“I got a voicemail from Samuel Lo today.” My mom stood behind the kitchen counter, arms crossed tightly, foot tapping a menacing rhythm, awaiting my arrival home from school on an unremarkable Wednesday afternoon. Her voice strained to stay level. “He said he wants to meet to talk about you. Any ideas what this is about?”

​

Oh fuck. All moisture evaporated from my mouth. “Um – no? No, not really.” I directed my eyes to the dark brown tiles beneath her red plastic slippers. Why, Mr. Lo? Why would you call her?

​​

* * *

​

My guidance counselor was a kind man with an enormous heart, whom I turned to far more for emotional than academic support. Students at my public high school were assigned to one of the five guidance counselors alphabetically by last name. Because my brother and I happened to share the same last name, Mr. Lo was also Jamie’s counselor. He helped my older brother navigate through IEPs, summer school to catch up on missed coursework, strategies to accrue enough credits to graduate – albeit a year behind his peers. The complexity of Jamie’s medical situation called for frequent meetings with my mother. During these encounters, my mom would always break down, wracked by anguished sobs as she agonized over her son's plight. She would sometimes mention that she worried all this might be hard for me, too.

​

“Your mom really cares about you, Jackie,” Mr. Lo would always assure me. “She’s just really stressed about your brother’s health. She’s trying her best.” He only saw one side of my mom: the overwhelmed single parent struggling tenaciously to provide for her children, the enormity of her care evident in the ferocity of her tears. Despite everything I told him, he still had faith in my mother. So he called her, hoping to arrange a civil convening between rational, benevolent adults. ​

​

* * *

​

My mother snorted. “You know what it’s about. You have to tell me so I can prepare myself.”

​

“Really, I – I don’t know,” I stuttered.

​

“Yes, you do.” Her voice began to rise in pitch and volume.

​

“Okay," I conceded meekly. "I, uh – I might have a hypothesis." Sticky sweat began to mat the back of my neck. “Um, a couple days ago I talked with Ms. Han,” I admitted, voice wobbling. “And maybe she went to Mr. Lo?”

​

“Talked about what?”

​

“She just – noticed I’ve been kinda stressed lately.”

​

Her eyes narrowed. “About…what?”

​

“Um..." My mind scrambled to devise an escape plan. "Just…everything.”

​

“And? What did you tell her?” she hissed, losing patience.

​

I picked furiously at the nail of my right thumb. “I don’t know. I don’t really remember.”

​

* * *

​

Ms. Han was the school’s woo-woo, go-with-the flow, unleash-your-inner-spirit-warrior art teacher. She was unapologetically kooky, and I loved her for it. A few days earlier in class, she had pulled me aside into her office in the back of the art room, spotting the distress on my face like a highway billboard.

​

“I sense that there’s a source of negative energy in your life that’s tying you down,” Ms. Han declared, as if performing a tarot reading. “You need to get away from that and remember the positivity you were born with.”

​

I pasted on a smile, attempting to preemptively seal the hatch, but it was no use. The waterworks erupted, leaking and leaking.

​

“You need to harness those emotions you’re feeling to create art,” she insisted, after I briefly explained my troubles. “To get you through.”

​

“But how?” I asked, sniffling. “How do I translate these – these messy feelings – into like, something tangible?”

​

“Just put your brush to the canvas,” Ms. Han shrugged, handing me another tissue. “Sorry, but it’s really just simple as that.”

​

* * *

​

“Of course you remember what you said.” My mom gripped the edge of the kitchen counter, vitriol punctuating each syllable she forced through gritted teeth. “I need you to tell me.”

​

“I – um, I just told her...I told her that our relationship wasn’t going so well.”

​

“And?”

​

“And what?” I mumbled, picking my nails with even more fervor.

​

“What did you say to her?”

​

My voice weakened to a whisper. “I – I don’t know.”

​

“Tell me!” she exploded, quivering with rage. “I will find out either way. Either you tell me now, or I find out tomorrow when I meet with Samuel Lo.”

​

Refusing to look up, I tried to swallow the dense, sticky lump of stifled panic lodged in my throat. How interesting. There's a bulge in that tile. That one over there is kinda discolored. This one has a dent in it. Dang. That dent is ugly.

​

“I bet you trusted Ms. Han as a confidant,” she sneered. “Do you feel betrayed? Did you expect it to come back to me?”

​

I remained mute.

​

Suddenly morphing into a disturbing calm, my mom opened her arms in an offered embrace. I stood there paralyzed, arms glued to sides, a hapless victim of Medusa. She wrapped herself tightly around me, like a boa constrictor preparing to crush its prey. An electric shudder jolted down the lightning rod of my spine.

​

“When you spill to other people outside the family,” she cooed into my ear, “you damage your own social standing. It makes people lose respect for you. It makes you seem immature and weak. It makes people think you have no family behind you for support, which will make them think lowly of you. It makes people think you’re crumbling, and no one wants to be around someone who’s crumbling.” 

​

I gnawed at my lower lip with forceful concentration.

​

Stroking my hair, she murmured, “I bet you regret talking to Ms. Han now. Did talking to Ms. Han make you happy?”

​

“...N-no,” I answered meekly. Unable to contain myself, I erupted into heaving sobs.

​

A look of disgust twisted her features. “Can you just pretend that you love me and let me comfort you?”

​

“It’s the other way around,” I sobbed. “You don’t love me.”

​

“I LOVE YOU BUT YOU WON'T LET ME!” she shrieked, wildly.

​

“No you fucking don't!” Abject desperation overrode my fear of talking back.

​

“FINE! I HATE YOU! WHAT DO YOU FUCKING WANT?”

​

Blinded by tears, I choked, “I just want you to love me.”

​

An ugly silence howled.

​

Please.​

​

She glared at me as I glared at the floor, both of us breathing heavily, tremulous and loud.

​

“You won’t let me love you,” she accused, regaining composure. “See?” She gestured toward my petrified posture. "I’m trying to comfort you, but you’re pushing me away with your body.”

​

I wanted to throw up. “You’re not comforting me.”

​

She jerked away, seething. “Do you expect me to say, ‘you did nothing wrong, don’t worry, everything you do is right, all of your unhappiness in life is caused by your mother?’”

​

I said nothing.

​

“If I’m not comforting you, then what am I doing? Huh?”

​

“You’re threatening me.”

She stormed away, doorframe rattling in her wake.