a late last cold snap

before full spring and summer

Clara and I wait

quietly in the dark van

light white clouds from our

breaths our bodies tight

shivering

I look at the light frost on the windows

small wispy frozen feathers

the muffled laughs outside

they are so annoying aren’t they

Clara says suddenly

the darkness slips off of me like

a silk scarf

I am so excited to speak back

my words explode like a sneeze

yes why do we always have to come to these boring dinners

I wish we could just stay home

Clara says

me too

I answer back

maybe when I get older I can just babysit you

she says

we both burst out laughing because

we are nearly

the same

age

hey great tennis matches today

she says suddenly

you’ve gotten so good

it’s amazing you made it

all the way to the quarter finals

pride blows up in my chest so

that I might burst like a piñata and

spill out my insides

we no longer hear

our parents and their friends

all we can hear is our chatting and

laughing

in the dark car

each looking ahead

leaned over

laughing

holding

our

stomachs

Secrets

I still don’t know why Clara

pulls her hair out

I still don’t know

if she will tell my parents

but somehow

I know

it’s not

my secret to

tell

somehow I know that

not even the snow can

bruise us anymore

because somehow

we know

we are each no longer

fully alone

Author’s Note

This story is based on my own childhood, growing up in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Many of the things in this story are true, but it’s semiautobiographical because some of the stories are embellished and some of the smaller plot narratives are fictionalized. For example, I was never a great tennis player like Frances! That’s just wishful writing. Also, much of this story is based on memory, and memory can be slippery.

It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I actually learned that my sister had been pulling out her hair the whole time (and still was) and that there is a name for it called trichotillomania, or “trich,” thanks to Google. When I finally asked her about it, she was surprisingly open and told me she had gone to seek therapy and attended a support group for people with trichotillomania. She never told my parents. She was most surprised when she met people who pulled out their eyelashes and even eyebrows. I think trichotillomania can be a very embarrassing and shameful disease to its sufferers, and over time, I learned to respect that silence.

One of the hardest things about the disease for my sister and myself was growing up in an immigrant Chinese American family, a family that was not familiar with mental health issues such as trichotillomania, depression, anxiety, and OCD (experts believe that trichotillomania is a form of OCD, or obsessive-compulsive disorder), all things that can run in our family. My parents always did the best that they knew how, and they tried to help my sister in all the ways that they could while struggling to make a place in an unfamiliar and sometimes unwelcoming new country.