by Justina Chen
“Which shirts do you want?”
“It not matter.”
So I reach up to select a few, holding my breath when my stiff shoulder protests. On her bed, I fold the sleeves one over the other so they hug themselves.
“There so much work,” says Bao-mu, glancing wearily around her bedroom.
“I’ll take care of packing the rest of your stuff after you’re gone. Just let me know where to ship it, okay?”
“You just like your daddy.”
“What? Bossy?”
“You always know what to do,” says Bao-mu stubbornly.
That unwavering confidence in me makes me tear up, and to distract myself, I hand Bao-mu her present. “Happy birthday, Bao-mu.” Where Mama is stressful to shop for, what with her ever-changing brand hierarchy with each new season—Prada is good, Chanel better—Bao-mu is a challenge, because she says at this time in her life, the best present is having someone listen to her talk. Out of habit, Bao-mu unwraps her present so carefully, she doesn’t tear the paper, good enough to reuse.
“Wah!” says Bao-mu. Her fingers run gently across the cover of the baby book inside the box. “This so beautiful. You make?”
I nod and tell her, “It’s a brag book. You can put pictures of your great-grandchild in it and bore everyone with them.”
“Brag book,” she repeats. She opens it to the first page, where I’ve drawn a manga version of her chasing a crawling baby. “In China, we say bad luck brag about children. It tempt fate to take them away, bring lots bad luck.”
“Oh.” I grimace, wondering if I’ve made a colossal mistake, given Bao-mu a bad present when all I’ve wanted to do is make her happy, remember me.
But Bao-mu sighs. “Maybe I not brag enough about my daughter. Ah, Syrah, life sometime so hard.” She looks at me intently, willing me to understand. “Just because someone leave you, not mean they not love you.”
“I know.”
But she makes a tsking sound as if she doubts that I know, and then she says in Mandarin, the way she always does when she has something Important to Communicate, “Wo jiang ni ting.” I talk so you listen. Bao-mu scoots over and pats the empty spot beside her. “When Christine little, just ten, the Red Guard come to our house in Shanghai. You know Red Guard? Cultural Revolution in 1966?”
I shake my head because, according to my school’s history program, nothing much has happened in America past 1945. With the brief exception of a weeklong sojourn into the Far East, Chinese history is a vast, uncharted territory, as far as I’m concerned.
“Communists took control over China about time when your mommy born. They start Red Guard group. Kids like little soldiers. Some your age, only fourteen, fifteen.” Bao-mu shakes her head, still unable to comprehend it. Her voice hardens. “One day, they came and burn all my books, smash pots, vases, everything beautiful. They take all my jewelry. I so stupid. I hid diamond in my shoe, one my husband gave me for engagement ring. The Red Guard separate us in different rooms. They tell him, they know I hide something. They tell him, they kill me if they find unless he tell them. So he tell them about diamond. They beat me, my husband in front of Christine. Then they take him away to labor camp.”
Bao-mu smoothes the bedspread between us, one pucker refusing to lay flat, its edge trapped under the suitcase. “Christine denounce me.”
“What do you mean, denounce?”
“All time in my village, we have meetings. Everyone have to come. Some make confessions about themselves, that they capitalist, they landowner. Christine say I bad, a landowner.” Bao-mu shakes her head, her fingers pressing down futilely on the bulge of fabric, but like her memory, it won’t be smoothed away. “In front everybody, they give me ying yang tou. Shave half my head, other half cut short like man’s hair. Very ugly.” Her eyes narrow in remembrance.
“And you’re still going to help Christine and her daughter.”
“They my family.” And like Baba’s favorite explain-all word, business, the way Bao-mu says “family” explains why she’s leaving me. To Bao-mu, family, not money or honor or face, is everything. And I’m not family. Her hand sweeps brusquely through the air to clear the ugly wisps of memory and history away. “Old story. We all have old story.”
Bao-mu looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to divulge my secret that I’ve punched down, tried to bury for the last seven months. The reason why I took off at Whistler, not because I’m an idiot but because I was so upset I became idiotic. There’s a big difference even if the results are the same. But that’s an old story I still can’t draw in my manga-journal, much less confess. Not even to Bao-mu. Or Age.
“You never told me any of this,” I say, realizing I only know the bare facts of Bao-mu’s life where it intersects with mine. How many journals could I fill with what we don’t know about each other?
“Sometime, better if we just forget about,” she says finally as if she knows everything about my broken heart. “No, no, that wrong. Learn from first,” she corrects herself. “And then forget about.”
What I want to know is, where’s the step-by-step plan for forgetting all the things that disfigure you inside, in places where only you can feel the scars? My hands are folded, a good girl at church, but good girls don’t knowingly let a boy like Jared do what he did to me.
“Seee-raaaah,” Bao-mu says, hanging on to the vowels in my name like she doesn’t want to let them go. “Look.”
When I do, I see that she’s holding a picture of me and her, the day I won the school spelling bee in fifth grade. I don’t remember where my parents were that time, only that they weren’t there. Bao-mu shakes her head in disbelief that so much time could separate that girl in the photograph from the one she’s sitting by now.
“You such smart girl.” Slowly, Bao-mu works the photograph out of its frame and places it in the brag book, the one I made for her great-granddaughter. She nods once, satisfied, and only then does she say, “You need make own brag book. You need say, I the best. I deserve the best.”
I throw my arms around Bao-mu, the one person who has always believed in me, no matter what. Under my hands, her frail shoulders are as delicate as bird wings. Only then does it strike me hard just how much I’m going to miss her when she flies this coop.
Choking up, I whisper, “I deserved you.”
“Aaah,” says Bao-mu, trying but not succeeding to sound impatient. I can tell she’s pleased.
So I take her hand, swallow my tears, and say, “Let’s go eat the soy sauce eggs. You need long life if you’re taking care of a baby.”
“First,” she says, stopping me with a gentle hand, “let me take picture of you.”
Holding still, I smile for Bao-mu, as she painstakingly positions the camera, so sleek and small in her old hands I’m afraid that she’s going to drop it. And after a long minute, she presses down hard, determined to capture this moment.
Still holding the camera before her eye, Bao-mu nods as though I’ve just given her my blessing to leave me. And in a funny way, I have.
15
So I was wondering in the shower this morning…,” Mr. Delbene says, rubbing his bald head, as smooth as one of those Magic Eight Balls. There are a billion questions I’d like to ask one of those prophesizing balls, and not one of them has anything to do with what a teacher, specifically Mr. Delbene, wonders about in a shower.
Me, I’d ask: Will I see Bao-mu soon? (Most likely.) Will I get out of being Shanghai’ed by my parents and taken to Hong Kong? (Outlook not so good.) Will RhamiWare sponsor me? (Better not tell you now.) Will Age and I be best friends the way we were Before Natalia? (Ask again later.)
“So I was wondering,” says Mr. Delbene, pacing, his mismatched feet in blue and orange socks today, “will I hear a scintillating idea today, one that revolutionizes high school journalism? Innovates the way students get news? Anyone? Anyone?”
No one’s more surprised than I am when, after a couple minutes of this soliloquy, I blurt out, “We should take advanta
ge of technology. Kids our age get our news online.”
“What do you mean?” demands George, editor-in-chief, varsity lacrosse captain, and early admittance to Yale. Obviously, this is one boy whose brag book gloats ad nauseam about all his accomplishments. Now, as if I’ve offended his family’s three generations of news coverage, both in print and on air, he crosses his arms and says defensively, “I read the newspaper. So what are you talking about?”
A couple of months ago, at a charity auction for something or other, I sat next to a big time publisher who moaned and groaned about kids in my age demographic not reading newspapers anymore. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, so I edit myself down to an innocuous, “The LA Times did an internal study on its readership.”
“So what? Just publish online?” George shakes his head, and then in a patronizing tone he says, “Good thinking, but people like print.”
Instead of backing down, I look around the class and ask, “What’s the harm in us blogging about school events, basketball games, the musical even, and giving real-time coverage and commentary? I bet we could sell online advertising to defray our costs.”
Silence makes me want to crawl right into my manga-journal. I clench and unclench my pencil nervously, until I realize Mr. Delbene’s considering my ideas, head cocked, interested. Most people only care what I think because of who my dad is. Their logic goes like this: Win Syrah over and she’ll tell Mr. Cheng, who’ll have one of his minions do the research, and voilà! Instant cash infusion.
“No one’s going online to look at what a blogger has to say about our football games,” says George with a smirk.
That’s the thing with opinions. As long as you parrot what people want to hear, you’re a Wise Woman. Say something they don’t, and suddenly you’re the Village Idiot.
“No, Syrah’s got a point. We’ve got to think outside the box,” chimes in Lillian unexpectedly for a toe-the-line kind of staffer. Then again, maybe she sees that the writing on this wall is so clear, it’s graffiti: the newspaper she’s inheriting next year is sliding fast into mass oblivion. She says, “At my old school, we did crazy things, like run student obits for the graduation edition.”
“Right, obits.” George mocks her in that same overtly condescending tone I hear from Wayne. Deliberately, he swings one leg onto his desk and leans back in his chair.
I bristle. Considering George is writing our newspaper’s obituary with an editorial calendar of boring, boring, and more boring, he doesn’t deserve to be Mr. High-and-Mighty, not even if his family owns a couple of newspapers in the Northwest. He’s just like Wayne, who, when it comes down to it, inherited his business, the Cheng investment arm, too.
That realization makes me straighten in my chair, throw out my usual go-with-everyone-else’s-flow, and build on Lillian’s idea. “Senior tombstones could be a lot of fun for our graduation issue,” I say.
“Journalism is to communicate news.” George folds his arms across his chest. “Not to entertain.”
“Real newspapers have gossip columns,” I remind him.
“So we print gossip?” he says, all skeptical.
“No, I’m saying newspapers aren’t just for hard news.”
“And no one’s reading the news we’re communicating,” says Lillian.
“So, what?” George slides his feet off his desk to thump onto the floor, a sound of disbelief. “We write obits?”
It’s tempting to compose his: High school editor-in-chief was Chengulated in front of entire journalism class for being a stubborn, pompous, know-it-all.
“The next thing you’ll be suggesting is that we have comic strips,” he says, and slaps himself on the forehead. “Oh, wait, we already have those.”
“No,” I say, “how about a manga-column?”
“A manga-what?” asks George, a crescent of a mocking smile forming.
Lillian looks approvingly at me. “That could be very cool. And Syrah’s a great manga artist.”
George is back to shaking his head. “What could she possibly manga about?”
When Chelsea angles her body from her seat in the front, I groan to myself. As everyone knows, just because her dad is some old-money, big-time real estate developer, she thinks everyone should hear her talk about him. Newsflash: Mr. Dillinger inherited his job from his dad, who got it from his father. So it’s not like Chelsea’s dad earned his position and power with his brains or work ethic or philosophy the way Baba did.
No matter, Chelsea clenches the back of her seat, a pulpit to grandstand with her Heavenly Father oration. “Well, the other night, my father was honored at the Juvenile Diabetes auction, and we bought a couple of tables.”
“So?” says George, which I’m sure is the sentiment echoing in everyone’s heads.
“So, focusing on more kids at our school means they’ll read the article about themselves. And so will their friends,” Chelsea says.
“And their enemies,” says the resident goth in class, his black lips spreading into a grim grin.
As hard as it is to admit, Chelsea is onto something. My neurons can hardly believe it. The way George leans back in his chair again, his reigning monarch pose, makes me want to pluck him off his family throne.
“Okay, so tell me, who?” George smiles smugly, like he knows the answer. “Who’s doing anything special that we haven’t covered already?”
True, the usual suspects have been featured extensively, not only in our newspaper, but in the Seattle Times. James, the concert pianist who won sonata competitions against teenagers when he was just eight. Becky, the future Nobel prize–winning scientist who scored a summer internship with the Hutch, the cancer research center on Lake Union.
Lillian says, “People’s community service projects. Some people are doing amazing things.”
“Some people, meaning you,” snickers Chelsea, morphing from girl-with-no-brains back to girl-with-no-heart in 0.3 seconds. “Great, we can all write stories about how Lillian is saving the world.”
“I’ve already done it,” I say, my voice so emphatic that it shuts Chelsea up. “I’ve covered Lillian.”
Lillian blinks at me in surprise. So does Mr. Delbene, who finally wakes from his trance and strides over to my desk to read the manga entry in my journal of the Groundhog Day party, starting with Lillian commanding a troupe of socialites. Imminent sickness fills my gut, and I stare down at my hands balled up on my lap. But when Mr. Delbene starts laughing, I glance up sharply at him, and he’s looking at me differently. With respect.
“Political cartoon meets social commentary,” Mr. Delbene says just as freedom rings, and the class becomes a flurry of movement out the door.
I bend down for my backpack and note that two mismatched socks in Birkenstocks are not moving out of my way. Years of dodging unwanted conversations with older men have me perfectly attuned to this danger. Let me guess; I’m about to be bombarded with a “brilliant idea” about how I really ought to manga-column about my father instead of Lillian. Look, if Baba doesn’t grant any personal interviews, not with Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer, then he sure as hell won’t divulge confidences to me.
“Syrah,” says Mr. Delbene as he eases his potbelly into the desk across from mine. “Just like your dad wrote in his book, right? ‘The best ideas are born out of crises.’ ”
“I haven’t gotten to that part yet,” I say, shrugging into my jacket quickly.
“Really? It’s in the introduction.”
He looks at me like he’s waiting for my aha moment of recognition so the two of us can share an impromptu Ethan Cheng fan club lovefest. Hate to disappoint, but I continue to look blank. Mr. Delbene shrugs. “Anyway, all I wanted to say was good thinking out of the box today. Your ideas just might turn our paper around.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Get your class to think, motivate them to act, shake their world up. You’ll be surprised at the power you could wield.”
“Because my dad’s Ethan Cheng?”
&nb
sp; “No,” he says, surprised. “Because political cartoonists communicate more than even essayists. I don’t have to tell you what a picture is worth, do I?” Mr. Delbene holds his breath and with his hands clenched on the edge of the desk, he wriggles himself out from behind it. “So think about the name for your column. The Syrah Cheng Way, maybe?”
On my way to English, I think about that. The Syrah Cheng Way. How can an outsider see me as a rightful Cheng the way my siblings don’t? The way I haven’t? Syrah Cheng, The Turnaround Queen. As I get sucked into the milling crowd, I wonder if maybe the rush I’m feeling from leading, not just following, from improving a newspaper, not just proving myself, is what addicts Baba to business.
At lunch, George waves me over to his table to “review” my ideas when Chelsea and her Six-Pack descend. Setting her tray down, Chelsea says, “So, Syrah, I heard you aren’t going to Wicked in Whistler.”
I shrug, noncommittally.
Chelsea leans in for The Ask. “If you’re not using your VIP tickets, can I have them?”
Suddenly, I hear Bao-mu: you too much good girl. This time, I’m not going to give up what I want, not these tickets. With a deliberate look at my watch, I stand up the way I’ve seen my mother do so many times when she’s late, abruptly and with an air of importance. “I just remembered something I forgot to do,” I tell them, grabbing the remains of my lunch.
It’s one of those rare sunny days in February, warm enough to sit outside, which is where I should have headed in the first place instead of The Six-Pack hunting grounds inside the cafeteria. A couple of kids are in the meditation garden, only they seem to be meditating on physical rather than spiritual matters. I sidestep the couple who are going at it—all “I’m going to miss you so much over winter break, Pookie” whenever they come up for air.
Since Age hasn’t returned my calls this morning or last night, I know a different strategy is in order, but what? Sitting on a stone bench in the corner, facing the sun, I picture Age at lunch with the crew, probably at some Vietnamese pho’ noodle dive near their school where the portions are enormous and the price is right. Smiling, I dial Mobey’s phone and ask to talk to Age.