“Oh, well, good job to her!” Vera seems genuinely delighted.
Sana sighs. “Yeah, good job, Mom. I’m happy for her, I really am, and I think she’s amazing. But because she went through such a hard time, her motto is now: ‘If I could do all that while I was literally homeless, then everyone can do anything they set their mind to.’ From when I was little, she’d always tell me how lucky I was to have a mom who isn’t a stereotypical Asian mom. To have a mom who understands and values the importance of the pursuit of creativity, who doesn’t just expect me to be a doctor or lawyer or engineer. Actually, given my mom’s background, I think she would’ve been disappointed if I’d told her I wanted to do any of those things.” Sana gives a bitter laugh. “But luckily for both of us, like my mother, I gravitate more toward being creative rather than analytical. I chose art. She was so happy. I think—” It’s a struggle to find the right words.
“Sometimes, I feel like the fact that I chose art is my mom’s achievement, not mine. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Whatever the roots, I chose art. I was good at it. I got accepted to CalArts. My mom was always boasting about it to our family, always telling the aunties and uncles, ‘See what happens when you don’t keep trying to squeeze your kids into such narrow lanes?’ It was kind of annoying, but whatever. I was happy at CalArts. I had good friends, I was doing well in my classes. My teachers liked me. But my mom’s voice was always at the back of my mind. Her expectations that I couldn’t just do ‘well’; I had to be like her. The top one percent of people in her career. She releases like four books a year because she has to be the best at publishing. And she wanted me to be like that, to be the best artist at CalArts.”
Vera nods thoughtfully, her eyes looking sad. A few times, Vera sucks in a breath like she’s about to interrupt, but then she manages to stop herself and sip some more tea instead. At some point, Emma totters over, rubbing her eyes, and Vera scoops her into her lap. Within minutes, Emma has settled her head on Vera’s shoulder and fallen asleep. Sana can’t help feeling a stab of jealousy at the simplicity of the kid’s world. Draw on pavement, drink warm milk, take a nap. She gives herself a little shake. How pathetic to be jealous of a toddler.
“Anyway, there was so much pressure, and I knew—I just knew I wasn’t ever going to be the best. I’d have classes and in every class there’s always that one person who’s just so ridiculously talented, you know? And that person was never me. And the pressure kept building, and I was starting to panic—I was one semester away from graduating and I still hadn’t made a name for myself, and there was my mom with all her expectations and hopes, and then . . . I met Marshall.”
At this, Sana has to pause, because the memory is so painful. So raw. “We’d just had our spring show, and I was watching my top classmates getting approached by gallery owners who walked right past me and my paintings. Like, they’d just glance at my paintings and their eyes would slide away. Hundreds of hours I’d poured into them and it took less than a second for the pros to tell that they were worthless. But then Marshall came up to me and said, ‘Are you the artist of these paintings?’ I said yes, and his eyes shone like he’d just hit the jackpot, and he said, ‘Wow. These are exactly what I was looking for.’ ”
Sana glances at Vera, embarrassed. “You probably think I’m stupid, don’t you?”
Vera frowns. “I think this Marshall is very cunning, and I think you were under lot of pressure.”
Sana’s mouth twitches into a sad smile. “Thanks, Vera. Yeah, I was. Anyway, he told me he’s an NFT collector.” Sana snorts at the memory. “I didn’t even know what an NFT was. Then I thought it was only for virtual art, but Marshall told me that it could be anything, even art in the physical world. Even sculptures. He said that the NFT world was a lot more diverse than these stuffy art galleries, and he could tell that there was something special about my paintings.” Her voice wobbles then. “I guess I wanted to believe in him so badly. More than anything. He explained more of the technical details to me, but by then, I was so desperate, so eager to believe him, that I would’ve agreed to practically anything. I didn’t understand most of the technical details; I didn’t really bother to. He had me sign all these agreements that I didn’t really—I tried reading them, I did, I swear, but it was all in legalese and there wasn’t a chance in hell that an arts student like me would’ve understood them.”
“What is this ‘legalese’? You mean like Chinese?” Vera says.
Sana laughs despite herself. “No, Vera. It’s not like Chinese. Well, it might as well have been Chinese for all that I understood, but it just means, like, really complicated language that you often find in legal documents that only those who’ve had training in legal terms would understand.”
“Hmm, yes, I see. Legalese.”
Sana half wonders if by this time next year Vera will have taught herself to be well-versed in legalese. She wouldn’t put it past Vera. “Anyway, long story short, it turns out that in signing those documents, I signed away all of my rights to my own art. It all belonged to Marshall. As soon as the papers were signed, he basically fuc—uh, sorry, he basically ghosted me.”
“Oh, I know this ‘ghosted,’ ” Vera says proudly. “I often hear it on the TikTok. It means when someone disappears very suddenly, like a ghost.”
“Um. Yeah, that’s right. So he ghosted me, and meanwhile, I was watching my paintings on the marketplace and I saw that one of them had sold for a few hundred dollars. It wasn’t much, not compared to some of my classmates’ stuff, but it was something! I mean, I created that out of nothing. I poured everything inside me into the paintings; the whole time I was working on those pieces, I ate and breathed and slept in this fog because I was so consumed by them. And to have them stolen from me like that . . .”
“Hmm, yes. I can see how that must be very painful.”
“It felt like he had stolen a part of me and left me with this gaping hole. And the worst part is, when I told my mom about it, she just laughed and said, ‘Oh, sweetie. Move on. Do you think I haven’t had my work stolen before? The literary world is just as full of thieves. Plagiarism everywhere. I once told a friend about a book idea I had, and next thing I knew, she’d written a book with exactly that same idea. You know what I did? I moved on. You are more than just one idea.’ ”
“Well,” Vera says, “I agree, we are all more than just one idea. But having our very first idea stolen, before we have even plunge into the water, is devastating.”
“Yes, exactly!” Sana cries, so loudly that Emma twitches a little. Sana winces, hoping she hasn’t just woken the poor kid up, but after a few moments, Emma settles back down. “Sorry, I’ll be a bit quieter. Anyway, when I couldn’t move on, my mom started getting frustrated. I got the sense that she was angrier at me for not being able to just shake it off like she would’ve than at Marshall for actually thieving it in the first place. She kept telling me it’s a good lesson to learn early, and to stop moping, and to ‘just keep swimming,’ and the more she said that stuff, the worse I felt. I became blocked. I couldn’t even bear to pick up my paintbrush for a while. And even after the hurt stopped being so raw, I picked up my brush and I stood in front of that blank canvas, and there was . . . nothing. My mom told me that she often wrote her pain into her books, especially when she was homeless. She told me to use this pain as fuel for my art. But I couldn’t. I just felt numb. I felt blocked.” Sana laughs bitterly. “Blocked. My mom doesn’t believe in blocks. She says that’s just us being indulgent.”