Out of the Box(18)

“Interesting,” she says. “So do you think the goose you’ve been hiding in your room will sound less asthmatic now?”

“Hey!” I poke her. “Watch it.”

She pokes me back, and we almost get into a tickle fight on the sidewalk halfway through Chinatown. We stop when we come to the vegetable store that spills out onto the sidewalk. No room for tickling among the densely stacked crates of bananas and spiky, green durian.

“It’s good to see you happy,” Jeanette says as we pass the giant luck dragon on the corner. “You’ve had a lot on your shoulders lately.”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

“Just that,” she says. “Your mother leans pretty heavily on you.”

My happiness bubble bursts, and I arrive with a thud in my regular life again. “She’s having a tough time,” I say. “Dad’s not helping out much, and work is really stressful.”

She puts an arm around my shoulder and tries to match her step with mine. We used to walk like this when I was younger. Every now and then, she’d jump or kick, and I would laugh and scramble to imitate her. Today I don’t change my pace at all.

“You know,” she says, “I wish she wouldn’t talk to you so much about her problems.”

I stiffen. “But that’s what families are for, to support each other.”

Jeanette looks at me and presses her lips together. “In many ways, that’s true,” she says. “Especially when everyone in the family is an adult, but right now your parents should be supporting you, not the other way around.”

I slow my steps to fall out of sync. She casts me a questioning look and pulls away.

“They do support me,” I say, “and I don’t see what’s wrong with helping them when they need it. I’m not a child, you know.”

“Well,” she says, “you’re certainly wise beyond your years, but that doesn’t mean you should have to deal with adult problems yet.”

“Is that why you’ve been taking the phone away from me when I’m talking to Mom?” Anger prickles under my skin. “I have the right to talk to my own family, you know.” At least I treat them with respect, I want to add, thinking how Mom must have cried after Jeanette snapped at her about the dentist appointment.

Jeanette looks hurt. “I know you do, Ellie,” she says, “I just don’t think they’re being fair to you.”

“So you’re trying to save me from them?”

Jeanette looks away. We walk in silence for about a block before she says, “I’m not saving you from them so much as from their situation. Ellie, I believe your mom’s struggling with some mental-health issues. And it sounds like your father doesn’t know how to help, and the whole situation affects their judgment as well as their emotions.”

I roll my eyes. “I can’t believe you think that about Mom. She’s stressed out. That’s all,” I tell her. “I should know. I live with her.”

“Don’t forget I know her really well too,” Jeanette says, her tone gentle. “I raised her, and I know what her life was like—all those years with our mom and dad…What makes you think this can’t be a mental-health issue?”

“What makes you think it is?” I counter, my tone not so soft. “I can’t believe you’d call your own sister crazy!”

“I didn’t,” Jeanette says. “That’s your word, not mine. I’m not insulting her, Ellie. I love her too, you know. I’m only saying she’s struggling, and it takes more than stress to make a person cry that much or to fly off the handle over things like burned toast.”

I flinch. “How do you know about that?” I ask.

A few weeks before I came here, Mom was running late for work, so I thought I’d make her breakfast. I got distracted, though, and burned the toast. When she came into the kitchen, she was furious. I apologized, and that made her madder still. “Good god!” she shouted. “Why are you apologizing? Did I raise you to be a doormat?”

She slammed out of the house without her breakfast. I was stunned into silence for most of the morning, but that evening she acted like nothing had happened. I guess she’d forgiven me, but I was careful about apologizing after that. Mom’s got enough on her plate without worrying about having a doormat for a daughter.

“She called me, crying, that night,” Jeanette says now. “She felt awful for how she treated you that day, but that’s not an excuse. It shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

“Like I said, Mom has a lot on her plate,” I say, “and she’s right that sometimes I apologize if I think that’ll make her feel better. I don’t see how any of that means she has ‘mental-health issues.’ She gets up and goes to work every day. She…I mean, she doesn’t just lie around and cry or get mad all the time, not the way you make it sound.”