by Justina Chen
“There’s a catch,” he says.
There always is with Ethan Cheng. But I know that I’m about to learn an important business lesson. I’m game.
“You need to solicit the same amount from other donors,” says Baba as he flips the page in his newspaper.
How am I supposed to drum up another million dollars? I slump to the back of my chair, but then I know. The answer is staring me straight in the face. Betty Yu Leong Cheng, the woman at Baba’s side. Raising a mere million dollars is nothing for my mother, who has been known to raise a heck of a lot more than that for the Evergreen Fund in just three phone calls.
“According to The Ethan Cheng Way, always learn from the best,” I tell Mama now. “Can you help me with the pitch? You are the rainmaker.”
Mama swallows another dainty bite and points her spoon at me. “You mean, a snowmaker.”
“What?”
“Excuse me,” she corrects me automatically. “I secured a few snowmakers. At no cost.”
“Mama, you’re amazing!”
The way Mama claps her hands together, grinning, she looks like a little girl who has just been told that she’s a beloved treasure. Maybe that’s all we need. Not fame and fortune for endorsing products, whether it’s a cell phone or a snowboard. But to be endorsed unconditionally by the ones we love most in the world.
“So, if I were you,” begins Mama, pausing for another bite, “I would start with the Dillingers. They’re good for at least a hundred thousand.”
“Mama!” I’m shocked that she’s talking about fundraising in such a crass un-Betty-Cheng like way. But this isn’t business; it isn’t even pleasure. It’s about Amanda and all the other kids who are waiting for a donor to give them their chance to live. So I ask, “Who else do you think I should hit up?”
“You two are dangerous together. I can just see it,” says Baba, shaking his head fondly at us. “This is going to be the most effective fundraising campaign the National Bone Marrow Registry has ever had.”
“How can you say that?” I ask.
“Your great-grandfather was part of the group who came to the Gold Mountain to build the railroad,” says Baba, lowering the business section to the table. “A few years after those men built the railroad, which radically changed commerce and transportation, they were excluded from America.” His voice may sound even-keeled, but I sense the outrage behind his words. “You just never know when your luck will change. So you don’t have to be the best or the smartest or the richest person in the room, but you have to be the hardest worker. Never giving up is how you make your own luck.”
“Surviving,” I say.
“Survival,” corrects Baba. That word rings with the same steel as the railroad tracks that my great-grandfather must have hammered. Survival—I wonder if that’s what propelled Baba through his career. That need to work himself to the top. Or was it to prove that he was more than the grandson of a manual laborer? “It’s why we named you Syrah.”
“What? I don’t get it.”
“The syrah grape grows in France’s Rhone River valley, where it has to endure intense summers and then the winter wind, the mistral,” explains Baba.
“It’s a survivor,” says Mama.
A survivor like my mother, who thrived despite Weipou’s best efforts to starve her spirit, and like my father, who eked a legacy out of nothing to honor his own manual-laboring grandfather.
“Remind me to tell Lena that the guest quarters need to be prepared for the Leongs.” Mama raises her eyebrows when I drop my spoon and Baba coughs. She demands, “What?”
“Excuse me,” I correct her with a smile, “but since when are the Leongs visiting?”
“Since I invited them to Ride for Our Lives.” Unconsciously, Mama runs her jade pendant back and forth on the gold chain, so that the crane runs amok, uncertain which way to fly. “It’s just one night.”
“Thank you,” I tell Mama, swinging around to their side of the table to hug her first, and then Baba. “These are the best birthday presents ever.”
When I settle down in my seat again to finish my now-cold oatmeal, Baba shakes out his newspaper, Mama goes back to reading about the next Tang horse on her acquisitions list, and me? I savor the traces of their loving smiles as they glance at me when they think I’m not looking.
41
Muscle memory is the only thing that gets most students and teachers through the first day of school after a long break. In my first period English class, I learn that lethargic brains are to homework what atrophied hamstring muscles are to exercise. Now, me, on the other hand, my brain has worked through my vacation, all pistons whirring as I try to keep track of everything that needs to be checked on and checked off before Ride for Our Lives. With only six days left before the Big Day on Sunday, I have zero seconds to spare.
My hand shoots up the moment Mr. Delbene asks in journalism, “During our long vacation, I hope that some of you spent a few minutes thinking about our newspaper. Anyone with a new idea?”
In the back of the room, Chelsea mutters, “What is she? The Lillian Fujimoro clone?”
Why bother responding when I don’t really care what Chelsea thinks and I’d rather focus my energy on what’s important: Lillian.
“I think we should publish a special edition newspaper to galvanize”—love that word!—“support for Lillian.”
“Why?” asks George, looking around and only now noticing she’s missing. “Where is she?”
“With her sister in the hospital.”
“Yeah, probably throwing another party,” Chelsea snipes.
“Actually,” I say, “her little sister needs a bone marrow match if she wants to beat her leukemia.”
“I had no idea,” says Mr. Delbene.
All is quiet on the Chelsea front. Instead, her mouth is open, guilt-stricken into silence. So she had no idea either, even though her mom was the one to hook the Fujimoros up with the best pediatric oncologist in town. If her mom hasn’t communicated this to Chelsea, chances are something is broken in the Dillinger home, and Chelsea, as much as I don’t want to admit it, might be another girl who’s slipped overboard without anyone noticing, too.
“So what’s your proposal?” asks Mr. Delbene, who’s rocking up and down on his feet the way he does when he’s excited.
That’s my opening to tell everybody about Ride for Our Lives and then show them the copies of my first-ever manga column.
“So what if we distributed this via e-mail to everyone in school and ask them to forward it? Through a little viral distribution, we might just reach someone, somewhere, who’ll be the perfect match for Amanda. What do you think?” I ask, growing more and more uncertain as I wait, wait, wait for people’s reactions.
Finally, George says, “This is brilliant.” And then, as if this were his idea in the first place, he says, “Blog meets service learning. You know, most kids our age don’t read the newspaper.”
If I’ve ever doubted The Ethan Cheng Way, I don’t anymore, not when I now have conclusive proof that Baba is right yet again. See, according to him, visionaries are so ahead of their time that they often get vilified for their forward thinking. It takes people a little time to come around, but they usually do.
“Manga meets service learning meets social commentary,” I correct.
“Right, that’s right!” says George, nodding as if I’m the one who’s finally catching on.
After class, Mr. Delbene asks me to stay behind. While I wait for him to speak, he tacks my manga-column on the bulletin board and reads the working title, “ ‘A Fine Whine,’ huh? Not The Syrah Cheng Way?”
“Nope, that’s been done before.”
He nods as though he understands that sometimes we have to step off the well-grooved tracks and find our own route, however bumpy it is. “I can’t wait to see what you come up with next.”
That makes two of us, Mr. Delbene. I can’t wait to see what I come up with next, either.
42
Tell me that I woke up
this morning on the set for a new horror movie, The Night of the Living Leongs, because surely zombies have replaced that entire branch of my family. The Boys standing outside The House of Cheng have their mouths shut, hair slicked down, and shirts tucked in, and in no way do they resemble The Boys of Richmond. My aunties and uncles file inside, dumbstruck tourists visiting a five-star haunted hotel, half-expecting that they’ll be picked off one-by-one. Even Mama, she of the perfect quip for every social situation, is uttering monosyllabic replies, like her conversational talents have been vaporized.
So it’s up to me to be the convivial host-slash-translator-slash-tour guide.
“Come in,” I welcome everyone, and lead the Leongs to the living room, where dim sum stations are set up. “You must be starving.”
One of The Boys whispers, “Our whole house fits in this room.”
“Yeah, a kid came in here about a year ago and he was never seen again,” I whisper back, loud enough for the rest of The Boys to hear.
That seems to loosen them up; at least it gets a round of “nuh-uh” going among The Boys.
Kids down, adults to go. They’re standing around, gawking. Not that I blame them. It’s not every day that you step into a house that has more precious Asian art than most museums. Even Jocelyn looks subdued, and I start to worry that maybe she hadn’t been envious of me back in Richmond because she had no benchmark, no conception of what billions look like. But then she intercepts my SOS and says, “Auntie Marnie, the present.”
With that prompt, Auntie Marnie’s natural bossiness asserts itself. “Yu,” she says in an authoritative voice. “Mama wanted you to have this.” From her cavernous purse, zipper broken and marred with a faint blue ink mark, Marnie withdraws a yellow silk envelope, snapped shut. She urges it on Mama, who simply holds it gingerly in her hand as if it’s a small-scale version of Pandora’s box that she’s loath to open. Well, that just irks Auntie Marnie, who commands, “Open it.”
With shaking fingers, Mama pulls out an apple-green jade bracelet. Even to my untrained jewelry-appraising eyes, I can tell that it’s hardly as valuable as the piece Mama wears around her neck. So many conflicting emotions must be running through Mama that I wouldn’t be surprised if she dismissed the gift, but slowly, with everyone watching, Mama works the bracelet, carved out of solid jade, over her left hand. At last, it slips over the birdlike bones of her wrist, and when it does, everyone smiles.
“Perfect,” pronounces Auntie Marnie.
At that moment, Baba walks in, briefcase in hand, unaware that the Leongs, even The Boys, are staring at him with starstruck awe: the great Ethan Cheng, the man whose face has graced sixty-two magazine covers, is standing right here with them. His eyes are only for Mama. When he reaches her side, she looks up at him and smiles tremulously, holding up her tiny wrist. “Look, Ethan, look at what my mother left me.”
“It’s beautiful,” Baba tells her, and then greets the Leongs as if they were his family, too.
In the middle of the introductions, from across the room, comes a loud crash followed by an equally loud chorus of “Oh, no!” The Boys are standing amid a fallen bonsai and its shattered pot, mouths agape with horror at what they’ve done.
“Aiya!” cries Auntie Marnie, rushing to them as she simultaneously launches into a tirade of Mandarin, scolding The Boys for being so clumsy.
“It’s okay,” I tell Auntie Marnie, even though I’m panicking inside: Oh, no, they destroyed one of Mama’s perfect, precious bonsai. Mama is staring, staring, staring at the tiny pine tree, lying like roadkill, thrown feet away from the broken porcelain.
Auntie Marnie first tells the boys to stand back and then continues her chastising in Mandarin, “Didn’t I tell you to be careful here? Aaaah, you boys are like ants on a hill, running up and down all day long. Now look what you’ve done.”
“It was an accident,” says Mama, interpreting Auntie Marnie’s Mandarin correctly. “Just an accident. It can be replaced. Really,” she says slowly, “nothing important was broken.”
As relieved as The Boys look at that, Auntie Marnie is still glaring at them, so I don’t hear a single protesting peep from them when I suggest that they follow me downstairs pronto. After I leave them in the theater, bouncing up and down on the couches as they watch a cartoon with Jocelyn, I return back upstairs to find Auntie Marnie still lamenting over the bonsai.
Just as I’m about to tell her to forget about it, Baba stops me with a gentle hand on my arm. Only then do I see the miracle unfolding within The House of Cheng: this broken vessel is mending our fragmented family.
“What a waste,” sighs Auntie Marnie, her hand full of jagged pieces of pottery that she’s salvaged from the floor.
“The pot was too small anyway,” says Mama, taking the shards from her. “No, no, what’s going to waste is all this food.” And then in halting Mandarin, Mama asks, “Chi bao le ma?”
It’s a greeting, a new start in our family history. “Let’s eat,” I agree, following Mama’s lead, as we urge plates on my relatives, on Baba, and finally on each other.
43
On Sunday, the morning of the event, Mama and I set a world record for female preparedness in the Cheng household. Mama has us on a timer; I’m not kidding. Seventeen minutes is all she allots for us to breakfast, shower, and steal into the car, all without waking up any of our extended family. Like conspirators, we’re giggling as Mama reverses out of the garage, looking like a teenager in her pigtails and après-ski outfit. My new red jacket—the result of the “You need to wear bright colors on TV” pronouncement by Auntie Marnie, which was seconded by Mama—is not for the fashion shy.
“We did it,” I say, and pull out the minute-by-minute program we created with Meghan a week ago. “I was sure one of The Boys would wake up.”
“You wore them out yesterday.”
“Our toys wore them out.” For once, I don’t feel guilty about our largesse, not when I can share it with the people I love.
Niceties dispensed with, we get down to business for the rest of the drive over to DiaComm. It’s still so dark, I need to use the mini flashlight Mama packed for this purpose. The lake we’re crossing over on the 520 bridge is flat black.
“I can’t believe today’s the event,” I tell Mama.
“You’ve been working nonstop. How’re you feeling about your speech?”
“Like I’m going to throw up.” Last night, Grace casually mentioned that my appeal for bone marrow donors would be broadcast to thirty million viewers worldwide over ESPN, and as she said, “That’s not counting the pickup on the news… if you give a good enough sound byte.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Mama says, as if I’ll be speaking at more of these fundraisers in the future.
We arrive to a DiaComm that has undergone a miraculous transformation, from parking lot to Snow Park. No sooner does Mama get out of the car than she marches to the snow blowers. Apparently, the shape of the snow is not quite up to Cheng standards.
“Shouldn’t this be smoother?” she asks, pointing a dainty finger at a lump.
A thin guy with a goatee takes his shovel and whacks down the offending bump.
“Is your mom always like this?” he asks me when Mama moves off to meet with the vendor who’ll be selling Ride for Our Lives T-shirts, proceeds benefiting the bone marrow registry.
“Like what?”
His bushy eyebrows lift meaningfully before he attacks another bump. In a way, I’m no different from Christine, who denounced Bao-mu publicly during the Cultural Revolution. Haven’t I put down Mama whenever I could, whether it’s in my head or in my journal? Written her off as a socialite fluffhead? Haven’t I been denouncing Mama, figuring if I couldn’t have her, I didn’t want to be like her at all?
For the first time that I can remember, I defend Betty Cheng, socialite, philanthropist, adopted daughter, reunited sister, and beloved mother: “Yeah, she’s always on top of everything. Isn’t she amazing?”
Three hours before
the event starts, the pro riders begin arriving to practice. It’s a who’s who of snowboard superstars, both guys and girls who are regulars in all the riding magazines. Some are Olympic medalists, others are video stars. Whatever career track they’re on, the snowboarders here are at the top of their games.
Surrounded as I am by these celebs, the only person I’m focused on is Lillian. She looks nervous and hopeful and afraid, just the way I felt on the way to Vancouver, desperately wanting the Leongs to accept me but unsure whether they would.
“This is so much bigger than I thought it was going to be.” Lillian gestures to the stands that are already congested, the VIP tent for the corporate sponsors, the pro snowboarders milling in the staging area around the ramp, the booths for Children’s Hospital and the vendors, and the tent housing the National Bone Marrow Registry. “I can’t believe you pulled this all off.”
“We haven’t yet,” I correct her. What counts isn’t the pomp, but the results. Will people, especially minorities, register their bone marrow?
“Are you kidding me?” Lillian’s about to go on, but she looks over my shoulder, mouth widening, as she gawks, not at the snowboarders, but at all the press, the celebrities of journalism who’ve turned out. The business press is hovering around Baba, ready to capture every business bon mot springing out of his mouth.
Then, grinning at Lillian, I hand her a press pass. “Have fun hanging out with the big boys.”
“You Chengs are amazing.” She slips the long cord over her head and looks at her badge, hanging like a medal on her chest. “It’s so official.” Throwing her arms around me, Lillian says, “Thank you.”
I know she’s thanking me for more than the press pass, and instead of demurring with an “It’s nothing,” I hug her back with a “You are so welcome,” and honor my own hard work to pull off Ride for Our Lives. Then I tell Lillian about the editor of Snowboarder who tracked me down earlier, not exactly groveling, but definitely apologetic for writing about how rich dilettantes like myself were hazards on the slopes.