Chapter 15
I manage to hold on to my apartment for exactly two more weeks before it becomes clear that I will not be able to make the coming month’s rent.
I emailed my landlord, asking if an extension was possible (There’s a pandemic, I whined in my message), and his answer was a flat no (I realize that, sweetheart, he replied, but rent’s still due).
I then emailed Sarah, begging for my deposit back (There’s a pandemic, I whined in my message), and she reminded me that deposits are, on the whole, nonrefundable (It’s the entire purpose of a deposit, she said, it’s a down payment to ensure that the vendor’s time isn’t wasted.
Stay safe!). With that, I was shit out of luck.
There are more humiliating things than moving back into your parents’ home more than a decade after moving out, but not much more.
Especially since my parents aren’t the kind who’d welcome me home with bright smiles and open arms. In fact, when I finally pull up in my car, the first thing that Mom says when she opens the front door is “You’re home” in the same tone of voice one might use to say “We need more milk.” A toneless, emotionless statement.
Is it strange to say that I would’ve preferred her to show some disappointment?
At least it would be an emotion of some kind, something I could’ve bounced off.
Unbidden, a flash of Haven’s parents dart through my mind—her mom and dad happily puttering around her as she cooks, her dad telling her that the noodle soup she made for dinner reminded him of how it felt when he was a little boy coming home to his mom’s cooking.
My dad turns up at the doorway and says, “Oh, Fern,” like he hasn’t been expecting me all along, like I haven’t called in advance to tell them that I need to come back here.
And again, there isn’t so much an inflection of emotion in his voice as there is an uninterested pointing out of fact.
Not “Oh, Fern!” but “Oh, it’s just Fern. ”
It’s because you were home for Christmas, I tell myself, trying my best to cement over the hurt. And it’s only April now, so obviously they’re not going to make a big deal of seeing you after only four months apart.
But Haven’s parents make such a fuss over her when she visits them twice a week.
She posts her homecoming all the time. Both her mom and her dad and their two dogs will be waiting at the door, and as she slides into the driveway, they wave at her excitedly, their eyes aglow with joy at the sight of her.
The dogs wag their tails. While her mom embraces her, her dad insists on taking her bags so she doesn’t have to carry them to the house.
The dogs dance on their hind legs, begging Haven for a cuddle.
The first thing I notice as I walk inside my parents’ house is the smell.
It’s not an unpleasant smell, per se—a mix of laundry and cleaning fluid—but it’s so ascetic, not at all the scent one would associate with a home.
It’s clean; I’ll give them that. That’s one thing my parents have going for them.
There are no pictures hung up on the wall, no decorations.
They have always said “Don’t do anything that would bring the house’s value down in case we decide to move.
” They’ve lived here for over thirty years now, but still they insist on never sprouting roots, never letting themselves get attached to it.
They haven’t changed a single thing about the house since moving in.
It still has the same light fixtures and everything.
If my parents were to die, it would be as though they were never here.
As though they were just ghosts passing through.
I know that this is part of their immigrant identity.
They are so scared of making waves because it might upend the little ship they’re forever on.
Whenever anything happens, their reaction is: Keep your head down and stay out of trouble.
Pretend not to see the fire until it engulfs you, and when it does, try to burn as quietly as possible. Do not make a fuss.
Sometimes I wonder if this is my future I see before me.
That I might end up like them, afraid to leave my mark in the world.
It’s probably one of the reasons why I write.
Writing is my quiet little way of leaving something behind, so I know that all this isn’t just a dream. So I know that I’ve existed.
The second thing I notice about Mom and Dad’s house is the silence.
There is never any music playing in here because we might disturb the neighbors.
In the evenings, they watch TV while they have dinner, but they do so with subtitles on and with very low volume, so low that I always have to strain my ears to hear what the actors are saying.
Even when Mom and Dad fight, they do so in hisses, like snakes warning predators away but never striking, always saving their venom for another day.
Their lives are like a held breath, everything hanging in stasis.
Growing up, I sometimes found myself randomly holding my breath when my parents were around, as though my body was waiting for something to happen.
Then I’d notice and think: What the hell?
Why was I holding my breath? And I’d have to consciously tell myself to breathe normally.
“How was the drive?” Dad says under his breath, like he’s half hoping I wouldn’t hear.
“It’s good. Long.” I lug my bags across the living room and notice Mom wincing as they drag across the polished floor, but she doesn’t offer to help me with them.
“I’ve prepared your old room,” Mom says. Coming from her, this is as close as it gets to a tight hug.
I acknowledge the effort with a smile. “Thanks, Mom.”
She hesitates for a split second before nodding.
She’s never gotten used to me calling her “Mom.” When I was little, she’d asked me once to call her “Mama,” but I’d said, “What if the other kids hear and make fun of me?” and she’d backed down immediately.
“You’re right,” she’d said, “it would call too much attention to us.” I still think back on that moment and wonder what our relationship would’ve been like if I’d just agreed to call her Mama.
I still haven’t forgiven myself for not doing it.
She so rarely asks me for anything. But I didn’t know, I want to tell her: I was too young, I didn’t understand what it meant.
And anyway, if I brought it up now, she’d probably feign ignorance and tell me she’s forgotten about the whole thing.
My old bedroom is the only space in the house that has some semblance of personality.
As a teen, I saved up and splurged on removable wall hooks so I could hang all sorts of posters.
They’re mostly of Green Day and other emo rock bands from the early 2000s, like My Chemical Romance, because, like every other teen, I really thought I was something different and unique and so I couldn’t possibly like the mainstream stuff.
Not me, misunderstood Fern Huang. I smile at the memory of my high school self. God, I was insufferable.
I’d planned to take a shower as soon as I got home, but once I drop my bags, I immediately feel so incredibly exhausted.
I flop onto my bed and breathe out slowly.
It’s as though my entire being is deflating, admitting defeat.
Here I am, after all these years of working my ass off, back at square one.
I stare at the popcorn ceiling for god knows how long before I take out my phone and unlock it.
I avoid opening Slack. Ever since I found out that Lisa and Jenna talk behind my back, the sight of the Slack app icon makes me feel nauseated.
I still participate in our three-person channel, but every time I do, I get so self-conscious that I end up second-guessing everything I write.
Instead, I open Instagram. Thanks to my efforts in the past one and a half years, I’ve grown my follower count from three hundred to over two thousand now.
Every time I look at the number of followers, my heart does a tiny skip of joy.
That’s all my efforts, I want to crow to the world.
I’ve been posting diligently, once a day at least, and my page is a beautiful mix of scrumptious-looking baked goods, me holding up books I’ve read and loved, and little snippets of my own upcoming book.
And over two thousand people have seen it and thought: She seems cool, I’ll follow her!
Isn’t that amazing? For once, I am grateful for all the crap I’ve had to go through with Annette, because it means I now know how to edit photos to get the best possible lighting and colors to catch the eye.
But then I go to my alternate profile’s feed, and the top post that gets pushed to me is Haven’s content. It’s Haven’s mom, sitting on a comfortable lounge chair and saying to the camera, “Reading my baby’s AR—wait, what is this called?”
Off-screen, Haven says, “Mooom, I told you, just call it a book.”
Haven’s mom: “Aiya, what is the proper name?”
Haven: “ARC. Advance reader copy.”
Haven’s mom: “Oooh, so fancy.”
Haven giggles.
Haven’s mom: “Okay, reading from my baby’s advance reader copy. This is an advance copy because the book is not out yet. So this is a very special copy.”
Haven: “Mom, just read it!”
The video is so cute I could just die watching it.
Their love and adoration for each other is palpable, even when they’re bickering, and it’s not even real bickering, it’s the type where you can hear the good-natured smile behind the words.
It’s impossible to watch it without smiling.
And when Mrs. Lee starts reading, it is impossible to tear my eyes off the screen.
I watch it all the way through, and when it replays automatically, I don’t scroll up.
I watch it again. Then I tap on Haven’s name, and my stomach drops because Haven has been busy too.