The Sun Is Also a Star(6)

Words, Natasha thinks, should behave more like units of measure. A meter is a meter is a meter. Words shouldn’t be allowed to change meanings. Who decides that the meaning has changed, and when? Is there an in-between time when the word means both things? Or a time when the word doesn’t mean anything at all?



Natasha knows that if she has to leave America, all her friendships, even with Bev, will fade. Sure, they’ll try to stay in touch at the beginning, but it won’t be the same as seeing each other every day. They won’t double-date to prom. No celebrating acceptance letters or crying over rejection ones. No silly graduation pictures. Instead, time will pass and the distance will seem farther every day. Bev will be in America doing American things. Natasha will be in Jamaica feeling like a stranger in the country of her birth.

How long before her friends forget about her? How long before she picks up a Jamaican accent? How long before she forgets that she was ever in America?

One day in the future, the meaning of irie will move on, and it will become just another word with a long list of archaic or obsolete definitions. Is everything irie? someone will ask you in a perfect American accent. Everything’s irie, you will respond, meaning everything’s just okay, but you really don’t feel like talking about it. Neither of you will know about Abraham or the Rastafari religion or the Jamaican dialect. The word will be devoid of any history at all.





Local Teen Trapped in Parental Vortex of Expectation and Disappointment, Doesn’t Expect to Be Rescued

The nice thing about having an overachieving asshole for an older brother is that it takes the pressure off. Charlie has always been good enough for two sons. Now that he’s not so perfect after all, the pressure’s on me.

Here’s a conversation I’ve had 1.3 billion (give or take) times since he’s been home:

Mom: Your grades still okay?

Me: Yup.

Mom: Biology?

Me: Yup.

Mom: What about math? You don’t like math.

Me: I know I don’t like math.

Mom: But grades still okay?

Me: Still a B.

Mom: Why no A yet? Aigo. It’s time you get serious now. You not little boy anymore.

Today I have a college admission interview with a Yale alum. Yale is Second-Best School, but for once, I put my foot down and refused to apply to Best School (Harvard). The idea of being Charlie’s younger brother at another school is a bridge entirely too far. Besides, who knows if Harvard would even take me now that Charlie’s been suspended.



My mom and I are in the kitchen. Because of my interview, she’s steaming frozen mandu (dumplings) for me as a treat. I’m having a pre-mandu appetizer of Cap’n Crunch (the best cereal known to mankind) and writing in my Moleskine notebook. I’m working on a poem about heartbreak that I’ve been working on forever (give or take). The problem is that I’ve never had my heart broken, so I’m having a hard time.

Writing at the kitchen table feels like a luxury. I wouldn’t be able to do it if my dad were here. He doesn’t disapprove of my poem-writing tendencies out loud, but disapprove he definitely does.

My mom interrupts my eating and writing for a variation on our usual conversation. I’m cruising through it, adding my “yup’s” through mouthfuls of cereal, when she changes up the script. Instead of the usual “You not little boy anymore,” she says:

“Don’t be like your brother.”

She says it in Korean. For emphasis. And because of God or Fate or Sheer Rotten Luck, Charlie walks into the kitchen just in time to hear her say it. I stop chewing.

Anyone looking in at us from the outside would think things are copacetic. A mother making breakfast for her two sons. One son at the table eating cereal (no milk). Another son entering the scene from stage left. He’s about to have breakfast as well.



But that’s not what’s really happening. Mom is so ashamed about Charlie hearing her that she blushes. It’s faint, but it’s there. She offers him some mandu, even though he hates Korean food and has refused to eat it since junior high.

And Charlie? He just pretends. He pretends he doesn’t understand Korean. He pretends he didn’t hear her offer of dumplings. He pretends I don’t exist.

He almost fools me until I look at his hands. They curl into fists and give away the truth. He heard and he understood. She could’ve called him an epic douche bag, an animatronic dick complete with ball sac, and it would’ve been better than telling me not to be like him. My whole life it’s been the opposite. Why can’t you be more like your brother? This Reversal of Fortune is not good for either of us.

Charlie takes a glass from the cupboard and fills it with tap water. Drinking water from the tap is just to piss Mom off. She opens her mouth to say the usual “No. Drink filter,” but she closes it again. Charlie gulps the water down in three quick swallows and puts the glass back into the cupboard unwashed. He leaves the cupboard open.

“Umma, give him a break,” I tell her after he’s gone. I’m pissed at him and I’m pissed for him. My parents have been relentless with the criticism. I can only imagine how ass it is for him working at the store all day with my dad. I bet my dad berates him in between smiling at customers and answering questions about extensions and tea tree oils and treating chemically damaged hair. (My parents own a beauty supply shop that sells black hair care products. It’s called Black Hair Care.)