ABOUT MAILE

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Maile's first language is Laos, but her second is French, and her third is English. Like her brothers before her, she attends a Catholic school despite weekend visits to the temple, all the way up to high school. Unlike her brothers, her parents force her to attend a Catholic high school, so while her brothers ditch uniforms and bible study, she's forced to recite passages from a book she doesn't believe in and praise a God she doesn't worship. [break][break] When they brag to her, over and over, about how great public school, she makes note of it. [break][break] When they ask her for a favour - "just tell mom we're staying late at tutoring!" - she tells their mother exactly where they are, and where they are not.[break][break]

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There is another Laos family in the neighborhood, they live a few houses down and Maile's family visits them often. They have a son that is Maile's age and a daughter several years younger. He speaks only English, does not go to temple, goes to a public school, and Maile doesn't like him.

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But her mother is obsessive- fanatical about keeping their blood pure. She insists, that him and Maile would make a wonderful couple, such cute babies, such wonderful chemistry! Maile's mother is charismatic and convincing when she wants to be, and the boy's parents are convinced. However, Maile is not, and though she doesn't say anything, she makes note of it.

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She eventually rationalizes the marriage away. The boy is okay to look at, and he doesn't ask her to lie, she'd probably be okay married to him.

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Maile is married right out of high school, and the ceremony is small. It's in a church, because they're both baptized despite the fact that Maile is not Catholic. She watches him slip the gold band around her finger like she's watching a movie. She doesn't feel him kiss her, finds the memory gone as quick as it had come, and doesn't dwell on it afterward.

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She doesn't dwell on the fact the boy has a box of condoms in his room either, or that it's partially empty, when they end up there, weeks later. She just types it into the notes on her phone when he's asleep at her side.

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Maile spent twenty-two years catering to her impossible-to-please mother, eighteen years being pushed and pulled around by her thankless brothers, and four years married to a barely-good-enough boy. She throws it all away in two minutes when she's offered an full-time position at the indie magazine she did a summer internship at, and she does not stop to regret it.

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The divorce is filed just between her and her (now) ex-husband, and she returns the ring to him. Her goodbyes are broken carefully, and her belongings are packed quickly.

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When she leaves, she makes sure to air the dirty laundry she's been hoarding for so long.

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She adds all the girls her ex-husband has been flirting with to a group chat, introduces herself, and then them all to each other. She tells her brothers' wives just exactly where they go, when they say they're somewhere else. And finally, she tells her mother of her divorce, and leaves every familial trinket she's been told to take with her on her bare bed in her empty room the day she leaves.

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Maila takes a taxi to the airport and it's awful. The driver talks too much, and the car itself smells like weed. She lets it go though, just this once, because she doesn't want to carry old problems into her new life.

[break][break] (Honestly though, she still carries so many things around with her from her years in her hometown, but she ignores them all because that's what she does best.)

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