Chapter 13
Maggie runs up the steps to the third floor of her parents’ apartment complex in Monterey Park with flowers in her hand.
What a day. Her mom’s dentist appointment went well.
But her own first transfusion had gone even better.
Ingrid taught her more about story in just three hours than any of her MFA instructors or college professors.
She snorts when she thinks about Estelle’s condescending reply to her:
Maggie,
Sorry to hear you’ll be leaving the MFA program. We will miss you, of course, but I do believe this is the right move for you.
My very best,
Estelle
She fumed at the email, tempted to write back, Bitch, you don’t know anything about me!
“Right move” my ass, you just don’t want me around to remind you of what you did!
But in the end she just left it. There’s no point arguing with Estelle.
The best revenge is to write something so undeniably good, Estelle physically shrinks the next time she walks into a bookstore.
And now she’ll finally be able to. With the $100,000 she received on signing, she paid her student loans off this morning.
The loan officer had asked her three times on the phone, “In full?” and she’d joyously declared yes.
Later, at the dentist, when the guy confirmed that Mom’s gums were all diseased and that she’d need at least seven teeth pulled and implants put in, Maggie didn’t even blink. She just told him to schedule it.
Her mom stared at her like she was high.
In a way, Maggie didn’t recognize herself, either.
It wasn’t just the money that was making her float.
It was the fact that for the first time in her life, she could look her mom in the eye and feel completely comfortable telling her that they were going to be OK.
Now, running inside her parents’ tiny apartment with flowers, she’s greeted by a burst of sesame oil scent and tears.
“What’s wrong?” Maggie asks, putting the peonies down and rushing over to her mother, on the couch crying.
“You heard the dentist! Thirty-five thousand dollars. We can’t afford that! I’m going to have to pluck ’em myself with a weed puller,” Mom says. Her tears stain her faded old T-shirt. It has the words It’s Britney, bitch! from when Britney did her residency in Vegas.
Maggie chuckles. “It’s fine, Mom. I’ll take care of it.”
“You’re going to pay for it?” Mom asks. Maggie looks away. Why’d she have to say it like that?
“Yes, me.”
Dad looks up from watching Chinese soap operas on his phone. He’s always watching Chinese soaps, killing time until his job. Dad works for JB Janitorial Services as a nighttime restaurant cleaner. “Maybe we just do one tooth—”
“No. We’re doing all of them. Yours, too, Dad.”
Mom laughs. Then her face clouds with worry. “You not playing with that coin stuff, are you?”
“No, I’m not playing with bitcoin!” Maggie says, rolling her eyes.
“Then what you got going on?” Mom asks, narrowing her eyes.
She can feel their concern on her, insufferably hot. Some days she wonders if anyone’s ever accidentally been killed this way. Does it say on any tombstone anywhere, Concerned to Death? Maggie goes to open the window.
“No, that window doesn’t work!” Mom says.
Maggie struggles with it, but it doesn’t budge. Instead, she gets a thick goo of oil and dust on her fingers. She walks over to the bathroom to wash her hands, only to discover the sink’s leaking and the entire bathroom smells like mold. “What’s wrong with this sink?”
“Broken!” Mom calls back. “Use the kitchen one!”
“Mom, you can’t live this way! What’d the landlord say?” Maggie asks, walking out of the bathroom and running the water in the kitchen. She takes a seat next to Dad, gesturing for him to hand over his phone.
“Don’t bother him!” Mom protests. “If we bother him, he raise the rent!”
“Too late. We’re bothering him.” Maggie’s fingers are madly typing.
Hi Mr. Foo, it’s Mrs. Wang’s daughter, Maggie. Just wanted to let you know that her windows aren’t opening and her bathroom sink is leaking. Can you let us know when you can come to fix it? Pls help!
Mom shrieks when she sees Maggie’s sent message. “You can’t use that emoji! That emoji too mean! You have to be softer!”
Maggie gawks at her mom. It’s amazing how she instinctively knows how to filter herself with other people but never with Maggie. She pushes Send anyway.
A second later, the landlord texts back:
Sorry out of the country!
Maggie makes the same face as the emoji. “Bullshit. He just doesn’t want to deal with it.” She puts the phone down, then gestures to her parents. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
Maggie grabs her keys. Fuck it. They’ve worked too hard and suffered too long in this country to just live with unventilated mold. They deserve to be treated like first-class citizens—even if it’s just for a night. She throws Mom her jacket and Dad his keys.
“Where we going?” her mom asks.
“A hotel,” Maggie says.
“A hotel?!” Dad protests. “Over a broken sink?”
Maggie nods, pushing them out the door. They need this. She needs this. But her parents’ feet remain stubbornly glued to the sticky floors.
“We’re not going anywhere until you tell us what’s going on.”
Her mom’s eyes burrow into her, and Maggie knows there’s no way she’s getting Mom out of here tonight. Not even if the ceiling collapses and the stove catches fire. Not without clear evidence that Maggie can afford it.
So she reaches into her jeans pocket for her phone. She can’t believe she’s doing this. She swipes open her Bank of America app to show them.
“I sold my book!” she announces.
The lie comes shooting out of her mouth.
It tastes so delicious and real, she almost believes it for a second.
As her parents stare at the amount in her bank account, their pupils swelling at all the zeros, Maggie catches their pride.
Her dad thrusts his arms around her. Her mother immediately starts dancing in her Britney shirt.
The three of them are screaming, laughing, and cheering.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Mom asks, her hands flying to her cheeks. “Congratulations!”
Dad hugs Maggie again. “My lucky girl!” he whispers into her hair.
As her parents slip their hands into each other’s and they make their way out of the cramped, moldy apartment, Maggie feels the pride glow in her chest.
—
They go to the Hilton in Pasadena, where Maggie checks her parents in for $158 a night. An outrageous sum to her father, but Maggie slides her credit card effortlessly through the machine.
“Don’t worry, Dad. Plenty more where that came from!” Maggie tells him.
“Who’s the publisher? Is it big publisher?” Mom asks when they sit down at the hotel restaurant. They order champagne—not by the glass, a bottle. Not the cheap stuff, either. Real champagne from France. The waitress arrives and pours for them. Mom clinks her glass with Maggie’s.
“The biggest!” Maggie says, taking a sip, the cold bubbles mixing with the nervous joy inside her. It surprises her how effortlessly she’s making all this up. She doesn’t even feel bad about it.
“This is the book about the girl who gets mixed up with the wrong people at a high-stakes blackjack game?”
Maggie tenses. She was scared to tell her parents she was writing a novella about her own life, worried that if they knew, they’d have a million questions and opinions, and she didn’t want to deal with that when she still had doubts about her writing.
So she told them that she was writing a thriller instead.
“Yup!”
“When’s it getting published?” Mom asks, hanging on to her champagne flute but not drinking the stuff.
“Before I tell you anything more, you have to tell the dentist you’re getting the extractions. All of them. Then you’re getting the implants.”
“I’ll call them first thing in the morning,” Mom promises.
“How did this happen?” Dad asks. “Was it that Estelle lady? Did she help?”
Maggie nearly chokes on her champagne. “No.” She shakes her head. “I did it all on my own.”
“When can we see the announcement?” Mom asks, setting the glass down. “I want to send to all our friends! Auntie Patty will be so jealous!”
“Uh, well, you know, publishing moves kind of slow.”
“Send it to us as soon as it’s out!” Mom reaches across the table for her daughter’s hand.
Then she lavishes on her daughter two words that represent the highest possible compliment to an immigrant daughter: “Jeng qi!” she says.
It translates to Make the family proud! Maggie’s so emotional, she can’t move.
“I will,” Maggie promises. “But first I’m getting you guys out of that moldy hellhole. You’re moving somewhere nice. I don’t care if the rent is double! A place with real windows you can open and maybe even a yard!”
A smile curves Mom’s lips. “A yard would be very nice. I can plant vegetables!”
“Yes! Plant whatever you want!”
“To Maggie!” Dad says, holding up his glass of champagne.
“The most amazing writer in the world!” Mom adds, lifting hers, too.
Maggie’s eyes glisten. They’re all the words she’s ever wanted to hear from her parents. She wishes she could bottle up this moment forever. She smiles as Mom finally takes a drink and relaxes. Her mom, who wears anxiety like a choker around her neck.
She tells herself she must earn this moment for real—she doesn’t care what it takes.