Real Americans

by Rachel Khong

Matthew thought I was more special than I believed I was. Who was right, and who was wrong?

It was a habit, with my parents: omitting information, not wanting to worry them unnecessarily. Though they’d raised me so American, I could never manage the sorts of American relationships my friends had with their parents, where they talked to them like friends.

My mother had always spoken English to me. Now I wondered if, in doing so, she had not fully been herself.

This was what love had always been for me: denying your own reality in order to protect another person.

mother never described herself as an outsider, she just was one—that was obvious to me. From the perimeter, she could see what was invisible to everyone in the middle.

It wasn’t until years later that I would understand that just because I could win an argument, it didn’t mean I was right.

Every powerful man, possessing everything already, wanted the thing he couldn’t have: time.