The Soothsayer17 min read

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In the summer, our Parisian half-cousin hosted a lunch at his condominium.  

I didn’t go. Not because I couldn’t, but because he’d added me to the group chat hours after my two sisters, and I wasn’t privy to the message history. From the outset, I had been left out of the loop and had taken great offence. Still, I’d heard all about what happened in my absence.

When S—my brother-in-law—arrived, our uncle asked him to drive his family to the airport the following weekend since they had several suitcases. Under duress, and feeling pressured to respond in front of everyone, S said yes, but the next morning, as soon as the effects of the alcohol wore off, he regretted it. He remembered how much he detested our uncle and brought himself to call and rescind the offer, which didn’t go over well with my parents. 

My mother, feeling responsible for his refusal to act on her behalf, submitted (albeit reluctantly) our family van. But since she doesn’t drive on the highway without my father—and the departure time collided with his work schedule—my Parisian half-cousin drove it, instead. The real turn in the story occurred when, on the way there, he collided with another car while changing lanes and sheared the driver’s side mirror clean off. I wasn’t displeased by this. 

In the coming weeks, rather than blame the Parisian half-cousin—mistakes happen, they said (and he, an engineer, promised to cover the cost)—my parents concluded it was S’s fault: this wouldn’t have happened if he had driven like he’d agreed—a preposterous premise to me. 

This caused such a rift between all parties that by November, when my parents, who were headed to Texas to attend a wedding, needed to be dropped off at the airport, S was hesitant. Though a truck driver who delights in long-distance trips and night shifts, he didn’t want to go alone, wanted someone else there to ease the tension. My older sister—his wife—intended to accompany him, but changed her mind, worried that one of their sons might wake up in the night looking for them. So I volunteered myself. After all, I hadn’t been home in weeks, and felt I’d been neglecting my family since meeting V. But at three in the morning, when my mother knocked at my door, I woke up disoriented, already regretting my tendency to please everybody. 

Groggily, I brought the overweight suitcases downstairs, out onto the driveway, and into the trunk, then sat in the back, shivering and waiting for the car to warm up. Soon my father and my brother-in-law joined me, but, after a few minutes, there was still no sign of my mother. 

“What is she doing?” my father incredulously asked.  

I knew exactly what she was doing: praying before the altar before heading out. Even if her husband honks the horn repeatedly, she keeps her eyes closed, hoping for the best outcome. 

Her loyalty to her devotions has always been her form of resistance. 

***

On the highway, my mother stuck out her hand for me to hold, and I accepted it. 

Her hands were small, soft, her grip light, and as I stared out the window at the red lights on top of buildings, I thought of V—the only other hand I’d been holding these days in the same affectionate tender way: on the city streets, in movie theatres, in the bedroom. These two people, whose hands I hold, then must let go of, to learn to be a person, without their fierce support. 

After a while, as we neared the airport, my mother mentioned that there were peaches in the fridge, and pears and apples on the dining table, and told me to eat them all before they went bad. Yet I knew I’d do no such thing: there was something about the way she cut and plated the fruit for me that made all the difference, without which I was too lazy to do on my own.  

“Take care of yourself,” she said to me. 

What would that look like, I wondered. 

“I will,” I replied, squeezing her hand. 

I wished to fulfill her request, if possible. 

***

The next day, as I watched a video of a woman decorating heart-shaped cakes, B called. 

“My grandmother died yesterday,” she said. “I’ve been in bed all day.” 

We decided to go for a walk around the area where our childhood took place because her dog needed to expel itself, but more importantly she needed to get outside and free her mind, to get some distance from the event. As a distraction, she wanted to hear about my family dramas.

The airport story made her laugh out loud as she rubbed the end of a plastic bag. 

“You could write a book about your family,” she said, picking up her dog’s poop. 

But I wouldn’t want to write that kind of book, I replied, since I’m not invested in the development of these plots—no solution in this house is ever a resolution, we’re all stuck in toxic cycles. My parents are stubborn and full of pride, my sisters combative and manipulative, and I am, in my own way, a non-conformist. In a family like ours, death or dislocation is the only way out; and the more time I’d spent away from them, the more the latter felt like a possibility. 

We circled back to B’s family home, said hello to her parents and her aunt and uncle who’d flown from Hong Kong to be there for her grandmother’s final moments and were now waiting to attend the funeral before returning. We sat down at the grand, circular dinner table where, throughout the years, I’ve eaten dinner, played cards, made desserts and gossiped. 

B put down her phone and signalled she was ready to tell her story. 

She’d received, she said, a call the week before—an interruption to her routine at paramedic school, which she had to step away from to spend days and nights at the hospital waiting for her grandmother to die, detachedly translating the doctors’ counsel to her family. 

On the final day, she closely observed how the body changed; the shift in colour and the way the last breath escaped, the ebb and flow of suffering, the dryness of her grandmother’s lips. 

It wasn’t the first time she’d been that close to death—a few months earlier she’d attended the scene of a suicide that had lingered in her mind for days—but it was the first time it was close family. A privilege, we agreed, to have gone so many years spared of serious grief.

When she was alone, she said, she wept, tortured by the flashbacks of the scene.

What you have to remember, I told her, was that while she had lost a grandmother, four women had lost their mother—the greatest bond—and they might not have the language to understand what they were feeling, causing them to repress it. She needed to be there for them in ways they couldn’t anticipate, to mother her maternal figures, as I had for my mother years ago. 

She paused, then remembered a time she’d been at her lowest point after a major break-up and consulted a psychic. The woman told her two or three things—one about her grandmother falling and injuring herself—and all of them had, in fact, come true. 

“Would you go back to her,” I asked. “To see what comes next?” 

“No,” she said, resolutely. “I’m happy now. I don’t want to threaten that.” 

“What would you do if you knew you were dying tomorrow?” she asked me. 

I said that, actually, I’d want to spend it all alone. 

She said she’d want to be surrounded by everyone she loved, even the ghosts of them. 

***

A few days later, seeking a change, I decided it was time that I cut my hair and shave my beard, an activity which, ever since I began to bald at the back of my head, I’d done at home. Each time, the process felt like undergoing a rebirth, the shedding of a skin: I came out of the main bathroom a different person. What was left behind was a shadow of what used to be, on my head and my cheeks, chin and neck; and afterwards, when I looked in the mirror, my face looked brighter, my cheekbones more pronounced. It was also when I looked most like my father.

I ripped a small translucent green garbage bag so I could lay it flat across the sink, which clung easily since I’d sprinkled water around the edges, then laid out the tools one by one. There was the barber-grade razor, which I’d purchased at Costco, whose long cord I unwound and plugged into the wall outlet. Next to it was a small brush, whose stiff bristles were frayed and bent, and the tube of oil I used to lubricate the blade. Then there was a pair of scissors and a shaving blade for fine-tuning, and a buzz cut razor which would even everything out, reach the places behind my head that I could not see. It took this village of objects to restore me. 

But before I could begin, I received a call from my second sister, who asked if I had a few minutes to talk. She was, once again, full of uncertainties. Unsure how to be the best mom that she can be to the baby, amplified by her desire and decision to stop breastfeeding before the one year mark. Unhappy with how much her husband had been working and controlling her finances now that her income had lessened and she had formed a frivolous spending habit. Stressed about the baby’s first birthday, which would happen around Christmas. Frustrated by my mother’s constant advice giving and distressed by our older sister and her periodic antics. 

Even if all these roadblocks were removed I was not convinced that it would lead my sister down the path towards enlightenment. She had always been ready to go to war with this or that person, too eager to suffer the aftermath then bask in the brief light of redemption.  

“Why does it have to be a battle to begin with,” I asked, decidedly not siding with her. 

“But then what would it be?” 

“The opportunity to communicate.” 

This answer didn’t gel with her, and she fell silent. She resisted deprogramming, even though she could understand it—was keenly aware of it—because what was a life without the constant sway between misery and mercy? Why turn your feelings into thoughts instead of simply feeling them? She said she had to attend to her baby—a lie—and abruptly hung up.

She’d be fine by Monday morning.

***

Balding was never something I thought I’d be afflicted by. After some introspection, I found a wavering acceptance, hiding it whenever I could, but not so obsessed as to seek out alternative methods to stop the growth of the degrowth, actively advocating for its sexiness. It was yet another attribute—to go with my effeminate voice—to cause me anxiety. So be it. 

I shore off my beard and soon clumps of coarse, black hair fell onto the green bag. I pursed my lips so I could erase my bushy moustache, drew the blade up and down my neck, maneuvering around my Adam’s apple. I took off my glasses so that I could begin to tackle my head, first what I could see, and then I turned the razor around and closed my eyes, feeling around the back of my head to get as much as possible. Then I used the buzz cut razor, which has a circular blade that rotates, to circle around my head again and again until it was red and even. 

I brushed off loose hairs from the tools and placed them back in their box, folded up the garbage bag, threw it in the trash, then poured handfuls of water around the sink so I could squeegee all the tiny clippings into it. Complete, I looked in the mirror. I was beautiful again. 

This was one way I could take care of myself, I thought. 

Restoring my sense of confidence.

***

When I checked my cracked phone, there were eight missed calls from V. 

A movie he’d long wanted to see was ending its run at the movie theatres this weekend, and he wanted to watch a matinee, which was hours earlier than we’d initially planned to meet, but I didn’t mind the change. I put on my outside clothes and went downstairs, cut and toasted the last bagel in the fridge for him and smeared it with cream cheese and wrapped it in tin foil before going through the cupboards and putting what I could—granola bars, bags of chips, a bottle of water, a can of carbonated soda—into a tote bag so we could sustain ourselves. 

Inside his car I sensed that he was in a good mood: he’d slept in a bit; his mother, who was still in town, made him a tomato soup; and we were good for time, tardiness being his animating fear and all. He told me all the things on his mind—the renovations they were in the process of doing around the house, his plans for the coming weeks—and when it was my turn, I told him about my disagreement with my second sister, catching up with B, and the airport story. 

He, too, found the family dramas to be amusing. 

“When we’re together,” he interrupted me to say: “the traffic is not so burdensome.” 

After parking the car in the underground lot we kissed, but only for a bit, before taking the elevator and exiting onto the city streets. We’d repeated the scene so many times over the past six months—the city, the lot, the elevator, the lobby, the walk to the theatre—that it was a routine, a sequence our bodies had naturally, unthinkingly adapted to. I knew where I was, what I was doing and how it would go. There was no hesitation, my body moving on its own accord. 

At the cinema we had our tickets printed out and went straight up to the theatre.

During the screening, every now and then, I brought my hand over to his knee, and sometimes he would give me his hand, which I squeezed to the beat of the score, and sometimes I travelled up his thigh, to his groin, which I would graze with my pinky before he cast it away—he found it distracting—but when I tried again, I found that, in that split second, he’d become erect, and now, with no one else in our row, he allowed me to lightly fondle him through the various layers of clothing, running my hand up and down his cock, cupping his balls—all of this, mind you, carried out subtly so—and when he’d had enough, the wave of arousal passed for us both, he pinched the skin behind my right knee and I obeyed, finally retracting, relaxing. 

This is one of the primary benefits of watching obscure films no one else wants to see. 

***

A long time ago, I tried to visualize what my future boyfriend would look like, how he would make me feel, what we would do, how I would act. That night, I remember, following the rules of The Secret, I slept on only one side of the bed so I could leave room for him to manifest.  

And now, here he was, before my eyes, a reality seated across from me typing on his laptop, running a finger under his nose every now and then, suffering yet another coughing attack, scratching at an irritating bump that had popped up on his neck. 

If he had happened to me, I thought, then weren’t all the dreams possible as well?

Now that Love was out of the way, I could focus on living a Life Through Words. 

“Are you ready to go,” he asked. 

“Let me just finish this chapter,” I replied. 

He paused and turned on a lamp, placed it on the window ledge behind me so my page was properly lit—he was worried about my ailing eyesight—and we checked on each other from time to time, breaking into conversation for a moment, taking turns sipping from the poorly washed glass of lemon-infused water. It felt so natural to be with him there, like that—so comfortable, with nothing on my mind. I was able to pay attention to the words on the page, entering the world of the book, which in turn made me feel more receptive to the world. 

“It may not be marriage,” Gillian Rose writes in Love’s Work, a book produced on the edge of death: “but it will be sacramental even without the benefit of sacraments. To navigate this together is to achieve the mundane: to be present to each other, both at the point of difficult ecstasy and at the point of abyssal infinity, brings you into the shared cares of the finite world.” 

As our relationship progressed—far beyond what I’d imagined—I learned that love—or what we understand love to be—radically changes: gone are the days of anxiety, and here were the days of communication, of figuring out ways to show up for each other time and again. On the other side of the Lover’s uncertainty was a sense of safety, one that enabled us to experience each other’s way of attending to the other’s needs, in all its positive and detrimental aspects. 

I thought of all we’d had to go through to get to this place: all the misunderstandings, the arguments and apologies, the punishing silences (mine)—everything that might have gone wrong. But things never got so bad that we broke: each kerfuffle only served to fortify the bond. 

The image of holding my mom’s hand on the way to the airport flashed before my mind. 

In ways I have yet to define—and perhaps do not wish to—these two are one and the same, people for whom I have the same attachment of love, affection, fury. Sometimes I imagine how they will act when they meet each other: she would love his frugality, his severe cleanliness, and he would love her cooking, her complaints about my bouts of anger. They are the only two people who truly care for me—my livelihood, my well-being—and yet they often disappoint my expectations of them: causing me to shut down, get in my head, overthink. But both, in the end, are always willing to talk it out after cooling down, making peace after bouts of chaotic war. 

Through them I’ve learned that to love someone, despite the flaws, is a way of caring for oneself. 

“Done?” he asked, eager to go to the next place, the next thought, the next thing. 

These days all I can visualize is a book in my hands with my name on it.

 

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Nirris Nagendrarajah (he/him) is a writer and culture critic from Toronto who writes about film, literature, opera, theatre and himself. In addition to Metatron Press, his work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in MUBI Notebook, Little White Lies, The Film Stage, Polyester, Intermission, Fête Chinoise, Ludwigvan, In the Mood Magazine and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. He is at work on a novel and can be found on all platforms @nireliofidelio. 

Brian Nguyen is a visual storyteller whose creative path has taken him from Hanoi to Busan to Vancouver. Recently joining Ricepaper Magazine as Visual Editor, Brian brings a fresh and dynamic perspective shaped by his cross-cultural journey. With a background in Professional Communication and a passion for photography, he believes his mission is to connect with people—visually and emotionally—through stories that uplift, encourage and humanize. For Brian, visual storytelling isn’t just about aesthetics, it’s about reaching people where they are and making them feel seen.