Anna Vu

Exhale. The plume of steam disperses from the bitter coffee into the sharp winter air, propelling upwards. I am seated at the dining table, my palms tingling as I grip the igneous mug. Pinching the tightness between my eyebrows briefly relieves the lingering heaviness I feel, but the house’s resonating incessantly hums in my ears. In the middle of the beige ceiling, a singular circular light flickers its amber flare aimlessly. Its heat concentrates into a boiling sensation on my nape, crawling up my scalp. Nevertheless, I am still cold; burning cold. 

Suddenly, the humming ceases. Raindrops strike the kitchen window as her cries ricochet from within the nursery. It's blistering. Her cries explode into a bursting inferno, blazing across the house in fiery ripples. It’s boiling. Ripping through the halls, crashing through the beige frames of my home as I quiver in the burning cold. It's smothering.  

Under her duress, she demands me with her wails. And so, I—as I must—rise, like all the mothers before me. 

My feet autonomously trudge through the hallway, burning. Hesitant fingertips hover over the nursery’s round, polished chrome doorknob, my hands ablaze. 

Staring into the polished metal, I see a restless woman, stretched and distorted in the spherical reflection. My dishevelled black hair blurs with the hazy darkness. Eyes are dim and hooded. Gripping the frigid, black-speckled mirror image, I remember us in the hollowness of our first embrace in the hospital bed. I as her mother, her as my daughter, and the emptiness. Emptiness created by the absence of my mother. 

My hand slips from the doorknob, leaving a slick of sweat that forms into black beads, obscuring my face, engulfing me. Streaks of black hair wash over the reflection of myself. My mother’s desertion pulls me down from the solid surface. I am slipping through gaps in the wood-panelled floor. 

In the doorknob’s black-speckled reflection, I see me: the daunting mirror image of my mother. 

After her birth, they had placed her neonatal body in my arms. I had recoiled from her warmth. The hospital room’s fluorescent lights were too bright. The bedsheet was twisted around my left leg, clinging to my sweat and bare skin. Loose hair strands adhered to the sides of my neck. Nurses clamoured around me with lively congratulations and compliments while the stirred air raised goosebumps on the sides of my torso. There was a transient relief from the softness of her skin, but with it came persistent doubts. How could I care for her when I was not cared for? What would she think of me when I’d eventually let her down? Would she falter when she sees our resemblance in her reflection? These thoughts scraped through the cavities in my head, threatening to manifest into a re-enactment of my mother’s flaws. 

If my mother were here, she would have stood in the empty corner at the end of the hospital bed. In my imagination, her once black hair would have waterfalls of grey, still splitting at the ends from the constant rough handling of her comb. Her eyes, avoiding mine, would have locked on the open window that inhaled draughts into the room. She would have spat her detestation through tight lips. An uneasy resentment would have permeated the air: the lingering crime of repeating her bastardly mistake. Another single mother. 

Yet, I wished she were here. Despite her neglect, her rejection, her desertion, I wished she were here to hold my hand and brush her hands through my hair. Here to tell me stories of my own infancy as she rocked my child in her arms like her mum must have done with me. 

As I cradled her fragile body in my arms, shuffling emerged outside the hospital room. From the sidelights, a black-haired figure fumbled before the door. My heart skipped a beat as the handle twisted. 

“Mum?”      

But the door shut behind her warm smile, her teal scrubs, and her silky black hair. The window’s icy wind drowned the whisper of my fleeting plea. My delusion disappeared in its gales.  

She will never come back. 

With the vigorous twist of my shaking hand, I open the worn wooden door. Inside the dimly lit nursery, moonlight illuminates the polished wooden floors to a glisten. The subtle rays highlight a haunting lustre on the scratched slats of the mahogany cot. I raise her—a wriggling bundle of yellow cloth—into my rocking arms as her cries subside. Who knew deafness was a by-product of parenthood? Or loneliness? Or resentment? 

I remember one time when the bathroom door was open. I was standing in the hallway, illuminated by the bathroom’s incandescent light. My mother was slouched over the porcelain sink, clutching a pair of scissors in a white-knuckled grip. Her eyes were absorbed in the mirror opposite her, deaf to my calls, unaware of the black clumps of hair surrounding her feet. Her long black hair was erratically cut into a choppy pixie cut. Eventually, she turned to me. Her puffy, bloodshot eyes bore into my hot, reddening face. It scared me then, but I understand it now. I know she regretted me and resented herself. Sometimes, I feel weightless enough to fall into my reflection and reach a callused hand for her on the other side. 

Retracing my steps, I return to the hallway.  

At the dining table, a fatigued hand stretches for the coffee mug, but with a tremble, the bittersweet coffee topples over. Its remnants pour out. The amber light illuminates the murky spill as the coffee spreads into the crevices of the scratched wooden table, and once again, I am slipping. Slipping as I see a glimpse of my reflection in the spill, and I am weightless again.  

Slipping into the crevasses of my repression, I am watching myself: a seven-year-old seated on the cold aluminium benches in the school’s vacant playground. I was awaiting my mother under the leaking awning. Awaiting her voice that I had not yet forgotten, a warmth that would never arrive. 

I can do nothing but spectate while she sits in a rain-soaked dress, bulky school bag by her side. The muddied rain crept down the crackled concrete, enveloping the dusty blue handball courts, flooding past her too-tight shoes, and into the grass lawn behind. So, as she shivered at the darkening sky, as she still had her innocence, and as the rain lent her its tears, I could do nothing but spectate. 

The bitter coffee draws me back as it trickles cold remains onto my shirt, prickling my skin with its grounding touch. I look down at the stain, seeing her short black hair and soft skin. In her gentle, sleeping face, I see me: an innocent girl awaiting her mother’s warmth. A reminder I am no longer just a spectator of the past. I hold her tighter in our embrace, hoping she grows to see the future in her reflection. 

So, as she lays on my chest, a foreign warmth subdues the burning cold.