I've always been frightened of one-way streets. The feeling you get when you're forced into going one direction and there's no clear way of coming back. That and traffic, especially when it's heavy and forcing you into uncomfortable situations. Maybe that's the reason why I never got a driver's license. Even if that was social suicide in Berkeley, where I lived, it was still better than dealing with the California highways. If my father was around, he'd shake his head and tell me that I wasn't living up to the last two generations of "strong independent women" that graced our family. But I'm pretty sure he'd have a good anecdote as well. And see the stark truth that was hidden behind it, in my interactions with people rather than cars. Iâve always preferred books to people, especially when they came with sticky situations where Iâd have to make choices that people wouldnât make themselves. In sixth grade, a boy tried to kick a soccer ball and ended up smashing my nose. He was a shrimpy little white boy that would give me this glassy-eyed stare when I tried to read my chapter books in silent reading. I remember being carried out of the field as he followed the teacher, sobbing that he was sorry. The next day, he wrote me a one page apology in bad English and gave me a daisy he had picked out from the front of the school. I just did my best to avoid him. Eventually he started hanging out where I did at recess and asked me to the end of elementary school mixer. I just looked away and mumbled no thanks, and avoided him for the rest of the school days. We fell apart after that, and on the last day of 8th grade, he made eye contact with me at promotion, and then sneered and looked away. It was about then that my father got me into a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class that had opened up in our hometown in Oakland. Despite picking up everything they taught me quickly, all the forms, throws, and pressure points, I was dismal at sparring. I didn't like doing it and it gave me bruises on my arms and legs from the little kids that flailed their arms. I couldn't improvise, and in the end, I just refused to do it. On the black belt test, I was supposed to spar a master, but I only shook my head and said I would pass. I ended up failing the test and not progressing. I still remember him standing up in the audience, crossing his arms and shaking his head. About $500 he had spent on classes, uniforms, and competitions, and in the end, I chose not even to try. But I guess, just to spite me, he bought me a punching bag for Christmas. I quit Jiu-Jitsu shortly after that. Needless to say, my father was disappointed in me, even though he never said a thing. I guess I could understand why. Apparently he had grown up in the South, and became the first African-American graduate of some big name white college that I forget the name of. Hating the South, he left for California by himself and ten years later, started his own business and family. He was that kind of person. "Natasha, I don't care what you do, but you have to be strong," I remember him saying, when I told him that I never really liked Jiu-Jitsu at all, anyway. Two years later, he died of lymphoma, even though he kept insisting to me, my mom, and my sisters that he was strong enough to live through it. I kept that old punching bag in the garage, even though it only became more caked with dust as the years went by. It was too painful to practice on it with tears running down my cheek and a stomach churning with guilt. Somehow during those dark days, I decided to pick myself up from the ground and start caring about my future. I pulled my B's and C's into A's and somehow was accepted into UC Berkeley, where they don't care about your freshman grades, anyway. And they loved a good sob story. "Poor little Natty," they would say. "She lost her father and did so well in school!" like I was some ghetto girl from Compton that beat the odds or something. I guess they didn't know that he used to make 200k a year and both my sisters went to Ivy leangues. But it worked in my favor so I kept my mouth shut. Even when sometimes it made me want to scream and dig nails into my face. Senior year of Berkeley, I had my first boyfriend, the only other African-American boy that liked to listen to the strange strain of Classical and Jazz fusion music that I liked and could make clever Art History jokes. Maybe it was his quirks that got to me, but Psychology 506 suggested that it was because in a way, he reminded me of my late father. But I don't like to think of it like that. I remember one day, I was lying on my bed, listening to the slow whir of the fan and smelling the scent of his cologne on my bedsheets. He was sitting upright, his eyes focused on the bright light of the outside Berkeley sun. And that's when he questioned me for the first time. "Why aren't you going to that P.F. Chang fundraiser? You've been working so hard on it for so long." "I don't care. Chrissy can go take the job. I'm going to stay here and sleep." "Is this because she got the position you wanted? You've been depressed about that for...days." "Maybe." I remember him sighing, rolling his eyes, and tossing the long hair out of his face. "So go fight the system. You've been in Red Cross longer than her, and even you said that she lied on her application and doesn't go to the events. How do you expect a president that never even shows up to meetings to know that?" "I don't want to do anything. Just...whatever." He narrowed his eyes and stood up. "You always do this, letting people take advantage of you, not speaking up... Are you just going to let this happen every time?" I ignored him. "What if they were to kick you out of the organization or if Chrissy said shit about you behind your back? You would just take it?" I laughed. "You sound like my father." "Enough with the father card." He looked around the room, and then I saw his eyes settle on the calendar that marked the last day of school before looking back at me. "What if I just leave now? And say that I'm going to break up with you and walk out of this door and give you up since we're both graduating. Would you stop me? Or would you just let me go?" I hated those stupid mind game questions, so I just turned my back towards him. "Go ahead," I said. He picked up his stuff, the CDs that I had made him, the cologne that I had bought in overseas in Paris, the teddy bear from our first date, and walked out without saying goodbye. I thought he was throwing another passive-aggressive tantrum and took it as a joke. I waited two hours, sitting on my bed, waiting for him to come back. When I realized that he wasn't, I immediately called his phone, but he didn't pick up. I tried again the next day, but there was no answer. And that was the last time I tried. I never saw him again. People who listened to my story were disappointed to find out that there wasn't a happy ending to it, no silver lining, no Hollywood gloss. I typed his name up on Facebook a year later, and found out that he was married to a singer-songwriting he had met in Taiwan. The entire time, I had thought he genuinely had no objections to my weakness with people. Calder was the type of guy that exerted confidence, and I thought he didn't mind what kind of person I was as long as he could mess around with me and have sardonic conversations. Maybe he was fed up the entire time. He just wanted me to prove that I wasn't something that he was afraid I was, and I had proved the opposite. So he left me. I didn't graduate from Berkeley. The day that I was supposed to be a magma cum laude biochemistry and creative writing double major, I found myself walking down a one-way street. I never expected the thing with Calder to last, but his sudden disappearance was so startling that I lost control of all else. I just know that my father would be disappointed. The Berkeley breeze stung my cheeks at 6 a.m. in the morning. I could see few cars, and the skies were gray, gloomy, and fogless. There was so much I had wanted to do in life, but never had the chance because I didn't want to approach people about it. Go see the California Coast with my family when my dad was first diagnosed. Tell my teacher that I did write that poem that she insisted I copied out of a book in fifth grade. Slap that cocky high school boy in the face instead of crying when he made out with a girl at a party after telling me that he liked me. Tell my father that I was sorry I couldnât be the person he wanted me to be. But I couldnât even bring myself look into his quiet face at the casket. I thought shyness, introversion, and the lack of a backbone was something you grew out of in childhood, but part of me was still as vulnerable as the baby fat that never really left my cheeks. I think, maybe, Iâve never lived. And if twenty-one years of college doesnât prepare you for the world, Iâm not sure what will. So when I was walking down the one-way street, I decided that maybe, despite life not being one direction, I had only really gone just one way. Was it my fatherâs way, or the way I thought he would want me to go? So I stick my thumb out at the highway, and hope to bring about one of those strangers that my parents told me never to talk to. A greasy-looking truck driver, not a taxi, stopped by, and narrowed his eyes at me. âWhere to?â âAnywhere,â I say. âNo, where?â he says impatiently. I look back at the open road, and realized that I could back. Turn away and beg Berkeley to take me back. Beg Calder to take me back. Beg my father in heaven somewhere for forgiveness and live a linear, pathetic life where I canât make choices or answer to people. But I canât go backward, and forward doesnât work either. I think for a short while, and then finally look him in the eye. I whisper my answer, the first place I can think of, that I heard about once in a conversation one day, and hope that itâs a good place. He laughs, places his hands on the wheel, and beckons me onto the seat next to him. And as we zoom out of the one-way street, I decide to never look back again. (c) Amy Fan
