Three Keys

by Kelly Yang

“Wow, look at all these!” he exclaimed. I grinned as he picked each and every bottle and jar up, opened them, and put them to his nose, like my mom did at the perfume counter at JCPenney. “So what do you want to make?” he asked. “How about something simple, like scrambled eggs?”

  “I know how to make scrambled eggs,” I said. “You just throw the egg in the pan, and then done.”

  Jason held up a finger. “Wrong. Not done,” he said with a smile. He moved my mother’s wok and reached for the flat skillet. It was fun watching him in his element, grabbing an egg from the fridge and cracking it into a bowl with one hand. I thought about what he’d said during the Kids for Kids club earlier in the week, about how the other kids in his class made fun of him. If only they could see him now.

  As Jason stirred the egg, I lifted my hands and said, “Eggplant!”

  Jason looked confused as I pretend clicked with my finger. “Eggplant?” he asked. “You want to put eggplant in your scrambled eggs?”

  I chuckled and shook my head. “It’s just something my mom and I say … or used to,” I said, my face falling a little.

  Jason grabbed a pair of chopsticks and started mixing up the egg. For a kid who was born and bred in America, he sure knew how to use chopsticks. My dad would be so impressed. When it came time to pour the egg mixture into the skillet, Jason reached for the cooking oil.

  “No.” I reached out to stop him, pointing instead to the small bowl just to the left of the stove. “Here, use this! It’s leftover from last night.”

  “Ew!” said Jason, making a face. “How poor are you guys?”

  I immediately looked away, kicking myself for inviting him here. He could be so mean. Just as I grabbed my dad’s leftover oil and was about to pour it down the drain, Jason gently pried the bowl from my hand.

  “Sorry,” Jason said. He held the oil up to his nose and sniffed it. “Actually, it probably tastes pretty good, you know, because it’s been infused with dinner and breakfast.”

  I looked up at him, surprised, as he poured the oil and the egg mixture into the pan.

  “Now comes the magic!” Jason announced.

  He reached for the spatula and started stirring like mad. He stirred every inch of the egg mixture continuously. In another minute Jason held up a taste for me on the spatula: creamy scrambled eggs that melted on my tongue.

  “Mmmmmm,” I said, closing my eyes. “You really should be a chef.”

  “Thanks!” He beamed. “I’ve been thinking of asking my parents if I can go to this cooking class in Irvine on the weekends. It’s at the Orange County Kids Culinary Academy. I’ve been wanting to go there forever.”

  “You should totally do it!” I encouraged him. Jason’s parents could definitely afford a fancy cooking school.

  When we were done washing and putting all the dishes away, we went back over to the front office, where we sat in the late afternoon sun and flipped through yesterday’s paper. I was reading the Letters to the Editor section while Jason scanned the Food section. A lot of the letters were about immigrants. People wrote in complaining that they took away their jobs. I wanted to say to these people: How could they take away your jobs when they can’t even get hired as dishwashers?

  I flipped the page and an article caught my eye.

  “Hey, look at this!” I said to Jason, pointing. “There’s a big march next month in downtown LA to protest Proposition 187. We should go!”

  “No way.” Jason frowned. “I’m not going to some crazy march.” He gave me a serious look and added, “And neither should you. There’ll probably be a bunch of racist people there, booing you. Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t care about them.”

  Jason shook his head at me, as if to say, Well, you should.

  “This is serious, Jason. Kids might not be allowed to go to school if Prop 187 gets passed!”

  “Yeah, but that’s not going to happen to us.”

  I thought back to what my dad had said to his immigrant friends at Buffet Paradise. “We’re all in the same boat.”

  “I’m not. Maybe you and Lupe are, but I was born here.”

  Sometimes, when Jason said stuff like that, I wanted to whack him upside the head with his own frying pan.

  “You’re still not white,” I reminded him. Had he forgotten all the things he’d said in Kids for Kids about being the only Chinese boy in his class? Because I hadn’t.

  Jason fell quiet, his fingers wrinkling the newspaper. The Friday rush hour traffic hummed outside as cars sped down Coast Boulevard. Jason muttered, “I see your point.”

  I looked over at him as the phone system beeped. The screen showed it was my mom calling from room 14—she needed me to bring her some stain remover and tape. I said sure, grabbed the Scotch tape, and ran out the back to the laundry room for the stain remover. Jason followed me.

  We found my mom bent over room 14’s bathroom sink, a bedsheet in her hands. A red wine stain—those were the worst.

  “One of these days I’m going to rub my fingers raw,” she muttered under her breath as she frantically scrubbed.

  It was useless. The redness just kept spreading. She squirted the stain remover, but the dark wine clung stubbornly to the fabric threads, as if to stick out its maroon tongue and say, “Nah-nah nah-nah-nah.”

  “Give me the tape.” Mom held out her hand.

  But that didn’t work either. Frustrated, she dropped the sheet on the floor and crouched beside it, like she was praying to the laundry gods.

  Then out of nowhere, Jason suggested, “You could try milk!”

  My mom gave him a funny look.

  “I just remembered, I saw Lupe’s mom do that once. When she used to clean for us,” Jason explained. “She soaked a stain like that in milk.”

  Wait, what? Lupe’s mom used to clean for the Yaos? Lupe never told me that!

  My mom jumped up. “It’s worth a shot. These sheets are brand new. We can’t afford to throw them out. I’m going to the store right now—I’ll be back in fifteen minutes!”

  Halfway to the door, though, she paused. I remembered at the same moment: My dad was still at the Home Depot. We only had one car.

  “A second car would be helpful at a time like this!” my mom muttered, shaking her head.

  “Maybe Hank could take you,” I suggested. “He’s out by the pool, working on our bank loan applications.”

  “Good idea!” she said, and ran out.

  Jason and I sat down on room 14’s bed.

  “I didn’t know Lupe’s mom used to clean for you guys,” I said.

  Jason shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

  All sorts of questions sprouted in my mind. When? For how long? Why did it stop? Why didn’t either of you ever say anything about this before? I didn’t know which to ask first.

  “She was a good cook,” he went on. “Lupe and I used to watch her in the kitchen. My mom said her food was too spicy, but I liked it.”

  “Lupe would come with her mom?” My head was exploding. Lupe couldn’t stand Jason. Why would she want to be at his house?

  “Oh, yeah, all the time,” Jason said. A nostalgic look crossed his face.

  “Did … something happen?” I knew I was prying, but I couldn’t help it.

  He shrugged. Instead of answering me, he picked up a pillow from the bed. A mischievous smile appeared. “You know what I’ve always wanted to do in these rooms but my dad never let me?” Before I could answer, he hit me with the pillow.

  “Hey!” I said. I wasn’t going to let him get away with that. I picked up the other pillow and hit him back. Jason laughed.

  We jumped on the bed and started having a pillow fight, laughing and screaming. Tiny little feathers leaked out of the pillows and fell around the room like snowflakes. They didn’t seem like a big deal until it was too late—before I knew it, the feathers were everywhere.

  “Oh, no!” I leaped off the bed and dropped to my knees, trying to pick up as many as I could. They were prickly little
things, with tiny little sticks that poked my fingers.

  Jason kept jumping, completely oblivious to the mess.

  “You have to help me!” I shouted. “Get the vacuum cleaner!”

  Finally, Jason hopped down. He was about to plug in the vacuum when I waved my hands and shouted, “WAIT!”

  Our vacuum cleaner, much like our washing machine, was very old. I didn’t know if it could handle a thousand spiky feathers poking it from the inside. And if it broke, would we have enough money to buy another one?

  “Let’s just pick them up with our hands,” I said.

  Jason made a face. “With our hands?”

  I continued gathering them, one by one. Reluctantly, Jason joined me. He groaned and sighed as we picked. They were stubborn little critters. Whenever I put one in my palm, another one jumped off.

  As we were kneeling and picking, the door opened. I looked up, expecting to see my mom back from the store, but instead I saw Mrs. Yao. She gasped at the sight of her son on the floor.

  “What are you doing?” she yelped. “Get up!”

  “We’re just cleaning,” I explained, but Mrs. Yao’s porcelain skin had turned the same shade as the sheet stain. She looked like she wanted to grab Jason and strangle me.

  “I didn’t let him come over so he can be the maid!” she snapped. I felt my ears boil. Before I could say anything else, she turned to Jason. “Get in the car!”

  As he walked out, Jason put the feathers he’d gathered in my hand. I stood very, very still, feeling the soft feathers in my palm, their ends like sharp, tiny knives.

  In the days leading up to October, a dark cloud settled over the state of California. Hank and I sat in the manager’s quarters every evening, watching the news.

  “Whether or not Prop 187 wins Wilson the election, one thing is clear,” the newscaster said one night. “There has been an increase in hate crimes. In downtown Los Angeles, a Hispanic woman was shopping, and the store clerk refused to take her Visa card, saying it was probably a fake.”

  I shook my head, wanting to cover not just my ears but the ears of every other member of Kids for Kids. I hoped they weren’t watching this.

  “And in Northridge, a Latino man was asked to sit at the back of the bus,” the newscaster went on. “This comes as a customer at a home improvement store was harassed by security guards in the parking lot, who threatened him with a baton.”

  I gasped, gooseflesh spidering up my arms as I thought about Lupe’s mom and what might happen to her if she got caught trying to come back. She was still in Mexico, trying to find a coyote, which Lupe said wasn’t a real coyote but a person who could lead her back through the desert and into the United States.

  Hank switched off the TV. We sat in silence, listening to the hum of the refrigerator.

  “I don’t know about you, but I intend to volunteer at the ACLU on my day off,” Hank said.

  I nodded, thinking that was a good idea. I knew from reading the newspapers that the American Civil Liberties Union was a nonprofit organization that helped protect the rights and freedoms of people living in the US. I gazed out the window at the Calivista sign. “Hey, will you help me put something up on the sign?” I asked him.

  “Sure.”

  Hank went out back to get the ladder as I chose the letters I wanted. As he climbed, I asked him to add two more words underneath CALIVISTA MOTEL and AS SEEN ON TV:

  IMMIGRANTS WELCOME.

  I thought about our new sign in class the next day. They were two little words, but seeing them lit up in the night had felt good.

  Mrs. Welch passed back our essays. This time I got a B−. Still not great, but an improvement.

  “What’d you get, Mia the maid?” Bethany Brett asked. Ugh. Ever since the article came out, she’d been calling me that.

  “None of your business,” I replied, quickly turning my paper over.

  “Not like it matters. You don’t need good grades for taking out the trash, right?” She laughed.

  I was about to tell her off, when I thought, Forget it. I didn’t want another cleaning session with Mrs. Fancy Degree.

  My mom was in the manager’s quarters putting away some keys when I got back.

  “Was it your idea to put up that new message on the sign?” she asked, pointing out the window.

  I nodded. “You like it?”

  “I do,” she said. I smiled.

  I asked her if she had heard anything else from the credit card company. I’d been checking the mail every day since I sent them my letter. But her face fell and she said no.

  To cheer her up, my dad suggested that she go out after the last room had been cleaned. “Take the night off,” he said.

  “You sure?” my mom asked.

  She looked over at me, but my eyes were on the TV, where another Wilson ad was playing. Gunshots fired in the background and the scary voice announced, “Pete Wilson has the courage to say enough is enough!”

  I clicked the TV off and jumped to my feet. “Can I come too?” I asked.

  My mom nodded and walked over to the phone to call her friends that she’d made at the mall.

  I groaned. “Why do we have to go with them?” I asked. “Can’t we go with Auntie Ling or someone?”

  “Auntie Ling’s still working at the restaurant,” my mom said as she dialed the number. “Besides, they’re fine!”

  Mrs. Zhou, Mrs. Li, and Mrs. Fang agreed to meet us at the mall. Carefully, Mom applied lipstick in front of the mirror. She always put on makeup when she went to the mall. Even before she could afford to buy lipstick at Walgreens, she’d cut open a beet and apply the juice to her lips.

  In the car, I kept glancing over at her. She’d put on a little too much lipstick, and with her bouncy curls, she looked kind of like Ronald McDonald. Still, it was nice to see her so happy. When we got to the mall, she seemed downright thrilled to see her friends.

  “Lao ban niang!” the friends greeted her, which translated to “wife of a boss” in Chinese. My mother blushed. I wondered if her new friends knew that she wasn’t just a sit-there-and-do-nothing lao ban niang like Mrs. Yao. My mom had just cleaned two dozen rooms with her bare hands.

  At the thought of Mrs. Yao, I drew a sharp breath. I thought of the way she looked at me the other day when she yanked Jason out of the motel room. Or a year ago, when she saw me and my mom here in this very mall. I poked my mother, wondering if she still remembered that. “Hey, do you remember how we used to come here carrying fake shopping bags?”

  I said it in a warm and proud way. We’d come so far from the days when we used to walk around the mall carrying department store bags—that we filled with toilet paper to look like they were full of stuff we’d bought. But my mom’s face flushed a deep red.

  “What do you mean, fake shopping bags?” Mrs. Zhou asked.

  Uh-oh. Did I say something I wasn’t supposed to? “I mean, the bags were real.…” I muttered, trying to walk it back. “There just wasn’t … you know, stuff inside.”

  My mom’s new friends stared at us like we were moldy old dishrags. Quickly, Mom muttered an excuse about how we had to get home and rushed me out of the store.

  In the car, she didn’t say a word. I kept peering over at her, hoping she’d at least let out a sigh. But she held on to all of her anger, the way Lupe held on to her secret at school. I could feel it fermenting and thickening inside her, like the stinky tofu sitting in our kitchen cabinet at home.

  She finally erupted when we got back to the motel. “How could you do that to me?” she wailed.

  I rushed to my father’s side on the sofa, and he scrambled to his feet. “What happened?” he asked.

  “She embarrassed me in front of my new friends!” Mom pointed at me. “She told them we used to carry fake shopping bags! And now they’re probably never going to talk to me again!”

  “Good!” I shouted back. “I hope they don’t, and I’m not sorry I told them about your stupid shopping bags!” I blinked furiously, trying not to cry
. I was sick of her pretending. I’d thought that now that we owned the motel, she would stop pretending. But she just found new things to pretend about!

  Mom plunged her face in her hands, like she was too mad to even look at me. I looked to my dad but he just shook his head, so I got up and went to my room.

  That night, the sounds of my parents arguing seeped through the thin walls. I hadn’t heard them argue like that in a long time, not since we took over the motel. My dad accused my mom of losing her mind with me, to which my mom replied, “You’re right. I am losing my mind. I’m not this! I don’t care how much money we’re making, I’m not a maid!”

  Footsteps stormed through the manager’s quarters and out the back.

  “Where are you going?” I heard my dad say to her.

  “I’m sleeping in one of the guest rooms tonight.”

  I cowered under the covers, wondering whether my words at the mall had cost a lot more than my mom’s new friends.

  Light poured in from the window the next morning.

  My eyes blinked open to see my dad sitting next to me on my bed.

  “Where’s Mom?” I asked.

  I heard banging in the kitchen and immediately feared the worst. She’s moving out. She and my dad are getting a divorce. She’s packing up her stinky tofu as we speak! I’m going to have to split weekends like poor Kenny Jacobson in the club.

  “She’s just in the kitchen,” he assured me. I felt my shoulder blades relax as my head sank back down on the pillow.

  “Is she okay?” I asked, pulling the covers up to my chin.

  My dad nodded. “Adults fight sometimes. I’m sure you and Lupe have disagreements too.” That we did, usually about Jason. Dad reached out and gently touched the tip of my nose. “It doesn’t mean you’re not best friends.”

  I got out of bed, and together, we walked into the kitchen. My mom was in the kitchen drinking a cup of jasmine tea. She put down her cup when she saw me. Her eyes were swollen like she’d been up all night crying.

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly.

  She shook her head, and for a second I worried that she wouldn’t accept my apology. But then she said, “No, I’m sorry,” and reached over to take my hand. She patted a spot on her leg, and I climbed into her lap like I did when we first got on the plane to fly to America, before the flight attendant told me I had to sit in my own seat. “I just wanted to be normal and have a night out,” she confessed. “And feel what it’s like to have a credit card like those ladies … and to have made it in this country.”