by Susan Tan
“There’s writing on the back, too,” Colleen said proudly, turning around so he could see. “Also, I’m wearing purple, because I’m a Colin-themed book.”
“And I’m a Selena-themed book.” I grinned.
“This is great,” Sasha exclaimed. “Cilla and Colleen are our mascots—the biggest fans of all!”
“Hooray for Selena Moon!” Colleen cheered. (She always knows just what to say.)
“Let’s go trick-or-treating!” one of the Tims yelled. And we all said “yay!” and set off as a group, the Selena Moon book and movie fans.
I’d fallen behind Colleen, because I needed to readjust my cardboard box, when I heard someone next to me say, “Nice.”
I turned. There was a boy in an animal mask, with a backpack stuffed under an old sweater to give him a hump.
“Do you like it?” The unmistakable voice of Ben McGee came from behind the mask. “Camels are my favorite animal. I always ask my mom to take me to see them when we go to the zoo.”
“It’s … very nice,” I said, trying to hide my reaction, since I’d made a promise to my mom and all.
“Yours is okay,” Ben McGee said, gesturing to my costume. I opened my mouth to say something back, because I was sure he was making fun of me, but he kept going before I could think of anything good.
“But Book Two is my favorite. When Selena and Evelyn have to work together to stop the witch’s prophecy? Best chapter ever.”
Slowly, I closed my mouth.
“You like the Selena Moon books?” I looked at him suspiciously, expecting him to laugh and say “Just kidding, Silly.”
“They’re my favorites,” he said. “My mom reads them to me every night.”
I didn’t know what to say. So finally I just said, “Thank you, Ben McGee. You gave me the idea. With the whole book nerd thing.”
The camel head tilted to the side, thinking.
“Cool,” he said. “I’d never think to make a book costume, though, and I love books and stories. Someone told me a story the other day, too, about how I was an alien from outer space who turned into an animal and then went to the zoo before finally becoming me. Have you heard it?”
“I…,” I said, looking around to see if my mom was close enough to hear. She wasn’t.
And I was surprised, because suddenly I felt kind of bad. I didn’t want to hurt Ben McGee’s feelings.
“I…” There was no way around it. “I might have been the person who made it up,” I admitted finally, afraid to look at him.
“Wait, really?!” He pushed up his mask, and he was smiling. “This is awesome—no one’s ever made up a story about me before. What kind of animal was I, after the alien and before first grade?”
“You’ll never guess.” I smiled back. “I swear, I didn’t know camels were your favorite animal,” I explained. “When I made the story up, it just came to me when I put all the evidence together.”
We walked off, just behind the others—me, Cilla Lee-Jenkins, Selena Moon and the Moonstone, and Ben McGee, alien and camel—as I told him his story.
At the end of the evening, as our moms were getting ready to take us home and I was already counting how many chocolate bars I’d gotten in my head, he said, “Bye, Silly Lee! Happy Halloween!”
And I didn’t even get mad. I just said, “Happy Halloween to you too, Alien-Face McGee!”
* * *
It wasn’t long after Halloween that I opened Selena Moon one day and didn’t see letters or T and H rules, or even sentences. I opened it up and I saw a story.
My mom, dad, and Mr. Ogden called it “developmental,” which they said means that my brain was growing, and one day it was ready to read. So I guess this part of the story doesn’t really have a middle (which all good stories should have—it’s usually the part where the hero is slowly getting better at something, like sword fighting or dragon taming, or reading). In a movie, there’d be music playing while this happened, and then at the end everyone would celebrate, and maybe there’d be fireworks. Or trumpets.
But as it turns out, when you’ve spent seven years of your life wanting to learn to read more than anything else in the whole world, once you learn, there’s just SO MUCH to catch up on that you don’t even think about asking for fireworks. You’re too busy reading.
Sometimes, when I’m lying in bed, and looking at Selena Moon, I trace the lines and wrinkles that I made that night when I got so mad that I threw my book away from me.
My mom offered to buy me a new copy, but I didn’t want one. Because even though they were made because of Struggles, I don’t mind those marks anymore. In fact, sometimes I look at them and imagine that someday, if I’m really lucky, and Destiny was really and truly right that day by the gumball machine, maybe my book will be the first book where the letters come together for someone. Maybe my book will be the first book someone ever reads.
* * *
Alien-Face McGee caught up soon too. And when he couldn’t quite finish a book, or if it was feeling too hard, I’d act the end out for him (or make up an ending, if I hadn’t read the book).
As a good writer should.
10
COLORS
The school year’s almost over now, which is sad, because I LOVE Ms. Bloom.
And school is REALLY fun, which is why I haven’t been writing much lately. But then yesterday, I looked at my mom’s stomach and realized how much The Blob’s been growing. So I know I need to hurry to get this book done in time.
Ms. Bloom keeps asking us to reflect on what we’ve learned this year, which is easy because we’ve learned so much—the water cycle, multiplication, how to write an acrostic poem, and how to line up (almost) quietly. And this isn’t all I’ve learned. From my mom I learned how to bake chocolate chip cookies, and my dad’s taught me to change a lightbulb (you do this by being very careful, and always keeping hold of the ladder with one hand and foot, and asking an adult’s permission. Also, there’s a little glass bulb involved, but this seems less important than everything else.). From my Grandma Jenkins I learned how to tell the difference between azaleas and rhododendrons, and my Grandpa Jenkins taught me how to make an embroidery cross-stitch. From my Ye Ye I learned how to measure wood before an adult cuts it to make a shelf, and from my Nai Nai I learned that when moms grow babies in their stomachs, they should eat rice cooked in ginger ALL THE TIME.
My mom hates this, but she tells my dad that Nai Nai needs to feel like she’s part of the process, and besides, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I don’t know what dogs have to do with it, but I was excited when my mom said this because maybe it means we’re getting a pet (though I’d prefer a puppy, actually. I want to teach it tricks. Especially juggling.).
Anyway, all these things have been fun to learn. But none of them are quite as important as the one big, big thing I learned last week. And this had to do with pictures.
It all began when Ms. Bloom told us we were going to paint family portraits and then put our pictures up all over the classroom for everyone to see at our end-of-the-year party. This way, we would finish the year by celebrating who we are and the people who support us. Ms. Bloom says a picture is worth a thousand words, which, as a future bestselling author, sounds HIGHLY suspicious to me.
But at first, the project was exciting. I love family portraits, and I already knew that mine would have everyone in it—my Grandma and Grandpa Jenkins, Nai Nai, Ye Ye, Mom, Dad, and the garden gnome Mrs. Tibbs gave us because her daughter-in-law had given it to her, which meant she couldn’t throw it away. My mom wasn’t sure if she could accept it when Mrs. Tibbs told us all this, but luckily I was there to say “yes!”
Mrs. Tibbs said, “I knew I could count on you, Cilla,” holding the gnome out to my mom.
And my mom said, “Yes. That’s our Cilla,” in a little voice that wasn’t supposed to sound like a sigh but did, and she took the gnome with both hands. (Horatio—which is what I named the gnome—is very heavy, I found out later, when I tried to br
ing him inside for a tea party and dropped him on the new umbrella stand. Don’t worry, he was okay. The umbrella stand, not so much.)
Horatio had a spot of honor in my picture. Also a red hat. This was very convenient, because Ms. Bloom told us to use at least six colors in our pictures, three regular ones and three that we’d mixed.
“Think about your colors,” she said. “And when you go home this weekend, take a careful look at the people and things around you. What you think of as just brown hair may be light brown with streaks of red. What you imagine as blue eyes may be blue-green. Color is all around us, and it’s a lot more complicated than we think.”
Now, at first, I didn’t really see what Ms. Bloom meant. I love colors, and am very good at picking them out, because I have Creative Talents. I know this because my mom said she desperately needed my Creative Talents to help her choose what the baby will wear when she comes home. I picked some excellent clothes, and I’ll admit that it was a little fun (especially when I found a pair of purple pajamas with blue polka dots, yellow socks with orange polka dots, and a green hat with red polka dots and DINOSAURS on it, which was GREAT).
So when I started my picture, the colors seemed easy. I used red for Horatio’s hat, then mixed it with white to make pink for his face.
My other colors, though, got a bit trickier.
For my Grandma and Grandpa Jenkins I used gray for their hair (though Grandpa Jenkins doesn’t have much), pink for their faces, and blue for their eyes.
The colors for my Nai Nai and Ye Ye were harder to figure out, but I finally found a light peach for their faces and dark brown for their eyes. I found a dark gray for Ye Ye’s thick hair, and black for my Nai Nai’s.
Then came my mom and dad, and of course, me.
My parents were easy, now that my grandparents were figured out. My mom had both her parents’ pink skin and blue eyes. And, after a looong moment, I decided to give her a very, very small bump in her stomach for the baby, whose name I won’t say—small enough that you wouldn’t notice it if you didn’t know it was there (though that’s not what it looks like in real life, because it’s getting REALLY big).
My dad had Nai Nai and Ye Ye’s peach skin and dark brown eyes, and his hair was black and straight like theirs. I gave my mom and dad matching red shirts because they like to tell me they’re a team, but sometimes my dad tells my mom that she needs to be more of a team player so I don’t think they have it totally figured out yet. I thought maybe the matching shirts would help.
And then there was me. Priscilla. Lee-Jenkins.
I’ve painted lots of pictures of myself before and they weren’t hard. But I’d spent so much time thinking about colors that I suddenly began to notice things I’d never thought about before. Like how my skin isn’t like my parents’. It’s darker than my mom’s but a different color than my dad’s—not pink, not peach. My hair isn’t black, but it’s a dark, dark brown. In the end, none of the colors I used to draw me were the same colors I’d used for the rest of my family.
We hung our pictures on the wall when we were done, and then we had free time and got to look at everyone else’s portraits.
Colleen had painted her mom, her dad, and her two brothers, plus her pet goldfish. It was a great picture, and Ms. Bloom said, “You captured the family resemblance so well!”
From Alien-Face McGee’s picture, I found out that he has a little sister and two cats along with his parents. Colleen said she liked mine, and Alien-Face wanted to know all about Horatio, which was a fun story to tell. But something didn’t feel right.
I didn’t know what it was until Colleen looked at my picture and said, “I like your drawing, Cilla. They’re all really far apart, though.”
And she was right, I saw suddenly. All the other families had been drawn standing together—holding hands, smiling at each other, some even playing games. In my picture, I stood in the middle with my mom, dad, and The Blob. My Grandpa and Grandma Jenkins stood next to us, off to one side, and my Nai Nai and Ye Ye stood on the other side, the whole page in between them.
“It’s no big deal,” Colleen said.
But it was.
That day, when I got home from school, I went to look at my mom and dad’s wedding photo, which they keep on a shelf above the couch. Mostly, I like this photo. My mom and dad are younger than I ever thought they could be, and my mom’s hair is long and curls at the end, and her dress is like a real live fairy princess’s with white lace and a skirt that poufs and goes all the way to the floor. This is the first photo, my mom says, of her and my dad as a married couple. But it’s also special for another reason that we don’t talk about. Because it’s the only photo ever taken with all of my grandparents in it.
In the photo, my mom and dad are in the center, holding hands. Grandma and Grandpa Jenkins are standing side by side next to my mom. And at the opposite end of the picture, my Nai Nai and Ye Ye are standing next to my dad. Everyone’s dressed up, and everyone’s smiling.
Except … I know better. That smile isn’t my Grandpa Jenkins’s smile when he gets a big piece of chocolate cake, or my Grandma Jenkins’s when she claps for me in the school play. It’s not my Nai Nai’s smile when I read her a story, and it’s not my Ye Ye’s when I find him the perfect tie.
In this picture, my grandparents are pretending.
And real families don’t look like that. Real families don’t have grandparents who stand as far away from each other as possible, in photos and when you draw them. Real families don’t have Nai Nais who say things like “I have errands” when she drops you off at your grandma and grandpa’s and you suggest that she come in to say hi. Real families don’t have grandmas who say, “Oh, I don’t think your Nee Nee, or Nay Nay, or however you say it, would want to hear from me, dear,” when you suggest that they get together for lunch, because they both love cookies and tea and pretty plates. Real families don’t have grandpas who say, “Your Ye Ye reads you stories too?” in a surprised voice, and then, “Golly, I just never imagined that,” which makes no sense because OF COURSE Ye Ye reads me stories—he loves them almost as much as I do. And real families don’t have Ye Yes who sometimes forget to speak in English when he’s talking to your parents. Or moms who have to smile and pretend her feelings aren’t hurt when he does.
They all came to the wedding. It took a lot of convincing, I once heard my dad tell a friend, when he thought I wasn’t listening. But in the end, my grandparents wanted my parents to be happy.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the only other time my grandparents were ever together after that, and the only time when we were really all together, was that day in the hospital, when my parents piled all those names on me. Priscilla. Lee and Jenkins. All those family names on one tiny baby, and all in a family that didn’t even want to be a family. And they didn’t even take a picture.
And now my mom and dad are going to have another baby. A regular blob baby, not a genius like me. A baby who’s going to have even more names stuck on her.
And I’ll be the only other person who really understands what it’s like to be a Lee-Jenkins, and having Big Sister Responsibilities means that I’ll be the one who has to protect my little sister from the Rude Individuals and Tough Crowds and Cousin Helens and Mr. Lewises.
So the picture I drew isn’t worth a thousand words. Because I don’t think this can be done, no matter how many words you use.
* * *
That Saturday, I went to spend the afternoon with my Grandma Jenkins. We were sitting in the kitchen, rolling out cookie dough, and I thought about Ms. Bloom, and how the colors on my grandma’s hands weren’t just pink, but were all sorts of things. There were red spots and white spots and pink and dots of blue. There were so many colors, and none of them were the same as the colors on my skin.
“Grandma,” I said suddenly. “Do you mind that I’m not like you?”
She paused mid-roll and turned to me with a funny expression. “Why, what do you mean, Priscilla dear?”
“Why, Cilla,” she said, smiling. “You’re so much like me.”
I paused, and looked at her like I didn’t believe her. But she just laughed.
“Want to know a secret?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, not sure how this was an answer to my question. But I love secrets, I can’t lie.
Grandma Jenkins leaned in close.
“Your mom told me about the gnome and the umbrella stand. When I was little, I wanted to play imaginary games with the paperweight shaped like a crane that my mother, who you are named for, kept in her fancy parlor. I made a nest for it in her best china, and guess what happened.”
“No!” I gasped, already guessing.
“Mmmhmm.” She nodded. “I dropped it and destroyed a whole tea set.”
“I … I’m just like you?”
“Just like me,” my grandma confirmed, putting a flour-coated arm around my shoulders. “A Jenkins woman through and through.”
“No,” I said thoughtfully. “Also a Lee.”
The next day I was at my Nai Nai and Ye Ye’s house, and I helped my Nai Nai make dumplings while my Ye Ye worked in his woodshop.
My Nai Nai rolled the dough and put the dumpling balls inside, and it was my job to pinch them shut at the top. Which gave me time to think, and to watch my Nai Nai’s hands move fast and quick, a blur of lots of colors too—yellow and white and pink and bits of brown and red.
“Nai Nai,” I said. “Do you mind that I don’t look like you?”
“Ay yah!” She stopped rolling and turned to me, putting one of her hands on mine. “You are my beautiful granddaughter. What would I mind?”
“But I’m…” I tried again. “Different from you.”
“Not so different,” she tutted, patting my hand. “You know, your dad told me about your mom’s shoes.”
“You mean the heels and the dirt and the worms?” I asked, feeling my face get a little red.