Chapter 1 #3
“Corgi is a dog, Jackie. It’s Kiribati ,” said Uncle Ben, like he didn’t just learn the name two minutes ago.
“That’s so brave of her,” said Jackie. “I mean, I couldn’t even find it on a map. And it takes guts for you, too, Debbie, when you think about it. It’s hard to let your kids go, but you know what they say, if you love someone...”
“You want to do what ?” My dad entered the room, stunned. “You want to go where ?”
Mom couldn’t even speak. Shit, she had very high blood pressure. So did Dad. Could this give one of them a stroke?
“Wait,” said Cody, confused and irritated. “You’re leaving the country?”
“I thought you were going to law school so you could work for me ,” said Uncle Aaron, basically apoplectic. “I didn’t give you a loan so you could waste it in the Peace Corps.”
It was time for this conversation to end. For everyone’s health. But I couldn’t get a word in.
“This is crazy,” said my father. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go to Berkeley.”
“Huge mistake,” said Uncle Aaron to my father. “Which I told you. You send a kid to Berkeley, they’re going to come back a communist.”
“Not everyone has the money to send their kids to Dartmouth,” said my dad, pissed.
“Better a communist than a heartless capitalist,” said Cody.
“Doesn’t he drive a BMW?” whispered Aunt Sarah to Aunt Jackie.
“Generational war!” snickered Nicole, pleased this diverted attention from her.
“But the diseases!” said my grandmother. “Just think of the diseases!”
“That’s true,” said Doctor Ralph. “They have leprosy there.”
“Leprosy?!” said my mom, on the verge of fainting.
“I still think she should go to Monaco,” said Aunt Jackie.
“Hold up,” said Sadie, my cool, older, union-organizing cousin. “First, y’all are being wildly first world. Check your privilege, please. Second, I think we’re losing perspective here. This is Dee’s life.”
Silence descended over the table, and I could see them wrestling with that idea. It was harder to digest than the kale salad.
My mom turned to me. She looked genuinely surprised. “Is it true, Dee?”
That it’s my life?
“No,” I said. Everyone was staring at me, even Cody. “It was just an idea.”
And then the unbearable slowness ended as ten pairs of eyes stopped focusing on me. My rebellion was squashed and forgotten in under two minutes.
“They lost,” my dad was saying. “Worst referee in the league.”
“If they had a decent backup center the refereeing wouldn’t be a factor.”
Cody leaned over my plate and speared some of my potatoes. “What was that?”
“A joke that got out of hand.”
“Even when you’re joking, you don’t stand up for yourself.”
I put my utensils down and fled to my room.
Maybe Cody was right, but he didn’t have to be so insufferable about it.
I put on my meditation app—should I do “self-love” or “setting boundaries?” I wasn’t good at either.
But I couldn’t shake Cody’s comment. Was he right about other things, too?
Was I truly committed to our causes? Sure, getting arrested yesterday would’ve been objectively stupid, but was I ever willing to get arrested? For something that really mattered?
I heard footsteps in the hallway, then a cursory knock on the door.
Sadie entered. Sadie was the black sheep of the family and my absolute favorite relative.
She had dark curly hair, olive skin, and a punk vibe.
She was carrying two plates of pumpkin pie.
My stomach turned. Pumpkin pie makes me aggressively ill.
“I think joining the Peace Corps is a fantastic idea,” she said, handing me a plate and sitting on the corner of my bed. She kicked off her Birkenstocks and shoveled in a mouthful of slimy brown paste. “That sounds way more you than law school.”
I took a very small bite of the nasty pie to be polite. “I’m not really joining the Peace Corps.”
“No?” The ring through her bottom lip sagged.
“I have no idea what I’m doing after graduation. I thought I wanted to be an organizer, and maybe I still do, but...” I pushed some pie around on my plate. “I feel like all I’m doing is theater. Like I’m going through these motions, but I’m not changing anything.”
“Some actions are effective, some aren’t.”
“That’s not the only reason. It’s also that I’m really bad at it. I get nervous when I have to speak to strangers. Which is basically the whole job. I’m not brave like you.” I felt so pitiful I decided to have another bite of the pie. Bad idea. I tried to spit it into a tissue without her noticing.
“I’m not that brave,” she said.
“You’ve been arrested like a dozen times. You chained yourself to a tree in front of a bulldozer. You even lost a toenail.”
“But I didn’t start there. You gotta build up to it.
Try getting a parking ticket first.” We laughed.
“Look, Dee, you don’t need to decide what you want to do right now .
I didn’t know what I wanted to do for years after I graduated.
Nearly killed Jackie.” She always referred to her parents by their first names, which drove them crazy.
She said she was trying to break down the patriarchal bondage that parents inflict on children.
“You’ll figure it out.” She patted my hand.
“Just remember, don’t do anything you don’t want to do, don’t worry about what your parents think, and don’t have sex for money.
And don’t dance for money, either. It may seem all right at first, but trust me, it’s a slippery slope.
Wow, this pie is delicious.” She wiped some whipped cream off her lip.
“You have to do what’s best for you. That’s what Grandpa would’ve told you. ”
“How do you know?” But I could imagine how she knew. He had been the pole around which our whole family spun.
“I know,” her eyes began to mist, “because that’s exactly what he said to me when Jackie and Ralph were on my case.”
I looked over at a framed photo of my grandfather.
He stood in his bathing suit on Brighton Beach, twenty years old, chest puffed out, covered in suntan oil.
He was so handsome then. He had died when I was nine.
I was jealous of Sadie, who had known him.
Really known him. I just had fragments of memories and an obituary.
Medic. Vietnam Vet Against the War. Hero.
“What else did he say?” I asked, cheated.
“He said you should look at your life like a work of art. Make it beautiful. And important. That way, when it’s over, you’ve created something.”
I sat with that for a moment. “I wish I knew how to do that.”
“You can begin by not living for other people. What do you want, Dee? What do you like? What do you think?”
“I hate pumpkin pie,” I said, with a vehemence that surprised us both.
“That’s a great start.” Sadie laughed and took my plate. “I wanted seconds anyway.”