I’m sitting in this room; clear glass in front and behind me, sunlight streaming alongside shadows, bouncing wall to wall. Cables are tangled; I’m certain my headphones are somewhere. The chairs are all turned sideways because they’re my foot-rests. My back lays sprawled in the chaos I call my work: SAT books, AP books, papers, a time magazine article, an ESV bible, and the scraps of packaging from my newly bought headphones.
My chair feels weird. Looking down, I find a smelly, black shirt that I had lost a week ago. That's where it was. I wince; it smells awful. That reminds me: laundry time. Plop! The clothes go into the all-consuming watery monster. Scoop! I pour a load of Tide. Clang! The lid goes down, condemning those vagabond clothes to a stormy, spinning hell for an hour. Or maybe more, considering that I'll forget about it. I listen the rumbling machine, imagining the dirty clothes screaming for release from their torturous dungeon, realizing that I had just mixed my red clothes with my white underwear. Yeah, maybe more than an hour.
"Joseph! What is this?" I stop moving. Instantly. For an moment, I consider jumping out the windows, or racing out the front door. But it's too late; I can already hear the sharp sound of tearing envelopes, the harsh thumping of "surprised" feet, and the door slamming shut behind my mom as she walks through the front door, with an envelope in her hand. An envelope with two prominent letters on it. AP.
Crap. I flick my eyes around, looking for shelter to survive the bomb known as my mother. I pick up my backpack on the floor just as I hear her take two steps into my room.
"Your AP Score come in mail today." she announced, glowering at me. I suppress a whimper. Sometimes I wonder if my mother is human or not. And then I remember: Asians aren't human in the first place.
"It is strange. You seem to have gotten a low score. Very low." she looks at me with knives for eyes.
I cringe. Which subject? Was it Bio? I remember writing the wrong answer for the free response. Stupid Amoeba. As useless as it sounds. Ameeeeeba. Sounds like something a cow would say. Stupid cows. I think I got a question wrong on cows too.
"What this? You got a 4 on-on what this subject called? Eng Lang/comp?"
A 4? I sigh in relief. How could I forget? My mom's definition of a low score was a 4. Briefly I lower my backpack.
"That's AP Language; you know, the class that's not important; yes, English class." I reply.
"Oh." she gives the paper a bit of thought, and then asks me. "So I paid 86 dollars for you to get a 4 on this test? Might as well not pay at all!" Huffily, she turns away. And then, almost as if this wasn't important at all, she says, "At least the rest of them were 5s. Could be worse."
The rest were fives? I can't repress the grin from surfacing on my face. Alright!
For dinner, we celebrate my scores by eating yesterday's leftovers. Obviously, my mom is the one who cooks in the house. Eating microwaved rice and chewy vegetables and funny-tasting tofu, I quickly look around; everyone is busy. My sister is drawing on a newspaper; my dad is watching something on his PDA; my mom is on the phone. There's no "how was your day?" or "did you do all your work for today?" In fact there's not even the barest hint of "I don't care what you're going to talk about but I'm going to pretend I'm listening."
I really want someone to ask "what's wrong?" or "are you ok?", but then I realize I'm hoping for a bit much there; this is my family; I should know better. All they see me as is a child that will give them money every year until they retire. And if not giving money, giving free labor, while living in their basement. And when I die, free meat.
But honestly, I'm saddened, strangely. Considering that I wake up at noon, go volunteer from 1 to 5, come back home and watch TV from 6 to midnight, then rinse and repeat, I don't have very much to be upset about. I should, as College Essays and deadlines will be coming up soon; but I have another four weeks to worry about that. And yet, I am upset. The place I volunteer at—this Chinese camp for little kids—is full of funny people. And although I tease them, play with them, probably annoy them, I enjoy their company, and I'm hope they enjoy mine too—which really tells you how hopeless I am, that I need to talk to kids half my age in order to be happy. And one of the girls who I talked to, Sara, is leaving and won't come back for three weeks.
She said to all of us "See you in three weeks!" and then to me "I won't be missing you at all." As utterly comeback-less as I am, I reply, "I know you will; everyday for the next three weeks you'll be thinking of me."
She glared at me, and repeated again, "See you in three weeks!", turned, and then left.
The problem is, I won't be here in three weeks. Or next year. Or the year after. And all I can do is wish that Sara grows up to be a great person, and will have a fun and exciting life. Oh, who am I kidding? All I can really wish is that someday, whether it's in the near or distant future, we'll meet again, and hopefully, she won't mind me saying "Three weeks sure was a long time; but I remembered you every single day."
And hopefully, she'll smile like I've seen her do so many times before.
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