I JUST WANT YOU TO LIKE ME | ✓

▬ 19: less than the sum of its parts

            My knees hurt when I stand up from prayer. I didn't think it'd been so long but when I finally blow out the incense it's past one in the morning; Ba's death anniversary has already ended. I didn't know how Bà and Ông would respond to me praying — if they'd just think I'm being a country bumpkin or downright be offended by it, so I did it in the kids' room with the bunk bed.

Everyone were awake when I started but I don't expect them to be still; I ease the door open to avoid the clack of the handle only to be proven wrong. Taut voices climb up the stairs.

'–told you that you had to get married, that the kids needed a fella around. And now look at em.'

'It won't be forever,' Má responds. 'He'll grow out of it.'

Bà Nội scoffs a laugh. 'We should never have let you take em to the other end of the country. We should have gone to court for custody when Dean died. It were probably too late for Miles but at least we could've intervened with Iris since you clearly have no clue how to parent–'

'Yến,' comes Ông's warning.

I imagine them in the kitchen, Bà standing by the sink, her shadow cast against the curtain so she appears twice as tall as she is. Ông is probably pretending to read the newspaper, as though he didn't already read it this morning. Má is trembling. She clutches her tea mug with white knuckles.

Silence presses down like smog until Má speaks through it. 'Iris is perfectly fine. Her teachers have nowt but praise for her.'

'Well, at least you've managed one child that isn't a disappointment,' Bà says. 'He's twenty-four years old and he won't even go t'university.'

A bud of joy blossoms in my chest at the fact that she remembered it's my birthday, that it's past midnight, that I'm twenty-four now. It's stomped when I process the rest of it.

'He will,' Má assures. 'He will.'

'It's no surprise to me that your nhà quê family fails to understand this, but–'

'My parents fought for the independence of their country.' There's venom in Má's voice now; I wait to hear the thud of a body to the floor as it infiltrates Bà's heart. 'You abandoned it. You should be grateful.'

A door opens behind me and I snap my head back as Iris steps out of the guest room, dressed in baggy pyjamas. Her brow furrows as she finds me leaning over the railing at the top of the stairs as though their disappointment has hooked a noose around my neck that tightens with each word.

A single second — during which a thousand ways of shutting down the conversation so Iris won't have to hear any of it fly through my mind — stretches like toffee until it snaps.

'I don't understand how you can let him be like this,' Bà bites. 'Dean would be ashamed of him, to have someone like him for a son.'

I knock the empty granite vase from the console table to the floor. The carpet muffles most of the sound but the thud is loud enough: silence is instant. It seeps from the ajar kitchen door like some noxious gas that'll kill us if we inhale too much.

Iris glares at me. You're a doormat, why can't you ever stand up for yourself? I confirm her accusations and shake my head: It's fine.

Ignoring the knives she throws at the back of my skull, I head down the stairs. Má needs me, she don't deserve to be spoken to like this.

I don't pretend to stumble in, to be thirsty, to be too sleepy to understand what's happening. I don't address it either — I may be a disappointment of a son but nobody can deny I make a first-rate doormat.