Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

He blinked. “Oh. I … suppose it is. You don’t have to say anything if you
don’t want to.”
“Why do you want to know?” Her tone gave nothing away.
Wallace struggled with what to say. He landed on, “I’m trying.”
She didn’t let him off the hook. He was a little in awe of her. “Trying to
what, Wallace?”
He looked down at his hands. “Trying to be … better. Isn’t that what
you’re supposed to be helping me with?”
The backs of her shoes hit the lower cabinets, causing the doors to rattle.
“I don’t think it’s our job to make you better. Our job is to get you through the
door. We give you the time to make peace with it, but anything else beyond
that is up to you.”
“Okay,” he said helplessly. “I … I’ll remember that.”
She stared at him for a long moment. Then, “Before I came here, I didn’t
know how to bake.”
He frowned. What did that have to do with anything?
“I had to learn,” she continued. “Growing up, we didn’t bake. We didn’t
use an oven. We had a dishwasher, but we never used it because dishes
needed to be handwashed, and then put into the dishwasher to be used as a
drying rack.” She grimaced. “Have you ever tried to whisk eggs? Man, that
shit is hard. And then there was the time I made the dishwasher overflow
with soap until it flooded the kitchen. Felt a little bad about that.”
“I don’t understand,” Wallace admitted.
“Yeah,” Mei muttered, rubbing a hand over her face. “It’s a cultural thing.
My parents emigrated to this country when I was five. My mother, she …
well. She was fascinated by the idea of being American. Not Chinese. Not
Chinese American. American. She didn’t like her history. China in the
twentieth century was filled with war and famine, oppression and violence.
During the Cultural Revolution, religion was outlawed, and anyone who
disobeyed was beaten or killed or just … disappeared into thin air.”
“I can’t imagine what that’s like,” Wallace admitted.
“No, you can’t,” she said bluntly. “My mom wanted to escape it all. She
wanted fireworks on the Fourth of July and picket fences, to become
someone different. She wanted the same for me. But even coming here, there
were certain things she still believed. You don’t go to bed with wet hair
because you’ll get a cold in your head. Don’t write names in red ink, because