Girl Overboard

by Justina Chen

  Mama folds her arms over her chest and stares at me as if I’ve betrayed her. “Bao-mu told us where you were.”

  Bao-mu, Mama said, not Pi-Lan, her given name. Mama called her “substitute mother,” Bao-mu, the way I do. Hearing that nickname on Mama’s tongue makes me wonder whether Bao-mu was Mama’s surrogate mother, too? Is that why Bao-mu continued to take care of me long after she should have been enjoying her retirement?

  “I couldn’t believe it when Bao-mu said she was sure that you were here,” Mama continues. Accusingly, she says, “Marnie told her.”

  Of course, Bao-mu knew I’d find a way to Po-Po’s funeral. Instead of being mad at her, I can understand what she was trying to do: mastermind a reconciliation of sorts.

  However brilliant Bao-mu is, she doesn’t account for Auntie Yvonne undermining the peace process. In English, my aunt demands, “How come you’re so mad? You were the lucky one who got to live with the rich uncle. We visited your house after you got sent to the best boarding school in England. It was a mansion. You had servants. A cook. A driver. We barely had enough to eat one meal a day.”

  Auntie Marnie puts a warning hand on Yvonne’s arm. If I’m expecting Mama to stop this the way she does any heated argument or political debate at her parties—with a gentle well-placed, self-deprecating comment—I’m wrong. Dead wrong.

  Mama’s tone is seething. “Lucky?”

  “Stop, stop, this is all a misunderstanding,” says Auntie Marnie, tears welling up in her eyes.

  I’m expecting Baba to run the same interference with Mama, because, after all, Chengs do not show public demonstrations of emotions. Instead, he stands behind her, the way Mama stood behind Weipou in that family portrait. One big difference: Baba has her back in this battle. Mama looks lethal in her wealth, armed in her expensive tailored slacks, handmade sweater, and sunglasses swept on top of her glossy hair.

  “How can you deny it?” asks Yvonne hotly. “Marnie was sent to the country for five years. Me, I worked like a peasant for two years.” She lifts up her left hand and wiggles her ring finger, the one missing its tip. “I lost this threshing rice while you were enjoying Hong Kong.” Her hand with the decapitated finger gestures at Mama. “And look at you now.”

  “Bu yao qiao le,” I plead for them to stop. Glancing over my shoulder, I’m startled to see The Boys clustered behind my parents, transfixed by the sight of adults fighting. “Hai zi men zheng zai ting.” The children are listening.

  Only when Mama breathes in do I realize I’ve spoken absentmindedly in Mandarin, the language of the sisters she wants to deny. Not the Cantonese of her lonely childhood in Hong Kong. The funny thing is, no one other than I can speak both languages. Only now do I have an idea why Bao-mu insisted I learn Mandarin even after Mama forbade it. She must have thought I could bridge the Cheng-Leong gap one day. Sure, I can translate word-for-word what’s being said between these two enemy camps, but I don’t want to. The words, their implications, are that ugly. Besides, anger, hurt, and blame are a lingua franca we all understand, that don’t need any translation. All I have to do is look at The Boys, who are staring wide-eyed at the adults fighting worse than any children.

  Baba orders me sharply, “Go get your things.” When Grace approaches me, he snaps at her as though she’s a disobedient child, “I want to talk to you.”

  The last thing I want to do is leave Grace alone to face the wrath of Baba, but Marnie says, “Syrah, listen to your parents.”

  It’s a dismissal I don’t expect. Head down, embarrassed and angry, I hurry to Po-Po’s bedroom and gather my belongings. It doesn’t take long to roll my few clothes into tight cylinders, squeezing out the air the way Mama taught me so I minimize wrinkles, maximize space.

  “Are you okay?” asks Jocelyn from the bedroom door.

  I nod, glance around Po-Po’s room for any trace that I was here, and don’t find any. But then I see the scrapbooks, too big to fit in my backpack.

  “I know it’s a pain, but could you send me these?” I ask.

  “Of course,” Jocelyn says without hesitation.

  The immediacy of her answer undoes me. I throw myself into her arms, leaving no doubt that whatever our shared history, we are family. Love is a lingua franca, too.

  32

  When two funeral marches are broadcast back-to-back on a classical station, the meaning should be pretty obvious: play dead. Call me a slow learner or a girl with a death wish, but two hours of silence is about all I can take.

  So I ask my parents, “How long have you known they were in Vancouver?”

  There are no recriminations, no accusations, and definitely no answers. To say it’s silent in the car would be inaccurate. Instead, no one changes what they’re doing: Baba cycles through his voicemail while driving, Mama studies the latest Christie’s auction catalog, and me? I go back to staring out the window at the snowdrifts as if I haven’t spoken up at all.

  The music dum-dum-dums its way into my thick skull. What did I expect? Effusive explanations from the King of Control and his Queen of No Comment?

  According to the road sign, Whistler-Blackcomb, British Columbia, is just ahead. Five and half hours from Seattle, three from Vancouver, and at the start gate of my imagination ever since my parents bought Chalet Cheng. Now that I’m finally here, why do I want to lunge for the steering wheel and turn us back to Richmond?

  The windshield wipers sweep back and forth through the thick falling snow like they can’t decide which side they want to be on: Cheng, Leong? Richmond, Whistler? Mama, Po-Po?

  Highway 99 spills into Whistler Village, and instead of winding up the mountain to our chalet, Baba turns into the village and pulls up to the newest boutique hotel. A valet in a faux-fur-lined parka rushes to greet us, his feet leaving potholes in the new snow.

  “Why are we here?” My question may as well have been rhetorical, given the likelihood of either parent answering.

  Amazingly, Baba says mildly, “A quick meeting,” like there hasn’t been a two-hour stretch of silence in our car, or that he and Mama haven’t SWAT-team extracted me, a prisoner of war, out of the Leong enemy camp. News flash: this prisoner wants to go back.

  The urge to brag about Baba has Mama breaking her self-imposed code of silence, too. “Your father has to greet Nokia’s other directors who are here.”

  “So bringing me to Whistler really had nothing to do with me, did it?”

  My question is ignored, Baba too busy handing over keys to the valet and Mama too busy smiling and thanking the valet, who solicitously holds out his hand for her. The person who needs a helping hand isn’t Mama, or me, but Baba. As he approaches the front doors, he slips on a patch of salt-covered ice that still doesn’t provide enough traction. Immediately, Mama abandons her helpless female act, shakes off the valet as if he’s a cheap Old Navy jacket, and leaps over to Baba. Before I can reach him, Mama catches Baba’s arm so he doesn’t fall. She asks, “Are you okay?”

  “Fine, fine,” Baba says, shrugging off her concern. He drapes his arm back over Mama, back to being the one taking care of her. And that is how they walk inside the hotel, two against the world.

  The fireplace, the focal point in the lobby, is made of enormous boulders, like the spillage of an avalanche. The runoff point is where the Nokia people are gathered; you can tell, since they’re the only ones dressed in business attire, looking ridiculous in this lobby that could double for a fashion runway of Gore-Tex, there are so many girls in here. With three good hours of riding left in the day, they’re inside? What I would do to grab their gear and go.

  You could set the Big Apple’s New Year’s ball to the countdown taking place the moment the corporate suits spot my parents. Three, two, one! Happy billionaire, everyone!

  “Ethan! Betty!” shriek the wives, sounding every bit the middle-aged versions of The Six-Pack, as they cluster around Mama.

  Mama is in her element, all “Wonderful outfit” and “Where did you get that?”

  Over the h
ustle of business and bustle of shopping tips, I hear the one voice that makes my brain cells nosedive to the bottom of my heart. A group of snowboarders struts into the lobby, loud, raucous, jostling each other. But I don’t see any of them, not a single one except for Jared Johanson.

  Whoever said that time heals all wounds obviously hasn’t experienced fatal injuries. It’s been, what, over half a year since I last saw Jared, and there it is again, that fluttery feeling. I obviously suffer from short-term memory loss. For all my swagger in androgynous snowpants and all my hiding in baggy jeans and enormous sweatshirts, I’m still all girl. A girl who got stuck in whiteout conditions of my own making and ended up with such a bad case of emotional vertigo, I didn’t know which end was up.

  God, even now, I know what I see: an up-and-coming snowboard star with eyes the color of silver pine who is currently basking in the attention of adoring girls, otherwise known as pro hos. And I know what my inner ear is hearing, Bad news, stay away. Stay far away. So why is my heart strumming fast as a hummingbird’s? Why am I hoping that he’ll turn around and see me? Why do I want him to stride over to me, put his arms around me, and confide that he hasn’t been able to stop thinking of me, either?

  “Syrah!” calls Baba.

  Wistful thinking is more dangerous than beautiful snow crystals, because Jared turns around. Jared sees me. Jared starts to stride over to me.

  Cowardly me, I hide behind my parents’ coattails and slip with them into the VIP boardroom, glad when I’m inside.

  But as the door closes behind me, I catch and keep Jared’s gaze. As if Grace is coaching me, I spin my situation into its proper light. Don’t think of this as running away; think of this tactical retreat as my first inspection run, the slow cruise around the course before Race Day, when I’ll talk to him.

  With a click, the door shuts on Jared. I gather my strength, put my game face on, and smile at the executives gathered to fête Baba.

  33

  Chalet Cheng perches on one of the best vertical rise mountains in North America, above the older million-dollar townhouses and the new multimillion-dollar condos. Even though I’ve been here just once, I can navigate to our chalet blindfolded. On the left is the vast Italianate villa that looks out of place on this street of log mansions, on the right a metastasized bungalow. And secluded at the end of the road is Chalet Cheng, a timber-frame lodge set atop blue-green river rocks. Windows the size of minivans frame the sunrises over Wedge, Armchair, and Mount Currie on clear mornings. At night, Rainbow Mountain glows in the sunsets, earning the peak its name. I breathe out, feeling like I’ve made it home.

  Once inside, Mama and Baba head immediately to the library for a glass of wine. The only place I want to go is my bedroom, but I stop by the hand-peeled log of red cedar that runs from the bottom floor clear on up to the third, feeling dwarfed beside it. It’s the same feeling I get standing on top of a mountain: awestruck that I could possibly exist in a world this massive. The contractors spent three months looking for the right log, and were just in time to salvage this thousand-year-old tree from being turned into paper.

  I start up the staircase that bends around windows etched with totem figures. As I near the second floor, Baba walks into the entry and looks up at me.

  “We have a business dinner tonight,” he says. “A number of snowboarders will be there. You’re more than welcome to attend.”

  Visions of Jared dance in my head. I’m not ready to face him yet.

  “Thanks, but I’m really tired,” I say, and continue up the stairs, past the second floor, which is reserved for Wayne’s family. For a guy who barely acknowledges my mom, he certainly helps himself to the perks she provides, down to the perfect shade of green she picked because she knew it was his favorite color.

  But then again, I think as I drop my backpack in my own bedroom suite on the top floor, I never thanked Mama either after she spent a good two weeks poring over color swatches, fabric samples, and furniture designs to create my room.

  From my window seat, I watch as the last of the sun dips below the ridgeline, and Baba’s car pulls out of the driveway and disappears down the dark street.

  My cell phone rings, and for a brief, stupid second, I think Jared’s calling me. I dive into my backpack, scrambling for the phone, wondering what, if anything, I should say. By the time I grab the phone, reality sets in before caller ID does. Of course it couldn’t be Jared. Why would he call when he never did after my accident?

  “Syrah? It’s Lillian.” Her voice sounds unsure, not knowing whether she’s welcome to step over the decimal point that separates her from me.

  “Lillian? What’s up?”

  “Hey, I’m sorry I’m calling during your vacation, but I…”

  I know what it’s like not to have anyone to talk to. “Stop. What’s going on?” And then I guess, “Is Amanda okay?”

  “We had the baby—”

  “Oh, my God! Congratulations.”

  Lillian’s voice is a mishmash of emotions. “Zoe is absolutely yummy. You’ve got to see her. But… her tissue isn’t a match after all.”

  “Oh, no.” I drop back down to the window seat and clutch a pillow to my chest, a feeble shield against what I know this means.

  “You know this was a possibility all along and my parents didn’t want to do any in vitro testing and risk Zoe. So now… unless we find a bone marrow donor who matches Amanda, we’ll have to use the stem cells that the doctors harvested from her. It’s not ideal. Even Dr. Martin says so.”

  “There still isn’t anybody who matches her?”

  “Nope.”

  “God, this is so unfair,” I say. “So when’s the procedure?”

  “Two weeks, if everything goes as planned.”

  “Two weeks,” I repeat faintly. Inside, I’m thinking: no way, no way. There’s no way that I can pull off Ride for Our Lives in fourteen days. Aside from one lame Ask at Boarder Xing with Age, I haven’t done any others.

  As if she knows what’s going on in my mind, Lillian says, “You know, I didn’t call because I wanted or expected you to pull a Cheng-style miracle.”

  But those are the magic words. The Cheng name creates miracles, whether it’s securing a private premiere of Attila from Hollywood or snagging five million dollars in three phone calls the way Mama did for the Evergreen Fund.

  “We can do it,” I tell Lillian.

  She snorts, a little sound of disbelief that I’ve heard all my life from Wayne, the one that cuts down my dreams with a You just try, little girl. You know what? I’m tired of that snort.

  “Okay, there’s one thing you have to do,” I tell Lillian, more forcefully than I intend. Call me a hypocrite, but knowing that I’m going to have to talk to my parents about Ride for Our Lives makes me think twice. “Let your parents know what we’re planning, because we’ll need their support.”

  “I don’t know, Syrah. Even if we pull this off, it’s no guarantee that we’ll find a match.”

  “No,” I agree. “But don’t underestimate The Tao of Cheng.”

  When we hang up, I think about how Lillian and her family are confronting something they can’t control or fix, no matter what they do. Or how much money they have. My big angst today was being pulled away from Auntie Marnie and my family when the truth is, I can always return to them. As soon as I turn sixteen, I’ll get my driver’s license. My car is already waiting in the garage, even if I pretend the Mercedes sedan isn’t there because I don’t want anyone, especially The Six-Pack, to know.

  And this afternoon, I got all worked up just because I saw Jared, a boy who created a messy mogul field in my past. But here’s the thing: Jared can’t create a single bump in my future if I don’t want him to.

  34

  In the preface to The Ethan Cheng Way, Baba quotes from Sun-Tzu: “One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements.” I figure, considering Sun-Tzu’s Art of War has been in print for 2,500 years, there’s got to be a reason
why military strategists still study him.

  But before I figure out what I want to say to Jared, I’ve got more pressing business to attend to. After I send out a flurry of e-mails to potential sponsors—including RhamiWare and Boarder Xing—I get in touch with Meghan, Mama’s event planner extraordinaire, who volunteers to handle the event logistics, right down to finding contractors to erect the scaffolding for a ramp and install a rail for the event. For a disease that kills indiscriminately, cancer also unifies in the oddest way: Meghan’s best friend in high school died of the same leukemia that Amanda has.

  “You sure you can arrange this on such short notice?” I ask her.

  “Oh, sweetie, I’ve done much bigger events on much shorter notice,” Meghan says, laughing at my event planning naiveté. “You just figure out when and where, and I’ll have this baby running.”

  By the time I get off the phone with Meghan, it’s ten at night, and I’m feeling like Ride for Our Lives may actually happen. Chalk up one more lesson from The Ethan Cheng Way that is completely right: surround yourself with only the best people. Which means that it’s finally time to do some housecleaning in my personal life. Only then do I begin sketching out how I want my conversation—the one and only skirmish I want with Jared—to unfold. You could call this my manga version of Grace’s Rude Q and A.

  Figuring out his questions is the easy part. After all, I’ve been listening to them for the past half-year. So you over me yet? Can I meet your dad now? Did you honestly think that I liked you? The problem is, I don’t have answers to the harder questions, the ones I should have asked myself all along:

  Question: What was I looking for that I thought I’d found with Jared?

  Answer:

  Question: Why didn’t I say No?

  Answer:

  Question: What do I need from him now?