Page 40 - Solstice Art & Literary Magazine 2021

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If Mindy was as embar- rassed as I was, she did a better job of hiding it. She just pulled me aside, asking me to take her to my room.
“Sorry, there’s not a lot to do in here,” I realized out loud once Mindy and I stepped into my room. The walls were bare, as were the shelves. We had just moved into our new house two months ago. I opened my closet doors in search of a board game or something.
“Ella, you have so few clothes!” Mindy exclaimed. I straightened up, my head bumping into the hangers, causing a cascade of click-clacks. Min- dy laughed, amused.
“Oh, um, I just put most of them in the dresser,” I defended meekly.
“And everything looks so plain too,” Mindy added, now shuffling through my clothes on the rack, un- invited. Click-clack. Click-clack.
I wasn’t sure how to feel. “Yeah, I know. I got most of them
from China...”
“Your shorts are cute, though.
I want those shorts.” She took my only pair of jean shorts off the hang- er—click-clack—and held them up.
“Yeah, I got those after I came here,” I explained.
Just then, my mom opened the door to my room. In the dim
hallway, the white of her nightgown morphed into a raggedy gray. It was the last thing I wanted to see; still, my eyes were transfixed in a horrified stare. I was spellbound. She was en- tirely oblivious.
“Sorry, Mindy, if I know you coming, I would make you some- thing to eat—”
“—It’s okay, I’ll be having swim practice soon—”
“—But I have in the oven... Ella, how do you say yáng ròu chuàn in English?”
There was no translation. It was a specialty of my hometown, which we used to enjoy at an open- air restaurant on hot summer nights. It was as out-of-place in this lan- guage as I was in that scene.
“Lamb skewers?” I answered.
“Yeah! Delicious. Mindy, come with me!”
The rest of my house smelled of cumin powder. I felt a broiling heat on my face as I passed the small electric oven nestled on a pantry shelf. Using a pair of mismatched oven mitts, my mom took out a tray with darkly peppered pieces of lamb skewered on sharp bamboo stakes.
FOUR skewers. “Two for you—” my mom handed two skew- ers to Mindy, “—and two for you.”
“I really can’t eat them, I’m going to swim practice now... ” Mindy protested.
“Just one, then.” My mom took one of the skewers from Min- dy’s hand and tore off a piece of lamb with her teeth. She chewed eagerly.
“Yum! You should try it, Mindy.” Mindy curled her lips again, revealing her perfect white teeth. She
took a dainty bite.
Walking Mindy back to
school for her swim practice, I chewed silently on the skewer my mom gave me, while Mindy held hers up like a magic wand. Halfway there, Mindy pushed the skewer into my hand, telling me she really couldn’t stomach it.
“You know,” Mindy looked into my eyes seriously. “Even though your clothes look really bad, I’m gonna make you cool and popular.”
The afternoon sun grew un- comfortable on my skin.
I was sick of transformations.
FIVE minutes later, I was alone again, holding the bamboo stakes in my hands, scanning for the near- est trash can down the hallway. I couldn’t find one that was out of ev- eryone’s view. Those stares followed me like a spell I couldn’t break. I pre- tended not to notice, walking blithely, showing my own pearly-whites as if my head was filled with a fantasy without an expiration date.
In reality, my mind kept go- ing back to my mom’s tired, bent
body, which the flimsy shift did lit- tle to conceal. I knew her closet was even emptier than mine. She had not bought a single piece of cloth- ing since we came here.
SIX suitcases. Two for Dad, two for Mom, two for me. They contained everything we brought here from our past lives.
The hallway blurred out of focus. Numbers ran through my head: everything in dollars was multiplied by seven. Seven Chinese
Yuan to one U.S. Dollar. Everything times seven—that’s how expen- sive things really were in America, where my parents’ once-consider- able income was barely able to keep us afloat.
If we did not come to Amer- ica, my mom once said, we would not be one-seventh of everyone else around us.
It was nothing to be ashamed of, she said.
SEVEN years ago. That was when my mother took me to the little bou- tique. I think I know why.
It was around that time she decided to leave her job as a design- er to take care of my cancer-rid- den grandpa. It was around that time my family decided to move to America. Everything around her was becoming a countdown: her ca- reer, my grandpa’s life, our time in
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