“No. I think it’s stopped.”
“Rest here for another twenty minutes or so, and then you can get dressed and be on your way. Take it easy this weekend, and avoid intercourse for at least three weeks.”
“Years,” I say.
She smiles. “I’ve heard that before,” she says.
Tiffany is waiting for me. We walk out the back way, avoiding the demonstrators, then drive to Burger King and order burgers and fries at the drive-through window.
“You’re white as a Barbie doll,” Tiffany says, causing us to get a long-lasting case of the giggles.
We drive down a side street and park in the shade under a huge pepper tree. I pick at my burger, but I’m not really hungry.
Tiffany tells me about her abortion, two years ago. It was her older cousin who got her pregnant. Unbelievable! Well, I believe Tiffany. I just mean it’s unbelievable what some people will do.
“I was on my way to being really messed up over that,” she says. “But Peer Counseling has helped me a lot. Ms. Woods noticed I was having a hard time, and she got me started with this group of girls that share their problems. Maybe she guessed I’d had an abortion, I’m not sure. Anyway, knowing I wasn’t alone helped a lot.”
“Did you ever think you should have the baby instead of getting an abortion?” I asked.
“Yeah, I did. But my mom said it would be awful for the family. And now, I don’t think I could handle a baby anyway. I don’t see how you do it, and keep up with everything else.”
“It’s hard. Sometimes I get discouraged, like maybe I ought to forget about school and work and just get on welfare. But that’s not really what I want.”
We talk for a while longer, then Tiffany takes me home.
“Thank you,” I say.
“I’m glad I could talk with you about my abortion, too,” she says. “Hardly anyone knows except the girls in my group. Sometimes I feel phony, like everyone thinks I’m this virgin— like you did, and I’m not what I seem.”
“That wasn’t your fault at all,” I remind her.
I see my mom standing at the window looking out.
“I’ve got to go,” I say.
She smiles, and I think we’ll be friends for a long time.
When I get into my house, Mom asks how the test went.
“It was okay,” I say.
“Ay, Mija. You look so pale. I think you work too hard.”
My poor mom. I’ve caused her a lot of worry and I hate that I lied to her about today— it would tear her apart if she knew I’d had an abortion. I can’t do that to her. I put my arms around her.
“I love you, Mama,” I say, just as Ethan comes running in from the other room, throwing his arms around my legs. I pick him up and walk out into the backyard with him. I’m so glad this is over. It’s like I’ve been living in a fog since I first suspected I could be pregnant. Now I can pay attention to other things again. And I’ll write to Benny tomorrow and tell him, in the best way I can possibly find, that we can only be friends. I can’t stand that he thinks things are different between us than they really are.
“Bugs!” Ethan yells, having discovered a treasure. I go over and look at the tiny creatures with him. I kiss the back of his tender neck and feel tears gathering in my eyes. What a mix, of sorrow, shame, relief, mostly relief.
“Bear hug!” I say to Ethan.
“Bear hug, Mommy!” he says, throwing his arms around my neck and squeezing as hard as he can. I squeeze back and we laugh and laugh.
“I did it for us,” I tell him, knowing he can’t possibly understand what I’m talking about. But he feels my love, the strength of the bear hugs, and we laugh again, rocking back and forth . . .
Two months after the abortion I’m still sure I made the right decision. But sometimes, in the dark of the night, I wake up crying. Or in the middle of my everyday life a feeling of sadness washes over me. I’ve started going with Tiffany to those meetings for girls. I think it helps.
In September I’ll enroll at Hamilton Heights City College. Ethan will go with me and stay at the day care center on campus on the days I have classes. Things are working out. I wish I hadn’t been so stupid, but I can’t change the past. Right now, I’m working on the present and the future. For Ethan. And for me.
Beyond Dreams
***
In my dream it is nighttime, darker than black, yet I can see. I am very small. My mother is holding me so tight I can’t breathe. Her face is fierce. We are rocking, rocking. Screaming voices, thundering ocean, howling wind. Breathe! I want to breathe! Men stand over us, pull at us. I awaken, shaking, gulping air, my voice caught in my throat. I am afraid to go back to sleep, to hear what I’ll hear and see beyond the darkness to what I don’t want to see. I lie with my eyes open, pulling myself out of the dream, into tranquil thoughts of blue skies with white clouds, of birds in flight, of cleansing rain and warming sun.
Although it is not yet light out, I get up from bed, go to my desk and switch on my study lamp. My history book is still open to chapter 12, and I begin studying the pros and cons of the Marshall Plan. It will keep me from the darkness of my dream, and make the A I hope to get on Friday’s test more of a certainty.
With the first rays of sunlight the dream sinks back to the dark place, the place where it hides, waiting to catch me in some unguarded moment of sleep.
Khanh, my twenty-nine-year-old brother, looks disappointed when he comes to my room and sees me already up and at my desk. I think he takes a mean pleasure from waking me up on school days, poking me in the arm and yelling at me, “Wake up, you lazy!”
I like being up, taking away his excuse to poke and yell at me. After I finish rereading chapter 12, I shower and dress, drink a glass of juice, and pick up the lunch money my mom set out for me before she went to work.
On my way to school, about a block from Hamilton High, I hear a familiar voice booming behind me, “Hey, Twinkie!”
I know without looking that it’s Leticia.
“Hey, Oreo,” I yell, turning back toward her, laughing. We’ve been best friends since fifth grade and that’s what we’ve always called each other. One of our other friends is Candice. We call her White Girl. When we go anywhere together, Candice always walks in the middle, like the filling in an Oreo, or a Twinkie. It’s a joke that’s become a habit. Our Peer Counseling teacher, Ms. Woods (Woodsy for short), says these names are racist, but I don’t think so. I think racism is in the heart, and I know our hearts are good.
I watch as Leticia runs past a bunch of slow-moving kids, stretching out her coffee brown, track star legs, and catches up to me.
“Hey, Girl. I tried to call you last night. I thought it was grocery shopping night for your guards.”
“It was, but Khanh got off work early, so they were back home by the time you called.”
“I hate how King Khanh hangs up on me with that ‘not home’ business!”
“I know. The only ones I’m supposed to talk to on the phone are Jenny and Linda, and then I’ve got a five-minute limit.”
“Man, that’s flat out prejudiced. Just because I’m black, and they’re from Vietnam and I’m not, he hangs up on me.”
“Well, he hangs up on Candice, too.”
“Don’t you get tired of that mess? I sure wouldn’t let my brother censor my phone calls. No, sir! He better not even think it.”
“It’s different in my family, though. When my mom’s not
around, or busy, what Khanh says goes.”
“It’d go straight down the toilet in my house!”
Even though Leticia and I are really good friends, there are some things about me she doesn’t understand, like how I live two lives—an American life at school, and a Vietnamese life at home. Like at school my name is Tammy, and at home it’s Trinh. It’s the same for Jenny and Linda. They have different names for school than the ones their parents gave them when they were born. And they can hardly ever talk on the phone, or go out, either. Their fami
lies put a lot of pressure on them to excel in school, just like my family does.
“Remember what your mother said when you wanted to drop Honors English because it was so much work?” I say.
“Yeah. She said it was up to me. I should do what I thought was right.”
“That’s what I mean. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to hear those words coming from my mom or my brother. I don’t think Jenny and Linda’s families ever tell them to do what they think is best, either. First, our parents know best, then our aunts and uncles know best. Then our older brothers know best. That’s just how it is.”
Leticia says, “No way would I let my brother tell me what to do—my mom, though, that’s a different story.” Leticia laughs. I have to laugh, too. Leticia’s mom is big. Nobody crosses her.
My mom is only about five feet tall, and she probably doesn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds, but size has nothing to do with who’s the boss. There’s a Vietnamese saying, “Children sit where their parents place them.” And in my family, I’m still a child.
My dad died on our way to this country, when I was only three. So that made Khanh the man of the family, even though he was just fifteen at the time. It’s strange. Sometimes I miss my dad, even though I don’t remember him. How is that possible?
I have no memory of anything before kindergarten. From something my auntie said, I know I was very sick on the first boat trip, before we got to the Philippines. And once, when I was still really young, I heard her say something about pirates, but my mom shushed her. I wonder if the dream that lurks in the darkness and comes without warning, always the same, started in my life before memory.
Whenever I ask my mom about that time, or about how my father died, her face goes all hard looking, and she says, “Yesterday’s gone. Don’t reach into deep waters or you may become food for sharks.”
She tells me to honor my father’s memory, but she offers nothing to help me remember. All I know of him is how he looks in a faded picture that sets on a shelf dedicated to deceased family members. And I know he smoked Camels because my mother puts a pack of Camels beside his picture every year during Tet.
I wish my mother would help me remember my father, and understand my past, but it’s not her way. Even so, I know she made huge sacrifices to get us to this country, and no matter how closed and hard her face sets, I will always love and respect her for what she’s done. Jenny and Linda and I talk about this sometimes. We all feel the same way. Our parents risked everything to give us a chance in life, and we will always honor them.
On the way to my locker, after lunch, I get caught in the middle of some guys who are horsing around in the hall. It is too crowded. I freeze, my hands over my face, trying to breathe. Frantically, I push through the mob and stand leaning against my locker, trying to free myself of the nightmare fear that has invaded my daytime life.
“Let’s go,” Leticia says, as she bangs her locker door shut. “Hey, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost or something.”
I pull myself back to reality and take my calculus book from my locker. Leticia and I walk together to Peer Counseling. We take seats next to each other near the door. The desks are arranged in a sort of sloppy semi-circle, instead of in rows like in all my other classes.
I like this class a lot. We talk about everything in here—drugs, sex, family stuff, friendship, suicide, gangs, conflicts, goals— everything. What with my honors classes—English, biology, history, and French—plus calculus, not to mention Vietnamese school on Saturdays, Peer Counseling is like a picnic to me.
This is the first semester of my senior year. I thought your senior year was supposed to be easier, less pressured, but that’s not the way it’s working for me. I spend from five to six hours a day studying. And not just because my mother and brother insist on it either. No way could I keep up in my classes if I didn’t study a lot.
When I was younger, school was fun for me. But since high school, it’s felt more like I’m caught in a trap. Peer Counseling, though—that’s like an hour where I can run free.
Woodsy sits with the rest of us in the large semi-circle of desks instead of sitting at the teacher/authority place in front of the room.
One of the requirements for this class is that we each do a project that relates to Peer Counseling. Leticia and I still haven’t chosen a project. We want to work together but so far we can’t agree on a subject.
Leticia wants us to sign up for the Safe Sex project. I’m sure I don’t want to do that. I get so embarrassed just buying things for my time of the month I can hardly stand it. I can’t see me standing in front of a bunch of ninth graders showing them condoms and diaphragms and all that stuff. Nothing embarrasses Leticia—she could do it easily. Me? I’d probably faint if I had to touch a condom. I’m all distracted right now just thinking about those things. My mom and brother would go crazy if they thought I knew anything about any of that. I do know, but not from experience.
Today is Josh’s turn to report on his project, which is about dreams—not my favorite subject, especially after the dream I had early this morning.
“Has anyone ever dreamt they were falling?” Josh asks.
Everyone starts talking at once, about falling, waking just before they hit ground, or dreaming they’re falling and actually falling out of bed, falling from cliffs, tall buildings, bridges, and on and on.
“Josh . . .” Ms. Woods says, standing. “Can you get some order in here, or should I reach for my whip?” She laughs.
Woodsy is tall, taller than Leticia, and skinny, with short, curly hair. She’s very forgetful about little stuff, so she wears her glasses attached to one of those necklace things and her keys on a bracelet. But she doesn’t forget the important stuff—like Leticia and I haven’t signed up for a project yet.
I don’t know how old Woodsy is—I can never tell. Some adults who I think are ancient turn out to be about thirty, and some who I think are only about twenty-five turn out to be fifty. Maybe she’s forty-six, like my mom. Woodsy’s not prejudiced like some of the white teachers around here. And she cares about students, not just about grades and test scores.
“Josh,” Ms. Woods says again.
“I know, I know. Hey, everybody, one at a time, remember?” he yells over the noise. “It’s as important to listen as it is to talk,” he says, reading from a poster-sized list of communication skills that’s tacked to the back wall, next to a giant red and white sign that says No Put Downs!
Listening is the easiest communication skill for me. I’d much rather listen than talk, except with one or two friends at a time. Then I can be talkative.
When things finally quiet down, Josh says, “I chose this topic because I liked the mystery of it—that a dream is a message from the unconscious, but the message is delivered in code.”
“I heard that if you die in a dream, you’re really dead. Is that true?” Tony asks.
“How could anyone ever prove that?” says my friend Leticia, always the skeptic. “That’s stupid!”
“Leticia,” Ms. Woods says, pointing to the No Put Downs! sign.
“Oops, sorry, Tony. I didn’t mean you were stupid, I meant it was a stupid idea.”
Everyone laughs.
“Hey, Twinkie, tell Josh about that dream you always have. You know, your fresh-off-the-boat FOB dream.”
“No, Oreo Girl,” I say, trying to make light of it. I don’t even want to think about that dream, much less talk about it. I can’t believe I ever told Leticia. I wish I hadn’t.
Woodsy turns toward us, red-faced. “This is a no-put-down classroom, and I expect you all to respect that!”
I’m so surprised by Woodsy’s anger that I just sit there, looking dumb, I’m sure. But Leticia says, “We weren’t putting anyone down. How were we putting anyone down?”
Woodsy takes a few deep breaths, as if she’s getting ready for an underwater swim. She glances at Josh.
“Josh, would you mind finishing up tomorro
w?”
“No problem,” Josh says, smiling with relief.
“I know we’ve done a lot with the concept of ‘no put downs.’ But it’s not something you learn once and never have to think about again. Every one of us, including myself, slips up, either in anger, or ignorance, or for the sake of a laugh. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay.”
It’s not unusual for Woodsy to change the class schedule because of something that comes up spontaneously. But it’s never been because of anything I’ve said or done. Right now I’d like to slide along the floor, under the crack in the door, and go be a worm in the weeds. Right now, I wish Woodsy was one of those teachers who only cares about test scores.
“What are some put downs you hear around school?” is the first question she asks.
Zach says, “Mr. Horton, in math, is always telling us stuff like ‘pretend you’ve got a brain,’ or ‘pretend you’re smarter than you are.’”
Tony laughs.
“Is that funny to you?” Woodsy asks Zach.
“Well, sort of. But it also makes me feel stupid.”
“What else do you hear?” she asks.
Woodsy stands at the board writing words that kids call out: Retard, airhead, butthead, asshole, nigger, bitch, dick, low-life, stupid, slut, ho, FOB, chink, nip, wannabe, oreo, twinkie, honky, gangsta, yo mama, faggot, dyke, butch, player, lazy, loser, and on and on. Seeing all of those words on the board like that is amazing—knowing they are just a few of the ways people can insult each other and make each other feel bad.
Christy says, “But a lot of people just say those things as a joke. What’s wrong with that?”
That gets the class going on what’s really funny and what’s just a cover for being mean and nasty. How do we feel, underneath it all, when someone calls us a name, trying to be funny? Does it hurt even though we laugh?
Woodsy asks, “Is it possible that even when used with humor, certain words such as faggot, or nigger, or chink, or FOB strengthen stereotypes that get in the way of our seeing each other as real people?”
I look at the clock. Ten minutes to go before the bell rings. I know this is the question Woodsy has been leading up to.
Beyond Dreams Page 11
