I’m not sure how to answer that. I gaze out the window, at the smooth, winding roads and the lush lawns and the ocean simmering on the horizon, peppered with little white boats, the clear sky opening up around us. When I think of here, I think of LA. These are my most intimate, immediate surroundings. This is the place where I grew up, where I learned to ride a bike and spell my name and play soccer, where we buried my pet goldfish and planted a cherry tree and set up a tent in our backyard to watch movies at night. But I don’t think of China as there either. It’s not the same as when my friends talk about traveling to France or Bali for the holidays, some hazy, distant destination I know only from photos and travel brochures. Although my memories of China are flimsy, stretched almost translucent over a total of five summer breaks from my childhood, I always have this feeling that my bones will know the place, even when I don’t.

“I’m not sure,” I mumble.

“Well, if you’re actually sorry about what happened today, and if you’d like to prevent anything similar from ever happening again, we’ll need to make some changes around here,” my mom says with a terrifying note of resolve in her voice. When she decides on something, she means it. Last year, she made an abrupt announcement that she felt the house chores weren’t being evenly distributed enough. By the end of the evening, she’d created a very strict roster we’ve been following to this day. Tonight is dish duty for me.

“I am sorry,” I say quickly. “We can go to my aunt and my cousin right now—I can write them an apology letter—”

“In what, English?” my mom says with a scoff. “If you’re apologizing to them, it better be in perfect Chinese. You should start practicing. No more English allowed in our house.”

“What?”

“Starting now,” she repeats. “Xianzai.”

“But—that’s—” I splutter. “I don’t—”

“Yong zhongwen” is all she says. Use Chinese.

Nobody speaks again for the rest of the car ride.

* * *

All throughout the next week, my mom is in a strange mood.

She stays up in her home office until midnight; when I go to sleep, it’s to the sound of the printer whirring or her computer humming. She disappears at dinner to make important calls, speaking in a hushed voice. She cancels our pizza night on Friday and cooks for the first time in a month to make sweet-and-sour pork ribs and sticky pineapple rice. She keeps her word about only speaking in Chinese; the one time she weakens is when she accidentally locks herself in the garage and I can’t figure out where the key is.

Then, on Saturday, she lowers herself onto the couch next to me and holds up a document.