He thinks he’s never seen her cry before. Well, that’s not quite a powerful statement. He doesn’t really see her in general. It’s not like they ‘hang out’ all the time, that he’s seen her plenty but just never the moment when she drops a tear. The sample size of instances where they find themselves a bit awkwardly in the same room is a bit too small to make any observation of his more than coincidental sightings. Maybe she weeps once in a while here and there to no one’s attention. Maybe that is what she wants.
The point is, he never thought that he’d, one day, see her cry. He’s never imagined that she cries, either.
She has always been a bit of a character. “Fucking Karen,” Naush once heard a waiter muttered under his breath as he exasperatedly turned on his heels after a frustrating exchange with her. Nothing was ever easy with her, so he didn’t really blame the waiter for losing his temper.
She’s that person who would reject a basket of bread and a bottle of water after learning that they cost money at a high-end restaurant; however, she would also unabashedly sneak bread in from her unnecessarily large handbag and drink from her own thermo bottle filled with tap water from the hotel.
She’s that person who would yell at the police, especially if they have a rookie look taped to their face; bite their head off for trying to give her a ticket because her front tires crossed the stopping line; guilt-trip them into thinking that they bullied an underserved, vulnerable, fragile, senior Asian woman; weasel her way out of legal troubles she caused; and still tell the story proudly like it’s her personal victory.
She’s that person who would complain all day how her son and daughter never help her out but refuse point blank if they ever dare move a finger to help. They once offered to drag the darn-heavy 30-kg suitcase that everyone begged her not to pack on a family trip up and down the filthy staircases of Rome’s underground. She proceeded to almost get herself injured because her frail arms weren’t made for the task. She begrudgingly handed over the now three-wheeled orange suitcase, whose left side was dented, to her youngest son. He needed to pass the ticket check once again to come to his mother’s aid. She was also the person to start a fight, 20 minutes later when her son tripped over the uneven cobblestone road because the imbalanced suitcase had gotten stuck at an awkward angle. She berated him for not knowing how to look after himself and shouldn’t have taken over the good-for-nothing suitcase. They fought all the way to the Colosseum.
She’s that person whom, in the entire family of taller men and women, no one would dare cross. There once was an unfortunately dense pickpocket that got screamed at by her. The thieving girl didn’t understand a word, but you could see fear mounting in her eyes. The pickpocket attempted to snatch the youngest son’s wallet as he was getting up from the floor and checking the missing screw of the orange suitcase’s handle (yes, it was from the same trip before). She saw it, through her bifocals, the thief’s hand reaching for his wallet; she yanked her so forcefully the girl almost faltered; the number of insults she catapulted at her (in her mother tongue) was honestly, in a bad way, impressive. The thief dropped the son’s wallet from under her hoodie while shaking and weeping.
She’s that person whom he has never imagined would cry, which is all the more reason why he is shocked as he witnesses tears gathering at the brink of her eyes like rainwater flooding and straining a dam. She stares into the pictures of her parents neatly fitted into the miniature frame mounted on their urns. He doesn’t know what is going on in her head. He’s not supposed to see this at all, as everyone is praying with their eyes closed. But he sees pictures of his grandmother and grandfather, the former of which he’s never had the honor to meet and the latter already fading into a hazy dream, reflected clearly in the teardrops threatening to break free from her eye sockets. Everyone else is mouthing their wishes and prayers to those who are no longer among them. But she isn’t. She stubbornly remains silent, compressing her lips into a tight line.
He really doesn’t know her that well, but he can tell that her austerity in words is not due to the lack of them; instead, he knows that any spillage of words on her part will come crashing down on her, crushing her as a person. She is not that person. She is that person who doesn’t cry. In fact, she is not even crying. Not a single drop is and will be gliding down her cheeks, which have not been dampened by a profound and inexpressible sadness for years.
Oh, what have the years done after her parents were gone?