An Interlude Izzy
An Interlude
IZZY
I give Nainai a look.
“What?” she says.
“You can’t do that!” I cry.
“Do what?”
“Say something ominous like ‘I was going to ruin everything’ and then leave me hanging.” I expected Nainai to laugh and admit that she has a flair for the dramatic, but instead, she grows quiet.
“Yes, well,” she says finally, “I did ruin everything.”
“Oh, Nainai.” I link both my arms through hers and squeeze. “No, don’t say that. Look at what you’ve built. How can you say you ruined everything?”
She smiles sadly at me. “All of this, Izzy, I would give up in a second if it meant I got to be with my loved ones.”
I can’t say that didn’t hurt. “I’m your loved one.”
“Yes, you are. But you didn’t come along until much later, my dear.” She pats my arm and we continue walking down the dark street.
“The way you talk about Yeye…” I say after a while.
“Yes?”
“Well, it’s just so confusing. Did you love him?”
She mulls over that. “I did, yes. As much as I could’ve loved any man who was content to exist within a system designed to oppress me. Does that answer your question?”
“I’m going to have to sit on that one for a bit.”
“You do that.”
“But, like, if the two of you had existed outside of this culture, like say there’s no patriarchy, that total equality has been achieved, do you think you’d have loved Yeye?”
“Hmm. I don’t know. Because we would’ve been two completely different people.
You can’t just extract the person from their surroundings and expect them to be the same people.
I was as much a product of the Chinese-Indonesian upbringing as your Yeye was.
Who can say what we would’ve been like if we’d grown up outside this culture? Silly question, Izzy.”
“There are no stupid questions!” I say, laughing.
“Oh, there definitely are.”
We walk for another long bit without talking, until I feel the weight of her sorrow growing so immense that I can’t stand it any longer. “Okay, Nainai. I’m ready to hear it. How did everything fall apart?”
“Well…” she says with a sigh. She looks up at the stars, and I’m surprised to see tears shimmering in her eyes. “I guess you could say it all began when I arrived in LA to find Ellery waiting for me.”