Beyond Dreams

by Marilyn Reynolds

  “Let’s take the terms Oreo and Twinkie. Isn’t that really saying a person is rejecting a big part of themselves, is two-faced and hypocritical?”

  Tony says, “I think friends like to call each other names because it shows they’re friends. Like I can say something to John that he’d smack someone else for, but because we’re friends, we laugh.”

  “Have you ever seen that backfire?” Woodsy asks. “Someone gets hurt, or angry, when the other person thought they were just being funny?”

  Several kids start talking about friends getting mad at friends. Woodsy listens and nods, then says, “Leticia and Tammy, I don’t want to embarrass you. I know neither of you wants to hurt anyone. I don’t want to put you on the spot just because earlier this period you said some things without thinking. We all do that. But . . .”

  The whole class says, “BUT . . . which reminds me that Leticia and I are not the only ones Woodsy has ever used to make a point.

  “Yes, BUT. . .” Woodsy says. We all laugh, including Woodsy, and I’m no longer quite so embarrassed.

  “When we call someone an oreo, or a twinkie, we’re saying they’re one color on the outside, and a different color on the inside. We’re saying they have no respect for their heritage. Leticia, do you really wish you were white?”

  “Nah, I know black is beautiful. Even Mattel knows that now. Toys-R-Us has a whole section of African American Barbies.”

  “Tammy, how about you? Do you consider yourself yellow on the outside and white on the inside?”

  “No,” I say, thinking of the illustrations in my biology book, the crimson red of the heart, the blue of the veins. “It’s just a joke.”

  “It’s not so funny,” she says. “And that FOB business . . .”

  “But some people really are fresh off the boat,” Tony says.

  “Most are fresh off the airplane,” Woodsy says. “Besides, it’s another stereotype. Right? What do people mean when they talk about FOBs?”

  “Stay off the road when they’re driving,” Tony says, laugh­ing.

  “They smell fishy,” Mary says.

  “Listen to me,” Woodsy says. “When we talk about people who are new to our country as FOBs, or say they’re all diseased, or on welfare, or a menace on the highway, or whatever gets said about such people, we’re denying their individuality—their personhood. Unless we are pure Native Americans, somewhere along the line our families came from somewhere else.”

  “But I think some of that stuff is true,” John says.

  “Right,” Woodsy says. “Some people who are new to this country do have T.B., or trouble learning to drive, or need pub­lic assistance for a while. And some are healthy and rich and excellent drivers. I want you to think about this. Is such talk part of the solution, or is it part of the problem?”

  The bell rings at exactly the same time she finishes her statement and I’m out of there. Leticia and I walk together toward the gym, two among thousands trying to make our way to the next place.

  “Old Woodsy was really on the rag today, wasn’t she?” Leticia says.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Hey, Twinkie,” I hear a voice beside me. It is Candice.

  “Hey, Girl,” Leticia says. I notice she doesn’t say White Girl, the way she usually does. I also notice that Twinkie doesn’t sound as funny as it would have an hour ago.

  “What’s up?” Leticia says.

  “Wanna do something Friday night? I’m available,” she says, looking at Leticia. She knows I’m not available. The most my mom and Khanh ever think I should do is go to the mall on a Saturday. Even then I have to be home by eight o’clock at night.

  “What about Donald?” Leticia asks.

  “He’s working late. He’s trying to save enough money to rent a limousine for the prom.”

  “Hey, that reminds me of a dream I had last night,” Leticia says. “Do you think that’s true about dreams being messages? I had this dream that Albert came to get me in a big white limo, but when I went to get in, the door was locked. And then it took off flying, like an airplane. What kind of mixed-up message is that, anyway?” She laughs.

  “Maybe you should tell that one tomorrow, when Josh gives the rest of the presentation, and leave me alone about my dream,” I say.

  “Hey, lighten up,” she says. “I was only joking.”

  “So funny I forgot to laugh,” I say.

  “Man, everyone’s losing their sense of humor around here. First Woodsy, now you.”

  “I’ve never had a sense of humor about that dream,” I say.

  Leticia looks at me for a long time. “Yeah, I guess I knew that. Sorry,” she says.

  Leticia and I almost never get mad at each other, and when we do, it’s over fast.

  ***

  Late in the afternoon Jenny calls and my Mom hands the phone to me. “Five minutes,” she says.

  “Tammy, what did you write about on that Marshall Plan question in history?” Jenny asks.

  I get my papers and we talk about the history assignment. Then I ask, “Jenny, do you think Twinkie is a racist term?”

  “You mean like when people call you Twinkie?”

  “Yes, or anyone.”

  “Well, I think if someone called me Twinkie it would be racist because I don’t like it. But I think it’s not racist for you because you like it.”

  “Ms. Woods says it’s always racist.”

  “Well, I can understand that, I guess. Like maybe it means there’s something bad about being Asian through and through?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I’m not sure I get it.”

  We talk a little more about history, then Mom yells at me, “Time’s up,” and I hang up.

  I take the world map I’ve been working on into the kitchen and spread it out on the table. The map has borders from 1945. Things used to be very different than they are now. This is the last major history thing I have to do before finals. I’ve been working on it for two weeks. It looks good—neat, with distinct colors. I just hope it’s accurate. Some of that information was hard to find.

  My mom is standing at the counter, still in her white nurse’s uniform, cutting meat into tiny segments and stir frying it with vegetables and seasonings. We’ll eat that with our rice. I watch her for a minute. She doesn’t smile much, but when she’s preparing food she has a slight, almost unnoticeable smile around the edges of her mouth. I used to like to help her in the kitchen. She taught me to make some dishes her mother used to make. Sometimes, around Tet, I help with food preparation. But mostly all I do at home is study.

  Mom’s kind of a quiet person, unless she’s mad—then she yells at me—she and Khanh both. I hate that yelling. Leticia’s mom talks polite to her, and so does Candice’s. When I told my mom once about how nice their moms were to them she got that hard, closed look on her face and said those women should be ashamed to be raising such lazy daughters.

  I can feel Mom looking at me now. It’s weird. Even though we don’t talk much, she seems to know when I’m thinking about her. I continue coloring Australia. She wipes her hands on the dish towel and walks over to the table. Pointing to Vietnam, she begins talking about her country, my country, the country of our ancestors. I don’t think her country is my country. I don’t even remember Vietnam. And the country she remembers is way different now, so who even knows Vietnam? It doesn’t seem real to me, to think of Vietnam as my country. I will vote in the next election, so maybe the United States is my country. But that doesn’t exactly feel real to me either.

  Khanh comes in and sits at the table opposite where I’m working on my map. My mom brings him a bowl of rice and the meat mixture and places chopsticks on the table. He thanks her in Vietnamese, in the formal respectful way that English cannot accommodate. English is more direct, straight to the point.

  We never use English at home. My mother is afraid we will forget our Vietnamese language if we don’t use it together. Also, speaking English would turn things upside down, because
I am most fluent in English, then Khanh. My mother just knows the basics for her job as a vocational nurse.

  Sometimes I try to use English with Khanh in the car, before we get home to our Vietnamese lives. But he refuses to listen if I speak to him in English. He says it is disrespectful—too informal a way to address the man of the household. I don’t think that. I think straightforward English puts families on a more equal level. But equality within our family is definitely not what Khanh wants. So, as the saying goes, I sit where I am placed.

  Just as Mom fills her bowl with rice and starts to sit down at the table, the phone rings and she picks it up. There is a very long silence, then she begins talking loudly, first fast, then more slowly. I stop my map work and look up, alerted by the intensity of her voice. Khanh, too, has stopped eating and is sitting very still, listening.

  “Khanh!” She motions to him, waving paper and pencil.

  “Write it down!” she says. “Write it down!”

  Khanh takes the tablet and pencil from her as she thrusts the phone toward him. She turns toward me, tears dampening the broadest smile I’ve ever seen on her face. “What is it?” I ask.

  She puts her arms around me, laughing and crying at the same time. “Lan. Your cousin from Saigon, Auntie Trang’s daughter. She will be here soon.”

  My mother goes back and forth, reading what Khanh is writing, patting him on the shoulder, patting me. I have never seen her look so happy.

  “How I miss my sister, Trang. How I miss Trang. And now her daughter will be with us. For certain Trang must soon follow.”

  Khanh hangs up and tells us that this coming Saturday, at four-twenty in the afternoon, my cousin’s flight will arrive at LAX. Mom grabs the phone and calls Auntie Mai, telling her the news, her voice and manner filled with excitement.

  “They got a good airfare, so they took it for Lan,” Mom is saying.

  “What about her parents?” I ask.

  “Her father is not well enough to travel, and Trang must stay to care for him. But Lan must get started in school here. Already it is late.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Why didn’t they come here when the rest of our family did?” I ask.

  She only shrugs. Even such a simple question about my time before memory must go unanswered. I roll up the map and take it into my bedroom, then sit at the desk and open my English literature book. From my window I have a good view of the house across the street. The two kids who live there are only in junior high, but I see that already they have more freedom than I do—coming and going at all hours of the day and night, yelling smart answers back to their parents. When I’m alone, just being me, I sometimes wonder how my life would be if I were one of those kids, or if I were Leticia, or Candice.

  Also I wonder what my life will be like next year, in college. I’m going to Cal State Fullerton. Khanh is buying a new car and is going to give me his old one, so I can commute. It’s cheaper than living on campus. But even though I’ll still be living at home, I know I’ll have much more freedom as a college student than I do now.

  I hope Leticia will go there, too. She’s been accepted, if she can just get the financial stuff together. She may end up getting a track scholarship, then she wouldn’t have to worry about money.

  Khanh has everything worked out for me—some financial aid, some scholarship money, and some help from him. He’s good at figuring things out. I’ll say that for him. And he’s worked hard. He just graduated from college two years ago, at twenty-seven, because he’s had to work full-time days and go to school at night. My mom works, too, but she doesn’t make enough to support us all. I guess Khanh’s a good person. He’s so harsh sometimes, though, that I forget he cares. But he wouldn’t have worked all the college plans out for me if he didn’t care. Except maybe he cares more for his idea of me than for the real me. And who is the real me? Maybe it has been a mistake to be that joke-Twinkie girl. I honestly don’t know.

  Tonight, as I look out my window, I wonder about my cousin. Will she look like me? Will she be nice? Will she want to hang around me all the time? Will she dress like a typical FOB? Will she help with the housework?

  Just as I’ve stopped daydreaming and started to get serious about my English assignment, I hear my Auntie Mai and Uncle Hoi’s voices at the front door.

  “Come in, come in,” my mother calls to them. There is a lot of laughter and excited talk, but I stay at my desk and try to concentrate on my homework.

  It is after ten o’clock when Auntie Mai comes into my room and sits on my bed. When I was younger and we all lived in the same house I was really close to Auntie Mai. She was playful— not so serious as my mom, and she always made me laugh. We’ve not been so close the last few years, though. I’m not sure why.

  “This is very happy news, Trinh,” my aunt says.

  I turn my chair around so I sit facing my aunt. “I guess,” I say. “I don’t even really know her.”

  “Oh, but she’s your cousin. You’ll love her.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “I don’t know, really. She was only two when we left. She was a very sweet baby. And her mother, Trang, is the sweetest of all the sisters, so Lan’s probably still sweet. It will be a big Tet celebration this year,” Auntie Mai says, smiling.

  She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a Reese’s chocolate peanut butter cup and hands it to me.

  “Thank you, Auntie Mai,” I say with a smile. For as long as I can remember, my aunt has always had something in her pocket for me.

  For the first time ever I don’t want to go to Peer Counseling. First, I’m embarrassed about yesterday. And second, which may really be number one, I don’t want to hear about dreams.

  “How about someone’s after you and you can’t run, or you’re

  trying to scream and nothing comes out?” Mary says.

  “I don’t know,” Josh says. “In the books I used for this report they kept saying everyone has to figure out their own dreams, but if it’s a dream you keep having over and over again, it’s an important message and you should pay attention to it.”

  “What if you want to stop having a dream that you have a lot?” I ask.

  “I think that’s one of those things you’re supposed to pay attention to,” Josh says.

  “But what if it’s scary? I mean really scary?” I ask, thinking of how I wake up from my unwelcome dream, shaking and unable to breathe.

  “Right,” Tony says. “I hate that—someone’s trying to kill me, and I can’t run or yell or anything.”

  "Well . . .” Josh says, shuffling through some papers, looking confused.

  Woodsy says, “I want to back you up on the importance of thinking about dreams and reflecting on our inner workings, Josh. It’s a way to more fully understand ourselves. Without self-understanding you go around doing things and not even knowing why. That can get you in trouble. It’s important to probe beneath the surface, look beyond your dreams to the messages they have for your life.”

  That seems like the opposite of what my mom always ad­vises—don’t reach into deep waters. Who’s right, I wonder.

  “I dream about the boogeyman,” Mary says.

  Lots of people laugh, but Woodsy says, “Make friends with the boogeyman. He’s part of you. Make friends with the dark side of yourself.”

  Tony hums the Twilight Zone tune and we all laugh, including Woodsy.

  At the end of the period, when Ms. Woods passes the project clipboard, I see that almost everyone is signed up for something. But there’s still a big blank opposite my name. Leticia’s, too. Besides us, the only other blank spaces are next to Roger, Marcus, and Tony—three of the biggest do-nothings at Hamilton High. We’ve got to come up with a project—soon.

  “Maybe we should sign up for the Safe Sex project after all,” Leticia says.

  “Filled,” Ms. Woods says. Pm relieved.

  “How about tutoring in a beginning English as a Second Language cla
ss?” Ms. Woods says. “We still need more people for that project.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, handing back the clipboard.

  “You speak Vietnamese, don’t you, Tammy?”

  I nod my head.

  “You could be a great help in an ESL class. They desperately need more people who can talk with kids who are new to this country and haven’t learned English yet.”

  I sit looking down at my notebook, saying nothing. I don’t know why, but I don’t want to have anything to do with those classes, or with the kids who go there. Like I said earlier, I don’t speak Vietnamese at school and I don’t speak English at home. I don’t want to mix things up.

  When I don’t respond, Woodsy says “Well, find something. It can be almost anything as long as it centers on a common problem and offers some possible solutions.”

  “We will, Woodsy. We’ll sign up tomorrow for sure,” Leticia promises.

  Later, Leticia says, “We’ve got to get a project, Girl.”

  “Maybe we should volunteer at Manor Retirement Home,” I suggest. “Michelle says she likes that. She’s reading to one of the ladies who can’t see well enough to read anymore.”

  “I can’t do that. It’s too depressing. It’s bad enough I’ve got to go see my grandma in one of those places. It’s sad. Remember how she used to always be laughing and cooking, always telling some story while we hung out in the kitchen?”

  I laugh, remembering how when we graduated from junior high school Leticia’s grandmother helped us throw a party. “She makes the best biscuits in the world.”

  “Made. She made the best biscuits in the world. She’s not making anything now, sitting in a chair, mumbling stuff nobody can understand.”

  “We’d be at a different place than your grandmother is,” I say.

  “Yeah. Different but the same. They all reek. You do it if you want, but I’ve got all the retirement home visits I can handle . . . How about just signing up for tutoring and getting it over with?”

  “No way. The FOBs over in those classes make me nervous. Nothing against them, but I’d rather not be around them.”