I know the sweet shape of sugar, tang, and the soft sweep of cat, mao. I know wo e le, I’m hungry; I know wo bu zhi dao, I don’t know. I know wo yao, I want; wei shen me, why; dui bu qi, I’m sorry.

Last March, I learned the word ai zheng, cancer.

My parents, of course, knew the word already, as native speakers who immigrated to America when they were in their late twenties. My father’s English was decent—he’d come here for grad school on scholarship—but in Chinese he was king. He knew jokes, stories. He had an endless supply of cheng yu, Chinese idioms, that he used to one-up us in conversation. In Chinese he teased, telling me that my life in America was one of ease, my adulthood fun and games compared to his.

The first time I visited my father in the hospital, he insisted he was fine, defensive as though I’d accused him of something indecent. Ri zi hai chang, he said. My days are still long. In the nine months he ended up living, he refused to tell his mother, my Nai Nai, about his sickness; he called her every night and pretended nothing was wrong.

Nai Nai has never learned a word of English. In America, that makes her a newborn.

As he weakened over those nine months, my father retreated to the language he knew first. He eschewed the American movies he used to insist on and started watching Chinese dramas all day. “They’re easier to follow,” he told us. “Effortless.” I missed the American movies. When I watched Chinese dramas with him, I understood little; the dialogue slipped past me the way a stream runs through your fingers, leaving no lasting residue.

I relearned words I’d forgotten: shou, thin; xue, blood; yi yuan, hospital. As his caretaker, my mother also learned new words, spending hours looking up the obscure language doctors tossed at her without thought: adenocarcinoma, carcinomatosis. My father wouldn’t talk to us about the cancer, deflecting our concerns. He preferred talking about his childhood, about growing up by the ocean, as though by invoking his youth, it would come again.

Once my father was in critical condition, we brought Nai Nai to the hospital and, with the help of a doctor, told her what was going on. The hospital had a translator who repeated the doctor’s words in a precise, robotic voice. But no matter what words we used, Nai Nai didn’t understand. “He was fine yesterday. How can he be dying today? When will he wake up?” She asked the nurses this last part over and over, reminding me of a toddler who had just learned why.

“Talk to him,” the nurses said once Nai Nai had worn herself out. Even though he was sedated, they claimed, he could still hear us. I watched the tube breathe in his stead, grasped for the perfect words in Chinese. Why? If they existed, I didn’t know them. Nai Nai murmured to him, so low I couldn’t make out what she was saying. I want. I kept thinking about American movies, of tender last words amidst a swelling orchestra. I’m hungry. All I had were scraps from a life that had been better off wordless: him taking me to the park, holding hands as we crossed the street.

I don’t know. My father lost me when he spoke at length in Chinese. I’d look at him, confused, and he’d shake his head. “How old are you? How can you not know what that means?” Sometimes he’d laugh and explain, but sometimes he wouldn’t try. Sometimes I wouldn’t try, either; I’d pretend to understand him, allowing both of us to move on.

Instead of died, the nurses used the word expired. Nai Nai threw herself against the hospital bed, wailing. She tucked the blankets tighter around his body as though he could still get cold. I’m sorry. Something about the bed gave the illusion that he was still breathing. That he could still tell me to stop playing games, to grow up. That I could still say: I will, I promise.

___

Julia Hou is a writer and software engineer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New Letters, Brevity, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She is a former editorial intern at Cleaver Magazine and has received support for her fiction from Bread Loaf, Tin House, and The Kenyon Review.

Artwork by Shelley Lennox Whitehead