Prologue
This is a mostly happy story. It’s important for you to know this because if there’s anything I hate the most, it’s a book that makes your emotions feel like a child’s overloved comfort toy being flung around a washing machine. The ones where it seems like the story’s all beautiful and nothing hurts, until someone kicks the bucket at the end, tearing a hole in your belly and removing organs that you didn’t know existed. I’d rather know ahead of time whether to bring tissues. It’s just better for your heart, you know?
I say this to you because I want you to be reassured. I want you to know so when the story ends with me staring at a pill bottle, wrestling with what to do with it, you’re prepared.
It’ll all be okay.
I promise.
This Is My Brain on Bankruptcy
JOCELYN
Irony: The year I decide that central New York isn’t a total dump after all, my dad finally admits that it was a mistake to move here.
It’s one of the rare days that my whole family gets to spend together. Usually my parents trade off running the register downstairs in the restaurant, because they’re incapable of trusting anyone else to do it, but when our water main breaks in the middle of the lunch rush, we can’t get a plumber to come in until dinnertime.
My brother and I greet the news like it’s a snow day. Family meal! Amah, our grandma, won’t be doing prep work, so she can help Alan with his algebra! We won’t need to help with cleanup after we’ve finished our homework, so maybe I’ll finally have time to work on the screenplay I’m writing with Priya!
The excitement dims pretty quickly, though, when I see that my mom’s almost at the point of tears when she writes the CLOSE FOR REPAIR sign that I edit to read CLOSED FOR REPAIRS.
I start to get really worried when I watch my dad pour Pepto-Bismol for his dinner instead of his usual chrysanthemum tea, so I pay more attention than usual to the heated conversation my parents have in their bedroom. I basically speak Mandarin at the third-grade level, never really having applied myself at the Mohawk Valley Chinese Association’s weekly language school, but even I can pick out the words “expensive” and “no money” and “back to New York City.”
After a long phone call, my dad finally sits down at the dinner table. It’s littered with the usual hodgepodge of microwaved kitchen leftovers. The moo shu pork looks particularly deflated.
My mom looks at him expectantly, almost hopefully. He nods and looks at the rest of us. Amah and I look at him, but my brother is too busy stuffing his face with a day-old egg roll to actually notice that my dad’s joined us.
“Alan,” my dad says sharply. He waits for Alan’s five-second attention span to focus before he says, “Second Uncle says manager at Queens branch of his restaurant go back to China. May be time to go back to the city.”
The silence after his announcement is suffocating, like someone’s hoovered away all the life in the room. Living over a restaurant, you get used to a constant soundtrack of activity underlying your life. There’s always the sound of chopping, or the clank of a wok banging against a stove, or someone shouting or cursing in Chinese.
My amah is the first one to make a sound. It’s a soft, noncommittal hum. Two notes, questioning, neither approving nor disapproving.
Alan, still chewing, manages only a shrug and a “Huh,” which makes no sense because he’s the one who’s spent the majority of his life here.
So it’s up to me to say loudly, “No.” Because we can’t move. Not now, after I’ve found an actual bubble tea place in this godforsaken backwater. Not now, when I’ve finally got a chance to take a film class at the local college. Not now, when I’ve painstakingly identified a group of people I can tolerate as friends, and even found a best friend.
My mom’s looking down at her hands, and my dad’s glaring at me, so I elaborate. “Dad, please say you’re kidding. I’ve literally spent the last six years of my life complaining about moving to central New York, and you want to give up the restaurant now?”
My dad bristles at my tone (I swear, there are actual hairs at the crown of his head that stick up when he’s agitated). Alan’s eyes dart back and forth between my dad and me. With his