“No, but we will pay for twenty people’s dinner,” my mom muttered under her breath.
The topic of credit cards was put on hold for the rest of the car ride. When we got back to the motel, my parents thanked Hank for covering the desk.
“Hey, Hank, what do you think of credit cards?” my mom asked.
Hank hopped off the stool and slapped a hand on our credit card machine. “Did you know you get a ton of miles on those things?”
“What are miles?” I asked Hank.
Hank explained that most credit cards reward you for using them to buy stuff by giving you free airplane miles, so you can fly to places and get a vacation for free. I poked my dad. Free vacation. I liked the sound of that.
“Yeah, but only if you spend enough money, which we’re not going to,” my dad replied.
“You never know. I’m applying for one myself,” Hank informed us. He tilted his head and made a dreamy face. “Can you see me frolicking around the Bahamas?”
I giggled. I could totally see that.
Later, I found my mom in the laundry room, except she wasn’t doing any laundry or folding towels. She was bent over on the small stool filling out a bunch of papers.
“Mom, why are you doing that in here?” The laundry room was so damp and sweaty, you could start growing bean sprouts on your nose if you stayed in there too long.
My mom jerked up from the papers, surprised and slightly embarrassed. “You scared me.”
I looked down at the papers. They were math worksheets for her students, hand drawn and hand copied. There was even a line where she had written Name:___________ on the top, like a real teacher. I smiled. Then I noticed another piece of paper beside the stack of math papers. Across the top it read APPLICATION FOR CREDIT CARD.
“Hank had an extra copy,” my mom explained. “It can’t hurt to apply, right?”
“Wow,” I said, impressed. “But what about Dad and not spending money we don’t have?”
My mom gave me a look. “You think with your mom’s eye for numbers, we’re gonna get too carried away?” she asked with a wink.
I smiled again. Fair enough. I pointed at all her math worksheets and asked her how that was going.
“Good,” she said. “Some of the students are getting it. You know who’s really good at math? Lupe.”
“Really?” I asked. I always figured Lupe to be more of an art person. She drew such breathtaking landscapes.
My mom nodded. “But I need to buy some calculators and a real whiteboard if I’m going to teach more complicated stuff,” she said. She glanced down at her credit card application and sighed. “I wish I had fewer rooms to clean and more time to do math.” Her eyes shifted to the mountain of dirty towels next to her. Every day, there was a new tower.
“Would you want to go for your engineering exam or a technician’s exam like Uncle Zhang?” I asked, thinking about what she’d said at dinner.
My mom thought long and hard. “No,” she finally decided. “Because then I wouldn’t be able to see you all the time.”
I smiled at the gray tile floor. I wasn’t sure if she really meant that or if she was just saying that to make me (and her) feel better. But either way, I felt relieved.
Softly, I told my mom about what the girls in the bathroom said yesterday.
“And what do you think it means to have an accent?” my mom asked.
“I don’t know,” I muttered. Something I have now, but if I work really, really hard, maybe someday I’ll get rid of it?
My mom put a hand over my knee. “Want to know what I think?”
I met her eyes hesitantly, half afraid she’d come up with another devastating transportation analogy. Instead she said, “I think an accent is like your very own unique signature of all the places you’ve been. Like stamps in a passport. It has nothing to do with where you’re going.”
I smiled at her in surprise. “Thanks, Mom.”
She smiled too. “Speaking of signatures,” she said, lifting her pen.
And that night, under the hot, roaring laundry machines, my mom signed her very first credit card application.
On Sunday, the governor’s race was in the news again and at school the next day, Mrs. Welch was back at it, talking about Proposition 187. She had a small Wilson for Governor button on the lapel of her blazer, and she was petting it fondly, like it was a furry cat.
“Why do they call it the Save Our State law?” Mrs. Welch asked.
This time, I raised my hand.
When she finally called on me, I said, “Because it’s goatscaping,” and sat up at my desk, proud to have said such a big word. Except I got it wrong.
“Scapegoating,” Mrs. Welch corrected.
A few kids in the back row snickered.
I looked over at Lupe, who mouthed ignore them. But as Mrs. Welch continued talking about Prop 187, I could tell Lupe was having a hard time taking her own advice too.
“It’s a matter of math, folks,” Mrs. Welch said. She started jotting down numbers. “There are four hundred thousand illegal immigrant children in our schools, and it costs us 1.5 billion dollars a year.” She recited the lines from the ad like a parrot.
I shook my head. “But education is a basic human right—” I blurted out.
Mrs. Welch snapped, “How many times have I asked you to raise your hand first, wait to be called on, and then speak?”
I mumbled sorry, then raised my hand.
“What is it?” Mrs. Welch asked.
“How would you even know if a child is an ‘illegal’ immigrant?” I asked her.
“I think it’s pretty obvious.”
“Based on what?” I asked. My face got hot. “Their race?” My classmates’ heads yo-yoed back and forth from me and Mrs. Welch like it was a tennis match. Lupe kept shaking her head at me, like Just drop it! But I couldn’t. “See, that’s why Prop 187 is racist.”
Mrs. Welch stopped stroking her button and pointed her finger at me. “Race has nothing to do with it,” she insisted. “Race isn’t even real!”
Oh my God, I wanted to break a broom! I glanced over at Lupe but her head was crouched so low at her desk, her face was practically the same height as her pencil case. For the next forty-five minutes, as Mrs. Welch proceeded to explain that because race is not a biological fact, racism is not real, I sat stock-still at my desk.
When the lunch bell finally rang, I walked numbly to the cafeteria and barely noticed when Jason ran up, excited.
“My mom’s going to pick us up after school on Friday,” he said. “We can hang out and have dinner at my house!”
I put my free school pizza down. “I don’t know about dinner.…” I said. The thought of dining with Mr. Yao was about as appealing as licking the inside of a toilet bowl.
I guess Jason could tell what I was thinking, because he said, “Oh, c’mon, my dad’s not even going to be there. He’s been working a lot lately.” When I still didn’t say anything, he added quickly, “Fine, you don’t have to stay for dinner. But I’m going to prepare it anyway.”
“You mean your housekeeper’s going to prepare it,” Lupe corrected.