丹丹 (my sister) is going to enroll at Paul Revere Middle School tomorrow, in Houston. She's now living with my aunt, my dad's sister, Pei Hong. I didn't really involve myself much in this drama the last few days, being so far away anyways, but it turned out alright. Pei Hong is probably better for Dan Dan than both my father and my mother combined. It's a good thing that my mother did such a ridiculous thing, coming here to pick up my sister and taking her over here, only to not want to care for her (or believing that she doesn't have the ability to care for her) at the last minute and try to push her off to live with my dad. What bullshit. But now, I'm finding myself looking up Revere Middle School online and reading about their dress code and bell schedule, thinking of calling the school myself tomorrow to make sure that she gets put into good classes... There's so much I can do, if I was in Houston, and none of them, my sister/parents/aunt, knows how to navigate that system at all. I want to offer all of my knowledge to her, but that's hard to do. Nevertheless, she's got so much more support than I did ten years ago. We talked on the phone for half an hour and chatted online too. The first time that she called since she left, we all happened to be at my grandparents' house, taking turns on the phone, all so happy to hear from her. Apparently, she cried the whole night. Nobody knew where she was going to live, who she was going to live with, and she cried wanting to come back, never having wanted to leave. But my aunt, who's lived with her and pretty much mothered her for the last 5 years, told her that she's welcome back here, anytime. My aunt said that she'll pay for the plane ticket, and she won't yell at Dan Dan for playing video games anymore. Whenever Dan Dan feels that she can't handle America anymore, she's welcome back here. Even Xue Ming (the cousin who gambles and is always broke) offered to provide her with 50 bucks of spending money each month when she comes back. --God, she has so much love from so much family! I had nothing like it, nothing at all, when I went over. How much I cried by myself and wanted things to go back to normal... with nobody to talk to, nobody to comfort me, and certainly no possibility of going home! Phone calls once a month to my mother didn't count. Of course I only told her that everything was fine, not to worry (I think I did understand the logic of covering up painful things to protect your loved ones, the natural act of bearing painful burdens yourself as the way of showing care for your family). My aunt pointed out that a lot of it was the difference of 10 years of technology. My mother was ahead of everyone else for having a phone in 1996. Of course I couldn't talk to anybody else. It's ironic, isn't it? Technology on an unabstract level. No phone=suffering. What a joke.

I find myself advising my sister to avoid ESL (English as a Second Language) classes as much as possible, because this school is 50% Hispanic, and that most likely means that the ESL classes will be filled with Hispanic kids who will speak to each other in Spanish, and my sister will understand Spanish even less than English and never hear enough English to learn it. Is this problematic for me to do? I don't know. It's reality. She's already picked up enough racist sentiments from my mother to make some really stupid comments, and I can only tell her that's not true, black people are not worse, both are fine, I have both good friends who are black and Hispanic. Well, she'll learn.