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“Anne? What’re you looking for, honey?”
Her mother’s voice startles her back into her surroundings from staring at the collection of the neatly packed glimmering glitter glues packed in plastic vials on the arts and crafts shelf. She was met with her knee before her mother kneels down beside her, a hand reaching out to tuck a strand of strayed curls behind her ear.
“Glitter glues,” Anne simply replies without adding much to elaborate.
“Huh,” Her mother kneels down to level her, trying to plaster the same serious look that Ashe Anne has on her face, but it’s hard when what she had been staring at is just a colorful collection of all kinds of glitters. “Well, which one are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure,” she replies again, now placing her hands on her hips like her mother does when she’s thinking, and the little head tilts as she stares and stares and frowns hard, and it makes her mother slightly laugh. She likes it when her mother laughs—it sounds like the ringing ho rakhang bells in the temple.
“What aren’t you sure about?” She asks her again, tilting her head to the side along with her. “The colors? Well, which color do you like?”
“It’s not for me , mommy,” she tells her, speaking as if her mother should know that by now already. “It’s for Marcy.”
“Marcy…” her mother tries to recall. “Ah, the girl you waved goodbye at on Friday?”
“Yep! Her name’s Marcy Wu with an u and she doesn’t talk,” Anne shakes her head in hyperbole until her curls fly around, “ever.”
“Why not?” Her mother asks. “Is she shy?”
“Uh-huh,” Anne nods, “ really shy. And I want to give her a new glitter glue because she likes glitter and we used her glue for a school project but I don’t know what her favorite color is!”
“Oh—well, then why don’t you ask her?” She suggests.
“Because she doesn’t talk!” Anne throws her hands up when she says it again, “ever! To anyone!”
Her mother smiles softly with a chuckle, standing back up to take a pack of multi-colored little glitter vials from the upper shelf. “Well, you can ask her to pick one from these when you meet her again, and then we’ll see which one she likes?”
Anne’s face lit up almost instantly, standing on her tiptoes to reach for the glitter glue pack on her hands. “That’s a good idea, mommy!”
“Of course it is, it’s from me!” Her mother raises her eyebrows with a smirk, earning a playful eye-roll from her as she lifts her back by the waist onto their shopping cart.
She forgot all about her little dilemma by the time the cashier beeps the colorful glitter glue pack and places it inside their shopping bag.
Of course it wasn’t until Mae saw Marcy for herself that she finally realized.
She’s never had a family member or a neighbor who had it—or what she suspects it is. She only could vaguely remember a young girl who stuttered her words out when she tried to order from the restaurant and kept looking up and down like she’s forcing herself to make eye contact although her body just straight up refuses to, like it hurts—it almost somewhat mirrors Marcy’s movements exactly, as she watches the two girls play on the kindergarten’s front yard from outside the metal fence. Her elbows were tucked and drawn against her chest and she keeps shifting her body back and forth as Anne chatters away and jumps on the chalk hopscotch boxes around them, ever the hyperactive.
They’d make a great fit for each other, Mae vaguely thinks fondly to herself before she hears a man on the other side of the yard call out for Marcy, waving his hand from outside the fence.
For a second, she thinks about actually approaching a stranger to talk about his child—that is what parents do, isn’t it? Plan playdates, talk about school activities, snacks… Mae doesn’t actually know how it all exactly goes—hell, she barely knows how to be a mother, sometimes. When she was a little girl, she would just go to the neighborhood field and play marbles with all the other kids.
But—well, most of the American experience is just butting headfirst into all those new and strange customs and hoping that they see her as one of them. And hey, maybe Marcy’s father is a stranger to America as she is—after all, she hasn’t even talked to him yet.
She is overthinking this. She is definitely overthinking this.
With a breath held, Mae walks over to Mr. Wu and tries her hardest to plaster the friendliest smile she could muster on her face—the kind that says hello, I am a suburban mother with three children, I definitely know what I’m doing.
“Hello, are you Marcy’s father?”
The taller man turns to her abruptly with a startled noise, quickly regaining his composure as he fixes his glasses right on his nose with his index. He looks… pleasantly surprised, or so Mae hopes, smiling rather awkwardly before offering her a hand to shake. “Yes, that is me. I assume your daughter is that little girl?”
Mae takes his hand, shaking it with a relieved smile. “Yes, she’s mine. Her name’s Anne—and I’m Mae. Mae Boonchuy.”
“Nice to meet you,” The man smiles back. “Um, so, where are you from?”
“Bangkok,” Mae replies with a smile slightly brighter than before. “And you?”
“Family’s from New Jersey,” he casually answers with a shrug.
Oh. Well, they’re definitely not newcomers; that’s easy to conclude. And… one less thing to bond over. And… It's time to call Anne. Definitely time to call Anne. “Anne! C’mere, sweetie!”
“Mom!” Anne looks up from her unraveled shoelaces with a grin, skipping over towards her mother with a hand reaching out for Marcy’s, instinctively guiding her over.
“Anne, this is Marcy’s dad,” Mae explains gently, tilting her head to pass a smile at the girl cowering behind Anne.
“Hello!” Anne smiles, reaching out a polite hand to him, and Mr. Wu bends down slightly to shake her hand in… awe?
“Oh, thank you—Anne, was it?” He asks. “I’m so glad Marcy managed to make a friend.”
Anne grins, grabbing Marcy’s shoulders excitedly before bringing her forward. “She lets me borrow her glue and she makes the best stick bridges!”
“Oh, well, I’m glad to hear that—maybe I should’ve packed her more glue,” he laughs slightly.
“Would you mind if Marcy comes over for a playdate sometime?” Mae finds the question said out loud before she could think twice, thrice, and eventually overthink it in her head. “We live just around a few blocks.”
“Ah I—that is a very kind offer, Mrs. Boonchuy,” the man sort of stuttered tensely again, reaching down to grab his daughter’s arm almost in a hurry, “but I… sorry, I couldn’t possibly burden that on you.”
A bewildered what? was the first thing Mae could think of in her head—but she bit her tongue before she could say it out loud, reaching down to grab Anne’s little hands, too. And then, a more fitting reply, “oh, not at all! If you’re ever comfortable with it, we would love to have her.” She tilts her head to pass a smile to the little girl hiding behind her father’s work case before gently tugging on Anne’s hand to get her attention. “We have to go, now. Say goodbye, Anne!”
“Goodbye, Mr. Marcy’s dad!” Anne waves her hand with a grin, “and bye Marcy!”
Marcy doesn't reply. She doesn’t even wave her hand back as her father hurries her along the other way.
As she watches Anne skip on pavement blocks a few steps in front of her, Mae recalls the way the autistic young girl who had been ordering food on the counter that day had her mother hovering on the corner, looking at her with an apologetic smile.
That’s the thing about them, she thinks to herself, half in revulsion. Their carers, they always apologize. Like it’s some sort of shame. How could they ever think of that?
Watching Anne skip around some more, her brown curls illuminated by the golden afternoon sun penetrating the leaves from the trees on the sidewalk, she thinks she’d never be ashamed of Anne. Not ever.
She wonders why Mr. Wu does, and feels her heart wrench in pity for a little girl she barely knows.
Anne doesn’t know how exactly it happens, but one day as her mother picked up a call on the kitchen landline phone with two hands pressed against her mouth on the kitchen floor with crayon chalks all over her hands (she has to be extra quiet when her mom’s on the phone), she watches as her mother’s face turn into a smile before nodding at something on the phone.
Her mother says a small goodbye on the phone and hangs the phone back on its place on the wall, then turns towards her with a blossoming grin. She must’ve grinned back as well and squealed out something in excitement, but suddenly she’s in the backyard watching Marcy stare at her father’s marigold bush before she could remember what it was.
And boy do Marcy stare. She stares and stares at it like it was the most interesting thing in the world, but she doesn’t dare to touch it, hands kept behind her back like her father’s toy soldiers in the attic. Maybe if she tries to stare at it too…
Nope. Nothing. Just marigolds, all frilled like her mother’s sundresses. Marcy seems to like them, though. Maybe if she shows Marcy her mother’s dresses, she’d like it too? Maybe then they can play? Does Marcy like playing marbles? She has a lot of marbles. Sometimes she’d throw them too hard against the porch tiles and one time it went flying off towards the bush and one time it hit a bee and she cried because she didn’t want to hurt them—maybe Marcy likes bees? Should she find her a bee? Yep, she should definitely find her a bee—maybe then she’d be so impressed that she’d finally talk—oh, there’s a bee!
It buzzes past her ear and Anne rubs her shoulder against her ear at the tingling sensation the sound gives her—she tries to keep her eyes open as she slowly follows it around, trying to not let it disappear into thin air. Maybe if she stands still enough to let it land on her—
“Woah, careful Anne, they can sting!”
“Huh?” She turns to him, losing her attention at the little bee almost immediately—she backs away at the mention of sting, running towards her father for cover instead, clinging on an arm as her father approaches Marcy and crouches down to level her.
“Oh hi, you must be Marcy,” he greets with a smile, which strangely makes Marcy cower, backing away, raising her shoulders as if she’s trying to tuck into herself like a threatened snail. “You like plants too, huh?”
A small nod. It was strange—her mother had sat down and held both of her hands like she always does when things are serious, and she tells her something about Marcy being different, but—well, she didn't think it had been such a big deal. She thought everyone was different in their own ways, like how no marigold flower will ever have the same frills.
If it were her, she would’ve said hello back and offered her father a hand to shake. But Marcy doesn’t. So, Anne decides to take matters into her own hands for her, scurrying over between her father and Marcy and reaching out an open hand for Marcy to hold. Marcy likes holding hands when she’s nervous, which is… well, all the time, really. “She does! She likes reading a lot and also she can count really well and also she likes drawing characters from her favorite games!”
“Ooh, games?” Her father asks. “What kinds of games?”
Well, that she doesn’t know. She turns around to Marcy to ask her instead. “Mar-mar?”
The girl looked down at the ground, and not a single word was said.
Oh. Well. “Don’t know, daddy!” She turns around to face him again, just as cheery as before.
“Heyyy, you know what?” her father chuckles, taking her to sit on his knee as he passes Marcy another smile, refusing to give up. “I’ve got some video games you can play with if you’d like! Wanna give it a try?”
Marcy’s eyes almost instantly lit up at that, like a pull-chain lamp being tugged on. Slowly, she gives them a hesitant nod, which makes Anne squeal in delight as she slid off her father’s lap to take Marcy’s hand and drag her inside the house. “C’mon! I’ve seen my dad play so many games! There’s one with knights, and one with the dragons…”
“Bingo,” Mr. Boonchuy smirks to his wife, earning him a playful slap on the shoulder. “One point for Mr. Dad.”
“No sandwiches for you,” Mrs. Boonchuy tells him, equally petty.
He sets the girls each a controller and sets up the console for them, watching how Marcy’s eyes practically sparkle like there’s glitter in her eyes while Anne spreads out the collection of hardcase DVD’s proudly. And as he explains the game to the girls, Marcy still doesn’t utter a word about the dragons or the knights, but Anne’s never seen her smile so wide, not even when the teacher declared she’s officially moved up her reading level to third grade—and, well, she’d reckon that it’s all that really matters, right?
Marcy comes over more often after that after the bewildered Mrs. Wu who came over to pick up Marcy had been pleasantly surprised that she wasn’t a trouble at all to them—which had been weird, Anne thought, because why would Marcy ever be any trouble? (she didn’t say that out loud no matter how much she wanted to, of course).
The second time, Marcy came over with green overalls and her hair tied up with colorful beads. She told her I liked them!, and Marcy didn’t say thank you back, but she had grinned back at her, all baby teeth and tooth gaps. Her mother drew them hopscotch boxes on the pavement of their driveway with colorful chalks, and Marcy isn’t that good at jumping with one foot either, but she doesn't mind. She lets Marcy draw flowers on her leg with a green chalk and lets vanilla ice cream melt all over their hands.
Then she lost count on how many times Marcy had come over, to the park after school or for sandwiches and warm days beneath the sun, painted with marigolds and bees and the soft green blades of grass Marcy kept running her palms over. They read books and drew pictures and marcy still doesn’t talk, but one particularly bright afternoon after she left to go home, she had left them a drawing with the two girls holding hands and Mr. and Mrs. Boonchuy on the back titled : “thank you!”
A little marigold flower magnet pins Marcy’s drawing on their fridge.
Things had been going well for a while, so it was a surprise that one afternoon after Mae had picked Anne up from kindergarten, Anne came pattering into the kitchen where she’s cooking all serious and front, standing as tall as she could make herself seem and with a stern voice say to her, “mommy, you know how lying is bad, right?”
She frowns slightly while chewing back an amused smile, crouching down to level her height. “Yes…?”
“Well, mommy, I have something bad to tell you,” Anne mutters, feet shifting side to side nervously as she avoids eye contact. “I lied about being friends with Marcy.”
She frowns harder, hands reaching out to hold her daughter’s arms in reassurance. “What do you mean, sweetie? You don’t actually like Marcy?”
“No no!” Anne exclaims almost immediately, stomping her foot against the floor with her fists balled, “I do, I really do! She’s so nice and smart and I feel so bad, because, um—” her leg shifts again, eyes darting around the room, and Mae squeezes her hands just a little bit tighter to ground her back. “because I— because I first actually came to her not because I want to, but because,” Anne chokes back on her next words, hesitantly looking at her mother’s face for reassurance, and Mae gives her all of it. And Anne trusts her. “Because the teacher told me I’ll get a gold star if I got Marcy to talk more and—and I did it because I wanted to make you and dad happy!”
“Oh,” if a heart can physically be crumpled apart, hers would have. Oh… what has she done to this girl? “Sweetie,” she starts, soft and slow and soothing, “Anne, listen to me, hey—you already make us so happy!” She cups her little cheek in her palm, stroking the soft blushed skin with her thumb gently. “You already make us so, so happy for being you. I don’t need you to do anything else—you’re already lovely just the way you are. And I’m happy because you’re my Anne. Okay?”
Anne nods, leaning her head into her cup palm before she goes in for a full hug, curling herself into her mother’s embrace as Mae shushes her softly, weaving her hand into her baby girl’s delicate curls. “I’m so, so sorry I made you think you weren’t enough, Anne. You are. You are. You don’t need gold stars to prove us that. Ever.”
“Mm,” Anne mumbles, “yeah. I still feel bad though, mommy. I really do want to be friends with Marcy. For reals this time.”
“Well, you can still do that now, can’t you?” she tells her, pressing a small kiss to her temple gently. “Why don’t we meet her at the park with the glitter glues we got and start all over again?”
Anne’s eyes gleamed when she looked up at her, a small grin creeping its way to her face as she jumped off her lap. “Yeah! I’ll go get it!”
“Wait—and hey, one more thing,” Mae held her back before she could run off, gently pulling her closer again, “I’m already so proud of you, baby.”
Anne tilts her head in confusion. “For what, mommy?”
Mae smiles softly, gently tapping her nose with one finger. “Well, for being you of course, silly!”
Anne remembers three things as she jumps on the rock steps leading to the park’s sandy playground—one, she didn’t need that silly gold star anymore; two, the pack of glitter glues and notebook clutched in each hand; and three, Marcy could be silent all her life, and Anne would still take her hand and guide her up the slide and draw chalk flowers on each other’s legs and explain her all about the dragons and the knights on her father’s video games.
Marcy could be silent all her life, and Anne would love her either way. It doesn’t matter. Voice or no voice, Marcy is still the same Marcy she had met that day, fingers covered with glue and stick.
Marcy’s waiting by the picnic benches when she arrives, and Marcy lets out a silent giggle as she crashes into her with a full blown hug—her mother exclaimed be gentle! somewhere behind her, but silly mom—Marcy loves them, tight hugs and squeezes and the soft tapping of her fingers on her lap, on her hair.
They drew pictures of everything and nothing and colored them with glitter glues, swaying legs intertwined beneath the picnic table, giggles and laughs under the warm afternoon sun. She spreads out the little glitter glue vials piece by piece proudly like she always does with her fathers’ video game DVD’s or the large heavy books from the upper shelves of their house’s library that Marcy loves so much, because she loves seeing Marcy’s smile bloom on her face and she loves Marcy even if she doesn’t.
Anne asks her, “so, which one’s your favorite color?” and Marcy points to the green glitter glue wordlessly, casually reaching out for it and held it up to watch it glimmer under the light of sun, and Marcy still doesn’t talk, but—
“Green.”
Anne grins, holding up her favorite color under the sun, too. “Cool! Mine’s purple, look!”
It doesn’t matter. Chalk on pavement and fingers intertwined as she guides her to jump with one foot, strands of hair glowing under the sun—
All she wants is Marcy. And any Marcy is always going to be her Marcy either way.