A future my mom knows nothing about.
A future that feels silly now, thinking back.
I allowed a nasty comment from Sierra to drive a wedge between me and my mom. And for what? To lose three years of time with her?
Time I’ve miraculously gotten back.
A rush of guilt floods through me at the thought of how I’ve dodged her last couple calls because I was too scared to have this conversation.
I resolve to be better. To appreciate the time I have with my mom. To not blame her for pain she never meant to inflict.
“School isn’t really going much at all yet. It’s barely week two.” I shrug even though she can’t see me. “We’ve mostly just gone over the syllabi and read the introductory chapters of our textbooks.”
“I’m not asking about your classes, silly. I know you’ll do great in those.”
In the background, my dad yells, “She wants thechisme!”
“How’s campus? Any new friends… are there any boys?” Mom asks, confirming my dad’s accusation that she’s calling for gossip.
“Yeah, Mom. Theydoallow boys in,” I joke.
“And how are those boys?”
My mind flashes to Alex and Ellie.
Alex and Ellie. Ellie and Alex.
“The boys are boys,” I say enigmatically.
“Say no more. I can already tell you want out of this conversation.” But her next words make me wish I’d stuck to the topic of boys. “Have you spoken to your sister yet?”
I knew this was coming.
“You know I haven’t.”
“Well… could you? She’s having a hard time at school. Always complaining. I’m sure a call from her baby sister would cheer her up.”
I remember that Sierra hated medical school at the start. She moaned about it in that way people sometimes faux-complain about their accomplishments: “Oh, it’ssodifficult, but alsosorewarding.” Which obviously meantYes, please make it clear how proud of me you are. That’s the only reason I’m talking about this in the first place. But later, when I vented about law school, she made derogatory comments about my work ethic and said that the stress of school didn’t compare to the stress of the “real world,” the years she spent grumbling to me conveniently forgotten.
“I’ll think about it,” I say to appease my mother.
“That’s all I ask. Oh, I almost forgot—I know you’re probably not thinking about this kind of thing yet, but I was discussing internships with Judge Wright the other day, and she said she could make room for you over winter break. It’s a good opportunity to dip your toes in, and if it goes well, it’ll guarantee you a spot in her summer-internship program.”
Oh. Shit.
I remember Judge Wright. I hated that internship. The hours were long, it was unpaid, and she loved to yell at me for every tiny mistake I made and a lot of mistakes I didn’t.
The other two interns hadn’t helped. They’d both been in law school and were older, so they treated me like I wastheirpersonal intern, someone to do all the grunt work they thought themselves above. I turned a corner one day to find them muttering about me being a “diversity hire” whose mom got me the spot. That had stung because, at least in terms of the second part, I knew it was true.
As for the first part—I was eighteen and had worked my ass off at everything I’d ever done, so I was unused to that sort of racist dismissiveness. Not that I wouldn’tgetused to it. I heard variations of it at everyturning point in my life from then on. When I awkwardly admitted that I was at school on a full scholarship, people’s minds automatically went to my ethnicity, even though in reality it was my PSAT score. How did I get into a top law school? Not my 4.0 GPA—nope, it was because I was Latina. How had I managed to sign with a law firm before graduation when some of my classmates hadn’t? Bingo—ithadto be my ethnicity or the fact that I was a woman, and hell, the two together just made my life a cakewalk.
“Yeah. About Judge Wright—can I think on it?”
“What’s there to think about? It’s only a month, with Christmas and New Year’s off.”
“I’m not sure I want to take on an internship during my first break from school.”
“Okay. Well, I already told her that you’d love to do it, but I suppose I can tell her you changed your mind…” My mom sounds like she dreads saying any such thing to Judge Wright, and my heart goes out to her. I’m tempted to backtrack and say I’ll do it.
