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Chapter no 19

Yellowface

AS IT TURNS OUT, I DO GO TO SEE MY MOTHER.

Mom lives in a suburb outside Phillyโ€”near enough to Boston that I can get on the Amtrak and be there by lunchtime the next day. I have to root around my phone for her street addressโ€”I havenโ€™t been to the Philly house in years, and I never see Mom outside of our yearly Christmas and Thanksgiving gatherings at Roryโ€™s. Iโ€™m sure this spur-of-the-moment visit is a product of vulnerability, motivated by fear and childlike regression. Iโ€™m also sure, past the initial hugs and tenderness, that Iโ€™ll regret coming at all; that once the โ€œIโ€™ve missed youโ€ and โ€œYou look good!โ€ chatter turns to the same overcontrolling, patronizing comments that have spiraled into blowout fights in the past, Iโ€™ll hop on the train and hurtle back to DC.

Right now, though, I just want to be near someone who doesnโ€™t hate me on principle.

Momโ€™s waiting for me on the front porch when I pull up. I called a few hours ago to ask if I could come stay for a bit. She agreed without even asking what was going on. I wonder how much she knows; if sheโ€™s seen my name smeared all over the internet.

โ€œHey, Junie.โ€ She envelops me in a hug, and the touch alone makes my eyes sting with tears. No oneโ€™s hugged me in so long. โ€œIs everything all right?โ€

โ€œYeah, of courseโ€”I was teaching a workshop in Boston, and itโ€™s just finished, so I thought Iโ€™d make a pit stop here before I head back home.โ€

โ€œWell, youโ€™re always welcome here.โ€ Mom turns, and I follow her into the house. She doesnโ€™t ask how the workshop went. Her blatant disinterest in anything that has to do with writing always stung when I was younger, but today, itโ€™s a comfort. โ€œWatch your step, thoughโ€”sorry about the mess.โ€

The path to the kitchen is covered in half-empty cardboard boxes; blankets, bunched-up newspapers, and towels are strewn across the tiles. โ€œWhatโ€™s going on?โ€

โ€œIโ€™m just putting some of the clutter in storageโ€”careful around those vases. The Realtor said itโ€™ll look nicer without all this stuff in the way.โ€

I pick my way around an array of white ceramic cats. โ€œYouโ€™re selling the house?โ€

โ€œIโ€™ve been getting it ready for a while,โ€ says Mom. โ€œIโ€™m headed back to Melbourne. Wanted to be closer to my girls. Cherylโ€™s closing on a condo for me this weekโ€”thereโ€™s plenty of guest rooms, youโ€™ll be able to visit. Rory didnโ€™t tell you?โ€

No, she didnโ€™t. Iโ€™ve known that Mom has wanted to go back to Florida ever since Dad died, that Philadelphia was only ever a compromise because my grandparents lived close by, but I never connected that with the real possibility that we might not call this place home anymore.

I suppose Rory never felt such a deep connection to this house, though. I was the one obsessed with the sycamore trees in the backyard, with hiding out among their roots and spinning stories long after Rory decided it was time to return to the real world.

โ€œDid you pack my room up yet?โ€

โ€œIโ€™ve just gotten started,โ€ says Mom. โ€œI was going to put most of your things in storage, but why donโ€™t you go see if thereโ€™s anything you want? Give me some time to wrap up this porcelain, and then weโ€™ll meet back down here for dinner.โ€

โ€œIโ€”oh, sure, okay.โ€ I pause on the staircase before I go up. I keep waiting for Mom to ask me whatโ€™s going on, for her to intuit with her motherly senses that Iโ€™m deeply not all right. But sheโ€™s already turned back toward those stupid ceramic cats.

MY NOTEBOOKS ARE RIGHT WHERE I LEFT THEM: STACKED AT THE TOPย of my

bookshelves in neat rows of five. Theyโ€™re each labeled with my name, the year, my phone number, and a ten-dollar reward offer if returned to the owner. No Moleskines hereโ€”my notebooks were always those college-ruled, black-and-white-splattered composition notebooks that you buy for ninety-nine cents at Walmart while your parents are doing back-to-school shopping. My dream worlds.

I pull them out and set them on the floor.

I used to live my entire life out of these notebooks. Theyโ€™re crammed with doodles I scribbled instead of listening during class; full-scale drawings I sketched out after school; half-finished scenes or story ideas or even fragments of lines of dialogue that came to me throughout the day. Nothing in these dream worlds ever became a fully formed productโ€”I didnโ€™t have the discipline or craft skills then to write a complete novel. Theyโ€™re more like a smorgasbord of creative churning, half-formed doors to other worlds, worlds in which I lingered for hours when I didnโ€™t want to be in my own.

I flip through the pages, smiling. Itโ€™s cute to see how derivative my story ideas were of whatever fandoms I was in at the time. Sixth grade: myย Twilightย phase, and I was clearly infatuated with Alice Cullen because I kept describing a protagonist with the same gravity-defying pixie cut. Ninth grade: my emo phase, and everything was Evanescence and Linkin Park lyrics. By then Iโ€™d begun sketching out some gothic, futuristic dystopian cityscape where kids flew around on skateboards and everyone had floppy, skunk-tail bangs and arm warmers. I guess Ayn Rand was an influence at some point in tenth grade, because by then I was writing paragraphs on paragraphs about a male lead named Howard Sharp, who bowed to no one, who had an unassailable sense of pride, who was a โ€œlone believer in truth in a world of lies.โ€

I spend the rest of the afternoon going through those notebooks. I donโ€™t notice the time slipping by until Mom calls upstairs asking if I want takeout for dinner, and itโ€™s only then that I realize the sun has set. Iโ€™ve lost myself for hours in those worlds.

I call down to Mom that takeout sounds fine. Then I root around for a cardboard box to load my notebooks into. Iโ€™ll bring them back to my apartment and let them linger in the closet, maybe take them out whenever Iโ€™m feeling particularly nostalgic. They wonโ€™t suit my current purposesโ€” thereโ€™s nothing there that I could turn into a sellable manuscript now. But theyโ€™ll remind me, whenever I need it, that writing didnโ€™t used to be so miserable.

God, I miss my high school days, when I could flip my notebook open to an empty page and see possibility instead of frustration. When I took real pleasure in stringing words and sentences together just to see how they sounded. When writing was an act of sheer imagination, of taking myself away somewhere else, of creating something that was only for me.

I miss writing before I met Athena Liu.

But enter professional publishing, and suddenly writing is a matter of professional jealousies, obscure marketing budgets, and advances that donโ€™t measure up to those of your peers. Editors go in and mess around with your words, your vision. Marketing and publicity make you distill hundreds of pages of careful, nuanced reflection into cute, tweet-size talking points. Readers inflict their own expectations, not just on the story, but on your politics, your philosophy, your stance on all things ethical. You, not your writing, become the productโ€”your looks, your wit, your quippy clapbacks and factional alignments with online beefs that no one in the real world gives a shit about.

And once youโ€™re writing for the market, it doesnโ€™t matter what stories are burning inside you. It matters what audiences want to see, and no one cares about the inner musings of a plain, straight white girl from Philly. They want the new and exotic, theย diverse, and if I want to stay afloat, thatโ€™s what I have to give them.

MOM ORDERS DINNER FROM GREAT WALL, THE LOCAL CHINESE PLACE.

โ€œTheyโ€™re new,โ€ she informs me as I sit down. โ€œHorrible service; I wouldnโ€™t go back there in person. It took me three tries just to get some water. But delivery is fast, and I like their orange chicken.โ€ She opens a carton of rice and sets it before me. โ€œYou like Chinese food, right?โ€

I donโ€™t have the heart to tell her that it was Rory who liked Chinese, and that Chinese food makes my stomach roil, especially now, since that horrible club meeting in Rockville.

โ€œYeah, itโ€™s fine.โ€

โ€œI got you the Triple Buddha. Are you still vegetarian?โ€

โ€œOh, only sort of, but thatโ€™s fine.โ€ I split my chopsticks open. โ€œThanks.โ€

Mom, nodding, spoons some pork fried rice onto her plate and begins to eat.

We donโ€™t talk much. Itโ€™s always been like this between usโ€”either placid silence, or vicious fighting. Thereโ€™s no casual in-between, no common interests we can shoot the shit about. Whatever wildness Mom once possessed seems to have evaporated back in the eighties, when she was smoking pot and following bands around and naming her children things like Juniper Song and Aurora Whisper. She went back to work after

Dad died, and since then has molded herself entirely into the American ideal of a working single mother: perfect attendance at her office job, perfect attendance at our parent-teacher meetings, just enough savings to put Rory and me through good schools with minimal student debt and to set up a retirement account for herself. The demands of such a hustle, it seems, left no room for creativity. Sheโ€™s the kind of suburban white mother who buys home living magazines at the grocery checkout counter, who drinks crate upon crate of four-dollar wines from Trader Joeโ€™s, who refers toย Twilightย as โ€œthose vampire books,โ€ and who hasnโ€™t read anything other than Costco discount paperbacks for decades.

Mom always got along better with Rory. I always got the sense that she didnโ€™t quite know what to do with me. It was Dad who could always follow me wherever my imagination went. But we donโ€™t talk about Dad.

We sit in silence for a while, chewing on egg rolls and stir-fried chicken bits so sweet they taste like candy. At last, Mom asks, โ€œHowโ€™s your, well, book writing going?โ€

Mom has always had the particular ability to reduce all my aspirations to trivial obsessions with a simple disinterested question.

I set down my chopsticks. โ€œItโ€™s, uh, fine.โ€ โ€œOh, thatโ€™s good.โ€

โ€œWell, actually, Iโ€™m sort of . . .โ€ I want to tell her why Iโ€™ve been so miserable these past few months, but I donโ€™t know where to begin. โ€œIโ€™m in a difficult place. Creatively. Like, I canโ€™t think of anything to write about.โ€

โ€œYou mean like writerโ€™s block?โ€

โ€œSort of like that. Only usually I have all these tricks to break out of it. Writing exercises, listening to music, going on long walks and whatnot. Itโ€™s not working this time.โ€

Mom shoves some bits of chicken aside to snag a candied pecan. โ€œWell, maybe itโ€™s time to move on, then.โ€

โ€œMom.โ€

โ€œIโ€™m just saying. Roryโ€™s friend can always get you into that class. You just have to fill out the application.โ€

Mom has suggested that I do a masterโ€™s in tax and accounting at American University every time Iโ€™ve seen her in the last four years. Sheโ€™s even gone so far as to print and mail me the application the summer after my debut novel flopped and I resorted to tutoring kids for the SAT to make rent.

โ€œFor the last time, I donโ€™t want to be an accountant.โ€ โ€œWhatโ€™s so wrong with being an accountant?โ€

โ€œIโ€™ve told you, I donโ€™t want to work an office job like you and Roryโ€”โ€ I know what sheโ€™ll say next. Weโ€™ve been hurling these lines at each other for years. โ€œYouโ€™re too good for office jobs? Junie the Yalie wonโ€™t put

in a hard dayโ€™s work like the rest of us?โ€ โ€œMom, stop.โ€

โ€œRory puts food on the table. Rory has a retirement accountโ€”โ€

โ€œI make more than enough to live on,โ€ I snap. โ€œIโ€™m renting a one-bedroom in Rosslyn. I have insurance. I bought a new laptop. Iโ€™m probably richer than Rory, evenโ€”โ€

โ€œThen whatโ€™s the problem? Whatโ€™s so important about this next book?โ€ โ€œI canโ€™t rely on my old work,โ€ I say, though I know I canโ€™t make her understand. โ€œI need to write the next best thing. And then another. Otherwise the sales will whittle down, and people will stop reading my work, and everyone will forget about me.โ€ Saying this out loud makes me want to cry. I hadnโ€™t realized how much this terrified me: being unknown, being forgotten. I sniffle. โ€œAnd then when I die, I wonโ€™t have left any mark

on the world. Itโ€™ll be like I was never here at all.โ€

Mom watches me for a long while, and then places her hand on my

arm.

โ€œWriting isnโ€™t the whole world, Junie. And thereโ€™s plenty of careers

that wonโ€™t give you such constant heartbreak. Thatโ€™s all Iโ€™m saying.โ€

But writingย isย the whole world. How can I explain this to her? Stopping isnโ€™t an option. Iย needย to create. It is a physical urge, a craving, like breathing, like eating; when itโ€™s going well, itโ€™s better than sex, and when itโ€™s not, I canโ€™t take pleasure in anything else.

Dad played the guitar during his off time; he understood. A musician needs to be heard; a writer needs to be read. I want to move peopleโ€™s hearts. I want my books in stores all over the world. I couldnโ€™t stand to be like Mom and Rory, living their little and self-contained lives, with no great projects or prospects to propel them from one chapter to the next. I want the world to wait with bated breath for what I will say next. I want my words to last forever. I want to be eternal, permanent; when Iโ€™m gone, I want to leave behind a mountain of pages that scream,ย Juniper Song was here, and she told us what was on her mind.

Only I donโ€™t know what it is I want to say anymore. I donโ€™t know if I ever did. And Iโ€™m terrified that the only thing Iโ€™ll ever be remembered for, and the only method by which I can produce good work, is slipping on someone elseโ€™s skin.

I donโ€™t want to only be the vessel for Athenaโ€™s ghost.

โ€œYou could work with Aunt Cheryl,โ€ Mom suggests, oblivious. โ€œSheโ€™s still looking for an assistant. You could move out of DCโ€”itโ€™s too expensive anyhow. Come down to Melbourne with meโ€”you could buy a whole house in Suntree with your earnings. Rory showed meโ€”โ€

I gape at her. โ€œYou asked Rory for my tax returns?โ€

โ€œWe were just planning for your future.โ€ Mom shrugs, unbothered. โ€œSo with what you have in savings now, itโ€™s smart that you make some property investments. Cheryl has a few houses in mindโ€”โ€

โ€œJesus, itโ€™s precisely this . . .โ€ I take a deep breath, force myself to calm down. Momโ€™s been like this since I was a child. Nothing short of a brain transplant will change her now. โ€œI donโ€™t want to have this conversation anymore.โ€

โ€œYou have to be practical, Junie. Youโ€™re young; you have assets.

Youโ€™ve got to take advantage of themโ€”โ€

โ€œOkay, stop, please,โ€ I snap. โ€œI know youโ€™ve never supported my writingโ€”โ€

She blinks. โ€œOf course I supported your writing.โ€

โ€œNo, you didnโ€™t. You hated it. Youโ€™ve always thought it was stupid, I get itโ€”โ€

โ€œOh, no, Junie. I know what the arts are like. Not everyoneโ€™s going to make it big.โ€ She rubs the top of my head, the way she did when I was a child, only now it doesnโ€™t feel remotely comforting. A gesture like this, between adult women, can only be patronizing. โ€œAnd I just didnโ€™t want to see you get hurt.โ€

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