Her Own Happiness, page 4
“I earned my degree in December, and they’re mailing it out here. In a normal year I would walk in May,” Maya started again. She saw her father’s eyes brighten. “It’s social work with a minor in deaf studies. If the Ohana Center was still standing, I would have slid right into an assistant director position, but . . .” She scrubbed her face with a hand. “I need a new plan, but I’m tired just thinking about it.”
Maya groaned internally. What she really needed was a career fairy to make her Hawai‘i résumé relevant—maybe even impressive—here. Her BA in social work felt about as useless as a third leg back in Maryland. You needed a bachelor’s to answer phones in most places out here.
The DC metro area was one of the most educated parts of the country. Great news for bookstores and theaters, but bad news if you weren’t interested, at all, in pursuing a master’s. Maya was pretty sure she didn’t want to do that. In fact, all she knew was what she didn’t want to do: no nursing homes, no CPS, no hospitals. She’d heard too many disheartening stories about bureaucracy and burnout. Listening to her parents, even on good days, made her wary of public schools. And her heart was still too stuck in Hawai‘i for her to even think of doing youth work out here. Her head and heart were too filled with “no” to make room for any ideas.
“We don’t want you to make any big decisions right now,” Momma said somberly.
Maya raised her eyebrows. “Momma, my whole life, you’re the one who said, ‘Broke in your twenties is an adventure; broke in your thirties is a crisis.’ This is a crisis! I have to act with some urgency.”
Daddy held his hands up placatingly. Maya noted that he was showing remarkable restraint, not rushing in with his opinion. He probably didn’t want a repeat of their old fights, either. “We understand, Maya, but it’s probably going to take a minute to get into the rhythm of this area again. That’s gotta be the biggest adjustment.”
“The vibe is almost antithetical,” she agreed.
“So I’m gonna ask you to listen to your mom on this. She’s been talking to a lot of her former students who are also in crisis—and their parents. The year we’ve all had killed a lot of dreams. You aren’t alone in starting over. But this can be your rebuilding year. You can have your old room for as long as you want. You can have free access to my car. We’ll even put you back on the family plan, Sprout, so you don’t have to worry about your phone bill, okay? We want you to be able to think past your basic needs. No conditions. And no unsolicited advice.” Her dad gave the floor a quick, uncomfortable glance. “No one wants a repeat of your high school years.”
“Especially me,” Momma said with a snort. Then she focused on Maya and squeezed both her hands. “And we know you’re grown. We plan to treat you like our adult daughter. Promise.”
Maya’s eyes filled again, and she had to let some tears fall. She was so relieved. Before she knew it, her dad was crouched at her side, dabbing at her damp face. She dared to look at him and saw the tears in his eyes, too.
“We’re so happy you’re home and safe,” he said. His voice was hoarse with emotion. “Get settled. Try and connect with some friends. We can get through the rest together.”
And for that moment, Maya was able to pause the anxiety spiral that had been trying to swallow her in the middle of all her sadness. She let out a deep sigh she hadn’t known she was holding.
Nothing needed to be figured out right now. She could take baby steps back out into the world.
In or Out with Emme Vivant
Marley St. James
Washington Post Magazine
If you’ve made a friend, met your least toxic ex, or started an online a cappella group, then you know about connection app the Spark. However, you may not know the driving force behind the app, Emme Vivant. Heir to a massive real estate empire in DC, polished, beautiful Emme could be buying mega yachts like the rest of the super-rich. Instead she’s become one of Forbes’ 40 under 40 (and our favorite angel investor) by only backing projects developed by women of color, queer folks, and the kind of people who typically can’t get a meeting in Silicon Valley. Emme recently hopped on a Zoom with us to do a round of IN or OUT.
MSJ: Since your first big project is the Spark, what do you say to ghosting? In or out?
EV: Regrettably: in. Ghosting should be reserved for creeps—clear and present dangers, right? But otherwise, if you just don’t like someone, you should say so. Everyone should get better at hearing no and saying no.
MSJ: How about the opposite of ghosting: Weddings?
EV: I’m never getting married, so I have to say “out,” right?
MSJ: Why don’t you want to get married?
EV: I’m a bisexual woman over 30, so I marched/protested/donated for marriage equality until it was legal. It is a right. But personally, I don’t need it for stability and don’t require it for love. Plus, once I learned Oprah didn’t get married, I realized it was truly just an option. One that doesn’t interest me.
MSJ: In or out: Capitalism?
EV: In. Money is a megaphone. Money is credibility. Money turns rich people with opinions into changemakers with gravitas. I mean, that’s why you’re talking to me, right? I know as much about programming apps as Bill Gates probably knows about international development, but people ask him about humanitarian aid. They shouldn’t. We’re not the experts, we hire the experts, but it’s our names that get clicks, right?
And let’s be honest, this country is too racist to embrace socialism, anyway.
MSJ: Care to say more about that?
EV: Remember how the early pandemic was like “We’re all in this together” until the news said that Black and Brown people were the most likely to die? Then suddenly masking up is political. Getting vaccinated is political. You can’t force socialism on a country where a lot of folks still aren’t comfortable with equality.
MSJ: Damn, shots fired.
EV: I’m just being honest. That’s the real reason you can’t compare the US to socialist utopias people like to bring up: Denmark, Norway—they’re like 98% white. And even they get uncomfortable when they see like five African migrants outside their door.
MSJ: Billionaires—in or out?
EV: OUT absolutely. Like my dad says, “if you ever have so much money you don’t know what to do with it, you owe someone a raise.” If you have “going to space money,” you owe a lot of folks raises.
MSJ: Careful, Emme—I’d hate to get you uninvited from Elon’s Christmas party.
EV: [loud honk of laughter] Honey, I am a mere millionaire and a woman of color over 30. Elon Musk wouldn’t let me near him without a catering tray.
MSJ: Emme Vivant, coming in hot.
EV: I’m just being honest!
MSJ: Let’s go to the next one. Books—in or out?
EV: In! Especially audiobooks. I’ve been loving Rev. Gina Elton’s You Are Light. It’s one of the few things that gave me hope in the last year. And I tell people that you need the audiobook, because you need to hear Rev. Gina herself read her own words.
Oh yeah, and my book is out next week! Oh my God, I’m so bad at promo. Yes, please check out (Ad)venture Capital: Girlbossing for Good.
MSJ: Based on that title, I think I can guess your answer, but the “girlboss”: In or out?
EV: I know this is unpopular, but in. As long as she’s girlbossing for good.
Texts from Maya to Ant, April 25, 2021
Maya:
I swear the Girlboss is stalking me, Ant! I was just trying to do this week’s big crossword and there she was! In the Post Magazine.
Ant:
Your first mistake was doing the crossword in the newspaper when there’s a perfectly good app somewhere
Hot cocoa and the Sunday newspaper is a sacred Davis family tradition
Speaking of news I have news!
(See what I did there)
I have my start date! Next Tuesday
May the fourth be with you
And also with you
Ha! He says he’s not religious but the Episcopal jumped out
More like years of chapel and St Andrews academy. It was a reflex
Okay, okay, back to the topic at hand.
I’m so excited for you
You’re out here making things happen with your awesome paid internship and we haven’t even graduated yet
I’m just glad everything worked out
TBH I had only made it through the first round of interviews and came out here out kinda manifesting the rest
Wow! That’s so unlike you, but way to take a risk!
It felt good to bet on myself
Betting on yourself is better than betting on failure, which is what you do when you don’t try
I like that
It’s from Rev Gina from the girlboss’s Ted Talk
I didn’t finish it, but she turned me on to Rev. Gina, so Emme Vivant can’t be all bad
Maybe I’ll watch that Ted Talk? Or read the article. I feel like if I don’t, she’ll turn up at the house
I’m just glad you didn’t come all the way out here for nothing. I would have felt so guilty because of how much I’ve enjoyed spending spring with you.
It would have been worth it for that alone
5/1/21
Hey Ma,
Just when I thought all the flowering trees were done, fluffy cherry blossoms started blooming EVERYWHERE. It’s like I remembered as a kid. I walk around the neighborhood every day and there’s always a new tree in bloom. You were right about coming out in spring; I would have been sad if I’d missed all this. Speaking of fluffy blossoms, how is Keke doing? How are the rest of my girls? Has Pua been around to help you rig up the irrigation yet? I know it’s part of her final project, so she HAS to get to it. I can text her if you want me to. Not much else to report here. It’s wash day so literally nothing else is getting done besides a deep condition. They got Shea Moisture and Cantu in every drugstore out here, though. No special trips! Okay, running out of space. XOXO
Your favorite Virgo, *
Ant
*Better than “Your loving son”? Hope this doesn’t make you feel 90.
Ant
Ant affixed the postcard to the metal mailbox at the end of the short but very steep driveway next to his new home. It was early (for him) on a Saturday morning, but he’d been awake for a couple of hours. Ant and the God of Jet Lag had come to a truce after wrestling for a solid month: he could sleep through the night if he got to bed by eleven, but no matter what he did, he’d wake up by seven.
Once he accepted this, Ant found he could always fill the time—mostly with Netflix. Recently, he’d started taking long mid-morning walks with the goal that, eventually, the walks would turn into more athletic jogging. Not today, though. This was a lovely morning for a stroll, and Ant didn’t take the fact that he could do so comfortably for granted.
Once it was clear that he and Ma would be living in the US for a bit after his dad died, his mother had decided he urgently needed a crash course in American-style racism. Before they left Japan, Ma had asked a couple of her friends (Black servicemen, obviously) to take him out for ramen and give him a version of “the talk” that all Black American boys receive at some point in their lives. Ant was bewildered. It wasn’t like he hadn’t experienced being the odd one out as a chubby Blackish kid with curly hair and the decent beginnings of a mustache for a twelve-year-old. But this wasn’t just about feeling lonely or isolated: this was life and death. Now that he was older, he knew there was no perfect place, but Auntie Kay’s neighborhood had good vibes and plenty of Black families. Seeing them let the worry slide off his shoulders.
Left first, today, he thought, walking north up the sidewalk on the hilly street. At least he thought it was north; he was still trying to figure out where the group house was positioned relative to the rest of Takoma Park. All in all, this seemed like a comfortable enough place to be a big, Black, asexual nerd. After a month of settling in and trying every restaurant that was open and within walking distance, Ant could sense that Takoma Park’s vibe was more “bougie urban neighborhood” than “bland suburb.”
It had a coffee shop, a vegetarian diner, and a yoga studio on its short main street. Notably missing were chains of any kind. The local Starbucks, CVS, and 7-Eleven were in easy walking distance, but on the DC side of the line, like lepers at the city gates.
The little city was welcoming to him, though. Good service in the restaurants and no one following him around stores, no stares when he went on his daily walks. The most important thing Ant had learned about his new home was that he could move about Takoma Park freely, so he did.
He turned the corner and saw his first cherry tree of the morning. It was in the yard of an aggressively modern house he’d nicknamed “the Tardis.” The navy-blue structure rebelled against the surrounding craftsman bungalows with a tall, narrow frame and large windows. Ant didn’t need to squint to read the labels on their cereal boxes from the sidewalk. But what’s privacy when you’re making an architectural point?
The tree was young, not even as tall as he was, but with thin limbs hanging with blossoms. The sight made his heart squeeze. Ant missed his girls. Nicole, his bold pink-and-yellow plumeria named for Nicole Scherzinger—every boy in Hawai‘i was pretty much required to have a crush on her as a point of state pride. Emma—his adorable redhead—was a hibiscus bush named for Emma Stone (despite Aloha). Keke, for Keke Palmer, was a fluffy cherry blossom tree. The first tree he’d cared for on his own.
When Ant told his mom about being “probably—definitely asexual” at twenty-three, she’d surprised him with her lack of surprise. Turned out his girls had given him away years ago.
“The only time you almost got in a fight was when your cousin Nelson kept making sex jokes about ‘getting into Emma’s bush.’ I literally had to turn the hose on you and ruin his Jordans a little to save their vacation. You weren’t embarrassed by the jokes—you were for real offended. Back then I thought it was because Nelson was an annoying little prick. But now”—she made a quick gesture with her fingers—“the math is math-ing.”
Crushes that were very real at the time, which was probably why it took him extra long to figure out his orientation. He did feel butterflies when a woman took his breath away. He caught the spark of attraction in the middle of a conversation—the kind you move from the couch to the back porch at a party. He could distinguish between a pretty he admired and a pretty he desired. It was just that his desire didn’t involve sex. For the longest time he’d thought that meant he couldn’t be asexual—turned out he just wasn’t aromantic and asexual.
In fact, Ant was very romantic. He liked holding hands. He liked kissing. He liked buying flowers and writing little notes. He’d been a wonderful (and occasionally frustrating) boyfriend to several good Christian girls in college. The last one had led him to be open about his identity for the first time—with Maya, of course.
It all started because Mallory, a particularly dissatisfied ex, was telling anyone who’d listen that she thought Ant was gay. She didn’t just confide in her friends; she shared her theory with pretty much everyone they knew, to the point where he’d enter their community college’s anime club meetings or choir rehearsals and conversation would cease. This stopped only when Maya walked over to Mallory, sitting among her friends at the student union, and said, “He’s not gay. He just doesn’t want to fuck you.”
Ant gaped at her through the entirety of this exchange. “I already dumped her, Mai,” he chastised when she returned to their table. “That was bad enough.”
Maya shrugged in response as she sat down. “That wasn’t only for you. She said ‘gay’ like it’s a disease. As a queer woman, I had to shut her up for all the rainbow-fam people.” She returned to her spam musubi lunch.
“Besides,” she began after a few bites, “there probably is some poor person in her youth group or whatever who crawls further back into the closet every time she talks about you.”
They ate in silence for a little while. Ant took a long slug of his Dr Pepper before he spoke again, more quietly. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to bang her, specifically. I think I don’t want to . . . with anyone—ever.” He took a breath, and waited. He’d grazed a pebble on the surface of this pond only once before, with his first and only white girlfriend, a fellow military brat. She’d asked if “it” was because he grew up mostly in Japan. Later, over several emails, she sent Ant several articles about “herbivore men” in Japan to show that she wasn’t racist. He hoped that Maya wouldn’t say anything as disappointing as that.
Maya looked at him and sighed. “I hope you’re telling me because you want to tell me and not because you feel like you owe me—or anyone—an explanation for your sexual choices. You shouldn’t come out for anyone but yourself.”
Ant sat up a bit straighter. Not the direction I thought that would go.
“No, I wanted to say it out loud,” he replied, mostly casually. “People look at me and see this big Black guy who, biologically, must be a sexual dynamo.”
Maya tossed her locs. “A nice way of saying you’re constantly fetishized, but keep going.”
He rolled his eyes but continued. “I feel like I could avoid situations like”—he tilted his chin toward where Mallory had been sitting—“if I get the no-sex thing out, earlier on.”
That made Maya smile. The kind of smile that warmed him all over. “Antonio, seriously, thank you for sharing your truth. I’m glad you feel that comfortable with me.” She dabbed her mouth with her napkin, then reached over to squeeze Ant’s hand. Maya seemed to know just what to say in this situation—probably because she’d been a peer counselor at the campus’s LGBTQ+ center. Or maybe just because she was wonderful.
He squeezed it back and gave his own half smile in return.
The memory was interrupted by another chime of his phone. He slipped it from his pocket and looked at the screen.
