Loveboat, Taipei

by Abigail Hing Wen

  My chest constricts further, and I rise up onto my elbows. “I can’t think about it right now. I just need to nail this dance.”

  We run our routine and watch our videos a half dozen times, until Megan finally collapses, pries off her shoes, and massages her toes. “I need a break.”

  I flop onto my back beside her and dig my thumb into my palms. A few blisters are bleeding—ugh. I rub them on the grass, out of sight. Even a glimpse of my own blood makes me want to vomit—how will I handle a career of hemorrhages and puncture wounds?

  Overhead, gray clouds close over the last patches of blue sky.

  A rumble of thunder vibrates the ground beneath me.

  I’m tackling the small problems, but not the big one.

  I can’t help but think . . . if Dad gets that bonus Mom’s hoping for. If I catch them in the right mood—

  “Three o’clock,” Megan whispers. “Don’t look now, but there’s a cute guy checking you out.”

  Unlike Mom, Megan knows when I’m not quite ready to talk.

  “Soccer boy?”

  “Yep.”

  I pinwheel my flag over my face, helicopter-style. I can’t deny it—maybe it’s because I dance myself—I’m a sucker for athletes. Not because they’re popular, but because of the discipline it takes to do what they do. Also the way they move—confident, purposeful—staking out their bit of space on this earth.

  Sitting up, I cast a discreet glance toward the soccer net. The team from Solon in their blue jerseys has formed a circle and are kicking a Hacky Sack. An Asian kid makes eye contact, then we both look away. It’s like an unspoken code between us. When you’ve grown up one of three Asian American kids in your school of less than five hundred kids, you don’t do anything to draw attention to your Asianness—his or mine.

  “Not interested.”

  “I’d go out with him.”

  “He’s not noticing me, he’s only noticing I’m Chinese.” I grab my phone. “Which, to be fair, I noticed right back.” Sure enough, the guy heads off with his soccer pals as I open the dance scholarship website to register. “See, he’s gone.”

  Megan sighs. “Because you give every guy like him the when-they-ice-skate-in-hell vibe. Just because he’s Asian American—”

  “Based on sheer probability in the state of Ohio, I’m more likely to end up with a fifty-nine-year-old, two-time divorcé than another Asian American. That is my future.” I say it like I’m joking, but the truth is, boys don’t see me as dating material. Which is why I’ve only ever kissed one guy—and in the end, he didn’t pick me.

  “Okay, you’re being ridiculous. What about the redhead? He’s not fifty.”

  “Ha. Just give it up—” I break off as a blue convertible pulls up with a crunch of asphalt.

  Right on cue.

  “Dan!” Megan squeals, shooting to her feet.

  The big hockey player steps from his car and swoops her into a hungry kiss. They’ve been apart for over six months, since his last visit from his freshman year at Rice. The kiss only lasts three seconds, but it feels like an eternity. I scuff the ground with my foot, familiar ribbons of envy tightening round my heart.

  “Hey, Ever.” Dan’s strawberry-blond hair is longer than it was at his farewell party. But his chipped-tooth grin hasn’t changed. My leotard feels transparent. And as his hazel eyes meet mine, crinkling with that smile, that afternoon behind the shed returns with a rush.

  Those big hands on my hips. His tongue pressing my lips apart. He taught me everything I know about kissing that I didn’t learn from practicing on oranges with Megan in middle school.

  And then Mom and Dad ran him off.

  “Dan wants to go for a ride.” Megan wraps her arms around me; despite our grueling workout, her hair still smells like rosemary. I sense her guilt for happiness at my expense, her query, you’re okay, right? Megan knows about that kiss, knows it’s in the past. We’re still friends because you have the biggest heart this side of the Mississippi, she’s said. The truth is, most days, I try not to think about them. Together. She squeezes me tighter. “Let’s pick up tomorrow? We’re gonna land you that scholarship.”

  “Thanks.” I squeeze her back, not wanting her to worry. Then, because she’s standing there, I make myself dare to hug Dan, too. Like he’s just another friend—

  “Everett!”

  I jump. My foot tangles in Dan’s. My ear scrapes his bristled cheek as I leap back to face an audience I hadn’t realized was watching.

  Mom. She charges from our car, jade blouse snapping like a parachute. Behind her, Dad pulls his Cleveland Indians cap lower, like he’s trying to shrink a few inches. He limps forward, that old injury from a fall mopping a spill at work.

  I cross my arms over my leotard, a futile gesture. Dan shrinks back as Mom comes at me, a battering ram of fury. Fat droplets of rain pelt my head and shoulders as Mom grabs my lace neckline, jerking me off balance despite the fact that, at five feet one, she’s two whole inches shorter than I am.

  “You’re wearing this? In public?”

  I try to yank free. My leotard is long sleeved, for crying out loud. Megan tugs Dan out of firing range, but she needn’t bother: his eyes are like a wild horse’s, facing a blaze that’s already scorched him once.

  “Why are you here?” I choke out.

  Mom shoves a page into my face. Creamy stationery creased into thirds. The precious purple flame insignia wrinkling under her fingers.

  My Tisch School letter.

  3

  “What is this?” Mom demands. “What else have you been hiding?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Dad’s eyes widen behind his tortoise-shell glasses.

  “Is this why you only got into one medical school?” Mom asks.

  “No! Of course not!” God knows I’d thrown body and soul into my applications and interviews, knowing how important they were to my family. But even though Northwestern’s program ranks higher than even Brown’s, Mom and Dad blamed my Bs in bio when I didn’t get into a bunch of places I applied. “How did you get this?”

  “A woman called asking if you were accepting,” Mom says through clenched teeth. I imagine the explosion on the phone, then the frantic search of my room. Mom shakes my letter as if it’s crawling with red ants. “There’s no future in dancing! You want to live like Agatha when you’re old? You want us to live like that?”

  Agatha. Mom’s favorite object lesson from church, who comes in for free senior lunches with her lipstick as crooked as though a toddler crayoned it on, and warbles about her days with the Cleveland Ballet.

  Dad’s face is as stunned as if I’d taken out a gun and shot him in the chest. “Did you tell Northwestern?”

  “Of course not,” I say, and Dad’s shoulders relax. “I haven’t said anything to anyone!”

  But I can read the thought bubble that hovers over Megan’s head:

  Just tell them what you want. They can’t keep treating you like an infant.

  “You think Dad wanted to push an orderly cart all these years?” Mom demands. “He did it to put food on our table.” Because the state licensure board wouldn’t honor his medical degree from China without him going through a residency he couldn’t afford with a wife and baby on the way. Because this world crushes all our dreams. I know; God, I know. This time, she doesn’t add what she often does: But it’s worth it. You got to grow up in America. You’ll have opportunities we can’t even dream of.

  And grown up I have, knowing that it falls to me, as the elder child, to earn back the cost of two lives.

  But why did you let me dance when I was little? I want to cry. Why give me honey when you knew my future was diabetic? Why let it in to fuse with my muscles and seep in under every square inch of skin?

  “You’ve worked so hard,” Dad murmurs. He means for med school. But I can’t help rubbing the swollen blisters on my palms.

  Overhead, storm clouds have turned the sky to ashes.

  “Tisch—” I can barely get my
words out. “I applied on a whim. I didn’t even get in at first. It wasn’t serious—”

  “Then you don’t”—Mom crumples my letter into a ball—“need this.”

  She could have gone pro with that shot. My letter sails into the dumpster.

  “That’s mine!” I scream.

  I fly forward and grab the rusty edge. Blisters burst as I heave upward—but my shoes slip, it’s too high, too choked with moldering garbage to salvage my heart now pulsing on the other side of this metal wall—then Mom grabs the back of my leotard and pulls me off and clangs the lid shut with a whoosh of rotting air.

  “What is wrong with you?” she cries.

  My shoulders shake. I feel cold. So cold, despite the June humidity. Dan’s backed up against his car. Megan clings to our flags. I wish they were anywhere but here. Megan’s brown eyes plead: tell them tell them tell them . . .

  I fight to steady my voice. “I just need to dance next weekend in the parade.” No need to tell them about the scholarship audition, not until I win it. “I’ll study bio between practices. I’ll be ready for med school. I promise.”

  “Ever—” Megan protests, but I shake my head at her. We can’t afford Tisch. That scholarship is my only chance and until I win it, there’s no point telling Mom and Dad anything.

  Mom and Dad exchange a look I don’t like.

  “Not just biology,” Mom says stiffly. “Mandarin.”

  “Mandarin?” This must be what that Chinese printout was about, but seriously? Saturday morning Chinese school had been torture: a thirty-minute drive to affordable classes in Cleveland, copying characters by the hundreds into charts, reciting ancient poems without understanding a word. “I dropped out of Chinese school in second grade.” After my teacher complained I had the fluency of a two-year-old, and the shame got too much for even my parents to bear. No way do I have time for Mandarin this summer.

  But somewhere in the recesses of my mind, an alarm bell begins to clang.

  “I was trying to tell you.” Mom pulls another piece of paper, folded into quarters, from her pocket. Glances at my friends. Later, she’ll regret her outburst in front of them, but it’s too late now. “Your father and I feel it’s time you learn your culture. We got you into a program. In Taiwan.”

  “Taiwan?”

  My parents have always talked about taking us to visit Fujian, the province in southeast China where they were born, and met in college. They left after Dad finished med school. But we’ve never had the money to go. Family hasn’t been a draw either. Mom’s parents passed away before I was born, and Dad’s four years after.

  All I know about Taiwan is that it’s an island off the coast of Fujian, and my uncle Johnny, married to Mom’s sister in Vancouver, was born there. She might as well have announced we’re blasting off to the moon. We can’t afford a trip there, not with my tuition ahead, and Pearl’s on the horizon.

  “It’s a good opportunity.” Dad removes his cap, suddenly earnest. “You’ll learn fántǐ zì—traditional characters.”

  I barely know what he means. “I can’t take off for a week—”

  “Eight weeks,” Mom says. “It starts this weekend.”

  “This . . . this weekend?”

  She nods. “Sunday.”

  “I’m not going!” I rage. “I got into Northwestern! I did everything you asked. I haven’t done anything wrong!”

  “Wrong? This isn’t a punishment.” To my surprise, Mom’s near tears herself. “Aunty Lilian said the program’s very good. Lots of young people enjoy it. And your ticket’s so expensive. No refund!”

  “Wait,” I cry. “You bought a ticket already?”

  “I sold my black pearl necklace!”

  Her black pearl necklace.

  The present from her father, who died when she was fifteen, younger than I am now. How many times have I seen her bring the string out on his death anniversary, polish the pearls with a scrap of red silk? She’s told the story so often, how Gong-Gong brought it back for her from a failed business trip to Hong Kong.

  And in Mom’s necklace is the echo of their every other sacrifice—her slippers scuffing the hallway as she folds laundry, covering my chores while I studied into the night; the scar where she cut her finger chopping black chickens to nourish me during finals; Dad chauffeuring me to my clinic internship; all their worries over my med school applications.

  Megan clutches Dan’s hand.

  Tell them tell them tell them . . .

  A war rages in my heart. That guilt that comes with Mother’s Day, when I can’t feel as grateful as I should. Not even close.

  It’s one thing to dance around the little controls Mom exerts on my life. Quite another to shed a hard-fought-for future of financial security and respect for our family. My parents would slit their throats for my happiness, and in return, my future is their future.

  I should have known better than to let myself get swept away.

  My shoulders slump. I can’t meet Megan’s eyes.

  “I’ll need to find my passport,” I say, then head for the car, leaving my heart in the dumpster, gasping like a dying fish.

  4

  Dad knocks as I sit hard on the lid of his plaid suitcase, trying to coax the stubborn, tasseled zipper around its last corner so I can make my flight this afternoon. I know it’s him knocking, because he’s the only one who does.

  “Come in,” I grunt.

  He holds a soft black case. His graying hair is combed over his balding head. He’s fifty-five, and his narrow face is tired and lined like a map of the Rocky Mountains, unlike Megan’s lawyer dad who could pass for her older brother.

  “Need a hand?”

  “I got it.”

  He ducks coming in, as if my doorway isn’t high enough. I take my room for granted most days, but now that I’m leaving, my Degas posters, lavender satchel, secret peanut butter cup stash—the space feels like my only sanctuary.

  “This isn’t for you to take to Taiwan. But I wanted you to have it.”

  The zipper’s hopeless. I take the case from him and spill a stethoscope into my hand.

  “My med school adviser gave it to me when I graduated. I’ve been saving it for you. Do you—do you like it?”

  The chrome is still shiny. He’s never used it: the soft Y-shaped neck, the round chest piece that can hold a heartbeat. I weigh it like a baby in my hands, this symbol of a respected profession my family has only watched from the outside.

  It’s more my size than his, as if it’s been waiting for me.

  The floorboards creak under Dad’s weight.

  A few years ago, Pearl and I watched Mulan on Netflix: the girl in ancient China who steals her father’s armor to save him, returns home a hero, and tries to earn her father’s forgiveness by thrusting her honors at him. Only to be told that the greatest gift was having her for a daughter.

  Pearl and I bawled. And then we found out Dad had watched it on a flight from Singapore years ago.

  “Did you cry, too?” Pearl had the guts to ask, while I hovered in the background, waiting for his answer.

  Dad had scrunched up his face, goofy-like, as he did only for her. “I did.”

  “Really?” I blurted, startled into engaging. Did miracles still happen? Did he actually get it?

  “Which part, Dad?” Oh, Pearl, how do you dare?

  “When the Huns invaded China,” came his honest reply.

  Now we’re standing in reverse. He wants me to love it, this gift, and I just . . .

  He takes my arm, a rare contact. “Taiwan’s not a punishment,” he murmurs. “It was bad timing. I might be able to join you the last days if I can line up my business trip.” To a hospital he consults for on the sly. It’s a few extra dollars and they fly him out twice a year. Maybe that will be me one day: moonlighting. Sneaking out of the hospital in my white lab coat to dance on legs that have forgotten how to move.

  Mom bursts in, pressing Dad aside. “Ever, I found you a neck pillow.” She thrusts it at me,
then unzips my suitcase lid. “Are you ready?” She inspects the contents, then yanks out my periwinkle dance bag and dumps my leotard and pointe shoes onto my bed.

  “You won’t be needing all that in Taiwan,” she says, and bustles off.

  Dad opens his mouth. “Ever—”

  “I can’t pack with all these interruptions.”

  I drop the pillow, set his stethoscope on my banned leotard, and fall back onto the evil zipper. I’m an automaton. Everything I’m doing is like their hands moving through mine.

  I don’t look up, even after my door closes behind him.

  To: tisch.admissions@nyu.edu

  From: ever.a.wong@chagrinfallshigh.edu

  Dear Tisch Admissions,

  With regret, I decline your offer of admissions.

  Ever Wong

  Twenty-one hours of connecting flights later, I sling my carry-on onto my shoulder and stumble bleary-eyed after my seatmate, down a metal ramp into Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport. My head still roars with the noise of the jets. My mouth tastes like talc and I regret the foil-wrapped teriyaki chicken that’s threatening to make its way back up my system.

  The airport glitters. Shiny white floor tiles shimmer with the reflection of a stampede of passengers. Perfume and body odor choke my lungs as I’m swept at dizzying speed past stores featuring Swatch watches and Dior shades, glass cases holding boxes of pineapple cakes, a fast-food counter serving black-lacquered bento boxes. “Kuài diăn, kuài diăn!” Someone pushes past me from behind.

  I catch a glimpse of myself in a store mirror; dark-haired, small, and terrified-looking, surrounded by strangers. Trying not to panic, I yank my crumpled welcome packet from my backpack. My contact is a Chen Li-Han. My ride should be waiting outside baggage claim.

  Now I just need to get to him in one piece.

  Down an escalator, past larger-than-life billboards of Asian models I can’t help gawking at, through a hallway . . . until at last, I spill into a rectangular room roped into lines that snake toward a row of immigration booths. Chinese characters mix with English everywhere and Mandarin announcements blare in my ears. At home, we only speak English, except when Mom and Dad use Mandarin to keep secrets. I’ve picked up a few basics at the Chinese Church, where service is translated line by line: “Let us pray” and “Please sit.” And I know the dim sum cart (har gow, shu mai, chang fen)—and that, I thought, was all I’d need. I hope that’s still true. I hope, I hope.