In the back of my parent's house, there is a little yellow room.

This room used to be a bright pink. It used to be mine.
When I moved out in 2021 my mom decided we should change the room to a pale yellow.

I've read somewhere on the internet that yellow is the color of insanity. I did not tell her this.
My father was more concerned that yellow is the color of piss. He did tell her this… but mostly as a joke.
And unrelatedly my sister sent me a video a while back that claims that dark yellow piss means you're dehydrated, clear means you're overhydrated, but pale yellow? Pale yellow is the perfect piss color.

So I guess the little yellow room is the perfect piss color.

My mom did not know of or intend for this.

My mom said that she wanted yellow because
  Yellow is the color of light and brightness.

I remember when I first helped paint the pink room to yellow I was impressed by how the sunlight from the window reflected so brightly on the yellow that the entire room felt like it was softly glowing with the hum of the afternoon. The sun’s beams reached out and filled every corner with luminous warmth. It still had the chemical smell of paint that coated the back of my throat with a burning sensation. I like that smell. I managed to get paint all over my shirt and my arms and wondered if I would shine just like my mom’s little yellow room.

  I did not.

Several months passed and I had not returned to my parent’s house.
When my mom next sees me, though, she folds my fingers into her soft hands and leads me to the back of the house excited to show me how she has decorated her little room of light.

The smoky smell of incense and beeswax permeates the air now. There is not much moon shining through the window tonight. The room would have been shrouded in darkness if it weren't for the several candles shuddering and casting long shadows across the furniture and my mother’s face.

I look around and see a dresser covered in a cloth decorated with intricate elephant embroidery and shelves filled with books and trinkets. Most of the candles are placed delicately in front of framed photographs on the wall and the dresser.

A small Buddha figurine sits in the middle.

My mom asks me to pray to our ancestors and I comply.
I squint to find a soft red pillow drowning in the vastness of the dark golden brown hardwood floor.
I kneel and close my eyes.

  In my head, I ramble:

“O dear dead ancestors, I’m sorry I never learned all of your languages. I’m sorry I was too busy learning the languages of your colonizers. I hope they have translators on whatever ghostly plane you’re on. No one ever told me where you really are and I guess I’m not really creative enough to guess.
I hope you can help make my mom less sad. Help make me less sad. Help make my whole damn family less fucking sad. Also World Peace or something I guess. But that’s probably out of your hands. I guess it's all out of your hands. Also sorry for cursing in my head while I pray. I guess that’s not what I’m supposed to do.”

I probably pray about other things too. Or maybe I just kneel there until my legs start getting numb. I wonder if I’ve kneeled long enough to please my mother. I bow 3 times and open my eyes. I look up and blink a few times. My mom has left the room anyway.

I stand up and look at her carefully placed decor.

Yellow pillar candles are melting. They look like they've been on for most of the day. The wax pools onto the candle holder and gently drips downward onto some crystals and shiny rocks scattered before me. I grab one of the rocks and peel off the wax. The hard wax crumbles between the palms of my sweaty hands. The wax has also fallen to the counter of the dresser which has drawers filled with more candles and incense. I think these drawers used to hold clothes. The long candle illuminates the picture above it in a flickering glow.

A man in a bright white button-up shirt and a soft smile.

  My grandfather.

I was told that part of the reason so many of my mother’s immediate family survived the Cambodian genocide was because he was so kind. He would help everyone who crossed his path. I was told that the man who was supposed to execute him for the crime of being against all the bloodshed of the Khmer Rouge had remembered this and spared his life.

Many people remembered his kindness. There were many crying people at his funeral. I didn't cry. I think my family thought I was too young to understand his death. Really, I was somewhat jealous that so many people cared to show up to his funeral. I wondered if people would bother to show up to my funeral like that. I think they were right, though. I really didn’t understand his death. I wish I were kinder.

  Sorry Grandpa, I should have cried for you.

On the table, there is a bowl of chocolates. Lindor from Costco (not sponsored). We are not supposed to touch these chocolates because it is Cambodian tradition that we set aside food for our ancestors. I later find out that my mom is mildly upset with my dad for taking them out of the room and eating them.

Next to the chocolates is a woman in a dark coat, black hair, and a soft-looking hat.

  My great-grandmother.

The one who brought my father’s side of the family from China to the French part of Canada. The one who claims she had to spend more time raising “those little white Quebecois children” than her own because she needed the money. The one I often avoided because she usually had something snide to say about my body.

I wonder what her name is. I realize that I never really knew how to pronounce the names of any of the inhabitants of the little yellow room. I’ve heard that names are very important. That they hold a part of a person’s soul.

I wonder what this says about me. I wonder if this insolent lack of knowledge is a nail in their coffins. I guess some of them were cremated, though? So these are hypothetical coffins. I would like to blame the fact that they lived and died more than 3,000 miles away in Canada but I don’t think I deserve that excuse. I should probably make more of an effort to know their names, but I’m too ashamed to ask my parents. I make a mental note to apologize about this in my next sorry excuse of a prayer.

Name or not, we called the woman in this picture big ta-ta because she was taller than my other great-grandmother. I was told a long time ago that ta-ta means great grandma in Chinese. The internet tells me it means goodbye in Chinese. The internet also tells me it means boobs.

I'm not sure if she would appreciate being called “big boobs”…

  Sorry for desecrating your memory, big ta-ta. Sorry I didn't talk to you more even though I really could have.

On the table, there is a vase filled with slightly wilted pink roses from our garden. There are always little green bugs on them. I think they’re called aphids, but I'm not an entomologist.
I never really understood bringing outdoor plants indoors.

Beside the bugs stands a woman with a small frame and white hair.

  Small ta-ta.

My other great-grandmother. The one who owned a knick-knack and snack store in China before her family left to find a better life in Canada. The one my father says basically raised him. Neither of my parents wears their wedding ring anymore but my father wears small ta-ta’s silver ring nearly every day. He wears her on his pinkie.

Small ta-ta didn't speak English or French, and I flunked out of Chinese lessons in the first grade. One night, a long time ago in Canada, I helped her up the stairs and she motioned me into her little dark bedroom. She switched the light on and the brightness hurt my eyes as she rummaged through her bag.

She then used her shaky hands to place a delicately made fabric red rose into mine. I told her it was “cool” and tried to hand it back to her. We passed it back and forth for a few minutes and she seemed a bit frustrated. When I finally got my dad to translate the Chinese for me, I found out she was actually trying to give it to me. My 12-year-old mind was blown away with sentimentality. It was one of my most treasured possessions. A memento of a person I barely knew. My newest and greatest heirloom.

I lost it sometime in 2020.

I miss that rose.

I’m sorry I lost your rose and I’m sorry I never knew what you were saying or really anything about you, small tata. Also sorry about the boob thing.

Seated on a side table, there is a large glass vase of dark yellow pillar candle stumps.

Dehydrated piss colored as my sister’s video might attest.

Later from these dark piss stumps filling the vase, I will make mini wax sculptures that end up crowding a corner of the library. I melt the wax scraps by mushing them with my fingers to sculpt crude animals. I make the eyes by mixing the burnt wicks of the old candles with the yellow wax.

A fox, a pig, a wolf, a bear, a bird, a crawdad, and a person later, I made a lopsided horse. I made this horse because my mom said her mom loved horses. As it turns out, I have no clue what horses actually look like.

I look at another pillar candle dripping wax onto a pink lotus-shaped container. I stick my hand close to the yellow flame. My sister sometimes jokes that my inexplicable urge to touch fire is arsonist gremlin behavior. She’s probably right. I keep my fingers there until I feel the soft sting of heat and quickly retract my hand. Ouch. Let's hope this doesn't become a problem.

I grip my tingling fingers with my other hand and look up. Framed above the dresser and all these candles a dark frame is perched on the pale yellow wall. The candlelight dances across a warm smile.
The face of a woman with soft gray hair.

  My mom’s mom.

After my grandmother’s tragic death, my mother believes that her mom sends hummingbirds to us as spirit messengers. My mom says that Grandma sends parts of her soul in those fluttering little bird bodies.
She gets teary-eyed each time she sees one. I used to too. Now I just get sad.

In a way, the little yellow room is a tribute to my grandmother’s memory. My mom had leaned into Buddhist traditions after her mother died alone and afraid in a Canadian hospital on the day of my high school graduation. The doctors could not talk to her.

My grandmother could only speak Khmer, the language of Cambodia––the beautiful home that she was forced to flee from in the ’70s alongside my grandfather and her six children.

She escaped Cambodia– the home that was ravaged by the Khmer Rouge and American bombs.
She was from Cambodia– the home that is still covered in explosives and engulfed in memories of war.
She left behind Cambodia– the home that cradles one aunt who I will never meet because her bones are buried somewhere deep in a forest near Siem Reap.

My mom assured me once that her family was lucky that they only lost one close family member back then.

  I am not so sure I would call that luck.

My mother’s living family members were not allowed to stay to translate Khmer for my grandmother and the doctors were struggling to treat her. She was confused, frustrated, and in pain. They gave her treatment that she could not consent to. None of us know for sure what they did to her. The amount of suffering she was in while caged in that small sterile room makes me hope my mom is right.

I hope those pieces of my grandmother’s soul really are free to flutter around and drink as much nectar as they please.

  Sorry for everything grandma.

I look at it all. I look at them all. And I bow three times for the second time.

  It's the least I could do.
Then, I exit that little yellow room.