Tina Huang

Grades 11-12 Honorable Mention

Similarities 

Summer smells like overcooked barbeque and cheap lawn chairs. In our backyard, Nai nai and I yank cucumbers off their stems. Against dehydrated grass, the bright green vegetables look artificial. Amid robin chirps, Nai nai plays Guangling Melody, a Chinese folk song, out loud. Whoever named it a ‘melody’ should’ve reconsidered.

Please don’t let the neighbors hear.

 The song’s guzheng and its shrill notes sound like angry cries, slicing the summer’s silence. Yet, Guangling Melody has always been Nai nai’s favorite pastime tune. Perhaps, regrettably, that’s where I get my own narrow taste from.

“Your mother calls her friends too much,” Nai nai says in dialect. When she talks about her daughter-in-law, her voice becomes high-pitched like she’s trying to prove a fact to

non-believers.

My accented response: “She enjoys talking to them.” I’m not a good daughter, but I don’t know when my defensiveness started — when I began taking Nai nai’s insults towards Ma ma as ones directed at me.

“Doesn’t she have work to do at the restaurant?” she says. “This is why your father is always tired.”

“He’s just lazy,” I say. It’s the language barrier that annoys me, makes me say these half-truths. Unlike with my parents, I couldn’t add basic English to elaborate. You always say it’s the language barrier.

Nai nai sighs deeply. She wipes sweat off her face, but her forehead cannot escape the sun’s rays. The melody ends. It doesn’t matter what Nai nai says next or if she speaks at all. It’s always the same.

How could an illegal immigrant marry her son?

The last cucumber falls down with an empty thump.

*

 “You notice how we never refer to him as ‘Ba ba’ or ‘Dad’ or anything?” I question my brother. He’s playing League of Legends again.

“Yeah, it just happened,” my brother says. Stretching his legs, he kills another enemy in the game.

It didn’t just happen. We created it.

 I wonder why we discuss topics we already know the answer to. Perhaps to acknowledge the absurdity — how our father’s affection appears only in the form of car rides and delivery pizza every few months. For him, words hold little value. I see my father whenever I lie.

*

 Autumn brings woodsmoke from a neighbor’s grill. The girl hops off the school bus, muscle memory carrying her legs across the driveway and up the gravel steps to her front door.

She’s happy (really happy) because she just met someone who plays soccer, the third blond boy from class. Envisioning herself in a stadium eating hamburgers and cheering on her new friend, she theorizes. If she begs her parents enough, maybe they’ll let her play, too. Their town has enough space for a million cleats. Instead of being the kid with pointy eyes, she’ll be an athlete.

At home, Ma ma meets the girl and hums. “Maybe if you get good grades,” she suggests.

Ma ma does not mention their empty fridge or how overpriced the jerseys at the nearby sports store are. Ma ma does not mention how time is shared differently between families — how theirs runs out quickly like Ye ye’s alcohol.

Ma ma says the girl is too dark. Her face shouldn’t be the color of honey or almonds or peaches — it should resemble the purest snow. Ma ma dabs her own cheeks with an antidote, traces circles on her forehead. “But you’re too young for this,” she says.

In turn, the girl rubs at her skin with her favorite towel. She rubs until Ma ma comes in and peels the towel, her skin, away.

“You kinda look like your mom,” Keara tells me. She’s sprawled across the floor of her small bedroom. Compared to my room’s naked walls, hers is decorated with weathered posters and dusty paintings.

I glance at myself in the mirror propped against Keara’s dresser. A crack in the glass runs down my left cheek. “Are you sure?” I ask. “I don’t think I look like either of my parents.”

“Well, you do,” she says.

Keara’s one of the few people I’ve been with since middle school. At first, the only times we crossed paths were during science labs on the light spectrum — but the 2016 Presidential Election and a classmate’s dumb racist joke started our occasional chats (which later grew to hour long discussions on teachers’ political parties). Keara has a sage-like confidence, the kind you see in stories of Galileo or Einstein — except hers is more grounded, touches more deeply. Fleet Foxes plays from Keara’s speaker in the background, but I don’t recognize the song.

“What does your family think about Black people?” she asks. “My aunt once called Asians ‘Orientals’.”

I snort at the term. “That’s so outdated.”

Keara laughs. “Yeah, I was like ‘What the hell?’ and she just continued saying that.”

Then I’m silent. Fleet Foxes sings about a shivering dog in the forest. I don’t want to tell Keara about my family’s beliefs: Their comments on Keara’s family (“Does she have a father?” Ma ma asked); How they refer to her as ‘that one Black friend’.

If Keara notices, she doesn’t mention anything. “Your mom went to college in China, right?” she asks.

No. She didn’t finish middle school. She came here illegally and only got to stay because she married a citizen.

“Yeah,” I say.

Keara smiles and cracks her knuckles, an old habit. Every pop melts into the tunes of cicadas and the indie song around us.

I carry my lies when we go to the local pool at Keara’s request (“We haven’t swam in forever!”) I’m not worried about Keara finding out. If I don’t tell her, she won’t ever know. My family life isn’t a soap opera. It’s a subdued nature film — of the low-budget variety, not the James Cameron type — that only those involved know about.

Keara catapults into the cold water. Soaking already, I shiver against the breeze and dip my legs in slowly. I can’t swim well. When the water reaches past my shoulders, I’m an insect trapped in a spider’s web. I’m the daughter of an illegal immigrant. I float, barely, and look at the lavender clouds above. Nowhere else in the world was a sky this empty.

*

“We don’t accept that coupon,” the cashier, Grace, says. She’s the woman Ma ma enjoys talking to. I only know her name because the receipts have it in ugly Courier New font. Ma ma said stores share their employees’ names as a precaution: “They need someone to blame at all times.” I wonder how often Grace hears mumbling about overpriced cigarettes or the leaking toilet in the women’s restroom.

“You gonna get that?” Grace says. She points at my bag of chips.

Although I’m looking down at my expired coupon, I know she’s staring. Creaks behind me signal another shopper’s arrival. In my peripheral, orange and red peek out of their cart.

Fanta and Coke. Probably for a party. I’ve been standing for too long. “No, not really,” I say.

“Wait.” Grace bends down and looks for something beneath the counter. Before, I had wanted light hair, a soft, shiny Barbie-esque blonde. The kind that’s not limp like noodles. But under the supermarket’s flickering lights, Grace’s half-bun is ghostly as it moves back up.

“Here, take this to your mom,” she says.

I grab a packet labeled Citizenship Test Study Guide. Thicker than a textbook, it weighs down the rest of my groceries on the way home.

*

“She’s going to fail,” Nai nai says. “She doesn’t have the brains to do it.”

I peel the rest of the pumpkin, watching its deep orange skin curl around itself. Ma ma is outside repeating questions on national holidays. Her greying head pops up every few minutes. I know she can hear us.

“It’s going to be a waste of gas money.” Nai nai clicks her tongue.

“Let it be wasted then,” I say. I count my breaths. “Legal or illegal, I don’t care what Mama is.”

“Are you defending her now?” Nai nai doesn’t seem as offended as I thought she would be, but I remember this look. The one from when Ma ma helped her install WeChat.

Nai nai and I share the same pride. She stops peeling. I throw the pumpkin skins away.

The kitchen’s air stings my arm, crawling up my back. Outside, Ma ma practices another question.

Among a class of twenty first graders, a teacher hands out worksheets. “Let’s talk about our role models today, kids,” she says. The students at the end of the room, chatting cheerily among themselves, do not hear her.

A girl stands up, raising her hand as high as she can. “My role model is my Ma ma,” she says.

 The teacher gives a snap of approval and records on the chalkboard. “A mom is one of the best role models.” She smiles, but the girl looks back down.*

Dust blankets the photo album, Ma ma’s youth. I slide my palm across the velvety surface and pause. The fish tank gurgles. Curved rays of light, the water’s shadows, dance on the walls. Before I turn the cover, I see myself in the tank’s blue.