Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
Sabrina
Every Tuesday of her senior year, Sabrina would wake and feel a cold dread descend over her as she remembered she had drama class.
Mrs. Saunders was a free-spirited “luvvie,” a word she’d recently read in a British newspaper that she used only in her internal monologues.
Mrs. Saunders wore elaborate print dresses with ruffled sleeves and an unapologetic sheepskin coat that flew open like a cape behind her in winter.
She had disobedient strawberry-blond curls and fine, delicate ankles.
Once, she bumped into Mrs. Saunders in the local farmers market; she was holding an armful of blue hydrangeas.
She told Sabrina she loved to put a stem in each room of her house.
Sabrina wanted more than anything for Mrs. Saunders to see and ignore her simultaneously.
She was terrified of the day she might decide to push Sabrina to let out her wild side .
The class was always invited to sit cross-legged on the floor for five minutes, before they began any of the curriculum, to do deep belly breaths, which Mrs. Saunders claimed would release any neural tension and help open up the authentic inner voice.
Sabrina’s greatest terror, though, was anticipation of Improv Day.
Mrs. Saunders never gave any warning. You could walk in, and she would suddenly say, “Kids, let’s set our inner selves free.
It’s Improv Day.” Mrs. Saunders had the nose of a bloodhound for identifying emotional trigger points that would bring forth a great scene.
Her eyes would scan the faces in the room.
Sabrina had seen several students lose themselves completely, and this terrified Sabrina—that she might unravel in the same unsightly, public way.
Mrs. Saunders, though, was very popular among the students.
There was a long-standing rumor that she had once dated the actor Hugh Grant in London when she was touring with a company that put on an Arthur Miller play in the West End, though Sabrina suspected this to be wholly made up, maybe even by Mrs. Saunders herself.
Kit liked Mrs. Saunders, and Sabrina knew this was mainly due to Mrs. Saunders’s preference for pretty girls.
She would sometimes congratulate Kit’s scenes with a Just lovely, my dear, what a charming thing you are.
And like a dog that had been praised for bringing back a ball, Kit would sit a little more upright, with a happy little wriggle of her chin.
···
One week in May, the summer temperatures started to soar, the sprinklers ran over the school fields every morning, and the students rushed from class to class in shorts and a lightness in their feet.
After their deep belly breathing, she felt Mrs. Saunders’s eyes on her.
And the words she had dreaded all morning, Let’s improvise, ricocheted off the walls.
“Sabrina Chen, we haven’t seen you up here before. Come join me.”
A ferocious heat rose to the surface of Sabrina’s skin. She paused, hoping she had misheard, and looked round to Kit, who was busy checking her cell phone.
Sabrina walked slowly. Her feet felt like they were sticking to the ground.
She heard a cough from the back row and murmurs among some of the students.
Otherwise, the room felt cool from the blast of air-conditioning that had been running all morning.
She stood beside Mrs. Saunders and felt like she was sinking into quicksand.
She could barely make out the faces of the students sitting in the front row.
“I want you to start with this line—”
“Wait, who else is going to join me?” Sabrina looked around her, into the wings and then back at the audience. But nobody came.
“Oh, honey, this is your moment. Let’s try a little monologuing today.”
“I’m not sure, Mrs. Saunders…”
“Come on, Miss Chen, give it a try, this is a no-judgment zone. Give it a whirl. It’s just a few minutes of your life.”
Sabrina took a breath.
“That’s it, take a deep breath, my dear, you can do it. Now then, here’s the starting point. Mother always says… ”
Sabrina could see Kit’s face. She grimaced as she slunk deeper into her chair.
She tried to say the words, but her voice was small.
“My mother always says…um, my mother always says…”
“Go on, dear, start with a truth. Sometimes a truth is all it takes .” Mrs. Saunders’s hand squeezed her own and it felt warm and dry against Sabrina’s cold fingers. She stepped back into the shadows. And then Sabrina was alone.
Sabrina took a deep breath, felt her belly expand, and exhaled.
“My mother always says, we need to work hard.” Her hands shook, but she reminded herself to focus on something beyond the faces before her, just as Mrs. Saunders always suggested for stage fright.
Then the words came to her. And for once, she allowed them to leave her mouth before she could turn them over to check them again and again.
“My mother always says that the world owes us nothing. But she doesn’t say it like I just said it, in an indifferent kind of way. Sabrina, you work hard, okay? You work harder than everyone. We have nothing compared to them. You have nothing. You remember. You work until your fingers bleed.
“I can see you guys don’t know how to respond to that.
It’s uncomfortable, the unheard voice of an angry Chinese mother who wants to live vicariously through you.
But this is the ambient noise in my house.
Only it’s not coming from some integrated sound system in the walls like in your houses.
It’s in human form and right up in your face.
This close.” She held her palm up in front of her nose.
“Yeah, that’s my mom. Success is big in my house.
But success has many forms. I guess beating the person who has more than us defines success in its purest form for her.
It’s getting the best grades. All the time.
I can’t lie. She wants to see you all fail.
You, and you, and you.” Sabrina pointed at random silhouettes before her.
“And for me to succeed. She will relish your shortcomings and see them as mere steps for me to grind my foot on while I climb this metaphorical ladder she has in her mind. She wants me to beat you.”
There was laughter. She didn’t know if it was at her expense, a mockery, or if she had struck a chord.
“And most people here do have more, right? I don’t mean it in a ‘poor me’ way.
I mean it as fact. It’s the way of the world; we can’t all have the same.
And there’s something about knowing where I am that I’ve always liked.
There’s a cleanness to it. A purity. Maybe that’s some kind of brainwashing from my mom too.
Like there’s no gray with her. She just says exactly what is happening in her mind and it probably leaves her mouth before the thought is even fully formed. Yeah, there’s purity in that.”
Sabrina paused. The silence in the room enveloped her.
She heard nothing but her own breathing as she awoke in her surroundings again.
She could see Mrs. Saunders nodding in the front row.
Her hands were clasped together, and her eyes were shiny.
Keep going, she mouthed. Sabrina felt herself stand taller.
“My mother always says that birds are her favorite because they don’t stay in one place too long.
They don’t linger by staying still. But I think no animals do that, right?
Maybe a seal, I dunno. But the bird thing—she loves Japanese paintings of birds, drawn with a fine brush.
Those super-detailed paintings where you can see every single stroke on the page.
She loves those. She says that birds stay for a moment, so if you really pay attention, you can catch them in their beauty.
They’ll let you enjoy them. And then they’re gone.
It’s funny how she likes those Japanese paintings though.
She loves the cranes, those long-legged birds, they’re so elegant.
They always remind me of the makeup worn by the geishas—you know, the white skin and the blood-red lips.
Those cranes and the puff of red on their heads.
I saw a documentary once and the ladies kind of glide, they walk so delicately down the streets in Kyoto.
It’s kind of funny how that’s what she is obsessed with.
It’s all hi-tech there, and cool subcultures in Japan, right?
All those futuristic neon lights. I look at pictures of those crossings and cool girls in the parks that are all famous and it’s like a wonderland.
One day I might go there.” Sabrina paused, and she kept her eyes up, she didn’t look at where she knew Kit was sitting.
“But yeah, my mom and Japan. It’s like she hate-loves it.
Because it’s the opposite of her. It’s all refinement, and nothing is stuck together with tape like everything is in our house.
In the hierarchy of fancy Asia, Japan and Korea are right up there, and then China is kind of like a gray area, right, because yeah, Shanghai and Beijing are all the new Sleeping Tigers and all, but in the countryside we have less than nothing.
And I say we , but I’ve never been there, and I don’t even know if I went whether I’d belong there or not.
And the truth is that my mom is from the least fancy place possible.
They didn’t have a television growing up, they didn’t have a radio.
They had nothing. Sometimes they could barely afford to eat rice, and that’s like the cheapest thing you can eat in the world, right?
That’s her origin story, but she collects pictures of these aristocratic elegant birds from a country that is all about refinement and elegance and subtleties.
Like, she’ll find one on the internet and ask me to print it and be all like, Sabrina, you see, this tiny feather?
How do they paint that? One day I’ll take my mom to see those cranes in real life.
We’ll go to the snowy place in Hokkaido, where you can see them do those beautiful courtship dances, their thin legs jumping up off the white powder and nodding their heads to each other.
I know she’ll complain about the cold. Why did you bring me here, Sabrina?
You know I hate the cold. I don’t even like the Japanese.
Yeah, she doesn’t like the Japanese. That’s for another day.
And there is nobody more outspoken and less subtle than my mom. ”
She could hear soft breathing from the seats in front of her. Mrs. Saunders gestured again for her to go on.
“My mother always says that the world is full of surprising moments. And that living in America is full of opportunities. We just have to have the vision to see them. She says it like, you either got the goods to see this or not. She has, that’s for sure.
She knows when she has a shot at something, and she takes it.
It’s probably the thing I kind of love about her most. Even though I’ve never told her this.
We are not the kind of family that talks about love.
I don’t think I’ve ever told her I love her.
She hasn’t told me either. But that’s okay.
Love has many forms, right? What are the five love languages?
” She lifted her fingers to count them herself.
“Acts of service…nope. Quality time…no again. Receiving gifts…nope, nope. Words of affirmation…not from my mom. Physical touch…yeah, that’s a no.
But my mom’s love language might be in the form of a baozi .
You know what a baozi is? It’s a fluffy, delicious bit of pure white Chinese bread filled with sweet, savory filling.
And they’re steamed and cooked to total perfection and more delicious than anything I know.
And my mom makes the best. If I had to sum up my childhood and comfort in one single word, it’s the hot steaming beauty of a perfectly formed baozi .
So I guess that’s my mom’s gift to me. Because I know she’s tired, she’s worked a long-ass twelve-hour day, and sometimes she still comes home and cooks up a storm.
And a baozi takes work. She’s gotta knead that dough, and then cook and chop up the pork or vegetables or chicken or whatever is inside, and find a way to perfectly steam the bread and filling.
It’s an art. But she does all that. And then she watches as I chew on that puffy cloud of deliciousness, and I can feel the love with each bite.
It’s right there, getting into the very marrow of me.
She says that watching me enjoy her cooking makes eating the bitterness of hard work and life worthwhile.
All that goodness, all that nourishment—that’s love right there. ”
···
Sabrina finished talking. Kit stared at her, her mouth hung open slightly.
She’d never seen this expression on her before.
It looked like envy. The rest of the class were clapping and hooting.
She felt the light weight of Mrs. Saunders’s hand on her shoulder.
And then she saw another pair of eyes that she was pretty sure had never really looked at her before. They were Dave Harrison’s.