by Yu-Han Chao
“What do you mean country boys?” Bay’s father sounded irked.
“Oh, I don’t mean you, of course. It’s just that I’ve heard your family keeps setting Shia up with these dopes who don’t know how to talk and dress like bumpkins. And they think government jobs are like an iron bowl, the best thing under the sun.”
“What’s wrong with a government job? It’s steady pay and guaranteed retirement.”
“I’m just saying they’re very old fashioned,” Bay’s mother said softly.
Bay’s parents cherished each other enough; they married late and had taken even longer to procreate. For the first five years of their marriage, Bay’s mother put up with a great deal of jeering from her parents-in-law, who said she “couldn’t pop out a child—even a pig can do that.” Bay knew her mother held a grudge.
The wedding rehearsal took place the day before the ceremony so the bride and groom could rent their tux and gown for two days in a row at a discount. Strands of white chiffon lay in the pews, waiting to be attached to the ceiling and the walls. In the background, a janitor with a slight hunch pushed an industrial-strength vacuum before him. Squealing children ran about, playing tag.
Bay’s new dress was a scratchy tea-length gown with many layers of stiff tulle and little bowtie accents. It was probably a bit much for Sunday school, but Bay secretly enjoyed the poofiness of the skirt and she didn’t want to act ungrateful. Thank you, God, for my new dress, she prayed. Anyway, there were no girls her age around to make fun of her. The ring-bearer was barely potty-trained and had to be rushed to the bathroom after an accident. He also had difficulty walking down the aisle, beelining to his mother every time instead.
“Okay, let’s try this again,” said the wedding organizer, a middle-aged man with weary bags under his eyes. He squinted into the microphone as he spoke. “Walk toward the groom, kid—see the groom? Groom, wave to the ring-bearer, please. Thank you. Now, walk to that nice man and give him the pillow with the ring, kiddo.”
The wedding organizer wiped his brow with the back of his hand and mumbled something about children making or breaking the ceremony.
After the rehearsal, the adults moved their conversation to a coffee house across from the church, and Bay slinked onto the sidewalk outside. She spotted the groom in the garden next to the coffee house, talking on his cell phone. She ran past him into the street, dodged a bicycle, and entered the church.
Inside, the bride, a sallow-faced young woman with thick-framed glasses and long hair tied into a thin ponytail, sat on the steps beside the altar, blowing up pink and white balloons and securing them with knots. The bride’s face sagged behind the frames, and her eyes looked red, perhaps the effect of blowing up too many balloons. Bay watched this scene from the doorway of the church, feeling sorry for her. They couldn’t afford a helium tank for her wedding? Why wasn’t the groom helping?
The groom still had his phone pressed against his ear when Bay left the church to look for him. Waiting for several scooters with families of three or four on them to zoom by before she crossed the street, Bay watched her cousin. Tall Korean grass, punctuated with trumpet-like daffodils, swayed in the breeze. As she got close enough to hear his words, however, they ruined the picturesque scene.
“What the hell makes you think I want to get married, you asshole? I told you a hundred times, I don’t want any of this. It’s my damn family making me do it.”
Bay couldn’t believe her ears. If he was talking like this now, what would happen after the ceremony? Bay wanted to warn the poor bride. She seemed like a nice woman, and Bay could see that she didn’t deserve to have a bad man like her cousin as her husband. Just then, unfortunately, Bay’s mother emerged from the café, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her inside.
“Where have you been? Grandpa and Grandma want to talk to you.”
Inside the coffee house, Bay turned and surreptitiously scowled at her mother as she yanked her arm free and made a slight bow to her grandparents.
“Ah-Gong hao. Ah-Ma hao.”
The old people touched her hands and her hair, and complimented her new dress. Bay was about to take off again when her father put his hands on her shoulders. “We’re leaving. We should say congratulations and good luck to the lucky couple. Where are they?”
“The bride is in the church blowing up balloons,” Bay said.
“Balloons?” Bay’s mother frowned.
“I think we should help her,” Bay said eagerly.
“We really have to go—no time to play with balloons. We’ll drop Ah-Gong and Ah-Ma off at Uncle Chun’s place and go home,” Bay’s father said.
Leaning her chin on the back of the seat, Bay watched the church shrink as the family car pulled down the street. The seatbelt for the middle seat was broken, and in its absence, she didn’t feel obligated to sit in any particular way.
“Sit down properly or you’ll get carsick, Bay,” her mother scolded. “And close your legs and put your hands on your knees, you’re wearing a dress.”
Bay did as she was told, but after a few minutes of silence, she could no longer hold back.
“I think they shouldn’t get married,” she blurted out.
“Why not?” her grandfather asked, tilting his head in her direction.
“He said he didn’t want to marry her on the phone. I heard him. And he made her blow up balloons all by herself.”
“Silly child. What do balloons have to do with anything?” Her grandmother dismissed her concern with a wave of her hand.
“Don’t tell the bride what you heard, or the wedding might be called off.” Bay’s grandfather chuckled, but he pulled his lips into a straight line when he sensed his wife’s burning glare.
“You keep your mouth shut. Don’t go spreading rumors. Sometimes people say things they don’t mean.” The fierceness in her grandmother’s voice made Bay lower her head, and the scolding continued. “Children should keep their mouths shut about the affairs of adults. Besides, we have all spent a great deal of money on that wedding. Marriage is no child’s play. There are a great many responsibilities in life.”
Bay slumped over, buried her face in the ruffles of her skirt, and sulked all the way home.
Round tables draped in red and chairs tied with giant pink bows filled a ballroom decorated in every corner with the red letter si, double spring, the wedding blessing. As luck would have it, a couple had broken off their engagement last second and made it possible for Bay’s cousin to have a banquet at the lavish Gwan Hwa Hotel, in banquet room number two. Platters of food arrived at the tables, where the adults grew talkative and loud. Guests gossiped while they picked up strands of pickled sea cucumbers, seaweed, cured beef, and drunk chicken with heavy plastic chopsticks.
Bay rolled her eyes as the grown-ups at her table inappropriately teased her about when she was going to get married. Look at her cousins—one married, the other obediently going on blind dates arranged by her parents. Everyone seemed to forget that she was only eleven years old and that they had just made her wear a flower girl’s wreath in her hair. She sipped two glasses of Little Red Berry, a nonalcoholic cranberry cocktail, one after the other, in silence, while trying to tune out the noise.
“Where is the bathroom?” Bay asked no one in particular.
“Over there, dearie.” An aunt pointed toward large red doors at the other end of the banquet room.
“Do you want me to go with you?” Bay’s mother asked.
“I may not be old enough to marry, but I’m old enough to use the bathroom myself, thanks.”
The other adults at the table laughed awkwardly while Bay’s mother shook her head apologetically, embarrassed by her daughter’s brashness.
After slipping through the red doors, the signage on the wall presented Bay with two options—turn left to the bathroom, or right to the “bridal preparation room.” She thought about this for a second and turned right.
Inside the preparation room, the bride sat alone before a long mirror ill
uminated by vanity lights, wearing a traditional Chinese qipao of red and gold. She dabbed her face with a powder puff, though it didn’t look like her caked-over skin could hold any more makeup. She started when she finally noticed Bay. She blinked her long, heavy lashes in an uncomfortable way that showed she had never worn fake lashes before in her life.
“You look nice without glasses,” Bay said.
The bride’s bright red lips formed a smile. “You’re the flower girl, aren’t you? Thank you for helping. How old are you?”
“Eleven.”
“Eleven years old,” the bride repeated, drawing out the words, shi yi sui, as if in a trance. Maybe she was recalling when she herself was eleven.
“Actually, I have something to tell you,” Bay said.
“Yes?” The bride turned to face her, something most adults didn’t bother to do. Bay wished she hadn’t, however, because of what she was about to say.
“I heard . . . your husband talking on the phone yesterday. He said that he didn’t want to marry you.”
“Pardon me?”
“I’m sorry, my family said I shouldn’t tell you, but now you’re already married so there’s no wedding ceremony to ruin—”
“What exactly did he say?”
The bride’s eyes were turning red again, like when she was blowing the balloons, and her slender hands shifted to her abdomen.
“That our family made him do it, and he didn’t really want to get married . . . ” Bay’s voice trailed off.
At that moment, Bay’s grandmother entered the room. “What on earth are you doing here, you naughty child?”
“I . . . I was looking for the bathroom and got lost.” Bay bit her lips.
“And what’s the matter with you?” The old woman noticed a tear roll down the bride’s cheek and somehow intuited what had happened. “Never mind what silly children say. Whatever she said, it’s nonsense.”
The bride dabbed her eye with a tissue and sat upright in the chair. “On the contrary,” she said, “children hear everything. They tell the truth.”
Bay loved the bride even more now—a kindergarten teacher with a heart of gold. The bride had defended children all over the world against mean Grandma, even as her own heart was breaking.
Twenty minutes later, as if the scene in the bride’s room had never happened, the bride and groom were toasting relatives and friends at every table, as was the custom. When the new couple came to her table, the bride smiled at Bay. “Mei gwan si, it’s okay,” she mouthed to her.
Three years later, Bay was spending most of her waking hours in classes at school or study sessions in the library and after school, she continued studying and completing practice exam books that her grandmother bought her.
“If you get good grades, then you can have a good career, maybe a steady government job in the future. If you have no education, all you can do is become a kindergarten teacher.”
“What’s wrong with kindergarten teachers?” Bay clicked her automatic pencil too many times and stabbed it into her exam book hard, snapping the lead.
“You remember your cousin-in-law? The one with the big stomach?”
Bay nodded, waiting.
“She and your cousin fought every day after the wedding, and the two of them went and got a divorce by themselves, without even consulting us.”
“What about the baby?”
“It’s a huge mess. The kid gets shipped back and forth between schools in different towns, between his mom, dad, and two sets of grandparents.”
Bay felt a knot in her stomach. She thought of her cousin swearing behind the daffodils, and the lovely kindergarten teacher blowing pink-and-white balloons in the cold church. She even tried to imagine what their baby looked like. Grandmother was wrong; Bay had learned something from her cousin’s marriage. And it wasn’t what the adults would have thought.
Fifteen
ELLIE WAS ONLY fifteen when she lost her virginity to a boy on the empty stage of the auditorium in the music building of Taipei Preparatory Music School.
Ellie’s piano skills were above average at best, but Kai— now, Kai was a star violinist, the concertmaster, the golden boy who stood before the entire orchestra with his two-hundred-year-old Stradivarius. At the beginning of each orchestra practice, he’d make a gesture toward the pianist to pound out a crisp, resounding middle A, tune his violin accordingly, and lead the strings, woodwinds, and brass instruments in turn with his mellow, rich delivery of the A, as they turned knobs, pressed buttons, and adjusted mouth pieces. Whenever the student orchestra performed a symphony with a violin solo, Kai stood center stage, awing the audience with technique-driven cadenzas he was known for composing himself in his five-lined notebook.
Kai could have asked anybody to be his piano accompaniment for the upcoming end-of-the-year concert, but he asked Ellie. Hands in his pockets, head tilted casually, no big deal, just asked her in passing if she was interested. Sure, she said, all nonchalant, playing it cool, though inside she was screaming, yes oh yes oh my god YES, and she wanted to scream YAASS! from the well-lit stage of a packed auditorium.
They practiced during lunchtime almost every day at school, the tension between them palpable in a way both titillating and painful to Ellie.
One weekend she finally found the courage to invite Kai over to her parents’ apartment to listen to a rare recording. She had saved up her allowance to buy an imported platinum-edition CD from the classical music section of Tower Records. It included a live recording of the music they would be performing, a postmodern piece called Untitled XX IV by Zuzitte. In her bedroom, Kai kneeled in front of her little CD player, which vibrated with the sliding, abstract violin notes sprinkled amidst soft piano chords. His body seemed to hum and dance to the music, and Ellie thought her heart would burst from sheer longing, though she wasn’t exactly sure specifically what for. After he left, she knelt in the same spot that Kai had kneeled an hour ago and slowly lowered her face to the floor, imagining what it would be like to be close to him.
A few days later, Kai surprised her with an invitation. “Let’s sneak onto the stage and practice after school. The music hall will be dark since the control room’s locked, but we can play from memory. It will be good practice.”
Lies were concocted for their parents, something about a group project meeting in a fast-food restaurant. In reality, after leaving the school gate at 5:30 p.m. with their classmates, Kai, with his violin case slung across his torso, and Ellie, wearing her pounding heart on her sleeve, walked halfway around the school fence and reentered from the back gate. The music building wasn’t locked yet, and they dashed in through the unsupervised front door and up the stairs to the concert hall.
The only lights barely illuminating the concert hall were the green EXIT lights above the four doors at the four corners of the room, watching them like narrowed eyes. The audience area was a sea of burgundy velour-covered chairs. One of the seats, hinge loosened, hung down like a sagging tongue. The piano on the stage glimmered faintly, reflecting the eerie green of the EXIT lights.
“Let’s go onstage.” Kai took Ellie’s hand.
Her heart beat fast. The touch of his warm, string-calloused fingers made her tingle. She let Kai lead her to the middle of the stage, where he gestured for her to face the audience, so they could pretend to take a bow together, still holding hands. In that moment Ellie felt the rush of performing with violin prodigy Kai in front of the whole school; she pictured the applauding audience yelling Encore! loudly as they rose from their seats, all the girls’ faces filled with envy.
Something interrupted her fantasy. Kai’s hands were on her shoulders at first, but slowly they slid down to her chest, which was still quite flat. Self-conscious, she hunched her upper body slightly. His fingers lingered on her breasts briefly before shifting to her waist. Her heartbeat was deafening as she felt his hands through the pleated folds of her rough uniform skirt. Then, Kai’s fingers reached under the skirt and found her panties, nudging t
hem down. How did he know what to do? Had he done this before? Was this why he had asked her to play the piano accompaniment for him?
Ellie was so stunned that she stood, statue-like, allowing Kai to kneel before her as he had before the CD player. He kissed her “down there,” her first kiss from him landing in a spot she had never imagined it would land. Then he stood up to kiss her on the lips. The taste caught Ellie by surprise, but it did not repulse her. Kai took her hands and put them around his waist.
“Undo my belt,” he said.
Ellie did as she was told, and down came his uniform pants. Through the green fabric of his fitted underpants, Ellie could see the shape of what looked like the stalk of a shitake mushroom.
The mushroom did not stay firm for long. Soon it turned bright red and slimy and was hidden away again. It all happened so quickly and quietly in the dark that Ellie felt like she had only dreamt it.
They both acted as they normally did the next day at school and practiced like usual during the lunch hour. Secretly, however, Ellie felt like she was floating in cottony clouds, on a warm river, in thin air. She was in love. Kai winked at her in math class and she spent the rest of the hour doodling his name along with musical notes and hearts in her textbook.
Weeks later, with some horror as the euphoria subsided, she wondered why she had not needed a sanitary napkin for so long. But it was just once—what were the odds? Was Kai such a genius and prodigy he could impregnate on the first try too?
Ellie tried two different pregnancy tests: one inconclusive and one positive, the tiny plus sign like the cross she felt she would be crucified on once her family found out. This was exactly the kind of luck she had in life—drawing the short bamboo stick from the teacher’s cup to clean the girls’ bathrooms, never winning anything in a raffle, called first for physical exams in PE, and now, having barely had sex once, fumbling and passive in the dark, and bam, knocked up! She wished she could undo the conception, without undoing what she and Kai had shared. She knew she didn’t want a baby. At fifteen, she had barely grown out of stuffed animals and dolls. Totoros and Tarepandas still lined her bed. She had a Sailor Moon anime poster featuring a magical wand-wielding girl with yellow pigtails in a schoolgirl uniform on her wall. Hers was not the room of a mother.