Tears | Teen Ink

Tears

February 6, 2015
By thechartreusedragon SILVER, San Jose, California
thechartreusedragon SILVER, San Jose, California
6 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Tears are of many different colors. Some are the color of the ocean, swirls of Gatorade blues and peacock feather greens and unfathomable hues of grays and violets and everything in between. Others are lemon-yellow, like the food-colored buttercream frosting lathered on the cheap cupcakes from the grocery store across the street that wrack your brain cells with sugar headaches, but you still eat anyway. Others still are the same color as the sweaters Mrs. Weasley knit Ron every Christmas: deep, smeared-berry maroon.
The day, Sunny remembered, the sky had been smiling at her with a thousand shiny teeth and the sea was full of the verdant hues of the peppers, lettuces, and eggplants of her father's rooftop garden. Even now, nothing suited Sunny better than a hot bowl of her mother's seaweed stew with oysters her older cousin brought from her father's hometown, an ample hunk of homemade kimchi, and a bowl of seasoned, boiled eggplant. It would be a long while before she got to savor such homemade delicacies again.
"Hal-a-bo-jee! Grandpa!" Sunny's little one-year-old daughter ran up to Sunny's father, pigtails flying behind her like excited little kites, one arm possessively curled around a beat-up Jimbo doll. "U-ree oh-dee ga? Where are we going?" she shook her grandpa's sleeve with vigor.
"Somewhere far away, darling," Sunny's father had knelt down so he was level with his miniscule granddaughter, gazing at her with an expression that made Sunny turn away. "On a plane!" his voice was dripping with false cheeriness. "You're going to go whoosh! whoosh!" with each whoosh! he poked the girl's baby-flab-covered tummy, and the child giggled delightedly, not noticing the crystal tear that fell from her grandpa's eye onto her head. 
At the airport, Sunny's father and Sunny's daughter (and Jimbo) had played hide-and-seek among the gray-speckled walls, the donut shops, and the bathrooms. Sunny's younger brother bought her a strawberry cream Dunkin Donut, her favorite, and they sat together on the gray metal chairs by the gargantuan windows with Sunny's mother. They had spoken very little with their mouths, but said an infinite number of words with their eyes.
And then, everything had been a blur. Sunny's father had been clinging to her and pushing her away all at once, her mother had been crying the quietest tears Sunny had ever seen, her twenty-nine-year-old brother looked so fragile and young she had a flashback to his chubby little elementary self, and her daughter had stood there the whole time, rubbing her nose on the Jimbo doll and mumbling something under her breath. There were red tears and yellow tears and blue tears and indigo tears. Tears the color of the strawberry jam in the donut she had eaten minutes ago, tears the color of her daughter's doll's vest, tears the color of her father's glasses, tears of all colors.
Across the Pacific, 9,023 kilometers, Sunny went from her family. She knew she had to go, she knew she had already quit her job which she had been so ecstatic to acquire years ago, she knew she had sold her house, she knew her husband was waiting for her, ecstatic to start a new chapter of their lives... but still, she cried like she had never cried before, curled up in the corner of the airplane bathroom, she cried a rainbow of tears. 
Fourteen years later, Sunny lived in a place where when she asked her vanilla and chocolate mixed ice cream, she was given tooth-pastey mint ice cream. A place where she overstocked on the bread she loved from the Korean bakery that was 30 minutes away. A place where she had no job, and her only significance was to cook and clean for her family, two activities she despised. A place where she was completely dependent on her husband, and a place where she had few friends and few confidantes.
A lonely place.
And yet,
tears are just tears.
Colors are just colors.


The author's comments:

For my mother.


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