Are you satisfied? Ma asks. Her palms are dusted with speckled snow, finely-grated grains that sit heavy on the hand. I am not. My stomach sits like the extracted egg yolks simmering in rose-flavored wine, acidic in its neurotic nature. Molding mooncakes should come easily to people like us, people who massage the dirt for gold, palms unfamiliar with paper’s grimy edges. I knead the dough. Await the eclipse. There are crescents lodged under the whites of my fingernails. Ma has a look of waning distaste, forehead wrinkled into the raised ridges of calligraphed characters. A permanent stamp. Her arms are sore from years of labor, grinding lotus seeds into a sticky paste, plowing until ragged lines grow dark with age. She tells me I’ll be like that, too. It must be trouble-free living on the moon, golden goddess with a pet hare, and I find myself dreaming about a home in a crater. Dream-me lives in a marbled manor with silk tapestries, drinking out of a stolen goblet of elixir. But our East Coast suburban neighborhood isn’t that. I live in a floating box, not like the moon with her pulsing vocation, but a car that steers through the I-86 without an ending. The popcorn ceiling reeks of mold, the four-seat sedan is too cramped, and I want to fly on a spaceship. Ma is right — I sit in a vehicle sinking in salt waves.
