Beautiful Country Page 27
The second thing was that, because Ma Ma was mad that Ba Ba had bought the car, she had decided to use it to learn to drive. Ba Ba did not like this. What if she crashed it, he yelled. The car was his baby, more than I felt myself to be. He spent most of the nights after dinner out on the street, wiping the entire thing down with a wet towel and then a dry one. This was a great sacrifice: we did not have that many towels.
Twice, the car was damaged overnight. The first time, a thief took the radio and some other parts that I did not even know existed. Ba Ba brought it to the nearest shop immediately, as if it were a child with a swollen wrist who needed to be rushed to a hospital, and within the week, it was good as new. Ba Ba then bought a stick to lock the steering wheel so no one could drive the car without unlocking the stick first because it would hit the window. The stick was off-brand, the cheapest and smallest available, and never sat snugly against the wheel.
Even so, the expenses made Ma Ma angrier, and all the more determined to drive it. “You place this—this thing above us—” she’d say, “above our safety and our future? I am your wife, and this is your child.”
In those moments, I spotted a familiar look in Ba Ba’s eyes before they hardened and shadows took over. It took me some time to trace it, but upon observing it a few times, I knew: it was the same look he wore when he talked about his home being ransacked when he was a child, about Nai Nai being dragged out and beaten before the entire village. It was not a look of pure sadness or fear, but instead something that I imagined the brown and white bird might have felt when it caught sight of Marilyn just before she pounced.
The second time, the car was gone completely. Ba Ba was sick. The realization of what happened seemed to suck all strength from his body and he crawled back into the bed even though it was morning and he was due at work and I was due at school. His face reminded me of the boulder in my heart that first day without Marilyn. He refused to call the police, so later, when I had returned from school and he had regained the ability to walk, we wandered from street to street, hoping to come upon it. This worked: just two blocks from where we lived, in the direction opposite of where we had started our search, there was our car, parked in a no-parking spot. The car’s doors had been stripped and the windshield shattered—this was the way to take two left turns even with the small stick, Ba Ba pieced together, ta ma de, I knew I should have bought the expensive one—and many things, among them the new radio, gutted. Still, the exposed dashboard was papered with parking tickets. Justice, I learned then, was blind.
Undeterred, Ba Ba once again restored the car to its previous condition, and after this, Ma Ma had Lao Jim give her lessons in the car after McDonald’s outings. I learned to retreat to the bathroom each time Ma Ma returned from those lessons. Sometimes, though, I could hear the shouting even from there. When that happened, I did what I could to overpower it. Where I otherwise would have sat on top of the toilet lid with both hands clasped together, silently beseeching Marilyn, God, or whoever possessed the power to help Ma Ma and Ba Ba, I stood and launched into prayer at full volume.
Please please please, I repeated until my words linked together in a secure chain, please please please make them happy again. I will do anything. Whatever you want.
* * *
* * *
As sixth grade wore on, I grew uneasy with the sense that Gloria and I were on the bottom rung of our friend group. More and more, Elena and Mia hung out with the other non-Asian girls in our class, the ones who were cool by virtue of the fact that they hung out with boys, the ones who wore bras with bright straps that showed through their shirts. Elena and Mia invited us to join, of course, but there was a social barrier that felt impossible for me and Gloria to pierce, perhaps because we were Chinese, perhaps because we could not afford bright bras we did not yet need.
Gloria was one of the few others in our class who also got the meal vouchers. She was also the only one who also liked to go to the free library that the school had, full of more volumes than were ever available at my local public branch. She liked everything that I liked, and she could not afford the same things I could not afford. She was my best friend. But she was also so easygoing and self-effacing that she made it impossible for me not to punch down at her, in hopes of lifting myself into the upper social echelon.
On a day I’ll never forget, the four of us spent lunch with the cool kids—among them, boys. I had been careful to tuck away my voucher booklet. Still, Gloria and I had little to contribute to the conversation at the table until it veered toward popular music and Usher. I had already begun studying the culture of cool music, doing what I could without cassettes or a Walkman. Ba Ba had a handheld radio with an antenna, and before Ma Ma and Ba Ba returned home to fill the air with anger and tension, I did my homework to the sounds of 103.5 KTU, a radio station that Kailey—one of the cool girls, with blond hair, blue eyes, tight spaghetti-strapped tops, and long legs—had once mentioned. The studying had equipped me with a general sense of what was going on in the debate, and who Usher was, though not enough for me to contribute anything meaningful. When the chatter among the cool kids broke for a second, though, Gloria intruded on them with a question:
“What’s R&B?”
I felt my face flush as it had on the first day, when I’d noticed that white girl paying for the breakfast I had gotten for free. I hated Gloria for asking the question. I hated myself for not knowing the answer.
“God, Gloria, you don’t even know what R and B is? How much of a loser are you?” The cruelty came out before I recognized my own voice.
Everyone turned to stare at us, including the two cute boys at the other end of the table. Gloria’s natural blush deepened. Mia was the first to speak.
“Qian, why do you have to be so mean? Do you even know what R&B is?”
“Of course I do,” I squeaked, convincing no one.
“What is it?”
“Rock and blues.”
“Wrong.”
I sat immobile, steeped in mortification. After a long while, the silence gave way to tittering, and I passed the rest of the day muted, humbled.
* * *
* * *
My prayers were useless at home. Ma Ma started spending a few nights at her friend’s home on Long Island. When she returned, Ba Ba and Ma Ma began throwing at each other words that I had never heard them use before. I began to tune out their dinnertime fights, mouth chewing and throat swallowing but mind shut off, body numb. I had stomachaches after those meals, maybe because I ate too fast, maybe because I ate too slowly, maybe because I barely ate at all. I could not pinpoint a reason because the mind that remembered too much suddenly decided not to remember at all.
One such meal, however, called my brain back into place. Ba Ba had said something in a sharp tone, to which Ma Ma responded in an even sharper, defiant tone. This gave Ba Ba the look again—a scared little bird trapped inside a thirty-six-year-old man—but it lasted for just a moment before it was replaced by hardened steel. And then Ba Ba stood up and did the thing that snapped me awake:
He reached across the table, hand moving past me, and slapped Ma Ma.
The sound bounced from one wall of the kitchen to the other, like a homemade kite in choppy winds, catching on this corner and that until it was all around us.
Then Ba Ba charged out, stomping into our room, presumably to get his jacket and the car keys, before slamming the two external doors, one after another.
“Ma Ma—Ma Ma, are you okay?” I so wished that she would talk to me again like she used to.
“Mei shi, mei shi.” She kept her face down but forced a smile. “He just didn’t like the meal.”
Ma Ma continued putting food in her mouth and chewing but I could tell she was not tasting any of it. Her head stayed down toward her bowl, her left hand covering her left cheek. All I could see was the top of her head, her hair parted in a straight line
a little off to the side. Among the black strands were a few hairs that had morphed into shocking, bright white.
When Ma Ma looked up again, I knew that she thought she looked normal. She thought that she looked okay, that she was playing the part of a protective mother to her shaking daughter. She would not have looked up otherwise. Believing that she looked no different than usual, Ma Ma opened her mouth to say something to me, something assuring and soothing, no doubt, but something I don’t remember. I never heard it because when she lifted her head and removed her hand, all that filled my world were the thick red lines across her cheek, the bright imprint of my father’s fingers on her face.
Chapter 29
GONE
It happened quickly. The weekend after the incident, Ma Ma set about cleaning the room. It was time to put away our winter clothes and take out our summer ones, she said, so she had us both pack and unpack our clothes, placing in one pile the items with too many holes and the items I had long outgrown, while neatly folding for a second pile those that were salvageable. Then, Ma Ma said, we needed to go to the local Brooklyn library to return all the books I had checked out. When I asked why, Ma Ma said that it was not nice to keep from others the books I had already finished reading, and anyway, she felt like taking a walk. I gathered the volumes—the usual Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley installments, along with some more Alice books and Harriet the Spy—and arranged them into a tall stack that Ma Ma stuffed into my JanSport, swinging it onto her back.
“What about this one?” Her eyes fell on another book still on the couch.
I ran to pick it up. It was almost as if I believed that the faster I grabbed it, the more likely I would be able to keep it. The book was Julie of the Wolves, and it had caught my attention because it had on the cover a girl who looked kind of like me, with a name that I had chosen for myself but was still afraid to wear. Julie, like the main character in the Alice books, had lost her mother young, and had to live with her father. But then her father disappeared, too, and her life became very, very hard. I was almost done with Julie’s story, and I was eager to see her arrive at a happy ending. I told Ma Ma this, promising to return the book as soon as I finished it, so other kids could meet Julie and spend time with her and wolves. Besides, the librarian who had checked out the book for me had shown me another book with the same girl on the cover. That book was titled Julie.
“This is the book that comes after the one you’re borrowing,” she said with a crinkle at the corners of her eyes. “When you’re done with it, come get this one. It is great.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s my name, too.” The words tumbled out before I realized that it was not the name on the library card she was holding. Luckily, she didn’t notice.
“It’s a very pretty name.”
“Thank you,” I said again, hungry to claim something not quite mine.
I told Ma Ma about this exchange, if only to assure her that I meant what I said about returning the book as quickly as possible. She took it the wrong way, though, because she looked sad.
“I can return it today if you’d like, Ma Ma.”
Ma Ma turned to me, the sad look slipping off her face. “Hao, guai. Mei shi.” So we left the book on the couch and walked to the library together, hand in hand.
Ba Ba was around for all of the packing and cleaning up, but he stayed out of our way, watching TV and then going out for a drive. Neither Ma Ma nor I had spoken to him since the incident. Had I known what was to come, I would have said a lot to him over the weekend. But by the time I knew, it was too late.
* * *
* * *
Monday begun as usual. I awoke and gathered myself for school. Ba Ba had already left for work, but Ma Ma was home, fumbling with the suitcases we had brought from China, the ones into which we had placed our wearable sweaters for summer storage the night before.
Before leaving, I kissed Ma Ma on the cheek and promised that I would return Julie of the Wolves after school. I had finished it late the night before and was breathless for the next installation. Ma Ma nodded absently, and I thought it was odd that she no longer seemed to care about something that had mattered so much to her just a day before.
The commute to school was different because for once I did not have a book to read, having returned all my volumes without borrowing any new ones. I was left only to people-watch and stare at the signs of the stations that had become the fixtures of my life.
The rest of the day passed without significance. It was not the sort of day one remembered, with special events or notable details. Had I known better, I would have taken the time to capture the moments and people and things, as I had when we left China. Had I known better, I would have been nicer to my friends, and committed to memory the jokes we shared that day. I would have thanked Ms. Rothstein and Señora Torres for inspiring me, for getting me to pay attention in class again, instead of passing each day in deafening boredom. But instead, the hours ticked by in complacency, and when the last class was over, I peeled off from Gloria, Elena, and Mia to head to the school library. I could not bear another subway ride without a book, and I was eager to grab several—and maybe even Julie!—before catching the A train.
After greeting the librarian and receiving with disappointment her news that she did not have Julie, I dove into my routine. I had a habit of perusing each shelf systematically, savoring every spine, cover, and blurb. By the time I had settled on two books to tide me over on the commute home—A Ring of Endless Light and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler—thirty-some minutes had passed. I walked out the school doors with my face already glued to the early pages of From the Mixed-Up Files and did not look up until a sequence of blaring honks snatched my attention. When my eyes left the dog-eared pages, I realized that our shimmering gold shoe was parked along the sidewalk.
The window at the driver’s seat was open, and protruding from it was Ma Ma’s furrowed face.
“Qian Qian! I was so worried I had missed you.”
“Ma Ma? What’s going on?”
“Get in, get in. I’ll tell you on the way.”
It was not until I stepped into the front seat that I noticed our two bulging suitcases piled in the back.
“Ma Ma? What’s going on?”
“We are going to Canada.”
“What? Why? Right now?”
“No. Right now, we are going to a place on Long Island. Called…Neck. Something Neck.” She pulled out a map and a sheet of paper. “Dui, Great Neck.
“Here, take this map. I studied the route already but I need your help, Qian Qian. See this path that I marked? Keep your eyes on that and make sure we’re going the right way, okay?”
There were too many words. So many words that I could not understand any of it. But staring at the map was concrete enough, easy enough. I was Ma Ma’s little doctor, and it came back to me all at once: all that mattered was that I helped Ma Ma do what she wanted to do. With some effort and several wrong turns, we found what was called the I-495, a big and wide road with many lanes.
Over the course of the next hour and a half, we made many more wrong turns, incurring honks and screams. It was also during that hour and a half that Ma Ma explained everything to me—how she had learned from her new friend who lived on Long Island that Canada was looking for educated immigrants; how that friend had introduced her to a lawyer, and how Ma Ma had worked with that lawyer for many months to get us permission to move to Canada; how we would not just have visas but full green cards once we got there, except it was not called a green card, but a “maple leaf card”; how I would be able to go to any college I wanted and she could work at a real job; how there was free healthcare; and how Ba Ba had refused to leave, how he was scared, how he loved America too much, maybe more than he loved us. It was a lot and I didn’t understand it all, not all at once. All I took from it was that Ma Ma had been working on this
for a while, without telling me. She had assumed that Ba Ba would agree eventually, but he never did. And then there was the incident. And that was that.
We were headed to Ma Ma’s friend’s home on Long Island first. It was going to take us many hours to get to Toronto, where Ma Ma had a friend from China, and she did not feel confident driving all the way there herself. What if we got stopped before we reached freedom? No, this way was better, safer, she said; this way she and Ah Yi could take turns driving.
Plus, Ah Yi lived in a big old house with her son and her white husband in a white neighborhood. Wouldn’t I like to see how Americans—true Americans—really lived before we left for good?
At this thought, our Brooklyn life played out before my eyes. The tests and essays, empty and unwritten, that I would never get to complete at Lab. My thin, long bed next to Ma Ma and Ba Ba’s bigger, fatter bed, and how I made those beds in the morning immediately upon waking, tucking in each edge until the comforter was sandwiched between the secondhand mattresses and their matching boxes. My friends, their faces around a long cafeteria table, talking with their mouths full of home-cooked lunches, except for Gloria, who poked at her tray of school food. The alley our room’s windows looked onto, and through which I still looked for Marilyn, even though I saw her less and less after I had decided that she was bad luck that needed to be threatened away with a stick.
And then there was Ba Ba, his smile when he handed me my Tamagotchi; his mouth as he sang and danced to Xi Mou Hou; his eyes when he looked over at me over the course of that last, wordless weekend.
It is odd, the images that come to your mind once you know you’ll never see any of it again.