Bea grabbed the last satay stick and placed it on her plate, pausing to see if I would protest. I didn’t. Everyone saw Winston so differently.

Mother chimed in again. “Here, yes, you have papers, but nothing else, Ah Loy. We live in a valley far away from the city, and you work underground. Our children are separated from so much family. They are not learning their language or their culture. The other day, I heard Beatrice tell someone that she doesn’t know Chinese because she doesn’t need it. The air here can freeze you to death, and the food is flavourless. Think about the asam fish head soup back home, with fresh galangal and lemongrass. The green everywhere and the mangoes growing in our backyard. Think about the pungent smell of durian.”

Even Auntie Choo Neo nodded slightly and murmured in agreement.

“I can see why Winston chose to stay where he is,” Mother said. “Let me ask all of you: What’s holding us back? We have citizenship now. We can go back home.”

“Home?” Father harrumphed. “How can you call that place home? Why would I leave a place that has welcomed me and my children to go to a place where people look at us like we’re the shit floating downriver from the stilt houses of Kampong Ayer? You can’t even have a beer without the state taking that away from you, too. Who wants to live in a dry state?”

“We can drink all the teh tarik and eat all the cendol in the world,” Auntie added, “but Ah Loy is right. We would always hunger for more. The joy the food brings to our lives would be a distraction from the worry that we would be kicked out or denied something one day. Even the heat is tiring there.”

“Then we can come back to Canada,” said Mother.

“I don’t want the yo-yo life,” retorted Auntie.

“It’s not right. We can’t go back,” Father said. “We chose this place, and it chose us. We have to give back the way it has given to us.”

“There is no betrayal in wanting to go back to where we came from,” Mother argued.

“That’s all that place is now, Swee Hua. A place where I came from, and that’s it,” Father maintained. “We barely existed there. What future did I have, working under the table, wondering if I would still have a job one day? I could eat like a king, but my children would be learning Malay or denied schooling? What for?”

“You’re fooling yourself, Ah Loy,” Mother insisted. “Only a certain kind of person can truly feel secure in this cold country.”

“Ayoo! You’re both wrong.” Auntie Choo Neo threw up her hands. “It’s not as if we’ve forgotten where we came from, Swee Hua. But Ah Loy is right. We did not belong back home. As long as we are together, we can remember and pass down our traditions, even here in Canada. We will always find home, wherever we find family. We cannot forget who we are.”