The sunset is smeared with a molten drip. An angry blush—it burns for
minutes, and then you can see the dry crust of the moon.

California tastes like crusty playground blood, dirt iron on your tongue.
The mornings are redwood–stained and smoky and salty, like school
trips to Lake Arrowhead, like family weekends in La Jolla. From everywhere,
you can see the mountains heaving with purple or orange, depending on the
time of day.

The hours eke by. Traffic is slow here, time is slower. Not like New York
with its subways and people and analog clocks on buildings that click
onward by the millisecond. No, Los Angeles sighs. There’s extra gravity, an
extra strength you learn to pull your hair up, the extra weight of the
windshield wipers to scrape your car clean.

Squint at the gleam of the sun on the cars stacked in front on the freeway,
black and glossy like beetles. Focus on how the Hyundai Sonata winks to
signal a left turn. Get in the leftmost lane, take the 60 West a few miles
to the 57 South. To Pomona. What is there in Pomona? Mostly the DMV,
honestly. And the high school I had to take my SAT’s in because my school
didn’t test AP US History. And the house that mom bought post-divorce, the
more permanent one after we moved out of the two bedroom, one bathroom
apartment that overlooked the Pomona bone-dry hills. Zoom out. Get off at
the Diamond Bar exit.

Pass the safety-light red Korean signs, pass the blown-up bus stop murals
of local realtors with skin burry from gratuitous misuse of Photoshop. No
one uses the bus stops anyway, everyone owns very sensible Sudans in
neutral tones. I remember my house, the dusty red and white Colonial with
bamboo shoots lining the brick wall. My dad planted it, maybe post-divorce,
and laughed in his throaty way, when the plant nearly pierced through our
railing. The rest of the house was my mother’s blueprint. For a few days, we lived in the Quality Inn across
from my elementary school. I remember taking a piece toast streaked with
grape jam (American breakfast!) before they shuttled me off to school.

I loved elementary school. I remember the big oak tree by the fence, the
one where we used our hands to shovel a tunnel out of the school, to China,
we would say. Or at least to the other side of the fence. But we never
really wanted to leave, not when we could comb the grass for lady bugs or
act like the fairies from our favorite books. My rotating cast of best
friends: first Alexis, then Hana, and finally (and still) Michelle. We had
matching rolling backpacks—small suitcases with a handle jutting out, in
matching salmon and turquoise argyle—that we were small enough to ferry
each other on. Remember my thighs scudding against asphalt, sun blanching
the ashy honeycombs on my legs.

Jake, the boy I loved, and the way his shins were curved like commas. He
and John Park—who just opened a Korean restaurant with his mom in La
Mirada, good for him—used to chase me and Michelle on the fields. Our
Skechers would glide on the dusty, dried up soil. Ashley, who my parents
said I couldn’t play with anymore because her brother called me a chink
(even though, sometimes, we would still pluck ladybugs out of the
playground weeds together). Sara, who everyone knew was the prettiest girl
in the fifth grade. She wore plastic glasses shaped like rectangles, so I
threw out my metal wired ovals. My face would flush whenever I tried to
talk to her. There was a rumor that she and Jayden had kissed behind the
slide once—I tried to imagine it, their sneakers crunching on woodchips,
the plasticine glow of the slide. Masterminded so that the teacher on duty
wouldn’t see them.

My old room, cast in the yellow of my butterfly nightlight. Baby blue
walls, uneven. Handmade and childlike. The ceiling still has patches of
white, which I used to dream were clouds. A mosquito net that hung over my
bed like a fabricked haze. I begged for that bed, a milk-white twin sized
wonder with flowers stamped on and spires on each leg. I never really slept
on it—I would wake up and cower in my parents’ bedroom, snug between them
and shielded from spirits. (I still think my house might be a little bit
haunted.) And the pool—every house in suburban, middle-class California
has a pool. I told my parents that the shadows in the deep end were the
ghosts of sharks and whales. My mom was always in China, working, and I
thought my dad was overbearing. I scaled the big oak tree in our backyard
without supervision, my only-child retaliation. I wanted a sibling, so my
parents bought me a crew of stuffed animals. They all had names, and they
were all my friends.

My parents paid for Chinese summer school and afterschool, where
upper middle-class Chinese parents send their kids so they can work longer
hours. I played handball with the other kids; the teachers stocked
bandaids because of how much we bled. We pronounced Chinese syllables with
profound effort, our American accents skidding across the different tones.

I stared at the fish whenever my dad took me to 99 Ranch Market. No Vons,
no Pavillions, no white grocery store—instead, the dingy, crowded Asian
supermarket that buzzed like a Shanghainese night market. The crabs were
stacked in a pile at the bottoms of their tanks, their claws bound
together. The fish heads retailed at only $.99 each, eyes glassy and
accusing. There was no hope for the ones in the tanks, either. Their fins
only twitched when a gloved hand dove into the tank. A sort of purgatory.