It's Not Like It's a Secret

by Misa Sugiura

  “We could get in a ton of trouble. My parents are pretty chill, but they would kill me if they found out we had boys over unsupervised. Not to mention drunk.”

  “Mine, too. But who says we’re going to get caught? Janet says her sister had a couple of parties at her apartment last summer and it was totally fine. No one called the cops, no one got in trouble,” says Hanh.

  “That was at college,” Reggie points out. “This is at Sharon’s. Totally different.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “It’s so unfair that Andy gets to have a whole house to himself and we have to go sneaking around,” Reggie grumbles. “I wish we were boys. Or that our parents were white. It would make things so much easier.”

  “C’mon, Reg. Asian pride! You don’t want to be like one of those slutty white girls,” quips Hanh.

  “Ha-ha. It’s so messed up. I know my parents used to party when they were younger, back in Hong Kong. I heard my mom saying once how she used to bribe the maid not to tell her parents when she snuck out.”

  “That makes both our moms,” Hanh says drily. “Except my mom didn’t have a maid.”

  Hanh and Elaine start planning what they will wear to Andy’s party, and I start hoping that everyone will forget about me and I won’t have to go. I manage to hold them off for the entire week, and even all day Saturday. But they are relentless. By Saturday night, I’m receiving a text every five minutes—they must have figured out a schedule between themselves, or maybe even set up a texting bot. All the texts say Sana, come with us! At nine thirty I decide whatever, I’ll just go for a little bit. Maybe they’re right. Maybe I need this. Besides, I’ll never hear the end of it on Monday if I don’t go. I text Reggie:

  Fine

  Lemme see if my mom will let you pick me up

  “Hey, Mom? Reggie just texted—she wants to go to the movies. Can I go?”

  Mom glances at the clock and frowns. She hates spur-of-the-moment social plans, and the fact that this one is coming from me, at nine thirty on a Saturday night, has clearly triggered the suspicion-meter in her head.

  “No. It’s too late.”

  “Mom!”

  “You should plan better.” And that’s it. No amount of complaining on my part is going to change her mind. She gets up off the couch and heads to her room to get ready for bed. And somehow, just because she said no, it becomes imperative that I get to that party. I devise a three-phase plan and have a quick text conversation with Reggie:

  Hey, Mom says no. I’m still going tho

  Yay! We’ll wait for u on Apricot Ave btwn Steinbeck and Cabrillo, and we all can go to Andy’s together

  That’s not where Andy lives

  Trust me

  K fine. Be there around 10:30

  This is my plan:

  Phase One: Tell Mom I’m going to sleep, wait until ten o’clock, arrange pillows and blankets to look like me under the covers, and sneak out through the window, leaving it open a crack so I can get back in later.

  Phase Two: Walk to Andy’s neighborhood, which is barely a mile away, and meet the others at Reggie’s van.

  Phase Three: Hang out at the party for a little while, walk home, and be back in bed by midnight.

  Mom will never miss me.

  Phase One goes smoothly, except for one harrowing moment when I can’t get the screen to pop out, and then when I do it slips out of my fingers and clatters around loudly in the window frame. But I freeze and grit my teeth for five agonizing minutes, and when Mom doesn’t appear, I climb out the window and into the night.

  Andy’s neighborhood is a little fancier than mine, and his house is one of those two-story, fake Italian villas with four bedrooms, a study, a “great room,” a living room, and a gourmet kitchen, squeezed onto a square of land that used to be home to a modest bungalow like the one next door. The street is evenly split between the dowdy old houses and the garish new ones. I can’t decide which ones look more out of place. There are cars parked up and down the entire street, and all the lights in Andy’s house are on, and I begin to understand why Reggie wanted to meet two blocks away. When I reach the car, the door opens, and Elaine beckons me in.

  I’m still not feeling up to the squeals and hugs that erupt, but I deal with it.

  “Okay. Here, Sana. Take two of these.” Hanh shakes two pills out of a little plastic bottle and holds them out. Elaine hands me a water bottle.

  “What? What is that?” I did not take Hanh—or anyone here—for a pill popper. This is weird.

  “Pepcid AC. It’s for Asian flush.”

  “Pepcid AC? For Asian what?”

  “Asian flush!” Hanh wrinkles her nose in distaste and Elaine grins. “You know, how Asians get all red when we drink alcohol?”

  Oh, right. That. I wince, remembering my reflection in the mirror at Glen Lake Country Club. Come to think of it, that night at PopStar featured a lot of red-faced Asians, too, Dad and That Woman included.

  “I read online that if you take two Extra-Strength Pepcid AC before you drink, you won’t get it. At least, not as bad,” Reggie explains.

  I’m not feeling up to getting drunk for the first time tonight, especially since I don’t plan to stay long, but it can’t hurt to take precautions. If Mom were to catch me sneaking back in, that would be bad enough. Sneaking back in with Asian flush? I don’t even want to think about it. I take the pills and the water, and we’re ready to go.

  We walk into a high-ceilinged, marble-floored front hall, complete with elaborate chandelier. It opens onto a white-carpeted living room with old bedsheets spread over the furniture and signs posted that say, STAY THE FUCK OUT OF THIS ROOM, MOTHAFUCKAS!

  “Uptight much?” whispers Elaine.

  Reggie rolls her eyes and says, “Poser.” Fake gangsta talk is one of her biggest pet peeves.

  Most of the action is in the back of the house, where the alcohol is. There’s a few white kids because Andy is a student government guy, and a lot of those kids are white, but most people here are a flavor of Asian: Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese, Japanese. I’ve gotten used to a mostly Asian crowd in the past few months, but a mostly Asian party still feels odd. I mean, talk about making yourself conspicuously different. Even though I’m technically one of them, I suddenly feel like I don’t belong. Like this isn’t really my scene.

  So I tell Elaine, “Practically everyone here is Asian.”

  “So?”

  “Do you think that’s weird?”

  “Uh . . . no? What’s weird about it?”

  It seems I’m destined to feel like an outsider no matter who I hang out with. I also notice that either the Pepcid AC trick doesn’t work, or not many people know about it, because red faces abound. Elaine points this out to me, as well, a little nervously. “Tell me if my face gets red, okay?” she says.

  “Trust me, you’ll know.”

  “Not if I’m drunk. Did you see those pictures of me from karaoke?”

  We squeeze through the hallway into the kitchen, where cans of Bud Light vie for counter space with bottles of vodka, rum, and tequila, and two-liter bottles of assorted sodas. Stacks of red Solo cups teeter next to a case of Red Bull. Costco-size bags of chips, pretzels, and popcorn spill their contents across the swirls of marble on the island in the middle of the kitchen.

  I pour myself a rum and Coke, and I’m taking an experimental sip, hoping to heck that the Pepcid AC will do its job, when I notice that the party isn’t all Asian, after all. There’s Thom, and there’s Caleb right behind him. I turn my back before they can see me—the advantage of having hair the same color as everyone else around me is that it’s easy to blend into a crowd—and search for Reggie.

  I find her with Janet and Hanh around the corner in the dining room. “Reggie! You told me that it would be just us!” She looks uncomfortable. And guilty. As she should.

  “I know, I know. But I knew you wouldn’t come if you knew Caleb was going to be here. Can’t you just, you know, try to patc
h things up with him? You could go for a walk or something if the party isn’t private enough.”

  “Caleb doesn’t want to talk to me.”

  “He says he’s mad, but I think he’s starting to get over it. I want us all to be friends. Please? For me?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Oh—shh! Here they come. Just act normal. I’ll get Thom out of the way, and you can apologize to Caleb. Be yourself. Be nice.” Panic grips me and I open my eyes wide and shake my head as discreetly as I can, the universal sign for No! No! No! but it’s too late. She’s waving at them. In the few seconds it takes for them to make their way over, just as I’m about to slide into despair, I feel a spark of hope. Maybe Reggie’s right. Maybe Caleb’s not as mad as he seems. Maybe I can make things right.

  “Hi, Caleb! I’m so glad you came! Sana’s here, too!” Reggie has put on a mega-watt smile and her voice is high and loud and extra-friendly.

  Okay. Go for it. I try for a funny opening—he likes funny. “Hey, stranger.”

  For a second Caleb stares stonily, stubbornly at some invisible thing in the air above Reggie’s head, his hands jammed in his pockets. Then he kicks at something invisible on the ground and mutters, without looking at me, “Hey.”

  Complete and utter fail.

  “Um, I have to go to the bathroom,” I mumble, and as Reggie reaches for my arm, I duck away and hightail it out of the dining room, through the kitchen, down the hall, under the chandelier, and out the door. I walk around the neighborhood for almost an hour, trying to escape the fog of despair that’s reappeared and is now hunting me down. I’ve just about given up when the phone rings.

  It’s Mom.

  36

  OH, NO.

  Has she been in my room? She has to know I escaped, or she wouldn’t be calling me. Maybe I should ignore her. Pretend my phone was on mute or something. Wait to deal with her until I get home. But what if she calls the police next? I answer. “Hello?”

  “Sana! Where are you?”

  “Nowhere, Mom. I’m just out for a walk.”

  “You’re supposed to be in bed! Why are you on a walk?”

  “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m just a few blocks—”

  “Hayaku kaen-nasai.”

  “I am.”

  But I don’t hurry home. Who would? Still, I can’t take too long, or she’ll be even angrier at me. Eventually I reach my block. The porch light is on. And Dad’s car is in the driveway.

  Great. This should be fun.

  No point sneaking back in through the window—hopefully Mom didn’t notice it, or the screen. (Why didn’t I hide it under the bed?) Hopefully she believes my story about just going for a walk. I open the door and brace myself. Mom and Dad are waiting for me on the couch, Mom in her robe and slippers, Dad in his work clothes. I don’t dare look at them in the face.

  “Tadaima.”

  “Okairi,” says Dad. But Mom says nothing. I lean down to take my shoes off, and her silence pools around me like water. I hazard a furtive glance at Mom’s face, and what I see surprises me. She doesn’t look angry. She looks sad.

  “Where were you?” It’s Dad again, sounding stern, which disorients me. Why should he be angry? Since when did he become the bad cop?

  “I told Mom—”

  “Mom found the screen in your room. Where did you really go?”

  If they planned this Dad As Bad Cop routine to throw me off my game, it’s working. I’m confused—I’m pissed at Dad and I feel bad for Mom. I’m not about to tell them where I was, but it’s a tough call about what attitude to take. Should I be contrite and retreat, or should I be sullen and push back? To buy time, I heave a sigh that could go either way.

  “Chanto henji shina sai.” That’s Mom’s line, but once again, it’s Dad who says it. That liar wants me to give him a proper answer? Fine. Sullen pushback it is.

  “Nowhere bad—it’s not a big deal. I’m back, aren’t I?” I scowl and cross my arms for good measure.

  “Sana! Tell me where you were!” I can see a vein bulging on the side of his neck, and his face darkens with anger. I feel my own anger rise and I push back harder.

  “No. Why should I? You’re never at home when you’re supposed to be. It’s not like you don’t go out to who-knows-where on the weekends. Huh? Where do you go?”

  “Sana,” Mom says sharply, “irankoto iwahen-no.” But to me, there’s nothing unnecessary about what I’m saying. So I say it again.

  “Where do you go, Dad?”

  There’s a long silence before he says, “That has nothing to do with you.”

  Suddenly, I’m done pretending. I’m done with Mom avoiding the subject. I’m done with Dad lying. Because where he goes has everything to do with me. And I realize that gaman—what I thought was gaman—can’t be what I’ve been doing. I haven’t been facing a bad situation and enduring. I’ve been hiding from a bad situation and allowing it to get worse. And I can’t allow it anymore.

  I run to my room and snatch my lacquer box from its place on the bookshelf. On my way back to the living room, I crash right into Dad, who’s coming around the corner into the hallway after me, and the box and its contents fly out of my hands—my pearl earrings, the sea glass, That Woman’s little gift box, the phone number, Jamie’s poem—all of my treasures and secrets—clatter and bounce like hail, flutter to the floor like dying moths.

  I drop to my knees and grab for the poem, which is none of my parents’ business. Then the phone number, then my earrings, which have rolled down the hallway. I pick up my beautiful red box and put the earrings, poem, and phone number back in. Then the gift box. Finally, I gather up the sea glass and put it away.

  Only after I’ve put everything safely back in the box do I realize that Dad hasn’t moved, and that Mom has joined him in the hallway. I stand up, and he turns and walks slowly, heavily back to the living room, and sits down.

  Heart pounding, I follow him. “Gomen,” he says as I enter the room, and I’m not sure if he’s apologizing for knocking into me, or for something else.

  I take a breath and get ready to tell him off, because I’m still so mad, I’m shaking. But once the air fills my lungs, I can’t form the words to express what I’m feeling. “I know where you’ve been, I know what you’ve been doing,” I want to say. “How could you? How could you have an affair? How could you lie like that for so long?” But the words stick in my mouth, and the air remains in my lungs. The space that separates me, Mom, and Dad seems to widen and stretch, soundless and empty.

  I realize that I’m terrified that if I say the words, if I demand the truth, there’s no going back. He’ll have words of his own, an answer that will fill the space between us, then fall and shatter like glass. And the fragile threads that bind us to each other—the memories of my childhood games with him, the stories, the stunted conversations we have now—will be severed by the sharp edges of the truth, and he’ll be gone. We’ll have no relationship at all, and we’ll be separated forever, driven further and further apart by the different currents of our lives.

  I look at Mom, sitting silently next to Dad. Waiting. Motionless. I’m filled with a fresh anger, this time at her. How could she hide herself from the truth all these years? How could she have allowed him to treat her this way—to treat me this way? How could she have let him continue to lie to us?

  Then it strikes me. If I continue to say nothing, if I continue to do nothing, then maybe nothing will happen. Or maybe Dad will leave us anyway. The truth could split us apart. But it’s better than drowning with the weight of a secret. Better than waiting for the fraying threads to be worn through one at a time by a lie. The truth will be there, no matter what, no matter how many words we say or don’t say. I take the lid off my box and pull out the crumpled slip of paper and the gift box with That Woman’s pearl earrings inside.

  I put them down on the table in front of Dad and say, “I know where you’ve been and who you’ve been with. You don’t have to hide anything anymore.”
/>   I walk back to my room and close the door.

  The light wakes me up in the morning, and last night comes flooding back. Once I got into my room, I pulled out my phone, which was bursting with texts from Elaine, Reggie, and Hanh asking where I was and if I was okay. I answered them (I came home. Mom awake. I’m in big trouble) and put the phone in airplane mode. Then I spent a long time alternately congratulating myself for being honest, worrying about whether I’d ruined my family, and trying to eavesdrop on Mom and Dad, who were still talking in the living room. Finally, I gave up and lay down. The last thing I remember is wondering how I was ever going to fall asleep.

  I’m still in my clothes, sprawled on top of my covers, but someone has spread a fleece blanket over me. I look at my phone: ten o’clock. Mom must be feeling bad for me—she’s never let me sleep in past eight unless I’ve been sick. I get up, change into my pajamas, and crawl back into bed. I’m afraid to leave my room, afraid to find out what consequences my actions last night might have had. I wish I could stay here for the rest of my life. Then I’d never have to deal with Dad, with Jamie, or with Caleb. Mom could just bring me soup and rice at mealtimes, and I could read and keep up with my studies from here. I could learn to write code and work for an Internet start-up without ever leaving home.

  At eleven o’clock, Mom finally peeks in. “Sana?” I pull the covers off my head. I’m not ready to get out of bed, but I figure she deserves some thanks for letting me sleep in. It must be killing her that I’m not up and doing something useful.

  “How are you doing?”

  “Mmf.”

  Mom comes over and sits on the bed next to me.

  “Dad wanted to talk to you, but he had to leave.”

  Figures. “He’s a coward.”

  Mom stiffens. “I told him to go,” she says.

  “Why do you let him do that to you?”

  “There are things you do not know. It’s my choice to live this way.”