sos judi dench

The first time I caught my father lying was when I was around 10 years old. It was whatever year that the Razr flip phone was considered sleek and cutting edge.

I remember wanting to be just like him. Talk like him, in a corporate American accent far from my mom’s tousled English. Travel like him – quickly, quietly and often. We followed him blindly on family vacations in silence like a pack of meerkats. He always knew where he was going, even if he had never been to that airport or country before. I wanted his things, his gadgets, I wanted his composure, I wanted his confidence. I wanted to know what he was like when he went away. I wanted to know him.

Despite my parents being first-generation immigrants, my dad, the eldest of five brothers, attended high school in College Station, Texas which is why he had a perfect American accent. He was the only son chosen to accompany his step-dad who was a professor of Entomology, the study of bugs, at Texas A&M. This was especially significant given that he was chosen out of all of his brothers who were actually his half-brothers, totally left behind in Indonesia. My dad’s biological dad walked out on him and his mother for another woman (I presume). In high school, we discovered that my aunt saw my dad’s dad in the flesh at a coworker’s wedding. Jakarta is a very crowded city yet hard to disappear in. I imagine now, my dad had also just wanted to know what his dad was like.

My dad had come back from a month long business trip to Paris, in between week long trips to local markets like Wisconsin or Indiana. I had no concept of the unlikelihood that his company would send him to Paris, because I had no grasp of how companies worked. I still believed all that I was told. A short time after this I started to hear every sentence with subtext, time every hesitation to the second, and rack my memory for conflicting evidence. I was listening for a lie. 

In a 3-bedroom townhouse in Irvine, California, the walls are beige and textured, as most of the homes in our “masterplan community” were designed based on Tuscan style homes. In this neighborhood, cypress and palm trees coexist against nature. Manicured lawns house bunnies and snails that live in harmony. These houses are so idyllic that there is a town in China called Ju Jun (橘郡 translates to Orange County) modeled off the city plans of Irvine, which was copied from the unique homes of the Italian countryside. A xerox of a xerox of a xerox always turns out slanted and obscured.

My fingers graze the bumpy stucco as I ascend the carpeted stairs, ignoring the railing near my head. I see the silver flip phone that my dad has left on the corner ledge of the staircase that leads to the lofted office. I swipe it swiftly, out of intuition, curiosity, anxiety. I dart into my bedroom on the left.

On my door I hang a pink plush toy in the shape of a heart with a happy face on it, and a sign I drew with highlighter on printer paper that says “welcome!” Mom and dad pack his suitcase and talk with their door open in the language I was intentionally never taught. They claim that they never taught me in fear that it would hinder my English skills. I always theorized it was so they could speak privately, out loud.

I slowly tuck the tip of my thumb in between the screen and keypad hoping it would mimic my hesitation. In complete defiance, the phone split in half and sprung out its LED wallpaper brazenly like a jack in the box toy – on it, a glowing image of a lady at night, in front of the Eiffel Tower. She has short medium blonde hair, or maybe it was tucked underneath a scarf. She looks elegant in all black, but old, much older than my mom. My mom is Asian and often mistaken for my sister. She wears colored skinny jeans to work with a button up and an ID card clipped to her hip. My mom has long black layered hair and rectangular glasses and I know she is pretty because men tell her that when we’re grocery shopping. She would laugh, show me off peeking behind her hip, and the men would walk away.

My heart races but I have a distinct understanding of what to do. I treat it like a mission. During this time, my brother and I would spend Saturday mornings playing James Bond 007: Agent on Fire on Playstation 2. In this game, most of the gadgets are concealed in a mobile phone, including a decryptor, grapple, laser, and remote transmitter. I look for the digital photo album in this real life gadget. I hear Judi Dench telling me, “Double-O-Seven, you have 60 seconds.”

Menu > Up Key > Right Key > Up Key > Camera > Photo Albums > View All >  Select 

The images are more or less of the same thing: She’s here! She’s there! It’s nighttime! Paris! I roll my eyes. Even the darkest photos illuminate my room almost entirely. It’s late and we were eating dinner soon. I hear my dad just outside looking for his phone, lifting and dropping notebooks and toiletry bags. I crack open my door to look into the hallway that spans across to their bedroom. The kettle downstairs whistles. My mom shuffles in a hurry. Her life revolves around his flight schedule.

I follow her down, grazing stucco, into the kitchen. I whisper to her that I found something bad. I show her the wallpaper. She slowly pulls the phone from my hands, looks carefully for a few seconds, then snaps it shut abruptly. While still looking down, her hair falls to the sides of her face. She squeezes her eyes shut behind her glasses in an aggressive blink then slips the phone in the back pocket of her white skinny jeans. She looks up at me, shakes her hair away from her face, and smiles softly. She pours two cups of jasmine tea, and adds a teaspoon of sugar in my dad’s cup, and none in her own. She brings both mugs upstairs. I wonder if maybe it was nothing after all.

The night behaves. My parents continue packing and break to eat dinner with me and my brother. During dinner, I ask if we can go to Disneyworld in Florida this summer, as any 10 year old girl would. My brother wants to go to Universal instead because they have faster roller coasters, as any 14 year old boy would. My dad says we can go but we have to visit the NASA base at Cape Canaveral too, as any dad would. My mom says nothing.

After dinner and past my bedtime, I hear them argue. I feel very guilty even though I know I didn’t do anything wrong.

My mom sounds angry. Dad yells. I hear the final zips of luggage. He yells again. It goes silent. He takes his luggage down to the garage and into the trunk of his car. It’s Sunday so he is taking a redeye to somewhere nondescript like Minneapolis.

Before he leaves, my dad comes into my room and stands next to my bed while I pretend to sleep on the top bunk. He is wearing a crisp button up and smells of Kenzo cologne. It is 11 o’clock at night.

He speaks softly. “Sweetie, did you show something to mom today?”

I shrug my shoulders looking anywhere but at him. I see my closet door is slightly open. Sometimes I imagine there are ghosts or dolls that come alive in there.

“Next time…” He puts his hand on my shoulder.

I clench my fist so tightly under the covers that I feel my nails digging into my palm.

“Next time you ask me first. Because you might think you saw something but really it was something else. Okay?”

I nod, feeling all the blood rush into my cheeks.

“Okay. I’ll try to be back on Friday. Goodnight.” He kisses me on the head. I know that he will be back on Saturday. From that moment on, and well into adulthood, I am repulsed by his affection.

I remember to say one thing.

“Can you shut the closet door?”

“Sure, sweetie,” he says, with a smile of relief that I said anything at all. He shuts the ghost-entrance carefully before closing the people-entrance, leaving a sliver of light diagonally across my room.

I look down at my open hands and there are four centimeter-wide half-moons on the meatiest parts of each palm, bright red. I decide that I like the Sidekick way better than the Razr because it has a full keyboard. I wonder if my family would ever switch to T-Mobile. The kettle whistles. My mom runs downstairs. I cry.