Her Dresses
Sweetness tinged my memory of Grandparents’ house. A thick, savory sweetness that clung to my palms and hinted of soy sauce and brown sugar, of Tang Cu Ribs mixed with sesame and leftover rice shoved into neat little boxes on the top layers of the fridge. It lingered on my fingers in the rides back home from their apartment, making my fingers sticky as they rested in my pockets.
Whenever Grandma heard about my sticky hands through the phone, she would always laugh and promise to cook more dishes once I get another chance to visit. I never neglected a single chance to cash in her words, leaping out of bed early on Saturday mornings just to cross the city to their apartment before lunch. Assisted by Grandpa, Grandma always made 5 dishes, ingredients stirred up in different combinations of sugar and spices in their magical little kitchen. It was braised pork with Chinese carrots and scallion steamed rolls and pumpkin rice cakes, stir-fry lettuce with oyster sauce and spiced corned eggs…The chefs always came out last after their proud dishes, hot and sweaty in their amours of apron. The for-two dining table would then be completely overcrowded with dishes, soups, and elbows that a few dishes were pushed onto the microwave.
My grandmother was majestic at cooking. She was, in fact, majestic in everything she laid hands on. She kept two rows of calligraphy brushes on her bathroom wall, her instruments for painting words, characters, flowers and birds, breathing and blossoming like they weren’t made of ink. Seldom when I visit, she takes my hand in her callused palms and leads me to her collection, the sides of her dress swaying gently and tickling my ankles.
She only wears skirts and dresses, stubbornly insisting other things to fail to accentuate her figure. Even Grandpa tells us that he hasn’t had the honor of spotting his wife in pants. Nevertheless, she loved her gowns—They were pale blue, lilac purple, scarlet and the color of sunflowers, going down to her knees in soft fabric that hugged her waist and pranced around her legs. “This one’s from the morning market,” she’ll narrate to us, “and this one’s a hand-me-down from your great grandmother.” In the instances where her eyes meet mine as she presents her dresses, I see plainly the beauty that made my grandpa fall head-over-heels for her half a decade ago reflected on her face, the same beauty accentuated by the flowing array of colors heaped neatly into the drawers of her closet.
On the day that it happened, it was also her dresses that were first taken away.
I can recall nothing unordinary about that day apart from a heavy rain that poured down from the skies and split the world in half. The Beijing sky was murky against wet pavements, blades of grass bending under the weight of droplets. I was in pre-calc when my mother appeared, eyes swollen from tears. On the way home, she kept silent and clung to the steering wheel a little harder than usual, grasping the leather like she was trying to maintain her balance. She’s gone, she burst out, the fourth light along the route. What? She’s gone. Off to a better place. It was your Grandpa who found her.
The rest became a blur. I remember ending up at my grandparent’s house, clutching to the edge of my mother’s shirt like a child. I remember that the floor was wiped clean of any traces of blood, and the sharp object which she used to take her own life was nowhere to be seen – she might’ve just been out for a walk, ready to reappear at the doorstep any minute. I find myself bringing back memories of our last conversation in attempt to find clues that somehow hinted at her departure, but there was nothing. Our last conversation ended with her offering me chocolates after mealtime at the disapproving glance of my mother.
Since that Friday, I never stopped by my grandfather’s house for food again. There was no specific event that led to this change after that single day, maybe except for the loss of the Chinese recipes which my grandmother had previously stored in her head. My grandpa continued to invite me over for lunch in his apartment across the city. My mother packed away her mother’s suitcases. We got a cat. My grandpa converted to Christianity. I went to America. I came back again. Life continued as if a Chinese family didn’t lose one of its members on a particular Friday.
Every now and then, I see my mother in one of my grandmother's sweaters. My mother wears them with a proudness and some sort of indignation, bringing us all to become nostalgic again of her. Seeing my mother in those sweaters makes me emotional. But her dresses? What about her dresses?