"Heritable" by Tessa Kaur
“Have you everthought about suicide?” My new psychiatrist asked me.
I focused my eyeson his shirt. What a stupid question to ask. Obviously, I thought about itconstantly. I thought about it as I crossed the street, as I cut meat intosmall pieces with knives at dinner, as I stared out of my bedroom window,snaking my fingers through the metal grilles that stopped anybody from gettingin, and me from getting out. Did any of his patients say no to that question?Did people come here if they didn’twant to kill themselves?
I did not say anyof these things. I stared at his pale, purple pinstriped shirt. It matched thepicture frame on his desk, the couch covers, the mousepad he used, even thesticky notes next to his left hand. I lifted my head, said “Yes” like a good,cooperative patient.
“Often?” heprodded.
“Yes,” I saidagain, the words a long exhale.
I didn’t want tobreak eye contact and make him think I was ashamed, although I was, or that thefacts of my daily life made me uncomfortable, which they did. I tried not toblink. I tried to tame the wavering of my voice as it crept through octaves,cracking and breaking. Yes, I have nightmares, I told him. Yes, I find it hardto get out of bed most days, yes, I often find myself crying with no provocation.I rubbed the edge of his shiny desk with my thumb, wondering if it was realwood.
It was a smallblessing that my psychiatrist had a face that was almost unkind. He looked likehe could be my uncle, but the uncle that made a lot of money and thought he wasbetter than you because he drove a Porsche. He seemed physically incapable ofmaking those pitying eyes that most people start to make when you talk aboutbeing horribly sad. It made me like him more, even as he made me list off mytraumas like I was reading a shopping list. Bullied in school, check. Multipleincidents of sexual assault, check. Self-esteem crushed as a child by authorityfigures, check. Used as my mother’s emotional dumping ground from young, alsocheck.
He cracked a smileas I explained that I had first tried to kill myself by drinking liquid soapwhen I was ten, only to throw up violently in my toilet shortly after. Growingup had been hard on me, especially since I’d had Asian parents – there wasalways so much academic pressure on me that I thought I would crumple like apiece of paper at any second. Like a good child, I’d internalized that it wasbetter to be dead than to disappoint my parents.
I described thepale green vomit to him, the way it tasted coming back up. I described how I imaginedI would puke bubbles. He laughed, and then I laughed too, because it really was a ridiculous thing to picture – me,young face puffy with tears, spewing foam into the air from my mouth like abubble gun.
“I think you knowwhat’s wrong with you,” he said.
It wasn’t like I needed to hear the words “you havedepression”, but after over a decade of adults telling me that I was justregular, store-brand sad, it was nice to have a middle-aged, certifiedauthority figure tell me that I was actually sick.
“Yes,” I said.“Depression, anxiety.”
“Any familyhistory?” he asked, tapping away at his keyboard.
I hesitated.Nobody in my family had ever killed themselves, nobody had ever been diagnosedwith any mental illness, and nobody ever talked about being sad, let alonestruggled to stay alive and functional. I also knew that depression lived in myhouse, sat at the dinner table with us, nestled between us on the couch as weall watched television in silence. It was a part of my family photos, standingin-between my brother and I like a third child.
There were a fewseconds of awkward expectant silence.
“My mother,” Isaid, feeling a wave of resentment rise in my chest, and not knowing where ithad come from. Doc keyed it into his computer, white desktop screen reflectedin his glasses, then looked back up at me again, obviously waiting for moredetails.
I blanched. “She’snever been diagnosed, so maybe it doesn’t count,” I added quickly.
What a stupidthing to say, I thought almost immediately, dropping my head in embarrassment.For most of my adolescence, my mother had insisted precisely that about me –store-brand sadness, not real sickness.
He smiled, lipsstretching thin, and said, “Tell me about that.”
I looked at himdumbly. My mother’s mind, her special brand of sickness, was impenetrable tome. I could predict what she was about to do, but never why. She wasalternately spiteful and kind, cruel and gentle, rational and incomprehensible.
“What do youmean?” I asked, at a loss.
“Well, tell me howyou know she’s depressed if she’s not diagnosed,” he said.
I looked at himwith genuine confusion. Because she’s like me, I almost said. That wouldn’tmean anything to him, I realized. He was practically a stranger, after all.
I said instead,“Because she told me.” My doctor raised an eyebrow at me.
“When I told her, Iwanted to see a psychiatrist, she told me she thought there was something wrongwith her too,” I clarified.
“I see,” he said.
But that wasn’treally the truth. I’d known since I was a teenager, when I was old enough toknow what mental illness was and that I had it. When I was young enough tostill be wearing school uniforms, my mother would pick me up in her car anddrive me home. Sometimes she would talk about her parents, and how much sheloved and resented them.
“I was never goodenough for them,” she always said. “I gave them so much money, I took care ofmyself, I never asked them for anything...”
She would rage on.This was not particularly strange to me, because she was Chinese, and herparents were typical Chinese parents – unkind and dissatisfied.
Then she wouldrage about my father, how angry she was that she was supporting him financiallywhile he sat at home and watched television all day. She believed it was herright to have somebody take care of her, but she’d ended up, essentially,supporting three children for twenty years. She’d cursed the fact that she’dmarried an Indian man who’d been spoiled by his mother, who would swear andrage at her. I would bite my tongue as she spouted stereotypes about the raceof the man she’d chosen to marry.
And sometimes,without saying a word to me about anything at all, she’d pull off onto the sideof the expressway and turn off the engine and cry hysterically, inconsolably,biting down on her fist to muffle her sobs. I’d watch her, unable to doanything, unable to speak, or move. In the face of my mother’s toweringemotion, I was always helpless.
I wanted to tellhim more. I wanted to tell him that as I begged her to help me fix my brain,pleading through tears, she cried too. She’d held my hands between hers andpromised she would never abandon me if I needed her. I wanted to talk aboutwhen I told her about the depressive episode that left me crippled in bed for aweek, unable to shower or eat or sit up in bed, she stroked my hair and told methat she had felt the same, every time she had lost a child in the womb, thatshe’d been completely immobile for weeks.
And then I wantedto tell him about when I was a teenager, wrestling with bulimia, she’d told methat I was exaggerating when I told her my life was slipping out of my control.I wanted to describe the anger that pooled in my chest every time she saidcruel things and refused to apologize, saying that being hurt would make metougher in a world without room for softness. I wanted him to know that mymother had always told me I was weak, that I was soft, that I just wasn’ttrying hard enough. But that wasn’t particularly strange to me, either –because she was Chinese. Chinese people don’t believe in mental illness.
I wanted to tellhim that my mother had told me about all the terrible things my father had doneto her, and then told me that I had to keep her secrets for her because nobodyelse could help her shoulder her burdens. She didn’t believe in friendships,only herself.
I said none of this.I looked at him, and he looked at me. We moved on.
*
I was prescribeddaily medication and weekly therapy. I put in the work, the time, the energy,into trying to be a person who did dishes and spoke to her friends and didn’tlie in bed crying all day. I began talking frankly about my emotionalstability, or lack of, with my parents. I would say, “I’m not feeling goodtoday,” and they would understand and make their voices quiet and gentle andcook me foods I like. When I inevitably got sucked into a downward spiral, theywould notice and remind me that they love me, and I always have a safe spacewhere I can ask for help. I talked to them about the side effects of mymedication, how the weight gain caused by my pills made me feel insecure andunattractive. Our relationship improved.
But a wallremained between my mother and me. I thought that the illness that made us sosimilar was also what drove us apart. Where she had somehow powered through herdepression through sheer willpower, I had been forced to turn to expensivedoctors to make me less sad. I decided that therein lay the difference betweenus – she was strong, and I was fragile. I was unstable, constantly at risk ofhurting myself, and she was sturdy as a rock, rising above her pain, always incontrol.
I couldn’tunderstand why we were so different. My superstitious mother attributed it tome being a Pisces, and her a Scorpio. She believed inherently she was moreindependent than me, had a stronger backbone. She once told me I was a snail waitingto be stepped on. She’d adopted the unkindness of her own parents and turned itinto a weapon to use against me, one less of a hammer and more of a chisel. Shechipped away at my self-esteem, assuming I would grow a thicker skin. She trulybelieved that Chinese people weren’t supposed to show their children realaffection, weren’t supposed to hug their children in public or say anything tookind because they’d take it for granted.
*
A few months intotreatment, my mother and I stood in the international food aisle of a grocerystore. I was holding a packet of mentaiko sauce, trying to feel the texture ofit through the plastic skin. I liked my mentaiko smooth, but a lot of times itwas sold in an almost solid packet. I probed it with my fingers meditatively.
My mother pushedthe trolley up to me and said, unprovoked, “I’m just as crazy as you, youknow.” I turned towards her in surprise, and she plucked the packet of sauceout of my fingers and set it in our trolley.
“Crazy?” I saidwith a half-smile, expecting her to make a stupid joke about our sharedobsession with food. But she wasn’t smiling. Her mouth was rigid, her jaw set,her eyes unfocused. The words tumbled out of her as if she couldn’t stopherself. It was her voice, but it didn’t really sound like her.
“When you wereabout five, and your brother was still a baby, we all went to Uncle Mel’s housefor dinner. And, you know, your daddy got drunk. We always drink at Mel’s. Yourdaddy wanted to drive home, and he wouldn’t let me drive, and your brother wascrying, and he kept driving faster and faster because he was so angry at thenoise. And he started shouting, and then you started crying too, becauseshouting always made you cry, because you were so sensitive, and everythingmade you cry. And I couldn’t take it because he wouldn’t stop shouting. So, Itook off my seatbelt and tried to jump out of the car.”
She was breathinghard by the time she stopped speaking. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. Herknuckles were white from how tightly she was gripping the trolley. I had somany things to say. Me too, I thought, and then, why are you sayingthis? Instead –
“I must havegotten the crazy from you, then,” I said, trying to turn it into a joke that wecould bond over.
She frowned. “Whatdo you mean?” she said, clearly confused.
I immediatelybegan stammering. “I mean, not like it’s your fault. Just that this kind ofthing is hereditary, you know?” I said quickly, racking my brain for a way tochange the subject without being blatant about it.
“No, it’s not,” mymother said, her brow creased. “Depression isn’t genetic.”
“Yes, it is,” Isaid, picking a pack of instant ramen off the shelf. “It’s genetically-linked,I read about it. Having family history of mental illness makes you more likelyto have it.”
I studied theingredients on the packet intently. Now I was the one who couldn’t look at her.The silence between us thickened like clotting blood. Finally, I glanced up ather. She was staring at me, face white, as if I had just slapped her.
“It is not myfault you’re like this,” she said, venom dripping from every over-enunciatedword, and pushed the trolley past me.
I watched herdisappear around the corner towards the frozen meats, my stomach sinking. Itwas a familiar feeling, knowing I hadn’t done anything wrong but still feelinglike I had. It was a feeling I got often when it came to my mother. I put theramen back where I had found it, fingers trembling. I began to walk after her,tracing the path that I knew she would take. She was a creature of habit,obsessed with order and efficiency. I knew her route well.
When I caught upwith her, she was inspecting cuts of beef, French manicured nails digginghalf-moons into the plastic wrap. I approached her like she was an injuredanimal, but she just looked at me like nothing had happened.
“Should I buyoxtail? I can make your favorite stew.”
I smiledhesitantly at her, unsure if this was a truce, and she put the meat in thecart.
“Yeah, I thought so,” she said, and she smiled back.
***
Tessa Kaur was born and raised in Singapore, where she lives to this day. Her work largely explores trauma and inequality. This is her first publication.