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ChapterFourteen
Waving to Stegan from the stoop of my family’s brownstone, I unlocked the door softly, hoping to sneak into the house without much fanfare, when I heard a crashing sound coming from the living room. My mother’s accented voice crept higher and higher with every word coming out of her mouth. By the time I stripped off my coat, placed it in the closet of the foyer, slipped off my shoes, and made my way to the living room, she was shrieking at the top of her lungs.
Pressing my index fingers into my ears, I stepped inside to find her waving a porcelain figurine in her hand, the kind my grandmother collected, about to fling it across the room.
Rushing up behind her, I whisked the object out of her hand and demanded, “What is going on, Mother? I could hear you shouting from the street.”
She did a double take. So intent on deriding my brother, she hadn’t notice I’d entered the house.
With a trembling finger pointing at Yo-Yo, she accused in a shaking voice, “He’s going to be the death of me! I’m going to die of unhappiness because of him! Die, die, die!”
Yo-Yo rolled his eyes at me. Dramatic was an understatement when my mother got on a roll. Coming home to this after the time I’d spent with Alex was mentally exhausting. The weight of it pulled on my tired muscles.
“Mother,” I said to her in a calm but firm tone as I carefully placed the figurine back on the small end table by the couch. Finally, her gaze broke away from Yo-Yo and flicked over to me. “Leave these alone and tell me what’s happened. There’s no way you’re going to die.”
My mother’s face was drawn tight, deep wrinkles digging into her forehead. Her eyes were bleak with fear. For a moment, I almost pitied her, but she constantly revved herself up over small things. Her life was one big ball of anxiety, and even things that weren’t problems could trigger a screaming fit.
Looking around, I asked, “Where’s Dad?”
“You’re father left to do groceries,” she muttered as she plopped down onto the couch, wringing her hands. “But him!” she reproached again. “I woke up early and checked in on him. He wasn’t in his bed. He wasn’t anywhere in the house. Slipped out the window and was doing who knows what in this city. He doesn’t listen to me. He doesn’t follow the rules of my house. He’s going to be the death of me, that child.”
“If you were normal, I would’ve told you where I went, but you freak out about every little thing,” began Yo-Yo.
“Normal? Your life is going to hell, and you call that normal? Do you know what I went through to get to this country? I crossed through one of the most dangerous jungles in Colombia, crawling with bandits and bad men, wearing only the clothes on my back. I walked and walked and walked through the Darién Gap—”
“Not with the Darién Gap again,” grumbled Yo-Yo, and I sent him a quelling look.
Talking over him, my mother rambled on, “…Mexico and into this country to escape the poverty in China so that I could give you what I didn’t have. A future. I had two children, not only one. That was all that was allowed under the One Child Policy. But I had two. One girl and one boy. Everything I’ve done in my life was for you, but you want to throw it away to rap on a stage in a dangerous neighborhood, where you might get killed.” She lifted back up to her feet and shook her finger at Yo-Yo. “Over my dead body!” she bellowed out.
“She exaggerates,” Yo-Yo turned to say to me. “I was at a club, hosting battles for new talent by a record company.”
Waving at Yo-Yo to leave us, I grabbed my mother’s hand and dragged her back down to the couch. “We know what you went through too,” I assured her. “We understand. Yo-Yo is not taking for granted the sacrifices you made to come to this country, but he’s almost eighteen. And you know, he’s a boy,” catering to her notions of gender. “They have lots of energy. He was just blowing off steam.”
“It was hard enough with you, but it’s even worse with him. At least you got into Juilliard. But what am I going to tell everyone back home, Nina? I can’t tell them he didn’t go to college. I can’t tell them he decided to throw his life away by singing music that sounds like he’s cursing. He’s so angry when he does the rapping thing.”
“Mother, you don’t have to tell them anything. He will go to college,” I tried pacifying her.
“It won’t be a good college with the grades he’s been getting recently,” she griped.
“As if they would know the difference,” I said.
“Nina, there’s the internet now. Everyone is on it, and they will go and look at the standings for the college he goes to,” she chided me impatiently.
Keeping up appearances was supremely important to her, especially with her father’s side of the family. After my grandfather died, my grandmother came to live with us and intense competition erupted. His side of the family took every opportunity to subtly scorn her. While I sympathized with her, I didn’t think Yo-Yo should be a slave to her ego and a family rivalry with strangers from halfway across the world.
“The most important thing is that he goes to college,” I reminded her. “While I know you have high expectations of him, Mother, pushing him will only make him rebel more.” Yo-Yo would only push back against pressure. “As long as he’s not hurting anyone, it’s okay to give him a little bit of space. Screaming at him will only drive him away, and he will stop listening to you completely.”
Squeezing my hand, she looked at me with desperation in her eyes and pleaded, “He listens to you. Nina, you have to speak to him about this.”
“I do already, and I will continue to, but you have to ease up on him, Mother.”
“There is no way he can succeed with this plan. There is no future in this music. It’s not an honorable profession, and it does not have the stability of a doctor or a lawyer. What about health insurance and a 401k? These are things you have to start with early.”
Patting her hand, I replied, “Let’s get him enrolled in college first, okay? We’ll worry about the rest later.”
Guilt gnawed at me because Yo-Yo diverted my mother’s attention away from my upcoming graduation. So anxious about him, she didn’t have the energy to get on me or my lack of a solid future plan. Truthfully, with Alex suddenly in my life, all I could think about was him and the possibility of what lay before us. It lit a fire under my dream of having a family, especially with college ending soon.
The lock of the front door rattled. Glancing over my shoulder, I watched as my father came in, weighed down with several bags of groceries. Rushing over to him, I took a couple of bags off his hands. Following him into the kitchen, I told him about Mother’s earlier explosion and asked him to go calm her down as I put away the groceries. I was grateful that I was moving back into the city because I needed a break from the drama.
