Sandbox by Caroline Shi (16, New York)

The playground in front of the church my summer camp is held in has a small sandbox near the back, plastic buckets and castle molds strewn across the surface. There is a layer of dark sand under the top layer that we are all fascinated by and pile high into our buckets alongside mounds of brown sand to form ‘marble cakes.’ We speak in broken English and Chinese because that’s all we can afford, waiting for our parents’ minivans to pick us up in the afternoon.

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On the weekends, my parents take me to the supermarket off the side of the main road that takes three right turns to get to. Inside smells like the crabs and fish swimming in the tanks by the vegetables, like the meat lined up all nice and pretty on the ice counters to the left. Inside is loud butchers and cashiers, louder advertisements for cheap cherries. Inside is boxes of mooncakes lined up at the center of the store, a preemptive celebration. There is no room for quiet murmurs of Go Back To Where You Came From here. This is nothing like the grocery stores my classmates go to.

During class, I stare out the window like the protagonists of the books I have been reading. My teacher says something funny, and everyone laughs. At home, I clip a clothespin on my nose and laugh the way they would. I go to the mall and ask for directions the way they would. I answer the question with a laugh and a joke the way they would.

Where are you really from?

The novelty of making new friends wears off when they pull their eyes taut, bow and arrow directed at me. When I catch their poorly absconded giggles about my grandparents, twice as sharp as normal. Mom asks me about them, and I tell her that she must have misheard me. 

We take a road trip at the start of every summer, a tradition of sorts. The sun sprints after us, always too slow, always melting behind trees when we escape. We rent hotel rooms in Holiday Inns across the east coast, stealing packets of half-and-half and drinking them like milk. We spend nights apologizing to the sun and conversing with the moon, giddy with anticipation for midnight adventures. 

In the morning, I overhear shouts and screams, words thrown around like money, money being withheld like words. I stay in my room for most of the day, the wall my new source of company. Mom tells me marriage is a transaction. That night, I cry into the face of my palms as fireworks go off, the backs of my thighs sweaty and sticky from the warm licks of summer.

I dream of sleepovers and painting my nails with girls in my grade. When I wake up, I attend a birthday party I was invited to at a nearby salon. The lady doing my nails complains about the dirt on my feet. Nobody knows this but me. Birthday girl pays in Ching Chong Chinks and Ling Lings and other niceties. We go to a pizzeria for dinner afterward, where we each pay five dollars for our portions. 

We move three times throughout my life. The closest sandbox is twenty-five miles away and six inches deep. Sometimes, I sit in the shower and scoop water into my lap, teardrops pooling to form my very own marble cake.

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