Beautiful Country Page 14

  I had never before seen a woman in such command of a man. Without a word, Lao Jim opened up his wallet again and handed her three more bills. He beamed, apparently proud of being manipulated.

  Mimi walked away without asking what any of us wanted to eat. I pleaded with Ma Ma for permission to go after her—I had never seen the counter or the menu—and after a pause, Ma Ma gave a small nod. I ran after Mimi’s tight light-blue jeans. Turning the corner to the cashier, I was greeted with lights, bins of fries, a colorful menu, and a display case indicating that it held the “Limited time only!” toys that came with the Happy Meals. Inside the case were little Barbie dolls that were supposed to be from across the world, to represent the Olympics: the white one with her blond hair in a ponytail was the only one who wore an official red-white-and-blue gymnast uniform, while the others wore outfits from their culture. There was an Asian doll who wore a kimono, but she had a lao wai’s facial features, and looked nothing like me. In any event, I knew that I wanted the blond one, because that was the “regular” Barbie, the only one who got to wear a real Olympics uniform. I got as close as I could to the plastic case, marveling at the fact that I could get a whole Barbie for free with a meal. The figurines were much smaller than the Barbies I had seen my classmates play with, but they were close enough, and more than I had ever expected for myself.

  My time was limited. I turned to where Mimi was standing before the cashier, who was pointing to the menu items high on the wall behind him. I hustled over to her and implored, “Mimi, may I please have a Happy Meal?”

  She looked at me for a second and turned back to ordering. I worried that she hadn’t heard me until she said in her broken English, “And Happy Meal, for girl.”

  Curious as to just how much everything cost, I paid careful attention as Mimi chose the Chicken McNuggets for me and then moved to pay. When the cashier was done pressing button after button on the register, Mimi handed over two of the twenties and kept her hand out for change. I gasped. Happiness cost almost twice our weekly food budget.

  Mimi stuck the change and the other two twenties in her front jeans pocket and we stood on the side of the counter, waiting for our food. Mimi made no effort to talk to me and instead fixed her eyes on the wall of advertising inviting us to “Supersize it.” As for me, I had much to study on the menu, converting the prices into ratios of our budget.

  Soon, the cashier started filling up two trays with our food, and the golden fries with browned edges and little clear crystals of salt had me salivating at the thought of the crunch giving way to its warm, soft center. I caught the drool that was dripping out of my mouth just as Ma Ma appeared at the counter, gesturing to another cashier.

  “Jim needs”—Ma Ma stumbled over her English words—“he needs, nei ge, nei ge, nei ge…” In her frustration, Ma Ma was reverting to the Chinese word for “um,” which we tended to repeat in quick succession when we were at a loss for the right word.

  The cashier took offense to this. She pulled her head back and spat out, “What did you say?”

  Ma Ma seemed to realize something and chuckled with nerves. “No—not that. Not that word. It’s a Chinese word.” But the lady continued to look at Ma Ma with the same suspicion that Lao Jim wore when I told him I had known who Chairman Mao was all along.

  I did not understand what was happening, but I zipped into action anyway, helping Mimi remove Ma Ma from the area and then apologizing to the cashier for whatever it was that had happened. When at long last I was able to get what Lao Jim needed—mayonnaise and napkins to grow his collection—we sat down with our trays of food. Mimi handed Lao Jim the single dollar bills, and I caught him frowning at the trays and then his hand, mentally counting the missing money. Just as quickly, though, Mimi deployed the fluttering high voice she seemed to reserve for him: “Look, Jimmy, your favorite: Quarter Pounder.”

  Silence fell upon the table, interrupted only by chewing. As I stuffed my face with the nuggets, I freed my new blond gymnast from the red Happy Meal box. She was perfect, but I was less happy with the nuggets, which were tiny, dry, and tasted nothing like chicken.

  Ma Ma was eating the fish burger again, the golden fried patty covered with a white sauce. Some minutes later, as I was combing through my tiny athlete’s hair with a single finger, wishing I had ordered an adult-size meal so I wouldn’t have to sit there with my stomach growling, Lao Jim got up and went to the bathroom across the room.

  Mimi checked to see that the bathroom door had fully closed behind Lao Jim before declaring: “You know he’s disgusting, right?”

  Ma Ma opened her mouth in surprise, but I didn’t know if it was because Mimi had finally spoken Chinese or if she was just shocked at what Mimi said.

  “Who?”

  “Him. James. He’s filthy. He has nasty thoughts about everyone. Even”—at this, she gestured toward me by moving her chin up and then down—“her.”

  Ma Ma turned and stared at me with new eyes. I had no idea what “nasty thoughts” were but I did not like how they made Ma Ma look at me.

  “He has diabetes but he still comes here every weekend. It’s the only way to get people to spend time with him. Can you believe that?”

  She paused for Ma Ma’s response but, receiving none, she pushed on.

  “Anyway, you should make the most of it. Eat more.”

  A squeak announced that Lao Jim was out of the bathroom and on his way back to the table. We finished the meal and rode home to the sounds of Lao Jim’s burps and my stomach’s rumblings.

  We continued to go to McDonald’s with Lao Jim after that, but Ba Ba always made sure to come with us. We never saw Mimi again.

  Chapter 14

  SLEEPOVER

  Third grade was a welcome change. Though it was a new class and a new teacher, I immediately felt like I belonged. Miss Pong was Chinese but didn’t speak Cantonese or Mandarin, so I was no more foreign to her than my Cantonese-speaking classmates. And she had a kind face that set me at peace. I found home in her approval, which became my daily goal. Looking back now, I realize that Miss Pong must have been just a few years out of college. To me at eight years old, though, Miss Pong had more power and wisdom than did any other adult.

  A few months into our time together, Miss Pong called me up to her desk as the class filed out to recess. She produced a book with a colorful cover depicting a girl, a pig, a sheep, and a duck, all staring up at a spider in its web.

  “Qian, I love how much you enjoy reading. You remind me of myself when I was a little girl.”

  I beamed. There was no greater compliment. I thanked her for the book—my third gift in America—which I tore through that week.

  After that, Miss Pong became for me the noble, guiding influence that Charlotte was for Wilbur, that Miss Honey was for Matilda. Unlike Ma Ma and Ba Ba, Miss Pong was always the same. She never raised her voice, she was never distracted, and she always listened to what I had to say. I adored her.

  Over the course of that year, Miss Pong and I exchanged letters and cards, correspondence that I would come upon again more than two decades later, when my parents abruptly moved out of their home and dumped what little remained of my childhood—report cards, medals, vaccine records—in my apartment. Among that pile remained Charlotte’s Web, yellowed but in otherwise pristine condition. The first page bore Miss Pong’s note: “Qian, this was my favorite book when I was your age. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.” And my response, which she never received because I wrote it in the book itself: “Thank you, Miss Pong, I did!”

  * * *

  * * *

  Miss Pong was a large part of why I felt more anchored in the third grade, but there were other reasons, too. I was pretty much fluent in English by then—as fluent as any other third grader who had been born here, who had always been in America—and that gave me a certain sense of safety. I also had a new best friend, Elaine. Much
to my relief and hers, Janie was no longer in my class. I grew so removed from my need for her translations that I don’t even remember seeing her around the school after second grade.

  Elaine was sweetness personified, with an easy smile, big eyes, and the thickest, straightest hair I had ever seen. She was the first friend that I really trusted. It was not that I hadn’t trusted my friends in China, of course—I had trusted them in the same way that kids untouched by immigration and poverty trusted everything around them: without question and by default. Elaine, though, was the first person I made the conscious decision to trust. She was the youngest and most easygoing of three sisters. Even though their parents were immigrants who spoke little English, all three of them had been born in Mei Guo. Their parents worked at sweatshops, too, but they were among the ones who sewed buttons.

  A few months into third grade, Elaine and I started to have sleepovers. It almost made me feel like a normal kid. Looking back on it now, I have no recollection of where she actually did the sleeping, so small were our rooms. Nor do I remember being ashamed of our home, and though Elaine must have been surprised, her sweet nature kept her from betraying it. At the time, I assumed that because she was Chinese, her home in America was just like mine, completely different from the lao wai palaces shown on TV.

  Elaine was the first and only person I ever had join me in the bathroom my family shared with our roommates. It was my sanctuary and place of peace because it was the one room where I was away from Ma Ma’s worries, where I could be alone with my thoughts and my books. When Elaine was over, we hung out there and talked, she sitting on the edge of the bathtub and I on the toilet, ostensibly pooping. If she found it at all odd, she did not let on—at least, not until I began to actually poop.

  Invariably she would begin to wince, and ask through a pinched nose, “Can I leave now?”

  “Why?”

  “—Smells so bad!”

  “You are such a baby.” Sometimes I would not have the chance to get this retort out before she ran out the door.

  Elaine slept over at my place several times before she asked that I sleep over at hers. The suggestion shot trepidation through me, and I put it off, hoping that she would forget. Spending the night at her place meant that I would not be around to take care of Ma Ma, give her advice, or protect her. I couldn’t risk that. Plus, I shuddered at the thought of entering a new household and family. There had been too many new things in my life, few of them good. I could not handle much more.

  Unfortunately, Elaine did not forget, and the days counted down quickly to the night I had doomed myself to spend away from Ma Ma and Ba Ba. This might have taken place as late as over summer break, because I remember that we had no school that day and Elaine’s second oldest sister, Wanda, was to fetch me from my dad’s office and take me to the very different part of Brooklyn where their family lived. Wanda was in high school, so she had the authority of a real adult. She also was the scariest person I had ever met. She had the steely feel of—as I would only later understand—girls who dared to have a mind of their own. Physically, though, she looked pretty normal, aside from the fact that she rivaled only Ms. Zhu in the amount of makeup she wore.

  The friend Wanda brought with her was another story entirely. Although Wanda was the scariest person I had ever met, her friend was just scary-looking. She may have grown scarier in my memory over the years: I see her vividly before me in thick black eyeshadow, thicker face piercings, and what I later knew to be gauged lobes, but what I then perceived to be severe ear deformities. Ba Ba must have thought the same thing, because the minute Wanda and her deformed friend came into the office, he stopped talking and froze. He had a cigarette in his mouth that fell to his desk, which he quickly retrieved, dusting off the ashes in embarrassment. I looked up at Ba Ba and back at the girls, who stared until Wanda stepped forward.

  “I’m Wanda? I’m here for Qian?”

  Ba Ba barely collected himself before pushing me and my bag forward with a clumsy hug goodbye.

  On the way out, and then the entire way home, Wanda and her friend said not a word to me. It was just as well, though, because I was preoccupied with eavesdropping on their conversation.

  “Omigod, he was so cute!”

  Elaine had not told me that Wanda had a boyfriend, so I leaned in closer and stood on my tiptoes, trying to figure out who she was talking about.

  “But, omigod, did you see how much I freaked him out? I told you I shouldn’t have gone up with you.”

  Gone up where? Who was freaked out? The only people who were freaked out by the holes in Wanda’s friend were me and Ba Ba. I was not a “he.” And Ba Ba was not “so cute.”

  I faded out of eavesdropping for the rest of the trip home, puzzling over this mystery and excited to bring it to Elaine, who would surely help me solve it.

  Many stops later—so many that by then the train was above ground—Wanda’s spooky friend got off, and Wanda and I rode the rest of the way in silence.

  When we finally got to their apartment, I paused at the entryway in awe. I had been wrong about all Chinese having similar homes in America. How could I have made Elaine spend so many nights in our cramped rooms? Elaine’s family lived in the nicest apartment I had seen so far in America, though it was still much smaller than the white-people homes on television. A TV, couch, and dining table filled up the living area. The dining table led into a galley kitchen, which they had all to themselves. Next to the TV was a room blocked off by a bunk bed that served as a makeshift wall. Inside that room, another bunk bed stood perpendicular to the first. The two beds corralled the sunlight flowing through the only window in the living area. Next to that was Elaine’s parents’ bedroom, which I never went into, and the little bathroom. The bathroom was about the size of ours, only their family did not have to share it with anybody else.

  The weirdest thing about Elaine’s home was that the living area was too small to allow the couch to be placed facing the TV. Instead, the couch sat perpendicular to the TV so that all watching had to rotate their heads to the left. Elaine explained that there were special rules for sitting on the couch. The person sitting at the end closest to the TV had the best view, but could not move around freely since that would block everyone else sitting on the couch. The person in the middle could move a bit, but not too much. The person at the farthest end, meanwhile, could make up for the poor view by gesticulating to her heart’s content.

  There were many rules like the couch rules at Elaine’s place, and I found it all very strange. Her parents were warm, like mine, but I thought it was weird that they controlled their kids so much. Elaine’s mom’s hair was shorn short and she was small and skinny in a way that made her look much younger than she was. She spoke neither English nor Mandarin—only Cantonese—but she was so loving that I needed no language to understand just what kind of mother she was. She reminded me of Ma Ma and she worked in the sweatshops like Ma Ma had, so in her presence I felt at home.

  My memory of Elaine’s father is fuzzy. This was probably because he was rarely home from work. But from what I did experience of him, I remember a gentle, quiet, and somber presence, loving but distracted by the demands of life.

  By the time dinner came around, I had relaxed into myself. Except for the additional siblings and the lack of roommates, it had not been so different from being at my home. All afternoon, Natalie, Elaine’s eldest sister, and Wanda watched me with amusement. Even as Elaine and I played with her dolls, I felt their hot gaze on my neck. They continued through the meal, but I was so hungry for the steaming hot noodles and beef strands that the moment Elaine’s mom placed the plate before me, I lost all self-consciousness.

  An eternity passed as I waited for everyone to be served. And then, when we were all ready, I let loose, slurping up the noodles, making whooshing sounds as I stuffed strand after strand into my mouth with my chopsticks. I kept my eyes down at my plate and
did not notice the family’s curious stares until I looked up again. It was then that I realized for the first time that Ma Ma and Ba Ba must have taught me to eat noodles the wrong way.

  I spent the rest of the night in unease, muscles stiffened to ward off wrong movements. I did not know what else Ma Ma and Ba Ba had taught me wrong, so I questioned every one of my instincts. After dinner, we watched a cartoon. I can’t remember what it was about, only that it was something I had never seen before. Mostly, I sat on the couch with my neck turned to the left and my face pointed at the TV while soaking up the shock that at Elaine’s house, it was not the children’s job to wash the dishes and clean up.

  Then it was bath time, during which Elaine showed me that she showered like we did in China—sitting on a stool while using a little cup to scoop water from a plastic water basin. I waited politely until she was done and then said I was fine going straight to bed. I was not used to showering more than once a week, and that seemed to me a better way to save water, but I figured I had probably been doing the showering thing wrong, too.

  Even my pajamas felt wrong. They were long bottoms that were so thin from wear that I could easily see the blue edging of my underwear underneath. On top, I had a T-shirt Ma Ma had bought from the 99-cent store. I had already worn it to school for days on end the year before. It had started out as much too large on me, but had since shrunk down to only slightly large and tattered. Elaine and her sisters had matching pajama tops and bottoms, the special kind that were just for wearing in bed, the kind that I had only ever seen white people wear on TV.

  I was to take the upper bunk of the second bed, the one above Elaine. I had long dreamed about having a bunk bed and a sister to share it with. But suddenly, the thought of falling asleep so high up from the ground, without Ma Ma and Ba Ba anywhere nearby, felt terrifying, sad, and final. A well of tears formed in my eyes. Natalie and Wanda looked up at my bunk, first startled, then amused again. Eventually, Elaine’s mother emerged from her room, in a similar matching set that she clearly wore only to sleep. She spoke to her daughters in the sharp tones of Cantonese.