Beautiful Country Page 26
Now, time slowed as I retrieved the box from the bag Ba Ba handed me, and quickened again as soon as I saw what it was. The box was rectangular, white on the sides. The front was clear, and in its center was a flattened, oval white egg with a keychain attached. The white shell was cracked in the center, exposing a screen edged in blue. At the bottom, three blue buttons protruded. I looked up at Ba Ba.
“Did I get the right one? I asked for the egg with a chicken in it.”
A few months before, Ba Ba had scolded me for not checking both ways while crossing the street. I had been too busy searching the ground for a homeless Tamagotchi in need of adoption. I told Ba Ba what I was looking for, going into lengthy detail as to what the game looked like and how it worked. Ba Ba responded only, “Look where you’re going, Xi Mou Hou. You’re not going to get your chicken that way.”
I forgot the conversation as soon as it was over, returning to scouring the streets with my eyes. It never occurred to me that we might be able to somehow afford a brand-new Tamagotchi, and even then, it wouldn’t have felt right to buy a baby chick instead of more healthy food for Ma Ma. Plus, I had had many other similar, unrequited obsessions in America: the full-size Barbie doll, the Furby, and the G-Shock Baby-G watch. None of them ever came to fruition, and they all petered off into a whispered longing.
But with the Tamagotchi, it was different. I finally had one. I wrapped Ba Ba in a great big hug, he bending down in his sweaty shirt, I reaching up on the tips of my toes. Then I ripped open the box and yanked the plastic tag out of the egg, hurling myself onto the couch as my chick beeped into life, leaving Ba Ba free to unburden himself of his sodden clothes.
* * *
* * *
It was, in fact, an acquisitive summer for all of us. After the Tamagotchi, and just before I was to start at Lab, Ba Ba came home with yet another surprise.
Ma Ma had come home first that day, and she was already in the kitchen steaming the vegetables we had ferried from Chinatown earlier that week: onions, carrots, and cabbage. We took care to go toward the end of the day, when vendors were eager to dispose of what had baked for long hours in the mixture of summer sun and car exhaust. Sometimes, when we went late enough, we even got sweet potatoes on steep discount.
Meanwhile, I was splayed out on our new forest-green couch, playing with my little chick. The couch was a new find from a recent shopping day. It was stiff and uncomfortable but looked much cleaner than our old one. Earlier that week, as we dragged that old couch out through the doors and onto the front steps, I looked at the embracing cushions, slouchy and soft from the years of sitting we shared, and asked Ma Ma why we had to get rid of a reliable, comfortable couch for an unknown hard one. Ma Ma explained that the look of things sometimes meant more than how they felt. The green couch looked newer, cleaner, more expensive. It would inspire us to work harder. It might even bring us good luck and prosperity. The toughness of the polyester bumps under me flowed in and out of my mind as I got my chick up to full health. I had developed a habit of doing that whenever I could, because I never knew what was to come the next day, and how long it might be before I could get back to my chick. It was better to load her up early. Like with Marilyn.
Then Ba Ba burst into the room, startling me into a seated position. “Come, come! Hurry!” By the time I left my chick and walked out of the room, he had already run down the hall to the kitchen, from which he was leading Ma Ma out by the hand. I could not remember the last time I had seen Ba Ba holding Ma Ma’s hand, so I figured that the news must be big, important. Ba Ba had left the front doors open, which he never did, and he waved all three of us through. He pointed at a car parked just outside our door. It was a four-door sedan that reminded me of a long, flat shoe, and it had the same shimmery gold color of the scratched-off shavings from the Bingo cards.
“There’s always a car parked here, Ba Ba.” I was eager to return to my chick; I was so close to getting her health to perfect.
“The stove is on—I should get back.” Ma Ma did not seem impressed, either.
“No, no,” and with this, Ba Ba ran down the steps and opened a door of the car. “This car is ours.”
I started to laugh at first, so impossible was the idea of us owning a car. Money aside, Ma Ma didn’t even have a driver’s license. Ba Ba had been learning with Lao Jim and had only recently gotten his. I still could not believe that Ba Ba had been willing to walk into a government office. Wasn’t he worried that they would arrest and deport him? Lao Bai had told him that he was able to get his license with no trouble, but how did Ba Ba know for sure that it would be safe? Wasn’t he worried that it was a trick?
In the end, he said, he just wanted a taste of what it was like to be a real American.
Ma Ma and I remained silent for so long that Ba Ba launched into a series of explanations: there had been a really good deal, a once-in-a-lifetime offer; he had to accept it in the moment or else; we still had some money left in that brown suitcase—we just had to save a little more later this year to get our savings back; there had been no time to check with Ma Ma before he made the decision; with the car, we could get to places, buy food for less, and maybe even move to another state where everything was cheaper and there would be more opportunities for Ma Ma and her degree. I bobbed my head from Ba Ba to Ma Ma and back as Ba Ba engaged in his plea. But it was too late: there was a storm on Ma Ma’s face.
“I have to check on the stove.”
As Ma Ma walked back into the house, I watched Ba Ba stare at his feet. He looked up again and offered me a smile. “What do you say, Xi Mou Hou—want to go for a drive?”
I didn’t understand what had happened, but I did know that Ba Ba had done something bad. I very much wanted to know what it was like to own a car. I wondered whether the ceiling also drooped. And I wondered whether, like Lao Jim’s car, it smelled like old man and garlic, whether it also shuddered before coming to a stop. Most of all, I wondered what it would be like to drive down any street we liked—not just the streets that led to McDonald’s. What was it like to slow down or speed up at our will? What was it like to have the cool air roll through the lowered windows and kiss my cheeks as Ba Ba and I navigated through our neighborhood, just the two of us—me in the front seat for once!—chitchatting about starting middle school like I was any other normal American kid?
But instead of finding out, I shook my head. Ma Ma was mad at Ba Ba about the car, so I would be mad at Ba Ba about the car.
“I don’t want to miss dinner,” I said.
Just as I turned to walk back toward my little chick, I caught the sight of Ba Ba standing alone by his new car, face dark with the sadness of a boy who had no one to play with.
* * *
* * *
We ate dinner in the simmer of contempt that night. Although we sat in the same spots around the same table as we always did, Ma Ma and Ba Ba were now farther away from each other. I wished for them to scold me and yell at me, about my lack of discipline, my teeth, my sloppiness, my anything. But they exchanged no looks or words, staring only at the plates of steamed onions, carrots, cabbage, and bland, boiled chicken. The meal concluded when Ba Ba got up. He placed his plate and chopsticks in the sink before cleaning the large bowl that Ma Ma had used to rinse the cabbage. He then filled it with water and grabbed our dish towel before walking out of the kitchen and down the hallway. Ma Ma and I sat staring at the table as we heard him open the front door and then slam it shut. He stayed out for almost an hour, and I knew only from looking through the sunroom windows later that he was washing the car by hand, with tender care that I forgot he possessed.
After Ba Ba stepped out, Ma Ma got up and began placing the leftovers into the fridge, gathering in the sink the dirty plates and bowls. I walked over to the sink and began my nightly dishwashing. To our roommates, it must have looked like just another night.
Chapter 28
COMMUN
ITY
On my first day of middle school, I arrived in Chelsea early and walked across West Seventeenth Street until I saw the building. I had half an hour before they would start serving the free breakfast, so I dodged eye contact with the kids standing just outside the door, some of them smoking. Instead of walking toward them, I continued on to Ninth Avenue, which then led me up to West Eighteenth Street. Halfway down that street, I came upon another school. There were also kids smoking outside that school. They looked similar but taller, and one of the girls carried extra weight only around her belly. I stood and watched for a while, comforted by the fact that these were not the kids I would be going to school with; they were just regular kids whose behavior I could consult for reference. I no longer knew how to act now that I was not attending a Chinatown school, full of Chinatown kids whose parents were just like mine. I studied them for ten minutes or so, until it became more appropriate to show up to school, at which point I walked back toward Lab while practicing the hand gestures and facial expressions that seemed to suggest cool nonchalance in this new world.
Back at the door to Lab, I pushed past the smoking kids, among them posh girls with eyes encircled by dark makeup. A security guard in uniform greeted me, and I was thankful that I had already been through the process for my interview. The secretary in the vice principal’s office at PS 124 had assured Ba Ba that Lab was like PS 124, and had the same rule of not asking about citizenship, but Ba Ba’s voice played on in my head, telling me that we could never really be sure. I unshouldered my JanSport backpack and placed it on the black conveyor belt. The bag was the same red one from elementary school on which I had drawn the cool letter S in white-out—every girl at PS 124 had one such S on her backpack—along with flowers and cats. I had added the other drawings later, when Ba Ba had noticed the S and asked me if I was in some sort of gang, and of course he knew I wasn’t, but wasn’t I worried that people might think that it was some sort of gang insignia? And then they might look into us and see that we were here illegally. I laughed but added the cats and flowers anyway—innocent little-girl things. Ba Ba had enough to worry about.
The guard waved me through the detectors and I held my breath as I walked past. I wasn’t sure what they were testing for; I prayed only that I didn’t have it. I let my breath go only after I was all the way through. The machine stayed quiet as I retrieved my backpack from the other end of the conveyor belt. The bag’s white-out drawings, which had once seemed so adult, now looked glaringly childish under the lights of the middle school. I shoved the thought out of my mind as I followed the trail of kids into the cafeteria. All of the sixth graders had been told to show up early, and it struck me that unlike my first day at PS 124, I was not the only one who didn’t know anybody. Best of all, I now spoke the language and understood the rules. There would be no walking into the boys’ bathroom here.
On our way from security to the cafeteria, I had caught others giving one another shy, furtive smiles, each of us praying against being the last to make a friend. For me, that hope was overshadowed by my empty stomach. I grabbed a tray at the front of the cafeteria and entered the small separate area where the smell of breakfast beckoned. The week before, I had received by mail two booklets of vouchers for free meals, orange for breakfast and red for lunch. I took an orange one out now and handed it to a stoic white lady with a hairnet, who then placed two scoops on my plate: one of hash browns, still steaming, and another of omelet, bright yellow with cheese. My mouth watered at the sight. The food here was better than anything I had seen at PS 124. But then again, that was why I had gotten the vouchers. Ba Ba explained to me that I was going from a school where almost everyone got free lunches to a school where I might be the only one. It might be hard, he’d warned, but I shook it off.
As I watched a white girl behind me hand five dollars to the stoic lady, though, shame crept up my ankles, past my legs and belly, and onto my face. I kept my face down at my tray and noted with gratitude that at least the flushing had dissipated quickly. Back out in the seating area of the cafeteria, I saw that, indeed, it had been a bad idea to give in to my hunger. Some of the other students had already made friends, sitting together, talking and laughing cautiously. But others were still trailing in, with uncertain looks on their faces. It’s not too late, I told myself. Plus, maybe those other kids already knew each other from elementary school.
Rather than barge in on an established group—I was much too shy for that—I sat down on my own, facing the door, willing myself to eat in the most friendly, welcoming way possible. As I sat, I noticed that even the table bench was sturdier, fancier, than anything I had ever touched at PS 124. Even so, I hoped that I wouldn’t start middle school as the girl who sat on it alone.
Just as I stuffed a fork full of hash browns in my mouth, a clump of three girls trailed into the cafeteria, one after another. They did not seem to know each other, and wore on their faces the terror I had felt on spotting the tables where kids were becoming fast friends. I gave each of the three my warmest, friendliest smile, realizing only afterward that I had hash browns and eggs in my teeth.
The girls didn’t seem to mind. They walked over, one by one. First there was Gloria, a petite Cantonese girl who reminded me of my friends from PS 124. Then there was Elena, a willowy Romanian girl who slouched, her upper body curving ever so slightly in on itself, reflecting back at me the diffidence I felt about my own towering height. And last was Mia, a Latina with a smile bright enough to light the sweatshop room. As it turned out, all of us were in the same class, and all of us were from immigrant families. And for the rest of the year, we were unbreakable.
Mia was the outspoken one. She made herself heard, but only on things that mattered. She was our moral spine, and her decisive loyalty and friendship formed a model for me for years to come. Elena was the de facto leader. She had an easy smile and a certain charisma that the rest of us lacked. Plus, she was the only one of us who had a brother, so she knew how to talk to boys. Only we fellow immigrants saw through her poised veneer and recognized her self-deprecating jokes about being a “Romanian Gypsy.” And Gloria was the peacemaker, the studious, quiet one who spoke up only when it became important to give way and make amends. She annoyed me and reminded me of Ba Ba’s repeated admonitions about how Asians needed to act in America. It would take me much longer to see her artistic spirit, which showed itself in the Beatles songs she hummed and her ability to soak up the otherwise invisible pain of all those around her.
At the time, I never thought about who I was in the group. Looking back, it is clear that I served many roles: the brain, the bully, the tomboy.
With the three of them, exploring the new world full of not just Asian classmates but also white and Black and Latino ones, was no longer so scary.
* * *
* * *
At Lab, for the first time, I was not bored in school. Classes were different. Instead of only teaching us how to conjugate verbs or having us translate from English to Spanish or vice versa, Señora Torres, a tiny stick of pep, planned a lunch trip to a nearby Spanish restaurant and gave us a list of words we needed to order off the menu. We could order only in Spanish, she warned, so we’d better know how to order what we wanted, because we would have to eat whatever arrived on our plates.
Our humanities teacher reminded me of Miss Pong. Ms. Rothstein was a small white woman with short brown hair and eyes that stayed bright with attention even as students talked. She had us read all sorts of books and focused our discussions on not just what happened in them but why they happened, and what those things were supposed to mean. And instead of just having us watch in silence the movie version of whatever book we were assigned, Ms. Rothstein actually had us ask questions—of her, of each other, of ourselves.
Just as Miss Pong brought Charlotte’s Web into my life, Ms. Rothstein gave me The Giver, a dystopian novel in which society was without pain or strife. The protagonist was a twelve-
year-old boy, Jonas, who carried the unique gift and burden of the memories from older, more painful, more emotional times. Jonas was another piece of my new life that made me feel less alone. Reading Jonas’s reflections on remembering and seeing too much gave voice to my own feelings. I stopped at many of the paragraphs and sentences, reading them, rereading them, and repeating them to myself. So many words from that book were talismanic refrains that, for the the first time, brought to life for me the very depths of my hurts, my joys, my loneliness.
* * *
* * *
Things at home had gotten worse. Ma Ma and Ba Ba rarely talked. We lived in two extremes: silence and screams. The only good thing that came of this was that the uncomfortable human sounds no longer emanated from their bed in the middle of the night, so I didn’t have to worry about falling asleep while covering my ears. Ma Ma still refused to tell me as much as she had before the surgery. Every now and then, she missed dinner or a full weekend day to visit that new friend on Long Island, the friend I had yet to meet. I didn’t know how to win back her trust after all my failures, and the quiet of the room once filled with words suffocated me.
I remained sneaky, though, and gleaned two things from what was said and what was not said: Ma Ma was mad that Ba Ba had gotten the car without telling her, and now she wanted him to agree to something she wanted. She was convinced that she had found a way to get us out of our situation, but Ba Ba demurred. “It’s the only way she’ll be able to go to college,” Ma Ma yelled, sometimes in the kitchen when I was in our room, and sometimes over my head at Ba Ba at the dinner table, as our roommates scampered out.
Usually Ba Ba said nothing, but once he mentioned that sometimes the white people in government used immigrants to win elections, and in the past they had handed out green cards to people like us. I had no way of finding out more, but the idea clung to the membranes of my brain.