I step into my orthodontist’s office and Dr. B greets me with the same smile he greeted me with six years ago. Six years ago he smiled to a shy girl, a new immigrant whose hopes of America were nothing like those of her parents. A girl who wore a thin, disheveled scarf around her head, an oversized turtleneck and a pair of jeans, and whose smile was only out of respect and curtsey. She was too embarrassed to correct her name when it was mispronounced, a humiliation she could not bare. The day she met Dr. B and his happy, friendly assistants, who smiled too often and too greatly, she was horrified to learn that her braces were not acceptable and that they had to be redone. She was discomforted when one of the nurses took her photo and she had to force yet another smile, exposing the metal wires in her mouth. She was further distraught by the fast English spoken around her. But despite the horrors of that visit, she never forgot the sincerity of Dr. B’s smile, one that was like a promise, a promise that said everything would be okay, that time would pass and those braces would eventually come off. Unlike other patients, her concern was not due to painful doctor visits, but to the foreignness of their faces, the strangeness of their language and the difference of their appearance.
Somehow the promise I saw in Dr. B’s eyes on that first visit was not broken. Everything did work out; the braces came off and became a distant memory, along with all my bad feelings about America. My name continued to be troubling but I didn’t mind correcting it. And now today, sitting in his office as a mature, 18 year-old young woman, I feel no different than the other patients here who are waiting to be checked. I thank him, though he doesn’t know that I’m not only thanking him for what he’s done for me as a faithful doctor, but also because of his promising smile on that November afternoon when I was timid and humiliated by a mispronounced name.

Yesterday I sold my wedding ring and then rushed to the bank to put the money in my savings. Today I am on a plane with Lolita, heading to Manhattan for an interview with the New York Times. The sun is out and the temperature is perfect. Lolita has her head in a book and I am reading an article in the Times. I have promised her a happy life in New York. I have promised us Broadway shows on Saturday nights and shopping adventures on 5th avenue. I have promised things that he never thought of promising. The little things that make life beautiful, the little things that my daughter will cherish for the rest of her life. I once gave him my heart, but now I’m giving it to the city, to myself and to my little Lo.
We are now walking in Central Park and Lo is enjoying the sun. I could not have asked for a better setting, a better temperature, a better picture. I don’t believe in happy endings and I’m not going to promise Lo such a thing. But I do believe that we will make the best of what we get, that we will watch out for each other, that we will make it through the busy streets, that we will make it through honking taxis and crazy drivers. I hold her arm and we cross the street, where a man is selling hot dog. I take a few bills out of my purse and hand Lo a piece. The hot dog man smiles. I smile back and head for the metro; I can’t wait to show Lo our first apartment in the middle of the city. I can’t wait to unpack my bags and go under new covers. I can’t wait to sleep to the sound of motorbikes and everything else that the city will reveal.
The End

A month has passed and we have forgotten her face, her small talks, her laughter and her anger. We have forgotten what makes her giggle, what makes her laugh, what makes her smile and what makes her frown. Her empty seat at the table and her absence in every corner of this house has left us nostalgic, longing for her warm embrace, her gentle touch. There are days that we simply sleep without thinking of her, without noticing the absence of her smell, the absence of her voice.
Mother is coming back soon. And we will forget she was once gone. What happened yesterday will only be a distant memory, one that will soon be forgotten.

On these endless summer days, where I ride the bus to work and listen to the same songs, and continue day dreaming, life is grand. I mean the world is literally at my fingertips. I can order a tall Caramel Macchiato with my credit card and I can buy a great book, like Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. The possibilities are endless here in America. And yet I haven’t taken my chances at everything. I’ve lived a life too safe, too risk-free, too…secure. I went from shy freshman girl to a sassy senior, which was a big improvement, but not quite enough. It was not the biggest jump. The jump I’m still willing to make. I’m living the American dream; I’m a writer. But I have not yet played around with my own rules the way I play around with words. I’m good at taking risks with the string of words that somehow make sense, but I have failed to take those risks in my own reality.
It only takes one jump. And I will be free.

I gave in. Once again, I became weak and I gave in. I had refused to marry him for months but I finally said yes when he proposed during breakfast one early morning. I didn’t find his proposal particularly romantic, but for some reason, in between my last bite of butter and cream on toast, I found myself saying yes to a man I loved too much. I liked the idea of being someone’s wife; in a weird way that I still find odd today, I liked the feeling of being possessed. But at the time when I was 21 and too young, I thought possession was the same thing as love. I thought that him having me for himself would mean he would love me endlessly. The funniest thing about this marriage was that I had been against the concept my whole life. I had been so set on not ever getting married because I was simple and a marriage seemed too complicated. I used to think that a happy life with someone I loved would be enough, no strings attached. But I had also been logical, cautious, and never a risk taker. And this was my one chance to break my own rules. It was my one chance to take a big risk, forget my better judgment, and ignore the rules I had once so perfectly drawn out for myself.
I finished my toast and couldn’t stop staring at the diamond ring on my finger, the ring that was meant to map our love for eternity, for better or for worse, in sickness and in heath, ‘till death did us part. But of course I didn’t think of any of those customs. I just looked at, thinking and believing that I had taken a risk, and that I had freed myself of boundaries and limits. I was too young, too young to know that the man in front of me was in love with something else, that he was doing what he thought was his duty. He was a boy who wanted to be a man, a husband, a caretaker of a fragile, insecure portrait of a wife.

The man in front of me looks about 70. He has fitted himself between two women, and is resting his hand on a black umbrella, carefully reading a piece of paper. He is wearing a white bow tie, a hat, and a suit. I want to call him the umbrella man. Next to the umbrella man, is the saddest, most insecure and introverted woman. A loose scarf is wrapped around her head. She is wearing jeans and sneakers underneath a long dress. She shyly glances around, but keeps her head down most of the time. I notice no rings on her slender fingers so I know she doesn’t belong to anyone. I feel as though on this rainy day, where traffic is slow, the grounds are wet, and all the lights are red, everybody is trapped in misery. And I’m just like them. I’m another miserable rider of this bus, and I’m looking for a story. I have run out of stories just like I have run out of songs. Everything these days is a rerun. The bus rides, the songs in my head, my fantasies, the cigarette lady who I see for the second time; it’s as if I’m living the same day over and over again. But let me go back to the people in the bus. The bus driver is a woman in her mid 30s. She is also carrying a yellow umbrella with her and she doesn’t enjoy driving on wet roads. Her smile is the fading kind because she’s had a long day and unlike me, she has many destinations to stop at. For her, life is a series of bus stops, of people getting on and off the bus, of dollars and quarters that fill the coin machine, of people who look for seats closest to the doors. These people, the ones who like to sit close to the doors, don’t take risks; they want to be safe. They don’t want attention so they sit somewhere where they can easily get out, with no hassle. I’m one of these people. I sit right next to the door so I can watch each face that comes in, so I can watch the roads, but most importantly because I’m insecure. I’m afraid that if I sit away from the doors, I’ll never get off the bus or that I’ll miss my stop.
I know there are more stories to be told. I know that the bus is not just about the cigarette lady or the umbrella man or that shy, innocent woman with the scarf. But, I like to wander off to my own world and become the shy, innocent girl with the head phones. That’s simply who I am on this bus. I’m a girl who can easily pretend that the life she is living, right now, right here in this bus, is nothing more than a movie, a comedy of happy, lonely people.

The rain pours and I watch it run down each balcony, hitting the cement surface of the walls and floors. On this lonesome, dull Wednesday afternoon, the only thing to watch from our window is the rainfall. And I wonder if this rain has its own story, its own secrets and lies. I wonder if someone has already unfolded the mystery of the rain. But even if there is no mystery, I will tell its story. I will tell my own version of this story.
But not today. Today I’m just a lonely watcher, one who’s tired of waiting. I’m not in the mood to dance to the rhythm of the rain.

He isn’t home today. My unborn baby and I are alone. I sip from my tea and wonder when he’ll get home, when he’ll be next to me and this baby, this living thing that I’m so afraid to have. I try not to think about my big belly, but it’s always in front of me, and I can’t hide it. I can’t forget that soon I will be a mother who has to feed this baby, nourish it, and take care of it. Soon I will have to teach this child the alphabet, the colors of the rainbow and numbers. I will have to hold it. I will have to love this unborn baby, and I will, I hope. Sometimes I hate my husband because I feel like he fooled me, like he promised me a false life, a big lie. But in the end he left it up to me. He said if you really don’t want a child, we won’t have one. But I didn’t want to feel guilty for the rest of my life; I didn’t want to carry the burden of knowing I deprived my husband of a child. I couldn’t do that to him. And most of all, I couldn’t do that to myself because deep down, I was dying to know what it would feel like to be a mother. I was a curious writer, in need of a story of a mother and her baby.

I stare at Lolita. She’s six and no longer has a father figure. Mama used to say, every little girl needs a father figure in her life, a father who knows how to get her daughter out of trouble, a father who knows how to hold her hand when mother’s hands are busy, a father who buys her cotton candy at the fair and shows her how to build sand castles. But my Lolita can’t rely on a man who may not always be there to pick her up. She can’t depend on a father who may not always be there to take her out, a father who may be busy with a new wife, a new family, a new home.
How many times did I tell him we shouldn’t have children? How many times did I tell him that it would be a big responsibility, a big risk, a big mistake? But he never listened and tempted me. He created the perfect family picture, where I was the sweet housewife and mother, and he was the architect who had made the safest, strongest and the most beautiful house. And he did. He made a house so big, so dreamy, so luminous that no wife could ever dream of. This house was even more beautiful than the Barbie house that I always dreamed of having as a child. But it never became a home. My husband knew how to build houses from scratch, he knew where to place things, but he didn’t know how to build a home, a home where he’d watch his family grow every day. Eventually he forgot that he had a pregnant wife waiting for him. He forgot that I feared seeing my doctor alone. He forgot that it if it wasn’t for him, I would have never agreed to be a mom. He missed most of my appointments and didn’t make it on time for the sonogram. During those painful appointments, where I waited alone, in doubt and petrified of the living thing inside me, I read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. On the day of the sonogram, I finished the book. When the doctor told me I was having a girl, I knew I would name her Lolita.

I take one sip from a can of beer that is not supposed to be in the fridge. It is bitter and disgusting. I swallow and immediately put it away. The night is humid, wet from an unpredicted rain, and warm from a prolonged summer that is too bland, too plain. I thought maybe a new taste, like a cold beer would add a little excitement to this night, but I didn’t realize that it would taste just as bitter as a cup of coffee. So I’m going to indulge myself with my usual hot tea, and I’ll just accept the fact that for now, life is stable, mild and dull.