Very random memory.

This was my first time attending school in California. There was one other Korean girl and the rest were Hispanic. These girls were speaking in Spanish at us saying something like “Chinky Chinese” at us or something. This was something I never experienced while attending school in New York. I was scared at first but I got used to it. I realized that my classmates did not get the same kind of education I did so I started getting cocky. These idiots did not know basic vocab. I had to basically teach them how to fucking study for tests.

But anyway, there was this one girl.

She was a straight-out bitch.

I don’t remember anymore what she did to me but I hated her at the time.

She was always alone because everyone else didn’t enjoy her company either.

But she always wore a tacky hat to cover her bald head.

I was too young to know what cancer was. I didn’t know that kids my age could get so sick with a serious disease. And I don’t think any of the other kids understood that either. So they all made up stories that because she was being such a bitch her mom shaved her hair off or something. Mean things like that.

I hated her guts but I had a feeling that there was something different about her, something much more serious that couldn’t be joked around with.

She wore a wig to school one day.
Okay, even if she originally had hair, it would have been SO obvious that it was a wig. It looked so cheap and plastic and I knew it was bothering her. It reminded me of that one Ronald Dahl book of these witches? They take off their wig and their bald head has red rashes or something. That’s what came to my mind and I wished she wasn’t such a bitch so I could go talk to her.

The other kids were insensitive and made fun of her cheap hair.

She never wore it again.

Looking at my mom now just reminded me of her.
It’s so strange, but sometimes, during bits of my life when I see things I don’t understand, I get this feeling that I will in the future. That I’m going to experience it directly or through the people closest to me.

Whenever I saw her, I knew I would understand what she was diagnosed with when I got older. I had a feeling that I would spend a part of my life feeling regret for not trying to talk to her.

So here I am now, thinking about this the entire week. I wonder if she’s well now. If she’s finally growing her own beautiful hair, combing and styling it every morning.