It usually happens on a Sunday morning when I come back home. When time is fluid and the noon flows into the morning. I rest my head against Ma’s tummy, wondering if Freud would call it an act of moving towards the womb, of tracing my origin. Something pops against my ears, Ma has just opened up the can of Figaro Olive Oil. I can’t see it, but I can never un-see its peculiar green color, superimposed with an image of a man extracting olives from a tree. Andy Warhol could have designed it. She pours it into a katori, and twirls the oil within. The earth is moving, the sunlight is changing, and there will soon be a storm over my head.

I am waiting for it to begin when she asks me if I already have my rubber band. It doesn’t surprise me that as soon as she sees my hair, she wants them tied. Sexuality has been called a law upon itself, my hair is no different. I don’t have a rubber band. But she begins anyway, a futile attempt at control. Her fingers trace my forehead, and she puts pressure over my eye brows. Like the noon, these fingers have also flowed from my hair to my face. Her touch possesses toughness, but it is also gentle, she is a natural at sculpting. With my eyes closed, the circular motion tells me how light must feel when you cannot see it – like exchanging secrets with sunlight.

I can hear Umebayashi’s “In the mood for love”, there is no better way of understanding the rhythm of Ma’s fingers. I also hear it when she chops vegetables. She says whatever you cook, tastes like your feeling towards the person you’re cooking for. Right now, I know she is cooking a conspiracy. “Are you still dating him?”, she is curious, and I am her daughter. “Dating who?”. I feel her response at the end of my skull, the beginning of my spine. How does she know this is our intimate spot? But I forget that she is still cooking, and right now, I am dough in her hands. She is going to knead me into who she wants me to be. “I am”, the rest of the communication is lost in touch.

She is a mother and her touch yields pleasure, comfort, relief. It is unlike my lover’s. We’re both sadists. This conversation however, is the antithesis of touch. Midway, it feels like a lovers spat. She is playing with my head, within and without. I don’t want to answer, but I always do. Touch is a controlling lover, but a surrendering beloved. Ma’s palms are tapping over my head, strong hits. She thinks she is in control, but really, she is surrendering to her helplessness. She knows this is the only time I obey. Her precision has improved, her fingers no longer need to navigate through my hair, they’re one with the roots. Figaro’s olive oil has reached where it needed to. But Ma is a sculptor, a pianist. A cook, she now needs to garnish.

And so it begins, as elaborate as a ritual. She calls out to my brother for a kanga, not a comb. I think she realizes this is a ceremony. The moment of her life where I come undone, and she knows me as she knew me – not only on weekends, but also on weekdays. Her fingers look for familiarity, parting my hair intricately, detailed as making a rangoli. She then locks this moment, one strand over the other, her braiding patterns as complex as an incantation. But I am her daughter, skilled at undoing. Soon it will be weekday, I will stand under a warm shower, will leave my origin, will be distant from her artistry. I will undo her undoing.