Am I Being Punished
by Maria Picone
“Let me buy something for you,” Mom says in a sly voice.
Coconuts don’t have sharp edges, but each time I visit Estero, we pay homage in my mother’s cathedral, Coconut Point, a mid-tier outdoor shopping mall with a TJ’s and a Ross. Shopping with Mom is speedrunning a Faustian bargain. She’s constantly offering me her preferred earth tones and bright pastels. The Florida house is faux Kahlo—all terra cotta, lime green, and snowbirding New Englander tropical blue.
“This one looks so professional,” she says, holding up a chartreuse blouse that resembles damask drapes. “Don’t you just love the color?”
No, dear reader, she’s not being ironic. “I don’t,” I say, having learned it’s best to turn the devil down directly.
“What about this one?” She sizes me to what I can only call ‘slacks,’ business-looking straitjackets meant to march cubicles. There are some Boomer things I don’t hate, like the Beatles canon. This is not one of them.
I add a pair of yoga shorts and a cashmere sweater to the cart. I’ve got designer brands in a queue in the dressing room. Her face scrunches. “Where are you going to wear that?” I don’t engage.
We veer off—she’s questing for grandkids-of-friends gifts and I’m contemplating face masks and Hello Kitty accessories.
Mom rebounds like a basketball, hard and coming for my face. “Wouldn’t this look so great for a cute day at work?” She holds up a navy blue blouse that screams Mad Men secretary. Where and when did she even find it? I want to ask her where I am going to wear that, but—sigh—I don’t ask what life I live in her head.
After heated negotiations, we settle on two plain cotton shirts, a boxy blazer, and sterling silver Hello Kitty earrings. One shirt is a raspberry color, more pink than red, which makes her so happy she throws face masks in the cart like a bonus. I never want to screech aside a packed rack or warm up for a firm no again. If I ask nicely, Dad will drive me to Nordstrom tomorrow while she’s at work, so I can cut the tags before she gets home to avoid arguments when I show her what I bought.
I put my card forward at checkout; she swats my hand away so fast it’s almost child abuse. “Don’t you dare,” she says.
BIO
Maria S. Picone/수영 is a queer Korean American adoptee who has been published in Tahoma Literary Review, Reckoning, and others including Best Small Fictions 2021. She won Salamander’s Louisa Solano Memorial Emerging Poet Prize, Cream City Review’s 2020 Poetry Prize, and support from Kenyon Review, Juniper, Tin House, Hambidge, The Watering Hole, South Carolina Arts Commission, South Arts, and elsewhere. She edits at Chestnut Review, Five Minutes, and Foglifter. Find her at mariaspicone.com.
BOOKS
Adoptee Song (Game Over Books)
Anti Asian Bias (Game Over Books)
This Tenuous Atmosphere (Conium)
SOCIAL MEDIA
Bluesky: @mspicone
Instagram: @mspicone