You always told me there was no way to say ‘I love you’ in Vietnamese. Well, maybe there was. But it was complicated because you had to address people depending on their age and gender, so there was no singular way to say it. Looking at your ghostly complexion under the fluorescent lighting of the hospital, I still just wanted to hear those three words from you. All I wanted was the reassurance and validation of your love, and now it’s too late to get it. What kind of mother doesn’t want to say ‘I love you’ to their child? I knew you loved me but I had never heard it come out of your lips to confirm it. You said that you were proud of me, that I was a good girl. Why could you never admit that you love me? In a desperate rage, I wanted to shake your shoulders and ask you: “Why won’t you tell me that you love me?” It seemed like nothing I ever did was enough to hear you mutter those three words.

Instead, you showed your love to me in a plethora of other ways. When I was nothing but tiny cells and tissues growing in your body, you forced your way from Đà Nẵng to the United States. You wanted to leave behind a life that treated you unkindly. You wanted to leave behind the country that wounded your soul when its people took the life of your father, your mother, and your brother. It left you to fend for yourself but gave you no means to do so. You couldn’t work—no one believed a woman belonged in the workplace—so, what did you do?

You found love—at least, that was what you told yourself. He was the love of your life, even though he showed his love in strange ways. Your worth was tethered to him, so there was nothing you could do but endure. His intense love for you remains in what he left behind. When you held me in your arms as a child, I traced the scar on your shoulder. I would ask you how you got it, and you would tell me that it was from a fight, that you fought a tiger to get to the boat you were going to take to America. When I was younger, tracing the scar, I didn’t know that the tiger had been my father and that the scar came from a knife. You had attempted to escape his clutches, and he did his best to stop you. You didn’t know yet, but I was inside of you then.

A nurse in Indonesia had been the one to tell you. You had been taken in by a refugee camp after your boat had floated aimlessly in the ocean for nearly a week. The early signs of pregnancy had started to kick in, and you were in no state to travel to America alone. From the refugee camp, you got on another boat—this time going to San Francisco. Before I even had fully formed ears to hear you, when you were escaping your home, the pain of the war, and your husband, was the first time you ever said that you loved me.

From San Francisco, you moved to Orange County. I have no idea how you made the seven-hour trip by yourself and settled here. Nevertheless, you made it, you found people here who took you in, and started to establish some roots. Since you spoke no English and didn’t have even a high school education, your job opportunities were limited. You worked where you could, looking after children during the day, imagining what life might look like when I’m born. At night, you cleaned office buildings. I only continued to grow which only made things more difficult. But you persevered, going to ESL classes and working jobs while seven months pregnant, so you could pay for your hospital visits.

Then, I was born. I was a tiny baby that wasn’t really that fussy, and as long as I was fed, I never really cried. You always told me you appreciated that about me. Especially when you had to leave me with your host family at night to go to work or school; or when you had just returned from an overnight shift. As I got older though, I refused to leave your side. You tried to send me to daycare, but I would just scream and cry until you lifted me up in your arms, out of embarrassment, to shut me up. You whispered in my ear, promising to bring me to the toy store. I would giggle and then wiggle out of your arms running into the classroom. I rarely ever saw you for most of my life, only when you dropped me off and picked me up from school. You got a new job at a nail salon that kept you occupied for the majority of the day, and at night you continued to clean the same office buildings. For years, I watched your body start to degrade from all the labor. You told me you loved me when you did everything you could to make sure the both of us survived.

All that money you made, you used on me. We finally moved into our own place when I was eight; I had my own room even though I only ever wanted to sleep in yours. I never saw you buy yourself a new blouse even though the faded pink one you always wore was starting to become loose, dragging threads and mismatched buttons haphazardly sewn on. But I always got new clothes every school year, new books every time we visited the bookstore near our house, and a new doll every Christmas. Every interest that I had: piano, gymnastics, dance, violin, debate, soccer, and volleyball, you found a way to get me in.

“Everything is possible in America,” you would always say, smiling down at me as you brushed my hair. Whenever I had a dance recital, you called off work to help me get ready. Even when you could not come, you would find someone with a video. When I decided to quit all of these things because I never felt like I was good enough, you smiled and said it was okay. You were never upset that I had wasted all of your hard-earned money. I felt guilty that I ever made you spend it on me in the first place, but for me, you would do anything.

We fought as mothers and daughters do. I was a developing, hormonal teenager that was angry at the world for what it did to you, and what it was now doing to me. The pressures of school and extracurriculars were weighing heavily on my shoulders, and I was obsessed with making you proud. Sometimes, you would try to correct me about something I was doing, telling me to stand up straighter or criticizing my looks. I would snap back at you, and then a full-blown fight would ensue. I knew, deep down, that I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way, even if you hurt my feelings. You were the adult, so every time we fought, it would end with you. Your broken English would boom across the house: “You are ungrateful! I wish I never had you!” Then, immediately after, there would be the sound of a door slamming so hard you could feel the walls shake.

But then, like clockwork, an hour later, you’d come into my room. Never making your presence known with a knock, only the creak of the door echoed as you stepped inside. I watched from under the covers as your tired figure walked through the darkness of my room, with a plate in hand. I already knew that there were sliced fruits on that plate: Apples, oranges, grapes, mango, star fruit, and rambutan. Whatever fruits were ripe that season, we would always have a stock of them that we collected from friends or neighbors. Without saying a word, you’d leave it on the edge of my desk and leave the room. Each slice of apple I bit into was crisp and sweet. I could taste the hint of citrus from the lemon juice you would rub on it to keep the fruit fresh. These fruits embodied your love for me—sweet and delicate yet pungent and tart. This was your special way of saying “I’m sorry, I love you”. And I knew that. That made every bite taste like sweet success. This was our way of calling a truce.

“I’ll always be proud of you, con,” you repeated every time I told you I wanted to stop going to practices or lessons. I could see the disappointed glint in your eyes, you had hoped I would become the next Amy Chow or Yuja Wang. Because, I could be anything in America, and what I ended up being was ordinary.

I never had any extraordinary talents or accomplishments. I was never really great at anything, actually. In high school, I got relatively good grades that earned me some small academic awards but I wasn’t my class’s valedictorian. I got into a semi-good college, a big university like you had always dreamed about. It wasn’t an Ivy League, but it was adequate in your eyes. You could barely even read the college acceptance letter I’d gotten but as soon as you sounded out “Congratulations” written at the top, your body launched into the air. We celebrated that night over xôi gấc as a symbol of good luck. I could see those three words form in your mind and I almost cried.

“Làm việc tốt, con,” you whispered tearfully. You grabbed my hand and rubbed soothing circles into it. This was everything you wanted for me, to go to a good college and get a job that would pay well. You wanted to see me be successful so that all of your sacrifices would pay off and I could live comfortably. Even though you lived your whole life with pins and needles in your side and a crook in your neck, my muscles have never ached or strained.

College was a difficult time for both of us, but you especially. I moved out of our apartment and you were left again to fend for yourself. You’d call me every day to make sure that I was eating, and always offered to bring me a home-cooked meal because dorm food never tasted good. I only came home occasionally on the weekends. Whenever I did, your eyes would light up as you rushed into the kitchen to make a huge pot of bún bò huế. My favorite dish. After the first few times, you knew that every time I came home I was craving a bowl. So when I’d walk through the door on a Saturday night, the smell of the stew was already wafting in the air.

“I love you, Mom,” I yelled by the front door. It was Sunday night. I had been home for the whole weekend and we had spent most of it gossiping about neighbors and friends while you painted my nails. I felt some sort of normalcy. Like we were a typical American family. You would not stop calling me and asking me to come home. So I did, and you were anxiously waiting for me because you craved my company. This overwhelming sense of normalcy had fished those three words out of my mouth so easily. But, when you didn’t respond and the thick awkwardness hung in the air, I remembered. We aren’t a normal American family.

I never said those words to you again after that day. The embarrassment and shame had permanently altered something in my brain. We were never going to feel comfortable saying “I love you,” and that was something I just had to cope with. After I graduated, you convinced me to move back in with you. I didn’t want to, but I knew you wouldn’t know what to do without me. So, I did. I got an office job near home, and once again, it was you and me against the world.

Those were only some of the ways that you showed me how much you loved me. I never doubted that you did, but, just once, I just wanted to hear you say it. Just like all of my friend’s parents who would yell from the top of their lungs that they loved their child during a tournament, or when they would casually say it before they hung up the phone. It’s too late to hear it now. You’re sedated, laying on a hospital bed in front of me hooked up to about a dozen life support machines. My hand is wrapped tightly around yours, my thumb rubbing soothing circles against its surface. Today was the day you were being taken off of life support. You never wanted this ending for yourself but lung cancer had its own plan when it invaded your body. I watched the doctors stop the flow of the different medications into your IV and turn off the ventilator machine.

The sharp sound of your heartbeat flatlining started to make my ears ring. My cheeks were coated with fresh, salty tears, stinging the dry patches of skin on my face. Gasping, I could barely mutter out those three words.

“Con yêu mẹ, con yêu mẹ,” I screamed in between gasps. My grip on your bony fingers tightened. I hoped you could hear my last three words to you. Just maybe I’d get to hear your spirit whisper it back to me. Or we could meet again, in another life, where you could hold my face in your calloused hands like you did when I was a child, kiss my forehead, and tell me then.