Picture Us In The Light(30)

My parents came back on a Thursday in the middle of the night. I remember them waking me gently, my dad lifting me in his arms. I remember feeling right at that moment how much I’d missed them, how thinking otherwise was only because I’d been so distracted.

At home they must have let me sleep. In the morning when I woke up my room was stripped bare and my mom had a present for me—a gigantic candy bar she’d bought at the airport that said TEXAS-SIZE CHOCOLATE! on it—and she told me that they had a surprise for me. We were moving, she said, to California. My dad was going to get a new job there. Wouldn’t I like to live in California? I could see the beach and I could see mountains. I could go skiing in the winter, and see real snow. In fact, we were moving right now.

I fought it as much as you can when you’re six years old and your world’s been pushed out of orbit in spite of you. I didn’t want to leave. And on some level, I think, I was afraid, and over time the fear dropped off because we came here and everything was fine, we’ve been happy, but I remember that now, that I was scared. That even then I think the way everything was happening felt off to me, how fast it was and how we didn’t tell anyone, that I felt that safe, steady image I’d always held of my parents dissolving. I wanted to see Ethan first and my mom told me no, we needed to leave right away. “They’ll give away our new house otherwise!” she said, smiling like she was teasing, like it was something I’d be willing to joke about.

I never talked back or argued with my parents back then, but I did that time. Even when you’re six, you understand what it means to say goodbye. But they held firm—I wasn’t allowed to go see Ethan; we had to leave right away—and when we went to the parking structure, our car was packed. My shirts were stuffed into a plastic grocery store bag.

Sometimes I wonder what Ethan remembers. Nothing, maybe. Maybe he’s already forgotten me completely. But every now and then I think maybe I’m wrong and—because he doesn’t know my last name now—he’s just never been able to find me. I wonder what he made of us just packing up and leaving that way. I wonder if he thought I just didn’t care enough to say goodbye.

And I wonder now, and I can’t fathom what this would mean, but the way we left like that—could it have tied back somehow to however our paths could’ve crossed with the Ballards’ while they were there, too?

But I still can’t imagine how my parents would even know them, and not just have met them but know them deeply. You don’t run into someone a few times on campus and then build a dossier on everything they’ve ever done.

At a McDonald’s somewhere in West Texas, where we stopped early on the way to California so my parents could bribe me with a Happy Meal, I cried so hard my muscles ached. My mom sat down next to me.

“Daniel,” she said, peeling the lid off a packet of honey sauce for my chicken nuggets, “do you know something about goodbyes? It’s worse if they’re long. Otherwise you’ll be sad forever and you poison all you have with your sadness, too. It’s better not to wallow in them. It’s better for you to move on and forget.” She dipped a nugget in the honey and handed it to me, then dabbed at my eyes with a napkin. I thought then how both my parents had left behind a whole country, a whole homeland, and how maybe to them Texas to California felt insignificant and small. It was the only way any of this made sense. She smoothed my hair and cupped my face in her hands. She smiled. And I must have been wrong about it all feeling small to them, because it was the first time I can remember, and I remember this distinctly, ever looking at someone’s smile and realizing it was fake. “You’ll make new friends, won’t you? You’ll be very happy and you’ll forget. You’ll be my strong boy.”





On Thursday at lunch, Mina Lee and Grace Leung arrive as emissaries from their corner of the academic court to talk to Regina. They come together, like they need reinforcements, pretending the rest of us aren’t there and standing over Regina while she tries to eat her lunch.

Mina and Grace are both part of a group of maybe a dozen or so girls in our grade and the grades below who’ve all grown up going to Regina’s church together. I don’t know either of them well—aside from Regina her church group has always been pretty insular—but I’ve had enough classes with Mina to get the sense that her view of the world is a series of kind of rigid boxes I probably wouldn’t fit neatly into. Once, hanging out at lunch last year, one of those days we took for granted, Sandra watched from across the rally court as Mina talked with Orson Lam. She mimicked a narration as Mina looked up at him and giggled—Oh, Orson, you are just so funny!—and then when Mina kept tugging down the bottom of her skirt, running her hands over her shoulder like she was checking to make sure her bra straps were in place, Sandra said dryly, “When you want a boyfriend but also your boyfriend is Jesus.” Regina was kind of pissed; she always stuck up for her friends from church. I remembered how Mina said once in AP English that girls who wore tight clothes had low self-esteem—it was a throwaway comment, something that was supposed to be a self-evident truth, and I remembered Sandra was wearing this clingy skirt that day. She referenced that comment once or twice as why she didn’t like Mina, but sometimes I wondered if the truth was that she was kind of jealous of those friends—all those times Regina vanished into them and their world.