Logical Reasoning

after the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT)

You are born into noise. / Your first memories perforated by the sharp slam / of
kitchen cabinet doors, / throat-sung Tibetan folk songs, / the heavy rattle of a wok
glossy with pork belly fat / scraped in steady beats against the creaking stovetop. /
Grandma yells at her husband / because he’s losing his hearing, / mom yells at dad /
because he’s losing the house. / You are six when you ask mom what a mortgage is,
/ a curse you hear nightly punched through your bedroom walls; / she is so proud of
your maturity / she still drags it up decades later. / No one asks why a child knows
debt / in four different languages. / You learn to yell too. / That’s the only way to be
heard.

You grow up a little. / You brim with rage all the time / and don’t know what to do
about it. / Mom sends you to counselors. / One teaches you about anger mountain,
/ how you skip the climb / jump right to the peak / but he doesn’t help you get back
down. / Another says you’re too easily verklempt. / You don’t even know how to
spell that / to look up what it means. / You pronounce things wrong enough already
/ are laughed at enough already / for your hybrid tongue / so you forget it. / You
ditch school / run a mile to the water / watch murky river mouth fresh silt into the
salt-heavy sea / losing and losing itself. / You still have to go home / eventually /
where they fear you / are sad, / you are lonely, / so they get you a parrot / then two, /
only for you all to learn when something is sickly enough / it’s kinder to put it down.
/ Fallen parakeet feathers / still vibrant / stuffed in a treasure box tucked in the back
of your closet / even now. / You grow up a lot.

Adult now / you come home every so often / to do their paperwork in English. / It’s
faster that way. / One night / mom asks you to draft / a separation agreement so she
can stop pretending / to love dad / in public. / She’s always been so good at saving /
had to be when dad hemorrhaged money but never affection / and you want to be
a lawyer / so isn’t this just good practice, / a first-hand experience you can add / to
your resume? / You owe her, somehow. / Have been her lodestar all your life / though
you feel more like gum that sticks her shoe / to the pavement of this family / so you
do it. / You call dad to the kitchen table / and he is the quietest he has ever been / as
you shove aside sugar cane juice boxes, / the old rag he’s refused to throw out for
years, / and start typing.

If the information above is true, which one of the following must also be true?

(A) You are a future professional. You steel yourself and finish the job. After, when
the agreement is signed and dated and witnessed, you drive the papers to the old
dike. You stare at the same brackish sea, the perpetual disagreement of waves,
consider tossing the documents in as if that could unseparate anything. Rule one
of family law is that you are never responsible for your clients’ situation when they
come to you (when the cracks formed long before you) except somehow, you are.
You still have to go home eventually. In your old room, you bury the papers so well
you can’t even remember where they are. Nobody asks for them. You don’t look.

(B) You move out. You escape. It’s easier than you expect, abandoning your clients
when you have been their mediator for so long.

(C) You try not to acknowledge how dad changes after. How he insists on driving
you to your new place thirty minutes away every time and how he actually starts to
listen to you talk about school and friends and work. He starts calling to ask when
you’re coming back for dinner. He buys strawberry Pocky and the jar of bean-brined
Sichuan pickle that you like and complains about the smell whenever you crack the
lid. He tries not to sound disappointed when you can’t make it that week. You flush
with guilt every time mom’s new boyfriend is nice to you.

(D) You spend hours alone, fossicking through online archives for anything in
Shanghainese because you haven’t spoken it in months and months and it rusts on
your tongue, but it doesn’t sound right in a quiet voice, in the polite tone of qipao-clad
girls on talk shows. You miss the noise as much as you hate it. You yell at your
husband. He doesn’t yell back, but wraps you in his arms.

(E) All of the above.