“So stupid. Didn’t even apply.”
“He’s not smart enough. He wouldn’t have gotten in anyway.”
“Ga Jeh didn’t apply,” I said to my mother. “How come you didn’t make a fuss with her?” My sister was a sophomore at Lincoln High School, a distant second-best to Lowell.
“You know your sister is not that smart,” my mother said.
“I heard that,” Ga Jeh shouted from her room.
“You know what I mean. You never had honor classes.”
My sister marched into the kitchen holding a glass with a Hello Kitty straw. Her hair was permed, and it stretched high above her forehead, curling at the ends like a tidal wave ripping over her head. She had that constipated look of hers. That look she’d only have when talking to us. Get her on the phone with a friend, and she’d sound like a cheery customer service rep. “Move,” she said to me.
I stepped aside. “Tell her, Ga Jeh. You don’t need Lowell to go to college.”
My sister opened the fridge and grabbed a jug of OJ. Goh Goh and I were protesting this juice. It was Willie’s. My brother always asked our mom when she’d return from Costco, “Did you buy this or did he pay for it?” Anything Willie bought, Goh Goh refused, and I would say the same but would eventually relent. Ga Jeh on the other hand favored my mother’s boyfriend, seemingly without reservation. She rode on the back of his motorcycle once, and the next chance I got, I did the same. “Traitors,” our brother had called us.
Ga Jeh poured the OJ into her glass. “Mom’s only pushing Lowell because you’re a boy.” My mother didn’t have the same aspirations for my sister, never encouraging her to be a doctor or lawyer as she would with me and Goh Goh.
“I don’t think like that,” my mother said as though the notion were ridiculous.
“Stop lying,” Ga Jeh said.
“I’m Mommy. Why would I need to lie?” She waved her hand dismissively.
“I don’t care where Dickson goes, as long as it’s not my school,” Ga Jeh said and left the kitchen, sipping on her juice.
I sat on the cushioned folding chair and set the form on the kitchen table, which was draped with a fruit tablecloth. I took the cap off my pen and slipped a Chinese language magazine under the form for writing support. “It’s McAteer or Galileo,” I said to my mother. Galileo was my zoned high school.
“Now you want to go to Galileo.” She plopped down on the chair next to me. “I ride the bus with those kids. Bad kids. Swearing in Chinese.”
“That’s why I need you to sign, so I won’t go there.”
She held the form, inspecting it. “But how come not Lowell?”
“Are you listening? Deadline. Has. Passed. Sign the form, damn.”
“Gong meh yeh? You love to swear now, huh? Shit. Fuck. Damn. Gong a. Gong a.”
“Damn’s not a cuss word.”
She raised her hand like she was about to slap me, her lips tightening together.
I flinched though she’d never actually slapped me before. She’d only spanked me once, with the lid of a large tin box. My brother had had a friend over while she wasn’t home, and apparently we were all responsible.
My mother, though, wasn’t against the idea of whuppings. She was raised on them by her grandmother, and when she’d see public service announcements on television about child abuse, she’d scoff at the screen,“Yueh gwo ngoh da leih, ngoh seung leih da dihn wa bei ging chaat. Keuih deih leih, ngoh do da leih. Bei keuih deih laih ngoh. Ngoh do mh gaan a.” A literal translation fails to capture her attitude. Let me try: I wish you would call the cops on me. Let them show up. I’d beat your ass in front of them. I wouldn’t give a fuck.
“You don’t want to listen to me,” my mom said. “You want to do whatever you want, go live with your dad.”
The phone was within arm’s reach. I hit the “talk” button repeatedly, a steady rhythm of beeps. A red dot sped across the display on the phone, searching for the best channel. Minnesota Dickson would not have to endure lectures. His father would be too tired from work for that. Minnesota Dickson would have his own room. Minnesota Dickson would live in a house. He and his father would watch football together. Minnesota Dickson would become a Vikings fan. Maybe a Twins fan. Minnesota Dickson would make money busing tables at the Chinese restaurant where his father worked. Minnesota Dickson would attend a suburban school, an all-white school. They would know nothing about him except that he was the Asian kid from California. He would make snowmen. Carry snowballs in his pocket. He would ski to school.
“Stop playing with the phone. I sign at the bottom?”
“You really would let me live in Minnesota?”
“If you want to go, go. I don’t care.”
I handed her the phone. “Can you ask him?”
She looked at the Garfield clock. His striped tail hung and swayed in one direction while his droopy eyes darted in the opposite direction. The clock was my mother’s idea, but perhaps Willie had bought it for her. “It’s late there,” she said. “I’ll call tomorrow.” She returned the phone to its base.
“Promise?”
“He won’t want to take care of you. He has to work.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a big boy now, right? What are you going to do when you get sick?”
“Tylenol?”
“You don’t even know how to take pills.”
That was true. I had a phobia of swallowing them. My mother would wrap pills for me inside a napkin and hammer them down to powder, then she’d mix the powder with water in a spoon, using a toothpick to stir.
“I’m sure Bah Ba has a hammer.”
“Who’s going to take you to the doctor?” she said. Our main doctor was an old guy with a cane whose office was a small room in the back of a store. He’d have me rest my hand on
