Chapter 21 #2
I offer her a small smile and say, “Do they not have sunlight in Baltimore? You look like the ghost of a sad Victorian orphan.”
Can’t be too nice.
My sister smirks, a weight lifted. “You’re one to talk—what, did you forget to pack a brush when you left for school?
” She snorts, then retreats downstairs for dinner.
As I follow, she continues, “Med school’s exhausting, but it’ll be worth it.
You’ll find out when you’re in law school.
Or maybe not. I’ve heard it’s nowhere near as difficult. ”
Mom overhears this and yells out a protest that is drowned out by my father’s laughter. A lively, joking debate about the hardships of their respective careers proceeds, with my sister and I observing their banter like a tennis match.
Just like that, all is normal in the Vasquez household, as if the two daughters hadn’t spent months not speaking.
It’s unhealthy that we move past conflicts by pretending nothing happened, no need for apology.
It will only breed resentment. A lifetime of resolving nothing and silently swallowing it down. And eventually just silence.
I’m unaware of it when dinner begins, but I don’t have to wait until Thanksgiving for that big family blowup.
After several minutes of Sierra talking about medical school, there’s a lull in the conversation, and my mom takes the opportunity to turn to me and ask, “Have you made any plans to see your old friends this weekend?”
I stare at her blankly, because there’s no one I’ve kept in touch with. Then I remember—only six months have passed since I finished high school, so that hasn’t been established yet.
“I’ll probably spend most of the weekend sleeping. Recovering from classes. You know.”
Sierra scoffs, and I know she wants to comment on how lazy I am or turn the conversation back around to her, but my mom replies before Sierra can say anything.
“Winter break will be so busy, you might as well catch up on sleep now while you can.”
“Wait, why is winter break going to be busy?” I ask, confused.
“Your internship. With Judge Wright? We talked about this.”
“Right. We did, only I thought I told you that I wasn’t sure it was something I wanted to take on during my first break.”
I’ve talked to my mother since, usually only briefly, catching up on each other’s lives. She hasn’t brought up the internship once since that first conversation.
“Yes, but if I remember correctly,” my mom says—and, uh-oh, that’s her litigation take-no-bullshit tone—“I asked you to sleep on it and give me an answer by the end of the week.”
“Right, but we didn’t talk again that week.”
“That is correct,” she says, her voice clipped.
“And we never discussed it after that.”
“We did not.”
“So, you, what, assumed that my silence meant I had decided to do the exact opposite of what I said I wanted?”
“Don’t raise your voice to me, young lady.”
“Carmen, please—” my dad starts.
“Javier, don’t you ‘Carmen, please’ me. She needs to learn to stick to her commitments.”
But I’m not a kid anymore, and while I might still be scared—plenty scared—of my mother, I refuse to be steamrolled. There is no way in hell I’m doing that internship.
“Sure, but this isn’t my commitment, it’s yours, one you made on my behalf without consulting me first and then didn’t cancel when I asked you to. If Judge Wright is disappointed, it’s because you set her up for it.”
“I don’t like this tone. Where did you learn to speak to me in that tone? Is that what they’re teaching in college nowadays?”
I start to roll my eyes but stop myself just in time—I gained a backbone, not a death wish.
I keep my voice level as I speak to her in what I perfected in law school as my litigation tone. Not quite as assured as hers—litigation was never my strong suit—but enough to get by.
“I appreciate you setting up this internship. I know you had my best interests at heart.” I really wanted to wait until closer to the end of my stay to drop this bomb, but I realize this is the organic moment for it to come out, so I continue.
“But it makes no sense for me to do the internship because I’ve decided I won’t be going to law school. ”
Silence. My mom appears to be parsing if I actually just said what she thinks I said.
I shoot a glance at Sierra, who’s staring at me wide-eyed, like she can’t quite believe what I just did.
She almost looks… angry? Yes, that’s definitely anger that I’m seeing.
What the hell does she have to be angry about?
I’ve just cemented her status as the golden child, probably for the rest of our lives.
I glance at my dad, but he’s not looking at me. He just watches my mom, awaiting her reaction. Smart man.
My mother’s words are a slow, carefully calculated response: “I know that freshman year can be tough, but you shouldn’t make such a big decision about your future only a few months in. If your grades aren’t where you want them to be, that’s something you can work on.”
“My classes aren’t hard.” Never mind that I switched classes so I’m no longer taking the ones she thinks I’m taking. That can stay my secret. “I just don’t want to be a lawyer.”
“How can you know that if you don’t give it a shot?” she asks.
Her response startles a laugh out of me. “I gave it a shot, Mom. It’s not happening.”
“I would hardly call a single semester a shot,“ she counters. “At least try the internship.”
“Where do you draw the line? A semester of classes I hate, then an internship I hate—”
“You don’t know that you’ll hate it.”
I do know, but she’ll never believe me.
“Before I know it, I’ll have so many credits that switching majors will be more of a headache than it’s worth.
You’ll talk me into giving law school a try.
One year in, I’ll already be so massively in debt, I might as well finish.
And then, well, I’ll have a law degree, so it just makes sense to get a job.
The farther I go down this path, the harder it will be to pivot.
So, no. I’m not going to give it a shot. This is me putting my foot down.”
“You’re being—”
I’ll never know what she was going to say—dramatic, maybe, or irrational, or possibly childish—because my father cuts in sharply, “Carmen.”
She stops, and they share a long look. My father leans in, whispers something to her in Spanish that I don’t understand but is something along the lines of “No somos nuestros padres.” Something about them being parents. Or their parents? Or a type of parents?
I can’t be sure. Whatever he says, it causes her demeanor to shift.
My mom turns back to me, her brow furrowed, and asks, “If not law school, then what?”
“I’m still figuring that out,” I say. I consider admitting that I’ve tried out a few things but again decide to keep it to myself. That can wait until winter break. Or maybe spring break.
“If you don’t have a clue what you want, how can you rule out law school?”
“Law school is the only thing I have ruled out.”
That hurts her feelings, I can see it on her face.
“Okay. No law school,” she says finally.
“You should focus on what makes you happy, JoJo,” my father says. “That’s the most important thing. And if you decide what makes you happiest is going into medicine, well…”
His words bring a faint smile to my face, but it’s quickly wiped off.
“Are you kidding me?” Sierra cries, her voice a screech.
Here we go.
“Where was this mindset when I was her age? I have to be a doctor, but Joey just needs to be happy?”
“What are you saying, mijita?” my father asks. “You’ve wanted to be a doctor since you were a little girl.”
“Yeah, because I knew that’s what you wanted.”
Everyone freezes. My mom, my dad, even myself.
Never, not once, have I ever heard Sierra say anything about not wanting to be a doctor.
Even all those years of complaining about medical school always came across more like virtue-signaling than anything else—Medical school is so hard, but I know it’ll be worth it for all those lives I’ll be saving, et cetera.