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Xiao doesn’t quite like his father’s new boyfriend.
It’s sounds so juvenile.
Boyfriend.
‘Childe’ is a lanky man, barely in his thirties, twenty years younger than his father, and only ten years older than Xiao. Childe is nothing like Mama, where she would be gentle, he would be rough and boisterous.
“I love him,” Childe often says, when Xiao asks.
“You’re a gold-digger,” Xiao would growl, pushing away the plate of almond tofu the man prepared. It tastes nothing like how Mama used to make, too-sweet, not enough of the bitterness. The sugar coalesces in his mouth like dirt. “You can’t even pronounce Baba’s name right.”
“It’s alright,” Childe would say, his eyes wrinkled into that look of faux-understanding, sickly-sweet pity, his mouth barely upturned into something vaguely sorrowful. “You’re still young.”
—
Baba did not cry. In all eighteen years of his life, not a single tear rolled down Baba’s cheek.
Xiao promised, once, he wouldn’t hold it against his father.
“It’s alright if you can’t cry,” Xiao had said, eighteen, when Mama passed, as Baba cried for hours in front of Mama’s grave, even as the skies had been muddled with storm clouds threatening to burst. “Mama would want you to be happy.”
“I just wish I wasn’t the only one left,” Baba had said, in a rare moment of candidness. Xiao knew that tone— it was faint, tinged with shame, and lingering with a heavy-hearted yearning. Baba never spoke about the old days, before he and Mama had Xiao.
He knew snippets, of course— a friend group, slowly picked off in the civil war. Baba and Mama had been the only survivors, having snuck on a merchant ship, sailing into waters unknown, until they reached land, where Mama and Baba’s names were foreign, butchered.
“A-Xiao, ah,” Mama would have murmured, when Baba got into one of his languishing moods, a singular cup of pale yellow liquid in his hands, staring faintly off into the distance. “Give your Baba some time, alright?”
Then she would take a little tissue from its holder, and she would fold an assortment of things to distract him.
But then Mama was no longer there, and it was just Xiao, waiting for his father, clutching a little bird of paper in his hands, Mama’s last gift.
The air was wet, yet no rain fell, even as the clouds bulged under the weight of accumulated water.
—
Childe’s inclusion and subsequent intrusion into Xiao’s family was not sudden.
Prior to Mama’s passing, Childe was always a family friend, always on the edges of their little circle. He brought casserole in a dish, during holiday season, a stark contrast to the dishes Mama and Baba would assemble in their kitchen, cutting the vegetables all wrong— Xiao’d seen, many times, the people in the cooking shows on the only available channel, their expert hands slicing the ‘best portions’ of the vegetable. Mama and Baba had never followed those shows, always slicing away the foreign vegetables a pale imitation of their homeland’s cuisine.
They weren’t foreign to Xiao, of course. He’d grown up here all his life, unlike his parents. But how does one tell their parents that what they consider quintessentially ‘home’ foreign, alien?
Xiao had been born here, and he had the passport to prove it— his name, printed on a thick card of plastic, a mother-of-pearl sheen to it, and in thick, inky block letters: CITIZEN.
In a twist of irony, Baba got his passport too, the day after Mama passed, in the same block letters.
They had always been excited to see the day. Promise after promise, ‘one day’, yet, when it finally came, it felt hollow.
Baba retreated into his ‘moods’ again, that day.
Again, at the dinner table, that cup in his hands. Xiao was old enough to recognise the shape of the bottle that produced the drink, the long, thin stem, flaring to a squat base, the amber glass swirling liquid within.
Despite everything, he had never seen Baba drink more than one cup. Not even in his worst mood.
—
He knows little about the friends that Baba reminisces about, on those days. Mama would always promise to tell him when he was older, and a sorrowful look would cross her face as she led Xiao away from the dinner table, to his room, the most decorated one in the home, everything else sparse, the sagging couch the sympathetic neighbour had donated, the unpainted walls, the cheap and eternally icy linoleum flooring.
She passed far too soon to ever tell him about the friends that Baba would whisper about to himself, nursing that cup.
But while Mama could never tell him herself, she had passed something on to him.
Mama had always been an intelligent woman. Perceptive— even of her own impending death.
Xiao had been afraid, of opening the little bird. But when he spied the little graphite marks within, he had to know what it said.
The letter that had been passed on to him, folded up into that little bird, had her spindly, long handwriting, still shaky even after spending several years in their new home, still carrying the hallmarks of the language that Xiao understood little of, the foreign characters from a place of origin he had never seen.
If you are reading this… I apologise, my darling son.
Taped to the letter was a worn piece of paper, crumpled and threatening to crumble apart into dust. Hasty yet defined graphite strokes formed into lines, into silhouettes. Mama, in the centre, Baba next to her. Behind them, several others. Below the crude picture, a short note. He couldn’t make out the characters well, his Mama and Baba’s first language still somewhat foreign to his eyes, but with his shaky understanding, he knew this was a parting note.
Gui-jie, it had read, take care of yourself and A-li, okay? Your loving companion, Ping.
—
Mama was the one to pick up the language first. But when Baba got the hang of it, he took to it like water. Often, when he spoke, many people would comment how he sounded natural. I can barely hear your accent, one lady had said. Xiao knew it was meant to be praise, but the smile Baba gave in return threatened to shift downwards, the corner of his lip twitching in sorrow.
Mama was different— she was verbose, yet the lilt to her voice would never cease, an eternal memory of her homeland.
‘Childe’ spoke like that lady, a little. To everyone, it was normal. But to Xiao, it sounded foreign. It was nothing like Mama’s, too perfect, too normal, unlike Mama’s stilted accent, her strange intonation.
“Are you alright, Xiao?” Childe had asked, when Xiao had stared for a full solid minute, at the sight of his father and Childe, holding each other’s hands like they longed to never part.
“Are you alright, A-Xiao?” Mama would whisper, as the others in school would deride him.
“I’m fine, Mama,” Xiao would have replied, “I’m fine as long as I have you.”
“I’m not fine,” Xiao had spat, “how could you!”
—
When Xiao turned ten, Baba had come home with a white cardboard box in his hands, the stamp of the local bakery printed on its cover.
He had opened it up, and from the confines of the box, he had retrieved a white, vanilla cake, frosting, sprinkles and all, and the little chocolate topping with the printed picture of some cartoon character atop stuck into the cake.
Xiao had often stared, at the window of the bakery, at the cake, but he knew that Mama and Baba had bigger problems than indulging him in an unnecessary luxury.
“How…?” Xiao had murmured.
“Your Baba got a new job!” Mama had squealed, pulling him into a tight hug, as Baba joined, far more leisurely. At the time, Xiao was little enough that Baba could wrap both Mama and Xiao within his arms. “How are you feeling, teacher?”
Baba had flushed a little, at the time, and coughed. “I am glad to be able to provide for our family better, now.”
Xiao knew that just yesterday, Baba got a letter in the mail-box, and a gasp and a frown had accompanied it. Today, Baba was buying him a cake.
“Happy birthday, Xiao!” Mama had exclaimed. A curl of guilt had accompanied him as he blew out the candles.
Now, as Childe approached him, asking him— “Hey, I heard from your father, isn’t it your birthday? Do you want anything as a present?”
Xiao had levelled him a glare, and said,
“When will you go away?”
—
Childe was a more recent constant, in their little family’s life.
In the later years, Mama had managed to attain a teaching position at Baba’s school as well, and it was a happy affair. Naturally, they had made a fair amount of friends at the school, but the most prominent of them all was Childe.
“Hullo,” Childe had greeted, on that fateful day, standing upon their doorstep with a disgustingly cheerful smile, “do you know Mrs. Guway-jong and Mr. Jong-li?”
He was holding a container, and within its clear walls Xiao spotted a frighteningly crimson soup.
“Yes,” Xiao had said, after several seconds deciphering the strange pronunciation. “I’m their son. Mama and Baba are inside, I shall call them.”
“No need, I see you’ve been acquainted with Childe already,” Mama had said, emerging from the darkness of the hallway to place her thin hand on Xiao’s shoulder. “Xiao— this is Childe, a coworker.”
“Hullo, Childe,” Baba had said too, a medical mask around his face.
Baba’s voice was rough with illness, a flu— the reason why he had stayed home, that day. He was looking better, but still, sweat damped his forehead.
“Baba, you should go in,” Xiao murmured.
“Uh! Wait— before I go— I meant to bring some soup.” Childe had grinned, holding the door.
Xiao had taken it, foolishly.
“This smells like seafood soup,” Xiao had said. “Baba…”
“—is fine with seafood soup,” Baba had interjected.
Xiao had looked at his father with shock. Mama had murmured— ”Are you sure, A-Li?”
Childe had beamed.
Xiao should have interrupted, right then and there— would have put a stop to all this.
But he didn’t.
He was frozen, on the step, wondering what else he didn’t know about his father.
—
The skies were irritatingly bright, in their onward march of bliss, even as the storm of grief threatened to consume the house. Baba barely ate, cooking rice only for Xiao, and losing time frequently, staring off into the distance. The bottle of wine remained ever present, except for once in his life, the bottle, with its foreign— despite everything, Xiao never really learned how to read them, even if they were from the homeland he never knew— characters, handwritten on yellowing sticker label, seemed to actually be running out of alcohol, as his father drunk from that singular cup. He never drunk more than one in a single session, but he was taking a single cup almost twice a week, now, instead of the infrequent, rare, occasions that it was in the past.
That was when it all really started, Xiao thinks. The reckoning. The destruction of their family.
“Mr. Childe,” Xiao had said, hazily. “Baba isn’t feeling well enough for visitors.”
“Your father called me,” Childe had said, in a rare moment of sombreness, “I brought some soup?”
He couldn’t deny Childe, of course. Baba had indeed called for the man, which was strange, as Baba called for no one, not even Mama. Baba was a man of silence, who did not express the presence of anything unpleasant in his life, who mourned secretively, without verbiage. Baba’s only indication of sorrow was that cup of wine, and even then, that was only for when his heart was truly shook.
It was a bit preposterous, to be honest.
Why did Baba trust this man so much?
Xiao had been there all his life, yet, Childe and his soup, once more, were accepted into the household.
—
Baba was a man who did not ask, did not judge. Only when one approached him would he give his honest opinion, and so, it was a long while before he was aware of the contents of Mama’s final letter to Xiao.
“Baba,” Xiao had murmured, tapping up to Baba. He didn’t want to tear open the fresh wound in Baba’s heart, but for months he had been agonising over what the rest of the letters meant, only understanding the last sentence of the mysterious note on a drawing, made by ‘Ping’.
So he decided to ask.
It was perhaps a mistake.
“Guizhong…” Baba had murmured, thumbing over the smudged graphite, holding the thin piece of paper as if though it was the most precious treasure in the world, even more so than the mysterious bottle of wine.
“What does it say?” Xiao had asked, trembling.
“It was a long time ago,” Baba had shook his head. “Merely some well-wishes, from… old friends long gone. Apologies, I… it hurts a little to much for Baba to explain, right now.”
And so Xiao had taken the little notepaper, and he had kept it, and had bowed his head with understanding.
“Ping… was she Mama’s friend?” Xiao had cocked his head curiously.
“We were all friends,” Baba had corrected. “But amongst all of us, Ping had the most special relationship with your Mama.”
To this day, Xiao isn’t quite sure what it all means.
—
Childe isn’t even his real name.
There’s another one, that Baba likes to mouth at Childe, when he thinks Xiao isn’t looking. It starts with an A, and that’s all Xiao knows of the man.
What kind of trustworthy person uses more than one name?
Nevermind that when he was six years old he tried to convince everyone in his class that his real name was Demon Conqueror. In his defense, he had just finished watching Yaksha-man, and had been wholly enamoured with it.
Nevertheless, Xiao has taken a peek at all the documents, the papers, the bills, that the intruder signs. His neat handwriting, Childe. No surname. Even the little plastic ID has that single name, but it feels wrong.
Childe’s been helping around a lot, lately, sticking his money into places that don’t belong. As a fellow teacher, his salary is similar to Mama’s, and so it feels like there never was a hole in the first place, the debts slowly disappearing away as Xiao is forced once more into the dual-income home.
Of course, when he looks at Baba’s look of relief, a clawing guilt bites at him.
Xiao’s twenty, now, he should be more mature.
But on days like these, he feels all the more like he’s a kid, once more, longing for his mother, and a deep anger simmers, though he tries to push it down, as ‘Childe’ sits in the place where his mother once resided.
—
Before Baba was hired to be a teacher at the school, before Xiao turned ten, he had far more variable hours. Xiao has vague recollections of this time— the letters that would come into the mailbox, the worried conversations held behind the doors of his parents’ bedroom.
Mama was often ill, during this time.
Often, she would pick Xiao up from school, and they would trudge to the bus stop together, Mama dropping in a couple coins, the machine spitting out, slowly, two tiny tickets.
They would take the tickets, and huddle together in the worn-down seats. Mama would always fold the bus tickets up into little hearts and stars and whatnot, and they would play a mini game of catch with their hands cupped, as the bus ambled on the road towards the hospital.
Then came the part where they would step off, and Mama would bring him into that cold place, with its sliding glass doors and the nurses and doctors rushing around.
Then, he would be sat down, in the waiting room, a receptionist keeping an eye on him, as Mama disappeared into the room, with that symbol on the door, a black fan on a deep yellow, like a wasp.
Xiao would be holding the little stars in his hand, and he would be frozen in that position until she emerged, weary.
Mama finally stopped going to the hospital for a while after that, and she finally got better enough to take up a job working alongside Baba at the school.
Of course— that was until she relapsed.
—
Baba is far more open in his affections with Childe.
Perhaps it is because Xiao is an adult, now— but still, it is rather disconcerting.
Baba and Mama had never nearly kissed as much. There were soft hand-touching, the brushing of fingers against a cheek, and the occasional hug, but Xiao rarely saw them kiss each other on the lips.
Of course, the horrible man still has some sense to do it when Xiao’s not looking, but Baba’s lips are always red and it’s very obvious when they’ve just been done kissing.
“I know you’re still… uncomfortable, about my relationship with your father,” Childe had said, cornering him slowly in the kitchen. “But I hope you can see that… I really am trying my best. Is there anything— anything I can do for you?”
“I—” Xiao had stumbled, as Baba had walked into the kitchen just then.
“Childe, Xiao,” Baba had said, and for a moment, a faint smile shined upon his lips. “I am glad you are getting along.”
Baba rarely smiled since Mama’s passing.
It was like Xiao’s birthday all over again, with Baba intensely happy, as if Xiao didn’t feel a burning, sinking feeling in his heart.
—
Childe had turned in for the night. Baba hadn’t.
Xiao blearily stepped out of his room to get a glass of water, but was met, once more, with the sight of Baba with that ever-present bottle, that singular cup of wine.
“A-Xiao,” Baba turned, placing the cup down. It was undrunk, still.
“Yes, Baba?” Xiao was hesitant, to go near Baba like this. Mama always said—
“Would you sit with me?” Baba murmured, drawing Xiao down into the seat.
“Yes, Baba,” Xiao replied, apprehensive— yet he did not show it. This was uncertain territory— never once had Baba quite acknowledged the world, when he was holding that cup.
“Baba wants to apologise to you,” Baba said, his eyes wrinkled into sorrow, his hand cupping Xiao’s. “Baba has not been very… present, lately. I know Mama’s passing has affected you deeply.”
“I’m… fine, Baba,” Xiao lied, “you should take care of yourself first.”
“I know you don’t like Childe,” Baba said, softly.
“I’m fine with him,” Xiao shoots back, too quickly.
“It’s alright, Xiao, I know it’s been hard on you,” Baba sighs. “Most people would say I am going… too fast.”
But I don’t want you to go at all, Xiao longed to say. Why can’t we just stay here, and remember Mama? Why can’t we just remain the way we are?
Instead, Xiao said: “...Give me time to adjust to his presence.”
A sigh.
“Do you know what this label says, A-Xiao?” Baba asked, thumbing the yellow sticker label with its little handwritten words. It doesn’t seem to contain any of the characters for wine or alcohol, but instead, it is evidently a note, penned by the same hand that had sketched those little people in Mama’s letter.
Ping.
“No, Baba,” Xiao admits, shame rising to his cheeks. “I don’t know.”
Mama and Baba, despite their difficulties with the language, tried to raise Xiao with the language of this country, and so the tongue of his ancestors fell to the wayside, until only the simplest of characters were familiar to him. The only reason he knows anything at all is due to the fact that Mama and Baba occasionally point things out, calling them by their foreign, unfamiliar names, and often Mama and Baba would write notecards for his birthday in that script.
“It’s alright…” Baba soothed. “I’ll teach you. It must seem all very strange to you, A-Xiao, all these secrets that your Mama and I carried from the homeland.”
“As long as I have Baba with me, I don’t care if he’s keeping secrets,” Xiao admits. “But… is the one who made this… ‘Ping’?”
It is true. There are a thousand winding things that Xiao cannot see, that stretch and pull Mama and Baba into different directions and strange afflictions, but they have always been this way. There is no other life he knows, no other life he can imagine, without Mama and her paper animals, Baba and his bottle of special wine.
“Ping gave this to us— before we boarded the ship. We weren’t likely to see each other ever again.” Baba whispered. “These words… are well wishes.”
“Your Mama and I… had a very special relationship, with Ping,” Baba continued, something faraway in his eyes. “Your Mama and Ping met first, of course. Back before the war. Back then, we were all… well, a little young, a little foolish, a lot of ideas and a lot of conviction. But conviction… well, wasn’t enough.”
“The people in the drawing…” Xiao trailed off.
“We called ourselves the ‘Adepti’,” Baba murmured, “and for a moment, it felt like we could free the world.”
Baba’s hand grips unconsciously around the bottle.
Xiao looks at the dwindling wine, in that amber bottle, and realises that Baba never moved, quite.
Baba had always been the one who remained.
Baba, who remained, was left with only his bottle of wine, and nothing else.
—
Xiao reopens the dictionary, on his computer, and agonises over that one word, in the little drawing with the even smaller note taped to the formerly folded bird.
Companion, it was translated.
But there was something else— its origin. A folktale.
A famous story, of a musician, and their lifelong companion, the only one to ever understand the feelings trapped within the strings of their song.
The only one who can ever understand the music of my heart.
The companion eventually passed away, leaving the musician alone once more.
Xiao will probably never understand, the threads of love that connect and string his parents. There’s an air of the unconventional, the strange, but the familiarity of it all does not allow him to see it as strange at all. But he knows, somehow, that somewhere in the seemingly simple equation of Mama + Baba, lies a tangled web, in which Mama and Ping and Baba and Childe in all their wisdom couldn’t possibly explain— but perhaps didn’t need to.
Mama and Baba never kissed, and Mama had a special relationship with Ping, and Baba often locked lips with Childe when he thought Xiao wasn’t looking.
It was easier to accept than he thought.
—
“You’re learning the language,” Childe comments idly, as Xiao looks up from the books. It’s a start— he’ll probably never reach the ability of someone from the homeland.
“Yes I am,” Xiao said, with nothing else to say.
“Good luck,” Childe says, earnestly. He’s starting to realise that nothing Childe has ever done is anything but sincere. It’s a difficult revelation. “I’m trying, but honestly, I’m still trying to get the hang of this language.”
“This isn’t your first language?” Xiao asks, surprised.
You sound so natural, he almost says, until he remembers the lady, with her compliments, that made Baba feel terrible.
“I’m not from here, originally,” Childe says. “Ah… but it’s all so long ago now… I wonder how they’re doing? If only…”
—
It becomes spring too easily. Xiao is twenty-one, now, and has just acquired a job as a clerk at the local bank. It’s a little far away, from the tiny apartment that he’s been living in, for the two decades of his life.
As Xiao packs his bags, Childe comes in.
“Hullo,” Xiao says hesitantly. Baba’s just outside, in the living room, and the door is wide open. He has to keep his hostility to a minimum.
“I’ll take care of him, don’t worry,” Childe says. “Kids like you should be worrying about normal things.”
“You won’t replace her,” Xiao says, quietly.
“I’m not aiming to,” Childe shrugs, folding up Xiao’s hoodies into the luggage. He folds far messier than Mama— Mama had an artist’s hands, and she deftly maneuvered the clothing. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you call me ‘Mum’ anytime soon. I know how important she is to you.”
“Do you?” Xiao raises an eyebrow.
“Believe me, more than you think,” Childe says. “It’s nothing like yours, but for a period of time I didn’t have any family at all, either. I had to find my own, amongst people I never thought I'd consider family.”
To have no family at all. It’s a sobering thought. Xiao still has Baba. But what about Baba? For twenty years, it’d just been Baba, Mama, and Xiao. Other kids had grandparents. But what happened to Baba’s parents?
“It’s okay to think of her, you know?” Childe murmurs. “But you have to live life, too. Imagine if you were the one to go first… wouldn’t you want your Baba to live happily, too?”
It’s a strange thought— if Xiao ever went away, before Baba.
He doesn’t like the idea of his face being added to the roster that Baba dreams aimlessly about, as he clutches the bottle.
He doesn’t want Baba to be unhappy.
He thinks of that moment, in the kitchen, Baba smiling, even for just a second.
He thinks of how Childe and Xiao make Baba smile.
“You’ll come back to visit, right? No need to agonise over it.” Childe laughs, shutting the clasp of the luggage for him. “Your Baba and I will always be waiting, here.”
And so, when Childe leaves the room, Xiao quietly takes the letter, and folds it back into a bird, and wishes goodbye to the words inside it. Then, he quietly taps to Baba’s room, and sneaks it onto the bedside table.
—
They don’t take the bus, this time.
Childe piles them all into his well-used Aquabus car, peeling blue paint and a convertible hood. Xiao’s scarce things are packed into the boot. Childe has turned the creaky, staticky radio on, and it blasts out a rock song, with lots of electric guitar, and screaming.
Meanwhile, Baba sits next to him.
“Xiao,” Baba murmurs, “How you’ve grown.”
“I’m still the same as ever, Baba,” Xiao says, thinking it will comfort his father.
“No,” Baba says, and a gentle smile emerges. “You’re growing. You’re changing. So different from your childhood. Continue growing, okay?”
Into his hands is pressed, a bottle of wine. There’s still a little left, sliding lazily in the bottle. The sticker label, with its well-wishes, makes a little more sense than it previously did.
“A gift,” Baba says, an air of amusement, “now that you can drink.”
“Baba… don’t you…” Xiao trails off.
Baba turns, a little, towards Childe, still singing along to the screaming vocals.
“Not anymore,” Baba said. “If you grow, don’t I have to grow along with you? I’ve got to catch up, don’t I?”
And so, a bottle of wine shakes inside his backpack, as the car rattles its way, just like the bus, along the road, down to the inner city, as the little paper bird rests in his first, but not last, home, on the table, where Baba will tuck himself into the covers, next to Childe, and Mama will be resting on the table, wishing blessings upon them.