Olivia Do
Invite Only
Hemmy So
No one keeps their job with sad truths. We are professionals here. This isn’t AA.
Do you hear me, Farrah? Focus. Concentrate. Tap into the psychic wavelength we share. I know you’ve been on it. We grimace at the same dad jokes. Our cardigan twin sets scratch us in the same places. Our foreheads crease when someone mentions the Business Insider article revealing impending layoffs. You’ve got to get this right. The ice breaker question may seem like mere boss lady curiosity. It’s not.
“Since I asked the question, I’ll go first,” our boss says. “My mother made me invite everyone to my birthday parties.” Her eyeballs roll back like meatballs sliding off a cafeteria dinner plate. “I wish I could have just invited my two best friends, but Mother wasn’t having it.”
Lauren will answer next, drafting off our manager’s winged ascent into nostalgia. Take this time, Farrah, to create your story. The one that will tug at heartstrings but not uncomfortably so. No poverty tales, please. Those only work for executives, people you can’t look down on because they’re at the top. You and me, we’re ground soldiers on the corporate battlefield. If we don’t fit in, we get pushed out.
“I had to invite everyone too,” Lauren says.
We moan at the injustice. Don’t look down in discomfort, Farrah. Lean back in righteous disappointment. Watch me. I’m a survivor.
“But,” Lauren continues—this dope dealer of happy endings must deliver—“if my mom hadn’t made me invite my entire third-grade class, I never would have gotten a My Little Pony as a present. And without that, I never would have tried horseback riding.”
“I love learning this about you,” our boss says. “I loved My Little Pony too. But nothing beats stroking the mane of a real mare.”
Have you ever touched a horse, Farrah? I’ve only seen equines on black-and-white Mr. Ed reruns during latchkey afternoons. Long, hot stretches of boredom while my parents assembled industrial machine parts until the sky turned inky black.
“Farrah, what about you?”
Time to bring the authentic self that management wants you to bring. You know the one—cheerful employee with personal interests she’ll never pursue because she’s dedicated her life to the job. Authentic self lands plum assignments. Authentic self earns outstanding performance reviews. Authentic self keeps her job.
I need you, Farrah. Stay. Remind me that we’re actors here because sometimes I forget. Corporate bitumen engulfs me, mutilates me, measures my worth in KPIs.
Tone down the furious leg bounce, would you? That’s your tell.
“I never had a party,” you say. The leg stills. “We couldn’t afford one.”
“Oh,” we murmur. Our boss nods like she’s just learned of someone else’s tragedy, soul shaken yet relieved to be spared such horror. On my lips, I taste the blueberry gloss hawked by Lauren’s favorite influencer, whom my authentic self happens to also adore. Is Lauren tearing up right now?
As anchor of this corporate race, I’ve got to make up for the goodwill you’ve lost. Make our boss forget poor people exist except in The New York Times.
“My best birthday party was in fifth grade,” I say, my voice grasping for healing control of the twelve-person conference room. “My parents invited the whole class to our house for a pool party. McDonald’s Happy Meals all around.”
“Everyone must have been thrilled with such a treat,” my boss says, her face normal again, voice buoyant.
I wouldn’t know. Tales of that party flooded my classroom on a Monday morning, Marco Polo played in Jamie Kinkaid’s bean-shaped pool, endless chips and salsa, a secret crush breaching the surface of a preteen hormonal sea. No one mentioned McDonald’s. I came up with that myself. All-American. Brand name. Not fancy, not ethnic. Safe. Comfortable. Known. Nobody wants to hear about seaweed soup served in garage sale bowls during family-only birthday dinners.
I continue, describing a mother who creates beautiful paper invites that my kind teacher, not the real-life version who equated my shyness with a need for ESL, puts into each student’s take-home folder. Invitations cuter and more colorful than those my actual mother tossed into the garbage. Dad, a member of the desk worker fraternity, slaps other fathers on the back as they cluster by the poolside grill, groan about underserviced office copy machines and wonder when the Rockets will make the playoffs. Classmates must be dragged home. My imaginary friends beg to come over another time.
“What a wonderful memory,” Lauren coos. “Makes me miss childhood.”
A yellowed snapshot from a family photo album, the one with the embroidered cover and gold tassel, takes over my field of vision. There my plump one-year-old brother sits on brown shag carpeting like a prince among his worldly treasures—a Curious George stuffie, a set of matchbox cars and that barrel-shaped coin bank I wanted so bad because it’d make me rich. His, the only birthday party my family ever hosted because boys deserved better.
Mine? Too much trouble. Too many people. A waste of money.
The low-pile nylon carpet beneath us rumbles. You’re shaking your leg again. I wish I could place a soft hand on your leg, Farrah, calm its intensity. You’ll get the hang of this. Layoffs at the end of the quarter. We have some time.
Hemmy So (she/her) is a Korean American writer and attorney from Pasadena, Texas. Her work appears in Witness, The Good Life Review, Redivider, and elsewhere. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two young sons, and an affectionate terrier. When not writing, reading, lawyering, or raising kids, she’s handcrafting greeting cards.