Flaws

The week before you move away from home to attend graduate school, your father gets a tonsillectomy. You visit him with your mother and sisters at the hospital, and he speaks weakly with eyes dazed, his hand searching for your mother. She links their fingers together, and you avert your eyes. Public displays of affection always make you uncomfortable, and witnessing a vulnerability that you didn’t know was capable between them, especially from your father,  unsettles you.

You are put in charge of getting his prescription from the pharmacy. You are the unofficial assistant, as in, you are the one who knows best how to discern English information and give necessary instructions to your other siblings. While you wait in line, you buy a thermometer. When you get the prescription, you read it over and over to absorb pages on avoiding acidic fruits, drinking cold water, and using ice cream to soothe the throat. You repeatedly check if his water is cold, if his medicine cup is clean, offering him ice cream and bland food.

You can’t wait to escape to the city where you’ll be too far for a day visit, but close enough that you’ll be in the same time zone so it won’t feel like you’re abandoning everyone.

Your father chooses the couch as his temporary bed when he is released. He groans but mostly sleeps. You assume it’s because his bedroom is far away in the farthest corner from the front door. Perhaps he would be lonely once he got tired of looking at his smartphone. Perhaps he was afraid of being neglected if you start to lose yourself in card games or video games with your many siblings. It would be easy to forget he wasn’t home.

You morph into the caretaker. You make him as comfortable as possible and keep an eye on him. You stop him from eating papaya though he craves a different taste from rice soup. You bring him a pen and blank white papers. He writes phrases in cursive-like letters that you strain to read.

You can’t wait to escape to the city where you’ll be too far for a day visit, but close enough that you’ll be in the same time zone so it won’t feel like you’re abandoning everyone. You feel guilty for leaving, but you’re relieved when the week is over.

*

Your young cousin is screeching and you want to sew her mouth shut. Her screams are obnoxious even for a child, you think with a deep frown, like a baby that has fallen off the bed. It’s terrifying. You are not familiar with her though you’re only a few years apart. You stand next to your older sisters so that you’re not associated with the child thrashing on the patio cement. She’s awful, unaware of how her prolonged tantrum has brought deep discomfort to everyone else. The aunts and uncles, the relatives and cousins, everyone is doing their best to ignore her now that it was obvious she could not be reasoned with. You also ignore her though you notice her father grabbing and dragging her inside the house. The scream is muffled when the door closes but then returns when he locks her in the storage room right next to the backyard, next to where you see her silhouette through the window. She is still screaming, and you are panicked. Why won’t she listen to anyone, not even her father who she should know better than to yell at? Why won’t she just stop?

Then, nothing. Then, an eerie silence like the pause after lightning crackles brightly against dark clouds.

Then, a resounding boom whips you around to see the destructive aftermath: Window cracked in the middle like a web; following the others inside, girl with bloodied knuckles.

*

You’re sitting in the front passenger seat, arms crossed, while your father drives. He isn’t supposed to be available, and now everything is out of control. You’re tight-lipped and contribute nothing to the pleasantry that your older cousin is engaging with your father. You’re livid with her, but it is not proper to act on this impulsive fury. She’s your older relative and your friend. What if she stops talking to you at school? But you ask yourself: Is this how a friend acts? Make you deal with the situation after not upholding her end of the bargain?

Your father enters your cousin’s driveway, and your cousin bids goodbye with no remorse. You hate her and stare at your lap. Your father has yet to say anything but you know he will. The car reverses. Your house is only two blocks away but it might as well be miles away. Your chest hurts so much from holding your breath.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” You burst first, and it is unstoppable. You try to explain the betrayal you feel. “She said her parents would come. She lied. I’m sorry.”

You’re sorry you could not predict how this night would turn out. You’re sorry you thought you could trust someone. You’re sorry you are still covering up for her even now. The consequences would be even more dire if an elder knew that your cousin had been expecting a male friend to give you both a ride home. Your mother only gave you permission to go to the theater on the condition that your cousin’s father would provide transportation afterward.

When the male friend didn’t show up after an hour, claiming he was stuck in traffic while coming back into town, you knew there was no other way. The darker the night got, the more severe the lecture would be. Your cousin looked at you with wide-eyed innocence and said that her father, the only one who could drive in her family, was not home. You must bear the consequences.

Your father parks on the sidewalk in front of the house, and you can’t hear anything he says beyond your sobbing and your own voice promising, “I won’t do it again.”

*

You forget your father exists sometimes. Around the house, your father holds physical space with material reminders, like framed photos or his personal computer in your brother’s bedroom, but he does not occupy your mind. He is responsible for the structure that you live in, but the house rules are enforced by your mother and older sisters. He is like a guest at a hotel; he can stay and go as he pleases, and what is left behind is cleaned up by your sisters.

He begins first, asking where you have been, but before you can tell the truth, he accuses you.

So, you do not expect him in the living room when you return from the movie theater. Your body tightens and hums, wanting to run away, but you’re frozen. You can’t look at him. You have been caught returning from an unauthorized day out with your friends. You do not speak.

He begins first, asking where you have been, but before you can tell the truth, he accuses you. It’s the same thing you’ve heard from your mother’s mouth, asking if you are trying to be a bad woman, but hearing it from your father irritates you. It’s been like this the older you’ve gotten. The more your father says derisive remarks about your gender and sex, the more agitated you become.

The fond memories you have of him now consist only of when you were still a child, in that time before girlhood came to you. There was the time he took the family to a buffet or “taj laj plab tawg” or “restaurant stomach explosion.” You had Jell-O for the first time and did not like it, but your father only laughed and told you to eat as much sweets as you can or else it would be a waste. Those days, your father used to laugh with you around.

Now, it’s become strained. You notice his absence more than his presence. He lives at home too, but you only see him for meals and showers and sleep. He never sees you either as you become occupied with homework, clubs, and sports.

You refute him right away and tell him how you simply had gone out to watch a movie with friends.

He asks what kind of friends.

This is where you have to twist the truth even if you hate doing it. Your parents hold traditional beliefs and you are not allowed to go out to any events that consist of mostly boys. It must be a girls-only event or you can only go with someone they trust—like an older sister or cousin who can babysit you.

You tell your father that they are just friends from school, all girls.

But it doesn’t matter because he is also angry that you left despite mother’s disapproval. You were in the wrong here for vanishing, but you did not think it would be a big deal. You left with your friends because you didn’t want to disappoint them. You still snuck out because you thought you would only have to deal with your mother upon your return.

You tell him you made a promise. You want to be an honest person. You don’t want to look like a liar.

But he is not impressed. Your reasons will never be enough. He is incredulous that your excuse is about a mere promise to some pointless friends. He picks apart your argument by bringing up paranoid hypotheticals: What if you were murdered? What if those friends were bad people? What if you disappeared and no one ever found your body again?

You are exhausted at how one outing could cause so much anguish.

*

With grandfather in the hospital, your father is the last to leave the dining table, and he heads to his bedroom to get ready for his overnight stay in the hospital. Your sisters and your mother clean up as usual, picking up his dirtied plate and spoon.

You grumble and make an offhand comment, “Why can’t Dad wash his own dishes? It’s not hard.”

You hear his footsteps thumping on the hallway carpet, and then suddenly he stands in front of you.

“What did you say?”

You are stunned. Your pulse picks up, and you feel the pounding in your arms to your fingers, gripping the pole of the sweeper. You are just a petty twenty-year-old, but he looks at you as if you have committed a grand offense. He looks at you as if daring you to do it one more time: repeat your petulant complaint.

It irritates you, and you are too willing to be honest than be a bare-faced liar.

Your mouth opens. “I said why can’t you just wash your own dishes? You finish eating, then you just wash it. It’s one plate with one spoon.”

Your desire to be truthful turns you stupidly stubborn and fearless.

His face contorts. He yells, “I’m going back to the hospital, I’m busy, so, when it’s time to wash dishes, then just wash the dishes!”

Just as you begin to feel guilty, he adds, “It’s you women’s work.”

You have always held him in some high regard despite his emotional absence. Your deep value for education is ingrained by his stern push to pursue a college degree—that an education would warrant you a voice and that no one could look down on you.

Now, you shout the terms you’ve learned in college like equality of the sexes, and he laughs in your face.

Your heart beats fast. Your vision is blurring from fury and tears. For the first time in your life, you want to punch someone. But physical representations of anger are anomalies in your family. Your second sister once exploded by kicking a table that screeched across the living room. Two of your older sisters got into an actual fight once, and then it never happened again. Your parents have never hit you. Direct physical punishment is rare. When you were a child, your father used a rubber band to sting your arm. Another time, you witnessed him throw an empty laundry basket at your older sister.

Most of your sisters hold back your father.

You are dragged out by one other.

You will learn at a later time that your father was also close to using his fists too.

For now, you are pulled a block away until your legs give out. You plop down on the sidewalk curb. Your sister watches you sob in silence for a few minutes, and then asks you why you would even start this fight. He is your father. You are not allowed to win. You know this, yet you are devastated still.

*

Seeing your father as fallible makes you less naive. You used to believe that family would not let you down, but you should’ve known better. Now you can no longer trust him. You see a side of your father that you never wanted to know. The memory—You’re crazy!—makes you feel weightless and hollow. You tether yourself to the grim reality that you are a Hmong daughter and woman. You avoid your father, which comes easy when he is rarely home. Safety has been compromised once; you won’t let yourself get hurt again.

*

The first time you see your father cry is at your grandfather’s funeral, a reminder of his identity as a son and a brother. He grabs his older brother’s arm for comfort. His shoulders shake, his head lowered, a boy in disguise of an almost fifty-year-old man. Your mother and sisters surround him and pat his back and shoulders to comfort him. It is the gracious thing to do, and you reluctantly add your palm to the layers of hands.

The first time you see your father cry is at your grandfather’s funeral, a reminder of his identity as a son and a brother.

The death of your grandfather changes him because, one night, he gathers everyone to the living room and sits in a lone chair across from his children. Your mother stands next to him in solidarity, as an accomplice in his whispered truths. You’re the only one standing, the farthest one behind all your sisters.

For the second time in your life, you see your father’s tears as he reveals his regrets and sadness. The confession is raw and vulnerable. Your sister once told you that your father, like other Hmong fathers, are uncomfortable with talking to their daughters directly. To communicate with them, he passes down his messages through the mother. It was the way it was: father to son, mother to daughter. Now, in a rare moment, you along with everyone else have become his confidants. You hear of how he never made up with grandfather for a previous mistake. You listen to his grievances.

You, his daughter.

Everyone cries, but you are as dry as a drought.

He is reaching for all of you at this time of need, but you do not move.

And then, he looks at you. And then, he says he’s sorry for that fight months ago. And then, he says that while others look down on him for having seven daughters, he does not regret any of you.

And you feel nothing. No, you feel something close to anger and hurt, still. How dare he do this? You refuse to forgive. You want to feel nothing.

*

There is a memory you forgot.

The day you returned from study abroad, you saw your entire family on the driveway welcoming your return except for your father. You asked about him and they said he slept in the computer room, a kind of retreat from the world. It was only proper to greet everyone in the house, so you headed to the end of the hallway for the dreaded encounter.

It was quiet. You slowly opened the door and peeked in. The creaking door stirred him. You hadn’t talked to him in the four months you’d been abroad, not that it was strange anyway. You rarely spoke to any of your family members since you were still able to keep in touch with them through social media. They knew you were fine, and you only expected to hear from them if there was any urgent news.

You found him sleeping on a foldable black mattress on the carpet with a simple pillow, his hair wild, his face wrinkled.

His eyes opened and looked up, seeing you. His hand raised.

You don’t know who reached out first and who reacted after, only that your trembling hand met his, and you dropped to your knees to whisper, I’m back, I’ve come home, and he nodded, not saying a word, your hands clenched together.