A Girl and an Ant (for Pieces of You)

2003-04-03 - 9:32 a.m.

There once was a girl named Flik
Shaped like an ant or a stick
From China she comes
And now we�re best chums
A better friend, I could not pick

She was born and raised in Shanghai. I�m from California. She weighs 100 pounds soaking wet. I weighed 100 pounds in 4th grade. She hates sports. I like to play rough. When she and her dad drove to Yosemite they discussed operas. When my dad and I drove to Yosemite we discussed families of lichen. She plays the piano without effort. I ace biology tests without effort. She likes to stay up until the early morning. I like to get up in the early morning. In short, we�re different. Really different. And yet she is my best friend.

The first time we met was on the Freshmen Rendezvous before college started. A bunch of the honors students were herded on a bus and sent up to the Feather River Inn for a few days of icebreaker games. I honestly don�t remember meeting her, but I know I must�ve because I met everyone who went, and she went. She says she remembers me. I ignored her, she says. I ignored her because I don�t like Asians. I think by now she realizes how untrue that assumption was, but the fact remains that her being Asian has something to do with me not remembering her. I went to high school in Hicksville. In my graduating class of over 400, there were maybe 10 people who were not white. I was raised looking at white faces and hearing white names. When I got to college, it was difficult for me to tell the Asian people apart and to remember their Asian names. That�s no longer the case, but it definitely was back then.

Flik doesn�t always smile a lot. Especially not to strangers. She lived in my dorm, across the hall and down one, and basically I thought of her as the grumpy Asian girl who lived across the hall and down one. My roommate, Zorro, and my two next-door neighbors, the Babe and Snow White, were also Asian, and they were the ones who first befriended Flik. A bunch of us would all eat at the same table in the dining hall every day. One evening at dinner I mentioned to the group that I wanted to go to a lecture being given that night about Ayn Rand and architecture. I would get extra credit in my Mentor class for going, but I hadn�t yet found anyone else who wanted to go with me and I didn�t really want to go by myself. Flik, it turned out, was also going because the lecture was being given by her art history professor and she would get extra credit for going, too. I asked her if she wanted to go together and she said ok. At that point in my life I had never heard of Ayn Rand, but the lecture was not at all what Flik and I had expected. Let�s just say that during that lecture we both learned the meaning of the word �phallic,� and it was a long time before I could look at a skyscraper or an elevator without blushing. And Flik and I discovered that we had similar senses of humor. From then on we were buds.

Freshman year was perfect. Flik and I hung out a lot in the Babe and Snow White�s room and we all had a ton of fun doing the things that dorky honors freshmen college students do. During the semester break I missed her very badly. Tigger also lived down the hall in the dorm. She and Zorro became good friends for a while and Flik and I had fun teasing them because they were both so gullible. The six of us were all good friends and it was all perfect. The next year we rearranged ourselves. Flik and I agreed to be roommates. She asked me, not the other way around. I was so happy. We were surprised that Zorro and Tigger didn�t decide to be roommates. Instead Zorro and Snow White were roommates and Tigger and the Babe were roommates. So we were all set, the six of us would be together for another year of fun sophomore year.

And then the summer of �98 happened. It was the worst time of my life. My grandmother had been diagnosed with breast cancer about eight years earlier and had been fighting it constantly. By that summer it had metastasized to her bones and liver. In May she was doing poorly so my grandfather took her to the hospital and the doctor told him to take her home and make her comfortable because she wouldn�t make it through the week. I was just finishing finals. We went to see her and help set up the home hospice service. Gramma didn�t die, though, not that week. She held out for three more torturous months. My mom, my aunt, and I moved into the house to help take care of her. There wasn�t much I could do. I was the strongest person in the house so I got moving duties. I moved her from the bed to the wheelchair to the potty and back again. At first she was somewhat lucid and if I got her attention she would help a bit. But as her liver shut down and the toxins built up in her blood, she was more and more out of it. That and she was always either doped up on morphine or in extreme pain. It was horrible watching her suffer. It was horrible watching my family suffer. Flik was my outlet. I wrote her long letters telling her how I was feeling and what I was thinking. Gramma died in August right before I went back to school. I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth at the time.

Then I went back to school and I wasn�t the same person I was before. I�m still not and I probably never will be. I was depressed and withdrawn and I cried a lot at night. I never talked much, but after that I talked much less. Everything just seemed so much less important, so pointless. I was just going through the motions. I interviewed for pharmacy school, was accepted, and didn�t really care. I joined Rho Pi Phi and wasn�t very excited about it. I got a job and just did it. I hated o-chem. Meanwhile Flik and Tigger had more classes together and they were becoming good friends. I became intensely jealous but tried not to show it. Tigger spent a lot of time in our room and I couldn�t stand it. I spent a lot of time just being somewhere else. Anywhere else. By myself. I met Doodle, Tigger and the Babe�s homesick freshman next-door neighbor. I took care of her, but only because I was the one with the car and it was the polite thing to do, and we became friends, but only because she was too sad to see how sad I was. We all sort of split up. Zorro and Snow White were off doing their own thing. I left Tigger and Flik alone and started spending more time with Doodle and the Babe.

The following year I was off to pharmacy school, which went year round so I couldn�t live in the dorms anymore. I found an apartment and Snow White and I were going to be roommates. Then Snow White backed out on me but had already found a replacement for herself, Feathers, a girl I knew from o-chem lab who was also going to pharmacy school. During this year I started to get over it. I wasn�t happy, but I was at least living and enjoying myself from time to time. I became more active in Rho Pi Phi and other clubs and played intramural sports. I also came to realize how much shit I had put Flik through the previous year and how much she had still been my friend even when I didn�t deserve it. I was still jealous and hurt that she had chosen Tigger over me. Then one day I had an epiphany. I realized just how much Flik must care for me to continue being my friend through all of that and there was no reason why I had to be her best friend as long as I was her friend. The best friend thing didn�t have to be mutual and besides, I liked Tigger a lot too and we could all be friends.

And we were. From that epiphany onwards I was a lot happier. We all went out and did things together and we could all just hang out together and be our goofball selves. I was more proud of their accomplishments than I could ever be of mine. When they got accepted to graduate schools on the east coast I was so happy for them I could hardly contain myself. I was sad, too, of course, because they would be so far away, but we all knew we would go our separate ways eventually. And we have kept in touch. Flik has remained the one person to whom I can tell anything. When I broke up with Stretch she was the only person I told for a long time. She has listened to me agonize about what I should do with my life. She is always there for me. She is my best friend. I think I�m pretty high up there on her list, too. In just a few weeks, the Babe and I are flying out to see Flik and Tigger�s graduate recitals. I can�t wait.