1Serene
MOM OPENS FORTUNE cookies from the only Chinese restaurant in town—Lucky Szechwan—one after another, until she gets the fortune she wants.
“Look, Serene! This one says ‘A pleasant surprise is in store for you!’” Mom smiles. She crumples up all the bad ones and adds the lucky one to her collection of good fortunes, housed in a glass jewelry box. “Better be true—or the investors will have my head on a clothes hanger!”
I roll my eyes. I wish Mom would stop worrying about the investors and just soak this in. It’s New York Fashion Week! Her big moment. She’s been working so hard, staying up late for months sewing her couture pieces. This time next week, all of New York’s elite fashionistas will be oohing and aahing over her creations. I’m only an intern, and even I can tell she’s outdone herself.
“You’re going to do great, Mom,” I tell her. I reach for the copy of Mom’s fashion week catalog and trace my finger over her name: LILY LEE. Someday I want to have my own label like my mom, except I won’t have my creativity choked by a bunch of money-grubbing investors. And it’ll be my real last name on the tag, Li.
Mom says Lee looks better. More American. So that’s what she goes by professionally.
“It’s a name white people could have,” Mom had explained when I was little.
“But we’re not white.”
“They don’t know that. All they see is the label.”
It had been Julien’s idea, I’m sure. Julien Pierre, Mom’s first angel investor, and the person she credits with opening the door for her in high fashion, has many opinions. His family started a famous line of handbags back in the day, which then got bought out by LVMH, leaving Julien and his siblings with twenty million dollars each. His brother and sisters took the money and snorted it, drank it, and Instagrammed it. But Julien, he was smart. He invested in my mom.
And now he’s the chairman of her board and a constant hemorrhoid in her ass. It’d been his “suggestion” that Mom use Lee, just as it’d been his suggestion that Mom start getting highlights and honey-brown eye contacts. Lighten, lighten, lighten. It was all part of his
rebranding of Mom—an all-American designer for all Americans—which started when I was twelve and never stopped.
I guess you can never be too American.
“Have you decided what you’re going to wear when you come out after the show?” I ask.
Mom purses her lips, thinking, as she serves the beef noodles from the takeout container. Beef noodles are her favorite, but she suddenly wrinkles her nose. Lately, she hasn’t been eating as much—I think it’s the stress of prepping for New York Fashion Week. Instead, she takes out a piece of ginger from the fridge and dices it up fine. Mom’s always adding extra ginger to everything. And I’m always taking it out, hoping my friends and my boyfriend, Cameron, don’t smell it on me later.
Guess Mom’s not the only one trying to become more American.
“You should wear that silk high-neck piece we designed,” I suggest. The other day in the office, my mom and I were messing around with silk. She was trying to teach me how to sew the delicate threads, and we ended up designing this stunning dress, cinched at the neck, made of flowing satin that draped all the way to the floor.
“I liked that too. But it looks too much like a Chinese qipao,” Mom says, then sighs. “You know what they would say if they saw me photographed in Vogue wearing that.”
I look down. “It’s not all about the investors, you know. . . .”
Mom puts her chopsticks down and reaches out a hand.
“We all have to make compromises if we want to make it big mainstream,” she says. “That’s how this works. Julien and the others, they know mainstream. That’s why they’re here.”
I frown. And we don’t? Because we’re Chinese? I stare down at my own pieces of discarded ginger sitting next to my noodles.
Mom puts her hands on my cheeks and looks into my eyes.
“Hey. We’ve made it. We’re here. We got in.”
I smile back at my badass, trailblazing mom, a beacon of hope for all Asian American girls who dream of doing something different. Even if she can’t use her real Asian last name.
That night, I add Mom’s New York Fashion Week catalog to my collection. It’s not a fashion collection, but a collection of reasons why my dad shouldn’t have deserted us. He split when I was still in my mom’s belly, and she brought me with her swollen feet to America, where she didn’t know a soul. I imagine him out there, reading of Mom’s success, his regret painful. I hope it’s excruciating. Which is why every time something good happens to us, I add it to my box. It’s filled with Honor Roll certificates, Excellence for Artwork awards, and every single VIP invitation to Mom’s fashion shows.
I just wish I knew where to send it to.
I picture my dad, walking around in Beijing, opening the box and going daaammmn. Ruing his decision not to chase after my mom, not to chase after me. I wonder, if he knew the box
would be so big, would he still have left us?
It makes me mad that I’ll never know (my mom doesn’t know how to get in touch with him—nor does she ever want to). And he’s never once tried emailing her, even though she is literally the most googleable person I know.
Most of all, it makes me mad that I’ll never know what’s in his box.
On Saturday, I drop Mom off at LAX. She has three full suitcases stuffed with clothes and two purses strapped to her body—and this does not include pieces from the collection, which have already been FedExed. These are her personal clothes.
I had stayed up late with her, helping her categorize and label her outfits, putting pieces together for cocktail party, interview, and major press. New York Fashion Week is so crazy and hectic, there’s no time to decide anything. So I preplanned, prelabeled, and presorted.
“What am I gonna do without you for a week?” Mom kisses me as I put the suitcases onto the luggage cart. “You sure you don’t wanna come?”
“I have a test for AP French,” I remind her. I’m taking French as my foreign language. I had wanted to take Chinese, given I can barely speak it and don’t know a single character other than my name, but Mom had felt it was more important for me to know the language of the great fashion houses.
Marcia, her personal assistant, runs up to us. Behind her, Julien is pulling up in his Porsche. He dumps his luggage by the first-class curbside check-in, doesn’t even bother to put it on the scale.
“Oh good, you’re here, we gotta go! Harper’s Bazaar called—they want an interview as soon as we land,” Marcia says.
“Harper’s Bazaar! That’s huge!” I squeal.
Julien walks over, overhearing, and adds, “It’s not Vogue, but . . .”
I frown at him. He’s always doing that, reminding Mom of some higher goal, as though what she’s currently achieving is not good enough. Like she needs reminding. He knows how long Mom’s been chasing the Vogue dream. It’s the holy grail for fashion designers. So far, they’ve featured a few of her dresses and mentioned her name once or twice but never done a full-blown interview.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” I assure her. “After the show, Vogue will come knocking—just watch.”
Mom flashes me a nervous smile as she turns to her senior designers. As is customary for New York Fashion Week, the entire senior design team is going, leaving the junior designers and me to hold down the fort (cue wearing flip-flops to work!). Jonathan, one of the senior designers, walks over.
“Oh, Serene,” Jonathan says, “can you do me a favor while I’m gone? It’s really important.”
“Absolutely!” I unlock my iPhone to take notes. “What do you need?”
I tiptoe on my feet, hoping to be trusted with an important email that needs to be sent. Or a meeting with a buyer that needs to be scheduled asap. Or a dress that needs to be FedExed—
“On my desk, next to my rulers and notebooks and fabrics”—he lowers his voice—“is a box of chocolates. Dark chocolate almonds. Can you put it away so no one eats it while I’m gone?”
Oh.
“Sure thing,” I say, trying to wipe the disappointment off my face. I wish the senior designers would see me as more than just a coffee order taker. I’ve been interning now at the company for months! I can handle more than chocolate lockups. I want to be trusted with real responsibilities—how else can I learn the ropes?
But I remind myself I’m lucky to have this job . . . considering. Everyone in the company still remembers what happened last year. It’s going to take people time to forget. But they will. I just have to keep proving myself to them.
You’ll get there, I tell myself.
When the last of Mom’s bags have been checked in, Mom turns to me.
“You gonna be OK?” she asks, suddenly a little misty-eyed. She always tears up when she’s leaving me. “Can’t I bribe you to come? A little New York pizza?”
“I’ll be fine,” I assure Mom. She hugs me hard. “Break a leg. I’ll be watching on Twitter!”
Julien reminds me as he walks away, “But don’t be tweeting anything. And stay away from One Oak.”
I flush at the not-so-subtle reminder of that horrible night. My phone dings as I shake my head—never gonna happen again—and I wave. It’s Cameron, my boyfriend.
Hey, Luke and I are having a debate. Settle this for us—what’s the plural of penis? Is it peni???
I laugh out loud as I walk to the parking lot.
Are u seriously asking me?? 
I text. It’s penises u dope.
R u sure? What about octopi? 
I don’t have time to get into an octopus/penis debate with Cameron, so I text back At the airport. Just dropped off my mom. I hop back into my car.
Why?
Hello, does he not remember anything I say? My mom’s going to New York, remember? She’s showing at New York Fashion Week.
I attach links to Mom’s show but Cameron’s more interested in something else.
So you have the whole house to yourself?? 
I blush. Even though we’ve been talking about it forever, we still haven’t done it. My friends keep telling me to seal the deal already. “You’re not
Cameron.” Which is probably true. Cameron is very hot. As in perfect body at the beach and multiple girls looking like they’re going to stab me hot.
Still, I wonder if there should be a more compelling reason to have sex with someone than “probably can’t get someone hotter.” I remind myself that Cameron is fine. I’m seventeen. Maybe biological attraction is the only reason I’ll get at this stage in my life.
Maybe. 
I text back.
going to get hotter than
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