I Love You More | MJJ ✔️

{Chapter 36}

On the next day, which is the day after my actual birthday, my family and I always do something. We donate to the orphanage that is very far from our place. We've been donating there for years and years. We chose it because there are some Burmese kids there and we're really close now.

Oh, and another thing is that we always wear our Burmese traditional clothes whenever we go there. It makes me feel special. I love wearing the traditional clothes and speak in my own language. However...., guess who doesn't let me speak in Burmese..?

Parents. They wanted to change their daughter into a complete American and forget the fact that she's a real Burmese with no other country's blood flowing in her body. I. Strongly. Disagree. With. Them. Even though I disagree with them, I have to do and say what they make me do at home. I have nowhere else to live in. What do you expect?

Wait...speaking of being an actual Burmese... Oh NO. Now, I thank Buddha that I'm living in L.A. I'll tell you. Burmese people don't like when someone dates a foreigner. Not even 'don't like'. They. HATE. It.

*looks at my MJ poster on the wall*

*sighs*

But I'm Laura Reimers. I'm one of the best secret keepers of all time so... No worries!

I can't stop staring myself in the mirror. I'm wearing matching burgundy middle-sleeved blouse and longyi. I tied my black hair into half and yes, my hair is black. This's the only thing I deny to do what my parents want me to do. They want me to dye my hair brown but I'll never do that in my life. Putting on the dark-red lipstick, I smile at myself in the mirror. I've never had more confidence like right now.

"Laura!"

"Coming!"

I grab my bag and walk down the stairs.

"လှလား?"
(Translation : Do I look pretty?)

Yes. I just spoke in Burmese. မင်္ဂလာပါ။
(Trans : Min-ga-lar-bar = "Hello" in Burmese)

"Very."

My parents' faces don't look good at all. See? They just replied me in English. Fun fact : my Burmese accent is still very real. I don't mix it up with my English accent which would sound...ugh.

So, we head to that orphanage and donate a one-whole-day meals and some cash. I just love to see children being happy, having fun with their friends. They don't have parents but...they still manage to have fun in life. How do they even do that..? My eyes suddenly fill with tears. I always shed tears when I see them because I'm happy and sad for them at the same time.

*phone vibrates in my bag*

OH. IT HAS BEEN VIBRATING FOR THE THIRD TIME. Michael will kill me! I walk out of the dining hall and pick it up.

"Hey..."

"Baby, why are you not picking up my calls?"

"Michael, I'm at the orphanage."

"What?"

"Donation for my birthday."

"Oh my God! Why didn't you tell me? I could've donated, too."

"Next time, love."

"So, you're busy, right?"

"No, kids are eating, so I'm watching at them."

"Oh..."

"What's up?"

"Dance class today ma'am."

"Holy- I will come to you from here."

"Okay-"

"Wait?"

"Why?"

I just remember that I'm wearing my traditional dress.

"Michael, I'm in my traditional outfit."

"Burmese?"

"Yeah, and I didn't pack for the class. Maybe, I should go back home first."

"No! Change of plan!"

"Hmm?"

"I've never seen you in your traditional outfit, so..."

I chuckle.

"Do you want me to come to you in this outfit?"

"Correct. Why don't we have some culture knowledge class today?"

"Alright..! I'll call you again when I'm on the way, okay?"

"Okay, babe. See you soon."

"See you..!"

We hang up and I walk into the hall again.

"Miss?"

One kid pulls my hand.

"Yes?"

I kneel down so that she doesn't have to look up at me.

"Do you know Michael Jackson?"

"Of course! Do you?"

"I love his dance."

"Really? I'll tell- Oh, so...is there any dance-move you can do?"

"I can't do anything. Can you do it?"

"Well... Yes."

"Wow! Can you show me a move?"

"Hmmm, I'll teach you the moonwalk. How's that?"

"Yayyy!"

"Okay, so..."

I start my Moonwalking lesson. She follows the steps that I say. A minute later, other kids surround us and begin to learn the Moonwalk from me.

"So... Can you do it now?"

"YES."

All of them are very happy because they can Moonwalk now.

Finally, it's time for us to go back. We thank the chief and other staff for everything they've done for those beautiful little kids. It feels more special this time. I see more of the beauty and future in children. Maybe, my boyfriend's impacts? *winks*

On the car,

"အမေတို့ကို အိမ်မှာချခဲ့မယ်"
(Trans : I'll drop you off at home-)

"ဗမာလိုမပြောပါနဲ့လို့ မပြောထားဘူးလား"
(Trans : Didn't I tell you to not speak in Burmese?)

My dad just destroyed my mood.

"အဖေ့သမီး ဗမာလူမျိုးအစစ်ပါနော်။ ကိုယ့်လူမျိုးစကားတော့ ပြောလို့ရတယ်ထင်တာပဲ"
(Trans : I, your daughter, is a real Burmese, so I think I have my rights to speak my own language?)

"ငါနင့်ကို အခန်းထဲထပ်ပိတ်ထားရမလား?"
(Trans : Do you want me to lock you in your room again?)

Yeah, he did it once. It even became my trauma but it's now gone as I don't give a damn about it anymore.

"ကလေးမဟုတ်တော့ဘူး၊ အဖေ"
(Trans : I'm not a kid, dad.)

"တော်တော့။ မပြောနဲ့တော့။ နင့်ကို American ဖြစ်အောင်လုပ်ပေးခဲ့တာ သတိရ"
(Trans : Shut up. Remember and be thankful that I made you an American.)

"ဒါပေမဲ့ သွေးကစကားပြောတယ်"
(Trans : But, blood talks.)

It's their turn to go silent. I stop talking to them, drive them home and head to the Neverland Ranch.