by Misa Sugiura
“Hi,” I say. Christina briefly turns the corners of her mouth up into something resembling a smile, but her eyes remain cold.
“I just wanted to give you your book back,” Jamie says, handing over Emily Dickinson.
“Oh, right. Thanks.”
“You were right. She’s more complex than she seems at first.”
“Pffff, you two are like homework buddies and poetry buddies?” Christina sniggers when she sees the title. “You competing for Nerd of the Year?”
“Shut up,” Jamie retorts as I busy myself cramming the book into my backpack, wishing I could climb in after it.
“Aww, I’m just playin’,” says Christina. “Hey, Sana, you don’t have to look so embarrassed! It’s okay.” Except it’s not okay, because she’s clearly enjoying my embarrassment. I smile weakly. I’m not sure what’s going on exactly, but if her goal is to make me feel small, it’s working.
Arturo asks, “You smart, like JJ says?”
“’Course she’s smart! All Asians are smart, right, Sana?” Christina’s voice is friendly, and maybe it’s because I’m so sick of that stereotype, but it’s not clear whether she’s laughing at me or with me.
“Isn’t that kinda racist?” asks JJ.
“It isn’t racist if it’s nice,” says Christina. “I’m just being nice.”
“It’s still racist,” says Jamie. “Anyway, I helped Sana with her trig homework, right?”
“Jamie’s the smart one,” I agree.
“She helped you?” asks Arturo. “I know she’s smart, but aren’t Asians supposed to be good at math?” He’s joking. He has to be.
“Not this Asian.”
“That’s for sure.” Jamie grins at me.
“Yeeeah,” says JJ. “I suck at math.” He puts his fist out for me to bump, and as I put out my own fist, I feel a thrill of solidarity—which is ruined when I see Christina rolling her eyes. But Jamie and Arturo are rolling their eyes, too.
Arturo says, “Failing math isn’t funny, bruh. If you fail out this year, I’m gonna fucking kill you.” JJ waves him off.
Then Jamie starts in, too. “How many times do we have to tell you? You gotta go to college if you want to get anywhere in life.”
JJ groans wearily. “I know, I know. Just chill the fuck out, okay? What are you, my mom? Maybe I don’t want to get anywhere in life. What’s that even supposed to mean, anyway? What if I end up becoming . . . becoming a movie star? Diego Luna didn’t go to college. That Ironman dude didn’t go to college.”
Christina groans. “Seriously? You’re going with movie star?”
Jamie adds, “Yeah, and I bet most movie stars did go to college. Anyway, you can’t bet your future on something like ‘I wanna be a movie star.’”
“Okay, fine. How about being a plumber? Or like, a store manager? Your mom works the desk at Kaiser. What’s wrong with that? Why you gotta be such a hater?”
“No one’s being a hater,” Arturo says. “We’re just saying there’s more opportunities.”
“As long as white and Asian people don’t take them all,” says Christina, and for a moment, I forget to breathe.
“Hey, babe, back off,” says Arturo. “Be nice. Sana, don’t listen to her. She doesn’t mean it personally. She’s just pissed because Lowell made her get three references to work in the student store, and she only makes the Asian and white kids get one.”
I look at Jamie, who nods. “It’s true.”
“Oh. That sucks.”
“Yep,” Christina replies grimly. I can’t say that I blame Mrs. Lowell for being reluctant to hire Christina though. She doesn’t seem like she’d be very friendly to customers.
“Well, see you at practice,” I say to Jamie.
“’Bye,” say Christina, Arturo, and JJ together. Arturo and JJ turn their attention back to the group. But Christina wraps herself in Arturo’s arms and watches me leave. I can feel her eyes boring holes into my back as I walk away.
“What were you doing with those guys?” asks Reggie when I reach my friends. They’re peeking over their shoulders at Jamie and her friends.
“Yeah, since when do you hang out with the Mexican kids?” says Elaine.
“Oh. Uh, Jamie was just returning a book she borrowed from me after practice yesterday. For um, English.”
“Oh, right. She’s in a bunch of my classes. She’s cool.”
“Yeah, but her friends hate me, I think. Especially that girl, Christina.”
Hanh glances over. “Yeah, I know her. She was in my P.E. class last year. She’s a bitch.”
“She’s pissed because Lowell made her get three references to work in the school store. She says Lowell’s racist.”
“She should have to get extra references. She was tardy to P.E. all the time. Plus, I heard she got suspended in middle school for fighting,” says Hanh.
The five-minute bell rings, and we start walking to class. “You shouldn’t have to get extra references for screwing up in middle school,” Reggie protests. “And I heard that fight was about JJ, before he got tall. Like some bigger dude was picking on him.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I sat next to JJ’s cousin in chorus freshman year.”
“Well, I don’t care. That’s no excuse. And anyway, I told you she was tardy a lot. Like literally every day.”
“Janet works at the store, and she’s late a lot,” Elaine says. “She only had to have one reference.”
“Everyone knows Lowell totally lets kids off the hook if they suck up to her,” says Reggie. “I bet she said something about the tardies to that Christina girl and Christina wouldn’t play, and now Lowell’s punishing her for it.”
“That doesn’t seem fair, though,” says Elaine doubtfully.
Hanh shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. If she had a lot of tardies and a bad discipline record, she should’ve sucked up to Lowell. She knows the rules. It’s her own fault if she doesn’t want to play by them. All those Mexican kids come in with this attitude like people are so racist and Asian kids are such suck-ups. Well, then, suck the fuck up! Stop complaining.”
I can’t decide who’s right. On the one hand, it’s true that school is a big game, and it’s not that hard to play along. Still. It seems like Hanh’s being pretty harsh. Because it’s also true that the game isn’t always fair.
I’m still thinking about this when we reach my locker. There’s a tiny corner of paper sticking out of the vent, and when I open the door, I see a folded note inside. I tuck it into my backpack before the girls see it. When I open it during Mr. Green’s homework review, my breath catches in my throat, and trig class melts away. It’s a handwritten copy of a poem: “My Garden—like the Beach—” by Emily Dickinson. It’s signed, “Your nerdy friend, Jamie.”
She must’ve put it there before I even saw her with her friends. Okay. Calm down. Maybe I’m reading too much into this. Maybe it’s just a reference to the sea glass and pearls in my lacquer box. Purely surface. No metaphor. Maybe she’s just saying she wants to be friends.
Or maybe it’s something else.
I spend the rest of the day pulling the poem out and reading it whenever I can. When I get home, I take the photo of Trish out of my red lacquer box, and replace it with Jamie’s note. After I do my poetry journal entry about “My Garden—like the Beach—,” I copy it, plus “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” into another, brand-new notebook. Then I scour the internet for a good poem for Jamie.
“In the Morning in Morocco” by Mary K. Stillwell is perfect. It’s about waking up in an exotic, dreamy place (Morocco) after having traveled from Omaha. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker seems to think she’s still in Omaha, just as she’s waking up. The light is coming in through the cracks of her window shade, and it’s like the dream is seeping into reality, or maybe it’s the other way around.
So. Page One of the new notebook: “I’m Nobody! Who are you?”
Page Two: “My Garden—like the Beach—”
<
br /> Page Three: “In the Morning in Morocco”
I’m going to give the notebook to Jamie after practice tomorrow afternoon. I hope she likes it. I hope she makes a Page Four.
POETRY JOURNAL, HONORS AMERICAN LITERATURE
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10
“My Garden—like the Beach—”
by Emily Dickinson
A friend of mine gave me this poem today. I’m not sure what it’s really about, or what it means. There’s some kind of comparison between a garden, the beach, the sea, and summer. Maybe having a garden and going to the beach are both associated with summer? Maybe the beach and summertime are both times/places where you can be free? The beach is wild nature and the garden is tamed nature?
The last part is my favorite: “the Pearls / She fetches—such as Me.” Maybe since pearls are a treasure, the speaker, “Me,” is also a treasure. Maybe the speaker is offering herself like a pearl, to be someone’s treasure.
12
I GET HOME AFTER PRACTICE ON FRIDAY AND wolf down a snack. Reggie, Hanh, and Elaine are coming to pick me up in ten minutes so we can go to Valley Fair Mall. Mom has agreed to let me go, since it’s Friday and I have all weekend to do my homework.
Reggie drives up to my house in her mom’s Honda Odyssey with Elaine riding shotgun and Hanh in the back. I buckle up as Reggie inches back out into the street and Hanh applies a little extra eye shadow. With maybe the strictest of all our Asian parents, Hanh hardly ever gets to go out unchaperoned—not even with girlfriends during the day. Reggie got Hanh’s mom to let her come by telling her that Mrs. Lin, Reggie’s mom, would be with us. Which is sort of true. Reggie’s cousin Sharon just got engaged, and she’s going shopping for a mother-of-the-bride dress at the mall with her mom and Mrs. Lin. They’re going in Sharon’s car, an hour from now, but that’s not important. The point is they’ll be at the mall, and we’ll be at the mall. Hanh’s mom doesn’t need to know that we don’t plan to cross paths.
“I just wish my parents would trust me,” grouses Hanh.
“They do trust you. They trust that you’re with my mom. And they’re wrong. So you can’t blame them for not trusting you,” says Reggie, not unreasonably, I guess. But I still feel sorry for Hanh.
Valley Fair is an endless maze of atriums and walkways, and I follow the others’ lead, glad they know where they’re going. At Forever 21, Reggie examines a cute pink long-sleeved tee trimmed with sequins and says, “Hey, Janet wants to go to karaoke after homecoming. Her sister’s at Santa Clara University, and she said she’d help us reserve a party room and bring some alcohol. Wanna go?”
“Yeah, right,” says Hanh. “Last time I checked, both of my parents were Asian. Janet’s so lucky her mom’s white. She gets to do everything.” She pauses, then adds, “Try that top in charcoal.”
“No, I talked to Sharon,” says Reggie, holding up the charcoal top. “She’ll tell your parents that we’re having a sleepover at her apartment and that she’ll be there. It won’t be a lie, ’cause I’ll just drive us there after karaoke.”
“Reg, you’re a genius!” I say, and Reggie takes a bow.
We call our parents, give them Sharon’s phone number, and set up next weekend. I can hardly believe it. Never was I ever invited to go out drinking in Wisconsin, unless you count the country club, which I don’t because I invited myself. Even if I’d ever been invited, I had no one to lie to my parents for me. But it seems so natural now, so easy, like in movies where teenagers go to parties all the time.
Reggie buys the charcoal top to wear to the party, and we all decide to buy something, too. The rest of the afternoon is a flurry of “Is this too see-through?” “Does this make me look fat?” “Can I borrow your pink flats to go with this?” and “Do you think Jimmy will be at karaoke?”
All the while, despite the girl bonding, my mind keeps going to Jamie. When I try on a top, I wonder if she’d like me in it. I wonder if she’s going to homecoming, and if I should invite her to karaoke with us. And what that would mean. I mean, Elaine isn’t about to invite Jimmy, but Jimmy isn’t her friend, not really. Jamie and I, on the other hand, are friends. Reggie invited me, and she’s my friend, right? But what if Jamie wants her friends to come? Like Christina, who hates me? And before I know it, I’m asking a question.
“Hey, if you’re like, kinda friends with someone, and like, you’re kinda interested in them, but you think their best friend might not like you, so you don’t really want to hang out with their friends, is it cool to say that to the person you’re interested in, or should you wait until you’re like, dating or whatever?”
And even though Elaine has just found the cutest top ever, no one seems to care about it anymore.
“What? Who? Who’s your friend?”
“She said she’s kinda friends with them. Not real friends, right?”
“Girl or boy?”
“Boy, duh. She said she wants to date them. Right? I mean, you’re not gay, are you?”
“Of course she isn’t, she’s way too normal to be gay!”
“Who is it, Sana?”
“Is it that guy, that goth—Caleb? Didn’t you eat lunch with him and his friends the other day? Omigod! Is it him?”
They’re fluttering and cooing like pigeons around popcorn. I should have known this would happen. “Stop!” I say. “Jeez, I’m sorry I said anything. It’s not important. It doesn’t matter.” But it does to Elaine, Hanh, and Reggie, and without my help, they decide that it has to be a guy—who likes me. But who? They proceed to guess the names of a hundred different guys, and they only back off when I promise to tell them who it is later.
“Like, how much later?”
“As soon as I know what’s up.”
“What if you don’t know what’s up for like, months? It happens, you know.”
“I’ll tell you in a month, no matter what.” Oops. Where did that come from?
“Swear?”
“I swear.”
“Jeez, you’re so secretive.”
“Inscrutable Asian.”
Why can’t I keep my big mouth shut?
I’m sitting in the food court saving a table while the others go and get a ton of food to share when I get a text from Caleb.
What are you doing?
At the mall with Elaine, Hanh, and Reggie
AZN grl
Whatever
I’m just finishing up when Reggie arrives with her tray of food.
“Who’s that?”
“Oh, that guy, Caleb.”
“I knew it! Is he the ‘friend’ you were talking about before?”
“No!”
She raises her eyebrow at me. Elaine and Hanh are now sitting down and arranging their trays and food. “I thought he was flirting with you during trig!” exclaims Elaine, clapping her hands.
“He’s a little weird, but he’s cute! Do you think she should go for him?”
“Oh. My. God. It is not like that, I do not like him that way.”
“It’s totally like that, and you should give him a chance. He’s nicer than he seems at first.” Elaine is really excited about this, for some reason.
“How would you know?”
“I sat next to him last year in Algebra Two, and we had to be partners all the time. He was always all ‘Everything sucks.’”
“I know!”
“Right? But he’s kidding. Plus he’s smart. And kind of funny.”
“Then why don’t you go for him?”
“Jimmy, duh.”
After dinner, we walk across the street and get an outdoor table at this fancy place called Straits Café, and sip six-dollar lemonades for the next forty-five minutes, much to our waiter’s irritation. Hanh and Reggie try to order a cocktail, and he doesn’t even bother to ask for ID—just stares at them, shakes his head, and walks away. “Asshole,” grumbles Hanh. The night crowd is starting to come out now, and I feel so grown-up, surrounded by adults. The place is flooded with Asians—mostly techies, judging by the snipp
ets of conversation we can hear, and Hanh starts to get nervous that she might be seen by someone who knows her family, so we pay up and leave.
When they drop me off at home, I’m about to get out of the car with my Hollister shopping bag when Elaine grabs me. “Stop! You can’t take that in the house! Are you crazy?”
“Why?”
“What the hell are you going to tell your mom when she sees what you got?” says Hanh. “Do you think she’d let you keep it?”
“Good point.”
“Right? Pack it with your overnight stuff next week, leave the house in something else, and we’ll all change at school. Here—” She takes my super-cute, fifty-percent-off, scarlet, low-backed halter top out of the Hollister bag, grabs my purse, and stuffs the top inside. “That’s better.”
“Hanh Le, master of deception,” intones Reggie.
Hanh shrugs and grins. “Learn from the best.”
13
WE’RE FINISHING UP THE SCARLET LETTER FOR English. It would be a cool book if it weren’t such a depressing slog to read. I mean, a Puritan girl named Hester gets married to an ugly old man and has a love child with her hot Puritan minister while her husband is away, and then the ugly old husband comes back in disguise to get revenge—sounds fun, right? Except that most of the book is written in horrible, torturously long sentences about how horrible and tortured everyone feels. Because no one knows it’s the minister’s child, Hester is the only one who gets punished, and she has to go around wearing a big red A for Adultery on her chest while the minister gets off scot-free. Except he’s supposedly suffering silently and being eaten away by guilt on the inside, which I think is a load of BS, and he should just man up and tell everyone he loves her.
Actually, I was a little like Hester when I lived in Wisconsin. I got labeled just like her: A for Asian. Except I couldn’t help being Asian, while Hester could have prevented herself from cheating. I say this to Reggie, Elaine, and Hanh at lunch a few days after our shopping spree.
“A for Asian?” says Reggie. “That’s awesome.”