Shadow Girl

by Liana Liu

I think: Yes, it was a dumb joke. I think: What a jerk. I say: “Ha! Very funny.”

I never, ever forget their home isn’t my home. My home is a one-bedroom apartment in a brown high-rise building with my mother.

At home we always finish everything in our bowl, every last grain of rice; it would be wasteful not to. But now I start leaving half of my meal, or more. I tell myself it doesn’t matter: in the Morison household, people don’t always clear their plates. I feel guilty anyway.

She yells something at me. I’m in such a daze it takes me a moment to understand what she yelled. She yelled, “Go back to your country.”