But I did not. Years back, in elementary school when the bullying had first begun, I had forced myself never to run, never to cower. Initially, it had been hard, and I’d still ended up running away in tears. But I learned to buoy myself up, to stanch the need to bolt. But all that anger was inflicted on me. Then internalized. I used to wonder about all that anger, where it all went. You can only take in so much. Somehow it has to come out, find release.
The boys edged closer to me now. I dropped my bag to the ground.
At the very second God created me, He must have blinked. And ever since, He’s been blinking a lot; every time something like this happens to me, I’m in one of His blinks.
I’m glad it was the librarian who walked in minutes later and not Naomi. She should never see what the librarian witnessed when she opened the door. Chairs overturned, tables pushed haphazardly to the side, books pulled off shelves onto the floor. Three boys, shirts disheveled, their hair ruffled, their anger unhinged, atop another whose face was hidden, pinned down. Again and again, fists raining down on him. One of them, Trey Logan, on top and straddling me, rabid with a tunnel-vision anger. “What kind of a Jet Li are you?” he yelled, his face beet red. “What the hell kind of a Jet Li are you?”
Naomi and I walked home in somber silence. The sky, spread above in a velvet expanse, darkened like a bloodying blister. Naomi occasionally glanced sideways at me. My wounds were mostly superficial, the nurse had said, and I was fortunate to not be any worse off. I was lucky, Mr. Marsworth had concurred from where he stood looking out the window, lucky I wasn’t hurt any worse. Those three were very bad boys. Mandatory Saturday detentions, he said, at least four weeks. He nodded his head as he said this, a rooster pulling at its wattle chin.
Truth is, they had no idea how bad it was for me. Under my clothes, my body was a hodgepodge of discolored patches of blue and purple. Every time I took a step and my backpack jiggled against my back, I felt a raw rub of pain sear up and down. My only consolation was The Punch—a solid connection that had landed square on Logan’s eyeball. I’d felt the taut liquid bulge of his eye give under my fist, felt his bony eye socket crack under my knuckles. Within minutes after The Punch, a huge welt had formed under his quickly blackening eye.
And one other thing: sometime during the melee, I made The Grab. It happened as I’d reached up to scratch his eyes out—I didn’t have a whole lot of options. But instead of finding his eyes, my fingers sank into his neck, hooking around a gold chain. I didn’t even remember ripping it off, but afterwards on my way to the infirmary I felt it snaked around my wrist. I slipped it into my rear jeans pocket. No way I was going to give it back to Logan. So between The Punch and The Grab, I didn’t think I’d made out so bad.
“Does it hurt when I do this?” Naomi suddenly asked, and just as suddenly she whipped back her arm and slap-punched me.
“Ouch! What the hell did you do that for?”
“So it does hurt!” she exclaimed, almost jubilant that her suspicions were confirmed.
“Well, I got hit, Naomi! I got gang-attacked. Of course it’s gonna hurt.” I rubbed my smarting arm. “They got punches in on me, you know.”
“Well, no, I don’t know, because somebody isn’t talking.”
“That’s only because…” I began, then I let my words drift into a sullen silence.
“You should have told me,” she said in a voice suddenly tender. We walked with the echo of those words strung between us. A flock of birds took off from a tree, stripping it of its fullness. They meandered indecisively before flying east, toward the hills. “How bad is it?” she asked softly.
I didn’t want to tell her the truth. I kept walking.
“I know you’re hurting,” she said. “You never carry your bag over your left shoulder. Your strides are usually longer, and you’re walking much slower. Xing, listen to me!” She stopped walking, forcing me to stop and turn to her.
“I’m all right, OK?”
But she was shaking her head. “What are you going to do?”
“What do you mean, ‘What are you going to do?’”
“Logan isn’t going to forget this. He’s gonna exact revenge.”
I started to walk. “I don’t think so. He’ll just let it go.”
“No way. That black eye you gave him is going to be a daily reminder to him of his utter humiliation. Every time he looks in the mirror and sees a black-eyed panda staring back, he’s gonna get stewed. You’re a marked man, Xing, you need to know that.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” I said, chest puffed out. “I’ve already proven I can take care of myself.”
She looked skeptical. “Someone like Logan will hold a grudge against you for months.”
She was right, but there was really nothing to be done. In a few weeks, if not days, Logan was going to drop me. It might be anywhere: in the cafeteria, in an empty bathroom at school, on the school bus. Somewhere, it was almost guaranteed, I was going to be felled with a punch to the stomach, a kick to the groin, a knuckle to the head. Logan would make sure I was physically marked this time—two black eyes, a few missing teeth, maybe even a slit earlobe. Anything to put the world on notice that he wasn’t going to take nothing from no one.
“I’ll be careful,” I said. It sounded unconvincing even in my own ears.
We reached the M15 bus stop for Ashland Mall. “Coming?” Naomi asked.
“Not today,” I answered. “Got some things I need to do.” She stared at me for a second or two. “Try to take a hot bath,” she said. “If you start to swell in places, apply some ice. If you can, try to get a few aspirins for the pain. Ibuprofens if you have them at home. For the swelling.”
I waited with her for the bus. The frigid air seemed ready to crackle and splinter. At one point, Naomi took out her winter hat. She tilted her head back, angling it at a slant so that her long hair fell straight down. With a quick swing of her head, she swished the hat on perfectly, her hair neatly caught and held under. She smiled at me, satisfied.
When the bus arrived, she waved a quick good-bye before stepping on. It lurched forward with a groan. Her routine was the same every day—after school, she took this bus to the mall and made her way to the food court. Her parents worked in the Panda House, slaving away in the small confines, the smell of kung pao chicken, spicy cashew chicken, and spring rolls seeping into their clothes, their hair, the deep grooves of their forehead wrinkles. Naomi stayed there every night, studying at one of the tables in the food court, her textbooks splayed about her. When things got busy, she sixth-sensed her parents’ need and made her way around the counter to help out until the swell of customers subsided. Then she’d get back to her books, picking up exactly where she’d left off.
When she first immigrated to America years ago, I’d been forced to tutor her, to help her with homework in the food court. Even back then, as peeved as I was having to teach—having to merely associate with—this little Chinese girl who spoke no English, I’d been amazed at her powers of concentration, the knitted brow, the tilted head. Only three years passed before the tables were turned, when the student not only surpassed the teacher but became the teacher.
I watched her bus turn the corner before I trudged home alone. But I had something. When she’d pulled on her wool hat, a faint whiff of her shampoo entered my nose. The fragrance would linger, seemingly for hours. All I had to do in the endless stretch of hours in my room was to inhale deeply, and I would smell the meadow fragrance—fainter with each passing hour but, I’d think, still there.
If you’ve never been inside a cold, dark abyss of gloom, then you’d have a hard time picturing my home. It was the only home I’d ever had in America, a ramshackle house surely in violation of at least a dozen housing codes. The heating was touch and go; there was a constant cold draft snaking through the house, and the pipes clicked and rattled constantly. It was always dark inside. This I never understood. It could have been Dante’s Inferno bright outside, but it’d still be dark inside, as if r
ays of light just wilted on contact with the walls and windows of this house. I’d be tempted to say this house was like a rusted-over empty birdcage, but that wouldn’t be true. This house had actual occupants. This bare, cold, sullen house. And ever since my father died, all the barer and colder.
I made my way up the staircase, each step creaking in time with my aching body. Into the dank bathroom, where I turned on the light switch. A sickly yellow fluorescent light urinated down on me. In the mirror, I saw blandness, the kind of face passed over in a crowd, the plainness of features that could drive a caricaturist out of business. My blah face, tight nose, earthworm lips, thin eyes (yes, OK, they were squinty, shut up already)—an impenetrable mask to all around. Years ago, I used to play with my features in this mirror, using my fingers to push down the angled tilt of the corner of my eyes, and picture myself with blond hair and blue eyes. In those moments, I fantasized that deep within me was a white boy on the fringe of freeing himself from the constricting bamboo chains. That one day my eyes would downturn themselves, ovalize, even turn blue.
The same eyes stared back at me now. Anger had taken root in them, festering over the years. They were darker now, cold as marbles. There were days I did not recognize them.
After a long shower, I sat on the edge of the bath basin, suddenly weak with fatigue. I hadn’t eaten much all day, and wave upon wave of hunger crashed upon me. And then, the smell of food. It wafted up from the kitchen downstairs, thick and luxurious, succulence slipping through the floorboards. I opened the door and stood cautiously. The sound of pots and pans clanging, of plates being set on the table.
An elderly woman was standing by the stove when I entered the kitchen, a threadbare cooking apron tied around her thin waist, tight as a straitjacket. It was Miss Durgenhoff, a boarder who’d arrived in nondescript fashion a few weeks ago. She’d settled in very quietly in the room next to mine, keeping mostly to herself, silent as a bat; she was the perfect unobtrusive tenant who settled into place without fanfare.
After my father’s death, money had become especially tight; my mother started renting out what had been his painting studio to tenants. Most were usually gone within a few months, loners, misplaced transients between nowhere and nowhere. Miss Durgenhoff was likely the same.
She shuffled from stove to table, her gnarled hands cupping the handles of a pot, plumes of steam swirling upwards. The table was laden with a feast, a banquet, a buffet.
“Ahh,” she said in a slightly phlegmy voice, “there you are.” She quickly smiled at me before turning back to the stove. Her glasses steamed up with condensation, hiding her eyes. “Thought I’d cook tonight for a change. And look, enough to feed an army. Want some?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” I replied, and already she was piling food onto my plate. For the next few minutes, I ate ravenously. The food melted richly over my tongue, then seemed to explode in rapture. I couldn’t seem to chew fast enough. Thick, oozing gravy draped itself over my tongue in a loving embrace, and when I swallowed, I felt the warm gravy hum all the way down to my stomach.
“It takes fifteen minutes for the stomach to tell you that it’s full.” She chuckled to herself. “You should stop eating for a while. Soon your stomach will go from telling you it’s empty to telling you it’s on the verge of exploding.”
“This food,” I said, chewing, “hits the spot just so.” I took a gulp from a pinkish fruit juice.
“I take it your mother doesn’t cook very often.”
“She comes home too late.” And I don’t have to eat and sit with her afterward, I thought but did not say.
“What do you do for dinner, then?”
“Oh,” I said, reaching for another helping of meatloaf, “I eat with my friend, Naomi, sometimes. Her parents work at the food court at a mall nearby, and I mooch off of them. I bring back food for those nights when I just eat here. Chinese food tastes good leftover, too.”
She tsked tsked me and shuffled over to the stove, where she filled a bowl with soup and brought it to me. “Have some of this; it’s good for you. It’ll help with the bruising.”
I kept on chewing, hiding my surprise. “How did you know I have bruises?”
“You live up to my age, and you learn to see past the surface stuff.” She saw the confusion on my face. “It’s the way you’re sitting, how you seem to be favoring different body postures. What was it, football practice?”
“No, I just fell down the steps.”
She shook her head. “You young people,” she said ambiguously, but her eyes were clear. She knew. After a moment, she smiled. “Come now,” she said, “the soup’s best when piping hot.”
The soup was a bitter concoction of what appeared to be chicken legs, sticky rice, hard radish, bamboo shoots, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and an unidentifiable spicy substance that serrated against my tongue like a splintered ruler.
“How is it?”
“It tastes like medicine.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Its medicinal side effects are quite renowned, to say nothing of its flavor.”
“So how long are you planning on staying here, Miss Durgenhoff?” I asked, putting the spoon down, completely satisfied.
She leaned back against the back of the chair. Her eyes stared out, moist with fatigue. She sighed and stood up slowly, her arms pushing up on the table. “Oooh. I fear I’ve been stationary for too long. Can’t let that happen at my age.”
“Let me help clean up.”
“No, no, I won’t have it. You’ll just get in the way. Go upstairs and do your homework.”
“I should help.”
“No, no. Just leave me be.”
I was almost out the kitchen when she asked me a question. A curious question.
“Do you know where the boy lives?”
“What boy?”
“The boy who hit you.”
She was washing the dishes, her back to me. She never stopped washing, never turned around.
“No, I—”
“OK, good night, Kris.”
I studied her for a few seconds, the steam from the hot water filling the room, clouding my vision. She disappeared in that gathering steam.
In the middle of the night, I awoke. I lay staring at the night outside, thinking, as I often did in bed, of my hometown in China. It was daytime there now: the streets overflowing with teeming crowds, the flow of bicycles, the honking of cars, the sun hot and smoldering. Children leaving school, chasing each other in the streets, stopping at a cart to buy a slice of watermelon from a hawker. I could see myself, the me that never left China. Always surrounded by friends, always laughing with abandon, always with a twinkle of confidence in my eyes. My skin a deep bronze from the burning sun, my hair tousled lightly in the warm breeze. I am smiling as I run home, shouting my farewells to friends, my voice unhinged in exuberance, unbridled in its own sureness. I am rushing home to the wondrous smells of home cooking, to the warm greetings of my mother, grandmother, of my father…
I pushed the blankets aside and stood at the window. Our car—husk-like under the garage light—sat in the driveway. I had not heard my mother return. Ever since my father’s death, she worked two jobs: at a massage parlor in a tiny strip mall during the day, and as a hospital janitor at night. She never spoke of her jobs. It wasn’t usually until past midnight that she returned; she no longer minded the fact that I was already in bed. We barely saw each other anymore, and we spoke even less, only on Sunday nights, and it was always the same damn thing. “Have you done all your homework?” she’d ask me, and then without waiting for an answer she’d monotone, “Education is everything.” Every Sunday night. Without fail.
Looking at my clothes lying discarded on the floor, I remembered something. I picked up my jeans and fished out Trey Logan’s gold chain that I’d snatched during the fight. On a small plate between links, the initials TL glimmered in the moonlight. There was a place for this, I decided. Taking down a painting from my wall, I located a wood pane
l in the wall. It was a small, L-shaped panel indistinguishable from its surroundings. I jarred it loose with my fingernails, as I had done countless times before. From behind the panel I removed a small pouch. It contained a slew of coins and petty cash I had picked up over the years. My “getaway” money. I threw Logan’s gold chain into the pouch.
I was about to go back to bed when I saw someone standing across the street. A dark shadow, stationary, barely noticeable. A flash of red color. Then it retreated into the shadows and whisked away so quickly that I wondered if I’d imagined the whole thing.
NIGHT
It isn’t the first time Justin Dorsey has snuck out at night to meet Susan, but it is the first time she stands him up.
Every night for the past two weeks he has met her by the lake. She is always there first, eyes shimmering with anticipation, her hair freshly shampooed and smelling nice. And she can always be counted on to bring everything: the snacks, the drinks, the blankets. He understands her excitement. He’s a catch, a high school sports stud and academic star, and her stock will only rise if word gets out.
Justin intends to keep these trysts a secret. He can do so much better than Susan, truth be told, but she’s just a quick filler for him while his girlfriend is away in Paris on a high school exchange program. He has needs, after all, an overpowering urge that surprises even him at times.
If you love me, you’ll keep this a secret. That’s what he’d planned to tell Susan tonight. Except she’s a no show. He waits fifteen minutes before heading back, miffed.
Well, he thinks to himself as he walks back, there’s a first time for everything in life.
Another first is awaiting him that night.
He can hardly have known this as he approaches the walkover. He hates this walkover, filthy as it is, but he has to take it every time. It’s the only way to cross Route 82. It is nothing but a thin strip of corrugated metal and tired concrete arching over the highway, mostly forgotten, barely used.
Crossing Page 2