It might be if the lady is missing her left ear and has cotton leaking out of her armpits, I reply. With her blond curls and tiny mouth, she actually looks the part. Can’t say I blame her.Ī suitcase is no kind of home for a lady! Emmy exclaims, fanning herself like a southern belle. I guess she just got comfortable in there, I muse. Of course, that was before I knew about Goodwill. I liked imagining them finding new families and kids to play with. I can still remember Wainwright explaining to nine-year-old me that they’d gone to foster care, too. My grammy bought me many more-Doggy the Dog, Findango, Corduroy-If-You-Please, and Sullen Moomelstein, to name a few. Fancypaws McKittenfluff, my sole remaining stuffed animal from a childhood menagerie. I know! You haven’t even taken out Fancypaws!
Two weeks back and I haven’t emptied my suitcase yet. You going to the art course with me this morning? she mumbles into Minnie’s ear. I just didn’t stick.Įmmy finally tosses the tennis ball away and curls around her Minnie Mouse pillow. A couple of those did involve legal issues on my end, but the others? Finances, leases running out-heck, one of my families got deported two weeks after I moved in.
Sometimes things don’t work out, and things just didn’t work out for me.
It’s not like I have any major horror stories to tell-nobody hit me, or starved me, or touched me. I’ve been with five-count ’em, five-families in five years since Grammy died, and I’ve spent as much time in the Center as I have in homes. I seem to be covered in nail polish remover or something. The lucky kids stick to their foster families. Tossing an afghan around my shoulders for good measure, I sidle up to Emmy’s bed. Mid-October and it’s already thirty degrees outside, every bit of that cold happily taking up residence in our floor. My toes instantly seek my slippers, and I cram my feet in as quickly as possible. Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I drop down to the concrete. Stay here as long as I have, and it’ll be no sweat. I’ll get fostered again before I get there, Nicki. I catch both and glance apologetically at Emmy. God, Nicki … slow down! How am I supposed to do that? I can’t even keep the ball going. There’s something calming about the thwackathwackathwacka of the balls off the ceiling, the dance my hands do as I throw faster and faster, until I can’t hardly see my fingers anymore. I’m digging my trenches just a little deeper, carving my roads a little farther, and when I manage to break off a bigger chunk, I get new lakes and hills. Well, my hands and a couple of tennis balls.Īs I work, pieces of plaster rain on me, but I don’t care. It’s a slow process, though, since I use only my hands. I’ve got the mountains and valleys, an ocean, and continents. Readers familiar with Yang's lauded "American Born Chinese" may be disappointed to find that Yang does not provide the art for this comic, but Thien Pham's simple, loose watercolor illustrations bring a light touch to this tale about expectations, realizing dreams then finding them wanting, and learning not to let parental expectations define your life - neither as a constraint or an excuse. Faced with their increasing control, and his increasing uncertainty about his "destiny" and how much he should let his father's ghost control him, Dennis must come to terms with his fathers regrets and his own.Yang creates a complex relationship between Dennis and his parents unlike many "controlling parent" stories, this tale refuses to cast them as mere obstacles to the protagonist's happiness. But he has to give up video games to do it. They're willing to do anything to help Dennis along this path, from laundry and cooking to threatening professors to get him reenrolled in college. They tell him he has an important destiny - as a gastroenterologist. When all hope for making his parents proud seems lost, four cartoonish angels, set to him by his father, appear to Dennis. On the eve of his father's death, he buys his first video game console the ensuing spiral turns hims from academic star to college dropout. Dennis Ouyang dreams in pixels, even if the games that inspire those dreams remain out of reach.
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