Mai-Nhi Nguyen

The sun burns white-hot in the late morning, and the air hums with the sound of cicadas. I walk home from school, my feet dragging against the uneven pavement, my backpack heavy with books. My uniform sticks to my back. I could take the bus, but the coins in my pocket are for later, for something more important.

At home, my grandparents sit in the courtyard, sipping bitter tea. They barely glance at me as I pass. My grandmother’s hands are always moving—peeling fruit, folding laundry, washing rice. My grandfather watches the television with the volume too high. My younger sister is in the bedroom, drawing pictures of places she’s never seen. “Is Mama coming soon?” she asks when she looks up at me.

I don’t answer right away. Instead, I pull off my shoes and sit next to her on the floor. She draws our mother in colors too bright, in dresses she never wore. “She said she would,” I say finally.

We live in a poor suburb of Hanoi, Vietnam, where houses are packed close together, their walls stained from years of rain and dust. The streets are uneven, cracked in places, lined with food stalls selling sticky rice and pho. Laundry hangs from balconies, and the smell of frying oil lingers in the humid air.

It has been a year and two months since our mother left for Los Angeles. I am fifteen now, but I feel much older. At school, my friends talk about pop stars and new clothes, but their worries feel small. I think about rent, about the way my grandmother sighs when she counts money.

My mother’s last call was two weeks ago. The connection was bad, her voice thin and distant. She said she was still figuring things out, that she loved us.

At night, when my grandparents sleep and my sister breathes softly beside me, I sit by the window and count the stars. Somewhere across the world, my mother might be looking at the same sky. The thought should comfort me, but it doesn’t. It only reminds me of the distance.