Sour Heart Read online

  “Reel it in a little, Mom,” I said, rolling my eyes. I knew in the very fuzzy part of what I paid attention to that my parents had suffered, too, they had struggled, too, and whatever happened to them in the year before I was brought to America was somehow related to their refusal to ever order beverages at restaurants because paying an extra dollar or two for something they could get in bulk for cheaper activated some kind of trauma inside them. It really did. But even more astounding was how they never stopped me or my brother from ordering those drinks, though I rarely did anyway, because…because of what? Because I was closer to that time of their lives when they had suffered and lived without much energy to dream? Or was it because I didn’t like the sickly sweetness of regular sodas and preferred rarer drinks, like a tart, fresh-squeezed lemonade or a non-carbonated fruit punch with a bubble-gum aftertaste? I used to order those at Sizzler without even thinking in the days before my brother was born.

  “You guys get one too,” I would implore them. “Let’s all get fruit punch.” But they insisted on the old tried and true formula: my father would order the steak dinner, which we would split three ways, and then my mother would get the salad bar buffet and I would get my fruit punch and all three of us would eat off the endless plates my mother brought back—mac and cheese and buffalo wings and fried chicken and spaghetti with meatballs and boiled string beans and broccoli and fried rice and rotisserie chicken breast and sometimes king crab legs if we were fast enough or lurked long enough and shrimp scampi and fillets of rubbery fish coiled inside of themselves on a mound of congealed buttery sauce. We would go through seven or eight plates of food and then rest for a bit or jump up and down to make room for round two, which was just as long but slightly less vigorous as we tackled another five or six plates of food. By the third round, we were slumped and sluggish with our belts undone, and then it was on to dessert. I would get vanilla soft serve with rainbow sprinkles then the swirl with no sprinkles and then chocolate with M&M’s and then a dozen chocolate chip cookies and one of each kind of cake—chocolate, buttercream, carrot, red velvet, cookies and cream, pound, meringue, whatever. It all went inside and we burped the memories of the night for hours afterward. Sometimes we would wake up still full, our bellies round and the skin over them stretched tight like a drum. After my brother was born, we stopped going to Sizzler—he was too small and we were too greedy and too broke to tempt ourselves with any more nights out. The three of us had to look out for him first and each other second. At least, that was how we would have liked someone else to describe us—a pack, a unit.

  But now I wanted to be free. I wanted to be free to be selfish and self-destructive and indulgent like the white girls at the high school my parents worked so hard to get me into, and once they did, once we moved into a neighborhood where no one hung out on the streets, where everyone was the same pasty shade of consumptive blotchy paleness, all it did was make me want to get away from my family. I envied white girls whose relationships with their parents were so abysmal that they could never disappoint them. I wanted white parents who didn’t care where I went or what I did, parents who encouraged me to leave home instead of guilting me into staying their kid forever.

  The morning of my California trip, my mother kept bringing up how she didn’t leave home until she was thirty and even then it was only because my father was immigrating to the United States. “For a long time, I considered just not going.”

  “Well, I’m not waiting until I’m thirty to leave home. You need to realize I don’t have the same life as you.”

  At the airport, I avoided looking in her direction. It was bullshit that she made her sadness so known, and took up all the space my excitement should have filled. My family waited with me at the gate until the very last minute and then, as they walked me to the boarding line, my mother staggered and stopped in her tracks as if she had been stabbed and leaned against my father with the weakness of the dying. “Are you sure you want to go? It’s not too late to stay.”

  “No,” my father said. “That’s not an option. Everything is going to happen exactly as we agreed. We want you to do well. We’re proud of you, okay? We’ll see you in three weeks.” My mother’s tears triggered a crying jag from my brother as well, and my father had to hold him back from running after me. It was strange to walk past them and wait in the back of the line to board the plane, knowing they were watching me go. I resisted looking back until there was only one person ahead of me in line. When I turned my head I saw the three of them huddled together—only my father was waving at me as my brother and my mother clung to him. It was a family formation that finally did not include me. I’m freeeee­eeeee­ee, I thought as the agent scanned my ticket and then immediately began to panic when I realized I had missed my opportunity to say goodbye. I heard my brother shout out, “When’re you coming back, Jenny?” and then the door closed behind me and I hardly thought about them again for the next three weeks. It was only later, much, much, much later, that I understood and accepted that my parents paid for me to be free. All of it, I realized, had to be paid for by someone.

  —

  “You’ll drive a Mercedes, and I’ll drive a Porsche when we grow up,” he said to me while we sat on the curb waiting for the ice-cream truck.

  “I can’t even freaking ride a bike,” I said, staring down the street, waiting to see if anything was coming.

  —

  On my ninth birthday, my mother was rushed to the hospital. Ten hours later, she gave birth to my brother. When we were both old enough to care, our mother told us that he was born at 10:22 in the morning.

  “When was Jenny born?” my brother asked.

  “Nine twenty-eight at night. But that was in China,” she reminded us. “It’s a twelve-hour time difference, plus you count an extra hour for daylight savings.”

  “So?” we said.

  “No,” our mother insisted. “You two were meant to be twins, but somehow you”—she pointed to my brother—“were stuck in my belly for an extra nine years. So lucky, you two.”

  We rolled our eyes. “Whatever.”

  —

  When I got back from California, I was so tired from not sleeping for three weeks straight that two different flight attendants had to wake me up after the plane had landed and taxied. I slept straight through the car ride home and when we pulled up to our driveway, my brother tugged at my arm and asked if I would play with him.

  “Now? I was going to go to sleep.”

  “But it’s not even nighttime,” he said, his bottom lip quivering.

  “He’s been waiting three weeks to play with you,” our mother said.

  “Fine. Let’s play Monopoly. I’ll let you be the car.”

  The next thing I knew it was four P.M. the following day and I was in my bed.

  I cried out for my family and immediately the door swung open to reveal my brother had been waiting on the other side.

  “What happened?” I asked him.

  “We were playing Monopoly and you said you had to lie down for a minute and then you were asleep.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “I tried. I put water on you. And I set the timer to one minute and put it on your pillow next to your ear. I was blowing my breath into your nose and I tried to pull your eyes open but they kept closing.”

  “And?”

  “You kept sleeping,” he said, his voice breaking. “We only played for five minutes.”

  “Oh,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I’m sorry. I promise we can play tonight after I write an email to my friend, okay?”

  “What about now?”

  “I just said I have to do something first.”

  “Okay, Jenny.”

  The email took me hours and by the time I was done, it was too late to play Monopoly. I called my brother into my room so we could hang out before bed.

  “Did you really miss me all that bad?”

  “I cried every day. One time for three hours and twenty-two minutes,” he s
aid, precise as usual. “I didn’t even have time to play.”

  “Because you were crying so much? No way.”

  “Yeah way.”

  “What about the time you called me and all your friends were over playing baseball? You didn’t cry that time, did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, you cried?”

  “Yeah.”

  I wanted to write another email to the boy with the pink button-down shirt who pulled me into his room one night when his roommate was out getting ice cream and took pictures of me. I missed California, missed the sweetness and newness of a boy, any boy, telling me cheeks were meant to be pink, and so I was meant to be in this world. But I was back in my old life now. I couldn’t even properly daydream without thinking about my brother crying alone while his friends were running around in our backyard. How did he do it? How did he find his way into everything? Even in my most private memories, the ones I told no one, sooner or later, he showed up, the perpetual invader, his small face asking me if maybe I’d watch him play a scary videogame and stand in front of the TV to block out the ghosts when they suddenly appeared.

  —

  My brother wanted to hook up his PlayStation to my TV on the one afternoon I actually had a friend from school coming over to watch three movies in six hours, so I picked up one of the videocassettes I had planned on watching and flung it across the room.

  “You always do this. I have to spend every single day with you. Every freaking day and every freaking hour. I’m so sick of it.”

  “So?” he said. “So what? I still get to play in here cause Mom said.”

  “Mom said crap. Get out before I push you out.” He was sitting on the ground and I grabbed him by the ankles. He pulled little white curlies out of my carpet as I dragged him into the hallway.

  “Never coming in,” I yelled after slamming the door against his outstretched palms. A second later, he was pushing his tiny hands through the wedge of space underneath my locked door. I took my slipper and whacked the tips of his fingers like he was a bug. I heard him crying on the other side. His fingers were touching my rug again. I took a glass of ice water from my desk and poured it all over his fingers. I heard the sound of my mother’s footsteps, thumping up the stairs from the basement den.

  I threatened him, “I won’t stop until you stop.”

  “I won’t stop first, I won’t stop first,” he repeated. I slumped down against the door and reached out a hand to stroke his little wet fingers, but they were gone. The footsteps stopped. I heard my mother scoop up my brother and knock on my door.

  “Say sorry.”

  I took my slipper and started hitting my own fingers as hard as I could.

  “Say sorry,” my mother said, louder. “You can kill yourself if you want, but first you have to say sorry to your brother.”

  I took my dictionary off the shelf and dropped it on the floor.

  “Don’t you dare,” my mother said, hitting her elbow against my door.

  “Ye-yeah, ma-mom’s ga-going to punish y-you ma-ma-ma-ma-my Jenny.”

  —

  “One day”—I sighed—“you are going to have to stop missing me.” I pressed my chin against the spot on his head from where his hair swirled out. “Okay?”

  “Why?” he asked me.

  “You just have to get used to it.” A week ago, our father had gone to Cleveland for some work business. “How come you don’t miss Dad?”

  “He’s coming back Friday.”

  “So what? When I go away, I also come back. Why do you miss me and not Dad?” I wanted to shake the answer out of him. “Why do you miss me more? I want you to give me a really good answer or else I won’t ever stop asking you.”

  “I don’t know. I just do.”

  “Then I’m going to keep asking you. Why do you miss me but not Dad? Why do you miss me but not Mom? Why do you miss me but not anyone else?”

  “I don’t know, Jenny.” He was crying now, and I shook my head.

  “I’m not a nice person, am I? You ought to make me pay one day.”

  “Okay,” he said, tears rolling down his face. “Then give me all your monies.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll buy you a Mercedes with some of it.”

  —

  Before dinner, I dabbed some of my mother’s lipstick on my lips. Tangleberry.

  “Lemme kiss you on the cheek,” I said. I puckered my lips and moved in close.

  “Are you wearing lipstick?” he asked me, arching his neck away from me. I had already pulled that joke on him three times that week.

  “No,” I said, lightly pressing my lips to the back of my hand. “See? No lipstick.” I knelt down next to my brother and kissed his cheek hard enough to dimple it.

  When we went to wash our hands in the bathroom, I remembered the mirrors and shielded his eyes with my hands as we were going in. “You’re my robot and I control everything you do!”

  “Okay, Jenny,” he shouted back.

  —

  The summer after he finished second grade, there was a Saturday when we were inseparable for an afternoon, going around every room in the house arm in arm, which was hard to do because he was so little and only came up to my waist. I had to bend down really low, so low that it made my back ache but I didn’t care. We walked in circles, chanting, “We! Are! Best! Friends! We! Are! Best! Friends!” until our dad emerged from hanging up laundry in the basement and watched us with an empty laundry basket balanced against his hip. He shook his head and laughed.

  “You’re both ridiculous. Come up here, I want to show you two jokers something.”

  We walked up the stairs arm in arm, following our father down the hallway to my room.

  “You see that hole?” he asked, pointing to my bedroom door.

  “Yeah,” we said.

  He took the laundry basket and hurled it through the hole in my door. There was room to spare.

  “You”—he pointed at my brother—“kicked that in because you”—he pointed at me—“wouldn’t let him in.” He looked at us, arms crossed. “Two minutes later, you’re running around in circles saying you’re best friends? You should be jesters of the royal court.”

  We were silent for a bit. And then we said, “So what’s your point?” For the rest of the afternoon, we went around arm in arm, still chanting, “We! Are! Best! Friends! And Dad! Is Such! An I-di-ot!”

  —

  Our mother came into my room when we were having a sleepover—my brother on the floor and me in front of the computer—and yelled very fiercely, “Go to sleep or never sleep in your sister’s room again.” I felt partially responsible because if it hadn’t been for me farting the entire chorus of “Row Row Row Your Boat” for my brother and making him laugh so hard that our mother heard it through the walls that separated my bedroom from hers, he would have never gotten yelled at. I knelt down on the floor and asked him if he was okay.

  “Are you thirsty? Hungry?” He nodded his head. “Be right back,” I said. “Don’t fall asleep.” I came back up with a turkey sandwich and a cup filled to the brim with water. While he ate I was reminded of the time when I had come back from a bad day at school and shut myself up in my room and watched taped reruns of Late Night with Conan O’Brien for three hours. When I realized I hadn’t heard any sounds from my brother in several hours, I went downstairs and found him sitting less than a foot from the television, watching Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and eating peanut butter with a plastic ice-cream scooper. Oh, I murmured when I looked inside the peanut butter jar: a hole right down the middle.

  Even now, I wondered if I had done right by him as I held out my hands below his chin to catch stray crumbs.

  —

  Whenever my brother and I start listing our grievances against each other—who wounded who more—my brother inevitably brings up the time I tried to kill him.

  “You tried to kill me. Remember?”

  “What? I never tried to kill you. That’s crazy.” But he swears that I
did, that once, I asked him to take his plate of pizza downstairs and he wouldn’t, so I pinned him to the floor of his bedroom and held a knife up to his throat.

  “It was probably a butter knife. You can’t even cut paper with those things.”

  “No,” my brother insists. “It had sharp edges. You were going to kill me with a knife.” And it was true, he was right. I had been so angry that day because I made him a lunch of microwaved pizza, which I had cut into twelve neat little squares since he was so picky and only ate food that had already been pre-arranged into bite-sized pieces he could chew once and swallow immediately, and despite my having gone through the trouble of making a perfect meal for him, he didn’t show any gratitude at all. He refused to eat. I told him if he wasn’t going to eat it then he needed to put the plate of untouched food back in the refrigerator, but he refused to do that as well, so I took the knife I used to cut the pizza and held it up to his face. “You deserve to die. You make me want to kill you sometimes. Maybe this time I will.”

  It was an act of desperation. I should have told him, I would never hurt you. I would set fire to any tree harboring branches that might one day fall on your head, cut the arms off the first kid who tries to punch you in the face, pave down and smooth over the bumps on our street where you always trip, go into your nightmares and vanquish the beasts who chase you so you never ever have to be afraid. But what right did I have? When would I finally get it? That I was the one he needed to be protected from?

  Once when we were napping side by side on our parents’ bed on one of the many afternoons we were left alone, I dreamt we were fighting on opposing sides of a civil war. When the war was over, I knelt down by my brother’s injured body and hacked him into four pieces. It was up to me to give him a proper funeral, but I had only two hands and couldn’t figure out which parts of him to carry back and bury and which parts to leave behind.