"Homecoming" - A Short Snippet

Based on the commission, "Fluff (Xiao with Jean's family for lunar new year)."

You've never liked Chinese New Year. 

You've associated it with stiff clothes, good manners, your dad's business associates and their stepford wives. The best part of the day, if you're being entirely honest, is sneaking back to your bedroom, cracking open a window, and smoking a joint with your head half-out so the smell doesn't stick to your clothes.  

Every year, unfailingly, you resist the urge to slip into the kitchen - surround yourself with the smell of fried dumplings and braised meat, the quick staccato of Cantonese among the catering staff - and instead head back to your place in the dining room. You know you're romanticizing the kitchen, the idea of the workers going home to their extended families (always happy families, in your imagination) and relaxing, the clink of Tsingtao beers being popped open while aunties gossip and uncles smoke and older cousins exchange side-ways glances while younger cousins duck beneath the skirts of a restaurant tablecloth giggling - and, yeah, you're pretty sure this image of the Chinese family, of the Chinese holiday, is as stereotypical and problematic as all hell - but, it's nice to pretend. Instead of being where you actually are. 

This year, though, is different. This year you aren't in New York, you aren't in your family's Park Avenue townhouse, you're wearing a fucking sweater and jeans (a disownable sin, in your father's eyes, you're sure) and (God-forbid) helping to make the food, your fingers clumsily folding the dough into a dumpling-shape while Jean's mom gently gives you pointers. You hear Jean exclaim next to you as they finish making the "world's smallest dumpling" - the size of the pad of their pinky - and you peek over to see Jean's dad's lower it good-naturedly into the pot, careful that it doesn't get swept away. 

It makes you want to cry - the domesticity of it. You find yourself blinking hard, looking up briefly at the ceiling.

Later into the night, much, much later, you thank them - Jean, and his mom, and his dad - for having you over. That you know you're not family - but here, Jean's mom interrupts you and says, any friend of Jean's is our family, and it's so fucking Hallmark you want to curl up and die because you don't think you can live like this, knowing that families like this actually exist and that they would willingly invite you - fucked-up, previously drugged-up you - to join them. 

Instead, you watch as Jean's mom's arms open into a hug and you hug her back tight, fiercely - unable to stop yourself from inhaling the smell of her cardigan, scratchy against your cheek, the faintest hint of mothballs. And you stick out a hand to give Jean's dad a proper handshake, and he does but also pats you on the back like you're a good kid in that awkward, middle-aged dad way and Lord - this family is fucking testing your ability to not cry (weep, sob) in public. 

By the time you're back in your own apartment (somehow you made it without a single tear escaping), you find yourself lying on your bed, focusing on your breathing, trying to ignore the tightness in your chest, an unfamiliar crush in your sternum that, if you didn't know what an actual heart attack should feel like, you'd be pretty fucking certain you were having a heart attack. 

So, you don't call 911. 

You pull up your phone, scroll down to the number you want. 

The phone rings once, twice, three times - and you consider hanging up, but then.

Your sister's voice. God, how long has it been? You were allies once. A long time ago. Friends. 

"Xiao?" she says. 

"Hey, sis," you say. "Xin nian kuai le."