Free If I Could Tell You by Lee-Jing Jing

the paper started to dance in front of my eyes but it didn’t help. All I saw was a jumble of letters, thick and black and unrelenting.
    Finally, I stood up and said, ask your father when he gets back. I got no time, got dinner to prepare.
    I left the dining space, turning my face so that I didn’t have to look at her. I said that and went to hide in the kitchen, stopping at the window to catch my breath, as if I had just run lengths around the field below. A little later, I heard the key in the lock, heard the door open and shut, and him sighing deeply as he stepped out of his shoes. I heard Mei Ling say, pa, I need help with homework. I imagined the slow rhythm of his nod, the way he closed his eyes as he did it so it seemed like he didn’t want to, not really.
    I sank my hands into the basin filled with water and vegetables that needed cleaning. I shook the dirt off the many leaves and tangled stalks, and told myself that it was alright. I can’t help her with her schoolwork, I thought, but I can feed my family. There was fish, thawing in a bowl, ready to be dressed up with mushrooms and ginger for steaming. There was
kangkong
, water spinach, that would go perfectly with dried shrimp paste. And soup made out of lotus root and chicken and herbs. Mei Ling, difficult at mealtimes, would touch her mouth to the fish and, with enough scolding, take a few stalks of
kangkong
. But the soup, she would drink. She would drown her rice with it and sip and chew and be full.
    It was alright, I told myself, until I saw that they were still working when dinner was ready. I was warm from the kitchen, so I stood at the other end of the dining table, near the window, cooling my face and watching them.
    No, no, that’s wrong, he said.
    Huh? Mei Ling said, looking up at her father, who had already turned his face away to look for the evening newspaper among the pile of things on a chair.
    Food’s getting cold, I said.
    Mei Ling said, last one! Last question, Ma.
    I brought everything out, the bowls and utensils and the pot of rice and dishes still steaming in their bowls and plates. I scooped rice into three bowls, set a pair of chopsticks firmly on top of each and still, they didn’t move.
    Time to eat,
la
, I said.
    Her father looked up. He said, okay, okay, time to eat. We’ll finish that later. Time to eat. He announced this, got up, and stood behind his usual seat, hands gripping the top of the chair and nodding slowly. As if he were the one who’d spent an hour in the kitchen, made all the food and was so proud of himself for cooking all of this.
    I GOT used to this the way I got used to staying at home as a child, watching my siblings go off in the morning, dressed in their white and blue uniforms, and then come back home again, my brothers sweaty from playing after school, my sisters full of chatter from what they had learned and heard that day. My mother had decided early on to keep me at home to help out. Nothing would get done otherwise, she said. She taught me to cook so that the family would get fed while she and my father spent all their waking hours working at the sewing factory and helping out with my uncle’s food stall at night. I had to be home when my siblings finished class and needed lunch. And I had to be there to help them grow into their clothes year after year, altering the length and breadth of waistbands, hems, and cuffs of second and third-hand uniforms. While I sewed, my siblings would be at the table, heads over their books, sharing the single lamp.
    I told myself that Mei Ling didn’t know, made myself believe it even after I told her off one afternoon for reading her storybook when she should be doing her homework. There was a pause before she replied, it’s a dictionary, ma, it explains words. I said nothing and walked out of the living room, clean laundry in my arms which I put in the dirty hamper and had to wash all over again.
    WE go to the hawker centre for dinner some nights, walking the five