The Bonds of Grief and Love

words by Elle Janchivdorj, art by Sarah Jun

9:36 AM, the twenty-second of July: Amina’s childhood ended on a midsummer morning. The realization snuck up on her gradually. It crept up her throat like bile, burning like acid, and settled in her mouth, leaving a bitter aftertaste.

Her grandmother was dead.

Amina wasn’t close with her grandmother. She was six years old when her family moved from Mongolia to the United States and before that, Amina met her grandmother only during summer break or the holidays. What affected Amina the most wasn’t her own grief. It was her mother’s.

The house was silent that morning; even the air seemed too heavy to breathe in. When she first heard the news, Amina didn’t believe it — no one ever wants to believe their loved one is dead — but the sound of her mother sobbing at the kitchen table proved it to be true.

Even now, five months later, Amina still felt the heaviness in her chest. Sometimes it was as if her lungs stiffened, and she had to remind herself to take a deep breath. In and out, taking care to hold it in between inhale and exhale. And sometimes breathing didn’t work. The knot remained stubborn, lodged deep in her ribcage.

It was annoying; she was supposed to be on break. In the years before, coming back home for break was relaxing and restful. This year, not so much. Her parents argued the day before, and today they were silent. They didn’t speak to each other, except through Amina. She was used to this, but that didn’t mean it didn’t affect her.

Now, Amina was sitting next to her mother, just the two of them at the kitchen table. Five minutes ago, her father left for work after telling Amina to tell her mother that she should take her medicine. A minute ago, Amina relayed the message but her mother refused. She asked again and pleaded for the third time; it was all useless. So Amina gave up.

She tried to take a deep breath, but air didn’t seem to fill her lungs as it should. Moments passed in complete silence. Amina had once been afraid of silence, desperate to fill it however she could. In the first few weeks after her grandmother’s death, she talked about anything she could think about with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. Though her mother hardly responded in kind, Amina tried her best to keep it up, but there was only so much joy she could pretend to find.

Amina often felt helpless seeing her mother so miserable. Her mother never really wanted to keep living in America, mainly because she worried about being separated from her family. Her mother’s greatest fear, as she’d heard during her parents’ many arguments, was losing grandmother and never getting the chance to say goodbye. She didn’t expect for this fear to be realized, none of them did, and everyone in the family was changed because of it.

Amina’s mother decided she’ll leave America and return to Mongolia. She’d been been thinking of it for years, even before the passing, but lacked either the time, money, or courage to do it. This time, she had said to Amina’s father, there was nothing to stop her.

Amina’s father was the one who convinced her mother to move to America. Every time she’d considered leaving, he always said staying would be for the best. Think about the children’s future, he told her. Now, he has long accepted there’s nothing he can do to convince her into staying anymore. He said he’ll let her take the kids and leave, but he’ll stay to become a citizen.

“Are you going to stay in America?”

Amina froze at the question. She looked up to see her mother staring at her. This specific question felt like an interrogation, always.

Amina hesitated before she said, “Maybe.”

“What do you mean maybe?” Her mother’s retort sounds demanding, her eyes narrowed and brows furrowed.

“Well,” Amina couldn’t help but shrink a bit in her seat. “I want to graduate, for one thing. And I’d like to keep writing.”

Her dream was becoming an author. Writing was her talent, her passion. It was why she chose English as her major, even if it came with the doubt that it wouldn’t guarantee a stable career, that it might just be a waste of all the sacrifices her parents made to get her into college. Amina’s creative writing professor once complimented her on her skills, and it gave her hope that maybe if she nurtured her talent, she could have a chance at making her dreams come true.

Her mother knew Amina liked to write, and that she possessed a lot of potential. Amina found love for storytelling because of her. Back when Amina was a child, her mother encouraged her to read. Her mother was good at reading poetry. It was the language of her soul. Rhymes came to life on her mother’s tongue and Amina felt in her heart every emotion etched within the letters. Listening to her mother’s poetry and reading every book she could get her hands on made Amina skillful with language. Her mother used to say that good authors are sorely needed in Mongolia, and Amina would one day be one of the greats.

Amina wasn’t so confident about that. After spending most of her life in America, she felt more American than she liked to admit. She wasn’t as good at Mongolian as she was at English, and she worried sometimes that her parents noticed, how she was slowly forgetting her first language.

“But what about going back to your homeland? Do you not care for it anymore?”

Amina sighs. “Of course I do.”

How could she forget her homeland, her family? She remembered her childhood there fondly. Amina remembered the sunny streets where she used to jump in rainwater puddles, share popsicles with her cousins, and play hopscotch with friends. Once in a while, she wondered if, after all, she should move back there — if she would be happy living in a quaint house in the outskirts of town.

Absentmindedly, Amina glanced at the TV in the next room over. She watched a subway train hurtle through a glittering city landscape, and it reminded her of the dreams she had for her future: a small apartment in New York City. The city of aspiring artists, calling her name from far away. She would get a job in a news company, work for five years, then move onto a publishing house. Selling books and making her dreams come true.

Out of the corner of her eye, Amina saw her mother move. She wrapped her cardigan tighter around herself, then fixed Amina with a look. In a moment, it dawned on Amina that her mother will not be there to see it happen.

The heavy feeling settled in her chest once again. Amina had to remind herself to breathe. In and out. Inadvertently, she thought about who she would be if her parents didn’t move to America. If her mother became a poet instead of starting a family. Will her mother ever get to see her dreams realized through her daughter? If her mother looks at Amina and thinks of all she had to lose, just for the slim possibility that her child would succeed.

“You’re not going back, are you?”

She didn’t know what to say.