Peter saw my distress. “I’m sorry.”

“There was no good way to tell me. I just can’t believe it.”

“She must have been tortured by her separation from you,” Peter offered.

“She could have fixed that by coming back to Canada. Or contacting us. Or keeping memories of us with her.”

“If there is one thing I know, it’s that your mother did not like Canada. She did not speak of Canada often, but when she did, it was not with kindness.”

“I see,” I muttered.

“She did talk of you and your sister that one time. She said her daughters were the best of her, and that she wished she could have brought you home. She got angry when I tried to talk to her more about this.”

Peter and I were two strangers touched by the same person, tormented by her memory. She was still casting her shadow over us, like Change does from the moon. We were both sitting in the dark, enduring a slow-moving total eclipse.

文Script

I INVITED PETER TO COME TO HAVE SOME KUEH with us at the apartment-style hotel where we were staying. In his broken English, he was friendly with John as we ate the spongy cakes and Leo fingered the rainbow-striped crumbs on her high chair tray. Peter opened the box from Mother’s apartment and showed me her wallet, her identity card, her makeup, an address book that appeared almost new, and some clothes. There was nothing else.

Peter pulled out a folded sepia-tinged newspaper article from his wallet. Unfolding it, I read the headline: Unidentified Woman Found in Kinta River Believed to Have Committed Suicide. The very short article included an appeal to public to come forward with any information about the identity of the woman. Her death was reduced to a few words, like a public service announcement that construction was occurring, or bus routes were changing.

I lifted up some of her clothes and felt something in the pocket of a dress. Inside was a thin stack of letters held together by a pink ribbon, the kind that I had seen people in Malaysia use to tie up important papers. I was disheartened to see no English words. Peter looked at me in shock. He said he hadn’t noticed the papers before and asked if I needed help reading them. I nodded.

I untied the pink ribbon and pulled out the first letter. It was a light red piece of paper and appeared to be an official document written in Malay. Peter told me it was my mother’s birth certificate. He moved his finger across the page to various boxes telling me what each said, relaying Mother’s name and her parents’ names. He pointed at one box and told me that it said, “Bukan warganegara.” Not a citizen.

“Is this a Malay birth certificate?” I asked.

“Yes. It says your mother was born in Kuching.”

I realized I had seen the red paper before. It was the same birth certificate that I had found in my old mementoes box. Mother must have acquired another copy.