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Sometimes, agreeing to the same lie is what makes a family family, Margot.”
She couldn’t get over the sight of seeing someone who wasn’t Asian speaking her language. She couldn’t get over America.
All of it would be shattered, too. Because their life would be part of the lie that this country repeated to live with itself—that fairness would prevail; that the laws protected everyone equally; that this land wasn’t stolen from Native peoples; that this wealth wasn’t built by Black people who were enslaved but by industrious white men, “our” founders; that hardworking immigrants proved this was a meritocracy; that history should only be told from one point of view, that of those who won and still have power. So the city raged. Immolation was always a statement.
Their family of two might’ve been the smallest country, but it was the only place where they belonged in this world.
Did stories keep us alive or kill us with false expectations? It depended on who wrote them perhaps.
Margot had always guarded the different parts of her life from each other—her mother, her friends, past boyfriends, coworkers. If none of those things touched, if she could keep them in isolation, she could never be hurt or destroyed entirely. The constant yet quiet construction of separate rooms, compartments around her. But most of the time, she felt alone in the center of that building. Lightless and airtight.
They could be both—separate and inseparable.
