"Seck fan?"
     The small, short woman cries out with a piercingly distinctive Chinese accent as she carefully places the scalding soup, deep-fried chicken and four bowls of steamed rice nonchalantly on the wooden dinner table. "Come to dinner," the voice has declared, a tired, matter-of-fact flatness suffocating the rich Cantonese inflections of a homeland years removed and a half a world away. A homeland far away but not forgotten. Oh, never to be forgotten! The last of the bowls of rice strikes the dinner table with a spiritless thud, and a thick layer of paint flakes off at an awkward angle. Smack! The woman administers a quick backhand brush and banishes the flake to a dark corner of the room. A reflex action.
     An older woman, perhaps in her late eighties, is already seated at the table, her hazel eyes, set deeply into a wrinkled face, peering out cautiously from behind non-functional bifocals, her soft gray hair pulled neatly into a tight bun. She stares with an otherworldly detachment into the emptiness in front of her, and her eyes narrow--almost imperceptibly--with disapproval at the bluntness of the table preparations. Almost imperceptibly. But she is accustomed to it by now, and dismisses it with an air of resignation. Mothers-in-law are allowed to dismiss their sons' wives occasionally. The first woman is too exhausted to notice and calls out again.
     "Seck fan, nyahh..."
     The man moves slothfully. Animated mechanically by the Pavlovian bell of his wife's call, he shuffles wearily towards the dinner table. Haggard face and gnarled hands tell of a life of hardship, dark brown, wisdom-filled eyes complement skin burned deeply by a cruel Caribbean sun. Silently, he takes his seat. The steam from the soup has risen sluggishly through the tropical night air and hovers reverently in a light mist above the table.
     A full minute of what seems like eternity passes before the last of the quartet joins. A boy, perhaps eighteen years old, trudges dutifully towards his mother's calling, now a distant memory. Dark circles under tired eyes hint at sleepless nights, his heavy footsteps on the wooden floor smothering the humid air with a rhythmic plod, plod, plod. He, too, finds his place.

It has been almost two years since Peter, the elder of the two sons left for America to study at a prestigious university (yoon-vah-stee, his mother would say). Two years meant two years of everyone coming to terms with the fact that a son had left his home, his sanctuary. Gone for four years-eight if you count medical school, four more if you count residency and all. Moreover, simply gone. Gone forever. Two years also meant two hard years of sacrifice for the family; Peter's brother knew what it did to his father and saw how it threatened their tiny grocery (the villagers called it "the old shop.") He sensed the worry it caused his grandmother; he noted the occasional silent tear on his mother's buxom cheek.
     Every month a letter would arrive from America, dutifully handwritten, clearly and neatly addressed, sometimes bundled delicately with a photograph or two. It detailed the goings-on of a typical college student, but no one save the eighteen-year old could decipher it. How he craved for the day he too would leave for America!

Now that day is almost here and the boy brings himself to the dinner table to face a cast of hollow-faced strangers. Three disturbingly unfamiliar faces pierce into his self; they face him, all sad faces, all expectant faces. The silver-haired woman breaks the monotony with a cold, wavering voice hinting at long-gone British ancestry: "This might be the last time I sit at a table with Patrick; allow me..."
     The four reverently put their hands together in perfect symphony and methodically bow their heads.
     "Our Father, who art in Heaven..."
     But the tears on the boy's face betray him.