moment, as he was serving customers. Standing behind the counter was a lanky man, tall, and the apron he wore looked too short for him. He had a habit of scratching the back of his head as he talked, the veins in his arms pulsating with the rhythm. Limping in his flip-flops, the man appeared to have injured his right hip or knee. He looked like he’d been on a bender the night before: slow, weary, and hunched over, searching for a flat surface to lie down on.