Page 26 of Bad Words

I returned to my apartment at a gray-black seven o’clock. Daylight saving time had ended, and with it the last of the year’s sun-washed evenings, but a flick of a switch and warm light painted over the darkness.

My home was five hundred square feet of pale neutrals. A jute rug ran beneath a pastel pink table, over which a wax paper globe light hovered like a moon. A taupe love seat faced a mounted television and a soundbar on a low, minimal stand. Amid the gentle bump of the radiator and the gurgle of the pipes, I wiped down the narrow counters and set acoustic guitar humming from my speaker. I watered the line of cacti on the windowsill and straightened the photos in the hallway. Jacob beside me in sky-blue robes at our graduation. Cassie planting a kiss on my cheek at her bachelorette party. My parents and my child self, clutching the ends of my sleeves in self-conscious middle school agony.

Then I dressed in sweatpants, sat cross-legged before the apartment’s front windows, and began to run a hand sander over the baseboard. Nubs and blobs and drooling lines of old paint flattened out and disappeared. Delicate hillocks of white powder accumulated on the uneven floorboards.

Eight years ago, I’d been lucky enough to land this rent-stabilized one-bedroom in a quickly gentrifying Bed-Stuy. My landlord had learned not to worry when I texted him bulleted lists of proposed improvements. Over the years, I’d wallpapered my bedroom, installed a backsplash in the kitchen, replaced every doorknob and drawer handle and light switch plate. This year’s project was to sand off decades of sloppy paint jobs from the windowsills, crown molding, and baseboards, then reprime and repaint with crisp new lines. I’d probably rent until I died, but I refused to live somewhere that would inflict itself upon me.

A meditative half hour passed, the sander’s vibrations harmonizing with the guitar, before my phone buzzed on the floor beside me. I unlocked it to find that my cousins in Seattle had finally caught wind of the Parker Navarro situation.

Amanda Lu

Selina! We just saw the video of you fighting with that author?!? Can’t believe it! Hope you’ve been holding up okay!

Peter Lu

Yeah, let us know if we can do anything, wow.

Peter Lu

For what it’s worth, I thought you won, haha.

I wasn’t particularly close with Peter and Amanda, who were seven and nine years younger, respectively, but we’d always been friendly. Like my Auntie Sylvia, they were ambitious, energetic people. Amanda was a software developer at Google, while Peter was working toward his economics PhD.

I replied, Ha. Thank you, guys. It’s been an interesting few weeks, but nothing I can’t handle.

They each reacted with a heart. I half smiled. Normally, we only texted at Christmas, birthdays, and Chinese New Year. I’d have liked to see them more often, but nothing ever brought us to each other’s respective coasts.

I typed, haltingly, Peter, how’s your PhD going? But before I could tap Send, another message arrived:

Peter Lu

By the way, should we mention any of this to our mom?

His unspoken question was, of course, whether I wanted the news to circulate back to my parents. Auntie Sylvia was delightful but not discreet.

Selina Chan

Probably best not to worry her.

Peter Lu

Got it

Amanda Lu

Your secret’s safe with us! Only we three and the internet will ever know.

I hit the laugh react, but my smile had gone. I didn’t like the idea of the rest of my family caught in the sand trap that existed between my parents and me. I wished that what was between us could stay between us, sealed within the walls of my childhood home, but everyone could hear our silence as distinctly as sound.

I glided my portable vacuum over the baseboard seam and watched white dust swirl up its translucent throat. I pictured my parents at this moment, ghostlike entities drifting through the clapboard house in our Minneapolis suburb. The kitchen table having worked gray circles into the linoleum floor.

When I slid a damp cloth along the baseboard, dust peeled away from the paint above the molding. The lines between materials grew clean and crisp, each wooden ridge perfectly redefined.

Satisfied, I picked up a fresh square of sandpaper. As I was attaching it to the sander, I got a text from Jacob:

Oh boy.

Oh boy what, I said.