Language in Time Part III of III: Home

For Part I, Winter Mornings, click here.
For Part II, In Transit, click here.

October 2006

I stare at a blank screen for hours, without thought or impulse. Sportscenter's jingles mingle with Weezer's "Say It Ain't So" on repeat as cold pizza lies on top of my research. My room is jumbled from end to end with dirty laundry, old papers, and resume tapes. But I see nothing but a blank screen for hours, without thought or impulse -- only patience that writer's block will fade, exposing metaphors so great they make similes jealous.

My fingers play these tricks on words acrobatically, double dutching through red marker lines and Spell Check's pop up signs. With every word I type, every sentence I edit, and every essay I send to the printer, I feel power in a language that has once left me tongue-tied. But I also feel something else -- the vibration of small object in my right pocket. Cell phone. Mama, I thought.

Hello?
"Hey, Di? It's me, mom. How are you?"
Okay.
"I'm okay too. Have you eaten? Are they feeding you well at all?"
Yes.
"That's good, that's good. You must miss our cooking. Have you finished your homework?"
Doing that now.
"Good. Well tell me again what's been going on in your life. How are you, really?"
Alright.
...
I'm gonna do my homework, I continued after the silence.
"Okay, well give me a call when you're bored. Good night. "
Bye.

I had once lived in denial that my native language was slipping from my frail grasp, that my unique past is fading into a future I do not own. But now, my teenage angst has subsided, giving way to a powerless acceptance. I am who I am -- a bastard child of China and America, trying to find an identity that has never been created. Tired frustration no long exists, as it no longer flails its arms in the oceans while others drown. I have stopped trying to dream Chinese dreams, and I have stopped trying to live Chinese lives.

I have become a guai-lo, a term we coin for white Americans even though it directly translates into "ghost people." The paleness of my skin, though, pails in comparison to the ghost of a language that I have forgotten. But the voice of Mama still calls out to me -- no longer a call for me to come home because both she and I do not know where that is. Another vibration.

Hello?
Didi, it's me. I forgot to say something to you.
What?

There is silence, but I remain quiet because I could hear her breathing heavy as if she wants to say something too difficult to tell me in person.

I love you.

My mother rarely speaks to me in English -- only twisting and slurring her tongue when she felt it imperative that I do not miss her meaning. Though broken, her words are perfect. Though perfect, she was vulnerable. Mama never used to say those words in any dialect. I never had to hear them beceause I have already felt them in the hokkien mien she has cooked, in the bed sheets she has changed, and in the dishes she refuses to let me wash for her. But now, words have become her last ditch effort, her hail mary, her final love letter to a fleeting son that may not return.

She wonders if I love her back and I do. She wonders if I miss her too and I do. She wonders if I will call our house in Queens home once again and I cannot answer.

But my response is a moot point. To me, I am already home when she calls. To me, her voice is my home. So now, I no longer talk or translate. I only listen and I am home.