The Best of Both Worlds

By Jedi Adia

Her name is Kira. And she is the sister I never knew I had.

When my mother left our home in Manhattan to go home to China, she was pregnant. She left my Canadian father and me behind, because she supposedly didn’t want to subject us to life in a Communist country. That was fifteen years ago.

Now, I am seventeen. Seventeen and preparing to meet the other half of the Odin family – my mother and my sister Kira. I can’t help being curious about them, but I resent them at the same time. I resent my mother for making the decision to go back to China. And I resent Kira, as well as myself, for being her daughters. I don’t think I can accept either one of them for walking back into my life, after living in a Communist country for fifteen years. The decision that my mother made was an illogical decision. I told Dad just that three days ago. He told me not to ever say things like that ever again, because he didn’t think it wasn’t nice to say anything like that about my mother. As he said this to me, I was thinking, “What about me? Do you think it was nice when my mother abandoned me to go to China and then decided to walk back into my life fifteen years later, while throwing my sister’s existence in my face? It’s like, one day I have just a father and the next day, I have, not only a mother, but a sister as well!” I left the house then and walked down the street. I didn’t know where I was going to go, but what I did know is that I needed to talk to someone other than Dad. Dad, whose judgment was clouded by his love for Mom and the daughter he’d never met. At least, that was the way I saw it. Now I really needed to talk to someone. I decided right then that I should go to the one person I knew I could trust and who would listen.  

The next day, I went to see Desi Reyes, one of the people I had been friends with ever since I could remember. I had hoped to talk to Desi in private, but when I arrived, I knew that wasn’t going to happen, for another girl from school, by the name of Kylie Hugo, was there. I knew I couldn’t talk about my life in her presence; it would’ve been all over town in a matter of hours.

Somehow, Desi knew what I was thinking and she gestured for Kylie to leave.

“No, Desi,” I remember saying. “I’ll come back later.” My problems didn’t matter very much. They did matter, but I believed they could wait. I left her house and went next door to my own. I had some thinking to do.

As I went by, I looked in the living room. The television was blaring; there was a baseball game on. It sounded like the Red Sox were winning. I looked over at Dad, but he wasn’t even watching the game. There was a beer bottle on the floor, so Dad had obviously been drinking so much that he passed out. He does that sometimes. I went in and turned the TV down a bit and then went upstairs. Dad’s drinking was probably why Mom had left. If that was the case, then I really couldn’t blame her. And Kira… Kira didn’t have much of a choice. I still resented her for who she was, though. She’s a communist. And I’m totally against that.

As I sat in my room, I asked myself if things would ever be normal again.

“But, then, your father’s drunk all the time, your mother abandoned you and you have a sister you don’t even know. How can things ever be normal? Your life’s changed. Forever,” I whispered to the image in my mirror, answering my own question. I wanted to forget all about this, but there was no way I could. I had my mother’s hair and her eyes. So, every time I looked at my reflection, I saw my mother. I hated myself for that. I could never forgive Kira or myself for being her daughters.

The phone rang once, breaking into my thoughts. When it didn’t ring again, I assumed Dad had picked up. I knew I had assumed correctly when Dad yelled something unintelligible up the stairs. Even though I couldn’t understand him, I knew what he meant.

“Desi?” I asked, picking up the phone.”

“Yeah…it’s me. Natalie, is there something wrong? You seemed upset when you were here earlier,” Desi said.

“I’d rather not discuss it over the phone. Why don’t you come over here so we can talk—“I paused, as I heard a bottle break downstairs. “Actually, I should probably go over to your house.” I hung up the phone and went downstairs to find Dad sitting on the floor amid empty or broken beer bottles and watching one of those karate movies with the Chinese people in them. I left the house through the back door and ran across the backyard, breaking through the hedge that separated our two houses. I walked through the back door and found Desi sitting in the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” she asked me, gesturing to a chair. I sat down and she handed me a lemonade.

“My mother’s coming back from China tonight,” I said.

“That’s not so bad,” Desi said, sitting with her elbows on the table, like she usually does.

“She’s bringing my sister with her,” I said.

Desi raised an eyebrow. “Sister? I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“Neither did I, until a couple of days ago. I’d talk to Dad about it, but he’s so drunk half the time that I can’t talk to him at all.”

“I believe I heard something about why that is,” Desi said. She said it more to herself than to me, but I heard it anyway.

“Who did you talk to about it?” I asked. “No, wait. I bet it was Kylie.”

“Oh, Natalie. Kylie’s not all that bad. She’s a good person. And no, I didn’t hear it from her.”

“Then who—“

“I heard it from Kylie’s sister Monica,” Desi said, cutting me off.

I placed my cup on the table and got up.

“Does everyone in town know about this?” I asked. Desi got up and we stood facing each other.

“Your father isn’t exactly keeping his drinking a secret. Actually, I think he’s proud of it,” Desi said. “Go home and try to catch your father in one of his lucid moments. Ask him why he is the way he is. Then ask him about your sister—what’s her name?”

“Kira,” I answered.

“Kira. Ask your father about Kira. See what he says. Maybe the reason for his drinking is that your mother left him and never let him see Kira grow up,” Desi said. “Ask him about that. Then call me.”

“I’ll try,” I said, as I turned to leave.

“There is no try,” I heard Desi say, as I closed the back door.

After returning home, I found that the bottles and broken glass were gone from the living room floor and the television was off. Dad was sitting on the couch and he was about as sober as I’d ever seen him. I started upstairs, but Dad called me back.

“Natalie, no one must know about what happened today. About any day that I get the way I was this morning,” he said. I turned to look at him.

“Dad, everyone in town knows that you drink. But they don’t know why. That’s what I want to know. I want to know why you are the way you are,” I said, walking toward him. Dad looked at me and it was in that instant that, even though we were in the same room, I felt like he was very far away. And when he finally spoke, I realized I should’ve known the answer to my question all along.

“She chose China over me. Over us. She abandoned her family and went to live in a communist country. And worse than that, she took your sister with her,” he began. “So now, you have a sister that you’ve never met and I have a daughter that I’ve never met.”

“Dad, do you know what she’s like?”

“This was taken on her birthday two years ago,” Dad said, handing me a picture. It was a picture of Kira on her thirteenth birthday. She was holding a Chinese fan and standing outside what was probably the house where she and Mom lived. And as I looked at this picture, I wondered how Kira would ever fit in here in American society. She was wearing a silk dress and she probably only spoke Chinese. My friends at school would think she was an exchange student or something.

“It’s like a completely different world,” I said, looking at the picture.

“It is,” Dad said. “China and Canada are two different worlds. You and Kira are the best of both of them.”

The best of both worlds. Yeah, that was one way of putting it. Not my way, but it was one way. I sighed. Maybe he was right.

“Yes, Dad. Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But it doesn’t mean I’ll accept her. I can’t accept her.”

“If you can’t accept her, that must mean you can’t accept yourself,” Dad said.

“As the daughter of a Communist, I never have accepted myself,” I said.

“You’re not just-“ Dad broke off and we turned toward the front door as we heard a voice neither of us had heard in a long time.

“Mom?” I whispered.

“Remora?” Dad whispered from behind me. I stared as a young girl came up behind my mother. This had to be Kira. She was about two inches taller than Mom and she closely resembled Dad. I am almost as tall as Dad, but I look like Mom. Since we resemble the same two people, there is no denying that we are sisters. Now, I suppose I have to accept the fact that my sister Kira has her home in the house that I call my home. As I think about this, I realize that I want to get to know her and that Dad is right. My sister Kira and I, born from a Canadian man and a Chinese woman, truly are the best of both worlds.