by Justina Chen
“What are you still doing here?” I ask softly.
Mochi stirs in his spot by Grace’s hip. She automatically places a hand on him, calming him. In bemusement, she answers, “I’m not entirely sure.”
Drawing closer until only the low platform table separates us, I admit, “I’m glad you’re here. The house creeps me out when I’m by myself.” I swear, this is the longest civil conversation we’ve ever had. Who cares if it’s treading the shallow waters of small talk? I don’t dare sit down, make myself at home, a signal that I want us to have a nice, long chat. That would just be an invitation for Grace to rub in how much she doesn’t really want to be with me. “What are you working on?”
“Oh, this?” Grace takes off her glasses and sighs. “Rude Q and A for a client.”
“What’s that?”
“Before my clients meet with the press, I script all the possible hard questions they might face, and the answers they should give.” Grace hands the Rude Q and A to me.
“No kidding.” I scan the document, covered with questions like How many people have injured themselves using your equipment? Beneath each is an answer that masterfully turns every possible negative connotation into a golden opportunity, the Midas Touch of words: I shudder to think how many people have injured themselves by not using this equipment, which has been methodically designed by the best mechanical engineers in the world and tested by top physiologists. “So they, what, memorize all of this?”
“Most of them do.” Grace lifts another copy of the document from her lap and shakes it impatiently. “But this client likes to shoot from his hip.”
“I hope he has a good hip.”
Grace grins at me, and suddenly I know why Mama works so hard to get a genuine smile from her. For a moment, I feel like I’ve been admitted into the Cheng inner circle.
“As a matter of fact,” says Grace, “he does not have a good hip at all. More like a fat ass.”
“Grace!” I say, and stare at my half-sister, the one who’s always so buttoned up and perfectly restrained. The words “fat ass” I just don’t see figuring in any politically correct answer Grace would ever give—even now, to me—however rude the question may be.
Grace’s eyes gleam. “Ironic, isn’t it, that he’s made his fortune building rehab equipment, which he now wants to take mainstream?” She pats the empty spot next to Mochi, a gesture that reminds me painfully of Bao-mu. It’s almost as if Bao-mu is behind me, pushing me in the small of my back to Grace. Leery, I perch on the edge, computer in my lap, ready to leave at her first insult. But then I see a photograph of what looks like a ball sliced in half.
“Hey, I had to use this torture device for my knee.”
“So did these people. Meet some of his poster children.” Grace shuffles the photographs she’s been holding and hands me one of an old man in running shorts, his race bib pinned to his singlet. “Hip-replacement surgery, and then he ran his twentieth marathon.” She shows me another photograph, this one a woman with a pixie cut. “She finished the Danskin triathlon a year post-op after her mastectomy.”
Under the shelter of my computer, my hand unconsciously rubs my knee, feeling the ridgelines of the scars that have yet to smooth over. Dr. Bradford had warned me to expect keloids since Asians, like African-Americans, tend to develop scar tissue that heals thick and dark over incisions. The thing is, as I flip through the photographs and listen to Grace’s one-sentence diagnoses of each of the athletes, I feel like I know these people who’ve been scarred and battered from accidents and surgeries and life.
“They’re survivors,” I say, interrupting Grace even though I know this will shut down our first bona fide conversation faster than a windstorm does a ski lift.
“What did you say?” Twice now, I’ve startled Grace tonight, but she doesn’t snap at me or make a denigrating comment about how stupid I am because anyone can see that these people are broken. Nor does she look appalled that my adoring little sister mask has gone missing in action, and I’m looking her straight in the eye, her equal.
“They’re beautiful.”
Grace asks, not in challenge, but with curiosity, “What do you mean?”
“They’re real people with real bodies who got back into their game.” I tap the picture of a man in a wheelchair. “Or got themselves into a different game.”
“Real people, real bodies,” repeats Grace thoughtfully. She scribbles it on her notepad the way I do in my journal. “That’s not bad.”
“It’s the truth,” I say, pleased, and scoot back so I can sit lotus-style on the couch.
Grace’s eyebrows lift. “One of my friends had ACL surgery a year ago, and she still can’t sit with her legs crossed like that. Pretty good.”
“Good genetics.”
Grace studies me, not critically the way Mama does, looking for any minute fault in me that she can whittle away, but as if she’s never noticed me before. “More like hard work.” Her eyes narrow at my computer. “What are you working on?”
It takes all my restraint not to apologize with a “well, this is probably a stupid idea, but…”—which is a major no-no according to The Ethan Cheng Way. (Never assume failure; always visualize success.) While I open the top of my computer, I tell her, “One of my friend’s little sister has leukemia. She’s just three.”
“Oh, that’s terrible.”
On the screen is the first slide, Ride for Her Life. Under the title is my manga drawing of Amanda on a snowboard in mid-flight, pigtails flying behind her like twin turbo engine jets.
“This is your snowboarding event, isn’t it?” guesses Grace. “The one you talked about at our family meeting?”
“Sort of,” I say, and tell her about what I learned from Dr. Martin, about how mixed-race kids have near impossible odds of finding a match on the National Bone Marrow Registry because so few minorities, and even fewer biracial people, are registered. “Plus, Mr. Fujimoro works for Baba. Isn’t that a sign we have to do something?”
“So what are you proposing?”
With that invitation to give Grace the whole pitch, I run through how we can get corporate sponsors to underwrite the event, how we can charge an admission fee and command premium pricing for a VIP level, how we can sell merchandise. Halfway through the slideshow, Grace is so silent, I’m convinced that she’s formulating her yes-but-no answer. Instead, she interrupts me, “People are pretty much self-motivated. It’d be more effective if we renamed this Ride of Our Lives.”
“How about Ride for Our Lives?” I counter. “It’s more inclusive.”
“Good, that’s good. And we can broaden the objective and encourage people of any color to register with the National Bone Marrow Registry.”
But when I get to the slide about PR, Grace says flatly, “No, that’s wrong. The headline isn’t about Amanda. It’s going to be about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the heiress who fell, the one who caused the biggest ruckus in Whistler’s history. The media is going to have a heyday over you.” Her sharp eyes don’t miss the panic that surely has to be as obvious on my face as badly applied blush. “Are you still willing to go through with this?”
Everything in me wants to shut down the computer, call this exercise a training run for the big day when I’m older and have more experience to really make a difference. But how can I let fear of getting skewered in the press stop me from helping Amanda? I can’t, especially when I can still hear her nurse’s bleak prognosis.
“Okay,” I say.
“You sure? Do you know what you’re agreeing to?”
I nod calmly, even if my hands are gripping my computer. “I fell. But I picked myself up. If companies can turn their mess-ups into triumphs, why can’t I remake myself?”
Like father, like daughter in true Chengian fashion, Grace ignores my question that she doesn’t want to answer. She breaks our gaze and busies herself with tidying the photographs, her papers around her, all her excuses for not answering
me. But then faintly, with her back to me, I think I overhear her asking herself, “Why not?”
My stomach growls. So I say, “You hungry for dinner?”
“Not really,” Grace says, but she follows me to the kitchen, where dinner is waiting in the refrigerator, another low-fat concoction of lean protein and vegetables. Our meal is a short, quiet affair with Grace taking three bites before pushing back from the table and saying, “I’ve got a deadline to meet.” But at the kitchen door, she pauses. “Do you work out in the morning?”
“Mostly in the afternoon.”
“Good, then I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
I narrow my eyes at her answer. But as Grace continues to the living room, with me following and watching while she gathers her Rude Q and A, I ask, “Wait, what about Japan?”
“Since my client—”
“The fat ass?”
“The one and the same,” Grace agrees with a slight smile. “Since he decided that it’d be more prudent to use a Japanese PR agency who understands the local market, my presence is no longer required in Tokyo. So I thought I might as well stay here for the week until your parents come home.” Slinging her briefcase over one shoulder and cradling Mochi under her other, Grace leaves for the guest wing, a place no original Cheng children have ever visited before.
“You’re staying?” I ask, stunned.
“Good night.” Without a backward glance, Grace disappears down the hall.
Upstairs in my bedroom, I reward myself, not with a victory dance but with my grandmother’s obituary that I read with my covers tucked around myself. In my first quick skim in the Viewridge library, I must have missed the last sentence. Po-Po’s memorial is in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Saturday. I sit up, my comforter falling off, wondering how the hell I’m going to get to Vancouver in two days when I’m still incommunicado with Age.
Ask. Grace. For. Help.
Again, those insistent, impossible words. Why is it easier to ask for Grace’s help when the beneficiary is Amanda, yet so painfully difficult to raise my hand for myself?
The dragons on my alcove bed, those divine signs of the emperor, stare back at me intently, the same way Bao-mu did when she lectured me: you need say, I deserve the best.
Well, I say, I deserve to know about this missing-link family. I deserve answers.
If I’m going to ask Grace to drive me to the funeral, then I’ve got some Rude Q and A to prepare tonight. Rolling to my side, I grab my manga-journal, where I left it on my bedside table, and touch the fu character on my bedpost for good measure. Tapping my pen on the otherwise empty page of my journal, I think about all the questions Grace may have when I tell her that I need to go to Vancouver. She might yes-but-no me, but guess what? I am going to yes-but-yes her back.
Only then do I begin to draw myself and Grace, side by side in Mama’s workout room, visualizing my success, which has Vancouver written all over it.
26
What was it that Robert Burns wrote, something about the best-laid plans going awry? Well, wouldn’t you know it, I’m in the middle of my all-time favorite dream come Friday morning, the one where I feel like a human hummingbird, hovering in the air above the mountains, the sun warm, but the air cool when the curtains around my bed are yanked open. One could call it a rude awakening.
“Rise and shine,” says Grace. She whirls around to flip open the blinds in my windows, but the only light that streams into my bedroom comes from the moon.
This is not how I pictured my negotiations with Grace to begin.
“God, Grace, what time is it?”
“Time to work out.” With her hair plaited in two braids down her back and in workout clothes, she looks like Pippi at boot camp. Great, now she’s taking a Grand Tour of my bedroom.
For a moment, I miss the old Grace who ignored me. But that thought is as fleeting as last night’s sleep, especially when I remember what this morning is: Victory in Vancouver. Yawning, I haul myself into a sitting position. It’s tiring to watch Grace flit around my room, checking the multitiered antique Chinese wedding basket next to my desk, the upholstered reading chair in the corner. She stops in front of the silver-plated frame of herself and Wayne on some vacation they must have taken together.
I pretend I’m not paying attention as I stretch in bed, wondering how pathetic I must look to her, harboring a picture of them when I’m sure no such photo of me sullies their bedrooms.
“This doesn’t feel like you” is Grace’s final judgment. Her hand sweeps my entire bedroom and its priceless contents, including the bonsai Mama has displayed on my desk.
Once, I would have thought, As if you know me. But Grace is right. My bedroom feels nothing like me. I crawl out of bed and lean against one of the posts to get my bearings. “I told the interior decorator that I couldn’t sleep in a bed that’s four hundred years old because every time I closed my eyes, I saw a village of people staring at me. Do you know what she said?”
Grace shakes her head.
“She said, ‘Nonsense! It would be aristocrats staring at you since this is an imperial piece.’ ”
“She did not.”
“Yeah, she did.” Shyly, we smile at each other, and I decide that it is definitely worth having my REM interrupted at five thirty in the morning for this very moment.
Half an hour into the workout, Grace isn’t Little Miss Rise and Shine anymore. I swear, her face is so red, feet pedaling and hands gripping the arms of the elliptical machine, I’m afraid she’s going to go into cardiac arrest, and my CPR training from my avalanche rescue class two years ago is just a tad rusty.
“Why don’t we cool down now?” I say.
“God,” she puffs. “How long do you usually go for?”
“About this long,” I tell her, sensing that she’s got enough Cheng competitive spirit to match me, minute for minute.
“Don’t lie to me.” Huff, huff. “Just tell me the truth.”
So I do. “Fifteen minutes longer.”
She groans.
“But you know,” I lean over to point at the warning label on her elliptical, “it says right there that you should consult a doctor before you begin an exercise program.”
“Yes, I am aware of that.” Huff, huff. “My new client is, after all, in the physical fitness business.” Grace looks at me accusingly while she pants. “You’re not even breathing hard.”
“I’m saving energy for weights.”
“Okay, done.” Grace presses the emergency stop button on the elliptical. As soon as she’s off, she bends over so that I can see every one of her vertebrae and her ribs through her thin top.
Skinny, I realize, isn’t the same thing as strong.
Me, I could stay on the treadmill for at least another thirty minutes, crank up the speed, I’m feeling that powerful this morning. That must be a sign to begin my negotiations. So I step off the treadmill and stretch beside Grace, crossing my right leg over my left, and reach for my toes.
“What are you doing next week?” I ask her nonchalantly, because according to The Ethan Cheng Way, you shouldn’t let the person on the other side of the negotiations know how much you want anything. With that small bit of knowledge, power shifts.
“You still want to go to Whistler, don’t you?” counters Grace unexpectedly. But then again, I should have known that the Master of the Rude Q and A would be good at guessing.
“Actually, I don’t,” I say, and cross my left leg over my right.
Grace arches an eyebrow at me, the kind of expression that says, I highly doubt you.
Surprisingly enough, it’s true. Somewhere between receiving that rejection e-mail from RhamiWare and visiting Children’s Hospital, I lost my burning need to go to Wicked in Whistler. I’d rather find out about Po-Po.
According to the Syrah Cheng Road Trip to Vancouver Rude Q and A, I should be prepared to answer why she should give up her precious working hours over the weekend to spend time on me.
Grace beats me to the punch.
“I’m working next week so I really can’t drive you five and a half hours each way to Whistler.”
“Can you drive me three hours to Vancouver instead? It’ll just be a weekend trip,” I say, and lie on my back. Bending my left leg, I place the ankle on my scarred knee and stretch my hamstrings. Grace doesn’t stretch, but sits next to me, knees drawn to her chin.
“What’s in Vancouver?” she asks.
My internal voice, the one I’ve squelched since it didn’t lead me away from Jared but to him, now gives an impatient tsk, unmistakably impatient as Bao-mu. This Rude Q and A may work for Grace, and The Ethan Cheng Way may work for Baba, but none of that is working for me.
Facing Grace, I tell her what I want. “I just found out that my grandmother passed away a couple of days ago in Vancouver. I have to go to her funeral Saturday.”
“Wait a second. Didn’t your grandmother die about ten years ago?”
“That was Mama’s adopted mother.”
Grace’s eyes widen, but other than that, her face doesn’t change. Finally, she asks, “Why isn’t your mom taking you?”
“That’s what I need to find out.”
Grace isn’t looking at me anymore, but out the window where the sunrise is slowly displacing darkness. Telling her what I want hasn’t been particularly effective. So I ask for what I need. “Can you drive me? It’s important.”
Grace stands up quickly, like she’s brushing crawling ants off her lap, and asks instead, “Are we going to do some weights?”
Disappointed, I nod, telling myself that I hadn’t really expected Grace to come through for me. Less than a day of civility does not a doting big sister make.
“So we should start on our big muscles first,” I say softly. “The ones that support us. How do lunges sound?”
“If it makes my butt tight like yours, okay,” says Grace.
How sad is it that the mention of my butt in the same sentence as the word “tight” works like a commercial break, interrupting my internal churning about having no way to get to Vancouver? This demonstrates two things: a little flattery can win me over, and Grace is a master of controlling conversation.