Rent a Boyfriend

by Gloria Chao

  As my mother bounded out of the kitchen, she bragged, “I can’t wait to show all those other women my new Bible! It’ll prove how much my daughter loves me, more than their daughters love them!”

  I suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore.

  December 29, 8:23 p.m. PST

 

  The ban on my parents is lifted! I did it!

 

  I knew you would!

  I’m ready for my Operative Certificate now

  You’ve always been ready

  Is there a Chicago branch?

  Yep

  They have to come here for a lot of their training since it’s smaller and there’s less demand, but it exists

  Long pause. Both type and delete multiple unsent texts.

  So is there actually an Operative Certificate?

  No but I can have one for you the next time I see you

  Well we better make that soon then, huh?

  Yeah we better

  Okay

  Ok

  I don’t want to take time away from your parents, especially your dad, but…

  Is there actually a way I can see you before you leave?

  (I couldn’t tell if that was banter earlier or real…)

  Another long pause.

  How about New Year’s Eve after my parents go to sleep? Around 9?

  I’m going to have to figure some stuff out

  As you know

  But yeah

  Let’s do it

  It’s a date

  Wear something you can dance in

  Oh man

  Do you have dance training?

  This could be embarrassing for me…

  A minute later:

  Okay you definitely have dance training. I remember you saying you were open to dance classes on your application

  Maybe we should do something else

  I promise it’ll be fun

  No judgment

  One laugh out of you and you have to do one of my game theory problem sets

  Actually you probably have training in that too

  I promise you’re worrying about nothing

  I’ll pick you up down the street at that park at 9:10, silly

  Okay but be prepared because I have access to YouTube, which was teaching randos to do things before Rent for Your ’Rents existed

  I’m shaking

  Me too

  My hips and shoulders

  In preparation

  How’d you guess my favorite moves?

  Chloe CHAPTER 53

  THE TALK

  December 30–31

  The next two days with my parents were… lighter. Not as light as dòuhuā—my mother’s favorite melt-on-your-tongue, silky, sweet tofu dessert—but maybe more like almond Jell-O? Secret-filled awkwardness still sliced through our interactions, but now there were a few actual laughs instead of forced ones. We also broke out the mahjong set—and at my mother’s suggestion, no less.

  New Year’s Eve afternoon, my father was napping upstairs—which tugged at my heartstrings, but I made myself be “normal” about it—and I was on the couch sipping bitter tea, definitely not trying to get a whiff of Drew from the cushions or anything.

  My mother sat down next to me, a steaming mug of not-bitter tea in her hands.

  “Do you get to have the mother tea because you’re the mother?” I joked. She looked at me blankly, so I explained, “The mother tea, the one that eventually becomes the bitter one you leave on the counter to make mine with.”

  She shook her head. “Of course I make you your own. No need to share germs.”

  “I was making a joke, calling it the mother tea because it births the teas I drink. You know, like how sourdough is made from a mother dough that has spores growing in it.”

  She made a disgusted face. “Yuck, who would want to eat spores?”

  “What do you think stinky tofu is?”

  She laughed, loud and hearty, and the sound cracked a smile across my face. “Okay, you got me, Jing-Jing. I was being hip—hippo—”

  “Hypocritical,” I supplied.

  “Yes, that, by judging what’s not familiar to me, just like what the Americans always do with our best things.”

  My smile extended to my eyes.

  “You know,” she said, “sometimes I forget how lucky I am.”

  I held my breath, but it wasn’t about me.

  “Bǎbá and I have been lucky to find this community, to live in America and hold on to our culture. It’s a luxury. Maybe… maybe I haven’t always thought about what it must be like for you, being in that environment but also growing up in America. It can’t be easy.”

  My mouth filled with saliva from… nervousness? Anticipation? Whatever it was, I swallowed and kept waiting for more.

  But then she said, “Jing-Jing, my parents never talked to me about the sex, so I didn’t talk to you about it, but maybe we should.”

  The alarms in my head went off like there was a fire and tornado and flood around the corner.

  “The sex is when a man puts his penis—”

  “Oh my God!” I yelled. “I know that! Can we not?”

  My mother grabbed my forearm before I could cover my ears. “Jing-Jing, listen to me. I’ve seen a few of those—what are they called? Sitcoms. They say this is important. That I need to talk to you about these things, even if it makes me uncomfortable.”

  Every wish I’d sent up to the heavens for more sitcom-like parents came back and bit me in the ass at the same time. I take it back!

  “There’s a reason Christians like us believe it’s an act for marriage,” my mother continued. “It’s very emotional, and it should be saved for your husband.”

  “I know all this.” Whatever to make it stop, even if I didn’t agree with her. My head was in my hands.

  “Well, maybe you don’t know that it doesn’t feel good for women. I’m telling you from experience: don’t give in to the temptation because it’s not worth it. Then you’ll be thrown-out water, and all for what? A bad time.”

  I considered telling her it was supposed to feel good for women too, but the idea of talking to my mother about her orgasms made me want to throw up.

  “You’re not doing the sex with Andrew, are you?” she asked.

  “No.” Not yet. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  I stood, ready to escape.

  She grabbed my hand. “I just… I want to protect you, okay? If he’s a good person, he won’t mind waiting. Relationships don’t have to be about the sex.”

  I looked back at her and said, this time sincerely, “I know, okay? You don’t have to worry.”

  She let go. I was about to leave when she sighed and said, “I had the sex before marriage and it almost ruined me.”

  I froze. Completely, even my breathing.

  Her words from earlier repeated in my head: I’m telling you from experience: don’t give in to the temptation because it’s not worth it.

  Oh. Oh. I thought she had meant that she knew from experience it didn’t feel good, but she had been trying to tell me something else.

  When I sat down next to her again, she had tears in her eyes. Her gaze locked on mine, pleading for me to listen.

  “Nobody wanted me after that. I didn’t tell anyone, but he did, bragging, and it got around the community I grew up in.” Her next words were so quiet I struggled to make them out even after leaning all the way in. “The only one who wanted to marry me didn’t know—and still doesn’t know—what happened.”

  “Oh, Mǎmá.” I put my hand on hers.

  I wanted to tell her that the people at fault here were everybody except her, that she hadn’t done anything wrong and had nothing to be ashamed about—just upset and angry—but before I could say anything, she pulled away.

  “This is why I talked up your innocence and purity to our whole community. That was a gift to you, one I painstakingly created over many, many years. How could you throw it away just like that, Jing-Jing
? You should’ve been smarter! Didn’t I raise you to protect your image, our family name?”

  “I’m sorry.” I hated myself. Whenever I had these kinds of discussions with my parents—about Hongbo, about my decisions, about our goddamn family name—I floated up out of my body and judged the Jing-Jing who swallowed her true thoughts and apologized like a pathetic loser. Except you do it to protect their feelings, to make everything easier on them, which could be considered noble, I heard Drew say in my head, but to me it felt cowardly. I hated what I became with them—so small everyone walked all over me. Soon I’d be so squished into the sidewalk I’d disappear.

  “I know Hongbo messes around,” she continued, “and it does bother me that he goes to strip clubs so often, and so openly. But I thought maybe that was good, and you wouldn’t feel like you had to do… woman duties with him. That you could just use his money and enjoy your life.”

  What could I say to that? Where to even start? The sexist, violent, completely fucked-up idea of “woman duties”? Or the other ten messed-up things she’d just said?

  She cleared her throat. “Well, that ship is bye-bye, so”—she waved her hands at metaphorical Hongbo sailing off—“I’m happy to hear Andrew isn’t pressuring you.”

  And for a moment I felt the window opening, and I practiced a few ways to tell her.

  No, he doesn’t—he’s a good guy. He may not be exactly who he said he was, but he’s not all that different.

  Yes, he’s great, and just because he’s an artist doesn’t change that part of him.

  Except, in order to tell her about him, I had to first reveal how I had lied and schemed to get Hongbo out of my life. Which would make her explode. And then I’d have to answer her barrage of questions about the real Drew—artist, operative, estranged-from-his-family Drew—which would make her exploded pieces explode.

  Sweat pooled in all my bodily crevices and I had to breathe deeply to keep from passing out.

  My mother didn’t notice and stood.

  “No doing the sex, okay, Jing-Jing? I’ll trust you for now, but I’m also not above making an appointment for you with Dr. Tsai to check your hymee.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I managed to exclaim just before she turned the corner into the kitchen.

  Chloe CHAPTER 54

  PICKLE

  My mother made herself scarce the rest of the afternoon, staying upstairs with my father, and they only emerged, I presumed, because they grew too hungry.

  For our New Year’s Eve dinner, we went to one of our favorite Chinese restaurants, where we knew the servers and the owner, which was helpful in that there were plenty of interruptions from them as well as from other restaurant patrons since this was a go-to for most of our friends. Not many restaurants had stinky tofu on the menu, let alone the really smelly steamed kind this place specialized in, the kind that permeated the entire space.

  After a purposefully loud family prayer, which we only did when church people were nearby, enough acquaintances approached our table to signal that Mrs. Kuo’s lift of our ban had started to get around. But it wasn’t quite as many as normal. I sweated through my shirt hoping my mother wasn’t thinking about how they all believed me to be pregnant, the same thrown-out water she had been, her worst nightmare come true. If I had to apologize to her again, I might throw up into my beef noodle soup, which would then only further convince the community of my pregnancy. I swear, if I’d been old enough, my parents would have ordered me a glass of wine to prove to everyone I wasn’t with child, but honestly? My mom and Mrs. Kuo were, sadly, right: the damage was already done. Even with the wine, people would’ve either whispered I was the worst mother-to-be or that I’d gotten an abortion. No matter what happened from this point forth, the rumor had already spread along the grapevine, and only the juiciest grapes would make it to market. But I was at peace with it. Getting rid of Hongbo would always trump my miànzi in a community I had never belonged in anyway.

  Once the foot traffic to our table stopped, I waited for the silence to descend, but—surprise times ten—my mother chattered away.

  “You know, Jing-Jing, Hongbo is a pig.” For a moment I thought she had finally seen his puke-green colors, but then I realized she was talking about Chinese zodiac signs when she said, “And pig isn’t the perfect match for a snake like you. That was always my one concern with him.”

  Yes, that was the right concern to have, I thought sarcastically.

  She continued, “Andrew is a rabbit, which is a better fit, but there are still some potential issues I’m worried about. Like difficulty communicating, tendency to pick at each other, and an inability to overcome financial problems. But since his family is well off, I feel better about that last one.”

  I didn’t believe in zodiac logic—Chinese or astrological, so my mother couldn’t complain I was “rejecting my culture” in this instance—but I still found myself panicking a little. Probably because I was drowning in lies. And maybe because there were already too many external forces keeping Drew and me apart, and I couldn’t handle another one, even one I didn’t believe in.

  My mother gestured to herself and my father. “We’re a perfect match!” she declared with her chest puffed out. “Mouse and ox—we’re faithful, understanding, and…” She leaned over to whisper the last word. “Intimate.”

  Dear Lord, please make it stop.

  My father harrumphed, low in his throat, a little phlegmy and a lot loud, and I prayed for a subject change. “Are you sure you don’t want to transfer to Stanford, Jing-Jing? They have a great economics department.” It was a topic I normally hated, but welcome in this moment. That is, until he said, “I’d feel better if you didn’t live near Andrew and have to deal with… temptations.” And oh, the irony: Drew lived here. “I know you got rejected, but maybe their standards for transfers are different? And you’ve gotten good grades at the University of Chicago—that must mean at least a little something, even to Stanford, right?”

  “Is there another reason you want me closer to home, Bǎbá?” I ventured. “Because I can take a quarter off.”

  He shook his head rapidly. “No, no, that’s not what I’m saying. I just—”

  My mother put a hand on my father’s. “I talked to Jing-Jing this afternoon. We can trust her with the sex. She may have lied to our friends the other day, but she hasn’t lied to us, not when it’s important. She was just so excited about her relationship with Andrew that she didn’t know how else to show us Hongbo wasn’t for her. Right, Jing-Jing?”

  I nodded vigorously. “Yup, we can definitely move on from this topic now.”

  “Don’t worry,” she murmured to my dad. “She didn’t even want sec-uh-see underwear.”

  For parents who still called it “the sex” and “sec-uh-see,” we were talking about intimacy and whale tails a shocking amount.

  But maybe this was their way of showing me they were coming around. This was the (dragon) fruit of my labor, a brief snapshot in time when my parents and I were okay, and I tried to make myself enjoy it even though I knew that if I turned around, I’d see we were on the precipice of a catastrophic fall. Because history showed that my parents and I could never be happy at the same time. The sand was shooting through the hourglass, seemingly quicker now that we were approaching the end.

  * * *

  The rest of dinner had been—gasp—pretty pleasant, leaving me in a dancing-and-humming mood as I showered and dressed for my night with Drew.

  From the depths of my closet I dug out a silver halter top and a boring black skirt—a combination quite fitting for me. I finished the look off with a poppy-colored cross-body purse just big enough for the essentials.

  I was excited, but I had also gotten myself into a pickle while making this evening’s plans. For a good reason, but still. That pickle had taken on a life of its own, which I now realized was a common problem for me.

  So it started because I needed a lie to tell my parents about where I was going tonight. Since they didn’t know
we’d lost touch and she was the one ’rent-approved friend who didn’t attend our church, I told my parents I was seeing Genevieve from high school. But then, after I told that lie, I remembered that Genevieve’s mother had a weekly mahjong game with Sienna’s mother, who was one of my mom’s patients, and she had a lot of dental issues. Like Swiss cheese, my mother had once said of her X-rays. And after making the three-degree connection, I worried that the information of where Genevieve spent her New Year’s Eve would get back to my mother, in which case, holy guacamole. So I texted Genevieve for the first time in a year and a half to see where she’d be ringing in the new year. Then obviously that got really awkward and I had to act like I wanted to know because I was hoping to meet up. I did consider asking her to cover for me like old times, but that left behind hard evidence of my lies in the form of a text that could be used against me. So I instead reasoned, It’s easier to just make plans, then take a page out of her book and flake out at the last second. But then my mother happened. She asked me a million questions about Genevieve and Genevieve’s mother and made so many comments about wanting to see photos of what Gen looked like now that I felt backed into a corner. No matter how I tried to spin it, I couldn’t win.

  Me: You’re horrible, and you just want to see “whether her baby fat was just fat.”

  Her: I said that one time! Why can’t you just get a picture for me? Are you hiding something?

  She made me promise to get at least one photo and to find out which plastic surgeon her mother had used because, after bumping into her at the grocery store a few months ago, my mother was sure Genevieve’s mom had gotten some work done to her face, though it “wasn’t Botox” and my mother needed to know the secret. “Why didn’t you just ask her?” I’d said, to which she’d rolled her eyes and responded in a duh tone, “Because I can’t let her know I know, and I can’t admit I need work too.”

  So I had decided, okay, Drew and I would meet up with Gen and her friends, hang out long enough to get a few selfies, and then he and I would break off and do our own thing. I’d used Gen as my cover countless times before, but this time, I felt queasy.