The color leaves Mei-Hwa’s cheeks. Silence falls like a heavy curtain as all conversation ceases in the room. A smear of red crosses my vision. Yes, most staff in this rural part speak almost no English, compared to Taipei. But most Western tourists I’ve encountered have been respectful, even more so than some Chien Tan students. This man’s tone—I’ve heard it before: the woman at McDonald’s yelling at Mom, the store clerk who called Dad a stupid chink.
My first instinct is to pretend it didn’t happen, as I have all my life. To spare Mei-Hwa the embarrassment, because maybe if we don’t acknowledge the disrespect, it won’t exist.
But then I set my plate on the buffet and stride toward them.
“You owe her an apology.” My hands ball into fists. “She’s not your servant. No one here is.”
The man turns chili red. At last, someone speaks perfect English.
“We weren’t talking to you.”
“You were talking to the entire dining hall. And news flash—not speaking your language—in their own country—doesn’t make anyone less intelligent than you.”
Rick’s hand braces my back. His disapproval radiates at the man, who scowls up at two hundred pounds of running back.
After a moment, he spits, “Apologies,” in Mei-Hwa’s direction.
“No problem, sir.” Mei-Hwa really is that kind. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
His wife glares at me as she hurries him away. Mei-Hwa puts her hands to her cheeks and gives me a tremulous smile. She bursts into Mandarin, then interrupts herself. “Ah, I always forget you don’t understand—thank you.”
“Sit with us?”
“My parents called. I need to call them back, but I’ll join you afterward.” She plants a floral-scented kiss on my cheek, then leaves.
Back at the buffet line, Rick hands my plate to me, then takes it back when I almost drop it. My hands tremble. The dining room chatter is subdued.
Maybe I shouldn’t have made a fuss.
But by the time we reach our table, Spencer and Marc are behind us. Sophie is talking to Xavier at his table, then she carries her plate over to join us.
“A woman yelled at my dad to go back to China,” Rick says. “We were just walking down the sidewalk. I was six.”
“Happened to my mom, too,” I admit.
“My dad didn’t say a word back,” Rick says. “I hated him for that then. But now, I think he was tired of having to fight it.”
We’re breaking another taboo, talking about racism, but I’ve just broken a bigger one confronting that guy before the entire restaurant, instead of sticking to that Asian nonconfrontational thing. But these are rules meant to be broken. Something happens to a kid when they see their parent treated like that. Something happens to the parent.
“It’s a thousand little deaths,” I say. How weird to have come all the way to Taiwan to understand this. Rick takes my hand and squeezes.
“My family always had trouble crossing the US-Canadian border,” I say. “Once we got detained overnight, my mom, Pearl, and me, coming back from visiting my uncle.” Brusque interrogations while I eyed the guns strapped to holsters, Mom so terrified she dropped and broke her glasses, a night in a grubby motel room we couldn’t afford. “When I was old enough to drive, I took over for border crossings. They cut me more slack. You learn to put on a certain face and tone so they leave you alone, right?”
“Or play football so they’ll respect you,” Rick says quietly.
My fingers tighten in his. Dancing taught me how to charm, a defensive shield. Maybe it’s another similarity that drew us together, for better or for worse.
“It’s not so bad in LA,” Marc says. “In some places, Asians are the majority, even half Asians like me. Worst I got was name calling on the basketball court, but all kids are mean.”
“Some people have it even harder.” Spencer shreds his sesame biscuit. “One of my friends wears suits when he goes through airport security. He says otherwise, as a black guy, he’ll get frisked and it takes too long. First on my agenda when I get to Congress is to overhaul the Department of Homeland Security.”
“I’d contribute to your campaign,” Marc says. “But I’m going to be a starving journalist. How about I cover you? ‘A vote for Hsu is a vote for YOU.’”
“Rick will fund your campaign,” Sophie says.
“Sophie will run your campaign,” I offer.
“I could.” She tosses her hair. “And once you hit the Oval Office, Ever will be your surgeon general.”
“My dad would bust an artery from sheer joy.” As for me, I imagine advising the President of the United States as his chief medical officer. No blood involved, just dispensing pearls of wisdom. I would be lying to say the prospect isn’t exciting on some level.
But for the first time, I realize it’s exciting as someone else’s story. Not mine.
“If she wants to do it, she could.” Rick kisses my ear, surprising everyone else around the table. How is it that he doesn’t know my favorite color yet but understands this part of me so well, better than even I do?
I smile at him. “My first order of business will be to add warning labels to snake-blood sake. It’s definitely hazardous to your health!”
Everyone laughs. We’re only dreaming, of course. All our parents’ lives have been full of struggle.
And yet we want to believe.
A familiar crash of wind shakes the building, setting the white paper lamps swaying overhead. Raindrops accelerate their drumbeats against the windows. Then the lights flicker out, plunging the room into darkness.
A chorus of dismayed cries rises.
“Blackout,” Sophie says.
A lighter flares in Rick’s hand, illuminating his chin. Matching glows appear at other tables.
The hotel manager addresses us in Mandarin, and Rick translates for me. “There’s another typhoon over Taitung, on the southeast coast. Six villages flooded.”
“Six villages.” I recall the doll floating in the muddy waters. “Where will the families go?”
“Who knows?” Spencer says. “Our tour guide said the shoreline changes every season because of typhoons. They’re constantly getting hit.”
“How can they live like that?”
“We’re so privileged,” Rick says, and even on the heels of our talk of racism, he’s right.
Our mood is somber as we leave the restaurant. The hallway is lit by pale yellow emergency lights. I bump into Mei-Hwa, pulling her rolling bag. Its cloth is so worn she’s bound it with rope to hold it together, something Mom would have done to save money rather than replace it.
“You’re not leaving?” I ask, dismayed.
She didn’t bat an eye when the tourist yelled at her, but now her eyes fill. “My home in Taitung was hit by the typhoon. My whole village is destroyed. I’m going back to help my parents.”
“Oh, no! Your sisters. Your parents—are they safe?”
“Yes, but we’ve lost everything—our clothes, photos, furniture. Everything’s gone.”
Like a stage emptied of its dancers, all her joy’s been swept away. A ragged sob issues from her throat. I wrap my arms around her, inhaling her floral scent as she clings to me.
“I’m on a scholarship at my university,” she says. “How can I afford to stay? How will they survive? What will they do?”
I imagine her parents, already eking out their survival day-by-day, minorities in their own country, sacrificing to give their daughter a leg up. Except for the accident of my birth in the United States, I could have been Mei-Hwa.
The wind blows open the door, gusts a blast of rain over us. I feel helpless as I release her.
“We’re doing a dance to ‘Orchid Grass,’” I say. “Thanks for sharing it with us.”
A genuine smile flits over her face, before it disappears into shadows again.
“Thank you, Ever.”
“Please let us know if there’s anything we can do.”
She nods and wi
pes tears from her face, then drags her suitcase out into the unrelenting rain.
32
Gurgling water echoes in the darkness. Rick lights a candle. It illuminates a flagstone floor enclosed by a solid fence of bamboo poles, a pagoda roof that partially shelters the square space of this bathhouse, nearly a quarter mile from the main resort.
Rick’s already pledged a hundred dollars of his own savings to my collection for Mei-Hwa. It’s a start. But she and her family, our talk over dinner all weigh on my mind as I grip the knotted sash of my yukata robe. I dip my toe into each of two pools built of flat stones. The smaller pool is warm, the larger hotter than any Jacuzzi. They smell of minerals. A spring pours from their corners, continuously refreshing them.
Rick slides the Japanese doors closed. “You first. Promise I won’t look.”
I hear his smile through the candlelit darkness. Some of my worries give way to the thrill of being here with him. Maybe part of fighting the unhappiness in this world is to seize happiness when we can.
He turns his back to study a line of three showerheads facing as many stone stools while I disrobe and slip into sinfully silky waters. They scald with a delicious heat. My bare feet slip over smooth stones as I sink to my shoulders and find an underwater ledge to sit on. The bamboo walls and the closed doors shut out the world.
“Mmm,” I groan. “Let’s stay here forever.”
Rick slips in beside me. His arm glides against mine. I try not to think of that bare chest, the hard muscles of his abdomen. Our hidden nakedness, with nothing but water between us.
“This is the first time we’ve been alone since you came back from Hong Kong.”
“When we were in my room for three minutes? We should have stayed there. Why did I have to show you the Lin mansion?”
“Because it was the best in Taipei,” I mock him.
“True.” Rick sinks deeper, to his chin. His voice takes on a sly tone. “You know, some onsen label themselves nonsexual. Just to be clear. Although the gender separation’s been a thing since the Meiji Restoration opened Japan to the West.”
“How do you know so much, Boy Wonder?”
“Do I? I guess I read. Everything. And remember all sorts of useless things.”
“Not useless.” I flick water in his direction. “So in theory, Professor Woo, if two people were to engage in such forbidden activity in this vicinity, they would fly in the face of years of tradition?”
“A hundred thirty. And regulations. It would be serious breaking of the rules.”
“Too bad.”
Moonlight catches his impish smile and he turns to face me and flips a lock of my hair behind my shoulder. Wraps a strand around his fingers. “Does it make me shallow that I’m obsessed with your hair?”
“I didn’t know you were obsessed with it.”
“It’s not just black. It’s blue and brown and red. In the moonlight, parts are silver.”
“How would you feel about me if I were bald?”
He kisses my forehead. “I guess you have other qualities. Meaningful ones. Like your shoulder.” His hand glides along the bare skin there. “Your neck.”
I push him gently back. “What if I were in an accident and got disfigured? Lost my mind? Not trying to be morbid. Just realistic. Nothing’s certain in life.”
His hand grasps my waist, drawing my body toward him until my thigh bumps his knee. “Remember how I said the timing makes no sense? But you’re here. Like you’d finally shown up and I didn’t realize I was looking for you.” His voice has turned serious. “Maybe some people are meant to be a part of your life. And we don’t have any control over when they drop in. Or over anything else that’s going to happen that might take them away again. If I couldn’t talk to you anymore”—his lips brush the tip of my nose and hover—“that part of me that needs to talk to you would die.”
I kiss him.
His arms close around me, his strong hands grasping my back. My lips part, drinking down his hot mouth, his tongue that tastes of mint and plums. I slide my hand between us, along the planes of his chest, his ribs, exploring his body, those muscled abs. His firm fingers glide down my wet skin to my waist, then come up to thread into my hair and cup the back of my head.
I have no idea how much time passes, or when the stars begin to cluster so thickly overhead that the sky drips with their lights.
We separate at last, dizzy, breathing heavily.
“Why didn’t we do that sooner?” I murmur.
“There’s more where that came from.” His voice is languid, lazy.
“You’re so smug.”
“Mm-hm.”
We slip lower into the water, resting our heads on the ledge, listening to the soft song of crickets in the night. I want to stay in this warm moment with him forever.
But a thought from dinner stabs into my head. A connection clicks and I sit up with a soft splash.
“What did you call this place?”
“Hot springs?” He turns to look at me, his head still resting on the ledge.
“You used a different word. The Japanese word.”
“Onsen.”
“This is what that tourist was looking for. He said it wrong. ‘The outdoor onsee.’” And he took it out on Mei-Hwa, while her parents were running for their lives from a flood. My throat swells shut. I can’t explain why it makes me so sad to realize the tourist had been in the wrong on two fronts.
“What’s wrong?” Rick sits up, alarmed. “Did I hurt you?”
“No. Her parents—” To my horror, a sob escapes my throat. “My parents—”
“Come here, you.” He pulls me to his chest and I sob against him.
“I’m so sorry,” I choke out between hiccups. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. This is our one night together and here I am raising the salinity of the hot springs.”
His laugh echoes off the waters. “I have never met anyone like you, Ever. Don’t worry. We’re still having our night.” He kisses the top of my head, my cheek. “What are you thinking about?”
I rest my head on his shoulder. I hadn’t wanted to burden him, when he’s already borne so much for Jenna. But this is Rick: solid, dependable. Maybe it’s okay to lean on him. I try to pull together my thoughts, what it is that’s been troubling me, not just tonight, but for so many nights.
“My dad’s fifty-five. Older than most of my friend’s parents. He didn’t have shoes until he was nine. His mom cooked noodles with scraps of meat, because they couldn’t afford more. When he first came to America, he admired the roads so much, because all he knew were dirt ones. When I was little and spit out meat, he ate it because he couldn’t bear to let protein go to waste. And now Asia has built itself up, and meanwhile in the States, my parents have had immigration officers on their backs, and dried-out dragon fruit, and my mom sold her necklace to send me here to learn their culture, and every time I let them down, it’s like I spit in their face like that tourist.
“I hate when they remind me, but they have suffered. Like Mei-Hwa’s family. And no one cares. And tonight, when Sophie said I could be surgeon general—do you know what that would mean to my dad? He’s always dreaming about big stuff like that when he’s pushing his orderly cart—that’s how he’s kept himself going. That’s how he injured himself; he walked right onto a spill at the Cleveland Clinic and never even saw it.
“But I don’t have it in me to get there. And then I thought, what if I didn’t become a doctor? What if I became a dancer instead? Even wanting it feels like I’m betraying them.”
Rick combs through my wet hair, gentle, comforting strokes. “Do you think they want you to be unhappy?”
No matter how angry I’ve been, I have never doubted they want the best for me. The molecular biology textbook was for my future. My happiness.
“No,” I admit. I lift my eyes toward a horizon I can’t see. “But I can’t talk to them. If they were American, maybe I could. Like Megan and her parents. If I were Chinese, maybe I’d wan
t more of what they want, like my cousins in China. No confusing American messages about individualism and self-actualizing. But they’re seven thousand miles away, and even if we were standing in the same room speaking the same words in the same language, those seven thousand miles are always there. This Great Divide. Between us.”
“It was the opposite with my family.” His thumb skims my thigh, then disappears. “They were right about Jenna. And I couldn’t hear them. Didn’t want to. If I had, maybe I’d have gotten help for her sooner.” He rests his nose in my hair behind my ear, inhaling me. “Maybe I wouldn’t feel so guilty now.”
“Guilty for what?”
“For being happy. Bigger. Like the biggest nesting doll, instead of the smallest version of myself. Not because of her, but who we were together.” His voice catches. “I didn’t know it was supposed to be like this. Between two people.”
Because he’s the eldest son of an eldest son of an eldest son, carrying the weight of his name. Not after his own happiness, but the happiness of others.
“Ever.” His fingertips brush my bare stomach. “I know you think I’m not ready—”
“Sh.” I catch his hand.
Then I draw it to my chest.
His touch is hesitant. Tentative. I place my hand over his, holding him to me.
“Ever, are you sure?”
We’re moving too fast, whispers a small voice in my head. But I don’t want to stop.
“I want you to touch me.”
He palms the whole of it, setting me trembling. My fingers find him under the water, and explore, both of us learning each other’s muscles and curves and contours. His mouth takes mine again and we move together in a haze of hunger and heat. At some point, I become aware he’s pushed me into a corner. The stone edges press into the backs of my shoulders as he kisses my mouth, my chin, the back of my jaw, my neck, his hands still exploring under the water.
“I’m hot,” I whisper.
He lifts me by my waist to sit on the edge. He stands between my knees, kissing me as I wrap my legs around his waist, cling to the short silk of his hair.
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