A few hours later, we returned to my dorm. Li Tian took off her unlaced, white high-top tennis shoes and wiped them down with the sponge. The shoes were her signal to the world that she was butch. The manly shoes showed she was stylish, but not girly. They stuck out from above her pants and matched her swagger as she walked.
“Do you like my shoes?” she asked. I told her I loved them. We sat together on my dorm bed with take-out bowls of rice and vegetables.
“I have some bad news,” I said.
“Okay…”
“I bought my plane tickets back to the States.”
“Okay…”
“October 3rd.”
“What…? So soon…”
“Yeah. My visa. It’s expiring. I have to go back,” I explained.
“I thought you got an extension.”
“I did. For 60 days. My 60 days is up on October 3rd.”
“Oh," she said. Tears began to stream down my face. I put down my rice bowl.
“Hurry up and eat,”[1] she said to me, laughing through her tears, shoveling the rice into her mouth. The laughter came from the attempt to pretend that everything was fine when the house we built began to burn to the ground. I laughed too, but I didn’t pick up my bowl again.
“Is there a possibility you would immigrate to the US?” I asked her.
“No, Sarah, that’s not going to happen. Maybe we’re not meant to be together after all.”
“Let’s get married,” I proposed.
“Did you go crazy?”[2] she said, and we laughed through our tears.
We touched our foreheads together again, this time with tears falling down our faces while sobs rocked our shoulders.
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