“Not bad,” Mom murmurs, opening and closing drawers in the kitchen’s built-in cabinets.
For the past year, Mom and I have been studying Mandarin together, using cookbooks, beginner workbooks, language classes, and Chinese dramas to round out our learning. Mandarin was her first language, but she moved to America from Taiwan at a young age. Once her family arrived here, they chose to mostly speak English to help their children integrate into school faster. She can still speak Mandarin, but mostly casual conversations and making plans. The cooking was a delicious add-on that we figured would help fuel the learning process.
“That’s an easy one,” Mom says as she removes the skin from a chunk of ginger with a spoon. “We need to be learning new words. Bigger sentences.”
“Asking ‘Why me?’ actually seems like a pretty useful sentence. When you’re having a bad day and nothing seems to go right, you can yell it into the sky with your hands up in the air,” I say, thinking out loud. String moves smoothly through my fingers as I work on a lemur animal portrait.
“For you, maybe. I don’t need to go around asking ‘Why me?’” Mom roughly measures out the recipe’s remaining spices and tosses them into a simmering pot of soy sauce, cinnamon, and Lapsang Souchong tea. The room smells cozy. “Iknowwhy me.”
Talia and I give each other a look and laugh quietly. Mom redirects her attention to the cookbook in front of her, and I pause the TV show to skim through new orders in my shop’s dashboard.
“Cute!” I say, clicking into one of the few new orders that have trickled in over the past week. “Someone named Bohai in Alhambra wants seahorses. That’s a new one.” I add the commission to my list of pieces to make.
“Where’s Alhambra?” Talia asks absentmindedly.
I take another sip of tea, the warm liquid comforting me. “Somewhere in California. I’m switching over to a movie. I need to focus on this lemur and can’t read the captions at the same time.” I grab the remote and flip through the options, settling on one of my favorites,Serendipity.
As the movie plays in the background, I step back from the board, looking for areas where I need to layer more string.
Mom approaches with a spoonful of liquid. “Try this. I used a smokier tea. If you like it, the cracked eggs get a soy sauce bath in it, and in a day, we can eat them. These recipes require too much patience.”
I take a sip. “Hot! Add a little more clove.”
“What’s up with all that?” Talia asks, nodding toward a corner of the apartment where my art supplies are organized into standing drawers. Next to it are poster boards with incomplete sketches of old ideas and completed pet portraits that need to be sent out. “You working on your next installation idea?”
“Oh. No. Just a few commissions for people who saw the installation on Instagram when it was still trash- and rat-free,” I tell her. “The one thingEntangledwas good for: more pet portraits. I’m in no position to be giving this up anytime soon.” I rub the string-induced calluses on the tips of my fingers. “And I haven’t been feeling inspired lately.”
“You can’t wait for the muse to come,” Mom says, slurping the remaining liquid from the spoon. “You have to actively think about ideas or you’ll find that you’re still making pet portraits fifty years later, arguing with someone named Beth from Pensacola about whether or not you fully captured her shih tzu’s personality in the portrait.”
“Enlightening. Thanks.” I gently push her back toward the kitchen. “Commissions are my priority until I have enough saved up. I know you were making money off your art in your twenties, but that’s not how it is for me.”
Mom shrugs her shoulders. “Don’t wait around is all I’m saying.”
“I’m blocked creatively. It happens from time to time,” I lie. Never once have I ever had artist’s block. “Entangledwas my best idea, and if people can’t respect an installation in a park, they absolutely won’t respect one in a subway station.”
Gravitycame to me the week after that night with Jack. I sketched it out and everything. But then… nothing. That was it. No more ideas. It doesn’t feel worth it to pursueGravity. It feels as though all my creativity and energy were cut down along withEntangled.
I watch from the couch as Mom removes the boiling eggs from the pot and places them in a bowl of ice water. “If you want public art, you’re always going to have to deal with the public. The ugly and the uglier. People can be cruel.”
I frown. “I know you’re right. Doesn’t make it easier, though.”
Next to me, Talia starts kicking her feet wildly and screaming. “Rooney!”
I jump up, pulling the string on the lemur harder than I want. I check to make sure the nail is still straight. “Whoa! Tal, what is it?”
Talia lifts her laptop up and leans in next to me. “Auction! Auction!”
I hook the red string over the lemur’s half-formed eyeball. “Whatare you talking about? Oh! Did you sell one of your new artist’s porcelain pieces? Her pieces are stunning.”
“No!Baby Being Born! Is going to auction!” she says, twisting her laptop to face me. “My friend at one of the art houses just let me know.”
“What?!” I take the laptop from her hands and read the email. I go over the words three times to confirm that what I’m seeing is real. “It’s happening in eight months,” I say. “And there’s no way to know who has it?”
“It’s as anonymous as you, Roo,” Talia says, her eyes bright. “But how great is this? They’ll still need to verify it and make sure it’s the original, and it’ll take some time to gather more video art to complete the theme of the auction, but yay! It’s what you’ve been waiting for!
Mom cackles while she wipes her hands off on a towel. “Are you really going to try to buy it back? How are you going to do that?”
I break out in a full-body sweat when I think about how many pet portraits I’d need to commission to be able to pay for the piece. It last sold in 2010 for $15,000. I hope it hasn’t tripled in price since then. “I haven’t thought through the money piece yet.”
