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She let the silence stay, amid the vast opulence of the room that surrounded her. It afforded her enough distraction from the sole other occupant of the room — her mother. In her mind it had been far too long since she last saw her, and even then, the distance between them carried further in the time spent apart. She seemed like a stranger to her now, a faint familiarity of someone she once knew, whose time it had come, to arrive on her shore. Despite all that she was and stood for, Michelle could not come to hate her. Hate was too strong an emotion to drive from someone who was never a present figure in her youth. The best she could surmount from herself towards her, if anything, was indifference.  

As Michelle gently lifted a tender portion of abalone from her own plate to her mouth, she noted her mother’s chopsticks untouched. She had aged significantly in their time apart, and deep within her, Michelle found a growing expanse of pity at the woman, whose last few years had clearly been unkind. There was a parallel continuity in the sorrow and anguish that now revealed itself to her in the moment, that perhaps they both shared. Realizing that she would not be the first to speak, her mother broke the tense silence. 

“How are you?” 

“…” 

“Good.” 

Michelle continued fixate with the crockery in front of her as she chased a head of broccoli nimbly around her plate with her gilded chopsticks. She was just as her stubborn as her mother was, and she had decided from the very start of the evening, that she was not going to make this night easy. In her eyes, the exercise was futile. There was nothing left in her heart to say. The time had long past for such things.  

“…and you?” 

Michelle found herself whispering in a barely audible tone.  

“Oh, I’ve been fine,” her mother brushed of nonchalantly, as she stared at the floor. 

“Came down with a cold last week, still recovering. It’s never been the same since the chemo ended, but I’ve been in remission for a while now, and my doctor says that the worst of it is over.” 

Michelle nodded in acknowledgement as she placed the head of broccoli in her mouth. The air conditioner hummed in the distance, as she felt a sudden chill. Her mother neglected to tell her about her treatment.  

“How are things overseas?” 

“…” 

“Just fine.”  

She refused to give up the secrets of her life a continent away with someone who never gave her reason to celebrate their accomplishments as a parent. In the past, she only reached out to her if needed her as a means to an end. She refused to play a part in her charade anymore. She continued to play with the food on her plate, this time, a julienne of carrot.  

“Look, I know you hate me, but please talk to me.” 

“You don’t deserve the hate I give.”  

Michelle rolled her eyes quietly and picked up a piece of chicken from the plate directly in front of her in an attempt to show her outward disinterest at the direction the conversation was heading towards. 

“I don’t hate you. I just don’t see why I needed to do this. Things have been fine as is the past couple of years, if not better.” 

Her words came out harsher than she had originally envisioned for them to be, and it took them both of them by surprise. The feistiness of her youth had returned along with a dormant resentment towards a woman who had used much of her childhood as a projection of her failing marriage. She found herself once more, within a space at the edge of her reality and a recalled past; a place she had once ignored, but now could not object to.  

A lone waiter returned to the room, diffusing the silent tension with a plate of stir-fried tiger prawns and salted egg yolk. It was one of the already many dishes her mother had ostentatiously ordered. She realized that at some moment of time in her life, the dishes before her, had been staple favourites of her youth. This was an attempt on her mother’s part to reconcile herself to the daughter she had lost many years ago.  

“I stopped eating shellfish several years ago,” she said quietly. “I found out I was allergic to them.”

Her mother froze in her expression and dropped her head silently.  

“Please excuse me. I need to use the bathroom.” 

She got up from her seat and folded her napkin across the arm rest of her chair. She turned around and proceeded to walk out to the adjoining suite at the far side of the room. She turned on the light and locked the door behind her. Combing her fingers through her hair, she wrestled a brave smile upon her face. She turned the knob of the faucet clockwise and ran her hands through the flowing warm water. She was exhausted and proceeded to wash her face. She tried to ground herself in the moment as she felt control slipping away from her being. She began to circulate through the collected memories of her mind and stumbled upon a jar she had long forgotten; the last time her mother embraced her in love.  

Five minutes had soon come to pass, and Michelle found herself settling once more into the rhythms of her being. She drew her face into a laugh and pinned it there. She counted to three, flushed the toilet and returned to the space she had left behind. She sat down on the table, picked up her chopsticks and stared at the woman in front of her. Her head was down, and her plate remained empty. As she looked up, Michelle noted the tears streaming down her face.  

“Look, I know I haven’t been the mother figure you needed growing up, and I truly am sorry for it. We might not have a lot of time left, and I want to try to fix things. I know I wasn’t the person you needed me to be growing up, but I want to change that. I’ve always loved you, even if it has never seemed that way. Please let me back in again.”  

Michelle sat in the lingering after tones of her mother’s words as she wrestled with the growing restlessness of her own heart. She moved closer to her mother and held her weathered hand. It was thinner and frailer than she had imagined it to be for someone still in their early fifties.  

“I’m sorry, I really am.” 

Michelle continued in her silence, as her mother cried out her tears. Trying to take in the whirlwind that grew around her, she found herself doing the only thing she knew to do. She spun the turntable to a plate of long beans and placed a heaping amount on her mother’s plate. She rested her other hand on her mother’s lap and squeezed it gently.  

“妈妈吃吧.”

Her words rapped instantaneously like knuckles against the hollow doors surrounding her own heart. It was the first time in a long time, she had acknowledged her mother in that way. Her mother’s sobs grew more profound with each contracting exhale as she took in the weight of Michelle’s words. As the moment continued to unravel before her, she soon found a steady stream of tears collecting down her face. Michelle grimaced bitterly, conceding the fact that her mother had won. She had missed her too. With that thought, she continued to heap food on her mother’s plate, as the two women wept through their first encounter together in almost half a decade, consoling each other amid spoonful’s of food.