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The only times she’d seen her mom rest were when she watched movies on her laptop or snacked on dried, salted plums on the phone with Auntie Mei. Magnolia hoped they could at least create a spa day, placing cucumber slices over their eyes, but knew her mom would never waste food by putting it on her face like that.
On the morning Magnolia turned ten, she decided that if she was going to be stuck all summer in the Big Apple, she’d find a way to be a wild worm, freely wiggling and chewing through all of it.
Mrs. Wu believed that birthday candles were a needless expense—if they already had large scented candles, Magnolia could blow those out instead.
Outside, the sun was glowing, and the air was thick with gray clouds of exhaust, sounds of drilling, and ice cream trucks singing. There was a black dog licking a dripping fire hydrant and cherry tomatoes set out like little jewels. Magnolia was thrilled by all of it,
“If you get overwhelmed,” said Magnolia, “look for the little things.” She pointed to a flurry of pigeons.
The day was getting hotter and worser at an astonishing rate.
I know the feeling.
She hadn’t known that things could change so quickly, that loss could happen in an instant, a friend gone, her plans ruined. Surely the universe had to be better at spacing negative things out so you didn’t have to deal with it all at once.
It was humiliating, the way people made them feel like they were not worthy of being understood, too odd to be respected, too unfamiliar to belong.
“Sometimes people can be mean, yeah?” said Mrs. Wu. “Shout at us, insult us, treat us as less than. It’s not easy. It’s stressful, me and Dada, we feel it, we’ve suffered. But I know something nobody else knows: that no matter what bad things happen, I already won. I am in New York City with my daughter. My secret is that I am the luckiest person in the world.”
All the anxiety Magnolia had been feeling, the overwhelm, the fear that things would never be right again, seemed to wash away with the choppy sounds of the ocean waves as she sat beside her best friend on a pile of cat litter.
