Page 4 of Next Time Will Be Our Turn
“Is that really what you think?”
“Uh, yeah! And it’s not even just tonight. Mama always told me that whatever you wanted, you got, and to hell with what other people might say.” I wonder if the envy is coming out painfully clear in my voice.
For a split second, I wonder if I’ve finally hurt my grandmother. Did I go too far? Is she going to tell me I’m a spoiled, unfilial grandchild and she’s cutting me out of her will or whatever?
But then Nainai throws her head back and laughs, a deep, throaty sound. The kind of laugh that doesn’t give a shit whether anyone hears it or not. “Oh, Izzy. Well, I’m glad you think that. It means I’ve done some things right, after all. But believe it or not, I wasn’t always like that. In fact, when I was your age, I was…” She takes a long, slow breath and turns her eyes up at the shimmering sea of stars above us.
Sixteen years ago, the entire world finally managed to get down to zero emissions. Without tons of carbon being chugged into the air, the stars have become so achingly clear again. It’s one of the reasons why I love my nighttime walks. Some nights,when it all gets to be too much, when I feel the weight of my family and culture and everything crushing down on me, I like to look at the stars and imagine myself swimming among them, a tiny speck in the endless multitude of possibility. I like feeling minuscule. It’s a good reminder that my problems don’t matter. Not really. Not in the vast expanse of the universe.
I wonder if Nainai’s lost in the same kind of thoughts I have. Though she’s standing right next to me, she looks so far away, like she’s in a different time and place altogether. Her expression is soft and slightly…lost. I’ve never seen her like this before; usually she’s razor sharp and alert. A chill prickles down my arms, raising goose bumps. What if Papa and Mama were right about Nainai losing her mind? I gently guide her back to the present. “Nainai, you were saying? When you were my age?”
She turns to meet my eyes, and my breath catches in my throat. I was wrong. She wasn’t lost. She’s been right here all along, and for just an impossible sliver of time, I catch a flash of what she was like back then, brimming with youth and vitality and so incredibly beautiful. She smiles, and I can see her smiling as a teen, fresh and untamed, the world at her feet.
“Take my arm, Izzy. I’ll tell you all about it.”
I link my arm through hers, and together, we walk into the dark.
Chapter 3
MAGNOLIA
1995–1998
You would think, with two parents who were doctors, and OBGYNs at that, I would’ve grown up smart and confident and beautiful. (Okay, I don’t know what being beautiful has to do with having parents who were doctors, but when I imagine the daughter of two doctors, I always think of someone who is smart and confident and beautiful.) But I was none of those things. My older sister, Iris, was. Smart, confident, beautiful. A lethal combination. What Iris wanted, Iris got. And what she always wanted was attention.
When we were little, Iris tried getting attention from Mama and Papa, but she quickly learned that she might as well cut stone for water, so she turned elsewhere for attention. Now that she was fifteen and had boobs, she mostly got attention from boys. I often watched from the window, marveling at the way she preened—she had a brilliant way of preening. She’d lower her face so she came across as demure, but at the same time she’dpush her shoulders back so her boobs strained against her dress, and somehow, she achieved a look that was both sexual yet innocent. And boys couldn’t help themselves. Men too.
I tried practicing the pose in front of the mirror one night, but it just didn’t work without boobs. Iris’s boobs sprouted when she was twelve. I was now thirteen and there wasn’t even the ghost of a bump yet. Iris took everything—the height, the looks, and the boobs. But enough about Iris. Sometimes, I get tired of talking about Iris. It was all anyone ever talked about—Where’s your sister? Iris did what? She went out with who?And so on and so forth, a constant chorus of Iris’s adventures.
Despite Iris being smart, she didn’t want to follow in our parents’ footsteps. Neither did I, for what it’s worth. You might think that this would greatly disappoint our parents, but in actuality, they were both relieved. And it was no wonder that Iris and I didn’t want to become doctors, because every night, Mama and Papa would come home looking very crumpled and very grumpy. They each had their own reasons for being cranky.
Papa was cranky because he was overworked, rushing through patient after patient at the clinic they opened up a year ago, and still had yet to break even.
Mama was cranky because she, on the other hand, barely had any patients.
“Why the hell did I break my back in med school?” she’d mutter as she took out a can of Bintang Beer from the fridge. “I should’ve known. No one trusts a female doctor in this country.”
Papa wisely stayed quiet, but I could see his jaw working as his teeth ground together, and even at the age of thirteen, I knew he was angry. I just didn’t know if he was angry at the factthat people didn’t want to see female doctors here, or if he was angry at Mama for being a woman. Maybe it was a bit of both.
“Not even women,” Mama continued. “You’d think that women would want to support other women, but”—she took a long swig of beer and shook her head—“internalized misogyny is a hard habit to break.”
“To be fair, male doctors do have a higher rate of successful births,” Papa said.
Mama’s head jerked to face him so fast, like a viper. “And why do you think that is?” It was clear she wasn’t actually going to give him the chance to answer. “In med school, all the professors only ever directed their lectures, their questions, their feedback to the male students. There was just me and two other women in my year, and the three of us were often told to go to nursing school instead. And never mind med school, secondary school was the same.” She turned to me then, and Papa’s shoulders sagged with obvious relief. She’d let him off easy. I resisted the urge to cower as Mama advanced toward me. She and Papa stopped spanking me and Iris a long time ago, but there was something about her that scared me all the same. It was the way she looked at me and Iris sometimes. Like we were total strangers and she had no idea what the hell we were doing in her life.
“You listen to me, Magnolia,” she said, crouching so she was staring right into my eye. “Don’t make the same mistakes I did. I thought I was special. I thought I could forge my own path, blaze a trail for other women. I was wrong. When you go to college, sure, go for the big degrees. Study premed, or prelaw, or engineering, or whatever the hell. But don’t bother studying too hard. I spent every waking hour in college and med schoolstudying my eyes out. I never had fun. Didn’t go on a single date. So stupid. No, you listen to Mama. You use that time and find yourself a man with potential. Someone with a real future. That’s the only reason college is worth going to in the first place.”
My insides turned sour. I wanted so badly to turn and run away. In my peripheral vision, I sensed Papa hovering, wrath emanating from him in palpable waves. Even at my young age, I knew Mama’s words must’ve hurt him, though if anyone had asked me exactly why they did, I wouldn’t have been able to explain it. I groped desperately for the right response. Something that would diffuse this inexplicable, unbearable tension in the room.
“I’m scared of blood,” I said. I don’t know why I said that, aside from the fact that it seemed like a good time to let this secret out. I’d hidden it for so long, ashamed that the child of two doctors could possibly go woozy at the sight of blood.
Mama blinked. Then she cackled while Papa shook his head. She was still laughing even after Papa left the room.
I hope you don’t think my parents were cruel. They had a lot to deal with. And if I’d gone to med school only to find that I’d have close to no patients in my career, I probably would’ve been a lot more bitter than Mama.
• • •
When she was fifteen, Iris was found topless with her boyfriend, so Mama and Papa did the only reasonable thing—they sent her off to California so she wouldn’t have the chance to ruin our family’s reputation back home. She was to live at a group home for Asian students run by a Taiwanese woman. I couldn’t decide whether that sounded awesome or terrifying, and I knewIris felt the same way. The morning she was set to go, her normally brilliant smile was strained.
