by Misa Sugiura
I consider asking her what she really means, but I don’t ask because what if she’s literally talking about common interests? How will I look then? So I say, “Arturo and JJ are really nice.”
The five-minute bell rings, and as we head to class, Janet shows up and asks Elaine how her date at the movies with Jimmy went. As Elaine gives Janet the details, it occurs to me that everyone involved in her story is Asian, and I get a wave of that good feeling of being part of a club. Maybe Reggie’s right. Maybe I just don’t have anything in common with Jamie’s friends. We don’t listen to the same music. We don’t wear the same clothes. We don’t take the same classes or have the same plans for our futures, except for Jamie.
But should that even matter? Is it even true? Or am I just making excuses? I think of how I felt like I couldn’t keep up with everyone the other night, how I wished Jamie was friends with Luisa Campos. Is it really just because Luisa is nicer? But what else could it be? And what does that even mean? Am I trying hard enough? Are they? Should they? Jamie and I are totally comfortable with each other. Why can’t I feel that way with her friends?
It’s Thursday, and I’ve just gotten home from a cross-country meet in Santa Clara. Mom’s been in a bad mood all week, and now she’s on my case because apparently I’ve been spending too much time with my friends. By which I’m sure she means Jamie’s friends, even though I’ve told her they aren’t really my friends.
I think it’s because I showed her a picture of Arturo, JJ, Jamie, and me at Jamie’s house with Mrs. Ramirez in the background, to prove that we had a chaperone all night. That was probably a mistake. One look was all it took to trigger a barrage of classic Mom commentary: See how those boys are sitting? Sloppy. They look like the bad students and criminal. Maybe Mrs. Ramirez is nice lady, but how can she let her daughter have those boys for friend? Those boys look like gangster. I don’t trust them.” Translation: “I don’t trust you.”
Which is totally unfair, considering the most untrustworthy person in this house—the one who’s going out and getting drunk and secretly kissing other women—is Dad. Okay, so there are two of us secretly kissing women. But the point is, Dad’s the one who’s doing wrong, not me. Dad’s the one who’s betraying Mom. And I’m the one who’s getting in trouble.
I’m studying for my physics test tomorrow and Mom’s busy with dinner in the kitchen when Dad gets home early from work. “Tadaima,” he calls, and rushes to his bathroom and turns on the shower. That’s weird. Usually he takes a bath when he gets home. Something’s up.
I sneak into his room to go through his pockets while he’s in the shower—if Mom isn’t going to do it, then someone has to. I don’t know what I think I’ll find, or even if I think I’ll find something. Phone: Locked, with a new passcode. Damn. Wallet: Nothing. Five twenty-dollar bills, a bunch of credit cards, a receipt from Gumba’s Pizza for $8.99.
But wait. What’s this? In the inside breast pocket, there’s a little box, wrapped in silver paper. Hands shaking, I undo the wrapping paper at one end, tug the box out, and open it.
It’s a pair of pearl earrings. For pierced ears. Which means they can’t be for Mom or me. Which means that they have to be for That Woman. Which means they’re evidence.
Which means that I sneak out of the room with the earrings and the wrapping paper under my shirt, go into my room, rewrap the present, and hide it in my lacquer box.
I’m so freaked out about what I’ve just done, and so mad at Dad, that I can’t come out of my room until well after he’s gone off to dinner “with clients.” I wish I hadn’t gone through his pockets, after all—I realize now that I really didn’t want to find anything. Why do I keep looking for stuff? And why do I have to keep finding it?
I can’t concentrate on studying for physics. I can’t even sit down—I just walk in circles in my room until Mom calls me for dinner. I consider showing her the box, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Besides, I’m too busy arguing with her about Jamie’s friends.
When Dad gets home, he isn’t drunk, as I’ve been dreading, but he is in a foul mood. Dad doesn’t yell or anything when he’s mad. He just won’t talk to anyone. Not a word. When he walks in the door, he doesn’t even say “Tadaima” to announce himself. Ha. Serves him right.
“Dō yatta? Umaku itta?” Mom asks him. Silence. Dad stalks to his room without telling Mom how it went (not well, obviously) and without looking at me. I hear him opening and closing drawers; dropping his change, his keys, and his phone on the dresser as he goes through his jacket pockets; opening and closing the closet door. “Nan’ka nakush’tan?” Mom calls from the kitchen.
As if he’d tell her what he’s lost. I imagine coming out of my room with the box in my hand and asking innocently, “Is this what you’re looking for?” and then, “Is it a present for Mom?” But the only possible outcome would be a huge confrontation, a lot of tears, and the humiliating collapse of our family. So instead I say nothing and stay awake all night wondering what to do.
Mom and I had an argument at breakfast about whether I could go and get a pedicure this afternoon with Reggie and Janet, which ended in her threatening to ground me for the whole weekend, including today, Friday, which shouldn’t count—more evidence that she’s in a bad mood, because she never grounds me. I wonder if she knows about the earrings.
The varsity team is running in the Stanford Invitational tomorrow, and the rest of us, including Reggie, Hanh, and Elaine, were all going to drive up to meet them and hang out in downtown Palo Alto afterward, so that’s another missed opportunity to be with Jamie. On top of it all, I didn’t sleep last night because of the earring thing, so I totally bombed my physics test.
And now, I’m having an uneasy lunch with Jamie, Arturo, JJ, and Christina, in case I can’t hang out with them—well, with Jamie—tomorrow.
“School doesn’t care about me,” JJ is saying. “Why should I care about school? Teachers all just think I’m a lazy Mexican, anyways, so why should I do shit for them?”
“They think you’re a lazy Mexican because you don’t do shit, bruh. That’s what lazy is,” Arturo says, laughing.
Jamie adds, “You can’t just walk in and expect teachers to care about you. You want them to give a shit, you gotta give a shit . . . two shits.”
“Forget two shits. If you’re Mexican you gotta shit gold,” says Arturo.
“Naw, doesn’t matter how much I try. They’re gonna be racist anyway,” insists JJ. “They look at me and they think ‘dropout.’ ‘Cholo.’ They don’t want to get to know me as a person.”
“Well, duh,” says Jamie impatiently. “But you can let them believe the stereotype or you can work against it.”
“I shouldn’t have to work against it, that’s my point. It’s bullshit.”
Suddenly, I’m filled with impatience for this boy who could be so much more than he is if he would just stop blaming others for his problems in school. I hear myself saying, “Aren’t you listening? Teachers don’t assume anything about you. You have to take some responsibility for getting their respect.” There’s a pause just long enough for me to realize I’ve said something wrong.
“Um, actually . . .” says Jamie slowly, “actually, they do assume things about you.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Are you kidding me?” says Christina. “Were you not there with us at the 7-Eleven last week?”
“Okay, yeah. But it’s not true at school. All you have to do is work hard.”
Christina gapes at me, then appears to collect herself. “Some Asian nerd-boy misses a few assignments, and the teacher’s all, ‘why aren’t you doing your homework, is everything okay at home, here’s a chance to make it up.’ A Mexican kid doesn’t do his homework, and that’s that. The teacher doesn’t say shit. Just lets him fail.”
“Maybe that’s because so many Mexican kids don’t do their homework.” Oh, no. I can’t believe that just came out of my mouth. It’s true, though. I mean, it’s probably true. Besides, Jamie said not to tak
e any crap from her.
“Oh, now you’ve got a Mexican girlfriend, so you know all about Mexican kids. How do you know we don’t do our homework?”
“Well, I don’t see how you could get bad grades if you were working hard,” I say. I’m keenly aware that I’m screwing up, and scared of where this argument is going, but I don’t know how to fix it, and it’s too late anyway.
“You guys,” says Jamie, frowning.
But Christina’s fired up. “You think we don’t work hard. You think we’re lazy.”
“No. I don’t think you’re lazy. I just. I just think you could work harder if you really wanted to.”
“You think I could work harder?” Christina’s voice swings up, incredulous. When she speaks again, it’s low and steely. “I know I’m not the sweetest person and all, so you probably won’t believe this, but I’ve been trying to be friends with you. I’ve been trying to be nice. But you keep judging me, even though you don’t know anything about me. You cooking your family’s meals? You helping to pay the rent? You been working thirty-two hours a week bagging groceries at Safeway ’cause your dad started chemo the day before school started and had to stop working?”
I swallow. That would explain why she was so upset the first day of school. “No.”
“Did you know I’m getting straight A’s right now?”
“No.”
JJ’s giving me some curious side-eye. Jamie’s just standing there with her arms crossed, looking uncomfortable. I’ve obviously just dug myself a hole, but I can’t see how it happened. I mean, I can, but how was I supposed to know about Christina’s dad? And I never said Christina was stupid. Everyone knows that the Mexican kids get bad grades. Stuff like that is always in the news, so it had to be true, right? And a third of the students at Anderson are Mexican American, but Jamie’s the only one in any of my Honors classes. They can’t all be working thirty-two hours a week.
Something inside me squirms uneasily, poking and jabbing, but I squash it down. Surely if I can just explain myself, everything will be better. But to my horror, the very accusations I hate hearing from Mom come streaming out of my own mouth. “Okay, so you don’t have as much time to spend on your homework. And you’re getting good grades. But—but it’s not just about how much work you do, anyway. It’s about attitude. People don’t just judge you on your grades. It’s how you act. It’s how you dress.”
You know how if a drowning person can’t swim, the best thing they can do is stop trying to swim, and just float? But instead they panic and flail, and the more they flail the worse it gets, and the worse it gets the more they flail? Right now, that’s me. Flailing. Thrashing. And making things worse. “If you dress like a thug and act all hard,” I continue, “what are people going to think? No wonder teachers assume you won’t work hard. No wonder you get followed around in stores. No wonder my mom and my friends don’t want me to hang out with you guys. You look like thugs, you act like thugs, so how can you blame people for thinking that you are?”
Silence.
No, wait. If I listen closely, I can hear the sound of nails being pounded into my coffin.
“I look like a thug?” Christina says finally. “I act like a thug?”
See? This is why I keep my mouth shut—things never come out the way I mean them. I hear how messed up my words are, how horrible I sound, but it’s like I can’t stop them. The words just keep coming, like ants out of a flooded anthill. “I didn’t say that you are a criminal, I didn’t say it was okay for people to judge you! I just said—”
“Yeah, I know,” says Christina, “I heard you. You said no wonder your mom doesn’t want you to hang out with us, because we act like thugs. Fine. Leave. I’m done with you. Get out of my sight before I punch your face in.”
Wisely, I decide it’s best not to point out to Christina the deep irony of her last sentence. Then I realize that I’m shaking. I look at Jamie for help, but she just takes my hand and leads me away.
Once we’re out of earshot, Jamie turns to me. “What the fuck was that?”
I stare at her, confused. “Huh?”
“What. The fuck. Was that. What’s wrong with you?”
Then it sinks in. She thinks that mess we just left is my fault. And that pisses me off. “What’s wrong with me? They’re the ones who attacked me. All I did was back you up. Didn’t you just tell JJ that he had to act against stereotype? Didn’t Arturo just call him lazy? Just because I said it and not you, just because I’m Asian and not Mexican. Like I haven’t experienced racism. Like they’re not racist. Where does Christina get off calling me a loser nerd just because I’m Asian? She never liked me.” Which is true. “And it’s because I’m Asian.” Which might be true.
Jamie looks back at Christina, then at me. “She didn’t trust you at first because she didn’t want me to get hurt. But now, yeah. It’s about more than that. Why should she trust you?” You don’t trust her. You’re . . . biased. Because you think she’s too ‘Mexican’—no, it’s true. Admit it.”
“She just said she was going to punch me in the face.”
“She was being ironic.”
“It didn’t sound that way to me.”
“That’s because you’re afraid of her. And for no good reason.”
“I’m not afraid of her.” Okay, I might be, a little bit. But is that because she’s Mexican, or is it because she puts me down all the time? I’m not racist, am I? How do I untangle all these threads? “Anyway, how come it’s okay for you and Arturo to say that JJ needs to work harder, but not okay for me to say it? That’s messed up.”
Jamie’s jaw tightens and she gazes at me and says, “Because Arturo and I have been friends with JJ since kindergarten. We know that he’s a good person and a sweet big brother. We know that he loves Star Wars and that he used to love school. We know that he got picked out of the audience to do some acting thing this one time at an assembly in elementary school, and people gave him a standing ovation. Not just to be nice, but because he was so good. But his parents won’t pay for classes or let him take theater at school because they don’t want him to be an actor. We know all of that. So we get to say whatever we want. You’re not allowed because you’ve known him for a couple of months and you think he’s a lazy Mexican. You think he’s a loser. You basically said he’s a criminal.”
“I did not.”
“You said he looks and acts like a thug. Same thing.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just—how can your friends expect people to treat them like individuals if they dress like stereotypes?”
“The same reason you expect to be treated like an individual even though you look like a stereotype.”
“I don’t look like a stereotype.”
“No makeup. No jewelry. No nail polish. Conservative clothes. Big heavy backpack. You’re a total stereotype.”
This takes me aback a little, but I’m not giving up. “Yeah, and Christina treats me like one.”
“She calls me a loser nerd, too, you know.”
“I know. But with me, it was different. She was totally talking about me being Asian.”
Jamie looks like she’s going to argue, but she stops herself. “Yeah, I know. I never said it was right.”
“Your friends think I’m not good enough for them.”
She doesn’t say anything. Just starts walking again.
Then she stops and says, “No. You think they’re not good enough for you.”
“That’s not true.”
“You know, Christina’s as smart as anyone in the Honors program. The only reason she’s not in it is because she missed the application deadline in eighth grade. I missed it, too, but I got lucky because my mom went to the office and fought for me.”
“School has nothing to do with it.”
“I bet if she was in Honors classes you’d have given her a chance.”
“Yeah, and if I wasn’t in Honors classes, or if I was Mexican, she’d have given me a chance. I mean, JJ’s failing
math, and we get along. Anyway, my point is they don’t want you to hang out with me.”
“My point is, maybe that’s because you don’t want to hang out with them. And don’t forget your friends don’t want you to hang out with them, either.”
“Yeah, but I still am. I’m still trying.”
“I know. But they are, too. Christina is. She really is.” She lets out a long breath and looks back at JJ, Arturo, and Christina. “Maybe we shouldn’t hang out this weekend, after all. I’ll just go home with them after school today, and I’ll spend some, like, quality time with them over the weekend after the invitational, and I’ll talk to them, and it’ll be all good next week. I promise. ’Kay?”
“Um. Okay.” What else can I say? But there’s still a part of me that feels like things aren’t quite fair. “I just wish I could explain that I didn’t mean what I said in a racist way.”
A shadow passes over Jamie’s face. “I’ll tell them you didn’t mean it. But . . . maybe you could think about it from their point of view. ’Cause it’s—it’s kind of my point of view, too.”
That knocks the wind out of me a bit. I hadn’t thought about it that way. I don’t know why.
“Can you just try? For me?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” She takes my hand and laces her fingers through mine.
A warm glow flickers somewhere inside me and radiates through my body, and I can feel a sort of bashful, lovestruck smile spread across my face.
Jamie’s got the same smile on her face, and it looks like she’s really hoping I’ll kiss her, and I really want to, and think I might be able to screw up the courage to do it, but at that moment Caleb and his friends come clomping around the corner in their big boots. So I drop Jamie’s hand and back up a step instead. “So, okay,” I say, “we’ll hang out next week.”
26
MOM’S BAD MOOD FLARED RIGHT BACK UP when I got home on Friday afternoon and asked her if I could please go out with Janet and Reggie to get a pedicure, and she grounded me for the whole weekend, as promised. I got to send them one text saying I couldn’t make it, and then I had to surrender my phone as well. I would blame it on her finally clueing in to Dad’s affair, but she’s just as attentive as ever toward him. It doesn’t make sense.