Reheated Rice

Priscila Santa Rosa

It has been twenty minutes since I parked, and I haven’t even let go of the steering wheel yet. Maybe it’s the row of garden gnomes staring at me with their lifeless, judgmental eyes. Maybe it’s the parade of golf carts going up and down the street, driven at the dangerous high speed of 10 mph. Maybe it’s just me, listing in my head all the choices my mother will tell me were wrong as soon as I gather enough courage to step out into the Florida sun and knock on her door. Did I drink too many lattes? Befriend the wrong people? Forget to wear a sweater too many times? How many resumes did I send this week? Two hundred? Why not four hundred instead?

Someone knocks on my car window. I look outside, and a woman with a large smile plastered on her face greets me. Her perm is filled with highlights, and her oversized sunglasses and hoop earrings fight for control of her face.

Reluctantly, I roll down the glass. “Yes?”

She smiles and points at my backseat, which is overflowing with cardboard boxes and might’ve given her the impression I’m a homeless person. Or worse, a coastal hipster who loves glamping. Too bad for her – I’m both. “Hi. I see you have a lot of boxes back there. Are you moving in?”

I smile back and say between clenched teeth, “I’m visiting my parents.”

The last bit gets her attention. “Oh? I haven’t seen you around here. What’s your name?”

None of your business is on the tip of my tongue, but it’s too early for a sidewalk confrontation with the Homeowners Association’s capo. “Mirella da Silva.”

“Ah! I thought I heard a bit of an accent there! Spanish, right?”

The smile is harder to maintain now. “Portuguese, actually.”

“I see. Well, that explains it then. I guess your parents don’t speak English. Maybe you could pass along a message? They need to repaint the house. HOA rules.”

“Uh-huh.” I could tell her that my parents speak English, but then she might try talking to them again. Since I don’t actually hate my parents, I just roll up my window. “Okay. Bye now.”

The woman’s aghast expression comes with her mouthing the word rude. I keep on smiling and wave at her. Finally, she gets the hint and marches on, leaving me alone again.

Not keen on attracting the attention of the entire aging neighborhood, I take a deep breath and get out of the safety of my rental. I pass by the gnomes and step on the watermelon-shaped welcome mat. It takes me a second, but I eventually ring the doorbell. Before I can change my mind and run back to the car, my mother opens the front door.

“You’re here!” She waves me inside, and we skirt around each other. Perhaps not noticing my hesitation, she plasters a kiss on my cheek anyway.

As I follow her into the hallway, the scent of myrrh hits me like a wave. The burning incense sits next to colorful crystals, a tiny smiling Buddha, and small statues of Catholic saints on a table near the house entrance. My mother’s own little decontaminating room, except it’s not for killing off germs but protecting the family from evil intentions and ill wishes — no matter what beliefs they might hold. I envy her magical thinking. I wish I could believe throwing salt over my shoulder or breathing in nice-smelling fumes was enough to make me lucky.

“If I knew you were coming, I would’ve made you something special,” she says, while we take a turn and pass by my father’s entertainment room.

The door is closed, but I can hear the muffled sounds of a football match coming from the other side. It’s a Sunday afternoon, and no doubt my father is watching ESPN. It used to be that Sunday was dominated by soccer instead. In Brazil, the entire family—aunts and cousins included—would gather to watch a match on the Globo channel while drinking coffee and eating homemade biscoitos. Just thinking about it makes me crave Brazilian coffee—real coffee. But I know that on the other side of this door, my father is now alone, crushing sea salt cashews between his teeth and sipping a Bud Light while burly men catch a weird-shaped not-ball with their hands instead of kicking a regular, actual ball with their feet.

My mother knocks on the door and yells, “Antonio, your daughter is here!”

“What’s she doing here?” His muffled voice is not much louder than the cheers coming from the TV. “What does she want now?”

My mother smiles at me a little wider. “He’s joking, you know that.”

I say nothing, and then we wisely move to the kitchen and out of his earshot. Right away, she sets out to make me something to eat—it doesn’t matter that I’m not hungry, feeding me is still one of the few things she can control in our relationship. I sit at the counter and drum my fingers while she grabs leftovers from the fridge, and I pretend I don’t notice she has gained weight, and her hair is whiter than ever.

She winces as she takes a plate out of the dishwasher, hand on her back. “So, how have you been?”

I study the surface of the kitchen counter. “I’m healthy. That counts for something, right?”

She places three spoons of rice onto a plate. “I’m sure things aren’t as bad as you think. Didn’t you have an interview last week? What happened to that?”

“Nothing. Nothing ever happens.” My drumming fingers are now performing a solo. “But you know what keeps happening? The bills. Those don’t stop.”

“You just need to keep trying.” With her back to me, she puts my plate in the microwave and fiddles with the buttons. “Something will turn up eventually.”

The dismissive tone stings. I slump my shoulders and finally said the words that were stuck in my throat since I looked at my credit card statements, since I packed my bags, closed the cardboard boxes, and bought my ticket to Florida. “I was thinking...” I falter. I kick myself internally. “I need to move.”

“But that apartment is so nice! You won’t find anything like that for that price anymore. Not in Manhattan.”

“That’s why I was thinking of moving somewhere else.” I look down at my hands. “Like… maybe a different state.”

The microwave pings to signal my rice is done heating. Mother doesn’t reach for it. Instead, she inches closer to the counter. She rests her hands on her hips and tilts her head oh-so-slightly—a pose I used to see back in school when I brought a B, which always stood for Bad in our household.

I take a deep breath, hoping she got the hint, hoping I won’t need to say anything more.

Instead, she says, “I thought you said New York was your best shot at landing a job at a big publisher?”

 “It is.” I feel the size of an atom.

“Then stay there and keep trying. I can’t believe not a single company wants to hire you. Did you call everyone after the interview? It’s important to follow-up.”

Here we go. I cross my arms and throw my head backward as she goes on to list the usual perfectly reasonable things I need to do to fix my entire life.

“And what about knocking on some doors? If you go visit their offices, they might see how much you want to work for them. I saw the other day that there’s a website that fixes your resume, so it looks better. I sent you the name, didn’t I?”

 “It has been a year, Mom. The only thing I got to show is debts.”

“Everyone has debts. It’s fine. It’s just how things work over here—”

I push the stool backward, and the screeching noise of it scraping against the floor stops her mid-sentence. She raises an eyebrow.

I clench my fists and, before I can stop myself, the words come out. “I missed three months of rent. They kicked me out.”

“Kicked you out? What you mean ‘kicked you out?” Her tone is incredulous and now a little high-pitched. Her eyes are wide, like two flashing supernovas burning up in the vastness of space. “How did you let that happen?!”

The tsunami that has been gaining strength for over a year finally wipes out all the little sandcastles I built to hide what was going. The short text messages, the changing of the subject on the phone, and the sharing heart emojis to pretend I’m fine—all gone. All that is left is a raging wave of anger and bitterness, and I can’t stop myself anymore.

“I don’t know, but maybe, just maybe, it’s because I’m a failure. Okay? That’s it. That’s the truth. I’m done. I’m tired of trying, of writing cover letters, of getting no answer and wasting time at interviews that lead to nowhere.” I start counting my fingers, pushing them back with enough to pull a nerve. “I went to industry parties, I went to pitch festivals, I befriended every single agent on LinkedIn, I scoured the internet for tiny publishers, and I even applied for unpaid internships made for people half my age. And I did all of that while working at Starbucks for chump change. And then I have to pretend I’m not mad. I have to keep smiling and pretending I don’t want to kill someone when they mispronounce my name or patronize me with compliments on how exotic it sounds while crossing it off the list of candidates.”

A heavy silence follows. It lingers. It chokes me. Then, the microwave beeps again, reminding me it did its job. Great – even the microwave is a more productive member of society.

Finally, she places her hands on the counter and says, “So, that’s it. You’re giving up. After all we sacrificed. Coming here, waiting years for our green cards. That’s it. It’s over?” She shakes her head. “What, then?”

“I just… I can’t stay in New York.”

She paces around the kitchen, gesturing widely. “I can’t believe this. You decided to change majors. This was your dream, right? You told us that. You insisted on that!”

When voices rise, my father steps out of his emotional cave. The hushed sounds of the TV stop. A few seconds later, he lumbers into the kitchen, Bud Light in one hand.

“What’s going on now? I can’t hear the game with all the yelling.”

Mother looks at me. I look at her. It’s like we are daring each other to answer his question. I look down. She sighs. “Mirella lost the apartment.”

He scratches his chin. “So. Find another one.”

“She’s giving up New York altogether, Antonio.”

He sips his beer. “Okay. She can move in here. It’s that, or we help her pay rent in New York. Guess what’s cheaper?”

I would jump off my seat and hug him if I wasn’t feeling so embarrassed right now. For the first time ever, my father’s lack of faith in me has worked to my advantage. Suddenly, I love the deadpan, matter-of-fact tone he usually uses to chastise me for being too emotional.

“So, she moves in and… then what? Does nothing?” my mother asks.

“I’ll ask around at church. They might have a real job for her.”

“Does it have to be the church?” I ask, feeling as if my nightmare is ending. “I was thinking Walmart.”

He slowly nods. “That could work. But the church probably pays better.”

Mother throws her hands up in the air. “You two are hopeless. Walmart? The church? What’s happening right now?”

My father shrugs, so she turns to me again. All the anger from before, all the tension, leaves my body, and my chest feels light again.

“Can’t I just have this, just this once, Mom? Let me fail.” My tone is pleading. For once, I want an F instead of a B, so that the B can feel okay.

“But what about…” She trails off, voice as weak and diminished as her aging body. She sighs. “Are you really okay with this?”

“No. But I need this. I want to come home. I know it’s not the mature thing to do or whatever. But I want to wallow in my misery for once and be with my family.”

“Oh, honey.” She crosses the counter that has kept us separated for what it feels like our entire lives and reaches to hug me. I melt into her arms, not minding the smell of incense clinging to her hair. “It’s okay. You can stay as long as you need.”

I hold her tight. “Good, because I came here directly from the airport. My bags are in the car.”

She laughs, and our hug keeps going until my father gets bored and walks out of the kitchen. After we let go of each other, she finally takes my plate out of the microwave, and, I admit, it’s the best reheated rice I have ever tasted in my life.

Bio

Priscila Santa Rosa is a Brazilian writer and undergraduate student majoring in English at The University of Central Florida. Her work has been published in Dime Show Review and Scarlet Leaf Review. She currently lives in Kissimmee but was born in São Paulo, Brazil.