Page 7 of Next Time Will Be Our Turn
“They’re not going to ask because we’re not five-year-old kids who go around asking people how old they are.” She turned down a corner of the street. “Here we are. This is home for the next however many years.”
I looked out the windshield and took in the blocks of identical beige buildings. The front gates opened slowly, and I scanned my surroundings as Iris drove in and swung into a parking space. She didn’t bother helping me with my huge suitcase, strolling ahead while I struggled to lug it out of the trunk. Then I rushed after her, already out of breath. It was a familiarfeeling, rushing to catch up to Iris. As far back as I can remember, I was always doing that, running up to her, trying to catch up and never being able to, not even when she slowed down. Even now, I still have dreams where I’m sprinting as fast as I can, calling out her name. They always end right before I catch up to her.
Chapter 4
MAGNOLIA
1998
The first thing I noticed about our apartment was how silent it was. Back in Jakarta, we usually had the fan or the AC on, so there was always a hum in the background. A hum I never noticed until I stepped inside our LA apartment. Every sound we made seemed magnified in the silence. Iris tossing her keys onto the kitchen counter. Iris kicking off her shoes. Me slipping mine off. Our socked feet on the carpet.
“I took the master bedroom,” Iris said, as she strode down the hallway. The second thing I noticed about the apartment was how much it smelled of her. It was the late nineties, which meant every teenage girl in the world had coated herself with some version of Victoria’s Secret body spray. Iris’s favorite was something spicy—I think it was literally called Spicy, and it hung thickly in the air like a giant fume ball. When I swallowed, I could practically taste it.
The third thing I noticed was that we had carpeted floors,which to me symbolized America. Indonesia was a tropical country, which meant the weather was hot and humid, which meant the only places that had carpets were hotels and restaurants and maybe homeowners who would come to regret their life choices. I dug my toes into the carpet and it hit me then, how far away I was from home. My cheeks got hot. Shit, I was about to cry.
“That’s your bathroom,” Iris said. “Stay out of mine.” She glanced over her shoulder at me and paused. I waited for her to tell me to stop being a baby. She sighed. “It’s not so bad. You’re lucky you’re not staying at a group home. Those bitches were brutal.”
I sniffed and swiped an arm across my eyes. “Really?” To be fair, I thought Iris was pretty freaking brutal. But it wasn’t like I could say that to her.
“Yeah. They kept telling me to go back to India.”
“But you’re not Indian.”
“No shit, Sherlock. Try telling them that.” Iris leaned against the doorway and appraised me. “You’ll be okay. You brought normal clothes, right?”
“What do you mean?” I shifted from one foot to the other, looking down at my outfit. Normal jeans. Normal shirt. Normal jacket.
“Clothes that don’t make you look like a FOB?”
“A FOB?”
“Fresh off the boat.”
I wrinkled my nose. “That’s silly, I didn’t come off a boat.”
Iris rolled her eyes. “Spoken like a true FOB. Take a shower. Nap. Whatever. When you feel better, we can get you some new clothes.”
In some ways, Iris’s kindness was worse than her cruelty. Because she gave so little of it that on the rare occasion she was actually nice to me, it cracked my heart right open. Now there was no hope of holding the tears back.
“Fuck’s sake,” she muttered when I started bawling. Then she walked into her room and shut the door on me.
See what I mean about her kindness being worse than her cruelty?
• • •
Neither Iris nor I knew how to cook; in Jakarta, we had a helper who cooked and cleaned for us, and I only realized how utterly useless I was in the kitchen when, my stomach rumbling, I went in search of dinner on Saturday evening. Iris was there, eating noodles out of a Tupperware container.
“Tonight’s menu is mie goreng,” she said, pushing the container toward me.
I grabbed a pair of chopsticks and sat across from her. “Did you order this?” The fried noodles were greasy and addictive. Or maybe I was just famished.
“No. Mom signed us up for a daily catering service. One of her friends’ friend’s sister, or whatever, runs a small catering company. She’s Indo, so all the food is Indo. It’s pretty good.”
That was how it was with the Chinese-Indonesian community. Everybody knew everybody. Business was often done through word of mouth. I was just relieved to be able to have Indo food in LA. One less thing to be homesick for. I wondered what we’d do the rest of the night. I didn’t have to wait long. Iris shoveled two more bites of noodles into her mouth, then she stood up and went back inside her room. When she came out,she was dressed in a glittery backless top and tight jeans. “Don’t wait up” was all she said before she strode out of the apartment.
Much later that night, she came back at three in the morning, and she must have been really drunk because she was stumbling everywhere. I stayed in bed and listened to the crashes and bangs from the kitchen and the living room. I didn’t dare go out of my room. Then the music turned on. Not loud enough for the neighbors to complain about, but loud enough that I could just about hear snatches of it from my room, which was somehow worse than if it had been loud enough for me to hear all the way. Because with the snippets of music, my mind automatically tried to grab hold of it, to follow the tune and the lyrics before I lost it again, and it drove me crazy. She listened to music until the sky lightened and weak daylight streamed in through the blinds in my room. Then she finally turned it off. She only arose from her bedroom at half past twelve, after which she made good on her promise and took me out to buy some new clothes.
Thanks to Iris, I was basically sleepless at night. But I couldn’t be too mad at her, because thanks to her, I also had four new tops, a new pair of jeans, a new skirt, new shoes, two new jackets, and the most American thing of all—a hoodie that saidDodgers. I thought the Dodgers were a basketball team, which made Iris pinch the bridge of her nose and say, “Can you please just…not?” Then I figured they were a soccer team.
