Corn Soup

"Memory of Bliss" by Lindy Giusta

By the time I sputtered into the lot, Mama was on the curb shivering, arms curled around a plastic bag of her belongings. She’d been released that morning, but I was late only because I was reluctant to scrape the ice from my windshield. She came unhurried to the car. When I asked her why she didn’t wait inside, she said that the air out here tasted sharp without the salt of other people’s breath.

Mama’s probation counselor advised me to acclimatize her gently: familiar places, familiar foods. Seeing as how Baba wasn’t around anymore to make her favorites, I took her to the dim sum place near our old apartment. Mama washed our chopsticks in cups of watered down pu’erh, her neck straight and sun-spotted hands dignified as if she hadn’t spent the past seven years with plastic sporks too soft to cut skin. We gorged ourselves on lo bak go and cheung fun until the trolley lady scowled at us for calling her over too many times. “Don’t get used to this,” I warned her when I saw her eyeing the mango pudding. “This is a one time only thing.”

That mango pudding was the last thing we splurged on. Mama knew about our financial situation, of course, but she was too overwhelmed in those weeks to come up with any ways out of the hole. She couldn’t even comprehend her release requirements. She sat there smiling dumbly while her counselor listed them out: not only did she have all the usual probation meetings and drug tests, and their fees, but she had her restitution payments — and somehow had to find gainful employment with a seven year resume gap. Plus, she couldn’t drive, on account of her license expiring while she was inside. To her credit, Mama was polite when the counselor chewed her out for not yet applying to any jobs. She said sure, I’ll just find a place that’ll let me work half days so I can come pee in a cup here twice a week. They’ll definitely go for it if I mention I’m a felon. All that in her accent still thick after thirty years in America, so I think the officer only heard the agreement and not the sarcasm.

Though I had my own reservations about Mama, I took pity on her when the officer threatened to send her back inside for a late payment. At the time, I was bagging at the big-box supermarket and worked so many holidays that my manager loved me. I cashed in my one favor to get an interview for Mama. Her English wasn’t strong enough to sell herself, so we went in together. The manager let us sit in the creaky swivel chairs in the back office while he read through her application.

“Work history looks good,” he said. “Twenty years at this handyman joint?” He ran his finger along the job titles I’d listed out: scheduling, accounting, customer satisfaction.

“Family business,” I clarified. When Mama and Baba moved here, Baba took on any odd repair work; Mama, who grew up comfortable before her father frittered away their wealth, never learned any useful skills besides her calligraphy. She had spent all her years here appeasing impatient clients and entering Baba’s jobs in a thick, leather-bound book that she never let any of us touch. I don’t know if she ever aspired to anything else, before she realized that money could come far easier through the gaps in her miscalculated accounts.

“Back on the job market again?” the manager asked. “No problem. We get a lot of older folks in here, looking for a second chance job.” He hummed vacantly as he paged through the forms. When he got to the end, he stopped abruptly. He looked at Mama. Mama spun around and around on the chair, legs dangling.

“Hey, I think there’s a mistake here.”

“Where?”

“Here, in criminal history,” he whisper-yelled. He turned the paper around to show me.

I fiddled with the lever on my chair, reluctant to look at it. “No. That’s right.”

He hesitated, mouth stutter-stopped on his next sentence. Mama’s face rotated past. I couldn’t tell if she was acting clueless, or if she had receded back into her daydreams, unbothered by her future. Was she embarrassed that her mistakes were laid out in those checkboxes for all to see?

“She’s nonviolent. And she’ll work twice as hard as the high schoolers,” I said. I reminded him the calendar was still short for next week. I knew he couldn’t afford to turn away an employee — he begged me for double shifts nearly every weekend.

He stuffed the forms behind his cabinet as if to erase Mama’s record from his memory. “She can work the self checkout. Not the registers.”

Mama started work the next day. Her job was easy enough, just to help out whenever the register threw an error, but she was jumpy around the customers. I think she never understood how they could self-scan when last week she couldn’t take a shit without permission. I watched her from my aisle in case she needed help. Even if she yelped when a register started blaring, no one glanced at her.

Sometimes, Mama talked about prison. She brought it up at random and without fanfare, like when she made corn soup on our two-burner stove and told me about her friend Ximena who taught her this recipe, who came to the city with her two kids and three of her sister’s. Or we would drive past a Jersey Mike’s after her drug test, and she would say that Aggie swore her first meal would be their Buffalo chicken cheesesteak when she got out. She said those women were her first real friends. I let her talk. She probably needed to convince herself that it wasn’t seven years wasted. Really, I felt for her; it must’ve been lonely with only fleeting comfort from our visits each week, when Baba and I yammered on about the mundanities of our world as if she were still outside with us. But now we were free, and we could do anything she wanted.

When Mama brought up visiting, though, I put my foot down. It wasn’t good to keep ties with them. You never know how those relationships turn out in the real world, when you’re no longer on equal ground. Mama agreed, mostly because she had no other choice. I controlled the car and the finances. Between her probation officer and me, she couldn’t take a step without either of us signing off on it, and it probably rankled her to no end. She didn’t bring it up again, though, just put her head down and kept working hard at the supermarket like she told me to do when I was a kid.

 ***

When I finally dragged Mama to the salon, Mrs. Lau took one look at her matted hair and sat us in the back next to Yee Chong, the cashier at the market next door. I was heartened to see Yee Chong — Baba used to take me to his market after school, and he always let me pick out a melon candy from his bowl. I guess that was a long time ago now, since Yee Chong turned away from us when we approached, no sign of recognition. Baba was the only one of us who was good at keeping friends. When Mama went inside, I started doing the shopping myself so Baba could pick up more work, and I preferred the Walmart Supercenter where none of the cashiers would see me and think of Mama.

Mama sat mutely while Mrs. Lau and I chatted in Cantonese about her new Volvo and the unseasonably late snows. Then Mrs. Lau pointed her comb at Mama. “What do you want?”

Mama answered in English, each syllable deliberately crisp. “Give it a trim.”

Mrs. Lau, undaunted, countered again in Cantonese. “You’ll need more than a trim to fix that mess.”

Mama hunched, the cape shriveling around her shoulders. “Make it quick.”

I didn’t know what Mama’s problem was. She knew Mrs. Lau before everything, when they first moved to this town with Kowloon air caught in their throats, when Baba went to Mrs. Lau’s basement studio every month for a new repair. Before my arrival gobbled up all their attention, Baba and Mama had Mrs. Lau and her husband over for dinner each week, and they would play cards and smoke Baba’s counterfeit cigars late into the night. I thought Mama would embrace her friend, but here she was shrinking from her touch. I tried to catch Mama’s eye in the mirror to silently admonish her. Her face was screwed into a knot of wrinkles.

Mrs. Lau set upon Mama’s tangles. With every scrape of the comb against her skin, Mama flinched away wild-eyed until Mrs. Lau grabbed her head. “Stay still.” I reached over for Mama’s hand and she squeezed me so hard her nails left crescents on my palm.

Mr. Kwok came over for Yee Chong’s haircut. He started to complain about Yee Chong’s dandruff, but when he saw Mrs. Lau ripping a knot through Mama’s hair, he wordlessly turned on the clippers. Yee Chong’s eyes flickered over to Mama, so tense she was nearly vibrating. I watched disgust and pity ripple across his face.

When I looked more closely at Mrs. Lau, I noticed how she held herself as far away from Mama as she could. Now I understood why Mama’s animosity sprang vicious and unbidden. It was the same reason Mrs. Lau switched to another handyman after the conviction and, I realized now, why she would rush through our haircuts with mumbled excuses every time Baba and I came in. I faced Mrs. Lau, willing her to look at me, but she and Mr. Kwok carried on about the kids from the high school who went to juvie as if we weren’t there. I stood from my seat. “Can you be gentler with her?”

“And use less water,” Mama added.

“Speak Cantonese, honey,” Mrs. Lau told her. To me, she tutted, “These knots aren’t coming undone.” With an exaggerated flourish, she brought the blade flush against Mama’s neck and cut the knot clean off.

I was still fuming when we left the salon. “I can’t believe them. Mrs. Lau told me she was so happy you were getting out. She couldn’t even be pleasant for one haircut. I thought you were friends. I babysat her daughter.”

Mama fingered the choppy bob skirting her ears. “I’m not surprised. She doesn’t want to feel like she owes you anything. Hurting someone is easier than being responsible for them.”

I eyed Mama, suddenly irritated by her flippancy. “Was that it? You didn’t want to be responsible for me and Baba anymore?” Until he died, I had hidden Mama’s worst betrayals from him, her forged invoices and her manipulated affection, because I didn’t want him to see what I saw. It was a blessing that he never understood the trial well enough to know that Mama had meant every error in his hard-earned accounts. “What would Baba say to that?”

“Baba doesn’t need to approve everything I do,” Mama said. She got in the car.

I stayed outside, gulping mouthfuls of air into my tightening lungs. For years after Mama went inside, I kept tabs on her victims. Most were destroyed by the debt, which had ballooned into something grotesque before they noticed — after all, Mama had a unique talent for sniffing out the ones who were the worst with money. Of course she never thought about them. It was impossible to make her understand her wrongs, and there was no point in it now that we were the only ones left. Neither one of us would survive my honesty. I ground my heel into a beetle on the pavement. Through the dirt-smeared window, Mama looked like she was made of glass. I got in the car.

On the way home, I asked Mama, “Did you forget your Cantonese?” She shook her head. “In English, in prison, I’m like everyone else — a nobody. But if I speak their language, I’m trying to belong with them. Why would I do that?”

*** 

Mama’s friend Ximena got released the week after. Mama was so happy, I think she would’ve skipped all the way to the prison if I didn’t stop her. Her stories of Ximena slid into fable: Ximena could identify your sickness with one touch, Ximena could transform a few expired cans into dinner for all five kids or four hungry women. When Mama was on janitorial duty, Ximena smuggled a bottle of vinegar from the kitchen to dissolve the limescale on the toilets. “To her, everything was useful,” Mama said. “Baba would’ve loved her.” I didn’t get why she was all that great. She would never make Mama’s tea right or know the perfect memory to comfort her when Baba came up. She was a temporary friend to ease the ache. Mama had me now — wasn’t that enough?

Mama waited weeks by the phone for Ximena’s call, but it never came, not even after I saw her out stocking shelves at Rite Aid. I watched Mama unplug and replug the wifi for an entire afternoon until I finally broke it to her that it wasn’t happening. Mama sagged a bit, but she puffed herself back up quick, claiming Ximena was swamped with all her kids and her treatment program. Ximena didn’t have it easy like her, with me taking care of everything. Secretly, I was relieved that Ximena must’ve realized she and Mama didn’t have all that much in common on the outside. Now Mama would see she already had all she needed.

I was restocking the candy and magazines next to Mama one evening when this woman walked up. She wore the pinched confidence of a regular; I wouldn’t have paid her any mind, except for Mama’s fingers tightening around her clipboard when she approached a self-checkout register.

I would’ve missed it if I wasn’t already watching so intently. She scanned some peaches and kale, straight into the bag. Then the king crab. Unscanned. She was smooth about it, practiced, as if this two hundred dollar purchase had glided direct to her purse many times before. Mama’s eyes popped open. She started forward, a shout ready, but I clamped my hand tight on her arm. Never confront, all of our employee trainings had said. Don’t accuse. It’s not worth the danger, or more importantly, the disturbance to other customers.

The woman didn’t even notice us. She walked past with her nose in the air and her free king crab in her giant purse, too good for the nobody cashiers in the bright red aprons.

Mama wheeled around on me as soon as she flounced out. “Why’d you let her go?”

“You wanna lose your job? You’d be fired if you caused a scene there.”

“But she was stealing.” I could see the bloodlust in Mama’s eyes, already picturing that woman in her former cell. “I saw it.”

In some ways, Mama had been sheltered during her time in prison. She hadn’t yet realized she could get punished ten times over, but this woman could come in here every week to help herself to the free seafood buffet and we would still thank her for coming. “You already know how it’d go,” I said, not unkindly. “Who’s the manager gonna believe, you or her?”

“You would back me up. Two against one.”

“I’m always on your side,” I agreed. “But even if all the evidence is there, you’ll never get him to listen to you.”

Mama had no response. She stormed out the doors with her clipboard in hand, arm cocked back as if to pummel someone with the produce codes. The woman was stowing her spoils in her trunk. Mama headed straight toward her, and I winced, already dreading our manager’s anger, but then she sailed right by her. “Where are you going?” I called. Mama kept going, down the block, across the next, through the Dollar General plaza. By the time I caught up with her, we were both wheezing. Mama shoved her clipboard into my hands. She headed for the Rite Aid on the other side of the next lot. I understood. Ximena worked there.

Ximena was by the medication shelves at the back, barricaded by crates of tampon boxes and heartburn pills. Mama plucked a box from the top so she could jab her finger directly at Ximena. “Why didn’t you call?”

Ximena’s eyes crawled from Mama’s fingertip up to her face, ruddy and slick with exertion. If she was surprised by Mama’s ambush, she didn’t show it. “I’ve been busy.” Her words came out carved in granite.

“You said you’d show me how to plant those chilies when we got out.”

“We said a lot of things.” Ximena shooed Mama away, but when Mama caught her wrist, she hissed, “When I met you, you were so small, like you didn’t know how to exist without your husband to take care of you.” She spat out husband like a swear word. “We knew you didn’t belong there. I took pity on you, tried to give you something to hold on for. They were words. Now we’re free. We’re free. I have responsibilities, things to do, I have my boys, and my damn sister’s boys too”—she waved wildly to the corner, where a few teenage boys sat slumped on the floor, phones in hand —“and you think I have time to play in the dirt like a kid? You need to grow up. You can’t hide from your life forever.”

Mama turned the tampon box over and over in her hands. I glared at Ximena’s blackened nails, her bruised forearms, that self-satisfied frown.

“My manager’s gonna be pissed — he’s already mad I brought the boys here. I have to get back to work. Get out of here. Don’t come around again.” Ximena twisted away from us, hands furiously shelving the rest of the pill bottles.

Mama stiffened and walked down the aisle. She looked like a cardboard cutout of herself. I didn’t know if I could make her feel better, so I said nothing. I shadowed her quietly, back around the lot, through the Dollar General plaza, across and down the blocks to the supermarket. No one had noticed our absence. The customers were still dutifully scanning their groceries, paying for them in full with the bag fee, streaming out of the store without a glance at us. I went back to my silent post. When nine o’clock hit, I wiped down my station, logged out of my register, and Mama and I crossed the darkened asphalt to our car.

Back when Mama was no more than the handyman’s wife, she relished how everyone’s eyes slid right over her. No one would remember her long enough to trace those unexplained bank transfers back to her. And if a customer ever came to our doorstep about an inflated bill, Baba’s apologies — so earnest because even he couldn’t see Mama’s cunning — would always appease them. Now, though, I wondered if Mama still savored her invisibility. Maybe she didn’t notice it anymore.

Something occurred to me. “You were watching that woman before — how did you know she was going to steal?”

Mama’s voice was rheumy from hours without use. “People always have a certain look on their face when they know they’re about to screw you over. I saw it in the guards inside, and in our manager when he realized I’d never complain about my missing overtime pay…. A little delight, a little pity. Like they can’t believe how weak you are.”

*** 

When we got home the next day, Mama asked me to drive her to Rite Aid. I gaped at her. “You want to go back?” She shrugged. “She doesn’t want to see you,” I said. Mama didn’t bother to argue. She just snatched up her bus card and some of our TV dinners and went outside to the stop. I watched her through the window. When the bus departed, I drove over to Rite Aid. Mama walked up a little while later and went inside. She came out after ten minutes, alone, shoulders sagging and hands empty.

Mama didn’t ask the day after. As soon as we got home, she took her bus card out the door, this time with the pot of congee she had made that morning. Again, I followed her. Again, she left with that same forlorn expression. But she didn’t stop. A week passed, and she kept at it, doggedly trekking out to that Rite Aid day after day with enough food to feed the whole block. I don’t know what she expected. Ximena seemed pretty clear the first time. Part of me pitied her hopefulness, but the other part felt an almost vengeful satisfaction: soon enough Mama would realize that she could only move forward in time, not backward, and she would learn to be content with what we had.

Mama was inside for a while the next time. I waited in the car, stomach rumbling, about to give up and drive home when she finally came out. Ximena was beside her. They were laughing about something. Mama shoved Ximena’s shoulder, and Ximena snatched the ice cream from Mama’s hand to take a bite. Where did she get that? I’d never seen her eat those before. Ximena’s sons, or maybe her sister’s sons, followed sullen-faced and gravel-kicking. They headed to the street, looking like a family from behind. Just before they turned out of sight, Mama glanced over her shoulder and I saw a strange expression on her face, as if she had left something important back at that Rite Aid. I started the car and drove off. I don’t know if she saw me.

The next morning, I hid her bus card in my wallet. Then I emptied the box of cash above the fridge for good measure.

Mama was unusually chipper on our way to work. She was reminiscing about that zoo she and Baba took me to as a kid, the one with free admission on Tuesday mornings. She would always run off to score free tickets for the bird show while Baba walked me through the park. “We should go back there,” she said. “I wonder if the peregrine is still around.” I knew she was trying to make me feel better now that she’d won. I told her the peregrine died last year from the bird flu that spread through the enclosures during a cold snap. It spent its entire life in that cage and never got to see the forests five miles away. “Even so,” Mama continued as if she hadn’t heard me, “we should go back.” She was still fixated on that zoo when I picked her up from her probation appointment in the evening, prattling on about the monkeys and the tigers as she went into the apartment. She hunted around in the catch-all dish for her bus card. Her words died in her mouth.

“Have you seen my card?”

“No,” I said. I turned on the television, set to whatever American reality show Mama was watching before work.

“I swear I left it right here.” I heard the clanging of keys, and then a booming thud as the coatrack toppled over.

I watched Mama feel around inside the box atop the fridge. She withdrew her hand with a frown and then headed for the couch. I pinned my eyes to the television as she felt along the seams of the couch cushions, turning up a stay nickel and dime in her search. She asked me to get up. I stood, legs weakened with dread, but she only unearthed a few rusted pennies. Not nearly enough. I plopped back down in relief.

“Do you have money for the bus?” Mama asked me.

I shook my head, unwilling to lie out loud, and turned to the screen in hopes that Mama would finally lay this to rest. But she went through the nightstand in our room and the kitchen drawers, practically trembling in her need to get on that bus.

I turned down the volume. “It’s no use. You’re wasting your time with Ximena. She doesn’t care about you.”

Mama came to the living room. She stood in front of the television, her head barely clearing the top of the screen, her hands clenched at her sides. “Are you serious? Why are you doing this to me? No, don’t look at me like that — like everyone else. Haven’t I suffered enough?”

Mama knew exactly how to make me feel sorry. I was tired of coddling her. “You have to make up for your mistakes,” I insisted. “You can’t just run away to Ximena. She’s not your friend.”

“They weren’t mistakes. I did them for us.” Outside, a car backfired, and Mama turned toward the sound. It was too dark to see her face, but in silhouette, her profile looked bright and cold. “We had nothing. You know, people used to respect my family. I know what it feels like. And then we came here, and no one even looked at us when we took care of their shit-clogged toilets for half price. It was only a little bit off the top at first. You needed a new coat, or books for school…. You were so young, but already you realized you were different from your friends. I couldn’t bear it. What kind of daughter has to throw away her life to take care of her mother?”

The hard plastic of the remote dug into my fist. “Don’t turn this on me. I never asked for anything. I just wanted you around.” Mama was right. I was too young when she made her choices. How could I be blamed for what she did? All at once, I felt like a kid again, desperate for Mama to come home. My voice rose to a trembling scream. “I can’t believe I defended you to everyone. I thought you would never jeopardize this family. But you were guilty. You must’ve always been guilty, your whole life, if you jumped at this as soon as you got the chance.”

“I’m not the guilty one,” Mama protested. “What about our customers, who made Baba work for free if they didn’t like his first repair? They rejoiced in our weakness, all of them. These people will spit you out if you don’t jump first.”

Mama’s words didn’t even register. It was too late for her sob stories. “Do you even feel bad for those people you stole from? You ruined their lives,” I said. “You ruined ours, too.”

“Baba said they got the money back—”

“He was lying!” I cried. “That’s all this family does, lie to each other. I lied to him for years. That you were doing the right thing. That he would see your release. And how did that end? He died with your lies on his lips.”

Behind Mama, a contestant on the television got voted out, and she started crying; huge, wracking sobs rippled through her rawboned frame. Mama crossed to the window with such ferocity that I thought she would jump out. But she settled her hands onto the frame with a world-weary sigh.

My anger could snap Mama in half from here. The words flew out before I remembered why I never told her the truth. “I’m glad he died before you got out. So he wouldn’t see how little you care about us.”

Mama’s entire body crumpled. She couldn't look at me. She just walked out. Even in that moment, I knew that my honesty — or was it cruelty? — had ruined something for good.

 ***

Mama didn’t speak to me for months after. I told myself I didn’t care. I had spent years without her around — what was another couple months on top of that? In all of Baba and Mama’s visions for their life here, the one thing Mama and I accomplished was our persistence, even if it left us alone in the end.

It was hard to pull off in complete silence, but Mama and I managed to get on with our lives: I helped her get her license back, so she could drive herself to her appointments; she got promoted to a human checkout cashier; I started working for Mrs. Lau at the salon for some extra cash. Mama’s need to see Ximena vanished. In one weak moment, I showed her our empty bottle of painkillers to ask her to pick up more from Rite Aid. She wasn’t excited at the thought of going anymore. GET IT YOURSELF, she wrote on the back of an envelope. I’M TIRED. I guess she realized that Ximena didn’t care about her now that Mama had stopped chasing her down. Despite her best efforts, she was turning into a respectable woman, one that Mrs. Lau would seat at the front of the salon. I should’ve been happy. Somehow, though, everything she did seemed wooden, as if she had left all her conviction back in that Rite Aid parking lot.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the day she got arrested. Baba told me that Mama was special because she loved her family more than she feared everyone else. He wished he could do the same. Back then I thought he was deluded by his belief in Mama’s innocence, but I think his opinions wouldn’t have changed even if he knew the truth. When Mama and I went at each other’s throats during that first phone call, he said that this was what we were meant to do, as a family.

I was walking to the bus stop from the salon — Mama had the car that day for an appointment — when I decided to take a detour. It was pleasantly warm that day. The first flowers had forced their way out of the frost-hardened ground, and business was slow enough that Mrs. Lau let me off early. She handed me an envelope on my way out. Your tips for the week, she said, but the envelope felt weighty enough that I suspected she felt bad about Mama’s haircut. I swung the envelope around in my hand as I walked. There was probably enough in here to replace the wipers on the car, or maybe even to repair our dishwasher. Mama would be happy about that one.

On a whim, I detoured by Dollar General to walk past Ximena’s Rite Aid. I was thinking about that corn soup that Ximena made with Mama, and wondering how Ximena got corn in prison, and realizing that whatever she traded for that corn was probably pretty valuable but she must’ve thought it was worth it to comfort Mama with one decent meal. Mama made me film her making it in our kitchen like she was a celebrity chef, and I cheered as her loyal audience. The soup itself was alright, hearty and warming, if a little bland for my tastes. I let Mama finish off nearly the whole pot. She said that when she and Ximena made it that first time, on the floor of the commissary at midnight, she felt as though Baba and I were right there with her, crowding around for a taste.

Ximena’s kids were outside by the dumpsters smashing glass bottles against the pavement. Some white lady got out of her car and yelled at them, and then stormed away with her phone out to call the cops. The boys frantically biked across the lot. They ran inside the Dollar General, their bikes scattered by the accessible parking sign out front.

I followed them to the entrance. Through the window, I saw them wandering through the aisles, five brown boys who made the Dollar General employees instantly stiffen up. I wondered if Ximena had anyone else to help her, like when Mrs. Lau came by every week with some fish stew after Mama first got arrested and everyone still thought she was innocent. One of the boys picked up a pool noodle shaped like a caterpillar. He swung it around, clearly delighted, until his brother came by and smacked him on the back of the head. He reluctantly put it back in the bin.

I turned away. The bus was coming soon, and I wanted to start dinner before Mama got too hungry. Behind the Rite Aid, Ximena crouched against the wall smoking, and she gave me a nod when I walked past. Just a little one. The sun was in her eyes, so she couldn’t see my expression, but she squinted at me as if she knew exactly what sickness was afflicting me. As my bus arrived, I ran back and handed her the envelope of cash. She accepted it with the wariness of someone who expects nothing.

“I’m Kailing’s daughter,” I told her.

“I know,” she said. That was all. Maybe another day she would come to our stoop with a meal of her own, or maybe she’d continue on without us. Today, at least, I hoped she felt my gratitude.

At home, Mama was watching her reality shows. I apologized for coming home without dinner. She didn’t seem surprised that I was finally speaking to her, but maybe she heard something in my tone, because she looked up at me with unusual warmth. I hadn’t noticed her smile lines before. When I asked her how her appointment went, she shrugged without saying anything, but she scooted over on the couch to make room for me.

About the Author

Sammi Chiyao is a Chinese-American writer and Kundiman fellow from Boston, Massachusetts. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. This is her first publication.

About the Artist

Lindy Giusta is a passionate Brooklyn-based queer outsider artist whose practice explores the intersection of storytelling and visual emotive expression. With a background in libraries, and a passion for community building, Lindy brings a unique perspective to their art, creating works that resonate with both personal and collective narratives. Their multidisciplinary approach includes a love for music, writing, and bookish things, with an eye for all things creative, making their work a vibrant addition to the New York art scene. Follow her at @lindydoesart or www.lindygiusta.art.