“It’s an analogy.” Xavier’s elbow brushes mine. I’ve come to a stop beneath it. “It’s us.”
I tilt my head, reading without words. Us cutting our own path through the rock, until we merge with the larger river of life. The flow of water breaks my heart, but it also mends it again—everything art is supposed to do.
“It’s brilliant.” My throat is tight with gladness. “I love it.”
He hands me a smaller roll of paper tied with a brown ribbon. “You told me not to sketch you, but I thought—you wouldn’t mind these.”
“Oh?” I unroll four sketches: Rick and me seated together on an orange rock in the Taroko Gorge. Rick and me with the glow of the night market behind us. Rick and me stick fighting on the edge of Kenting National Forest, my head flung back with laughter.
And one more. Sophie and me sitting by Sun Moon Lake, Sophie’s head bent over her clipboard. My arms around my legs. We’d been talking about this moment with Xavier.
“You were right. About a lot of things.” He touches the tiny bo staff in my painted hand. “That’s what happiness looks like.”
Sophie joins us. “I’m auctioning off your mural last of all.”
“Anonymously,” Xavier says. “Say it’s some student’s.”
“Sure,” Sophie agrees, then gasps as she catches sight of our painting. “It’s beautiful.”
“The colors.” My throat aches with the release of so much that’s been buried deep away. “I’ve never seen such amazing colors.”
Backstage, in the mirror-lined dressing room, I change into my ruby dress. Cap sleeves show off my arms and a black sash tied at the side accents my waist. The skirt modestly skims my knees but the silk clings to my body. As I face myself in a mirror, I instinctively hunch my shoulders, hiding my curves. Then I force myself to straighten.
Still, my stomach is taut with nerves, imagining all the eyes of Chien Tan on me, as I tuck my clothes into my bag. A glamour shot flutters down—the one Xavier returned. I feel the usual jolt, but for the first time, I allow myself to study it.
And a crazy thing happens: It’s so much better than I’d feared. The light highlights my cheekbones at a flattering angle, the ballerina curve of my neck, my good posture. I would still rather throw myself under a rickshaw than have had these passed around—but I’m no longer mortified by the sight of my own body.
Sophie comes in and opens her makeup bag before one of the mirrors.
“It’s nuts outside,” she says.
I peer out the window. A crowd jostles against the five-paneled gateway of Liberty Square, waiting for entry. It’s so large that it spills onto the street. A barrier of policemen in blue uniforms is herding them out of traffic onto the opposite sidewalk. Cars and motorcycles honk as they cut through like lawn mowers over a yard.
“It looks like half of Taipei has come out,” I say.
“They have,” Sophie gloats. “Debra said some government VIPs are coming. That’s why they’ve beefed up security.”
I know it’s unlikely I’ll spot him, but I still search for Rick’s bulky shoulders among the crowd, his bo staff aloft.
Instead, from among the crowd across the street, a familiar Cleveland Indians cap jumps out at me.
Even among a hundred Chinese, I recognize his slouchy posture. The way he lowers his cap and hunches down. The extra distance from his eyes that he holds his folded paper map. Like a character from one performance walking onto the stage of the wrong story.
Dad.
I pull out my phone—sure enough, he’s texted me:
Dad: I’m here at Chien Tan. Your classmate said you were at a picnic at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial.
Dad: I’m here at Liberty Square but it’s blocked. There’s a fundraiser at the theater.
Dad: Are you still at the Memorial? I’ll try to get through.
He sent his last text twenty minutes ago. What was my classmate thinking, covering for me by sending him to the wrong tourist attraction in the right complex? I text him:
Dad, I’m not there. Must be a mix-up. Meet you on campus tomorrow, k?
My text spins, spins, spins, then fails to send. No signal. Timing couldn’t be worse. “Sophie, my dad’s outside.” I grab a black smock off a hanger and drape it around my dress. “He’s looking for me. I need to run down for a few minutes.”
“You can’t.” Sophie grips my arm. “He’ll stop you. You said so yourself. This is your grand finale. Ever Wong’s last dance!”
I hug her. “He won’t stop looking until he finds me and I can’t let him look all night. I’ll tell him to meet me on campus tomorrow.”
“What if you get stuck at security?”
“I’m a performer. They can’t keep me out.”
“But—”
“Here.” I reach for her clipboard and unclip one of the backstage passes she’s auctioning off tonight. “I’ll get back in with this.”
There’s an unexpected spring to my step as I run down the theater steps into the growing dusk. Dad’s here. Doofy Dad who took me ice skating when Pearl was born so I wouldn’t feel left out while Mom focused on nursing her. Dad who taught me to drive in the school parking lot at peril to his own life and limb, who left the shores of Asia when he was a few years older than I am now to live his life away from family and friends.
I wasn’t entirely truthful when I told Sophie I wanted to spare him wandering all night. I understand why Dad cried in Mulan when the Huns invaded China.
He missed home.
And I’ve missed him.
The five gates leading into Liberty Square are barred by blockades. Guests file through a narrow entrance, opening their bags and backpacks for inspection by security guards in blue. Squeezing by, I flash my backstage pass at a moon-faced guard. “I’m coming back in. Wǒ hěn kuài jiù hùi huílái le. Don’t forget me!”
He waves me through and I sink into the crowd that towers over me like a field of corn. I can’t see beyond the faces coming at me. Under my feet, the ground vibrates with the rumbling of cars zipping by ahead. A cavalcade of mopeds speeds past, spewing fumes.
As I near the street, a white truck barrels through.
And when it passes, the Cleveland Indians cap is opposite me, across the street.
He’s hemmed in by a tall man on his left and a family on his right, and squashed behind a large woman in a floral skirt who keeps bumping into him as the police press the crowd back from the street. The blue-striped shirt he wore to my graduation is untucked over his jeans. He squints at his map, then cranes his neck in several directions, maybe trying to find alternative routes into Liberty Square. He looks tired. In Ohio, dawn is breaking, and like me, he’s never adjusted well to jet lag; he must have sat awake all night on his flight.
“Dad!”
A black car zooms by, leaving a vacuum that tugs at my skirt. Dad turns in several directions, seeking my voice.
“Dad, over here!” I wave.
His weary eyes meet mine, then light up like fireworks.
“Ever!” Waving, he tries to maneuver around the woman between him and street. “Ever!”
She shoves back. “Wait your turn!” she snaps in Mandarin.
I push eagerly toward him. He’s still waving, grinning ear to ear. He sidles around the woman and rushes toward me, all of his attention focused on reaching me in that single-minded way of his.
Then everything happens at once.
Dad’s face opens with surprise. He pitches forward, arms flailing for balance.
Into the street. Into the path of an oncoming car.
“Dad, look out!”
A horn blares without end. In the middle of the road, Dad freezes like a cornered animal. He’s never been quick on his feet.
In the space between heartbeats, the collision plays out in my mind and heart. That body that’s pushed an orderly cart for twenty years. The unforgiving impact of steel, the weight of too-many kilometers per hour.
It’s a choice to leave the curb. A choi
ce to risk not just tonight’s performance, but all future ones. But it is a choice, not a forcing of my hand through a sacrifice, or threat of punishment, or even the weight of guilt and obligation.
And I make it with all my soul.
“Dad, move!”
“Ever, no!” he shouts. “Stop!”
Then I’m sailing over the street at him. To my left, the glint of chrome, the glare of headlights barrels toward me. My hand closes on his arm as another blare of horns takes out my eardrum.
35
The world is vibrations. Thunder. Particles.
Dad and I barrel into the woman in the printed skirt. She screams and my shoe flies off and my arm wrenches in its socket, shooting fire into my body. We’re a tangle of hair and limbs hitting the sidewalk, rolling, bruising, as the horn falls in pitch behind us, then fades.
“Ever! Are you hurt?”
My shoulder and upper arm burn. I can’t move it. The pain comes in waves that threaten to drown me but slowly I realize I’m lying on top of Dad. He gropes at the pavement. His glasses have fallen off and I snatch their wire frames off the ground. One thick lens is cracked, but I shove them into his hands and he fits them to his face.
“Ever.” His face is more mole-speckled than I remember, his graying hair wild tufts on his head. “Ever, are you okay?”
Something is wrong with my body. But I scramble to my knees and wrap my good arm around him, which I cannot remember doing since I was a child. He smells like soap, like Tide, like newspaper.
Like home.
“You could have died,” I sob.
All around us, people babble, prod, kneel, and fuss. But all my focus is on Dad’s hand, hesitantly stroking the back of my head, another something I can’t remember happening since my early years.
“It’s just my ankle. Better than my head, thanks to you,” he adds when I pull back.
A flare of pain washes my vision white.
“Ever!” Dad grips my arm as I cry out. “What’s wrong?”
“Shoulder—” I grate. “My shoulder—”
“You’ve dislocated it.” He grips my shoulder blade, his other hand my arm above the elbow. The worry fades from his face, replaced by a calm focus I’ve seen at parks and events, when he’s kneeling before a medical emergency, and knows what to do. “Hold still, this will hurt.”
With a wrench and pop, he jams my arm back into its socket.
The extreme relief collapses me against him.
“You’ll be fine.” He strokes my back with that tentative hand. “In a few weeks—”
“You lost this.” A man hands me my shoe. “Paramedics are coming.”
Sure enough, a white ambulance, red-cross logo and red lights flashing, is moving up the street toward us.
Dad grips my hand. His next words tumble out, as if he’d dammed them in his entire flight, his entire search for me, and he needs to get them out before the paramedics are upon us. “On the plane, I was remembering a time we brought you to the park. You were four. A man was playing a violin and you danced barefoot on the grass. Everyone came and watched you. A woman told us to enroll you in dance classes. That was when we put you in Zeigler’s.”
All I wanted to do this summer was dance.
Dad heard me.
That four-year-old day, I don’t remember. I didn’t even know that was the reason I’d ended up in the studio that became my second home. But the story is a gift. Dancing has always been a part of me—and Dad’s seen that.
“I’m sorry I let you down.” This reunion is nothing like Mulan and her father. I’m not bringing him the emperor’s crest. From his point of view, he sent his elder daughter over the seas and she went berserk. He’s not entirely wrong either. “I’m sorry about the photos.”
“You talk to your friends and guidance counselor more than us,” he says. “Sometimes, when you come home, you speak English so fast we can’t understand. Sometimes we are scared we haven’t raised you right. All we wanted was for you to have a better life. What if we came to America for that, and we lost you instead?”
“But don’t you see?” I shift against him, pressing my shoulder into his chest. “I already have a better life. Because of you and Mom.”
Dad’s face spasms. I’m afraid he’s going to cry.
“Do you feel that way?”
And then the paramedics are raining down a hundred questions on us.
“My ankle’s broken,” Dad tells them calmly.
“Dad, oh, no.” Typical Dad, to keep that to himself. “But your work—”
“Let me worry about that.”
They check his vitals. My ankle is tender, but unsprained. A paramedic hands me a white pill—prescription-strength ibuprofen—and a bottle of water. As another paramedic inspects his ankle, Dad jokes their ambulance is better equipped than some hospitals in the States. His voice is richer, more confident, than I remember.
And another amazing thing happens. They’re speaking Mandarin—and I understood the gist of it.
The crowds have begun to thin, funneled into Liberty Square and the theater. A man in a white coat presses through, kneels beside Dad, and shakes his hand. His hair is tufty and grayish like Dad’s.
“Andy, I came as soon as I got your text.”
“This is Dr. Jason Lee,” Dad introduces me. “We were in medical school together. He’s the one who’s been flying me out to consult for his hospital here these past few years.”
“He’s a treasure, your father.” Dr. Lee squeezes my hand. “Thanks to him, we provide the best patient care in Taipei.”
Dr. Lee takes charge, and soon Dad is seated on a stretcher, ankle temporarily wrapped. Despite his protests, they declare he’s dehydrated from his long trip and put an IV into his arm. I gently rotate my arm. The pain has lessened but I know better than to ask Dad about the bo staff dance. It should be fine.
“Wong Yīshēng?” The head paramedic hands Dad an electronic tablet. “The city will cover your bill. Please sign here?”
Wong Yīshēng. Dr. Wong. He’s using his proper title.
All these years.
Then Sophie’s voice reaches my ears. “I need to speak to her. This is an emergency!”
Sophie appears from behind a paramedic, her face ready for prime time with faux eyelashes, deep blue eyeshadow, berry-red lips. A black smock covers her checkered dress. Her hair spills from its updo.
“Dr. Wong! Hi! I’m Ever’s Chien Tan roommate. I heard you were safe—so glad! Um, since you’re okay, can Ever come with me for an emergency school project?”
The trump card. Nice, Sophie. She shoots me a fearful look, while Dad removes his glasses and rubs them on his shirt.
“You should rest your arm, Ever.”
“I just need a few hours, Dad.” I slip another ibuprofen from the paramedic’s kit.
Dad’s eyes tell me he wants to protest. But then he nods. “Jason wants me to come to the hospital for X-rays and casting. I’ll go to my hotel afterward. What’s the project?”
“Just end-of-summer stuff.” I automatically downplay. I give him another hug, then start after Sophie, who waves me on impatiently.
Hurry, hurry! twitch her brows.
But something tugs at me, holding me to this patch of sidewalk.
I turn back. Dad’s watching me from the stretcher, that mole-speckled, spectacled face I can never penetrate. That gap between us that will likely always be there.
But I know now that the Great Divide is the enemy. Dad might never understand why I cried in Mulan, but maybe it isn’t fair to demand that of him.
And if that Great Divide is ever to be bridged, or at least made smaller, I can only change myself. Not to give up my Americanness.
But to let them in.
I take a step back toward him, fingers wrinkling my black smock. He’s never seen me dance outside my tame ballet recitals. For so many reasons, I’ve never been able to share this part of myself with him.
“I’m actually helping to run the fu
ndraiser in there.” I point to the orange swallowtail roof of the National Theater. “It’s a talent show. I choreographed a dance. If you can pull your doctor strings and get them to discharge you, I’d love for you to come.”
Dad blinks behind his lenses. “Oh.” He tugs his IV from his wrist.
“Dr. Wong, please, be careful!” The head paramedic springs forward.
“If you could find me a wheelchair for now.” Dad’s already climbed to his feet, bracing himself on the ambulance door. I’d forgotten how stubborn he can be, too. “I’m going with my daughter.”
36
The red velvet drapes muffle the roar of voices beyond. Completely unprofessional, I make an eye-sized slit and peer out. Chien Tan kids and counselors cram the front half of the theater, and the rest of the rows to the topmost balcony overflow with strangers.
“We’re sold out!” I whisper.
“And the better our show, the more people will bid at the auction. They’ll be in the right mood.” Sophie hugs me. “He’ll be here.”
Program in hand, she slips out between the curtains.
The show runs an hour, plus intermission, and our number is the finale. Rick still has time. I refuse to worry. My ankle twinges—I seem to have injured it a bit after all, and I rub it, and take the second pill, hoping that will be enough to get me through. I smooth my braid to the bit of red lace at its end, then adjust the neckline of my dress. Every tuck and curve molds to my contours. There’s no hiding my body in this dress, and instead of wishing for Megan’s legs or Sophie’s curves, I feel beautiful in my own right. Tonight, I’m showing what I can do, not just to Taipei and Chien Tan, not just to Aunty Claire and Uncle Ted—
But to Dad.
“Dàjiā hǎo!” The mic amplifies Sophie’s welcome through the theater. “Hel-lo, Taipei!”
An answering roar shakes the stage beneath my feet.
I watch from the wings with Debra and Laura as Sophie announces each act: Chinese yo-yos, martial arts. Mike’s comedy routine draws chuckles from the audience. A guy from Bus G flies through Rachmaninoff’s Études-Tableaux, his body and hands digging into the piano keys with so much fire and passion that I understand what Rick understood when he switched from music to football.
Loveboat, Taipei Page 28