It’s in doctor’s office lighting that we discuss putting our dog down for the first time. He’s our first dog, therefore our first encounter of even considering the process. His health issues are rampant and getting more expensive by the minute. Most recently, his leg has seized up, making him hop around like a three-legged circus animal, and we’re beginning to wonder how much time he has left. In week-old conversations and long car rides to the vet, we spoke of it in practicalities and formalities, but now we stand with tears running into our masks in the veterinarian’s uneasy onlooking gaze.
How we can make him go away? Have happy? How to say bye-bye?
It’s more painful to hear my dad chokingly utter broken English beside me, sending the familiar wave of embarrassment over me. After a beat, I step into the role I’ve been playing for years: Translator, interpreter, speaker, and wonder-er of how much of what I’m saying he truly understands. I feel my throat lock and my tear ducts release with the same key.
Our conversations have always been like this, even in our own household when no third party is involved—the cogs in our heads whirring wildly as we both try our best to translate in our minds what exactly we mean in languages that never quite overlap. As we speak of matters of life, death, and money, our emotions flowing over, the cracks in our conversation are thrown into sharp relief. I substitute English for Chinese while he patches and reroutes his sentences with simpler language for me. It’s a strange kind of dance, where linguistically we both hop around with the grace of wearing one six-inch heel and one wooden clog. I wear these same shoes when I enter family-friend functions, and unlike the Vans I can leave at the door, these are ones I can’t take off as I limp around perpetual Chinese conversation.
I stumble, poked relentlessly by my mismatched footwear. I’m asked how I’m doing. Stab. Where I’m studying. Stab. Why I don’t have a boyfriend yet. Stab. I slink to the shadows on the balls of my throbbing toes, but my mom thrusts me into the spotlight for the thousandth time, loudly shining the spotlight on my fragmented Chinese, a mix of jeering disgust, laughter, and disappointment on her lips. She laments my loss of the language, how I rejected the verbally abusive Chinese lessons in the basement of the local Chinese teacher’s home at eight years old, how I never bothered to polish the rough edges of my tongue since. It used to be almost a quirk, a party trick, my illiteracy in Chinese, but as I get older, it gets less and less cute.
She is mom, not ma ma. She is excellent at English. Mom and I are like sandpaper to skin from the minute I learn to talk. We are abrasive, aggressively exfoliating each other’s identities through eighty-percent-English arguments, until we are both rubbed raw and seething. I am eight years old and wondering when we will be the barbeque-grilling, game-night-playing, Christmas-celebrating families in the books I borrow at the library. She is in her late thirties agonizing over where she went so wrong with me. Ba works late into the night. Mom is around, and therefore can be blamed for everything. I gleefully overlook her encouragement of my creativity and her nurturing care as she sits me down with a pencil and four-square Chinese writing paper. There aren’t many ways to fight authority as a child, but I can rebel against her language. I can make Chinese insults impossible. If she refuses to be proud of me, I can remove her from my vocabulary.
He is ba, not dad. His English is terrible, and he is a quiet man. He tells me Chinese stories at nighttime, teaching me about the world of spinning improvised yarns. These Chinese tales are the only thing that puts me to sleep at night. I am unable to recognize the irony in seeking entertainment in the language I push away. I may refrain from ordering Chinese at restaurants for the rest of my life, but I will forever remember how to say Doctor Horse and Evil One-Eared Rat, characters of our storytime world. I keep a little Chinese, for him.
Constant rejection in Chinese builds a case of resentment around the language. When I take Mandarin in high school, the teacher asks me if I already understand it. I shake my black-haired Chinese head, blink my Chinese eyes, and use my Chinese lips to say no because it’s easier than saying yes. On job applications, my pen hovers over the second language box, wondering if it’s accurate to write down Mandarin Chinese. I spell out proficient in Mandarin Chinese on my resume. Undo. Redo.
I know it’s an easy fix in theory. Just learn more Chinese. But can I be blamed for walking to the Western side of the room when I’m constantly reinforced with doses of insecurity whenever thrust into Chinese conversation? Why bother being jeered at by the Chinese international students when I can speak English and be perfectly eloquent, spinning poetry and personal essays like it’s second nature? Why consider cobbling together sentences to connect with people whose culture has never held space for me? Just learn more Chinese. For me, Chinese means ridicule. It means screaming matches between my parents downstairs. It means a huddle of Chinese parents comparing grades, extracurriculars, proficiencies. It means yelled conversations in the car about my every deficiency. It means getting locked out of the house. Just learn more Chinese. I know, OK?
Yet here I stand in the veterinarian’s office, looking at the water in my father’s eyes, wondering: In the spaces between our shared words, what falls between the cracks? What expressions have we never been able to communicate? What has been thrown away by my own willful ignorance and stupidity? What parts of my father have I lost along with the language? What doors closed when my lips did?
We love our dog, Ba says to the vet.
It almost surprises me. Because I did not know he loved our dog.
Love is something we don’t say. Ai, the Chinese word for love, comes into play even less, unless it is in the form of Ai-ya, what did you do? At my Canadian school, we throw love from wall to wall, paint it up and down the ceiling. I love this. I love that. love you. I love this colour. I love your sweater. I don't know what it’s like in China, but at home, love is nowhere to be found, and Ai is just as scarce. I love you, baby, my friend Nicole's mom says to her as she drops her off at elementary school. For me, there is no love, there is goodbye and a closing car door. In my house, love is sacred. Ai is the holy grail. yet at the same time, they have gone unused for so long that the words have become rusted, and the meaning is peeling off.
But what use are Love or Ai or Ai or Love if they can’t encapsulate the way my dad cradles our dog in his arms? If, in between their letters or strokes, they don't hold the image of my dad calling out our dog’s name first thing every evening when he comes home from work? If they don't have a subscript detailing the way my dad carefully hooks his leash around his collar, being sure to avoid snagging his curls?
We speak of my dog’s healing in fractured communication. After his x-rays, we trundle to the car with medication in our hands. I do not tell my dog I love him. I do not tell my father I love him.
The car ride home is quiet.
But if he speaks to me, I will listen.
About the Author
Sophia Guan is a psychology student who is constantly questioning her past and future life choices; so much that she often forgets to return to the present. She enjoys reading, creating art (@phiagallery), long walks, and learning. Thank you for perceiving her work
