Silence

She sits at the kitchen table downstairs, shoulders slumped and hair falling forward to hide her careworn face.  Her head is bowed as though conquered.

Her cotton shirt is brown, as are her loose-fitting slacks-she blends in with the table.

"You look sad," I say to her, pressing my cheek into the wall.  My voice is lighthearted, yet my stomach tightens in apprehension.  For a while she doesn't answer me.  Then she says to me, with little emotion, "I am sad."

My stomach ties itself into a knot.

"Why are you sad?" I unclasp myself from the banister and walk into the yellow kitchen light.  The proud head, with the wide nose and thin, flat lips turns away from me.

We are shrouded in silence.  Now, silence is a funny thing because sometimes it is the most beautiful thing in the world.  When it follows laughter, or a kiss, or simply itself as it floats along the meadows and streams.  But not now.  This silence is ugly and cancerous.

I step closer.  "Why are you sad?" and my voice takes on the quality of someone very young.  Someone I imagine that I used to be, although that was so long ago I can't truly remember.

"Why are you sad?"

She won't tell me.  I can see it in her eyes as she turns reluctantly to face me.  I can't force her, and I'm frightened of something I can't understand.  I wish I were older, wiser, versed in the ways of womanhood.

My mother tells me, in Chinese, to do my homework.  The silence returns to claim us.  So she repeats herself without anger or exasperation.

"How can I do my homework if you're sad?" She doesn't reply, but looks away.  I walk closer to her, and I can see that she doesn't want me there.  I can't help her.

So I leave before she can see me cry.