My aunt told me we were going to the zoo.

What I loved most were the lions and tigers whose roars echoed in the ears of visitors, even when visitors stood nowhere near the enclosures.

I saw no lions or tigers that day, but I mimicked their powerful voices, holding the roar long enough to shatter the eardrums of those near me. This was not courage. I was not roaring with the confidence and power of lions and tigers. My roar was the sound of pain and betrayal.

#

We were going to get my "tongue cut"—what my aunt meant was a lingual frenectomy. Even though I was focused on the promise of a trip to the zoo, I had overheard her discuss this with the family. Speech impairment, all my relatives had whispered among themselves, was undesirable. In the harshest sense, they thought it would make me seem less intelligent.

It was agreed: something must be done. So we started our day trip.

I was used to climbing mountains, for my grandmother had taken me to hike up the ones in Shanghu—the ones near Changle City should have been no different. Looking back, it was strange that a zoo would be located up a mountain, but I didn't know enough to question it.

I remember being taken to a gazebo or temple of sorts that doubled as an outdoor clinic, though I had no clue until it was too late. At various tables sat nurses and doctors in uniforms and masks with children in front of them. Parents huddled around their sons and daughters, tense.

"Where is the zoo?" I asked.

"We'll go right after this," my aunt replied.

My lips drooped, offering her the most unimpressed expression I could muster. She ushered me towards a doctor whose table had cleared only seconds before. The child who left with her mother wiped furiously at her eyes. I sat down, confused at the child's reaction, and wondered what had happened.

The doctor smiled after greeting my aunt and held up a pair of scissors in one hand and a syringe in another.

"Would you like the needle before we start?"

The doctor never explained the contents of the syringe. I stared at the sharp point, so thin it was almost invisible. Its end glinted in the sunlight.

"No!" I shook my head.

At the time, I feared needles far more than I feared scissors—though I would come to fear scissors just as much. And as I aged, I felt maybe both of these things weren't nearly as painful as the fluent English that didn't, couldn't, leave my lips—or the words others spat at me.

"Brave child." The doctor smiled.

He then instructed me to curl my tongue upwards. "It'll only take a second. A small snip, and we're done—and then you'll get a popsicle."

The idea of a popsicle appealed to me, but I eyed the scissors with caution. A hand landed on my shoulder.

"It's okay. Just close your eyes, and you'll be fine."

When my aunt's hand left my shoulder, I reached out in a panic, feeling for her reassuring touch. I released a breath when my clammy hand met her soft fingers, encased in her fist, before she smoothed out my curled digits.

"Don't let go," I begged.

She didn't. But the physical touch was far from the mental safety net I needed at the moment. It may have been the only support I ever received, and I would continue to crave it in the aftermath. I don't remember receiving more, or perhaps I did but refuse to remember. What stayed with me was the betrayal I felt because my aunt had lied—a lie of omission.

I closed my eyes, but I was certainly not fine. Without the anesthetics, there was searing pain after the cut and an ache I had to endure for the rest of the month. I roared like a tiger, creating a zoo of my own with some of the children echoing me. Maybe my mouth clamped over the scissors before it escaped. I don't remember anyone holding my mouth open.

My aunt handed me a sweating popsicle. "We can go to the zoo now," she said.

I squatted outside the temple with my arms crossed, thinking about the tigers and lions. No longer could my aunt be trusted, but of course, I did trust her again.

I had no other choice.

#

I began to ignore my aunt. I rejected later trips to the zoo, and instead clutched my mother's hand. But then she let go. She went away. Not willingly, but as a child, I didn't know that.

My mother left for Canada after my father obtained his citizenship to begin a new life, to pave a new path for my future. I thought she no longer wanted to be my mother; I thought she had betrayed me, like my aunt had. And at the moment, my mother's betrayal stung more than my aunt’s. It was a pain akin to my lingual frenectomy.

My grandmother would ask me to speak to my mother over the phone. With crossed arms, I rejected the offer like I rejected the zoo—over and over again, week after week—as I prodded the spot that had long since stopped swelling under my tongue, a habit that would never stop.

"Why don't you want to speak to your mother?" my aunt asked one day, her voice drifting under the bed—a place I often hid when my mother called.

I didn't answer her, but instead responded with a question of my own: "Can I call you Mom?"

And finally, we went to the zoo again.

Sometimes trust can be regained simply by an act of greater betrayal. Both trusting and holding grudges can be fleeting to a child, even though the child believes they can hold onto both forever.

It didn't feel like I was taking revenge, but my mother later told me she never felt so betrayed in her life, and she despaired that her daughter, at such a young age, would want to disown her own mother. But, at the same time, she said she understood.

Betrayal isn't always intentional either, like when a child is merely seeking comfort. Sometimes, we do something as a kindness—like my mother's decision to emigrate—only those affected don't always realize it at the moment. And when they do—if they do—it might already be too late. It sometimes still feels like betrayal.

#

Then it wasn’t my mother I was betraying.

I didn't have a choice when I emigrated to Canada to be with her. And when I left my aunt behind at the airport, tears soaking both our faces as we held on as long as we could before departure, I couldn't help but wonder if she felt betrayed.

She didn't. But I couldn’t be certain back then.

My tongue continued to prod the space under itself. When my mother asked why, I didn't know the answer. And as I aged, my answer became, "Habit, I guess."

I find now, as an adult, that it is much easier for me to let go of grudges than it is for me to trust someone again. It was much easier as a child to trust again, because as much as the grudges did linger, I'd been taught to always trust family.

#

In Canada, one of my favourite things to do as a child was visit the pet store near my home in Scarborough.

There, I watched lizards slide out their tongues, then mimicked the action, feeling the discomfort while trying to extend my own tongue as far as it could go. Mine was too short by comparison.

As if mocking me, the lizard whipped its tongue back and forth. I stood there, blaming my fear of scissors and needles for the fact that I couldn't muster the courage to get a second lingual frenectomy, and I grew annoyed that my tongue wasn't the same length as the lizard's, or as nimble, and that I always tripped on my words. Really, perhaps I still blamed my aunt.

Now I wonder, if the situation had been any different, if my aunt had told me the truth—that we weren't actually going to the zoo—would I feel differently now?

Sometimes I still stretch the lingual frenulum, hoping to extend it somehow without needing the surgery. I wonder if I should get the second surgery. Then I recall the specific moment in my childhood when I was cut the first time. The desire disappears.

#

In the third grade, while I practiced my speech arts presentation on the topic of rabbits—public speaking has always been a fear of mine, though I have been told that at one point when I was younger, I could brave any stage—my mother entered the room.

"Do you want to get that second cut for your tongue? Make it longer?" She never referred to it as a lingual frenectomy, or even if she did, I don't think I would have understood the Mandarin term for it.

I did want to get one because that would likely mean being able to speak English more fluently, fitting in with the other children, seeming truly "Canadian"—because wasn't that what my mother and father had betrayed me for? Wasn’t that what they wanted? But the fear of my experience with the surgery—the pain—outweighed my loneliness, my desire to belong.

I looked at our rabbit, sitting in the corner of the room in its cage, and wondered how long its tongue was. I looked at our rabbit, imagining my aunt, imagining the zoo—the animals in cages, me at the temple.

"No."

#

My mother no longer asks me if I want to get a frenectomy, though I still get self-conscious whenever I speak. And whether it is nervousness or not, my first thought is of the still-attached flesh under my tongue.

By now, my mother and aunt have long since regained my trust because I've come to understand the reason behind their actions. But often the heightened sense of emotion you experience as a child remains. It continues to haunt, though you come to understand, come to rationalize, come to accept the betrayal and see it as an act of love.

The child within me will continue to prod, to test the holes in my memory, trying to understand the logic behind my acceptance of my mother's and aunt's apologies. I will continue to prod as insistently as I prod the lingual frenulum. I will wonder for the rest of my life.

I am as certain of this as I am that there will never be a second frenectomy.