From the writer of Sweet Spot, comes the sequel of two familiar characters you already saw coming.
Harper Davis has many titles: marketing connoisseur, almost-lawyer, disappointment to parents, and most importantly: liar. Big. Fat. Liar. But what el...
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I've never had a birthday party.
Even though I was just a kid at first and school wasn't all that serious, my education was always important to my mother. Kindergarten was practically Harvard for her and my four year old self would go above and beyond in art projects and letter tracing so I could be the best in class.
That only intensified the older I got and the more serious my education actually became, the more my mother didn't want to me have any distractions.
Friends are a distraction, Harper. Your classmates don't work as hard as we do and they'll only get you in trouble.
Why would you need a birthday party, Harper? I'll buy you cupcakes to take to school if you're going to make a fuss. Besides, we have a test tomorrow to study for.
Not having friends isn't something to cry about, Harper. They come and go but your education is forever. You'll thank me one day.
Now that I'm older I understand my mother was using me to make up for her mistakes. If I strip away the personal feelings I can admit that, yes, my parents having me at eighteen was a mistake on their part.
Getting pregnant out of wedlock right after high school might be normalized in some cultures, but it's almost always going to be taboo and shameful in an Asian family. I only have one Asian parent and that alone was enough to scare me away from sex until I graduated university because I was paranoid about getting pregnant. To imagine my mother failing to do so, who came from a traditional family brought up in China, with fiercely traditional Asian parents, makes me scared for her.
She doesn't talk about it but I can only imagine the fights that took place, the years of silence that probably followed when she up and left China for an American boy to have a a baby.
In fact, Wài Gōng still hadn't forgiven her by the time he died. Wài Pó calls sometimes but the conversations are short and strained. I never saw either of them in my parents' wedding pictures either. It makes me feel genuinely bad for my mother. Helps me see the human in her and sympathize for her hurt.
But being older also means I've passed the age she once was when she made these choices. While I can understands she was scared and alone, while I can recognize that I'll never know what that's like, I also know that my own childhood was taken away too because of her trauma.
I might not have experienced the same hardships as my mother but her trauma brought unnecessary hardships to my life, hardships that she doesn't even realize exist because she isn't willing to acknowledge she caused them.
It causes a weird relationship that's equal parts love and equal parts resentment. She sacrificed her whole life for me and provided me with a comfortable lifestyle, but she wasn't ready to be a parent and I deserved to have one.
Every child deserves a parent and it hurts when they fail to be one, even if you love them for trying.
So, naturally, I feel alienated and out of place as I approach the black oak door and ring the doorbell for my first birthday party. The sight of all the cars parked along the driveway and against the sidewalk are nerve-wracking enough, even if it's just for a bunch of teenagers. I didn't do well with teens as a teen myself so I can only imagine the disaster that will take place today.
