Page 25 of Next Time Will Be Our Turn
When James picked me up, the last thing I felt like doing was smiling, but if there was one thing I was good at, it was pretending everything was just fine. Some smiles were harderthan others, but on the whole, I found it easy to swipe one on, just like applying a layer of lipstick. He didn’t even notice that anything was wrong. He said, “Hey, baby, ready to kick some ass tonight?”
I liked the way he called me “baby.” I hadn’t been lying to Iris; James never tried anything with me. Unlike Ellery, he never once touched me, not even a handshake. But I was sixteen and I had a crush on every guy who paid a shred of attention to me, and so I noticed things like him calling me “baby” and how he didn’t call any other girl “baby.” God, it was so easy to capture me. I was so ready to be held in the palm of anyone’s hand, soft and pliant. So eager for someone to notice me, to look me in the eye and say, “Magnolia, you’re so special, and I’ve been looking everywhere for someone like you.”
• • •
For my seventeenth birthday, Ellery threw me a little party at a nearby park. Winnie, James, and a few other people from badminton showed up, as well as a couple of my classmates. My cake said:
Happy birthday,DaisyHydrangeaTulip! You’re almost not a toddler!
I laughed when I saw it, then I smacked Ellery in the arm. She gave a mock wince before pulling me into one of her seconds-long hugs. I watched my friends mingling with one another and a warm glow of happiness pulsed inside me. They were all here for me. Somehow, I’d managed to carve out my own little circle of friends. A small space right here in LA, where I belonged.When it was time for me to blow out the candles, Ellery said, “Don’t forget to make a wish, Tulip.”
I looked around me. Everyone had gathered around the cake. James was watching me closely, an unreadable expression on his face. It looked so intense that I immediately broke eye contact. Instinctively, I sought out Ellery. Her face was soft, nothing but tenderness written on it. I closed my eyes. I wasn’t sure exactly what to wish for, aside from knowing that there was an ever-present ache in my chest, and I wanted it to either go away or expand and consume me completely. In the end, I wished for happiness. The most generic of all wishes, the kind of wish you made when you didn’t know what you wanted. I blew out the candles. Everyone cheered, and we ate the cake.
When I went home, Iris said, “Where the hell have you been?”
“Ellery wanted to celebrate my birthday,” I said. I could be a passive-aggressive little ass sometimes, plus Iris hadn’t even wished me a happy birthday, and it was almost eight p.m.
“Why does she keep hanging out with a kid? I don’t get it.”
I shrugged and went inside my room, closing the door behind me. Despite the celebration with my friends, I still felt hollow inside. I missed Mama and Papa, and the fact that Iris hadn’t even bothered to say “happy birthday” to me stung a lot more than I cared to admit. I wished I didn’t give a crap what Iris thought, but at the end of the day, I wanted my big sister to love me. God, I was needy.
There was a knock at my door. “What’s up?” I called out, surprised. Iris didn’t usually bother knocking. The door opened, and Iris walked in with a tray of muffins, each one with a candle on top of it. As I watched, open-mouthed, she started singing“Happy Birthday.” A giant smile took over my face and I didn’t bother fighting it. I beamed like a complete dumbass as Iris finished the song.
“Make a wish, Sis.”
This time, I didn’t have to wonder what to wish for. I closed my eyes and thought:I wish this moment could last forever.
It didn’t, of course. Remember what I said about how Iris’s kindness hurt more than her cruelty? With every unexpected act of kindness that she doled out, she buried herself a little deeper inside my being, digging into the marrow of my bones. Until now, what brings me the most sorrow isn’t the memory of her viciousness in those days but these moments of astonishing tenderness.
• • •
A few months after my seventeenth birthday, about a year and a half after I moved to LA, Mama visited for a couple of weeks.
“Papa would’ve liked to come too,” she said, “but the clinic’s gaining traction and he’s been so busy.”
I nodded, slightly disappointed, but not too much because, let’s face it, Iris and I never really had much of a relationship with our dad. My fondest memories of him were from when I was a toddler. Him picking me up and swinging me onto his shoulders while I shrieked with laughter. I remembered the tacky, slightly sticky feel of his gelled hair under my fingers, and afterward, when he put me down, my hands smelled of his hair gel for the rest of the day. I refused to wash my hands for the longest time, lifting them to my face every few minutes to smell them. And that was the only quality memory I had of him.
Mama was dismayed by the state of our apartment; neither Iris nor I were big cleaners, so the first couple of days Mama was here, all she did was clean and nag me and Iris into doing the same. We complained, but by the end of it, the apartment was less grimy, at least. Then she took us to shop for “proper clothes,” and that night, during dinner, she gave us her usual talk about making sure we were looking for the “right kind of boys.” I was used to listening to this, of course, but Iris kept rolling her eyes and sighing and generally looking pissed.
“Iris,” Mama finally said, “I know you think you’re invincible right now, but trust me, one day, you’ll look back and regret that you wasted your best years.”
“I’m wasting my best years by not looking for a good husband?” Iris snapped. “Mom, I’m barely twenty. Marriage is the last thing on my mind. And Magnolia is only seventeen, that’s still aminor, Mom. So maybe you can lay off the ‘find yourself a rich husband’ talk?”
“You are becoming too Americanized. Didn’t I tell you both, before sending you here, that you should focus on making friends with other Chinese-Indo kids? There’s a reason why we chose LA and PCC. Goodness me, do you know how lucky you are to be here? There must be hundreds of Chinese-Indos in PCC alone. So many of my friends’ children went there, and they stuck together with other Chinese-Indos so they didn’t become like…brainwashed American hooligans. I could give my friends a call and find out if they know of anyone’s kids going here right now. I could put you in touch with them.”
I felt a little guilty when Mama said this, because while it was true that there were plenty of other Chinese-Indonesians at PCC, I never really bothered to get to know them aside from theoccasional polite hi when we passed one another on campus. I knew it was what was expected of us, but I also just really wanted to immerse myself in LA, not find a tiny corner of Indonesia here.
“Sure,” Iris said, “yeah, let me do the opposite of broadening my horizons and only stick to befriending other Chindos so I can be the perfect little Chindo girl who never has a single opinion of her own. Great advice, Mom.”
Mama put down her fork and sighed. “You think you know better than your elders what’s good for you. You have no idea what it’s like to not have enough money to buy food or keep the electricity on.”
“Here we go again,” Iris muttered. “Here comes the sob story.”
“Stupid child,” Mama hissed. For a moment, I tensed, wondering if they were about to launch into one of their many shouting matches. But then Mama released her breath and turned to me. Evidently she’d given up on Iris. Her gaze drilled into mine. “You need to listen to me, Magnolia. Learn from my mistakes.”
I nodded. “Okay, Mama.”
That mollified her a little. Behind her, Iris rolled her eyes again. But all I cared about was that Mama’s face had softened, and she reached out and tucked my hair behind my ear. “Sweet Magnolia. You understand I’m telling you this for your own good, right? I just want you to live the best possible life. Not like me, spending years studying only to have all that time go down the drain. The clinic’s doing well, but it sure as hell isn’t because of me. We had to hire two more doctors to cover the growing number of patients. Both of them male doctors, of course.” She snorted bitterly. “Did I mention I had to give my office to one of them?”
