Sacha Yuan
Sacha Yuan
I am a first-generation Taiwanese-American nurse, and this story draws in large part from my real-life experiences straddling two cultures, overcoming trauma, and finding beauty in the breakdown. I have a degree in mass communications and was a journalist for the Daily Bruin and San Jose Mercury News. My poetry has been published in The UCLA Beat, a journal of literary and artistic expression for medical and nursing students. In my spare time, I teach violin to children, act occasionally in TV shows and do stand-up, and guerrilla garden on random patches of soil adjacent to my apartment.
Gas Station Ice Cream
Children understand poverty in can and can't haves. What they can have is slightly hardened bread sitting out on a tray unencumbered in the front entrance of St. Vincent de Paul thrift store with a sign that says “free,” clothes sitting discarded on the curb in a pile haphazardly stacked to incite a mound of interest, and anything in the large metal dumpster sitting in the back of the grocery store, so no long as no one is watching. Anything sealed, behind a freezer door, or in someone else’s hand—those are can’t haves.
When I was about five years old, my parents and I moved away from Virginia to our new life in Michigan, away from everything that reminded them of our old life as a family of four, which was now down to three. I was oblivious, as five year olds often are, happily sitting in between the driver and passenger’s side in the middle divider. I was small enough to sit in front with my parents, albeit illegally. Where was a small child supposed to sit in a U-haul anyway? In the back with all the things? No, sitting in the front was the only logical choice, obviously. My parents would not let me out of their sight, not after what had happened to my baby brother. Their grip around me tightened in an effort to hold on to the life they had created. For better or worse, they weren’t going to let go, and they never have.
We stopped at a gas station, and after my father had finished filling up the truck, the three of us went inside to use the bathroom. As we were walking back to the truck from the bathroom, my parents on either side of me clutching my hands tightly, I saw something glorious. I saw someone eating an ice cream cone, the wrapper still around the cone. It was ordinary gas station ice cream, but to me, it was extraordinary. I’d only ever had ice cream from a tub in our freezer, never individually wrapped and never from a gas station, where prices were ingloriously inflated. I knew this, even at a young age, so I said nothing, simply watching the man lick at his ice cream cone, closing his eyes and savoring the taste slowly. We walked past him and my head involuntarily turned back so I could look at it again, as if maybe by watching him I would be able to vicariously taste it. Indeed this was a game my father had taught me. If I was craving something, I only had to imagine myself tasting it, and I would taste it, albeit a dulled version of it. Still, I could experience it, for free. I very much wanted the ice cream, but I knew better than to ask. I was 乖 guai - well-behaved, good. I licked my lips and stared. I played the game my father taught me. I was aware of poverty in the way that children are - can and can’t haves.
My parents looked at me, following my gaze to the man with the ice cream, licking away. It was a hot summer afternoon, where the sun beat until the asphalt yielded to steam, where sweat was more of a continuous stream than an intermittent reaction, where the arid heat beckoned one towards something liquid, something cold, towards sweet, sweet ice cream. This one ice cream alone could buy us a loaf of bread and peanut butter for the week, which is what we’d been eating for the last forever. It was what we could afford. Both my parents were students who saved every penny they made from their blue collar jobs to send back to my mother’s impoverished, dying adopted mother. When my parents looked at me, they saw a child who wanted something, but knew better than to embarrass them and ask. The American dream, as elusive as gas station ice cream. Unable to stop me from swiveling my head back at the man yet again, my parents gave up and stopped with me in the middle of the gas station, the three of us staring at the white man eating ice cream. He was completely oblivious to us, not knowing that he had a luxury we had never known.
After a few moments, we walked back to the truck, my head still turning every few seconds to watch the man, who was now eating the cone, each crunch-crunch-crunch a step towards heaven, an invite to the holy place, the sum of the crunchy waffle cone and soft icy vanilla deliciousness greater than its individual parts. Oh, how I longed to eat that ice cream cone! But up the steps of the U-haul I went, with an assist from my father, who now had a pained look in his eyes, his pride shattering along with my hope of eating ice cream. My mother, tears welling in her eyes, stayed quiet as she stepped into the passenger side of the truck, buckling up and looking straight ahead, unable to bear the longing in her daughter’s eyes.
My father turned the key in the ignition and the truck revved to life. I was still craning my neck to look at the man, now nearly done with his ice cream, on his final bite. I felt my father’s gaze on me so I turned and looked at him with a hopeful smile, thinking, maybe next time.
He looked at my mom, his eyes asking a question she instantly understood, and she nodded slowly, the tears now spilling slowly down the middle of her eyes, twin streams of shame that she wiped away quickly. Before my mother could change her mind, my father was out the door, the truck still idling where it was parked. He looked back at me with a giant smile on his face, then he was running towards the gas station, love abounding in every step. I sat there, holding my mom’s hand as I often did when I saw her crying, not quite understanding her sadness. A few minutes later, my father reappeared at the door with that glorious, heavenly beacon that was gas station vanilla ice cream.
Slowly, my father and I unwrapped it together, letting the wisps of coolness float up to our faces, and we smelled it, studied it, and savored it without tasting it. I thought surely my mother and father would want a bite first, as they had gazed at the ice cream cone the same way I had earlier - with longing and the understanding that it was out of reach. Now here it was, within their reach. But no, they didn’t take a bite. My father handed it to me, helping me wrap both my hands around the cone. This one was all for me, and I was as happy as can be.
A few licks into my ice cream, I looked up and saw my father smiling at my mother. She smiled back at him with uncertainty, as if she wasn’t sure they had made the right choice, but my father’s smile, it was the kind of smile that could make a person feel full, beaming with the confidence of doing the right thing. Slowly I saw her smile change to match his, understanding that this was a choice they had made together, one that would cost them now but pay dividends later. It was a day to be remembered, a day where they sacrificed their own needs to satisfy their daughter’s wants. Though they had nothing to eat since breakfast, and would skip dinner since they’d spent the day’s monetary allotment on ice cream for me, they looked as content as can be.
It would not be the last time they made a sacrifice for me - something they would later remind me of constantly. How costly I was! My Chinese school tuition over the years could have bought them a Lexus, one violin lesson could have paid for a new pair of shoes for my father. In fact, even this story, I can’t be certain that I remember the details myself or because they told it to me so many times. Nevertheless, I remember the feeling, and in that moment, everything was sweet, oh so very sweet.
We sat there like that for a few minutes with the car idling, windows down, me licking away, my parents’ tears and sweat mixing in the heat, until I finally finished eating my ice cream cone. I looked up to see both of them smiling at me, their eyes full of love.
And so it is that money talks,
For those who don’t have much.
Money is not just money;
Money is sacrifice,
Money is strife,
Money is life.
And though it may sound cheap --
For those who have been lucky enough to taste gas station ice cream,
Money is sweet,
Money is magnifique,
Money is love.