Endless Waiting

Every day Father wakes up. He heads into our tiny kitchen and turns on the water faucet. He lets the water run to get as much of the orange colored rust escape from the pipe. As soon as he feels it’s ready, he fills the electronic white water heater carafe with water and sets it on. It works on getting the water boiling and Father gets dressed. He hurriedly goes to his black Toyota and makes a quick run to the local Vietnamese-owned French bakery down the street. He gets his usual: 3 dollars’ worth of the short baguettes. Father says it’s not the best – not like in France, but as a substitution, it’s better than not having any “pain”. When he returns home, Mother ascends from the basement, where she’s been laboring over her clothes. Mother is the most hardworking person I’ve ever known – and I admire her greatly for it – it is one of her many skills and attributes I hope to learn from and to emulate. Mother prepares the coffee Father likes, while Father sets on top of the dining table the brown paper bag containing our the baguettes. Father watches as Mother finishes making the drinks, bringing the drinks to the dining table. Sometimes he helps Mother, and brings out the plates for the bread. Sometimes, he just sits and waits. Mother brings out the plates, the Nutella, the French butter, the knives, and they soon eat breakfast.

I don’t know what Father does everyday. A man of few words, he comes and goes as he pleases. “I don’t have to answer to anyone,” he once told Mother. He used to love his children very much. Perhaps too much. Their betrayal of his love has caused his descent into oblivion. He said he couldn’t go back to school because he needed to earn money for his children, to send them to school, to pick them up to school. He didn’t want them to join the gangs prevalent then. Still. He uses his children as a shield. But for what? The $9/hr job couldn’t really support all of his 6 children. Even when there were only 2 children left at home, his small increase to $10/hr was barely enough to pay for the mortgage and bills that came in monthly. There were days when the four of them would subsist on bread, ramen noodles, and eggs. Father didn’t seem to care that he was writing checks that continually pulled from this credit line at the bank. Mother and Father would always argue about that – “What do you want me to do?” He’d shout at Mother. “You’re no help to me at all! You can’t work and everyone expects me to take care of them!” Mother is horrified by the words laced with meanness. She works hard – but for reasons unknown to her, her work has no value to him. She once told me that perhaps he was waiting. Wanting to make another life with someone else. That he wanted to escape the family he had created. I cried back then. I told Mother I didn’t want to see them separated. But Mother scolded me, and said if it was meant to be, that nothing on earth could prevent Father from leaving. “It’s better that he’s still alive and you can still have someone to call Father,” she comforted me.

They live together as though embattled in a chess game. Each waiting to see the other’s move. Who’s going to call it quits? Who’s going to have the upper hand? And we are but pawns in their game? I can’t wait any longer, I tell Mother. Someone needs to make a decision so that we can all move on with our lives. We are sitting in a fishbowl. Swimming around in circles all day. The landscape remains the same and Father is holding us back. Mother tells me we have to wait. That it’s his move next. We can do nothing but wait. I don’t cry. I say okay. But inside, I am tired of waiting. I am ready to move on and I don’t know how long I can wait. Mother has waited all her life. But I am not her.