By Paisley Rekdal
Childless
was my mother’s explanation
for their presence
at every birthday, recital,
Christmas: not
unwelcome, nor
unexpected even: Bob,
my uncle’s Black
co-worker, and Bob’s wife
Carol, a white
woman born,
like Bob, in Mississippi. Which explains,
perhaps, why
they never traveled
home or spoke
of their own families,
adopting ours
instead: its clash
of Chinese, whites,
Malaysians, children
gifted with disinterest
in our race, even if
for Bob and Carol,
we must have been defined
by it, by our
indifference to it, at least
in the ways they’d been taught
to care and think of it
themselves. I remember
Bob’s metal glasses, his powerful,
dry palms: how forcefully
he’d grip my hands
in his, delighted
as he queried after
my school
assignments, what books
I read, what books
I’d someday write,
he insisted, his gaze
paternal if intense, whereas
Carol looked, somehow—
my mother particularly
noticed it—unsettled
as my cousins
pounded down the hall,
Po Po yelling after
in Cantonese, so
unselfconsciously
ourselves perhaps
it permitted Bob
some reprieve from their usual
quiet, if we
were the only
social invitations
offered them; or no
reprieve at all
if he or Carol
wanted but could not have
a child. Here,
every holiday spent with us
would have been evidence
of a life marked
also by some absence
in their marriage,
as my mother casually
called it. Was our family
admonition, respite,
fantasy? Likely
they thought nothing
of these visits,
and I am wrong
to imagine Bob liked me because
out of all my cousins, I
was closest to what
he and Carol
might produce:
that it was love
they felt for us, just as we
felt love for them,
not merely ritual.
It is only my memory now
of Carol’s face
that makes me wonder
about these visits—
that tightness
to her smile
over the roast beef, the lap chang
and sticky rice, as if she were afraid
they or we’d
offend, both she
and Bob belonging
no place and everywhere
at once. I wonder,
having had
no children now
myself, if I’ve returned
to their memory
to find only some reflection
of myself, my mother
having leaned
over the table today at lunch
to hiss, You
are more comfortable
with white people
than us; the piercing
half-truth of it stinging
us both
with its accuracy and lie. I
am not comfortable
with anyone,
really, and if I did not
have a child, it was not
out of fear
I have become a diffusion
not expansion of a self
my mother
would recognize: less
her, less my father, even
as I am more
than both of them as well. Did Bob
and Carol fear
that a child
would be more reckoning
of what the two of them
meant together,
or did they simply decide
against more difficulty, as I have
in choosing to marry
a white man who does not love
the future enough
to produce more of it
with me? Was it for my mother,
my husband, or myself
I never had a child?
And yet how grateful
I have been
for this decision; how sad
I am as well, ashamed
before my cousins’
babies, their milky
skins, their near-blond hair.
How little courage
I have really had
myself, though
I’d never call it cowardice
on Carol’s part
or Bob’s, their marriage
so different from my own
as I have merely chosen
to suffer, somehow, less.
I’ll never know
what they thought
of all those weddings, funerals.
And now they’re dead,
I cannot ask. Instead
I’d complimented them
on Carol’s handknit sweaters,
Bob’s tailored suits,
the excellent pound cake
they brought each Christmas,
the recipe for which
I still keep for special occasions,
because the recipe
is meant for sixteen
people, Carol typed, then added
in her neat,
clear hand, perfect
for parties or large
families, which is why
I’ve rarely made it since
there are only two of us.
