Beautiful Country Read online

  Wu Ah Yi had a daughter, Feng Feng, who was two years younger than me. I had been disappointed to find that her mother had given her the same floaty disease. When she was well, Ma Ma had forced us to spend time together, admonishing me time and again to be “understanding” and “nice.” But I could never pay attention to anything Feng said. No matter how much I forced myself to like her, I wound up with the same conclusion: Feng was dull. Plus, whenever we passed by windows and glass doors, Feng’s head swiveled as she walked, eyes following her own reflection until it was gone. Wu Ah Yi was the only other person I’d seen do that.

  As Wu Ah Yi cooked in her kitchen the first night I stayed over, Feng and I stood around, mandatory audience to her stories about beauty. They were stories I had already heard, but it didn’t matter.

  “Wang Qian, you know, when Feng Feng was in China, one of my friends said a horrible thing to her, that she was not as pretty as I was!”

  I knew from the first time I had heard this story that Wu Ah Yi wanted me to be surprised and insulted in response, so I supplied those emotions to her, opening my mouth and wrinkling my face in indignation.

  “No, no, it’s fine, because you know what Feng Feng said?”

  I shook my head, as I was expected to do.

  “It’s incredible! I can’t believe she said it! She was only five at the time!”

  Feng beamed now, as she had in previous tellings.

  “She said to my friend, she said, ‘You’re not as pretty as my ma ma, either!’ ”

  At this, the two broke into peals of laughter. They were well rehearsed. It almost felt organic.

  It was then that I examined them for the first time. They both had fine features, but neither of them was good-looking, not really. They both lacked the kindness and gravitas that made Ma Ma beautiful. But Wu Ah Yi nevertheless found it important to remind Feng repeatedly that night, while I was in earshot, that her mother’s eyes were bigger and prettier than my mother’s eyes. But then Wu Ah Yi also said that Feng’s own eyes were nowhere as big or pretty as hers.

  Eyes are the ultimate gauge of beauty in Chinese culture. The larger her eyes—the more they looked like white people’s—the more beautiful a woman. And it was true that Feng had eyes so small that I wondered if she and her mom were actually related. I would not realize until I was in college that Wu Ah Yi had gotten eyelid surgery, the same kind of surgery that the blueprint of her childhood destined Feng to undergo. It was almost as if she believed that by slicing the flesh of her monolids, she could dig out the insecurity that her mother had buried in her all those years.

  In the moment, though, as I listened to Wu Ah Yi berate Feng, I could not help but travel back to my own dinner table, where Ma Ma and Ba Ba made such sport of dissecting the innumerable flaws in my own appearance. It made me want to like Feng—really like her, not just because Ma Ma commanded me to, but because we had something big in common. But camaraderie over the callous, brutal pelts that fired from our parents’ mouths was not enough to give root to real friendship. Try as I did—and boy, did I try that weekend—I could not get around finding her boring. It made me start to wonder whether Ma Ma had missed something in her equation: that maybe, even more than dignity, beauty demanded substance.

  None of this kept me from growing homesick during my stay at their home. It was the back-and-forths between Feng and her mother, the comments and eye rolls and nudges that recalled to me a safer time when Ma Ma and I were always side by side. In those moments, I was an orphan, with no one to love or protect.

  * * *

  —

  Wu Ah Yi was interested in only one other topic: my academic performance. She grilled me about my grades, and after each response, she turned to Feng and said, “Can you do it, too, Feng Feng? Can you?” Feng never responded.

  It didn’t make her dislike me, though. For at her core, Feng was good. She followed me around like a baby chick, chirping nonstop questions. She even waited outside the bathroom, clocking my pee times.

  This compounded my troubles. I was never able to poop in a toilet other than the one in our shared bathroom, and even there, I took a long time. I never even bothered to try at school or at Elaine’s, but on Sunday morning, after a second full night at Wu Ah Yi’s, I felt heavy and close to exploding. Feng, of course, followed me to the bathroom and waited outside. She continued her prattle through the door, so I gave it a good five minutes before emerging in defeat.

  A little while after breakfast, Feng fell into deep conversation with Wu Ah Yi and I thought I would use the window to try again. She did not follow me at first. But then, after a few minutes, she came pounding on the bathroom door, berating me for not telling her where I was going.

  “I would have come with you, Jie Jie, just tell me next time.”

  Feng had taken to calling me “older sister,” but I felt like her chained monkey. If I had not already had so much sitting on my shoulders and hanging from my neck, perhaps I would have enjoyed the presumptive intimacy she felt. But as it was, I felt only annoyed that I had yet another person looking to me for guidance. Another person whom I would fail.

  “Go away. It’s going to be a while.”

  “It’s okay, Jie Jie! Take your time. I’ll wait.”

  My fate was sealed with that, and after taking the perfunctory steps of flushing the toilet and washing my hands, I opened the door to find Feng seated cross-legged on the floor.

  “That wasn’t so long, Jie Jie! What do you want to do now?”

  When she ran to the kitchen to declare to Wu Ah Yi that we were playing checkers, I also heard her whisper, “Ma Ma, do you think Jie Jie ate something bad? I’m worried. She’s going to the bathroom a lot. Should we give her some medicine?”

  When Feng returned to the living room, I said nothing, pretending not to have heard what she said, pretending not to be bloated, homesick, exhausted. We set up the checkers board. To make up for all that I couldn’t give her, I let her have the red pieces, the color of happiness and prosperity in our culture.

  * * *

  * * *

  After Wu Ah Yi’s, I begged Ba Ba to let me stay with him on the weekends. I could even stay home, I said, if he didn’t want me to go with him to the hospital. I could take care of myself and it was less exhausting that way, and I wasn’t alone, not really, because Marilyn was there.

  Ba Ba’s brows scrunched toward each other and he opened his mouth gradually, as he did when he was forced to talk about a topic that he had put off. “Well, about Marilyn—”

  I knew in that moment that what I had dreaded for months had finally come, that Marilyn’s time was running out. I had to stop him before he could say it. Because if he didn’t say it, maybe it wouldn’t be true.

  “Hao de, hao de. I will stay somewhere else this weekend, but please take care of Marilyn while I’m gone.” I hoped that Ba Ba would accept this as my barter—he could send me away for the weekends if he would just put up with Marilyn a little bit longer.

  It seemed to work. Ba Ba didn’t bring it up again, and I was due to be shipped off somewhere else on Friday. But just in case, I started feeding Marilyn a little more of my food every night.

  * * *

  * * *

  Lin Ah Yi’s home was the poorest of all. Like Wu Ah Yi, she was a new friend, having met Ma Ma in the school. I don’t even remember where she lived, but I know it was somewhere far from Manhattan, because it took a long time to get there by subway.

  Lin Ah Yi’s home was in a basement. It reminded me of the hallways in the hospital, with all of its lights buzzing, so artificial and bright that they gave me an instant headache. I figured that this meant Lin Ah Yi’s family must have been really poor, maybe no-income, like us.

  Ma Ma, Ba Ba, and I had almost lived in a basement apartment. When we visited the place, we saw that it had gray walls and pipes everywhere that banged and clacked. The
re was only one little sink and one portable stove, like the ones we had used to eat hot pot at Lao Lao’s. Ma Ma had said that there was a good public school in the area that made it worth it, but I said nothing was worth this, and so that was that.

  Lin Ah Yi’s home was not as bad as that basement apartment; it was finished with white walls and had only a few white pipes, but still, it was a basement. The neighborhood did not seem like it had a good school, either, because all of the doors and windows had bars on them. It reminded me of the area where we first lived when we arrived in America, the place that taught me that we were chinks who would be attacked by dogs as their owner stood by, laughing.

  Lin Ah Yi had a son, Ting, who was the same age as Feng. I was grateful that he seemed to find me boring and never followed me around. His friendly apathy was a wide-open window on a stifling summer’s day.

  The only time Ting and I spent together was when Lin Ah Yi took us to the library. Even though it was the first time we met, Ma Ma had told Lin Ah Yi all about how much I loved books, and that I never felt alone when I had one with me. So before my arrival, Lin Ah Yi had looked up the branch nearest to her home. It was still pretty far away, so after picking me up, Lin Ah Yi took me and Ting to find the branch, turning down this street and then the next, Ting running ahead of us and chattering about his games and toys while Lin Ah Yi asked me about school and the graduation that was to come. It was the most focused attention I had gotten to myself since Ba Ba had left China. It was nice, but I also felt uneasy, as if I were being too selfish, taking too much. But then we were at the library, and I peeled off like Ting, grabbing at books and checking out eight Baby-Sitters Club editions, a personal record.

  When we got back to the basement, I learned that for the first time in my life, I had my own room. The apartment was a long railway, like ours, except the family did not have to share with anybody. At the front was the kitchen, which was also the dining and living area. It was the only room with a window, a small, dusty thing at the very top of the wall. Next came Ting’s room, or what would be my room during my stay, for he was going to bunk with his parents. It was a square box with a humming fluorescent tube on its lid. Next to that was the bathroom, then the adults’ room. I was so enthralled with the idea of my own room that I rarely bothered to venture into the other spaces—not even the bathroom, my habitual place of safety. My room was spare, with all white walls, a full-size bed, and a stool that doubled as a nightstand. To anyone else, it would have suggested a sterile examination room, but to me it was heaven. As soon as I saw it, I sank into the giant bed with its marshmallow comforter and began devouring the books, not getting up until I was called to dinner.

  Dinner was steaming and yummy, with lots of dishes like the ones that Ma Ma made—stir-fried bell peppers; tofu and scallions; pillowy white buns that reminded me of the bed that awaited me. Lin Ah Yi’s husband did not say much to me, but he had a benevolent face that smiled back at me every time I looked at him. Ting seemed excited to have a new person in the house but not overly so, speaking with zeal to his parents and me about school and the library and his friends. As for Lin Ah Yi, she was love itself, making sure I had enough of everything to eat and asking whether I might like to go to the store with her to buy a white dress, as was required for my graduation.

  It was at that creaky table, under the flickering lights and the tiny dusty window, that I noted how full I felt. Out the door, the world remained the same, with Ma Ma in a hospital bed, awaiting an uncertain fate, and Ba Ba in an unknown place with unknown company. But in that basement, underneath the surface of the sidewalk, how everything had changed for me. For once, I had space.

  Lin Ah Yi refused to let me clean up after dinner, so I returned to my room, to my marathon of books. I started off on top of the comforter but made my way under it after Lin Ah Yi came in to say good night. I slipped lower and lower in the bed, until I slid into sleep with an open book on my face, the overhead lights still humming.

  I was so at peace that I did not even come close to feeling homesick that night. The horrible truth was that, in that moment, Ma Ma was nowhere near my mind. She appeared only in stomach pangs that pulsed every now and then, so anxious was I about hearing bad news when I got back to Ba Ba.

  Peace was still there when I awoke the next morning. The clock on the wall informed me it was ten—early!—so I opened my book up again, savoring the freedom that came with four walls and a door all my own. Beyond the door, I heard the family rousing: the telltale beeps of Ting’s handheld game; Lin Ah Yi’s frying of you tiao, savory long doughnuts that brought a drool to my mouth; her husband’s humming to the Chinese tunes sounding from the boom box. And still I stayed cocooned in the comforter, even as the wafting kitchen smells cradled me. I did not leave the room until a full hour later, when I felt like it, at which point Lin Ah Yi greeted me with a meal she had kept warm for me on the stove. There were no words about how pretty she was or how little money Ma Ma and Ba Ba had. There was only good food and flowing music.

  The rest of my weekend passed just like that—doing what I wanted, shutting the door to my room when I felt like it, carrying no concerns other than what book I would start next. And though worry about Ma Ma and guilt for being so selfish popped up every now and then, they got buried under the sentences and pages and chapters and the new ease in my body.

  * * *

  * * *

  I was sad when Ba Ba came to pick me up. Ba Ba and I spent the subway ride home catching up on our weekend—Ma Ma was better, though he stayed silent about Marilyn when I asked after her—and through it all, the low hum of peace from Lin Ah Yi’s home buzzed through me. It stayed with me until I stepped through the threshold to our room, disappearing only when I realized something was wrong.

  I gasped.

  There was no tail swish to greet me, no little black figure who rubbed and leaned on my ankle.

  I didn’t need to ask. Ba Ba launched into a series of explanations, as if it were a choose-your-own-adventure book where I got to read all the potential routes and pick my favorite—not that it mattered; not that any of it would end with Marilyn back in our room; not that it would change the fact that I had to once again live without the one being who was there just for me.

  “I had to set her free, Qian Qian. The doctor said it would not be good for Ma Ma…plus, Marilyn’s asymmetrical face, it’s bad luck…and we barely have any money to feed you, we can’t afford all that food…be a good girl…be a big girl.”

  I caught only snippets of his pathetic offerings, so heavy was the pounding in my head, my throat, my heart. The things I loved, they always went away.

  We had not even gotten to say goodbye.

  I did not look at Ba Ba or acknowledge his weak words. Instead, I dropped my backpack on the ground and dove past the curtain, straight into bed, back in a world where the only four walls I had to myself came from my unwashed comforter.

  For the next few hours, until sleep relieved me, I thought about what happened when people and animals died. Where did this brain go that carried so many fears? Where did this heart go that pulsed with so much pain?

  Chapter 24

  SURGERY

  When at long last the nurses and doctors realized Ma Ma could not wait anymore, no matter how many rich people demanded that their operations come first, the surgery came. I remember little of the day, only that Ba Ba and I waited eleven hours on the stiff metal chairs in a white room that smelled like bleach. Ba Ba said that we had to stay there the whole time in case something happened. When I asked what could happen, he didn’t respond. Ba Ba’s body stayed next to me but the rest of him was far away, leaving me to study the gray-white tiles on the ground, counting them one by one, and then restarting each time an indolent adult walked across the floor and disrupted my survey.

  It was important that I got an accurate count of the precise number of tiles on the floor. Ma Ma depended on it.r />
  All around us, there was chatter and beeping and phones ringing. The chemical smell was stronger than ever, my nose under attack. And the ceiling lights were brighter than anything had ever been in the history of the world. I don’t remember there being a window in the room, though there very well may have been one. I remember only staring at the ground, whiteness all around.

  By this point, my hand was less blue and swollen, settling into a deep-red plumpness. It did not hurt as much as it had before, or maybe I had just gotten used to it. I had developed small techniques that grew normal over the weeks: I squeezed the toothpaste tube with my left hand; I wrote in lighter strokes, giving up my tight pencil grip. I learned to keep the hand shriveled in a sleeve, a pocket—though squeezing it in was often painful—or hidden behind my back, just in case it drew a worried glance. I had the closest call at Lin Ah Yi’s, where I dropped my chopsticks during dinner, causing me and Lin Ah Yi to reach for them at the same time. I reached stupidly, reflexively, with my right hand, and she grabbed my wrist to examine the rump, no longer purple but then blue-green with a yellow halo.

  “What happened?”

  “What? Oh, this? It’s always like this.”

  “Really?” She looked deep in my eyes and it was all I could do to keep my face from twitching.

  “Yeah.”

  She looked at my left hand, a normal size and color, and then turned back to the right, pressing her thumb into the fattest part of the rump.

  “Does this hurt?”

  Acting normal demanded all the discipline in the world.

  “Not at all.”

  I was in particular danger in the hospital. There were too many professionals; they would know something was wrong and I wouldn’t be able to trick them like I had with Lin Ah Yi. We couldn’t afford to treat it, I knew, and anyway, it was getting better. So I wrapped my hand in my sleeve and returned to the book I had been trying to read for hours. It was a special edition: the Baby-Sitters Club was traveling across the country in RVs, which I had just learned were mini homes on wheels. I had started to fantasize about having one. How great would it be, I thought, to have all my possessions in one place and have it all to myself? Marilyn would be there, of course, and I would drive her from place to place and keep her safe. Perhaps I could even take her to the East River, which I saw in person once on the Brooklyn Bridge field trip, and otherwise only on TV and through subway windows. There, she might be able to catch a fish. And Ba Ba wouldn’t have to leave me at random homes. As much as I liked it at Lin Ah Yi’s, having a home of my own sounded even better. Plus, I would be able to drive Marilyn around in a radius around the hospital, so that we would never be too far away from Ma Ma. And if we were caught, I would just sneak Ma Ma out and we would drive far away just like she dreamed about.