(The short story “Trash” by Souvankham Thammavongsa appeared in the June 13th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)
(Things might get SPOILED)
Self-perception, self-worth, first impressions, the desire for acceptance; these were all the themes that swirled around and in the very compact and effective short story “Trash” by Souvankham Thammavongsa. The story is about a young female cashier at a local grocery store who falls in love and marries a man in five days after meeting him at the store, and then the man’s mother comes to visit. Mother-in-laws can be tough, and let’s be honest, the mean mother-in-law is a cliché. Hell, even the illustration for the story leads you to that conclusion as well, and as I read the story, I didn’t have high hopes for what I was going to unfold.
Yet, what followed was a very well-crafted comparison for two self-made women, their attitudes toward the world they occupied, and how they desired the same thing, but attacked it in two very different ways.
The young woman, the cashier, is from a world of rude honesty. “If they didn’t like you, you’d know about it and they would say it to your face,” the cashier informs us early in the story, “There is no pretending.” The cashier’s parents died when she was in her last year of high school, and she had to drop out to support herself, as there was no one to help her. She took the job at the grocery store, and she came to enjoy the job, and apricate the employment as it gave her an opportunity to provide for herself – an apartment and furnishing that were all hers.
The mother-in-law, Miss Emily, had gone to college, graduated law school, became a partner, owned her own practice, bought property, worked hard to make something out of herself, as the young woman tells us. Miss Emily’s husband had died several years ago, a sudden heat attack, and she had married him right out of college, as we are told, because having a family was what she really wanted.
When the women meet for the first time, they go to dinner and Miss Emily tells stories of her son, and when they all are on their way back to the son’s apartment, Emily askes about the young woman’s family, where in the story of her parents death is told, as well as how proud she is for having supported herself. Miss Emily’s reaction is to ask if she would quit the supermarket job now that she was married to her son. Miss Emily wants her to quit the job and go back to school, to make something better of herself. The next day, Miss Emily takes her shopping, so she can have clothes that look like a wife of a man who works in an office. But when they return to the son’s apartment, Miss Emily changes and starts to complain to her about the cleanliness of her son’s place, and that she, as his wife, needs to do something about it. The young woman takes a break, and goes outside of the apartment, and wonders about a mother’s love, and how she wants that as well.
And it was this ending of the story that broke my heart a little. I could feel through the words how much the young woman wanted to belong, to be a part of this family, and believing that her mother-in-law was doing all of this out of love, and that she wanted to be recognized as a productive member. But I also felt that for the young woman to get all of that, on some level, she would be forced to admit that where she came from, and what she had made herself into, just wasn’t good enough. Heartbreaking for me, because clearly the young woman was just as much as a “bootstrap” self-made woman as Miss Emily, but her achievements were viewed as less worthy.
It’s the type of story where I want to tell the young woman that she is good enough, and she does have value. But, I also have the feeling that her desire to be loved and validated will lead her to reject all that she has earned on her own. It’s a harsh reality, but also very honest.
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