I pull the sonogram out of my jeans pocket and get on my knees as if about to pray at an altar of dirty laundry. I smooth out the image on top of the box and trace the shadowy white form with my finger. You can make out maybe a couple of ribs, a strangely oblong skull, spindly insect legs. It looks so ugly, so black and white, so scientific against the creamy cardboard and painted flowers.
I find a pen under an old Shakespeare essay that made my father proclaim me some kind of prodigy in the critical arts. On the back of the image I write, She calls it the Little Alien. Then I shove it into the pristine box, which is empty except for another black-and-white picture, also procured on the sly while with a childhood friend and that will also haunt my dreams if I let it.
I check my posts and messages, then go downstairs and steal one of the cold packs my mother uses when her back goes out. When I was little, I actually pictured her spine going out for the day, maybe doing a little shopping, so my mother had to either stay in bed or slither around like a snake.
Back in my room, I nurse my elbow and eat some sugar snap peas from a bag that says they were “best before” yesterday. My phone buzzes, and I know it’s my best friend, Celeste, because she always gets antsy around this time, anxious to firm up her plans for the night. But it’s not Celeste.
R U there?
I don’t remember giving Bev my number at the coffee shop. Out of the blue, though, I remember that when we were kids, she liked to throw out stupid challenges, just for kicks. “Let’s see who can go without peeing the longest,” or “Let’s pull each other’s hair and see who screams first.” And I remember the day she moved away.
Bev was standing in her driveway, surrounded by boxes, watching my father struggle to get my cello case into the hatchback. She was wearing a black tank top that said Sweetie Pie in purple glitter, and she had straightened her thin blond hair, like always, because her hair grew slowly and she thought it added length. We didn’t speak that day, hadn’t spoken in months, but I remember her smirking at no one in particular, all alone among the assorted movers and half siblings, because Bev always seemed alone even when that house was full of people.
Fast-forward about a decade—what kind of person gives a sonogram of their unborn child to someone they barely know anymore?
There’s another buzz.Change of plans. C off 2nite. R U UP 4 a flick with us? Come on, Faye, baby. Three’s a thrill…C
The thought of tagging along with Celeste and her beefy, worshipful boyfriend Carson is almost as painful as my elbow.
I ignore Celeste and reply to Bev.Yes.
I reach under the white eyelet bed skirt I thought was the height of chic when I was twelve and pull out Sasha’s sweatshirt. I press it to my face and inhale like my life depends on the scent of cheap orange candies and cigarettes. Though I know it’s ridiculous, I think of this Confucian poem I used to love, the one I would recite in both Mandarin and English for the delight of my parents. But later on, in my bed, it was just for me.
Through the cloud and gloom I was
Your constant star
Now you have gone from sight
And love’s white star
Roams aimless through
The night.
I’d whisper it to myself, first in one language, then the other, trying to imagine what it must be like to love someone like that.
My parents, like all good Westerners who adopt from China, fed me this stuff like it was spinach. For the first five years of elementary school, I studied Mandarin every Saturday morning. We faithfully celebrated every Chinese ritual and occasion with the other white and yellow blended families in town. We flew across the country to celebrate Chinese New Year with my oldest friend, Emma, whom we think I shared a crib with at the orphanage. But even that wasn’t enough, not for my keener parents. A year ago, they splurged on a two-week extravaganza in the southern rice paddies and the stinking hot Chinese city where I was abandoned.
My phone rings and I’m startled, as if I’d just wandered into some ancient brushstroke painting where nothing as profane as technology dared exist.
“Faye,” Bev shouts, “is that you?”
I hold the phone a few inches away and try to catch my breath. “Yeah.”
“I am so sorry for bailing on you like that,” she gushes.
“I won’t go into it because it’s too depressing. But it was fantastic to see you again and I was wondering if you still wanted to get together, talk about old times. I still remember your house, with that old piano and everything. I’d love to see it again, just for fun, because I still remember it, you know?”
In my memory, we were almost always at Bev’s house. It didn’t matter if I came home ready to puke up a bag of colored marshmallows or with permanent-marker tattoos covering my thighs—my parents always let me go back there. Until they didn’t.
“Sure,” I say. “Yeah.”
“Does your dad still mow the grass in sweat socks and sandals and that big straw hat? Your dad was so adorable. Mr. Crazy Professor.”
There was a time when I worshipped my father. I thought he was the cleverest man in the world and would jump through hoops like a trained doggie just to please him. I wonder what he would say now if he knew I was inviting Bev Novak over and that she remembered him as a giant dork.
“Yeah,” I say. “He still burns easily and he’s still crazy.”
There’s a creak on the stairs, the bouncy gait of the man himself, a post-surgery marathoner who’s fit as a fiddle. “Supper’s on. Couscous with mango and prawns.”
“Can I call you back?” I say.
There’s another text from Celeste. Have U gone AWOL on me? U have to come out sometime, or I will hunt U down.
I press the sweatshirt to my face, take one last good hit and think of the story that’s in all the Buddhist picture books for kids. The details are always different, but the gist is the same. A man wins a small lottery and buys himself a horse. The villagers all say, “What good luck!” But the man’s father says, “Perhaps, perhaps not.” Not long after that, the man falls off his horse and breaks his leg. The villagers all say, “What bad luck!” But the man’s father says, “Perhaps, perhaps not.” Then one day a war breaks out, and the army comes recruiting. The man is too lame and so escapes the bloodshed that follows.
Interesting how I think of this right after my little accident with the drawer, because since when was I such a daredevil? My careful, anal nature is a family joke. I was a clean freak before I could walk, which I didn’t bother with until I was nearly two. There’s video of me crawling around picking up my father’s lost pens, lone socks, bits of dried-up cereal, you name it, and returning them to their rightful places.
It wasn’t until very recently that I started letting things scatter and pile up on my bedroom floor like garbage in the wind. Is this disgusting? Perhaps, perhaps not. Isn’t it a good thing that the dirty clothes cushioned my fall? Perhaps, perhaps not. I do know it’s freaking out my mother, though she would never admit it.
“Get it while it’s hot,” my father calls.
I shove Sasha’s sweatshirt deep beneath my bed and stare at my phone. Maybe the more you have to hide, the more appealing mess becomes.
How bout tomorrow nite? I text Bev. After 7? U remember the address?
After Bev hightailed it out of the coffee shop today, Mr. Laptop’s gaze fixed on me. It was like last year back in China, when people on the street stared openly. Sometimes they would point at me but address my parents, as if I had no voice of my own. “She Chinese?”
“Yes, yes,” my parents would say reassuringly in their lousy practiced Chinese. “She’s our daughter, but she was born here, in Guangzhou.”
Most nodded approvingly, and a few remained confused. Either way, I came to loathe it.
Bev texts right back, as if she’s been sitting there strumming her fingers on that big belly, waiting.Yes and yes.
In the coffee shop, I’d shoved the Little Alien into my pocket, away from prying eyes.
I wish now that I’d had the guts to stare down Mr. Laptop and his nosy, judgmental gaze with my dutiful almond eyes.
I wish he’d scalded his tongue on his mediocre microwave pastry.
I wish there’d been some kind of surge in the outlets so that when he finally got back to work, he’d been greeted by the blue screen of death.
TWO
Before lunch the next morning, Celeste shows up at our door. “I’ve got the truck. You have no choice, my dear. Get in quietly and I won’t make a fuss.”
My mother shoos me out the door like I’m a sickly kid who needs fresh air, and Celeste gives her a mock salute. “Leave her to me, ma’am.”
Celeste is very good at most things, including giving off an easy, respectful confidence adults find reassuring. The only exception I can think of is our French teacher, Mme. Martin, who has some kind of chip on her shoulder when it comes to smart young women.
Outside, the sun is glaring and the March ugliness is on full display. The snowbanks are coated in grit and sand. It’s been so long since the giant elms on our boulevard made a cozy arch of green, it’s easy to believe they’ll stay gray and dark forever. The side streets are covered in snow that’s melted and then frozen again into tire-chewing ruts. But Celeste is unfazed; she drives with the same steadiness she always does.
“So what’s with you?” she asks. “You not answering your phone?”
When I don’t reply right away, she knocks on my head with her knuckles. “Hello? Are you there?”
I bat her hand away, and the truck swerves a little toward the curb. For some reason, this makes me laugh. “Hands on the wheel,” I say.
She’s like a dog with a bone though. She will not move on until she’s dug up an explanation.
“Nothing’s with me,” I say. “I’m just enjoying doing nothing.”
But this is obviously not enough.
“Is it about Kyle?”
This is truly laughable, but I don’t dare, because Celeste takes it very seriously when she tries to fix me up. Last month it was, “Okay, he’s really into music, and he does karate, and Carson says he’s really into Asian girls.”
She always says this last part as if she’s half joking and half thinking it should seal the deal. The first time she came inside my house, she said, “You’re more Chinese than the Chinese,” which is sort of true, but which I found strangely irritating. Who was Celeste to make smart remarks?
Celeste is Métis, about as native to Canada as it gets without being full-blooded Aboriginal. Her great-great-grandparents settled the traplines and the trade routes but don’t have much to show for it now. Celeste plays the fiddle, and her sisters created their own “dirty jig.” But all in all, the Métis are the big historic losers—they’re just now getting a bit of land back—and their biggest cultural pursuit is arguing over who gets to be Métis.
She always speaks about these “set-ups” as if I don’t see these losers every day at school. I already knew Kyle liked to talk about obscure bands. I knew he had great abs. There was nothing wrong with Kyle. I even let her talk me into thinking I was interested. I actually imagined he and I getting all sweaty at the dojo together. He’d come in close behind me and position my arms just so, breathe against my neck and say, “This is a defensive position. Keep the hands high and they can’t get your eyes.” Maybe he’d see me as one of those classical pin-up babes who sell out concert halls. He’d ask me to play my cello for him, swaying and sexy, in just my underwear.
But then he got back together with his old girlfriend, who is busty and freckled.
“Kyle and Sara belong together,” I say to Celeste. “They kind of look alike.”
Celeste looks at me with pity now, which is hard to take. I hated karate class. I hated the jumping jacks, the group yelling, the stupid air punching. Words cannot express how much this isn’t about Kyle.
“Think about it,” I say. “Thin lips, pointy nose. There’s something ferret-like about both of them.”
Celeste keeps her eyes on the road. “When did you get so nasty?”
“What’s wrong with ferrets?” I ask.
She shakes her head, but I can tell she’s ready to let it drop. She’s ready to let things become normal and easy between us again. “No wonder you never get lucky,” she says.
At the mall, she tries on jeans, and every pair is tailormade for her athletic perfection. I try to convey the right amount of enthusiasm without crossing the line into insincerity.
She asks what I’m doing tonight, and I tell her Emma is flying in tomorrow.
“Your old orphanage buddy?” she shouts from the change room. They’ve met before, and she pretended to like Emma until finally pronouncing her “a tremendous geek with Toronto pretensions,” which is true enough. I tell her yes, that Emma.
“So what?” she shouts. “That’s tomorrow.”
I lie with alarming ease. “I need to tidy up. Wash the sheets and stuff.”
Celeste manages to open the curtain with an armful of jeans and hands full of hangers. She dumps them on a chair meant for loyal boyfriends.
“You’re the queen of anal,” she says. “The absolute queen.”
Celeste has a part-time job at a grocery store. She has a driver’s license. She has the marks for med school but wants to be a politician of all things, like her father. There are times when she makes me feel as immature as I look, and yet I know there are some things she will never understand.
Before Bev arrives, my parents leave for their first curling game, which they find too cute for words. They are wearing overpriced vintage curling sweaters that someone’s grandma knit forty years ago, and they traipse off ready for an evening of ironic detachment.
“As a Scottish Canadian, I’ve let down my people sorely over the years,” my father says. “But as God is my witness, that ends tonight.”
People curl every day, but my father must turn it into a farcical return to his roots. I wonder what would happen to his self-satisfied grin if I told him Bev Novak would be arriving soon with her unwanted, unborn kid.
When she comes to the door, her nose is extra pink from the cold, and with her hair in pigtails, she looks like an adorable cocker spaniel. She’s wearing a plum-colored parka that barely clears her waist. It couldn’t be done up if she tried, and I wonder if it’s possible for a baby to feel cold in the womb.
She kicks off her untied runners and squeezes past me. Hands still in her parka pockets, she walks right in. “Still the same,” she says.
I follow her into the front hall, where she spins around slowly in her sock feet. Some pregnant women look like they’ve swallowed a beach ball, but not Bev—every inch of her is just a little more round.
“The same,” she says again.
This seems to please her, but I feel the need to point some things out. “All those bookshelves are built right into the walls now, and everything’s a shade darker. And the stairs aren’t painted anymore. We stripped it off. It’s all natural oak now.”
She crinkles her nose. “Really?”
Before I can say, Really, I sucked in dust and fumes for weeks, she takes off into the living room. “Green walls,” she says, “and a million books, that’s what I remember. That’s the same.”
She picks up a lacquered box from the coffee table. My father got it for my mother the Christmas they decided to adopt from China. It’s egg-shaped and glossy black, with tiny shards of inlaid pearl in the shape of a bird.
“This used to be somewhere else,” Bev says. She looks around. “Like on the piano or something. I remember thinking a flamingo should not be white.”
As far as I know, our piano has always been covered in family photos, but I couldn’t say for sure. “It’s a whooping crane,” I say.
She laughs like I’ve made a joke and carefully puts the box back in exactly the same place. “Remember when we almost broke it?”
I shake my head. “When?”
But she’s already on to something else. Fo
r maybe twenty minutes, she pokes around, keeping up a running commentary as if the whole point of her being here is to tour the house. She points at the wall over the loveseat and squeals in delight. “That painting!”
She kneels on the cushions and fingers the scroll, tracing the Chinese characters as if they’re braille. “I used to wish I looked just like her.”
It’s a relatively simple piece. The scroll isn’t covered with intricate birds or meaningful leaves or mountains rising gloriously in the distance. There’s just a woman in a flowing robe, holding a fan over her shoulder. She is willowy, with sad, delicate features and black hair piled up on her head like scoops of ice cream. For years, I liked to imagine that she was my birth mother.
Bev shoves down the waistband of her leggings and reveals three Chinese characters tattooed in the small of her back. “I got this two years ago. I had to forge Lara’s signature.”
I need to think for a moment to remember who Lara is—Bev’s mother, Lara, the only mother on the street who didn’t have a job. Who was never in-between—either laughing or crying, in our way or holed up in her room, fat or skinny. The only thing that never changed was her gorgeousness.
“Did it hurt?” I ask.
She shrugs. “‘Beauty plus strength equals woman.’ That’s what it says.”
Though I never made great strides with written Chinese, I’m skeptical. I straighten the scroll, even though it’s not crooked. “She’s a prostitute,” I say. “Tang Yin, the artist, loved to paint ladies of ill repute. The poem on the side is about how hypocritical people are.”
Bev claps her hands and laughs as if I’ve just performed a clever trick. “Well, I guess I always did have big dreams for myself, didn’t I!”
I don’t mention that I haven’t actually read a whole translation of the poem, just a little about Tang Yin, how he liked to depict outward calm and inward pain, so he painted a lot of prostitutes.
Bev wobbles a bit and has to grab the arm of the loveseat.
Your Constant Star Page 2