living room
The summer after I’d graduated high school, my brother brought home a new girl he was dating. She lay on the floral print couch, her head on his lap. We were watching television together. Or maybe I was the only one watching. I was sitting on the red beanbag in front of them, so for all I knew, they weren’t paying any mind to the screen, just goo-goo eyeing each other.
The girl wore dark lipstick and had blonde highlights in her hair. My brother had a blue streak in his hair. That was the thing—Asians coloring their hair. Ga Jeh had dyed hers chestnut. I used to style my hair, gel it, spray it, but now I’d just slap on a hat. It made it so much easier leaving the house. In the morning, I’d wake up with hair that had puffed up overnight, as if it had risen like a sad soufflé. And that’s pretty much how my hair was that night. Plus, I was looking bummy in a faded black shirt and sweatpants with a hole at the knee. I didn’t know Caroline was coming over. I didn’t even know my brother was seeing her.
I used to say hi to Caroline at the bus stop. The first time I noticed her, I was with Rob, and he said, “That’s you, dog.” He said that every time there was a cute Asian girl. He nudged me to say something, which I refused on principle. Even when he was encouraging, Rob was bossy. He still saw himself as my mentor, and I didn’t know how to opt out of that contract.
My brother wasn’t doing much with his life. He’d gone to the top high school in the city, had good enough grades for a university but settled for the local community college. He’d said he was saving money. Cheap bastard. We called him the Rebate King. He’d combine rebates so stuff was practically free. A case of Snapple, which he wasn’t even a fan of. A printer stand though he didn’t have a printer. He was always trying to get over. Goh Goh was a gambler, betting on Sundays. Once, he had to beg my mom for a couple grand. It was that or have his legs broken. I’d thought that was only in movies.
Instead of entering into his fourth year at City, a “two-year college,” my brother planned to drop out, or take a break, the answer fluctuating. He was going to work full-time, make more money, his job a stock boy at Toys “R” Us.
“Lum Goon Saang,” my mother said. She stood at the doorway of the living room, wearing yellow leggings with black polka dots, pissed as hell.
My brother got up but tried to play it off, like he wasn’t about to get chewed out for letting this girl put her feet up on the couch. “Do you want anything to drink?” He turned back to ask Caroline.
“No, I’m fine,” she said.
I leaned back in the beanbag like I was reclining in a seat of a car. I stretched my legs out on the red and black zebra-striped commercial carpet. I flipped channels with the remote, still in its original case, cellophane over the buttons. It’d been my mother’s idea, but it was my brother who had applied the masking tape that kept the case from falling apart. This was the same guy who had let his Transformers sit on the top shelf of his desk, posed for war, covered by a dusty veil of Saran Wrap. Never once played with them. “One day, they’re going to be worth a lot of money,” he’d said. He’d let me read his comics but only if I followed his rules. I had to place the comic on a pillow. It prevented creases on the spine, he’d said. To turn the page, I was to only use the tips of my thumb and index finger. He’d stand over me, ready to sock me if I messed up.
My mother and Goh Goh began arguing in the kitchen, so I turned up the television to drown them out.
“What do you got planned for next year?” Caroline asked me. By next year, she meant at the end of the summer.
“City. Maybe a job.” Community college was my only choice, my grades too low for a CSU or a UC. When the counselor explained this to me in her office, as we reviewed my transcript together, she was shocked. I’d scored a 1080 on my SAT, close to the national average, but at Galileo, it’d been among the top scores. She wanted me to explain the discrepancy. She hardly knew me. The entire senior class was her caseload, several hundred students. I shrugged, and she let me slip out of her office.
It wasn’t a surprise I had few options for college. My mother received a letter in the mail saying I was in danger of not graduating because I was on the verge of failing a required course. I had a C average, a 2.1 GPA, but it was a miracle my GPA was even that high. I’d lucked out on some easy classes.
I had two years of Spanish with the same teacher, a jolly guy, a student favorite. He was a dark-skinned Mexican who’d refer to Spain as the motherland. At the end of each semester, he’d have us put all our work into a folder, write our name on the front of it, and below our name, write what grade we thought we deserved. I’d have just a few completed worksheets to show for the semester. I’d take whatever paper was in my bag, blank, scratch, or even work from another class, and I’d stuff the two pockets of the folder with these sheets, being sure to place
