Beautiful Country Read online

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  At the hospital, when we finally did enter a room, I wondered if there would only be another connected hallway that we would have to turn down. I thought this because the first face I saw in a bed did not belong to Ma Ma, but to an old white lady, who had blanched skin and closed eyes that were curtained by wrinkles.

  But it turned out that there was no hallway from there. Beyond the bed was a curtain and as we walked toward it, I felt the kiss of sunlight. Under the strong rays casting in through the window, it took me a few more steps to see that the sleeping figure in the white bed was Ma Ma. She was a raisin of herself, and her eyes opened just as I threw myself onto her.

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  I visited Ma Ma regularly, finding my way to St. Vincent’s by subway after school. My fear of being found out and captured at the hospital lost a decibel each time I walked by an officer in the halls only to be ignored. Over time, it became but a dull murmur in the background of my visits with Ma Ma.

  Instead, I became more preoccupied with the fear of losing Ma Ma. My new fixation actually eased my previous stomach discomfort. There were still bubbles that led to throw-up, but they came and went, receiving little attention, like Mr. Kane’s teachings at the front of the class. My anxiety found its full throat whenever I was not with Ma Ma—all during school and for the entire night the minute I left her hospital room. What if they wheeled her off to surgery without me? What if I never saw her again? What if she needed me when I was not there?

  It felt to me just like that time the plane took Ba Ba. And like the time Ma Ma and I got on it and our whole family and world were taken away from us. Only this time, I didn’t have the hope or innocence I did before. I knew that new awful things were waiting, and that there was nothing I could do to keep it all from unfolding. My short life was replaying, but each time it promised to spin into worse and worse dimensions. I spent hours wrapped in this miserable thought, sitting on the metal chair next to Ma Ma’s hospital bed, my homework dutifully on my lap, my eyes fixed on her sleeping figure.

  For days after, Ma Ma’s classmates came with arrangements of flowers in colors and shapes I had not seen since we left China. To this day, thoughts of the hospital recall to me the smell of lilies, bleach, and rubbing alcohol, all kneaded up into one terrifying ball.

  Only one thing had me leave my metal chair during visits. Three rooms down from Ma Ma stayed an old lady who had the bed by the door. I first saw her when I was walking with Ma Ma down the hall. I held on to Ma Ma’s right hand as her other hand gripped the tall pole from which hung a bag of liquid whose tube was connected to a needle, which was in turn jabbed into the inside crook of Ma Ma’s left arm. Ma Ma and I had just eclipsed the third door when we heard the word “Nurse” trickle out. When I turned, I saw the old lady looking back at me, unblinking. Her eyes were foggy with cataracts, her short hair white and wiry. She reminded me of the poodles I’d seen often on my walk from the subway station to the hospital, in shock at how many more dogs there were in white neighborhoods.

  My first thought was that I was looking into death’s withered face. My second thought was a question: How did she get a bed bigger than Ma Ma’s? But then I realized that it was just an illusion: so small was the lady that, even seated in her adjustable bed, she barely appeared to have a neck or torso. She was just one balloon head, huge compared against the rest of her, eyes staring at me through a smoggy shield.

  From then on, I checked on her every time I walked by. I would hold my breath before passing her room and cross my fingers that she would be there. Only when I saw that she was would I let myself breathe again. On my way in, I had to pass the lady’s room before reaching Ma Ma’s, and this became a game of superstition: if the lady was there, Ma Ma would be okay. So from the moment I got off the elevator to the minute I stepped past her room door, I whispered my mantra under my breath as fear shrieked in my head: Please be there. Please, please, please be there.

  The old lady never had visitors, but one day, just as I let out my breath in front of her door, I found her clutching a gray-brown stuffed bear the size of her two hands. We had by then developed a routine: she shouted “Nurse” into the hallway until Ba Ba or I looked in on her, at which point she would stop. She didn’t smile, not really—she would only look back us through her papery eyelids, her mouth slightly curved and open, bones and veins visible on her hands through the veneer of spotted skin.

  I never talked to her. But it was warm comfort to see her every day. In those moments when our eyes held each other, it felt as if we were family, as if neither she, nor I, nor anyone else in that hospital was quite as alone as we actually were.

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  Ba Ba was still working at the lawyer’s office, but he was now haunted by all the many places he had to be. As I did after school, he took the subway directly to the hospital after work, and there the three of us would share Ma Ma’s dinner, which arrived on a tan cardboard tray. When the generous worker was on duty, he would leave us two or three extra meals, a feast. Ma Ma always saved the Jell-O cups for me. I had never had Jell-O before, and when I brought a piece out on the spork and shook it until it danced and wiggled, it felt as if I were just another rich, white American kid who could afford to play with her food.

  Walking past the cops at the hospital never seemed to get easier for Ba Ba. His hand always squeezed mine harder at the sight, as if he needed to remind himself that we were still there, together and safe. Even after we passed a cop, Ba Ba never resumed talking, instead keeping his eyes turned just over his shoulders, watching for figures behind us, listening for quickening footsteps.

  But when he wasn’t running from his own shadows, Ba Ba liked to make me laugh. He multiplied his efforts during the time when Ma Ma was in the hospital, perhaps because my smiles grew so rare. It was as if I had lost the muscles for them.

  We didn’t have much at our disposal, but Ba Ba knew that my laughter sat on the shoulders of the cheapest inventions. One easy favorite came from the simple mechanics of plumbing: Ba Ba would go to the bathroom and leave a nice, sizable creation in the toilet without flushing. The first time he pulled this prank, he came back to our room only to say, Oh! I forgot my book by the toilet! before asking me to retrieve it. I walked to the bathroom with my nose in my book, and did not look up until too late, until I was right in front of the toilet bowl, in full view of the glorious brown mess. Then came Ba Ba’s snickering from outside the door, and his declaration that, oh, sorry, he must have forgotten to flush.

  And then, of course, there was our song, Xi Mou Hou. We started dancing to it again at night, after returning from our visits with Ma Ma and after Ba Ba locked the door to our rooms and waited long enough to be sure that no footsteps were coming. When at last his shoulders loosened and dropped, my feet found the tops of his and the two of us swayed to the rhythm carved into our bones. It was my lullaby, sweeping me away from the beeping of the hospital machines.

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  As Ma Ma’s time in the hospital ticked by, I created many more solitary and superstitious games. I made little bets, like if I could get to this crosswalk or that building before the light changed or before the next car honk, Ma Ma would be okay. It was also then that I tripped over my own feet more. I even began to hit doorframes as I walked out of rooms. It was as if my arms had all of a sudden grown too long, had started swinging too widely. I repeatedly hit them against other people, objects, and all that surrounded me. The more I willed myself to walk quickly, to move smoothly, to save Ma Ma, the more I stumbled and failed, my goal collapsing just before my outreached hands.

  One particularly bad fall took place during lunch recess. I don’t remember what I was doing or how it even happened, only that I had been moping around the fence, far from my hopscotch-playing friends. I was contemplating how stupid it was to jump on one leg and
then the other, from one box to the next, when there were people out there in the world who were so sick they had to stay in bed with needles stuck in them. And then, out of nowhere, I tripped on nothing and fell, landing on my twisted right hand and wrist. I pushed myself up as quickly as possible. In my haste, I pressed the back of the hand, which was already turning blue, farther into the ground.

  No one had noticed my stumble, or at least no one came over. I didn’t dare look around. If someone had seen, if someone had laughed, I didn’t want to know. I spent the rest of the afternoon staring at the gradations of blue and purple as my hand rose like yeasted dough. Within an hour, it became impossible for me to grip a pencil or write. I still could not read anything off the board. In fact, my eyes had gotten worse. So I sat still and nodded every now and then, trying to act normal while committing to memory what I would have to do for homework later that night.

  I was lucky because that week I was wearing my pink sweater, which was several sizes too big. I was meant to grow into it as I wore it, but the weave of the stiff, acrylic yarn had already loosened. The space between the threads of yarn got bigger and bigger, gaping until the sleeves draped well over my hands. It just happened to be the perfect cover for my swollen stump.

  I said nothing to Christine or anyone else when class was over. Instead, I strode toward the door and down the hall into the bathroom, pausing only when my hand brushed the doorframe—my clumsiness persisted—shooting shards of pain up the hand and into my wrist, now also swollen.

  I hoped that running water on it would help. But, as it turned out, a taro-bun hand did not feel like a normal hand. Even after I adjusted the temperature to extreme cold and then extreme hot, the bump felt nothing. By this point, my classmates were catching up to me, so I draped my sleeve over the swollen hand once more and walked out of the bathroom, hoping no one would notice the dripping water.

  I spent the whole subway ride to St. Vincent’s fretting about hiding my hand from Ma Ma so she would not have to worry. By the time I reached the hospital and walked past the old lady’s room, I still had not come up with an excuse. I was so focused on my hand, in fact, that I did not realize until after I had already passed the old lady’s door that I had not even checked to make sure she was there. A bad omen.

  It was a bad day for Ma Ma and she had no time to notice me. When I arrived, a nurse was already in Ma Ma’s room, explaining that because all of her easy-to-find veins had been used too much for the IV drip, they had to start using long, scary needles now that poked into the top of Ma Ma’s feet. The needle meant that Ma Ma could not walk around, so she was left in her bed to think about nothing but her pain and anxiety.

  I forgot about my hand until Ba Ba and I left the hospital. It wasn’t until I reached to swipe my MetroCard that I remembered that it hurt to hold things now. Ba Ba didn’t notice: his eyes had that far-off glaze that told me he was battling his shadows again. After swiping through the turnstile with a grimace, I returned my hand to its sleeve, just in case Ba Ba came back to me.

  Chapter 23

  MOTHERS

  Ba Ba started having me stay with family friends over the weekends. He told me it was for the best, that he had to be with Ma Ma at the hospital, but it was not good for a little girl like me to spend so much time in such a place. I wanted to believe him, but doubts poked at my brain from all directions. I was Ma Ma’s sentry, her little doctor. Was I failing her by listening to him?

  It didn’t matter, because at the end of the day, I was a good girl who did what her ba ba said, even if it meant betraying her ma ma at the same time, even if it meant crying and embarrassing herself, as I had at Elaine’s.

  I stayed with Ba Ba’s friend Yang Ah Yi first. She was the mother of the younger of the two boys I was forced to spend time with when all our families got together. Though I liked her son, I feared her. They looked a lot alike, with small chins that gave their faces a rounded look full of curiosity. They were both very dark, looking as if they had been roasted. Yang Ah Yi’s son was very kind. But Ma Ma and Ba Ba insisted that in China, dark faces were seen as bad luck, and they once told me that some of Yang Ah Yi’s darkness was on the inside, too. I didn’t know what any of this meant, but I kept a good distance from Yang Ah Yi all the same.

  Yang Ah Yi’s husband didn’t seem good or bad, but he reminded me of Lao Bai and his flexible morality. He always did just what Yang Ah Yi told him to do.

  As I recall, they had then just moved to a two-bedroom in Queens—either Forest Hills or Elmhurst; the two blur together in my mind. It was the nicest American apartment I had ever seen outside of TV, even better than Elaine’s apartment. The kitchen connected to the living area, so they had room to fit an actual dinner table, around which sat matching chairs. Outside of China, I had never seen such nice furniture in person.

  Yang Ah Yi picked me up and brought me to her fancy apartment just before dinner, and I spent much of the time before the meal marveling at the dining set. From the meal itself, I remember only three things. First, I had to ask for a fork. My hand was still a swollen ball; I had not been able to use chopsticks for several days, and I had forgotten to pack the plastic spork I had pocketed from the hospital. Second, everything on the plates was tinged brown, and when I managed to get the food to my mouth, I was disappointed to find that it all tasted the same—salty—and had the chewy quality of overcooked school lunches. I missed the trays of hospital food and hoped that, without me there, Ma Ma would still remember to save the Jell-O cups for me. Third, I was left out of the conversation entirely. Yang Ah Yi and her husband talked as if I were not there at all. Though the son tried to involve me a few times, he was shy and had already developed the preteen hatred for his parents that I had yet to grow into. He and I sat on our side of the table, chewing, chewing, chewing through the salt as the adults droned on about one thing or another. It was not until after dinner, when I was doing the dishes, and the son was back in his room, that Yang Ah Yi spoke to me for the first time.

  “Wang Qian,” she said, her mouth mirthless, “did you know that people say that my family is low-income?”

  I didn’t know. I hadn’t realized that people talked about other people that way. But she was scary, so I nodded.

  “In fact, we are all called low-income, all of your father’s friends, even though we did pretty well in China.”

  The nodding continued.

  “Well, not you and your family.”

  Another nod, slower this time.

  “Because if my family is low-income in America, then you are no-income.”

  No one had ever said anything like that to me. I had trouble understanding it at first, and the shock offered some padding for the sting. But later that night, as I lay on the stiff couch in the living room, willing myself to sleep, the words came back to me. I didn’t feel an urge to cry, as I had at Elaine’s, because I was too busy unlocking the puzzle formed by Yang Ah Yi’s words. What did it mean, that we were no-income? Ba Ba and Ma Ma made money. I had seen the money. I had earned some of the money, too. I had not imagined it all. But I knew that Yang Ah Yi was better off than we were. Just look at this couch, that table. Plus, Ma Ma had told me that they were rich because Yang Ah Yi had found a way to hold on to her visa all this time—something, she said, that Ba Ba had been too dumb to do.

  When I got home on Sunday night, I told Ba Ba that I wanted to stay with someone else the following weekend.

  “Why? They have such a nice place. I bet you ate good food.”

  I didn’t want to tell Ba Ba that we were no-income. He didn’t need to know.

  “I don’t want a fancy place. It was too sad there.”

  Ba Ba didn’t ask any other questions and his eyes drifted off to a faraway place again, but the next Friday, Ma Ma’s friend Wu Ah Yi picked me up from the hospital.

  Wu Ah Yi was one of Ma Ma’s new friends from the master’s program. She was
not quite scary like Yang Ah Yi, but I didn’t like her, either. She had an odd, floaty quality to her. The very sight of her recalled to me what Ma Ma had told me years before: that a woman could be beautiful without being pretty, but a woman could not be beautiful without having dignity.

  When Wu Ah Yi came to retrieve me from the hospital, she had a face so full of makeup that it reminded me of the attendant on our flight so many years before. I don’t remember exactly what Wu Ah Yi wore, only that it was bright and silky and had a logo design that I had seen on the subway, on women so classy and elegant that they set into stark relief the dulled graffiti on dirty aluminum.

  Ma Ma shrank a little lower in her hospital bed at the sight of Wu Ah Yi’s extravagance, and in that instant, I wanted to tear the logos apart with my hands. All Ma Ma had on was a white hospital gown with a little blue pattern on it, like the top of the table we had found and dragged back to our kitchen. The gown gaped in areas where there were no strings keeping them together, the seams rolling into the fabric, aged from repeated laundering.

  Every time I was around her, Wu Ah Yi was either talking about how pretty she was or asking others to confirm that they thought she was pretty. I once asked Ma Ma why she was friends with someone who only seemed to care about one thing. Ma Ma had responded that Wu Ah Yi was very kind deep down, but that the world had taught her to measure herself by her appearance, by comparison against every woman and girl. “Try to understand her instead of judging her, Qian Qian,” Ma Ma had said. “You are luckier than her because you know you are worth more than that.” I tried to keep this in mind, but it was hard to be truly understanding of something I did not yet comprehend.