Beautiful Country Read online

  I fell to the ground to look after Marilyn under the bed. She was huddled at the corner where my bed met the wall, a mess of fur, bones, and blood. Ma Ma sat on the bed, motioning for me to rise.

  “She will come out when she feels safe.”

  I wanted to ask what it meant to feel safe, but I knew somehow that Ma Ma and Marilyn both needed me to stay quiet. So we sat, I with my eyes directed at the floor, Ma Ma with her face colorless, the fire extinguished.

  Ba Ba was gone for a long time that night. A little while after he walked out, long enough to make sure, perhaps, that he was not returning with a bigger broom, Marilyn emerged from under the bed. Ma Ma gathered my poor Marilyn in her arms as I dabbed at bloody paws with more of our roommates’ Q-tips. Most of the bleeding had stopped and caked up, and my stomach finally untied itself at the sight of Marilyn drifting off to sleep on Ma Ma’s legs. This was what it took for her to become a lap cat.

  By the time we went to bed that night, Ba Ba had still not returned. But for the first time, Marilyn had crawled into bed with me and stayed there, between my torso and the crook of my arm. Ma Ma tucked us both in with a kiss on our foreheads. The thought occurred to me that this, of all nights, was the first time I had felt protected in a long, long time. And then, in as much time as it took for me to give Marilyn a squeeze and a kiss, I was asleep.

  Chapter 20

  GRAFFITI

  Ma Ma’s new classes were at night, so she did not get home until long after Ba Ba cooked and served dinner. When Ma Ma returned through the front doors, she did not even stop by our room. Instead, she walked down the hallway, heading directly into the kitchen. Then, with a flick of the switch on our little lamp, she started studying.

  I had never had so much alone time with Ba Ba since he left China, and I was surprised to find that we still had fun together. He really only knew how to cook one dish: stir-fried tomatoes and egg, with bits of scallion in it. It was the recipe that no one could escape in northern China. I would stand in the kitchen with Ba Ba as he cooked, watching him beat the eggs, slice the tomatoes, then scallions, and throw them all into the big frying pan we shared with our roommates. We chatted about the people he dealt with at work and how each of them came to be so far from home. Then I ranted about all the things that my new best friend, Christine, did to annoy me and about how Julia was so spoiled that she bought a Good Humor strawberry shortcake ice cream bar from the vending machine every day after school. I knew because I had developed the masochistic hobby of following her out of class and watching each time as she put the sixty cents into the coin slot, salivating as she made her way through the pretty treat, covered with pink and red dots.

  It was nice but strange to go all evening without hearing about Ma Ma’s worries. I felt guilty for not being there for her and for having so much fun with Ba Ba, especially when he was the source of so many of our troubles. This guilt showed its face in the moments when I was laughing hardest at Ba Ba’s jokes, which I would cut short, remembering that Ba Ba sometimes had the devil in his eyes and that I should be careful not to get too close.

  When she was home, Ma Ma started telling me that she had stomach pains. I figured they were the same as the pain I felt when I waited, starved, for lunch. But Ba Ba and Ma Ma said it was Marilyn’s fault, that her black coat and her asymmetrical face had cursed us. I knew better, though: we had had bad luck ever since Ba Ba left for America. And I knew I could prove them wrong if I could just give Ma Ma a little bit more to eat.

  At the end of each dinner, I made sure to put some of my meal onto a plate just for Ma Ma, placing on the edge one of the napkins Ba Ba regularly pocketed from the dispensers at McDonald’s. I wrote on the napkin the message “Do not touch!”—just in case our roommates got any ideas.

  Ma Ma never ate the food, though. She went directly to studying at the table, never even looking in the fridge. After Ba Ba fell asleep one night, Marilyn and I climbed out of bed and followed Ma Ma to the kitchen. There, I brought the plate out to where Ma Ma was seated, peering through her big square glasses at a thick textbook full of numbers and formulas. Marilyn jumped to the table, fixing herself under the lamp, always the warmest place in our home.

  “Ma Ma, you have to eat something.”

  Ma Ma waved me away.

  “Ma Ma, you have to eat something.” Persistence was my strong suit.

  “I don’t have time,” she muttered, “and you should be in bed.”

  I was guai and dong shi, a good and mature girl, so I did what Ma Ma said. On the way out of the kitchen, though, I looked back to see her holding her stomach with her left hand as she flipped through the textbook with her right.

  Back in bed, guilt gnawed at me. How could I go to sleep while Ma Ma studied, hungry? At least, I thought, Marilyn was there with her, taking care of her. I fell into spurts of sleep, awaking several times to look over at Ma Ma’s side of the bed. Each time I saw that it was empty, I stayed awake for as long as my guilt could carry me, before backsliding into drowsiness again. This continued until finally I awoke to see that Ma Ma was in her place in the bed, coiled on her side, facing me and away from Ba Ba. I wondered where Marilyn was, scanning our bedroom just as the faint glimmers of sunlight began to sneak in through the windows. The skein of black, tan, and white fur coiled into itself under Ma Ma’s bed was the last thing I had time to see before meeting restful, deep sleep for the first time that night.

  * * *

  * * *

  I began to get sick around this time, too. I often felt like I was going to throw up, especially after I vacuumed into my mouth everything that was on my lunch tray and then piled on top of it gulps from the milk carton. Usually, nothing came of the nausea and it passed by dinnertime. A few times, though, I actually did throw up. The first time happened on the subway after school. Each motion of the train brought another cresting wave in my stomach’s rocky seas. I managed to hold on until the train began to pull into the Church Avenue station. Then, just as I stood to rise, I felt the sea bubble up. Through the carbonation, a balloon rose from my stomach and floated up into my throat. I swallowed hard several times, hoping to push the balloon down, but failing. Just as the train doors dinged opened, I felt the balloon burst and erupt hot air into my mouth. Only it wasn’t air. It was chewed-up bread and sloppy joe, even sloppier on its way up than it had been on the way down. I barely had time to register the flush of red heat that swarmed my face and the brown and orange pile that sat on the floor before the train doors dinged a second time, announcing their impending closure. I jumped over the pile and walked through the door, dodging eye contact with the other passengers, all too aware of the smells I was leaving behind.

  Then, on the platform, another balloon rose through my stomach and burst in my mouth. I left pile after pile throughout the station and on the sidewalk, a trail of bread crumbs that followed me all the way home.

  Pretty soon, it began to feel as if the balloons were always in my belly, just waiting to pop. They were there even when my class went on a field trip to the Brooklyn Bridge. I felt them start to emerge as Christine and I walked along Centre Street, past the fancy courthouses that had many steps leading to them. We were near the front of the line formed by our class, and Christine was driving me crazy. We had become fast friends because I was drawn to her open, smiling nature, and because she was very pretty and thin, with large, bright eyes and a perfectly symmetrical face. She had none of the physical flaws that Ma Ma and Ba Ba had identified in me, but because she was so accepting, I sometimes got away with saying mean things to her like Ma Ma and Ba Ba did to me.

  On that particular day, Christine had spent the entire walk to the bridge fawning over her new sneakers.

  “Look how bright and white they are! I’m going to keep them like this forever.”

  I ignored her, but I squeezed my toes in secret. It was early spring, and my sneakers for the year were nearing the end o
f their life. My toenails had already dug holes in the layers of fabric, so I had developed a habit of clenching my toes to keep them from rubbing against the holes even more.

  The toe clenching slowed our walking, and as we got onto the bridge, the rest of the class caught up with and then passed us. The plan was to walk to the Brooklyn side, and then turn around and walk back.

  It was a free field trip, and I was grateful for that. Later in the school year, we were to take a trip to a fancy movie theater by Lincoln Center and watch Mulan, my very first Disney movie. But to do that, Mr. Kane had collected a lot of money from all of us. It had cost Ma Ma and Ba Ba money that would have fed us for several days. And it wasn’t even enough, because Mr. Kane told us to bring more money on the day we were supposed to go to the theater so we could buy popcorn, which elicited many cheers from my classmates. I had never been to the movies in America before, and wondered why everyone was so excited about popcorn. In China, we ate sunflower seeds in the theaters, the cracking sounds playing backup to the movie soundtrack, the floors slowly filling with empty, open shells.

  Earlier on the Brooklyn Bridge field trip, the free one, my class had walked by Ba Ba as we snaked through lower Manhattan, just before we hit the courthouses. Ba Ba seemed to be coming from one of the brown government buildings that he always told me to stay away from. He was alone, dressed very nicely, with his dress shirt and dress pants and shiny shoes with thin laces.

  I had no idea what he was doing there but ran over to hug him anyway. He waved hi to Mr. Kane. They had met before, at parent-teacher conferences where Mr. Kane told Ba Ba that I was a diligent student, but that I needed to be less shy and that I needed to change my clothes more often.

  I was grateful only that Ba Ba was well dressed when we ran into him. I tried not to think about what he had been doing in those government buildings.

  After that, the balloons emerged. They bubbled up slowly and stayed afloat just above the waves. I didn’t even notice them float up until they pushed through the doors of my throat. Instead of ugly words, ugly food emerged—another school lunch, this time chicken nuggets, flooding out of my esophagus and onto Christine’s brand-new sneakers.

  “My shoes!” Christine exploded, but I had no time to feel embarrassed, because she started gagging. A few other classmates joined in within a few minutes, and Mr. Kane had to walk back several steps to find all of us huddled together, heaving around my vomit.

  “What the hell happened?” The best thing about Mr. Kane was that sometimes he forgot that he wasn’t supposed to swear around us.

  “Vomit—” Heaves muffled Christine’s words. By now, she had covered her face with her hands. “It makes me throw up.”

  Mr. Kane herded all of us away from the scene and back the way we had come on the bridge. As we shuffled toward Manhattan, our gags subsided. I fought the residual waves in silence. By the time we stepped off the bridge, I felt almost normal, thankful that I did not throw up again. But as nausea retreated, shame mounted. I had nearly caused my entire class to throw up on the Brooklyn Bridge. And because of me, we never got to see the Brooklyn side. I mulled over this on the rest of the walk back to school, avoiding others’ eyes and keeping my gaze on the ground. Christine tottered beside me, her shoes coming into my line of sight every now and then. For the rest of the school trip, I saw only the gray pavement, interrupted every so often by the white of Christine’s sneakers, now marked by brown splashes and orange chunks, the graffiti of the human body.

  Chapter 21

  JULIE

  I became a habitual liar. Alternate lives spewed out of my mouth before circuiting my brain. I started small but soon advanced to bigger, more extravagant creations.

  “I was born here,” I ventured once at the lunch table. A few of my friends grunted in recognition, but none looked up from their hamburgers.

  That was my gateway drug.

  “My dad is a cop,” I tried next.

  This got a friend’s interest. “Does he have a gun?”

  “Of course,” I replied without looking up, donning a mask of cool nonchalance. “Sometimes I get to hold it.”

  “Where does he work?”

  “Can he come to school and show us?”

  “He works in Chinatown.” It seemed safest to go with the only neighborhood I knew well.

  “He’s part of the Dragon Fighters.” I had conflated Chinatown’s firefighters with its cops, but none of us knew any better.

  “Maybe he can come to school one day,” I risked, “but he’s very busy.”

  I wasn’t just talking about these lives. In those moments, I lived them. I was no longer Wang Qian, the bloated girl weighed down with daily worry, the skittering cockroach who turned and walked the opposite way whenever anyone in uniform appeared. In those moments, I was the person who actually deserved the silent awe my friends bestowed upon me at the lunch table with wide, shining eyes.

  I grew braver with my lies.

  “I’m half-white,” I declared during another field trip, this time to the Museum of Natural History. Mr. Kane was a big fan of field trips. It meant he didn’t have to teach, which was a treat for all of us.

  Christine didn’t respond. I turned to see that she was not enthralled by my makeshift, half-prestigious heritage, but instead fixated on the fossils arranged into a triceratops.

  “My dad, he’s a white CEO,” I said as I examined the tiny arms of the Tyrannosaurus rex towering over us, careful to hide my exuberance at finally deploying the term I had once heard on TV and earmarked for later use.

  “I thought your dad was a cop.” Christine perked up. “And we saw him on that trip! He’s not white.”

  The problem with Christine was that you never knew when she would be paying attention.

  “Look, Christine, a triceratops in the same room as a T-rex! That makes no sense! He’ll be eaten.”

  “I thought your dad was a cop. A Chinese cop.”

  Memory like an elephant.

  “He—he is. I was just testing you. You passed!”

  * * *

  * * *

  Ma Ma grew sicker. When she wasn’t in school or at work, she was in bed. We never went window-shopping anymore. Not to the nearby Thirteenth Avenue, where we got free samples of sunflower seeds and nuts from the Jewish stores. And certainly not to our favorite area, Herald Square, which had both stores where we could actually shop, like Conway, and stores where we could only dream to one day shop, like Macy’s.

  Instead, our outings were to the only Chinese doctors who were safe to visit. Their offices were in their homes, their basements. Ma Ma told me that many of the doctors were “hei” like us; they had been doctors in China just as Ma Ma and Ba Ba had been professors in China, but now none of them could do the things they were good at. Not openly, anyway. It was safe this way, Ma Ma said, because they couldn’t report us and we couldn’t report them.

  “What if they do something wrong,” I said, “and they make you sicker?”

  She replied with one of those questions that was really an answer: “Could it be worse than not seeing a doctor at all?”

  * * *

  * * *

  The “friend test” worked well for me. Anytime I was caught in a lie, I had a way of flipping it and turning it into a “gotcha.” It gave me control of every situation.

  My lies grew beyond who I was and where my parents were from. They budded and flowered in even the most banal scenarios.

  As best friends were required to do, Christine and I always went to the bathroom together, using adjacent stalls. If no two adjacent stalls were available, we waited. Who were we to question the rules of friendship?

  Christine loved to slam the toilet seat down onto the bowl the minute she got into the stall. Because I was always next door, it hurt my ears. But of course I did not tell her that.

  “Christine,
my mom said that if you do that a hundred times, you will go deaf.”

  “I’ve done it thousands of times. I do it every day.”

  “I know.” I kept my voice measured and calm. “I was just testing you. You passed.”

  “Sweet!”

  I was smarter than Christine. But she was happier because she celebrated all victories, real or false.

  * * *

  * * *

  It didn’t matter who the doctor was. We met with them all. The safe ones, anyway. They all told Ma Ma the same thing.

  It’s just a stomachache.

  Eat better.

  Go get some of that pink liquid medicine from the stores.

  None of it worked.

  * * *

  * * *

  As with fourth grade, I spent most of fifth grade daydreaming, alternating between staring at the chalkboard and at Mr. Kane while my mind roamed. It was weird to have a white man for a teacher. PS 124 was good like that. Even if they didn’t speak Mandarin, most of the teachers, like the students, at least looked a little like me.

  Mr. Kane looked nothing like me. He was the white kind of pale, with a lot of red underneath. His skin reminded me of the steamed buns with the pink dots in the center. Except his skin wasn’t taut and tender like a bun’s. It was a little saggy.

  I had no idea how old he was, only that he seemed old with a capital O. This may have been due in part to the fact that Mr. Kane looked like he was a million feet tall. It was confusing, though, because sometimes Mr. Kane was fun and playful, just like one of us, and other times he seemed to look down at us.