by Lisa Ko
The sun was coming up. Before she could end the call, he said, “If you found Leon, why didn’t you try to find me?”
“I did try.” She sounded hurt. “I looked for years, even. Leon didn’t know where you had gone. I was saving money to come back to New York. Even if it cost me sixty thousand dollars, I was planning on coming to find you. Even if the first thing they did when I got there was throw my ass in jail. When I heard from Leon that you’d been adopted I wanted to jump off a bridge.”
Her words retreated into a small, strangled space. Daniel’s mind was a jumble of names and motives. It was Leon’s fault they’d been torn apart, Vivian who had given him away. He stood against the counter, brushed crumbs onto the floor.
“But you’re okay?” A hopeful note crept into her voice.
Daniel walked back to the living room. To acknowledge his mother’s regret meant he had to think of what her leaving had done to him, the nights he’d woken up in Ridgeborough in such grief it felt like his lungs were seizing. Months, years, had passed like this, until he became adept at convincing himself it didn’t matter.
“That doesn’t excuse you going away,” he said. “You have no idea what happened to me. You can’t pretend you didn’t mess up, that you did nothing wrong.”
Roland came out his bedroom. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
“Everything all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Deming?” his mother said. “You still there?”
Daniel waited until Roland returned to his room and closed the door. “Yes.”
“There are so many things you don’t understand,” she said. “Ask Leon, you said you spoke to him, so why don’t you ask him?”
He was silent. He heard his mother say, “Yes, I’m in here.” She spoke in a loud, cheery manner, and he heard a man’s voice in the background.
She whispered, “My husband is home. I have to get off the phone. I’ll call you.”
CALL ENDED, the screen said.
Daniel poured himself a glass of water and drank it in several gulps, then washed his face in the sink. As the cold water ran down his neck, he realized her husband didn’t know about him, that she pretended he didn’t exist.
Ten
Central Park was covered in a thick matting of leaves, and the smoky smell of October made me think of running through the temple courtyard with Fang and Liling. You were running around the village like that now. I flipped through an English-language newspaper a woman in an orange apron had given me in the subway. Couldn’t read the articles, but I could make up stories. I didn’t often feel self-conscious about being out by myself, but today I wanted you to be there with me, needed someone to play witness to my life.
Five years had passed since I sent you to Yi Ba and the pain of missing you had faded, become amorphous; it was like missing a person I no longer knew. After you left, Didi returned to her bed, and when another roommate moved out I was promoted to my own, the sleeping bag on the floor going to the next new woman that arrived. Now I had a top bunk. Most of the women I’d lived with when I first came had left for other apartments, even other cities. Didi spent a couple nights a week at her boyfriend Quan’s apartment, but she and I remained on Rutgers Street, instructed the new arrivals on how to buy subway cards, where to get the best produce, which stores were rip-offs. I recognized the fear in these newcomers’ faces, watched them absorb my recommendations with grave intention. They said I was brave; they were awestruck when I told them how long I’d been in the city. “You’ll get used to it,” I said. “It gets easier.”
A few roommates had saved enough to buy into marriages of convenience. Didi and I went to City Hall for our friend Cindy’s wedding to a gray-haired white man. “I can introduce you to the woman I worked with,” Cindy said. “Professional Chinese lady.”
“I don’t want to sleep with a hairy American,” I said, then wanted to take it back, because that’s what Cindy had to do.
“You can get a Chinese man who has citizenship. And you don’t have to stay married,” Cindy said, “only long enough for it to work. You don’t even have to sleep with him if you don’t want to. It’s stupid to marry a guy without papers. It’s a wasted opportunity. The way you’re going, it’s going to take a long, long time to get your green card.”
“If ever,” Didi added.
Since you’d left, I’d been working twelve-hour shifts. Sewed more hems than anyone else. On the wall next to my bunk, I taped a piece of paper with two columns, one with the amount I owed, the other with what I’d paid off, the numbers so small I could only see them when I was lying down, and slowly, the number in the first column decreased and the number in the second column increased. But with the months I hadn’t worked after you were born and the money I sent to Yi Ba, it was taking longer than I expected. By the time you were five, I had paid off a little more than half the debt. More than twenty thousand remained.
I called you once a week. At first, Yi Ba would hold the phone to your face and ask you to say hello, and I would talk as you made gibberish sounds. Later, you were able to speak to me, and each time I called your voice would sound fuller and you would know words you hadn’t before.
“Are you listening to your Yi Gong?” I’d ask.
“Yes.”
“What did you do today?”
“Fed the chicken.”
“Do you remember New York?”
“No.”
You turned four, then five, old enough to go to school in New York, but Yi Ba made excuses. “Why not wait until your debt is paid so you can have more time for him,” he said. “Wait until you have enough saved to get your own place. He shouldn’t be living with all those women. And you need to get a better-paying job, with better hours. Who will look after him when you’re at work?” But Yi Ba had softened with his grandson. I’d told him that I’d met your father in New York, though your passport had your birthdate and anyone could do the math. Yi Ba hadn’t demanded details, only accepted the money I wired. For Deming, he said. He told me you had grown three centimeters in a month, that you liked to sing along to music on the radio, had nicknamed the current chicken Feety. I was glad he treated you well; it made me feel less bad about sending you away.
He kept me up to date with village news, which we both claimed to not care about but I always looked forward to hearing. Haifeng was engaged to a woman from Xiamen, whom his mother said was from a good family. I was happy for him, for landing a city woman, as well as for myself. I had escaped.
Visiting his parents on New Year’s, Haifeng had seen you—you were too young to remember—and asked Yi Ba for my phone number. He called me several times, but I never called him back. But maybe I should have let him meet you; it might have made things easier.
It wasn’t even noon yet, I had the day ahead of me, but I could no longer feel as good as I had when I left Rutgers Street for Central Park this morning, wrapped up in a long gray coat Cindy had given me. When I wore the coat over my jeans and sweatshirt, I’d walk a little taller, blend into the crowds on Canal.
I took out my phone and called Yi Ba. It was past eleven at night there, too late to be calling, but I wanted to hear your voice. The phone rang for such a long time I thought I had dialed the wrong number. When someone answered, it was neither you nor Yi Ba, but a woman who sounded familiar. “This is Peilan,” I said. “Who is this?”
“Peilan,” the voice said. “It’s Mrs. Li. Haifeng’s mother.”
“What are you doing there?”
“I need to tell you. Your father died. He had a heart attack last night. I didn’t know how to reach you and I was hoping you would call.”
A high-pitched ringing churned in my ears, like a train squealing to a sudden stop. “No.” My voice sounded strange, but I refused to let it waver while talking to Mrs. Li. “I spoke to him on Sunday.”
“I’m sorry. It was quick. I don’t think he was in much pain.” The ringing intensified. “Deming has b
een staying with us. I ran over to your house as soon as I heard the phone inside. Will you be able to send him to America soon?”
Somehow, I was able to inquire about the funeral, which my relatives would arrange and which I could not afford to attend, and to walk to the subway and back to the apartment, where later Didi found me in my bunk with the newspaper spread over my face. My father and I had been apart for so long he only existed on the telephone, but I’d always hoped we would see each other again.
I cried into my sleeves when walking down the street, tried to sniff the tears away at work, and when I couldn’t hold them back I let them drip, let my nose run onto the sewing machine. I thought of how, when I returned to the village after working in Fuzhou, one of the neighbor women had pulled me aside and said, “Your father is proud of you.”
I called Mrs. Li every night so I could speak to you, to make sure you were still there. I cried for weeks, lay in bed on my days off. Mrs. Li called and said one of Yi Ba’s cousins was able to get a loan due to having a relative in America—I was the relative—and apply for a tourist visa. He agreed to take you with him on the flight to New York, as long as I bought the tickets.
THREE WEEKS BEFORE YOU came back, six weeks after Yi Ba died, I went to a party at Quan’s apartment. The men played cards while the women talked and watched TV.
I saw a man in the corner tip a bottle of beer to his mouth. Built like a block, he leaned back, mouth curled up at the ends, like he was daring me to come to him. He noticed me looking and unpeeled a large, open smile. There was a gap between his two front teeth, wide enough to slip a watermelon seed inside.
“You don’t play cards?” He shuffled the deck in his wide hands. His Fuzhounese had retained the rural tones I’d been trying hard to sand down.
“No money for cards,” I said. A commercial blared on the TV, a deep voice narrating as a sports car looped the sharp curves of a mountain.
“You don’t have to play for money.” He cracked a peanut shell in his mouth. “We can play for peanuts.”
“I don’t like losing.”
“Then you won’t lose,” he said. “Then you’ll always win.”
I picked up a peanut and snapped it in half. “So when did you come over?”
“Nine years now.” He cut the deck. “You?”
“Six.”
He said the name of his village, which wasn’t far from Minjiang. “Better to be the one who leaves than the one who’s left behind.”
“You think?” I saw the man’s secret smile, his weighty brow, the eyes that tugged down at the corners, and wanted to unlock him. He was familiar to me, but nothing like Haifeng; he looked like if you got to know him, there might be something there. “Working our asses off in America? Maybe it’s better to be home, fat and happy in a brand-new house.”
“And daydream of being here? You wouldn’t stay there,” he said.
I smiled. He was right.
His name was Leon, and he worked nights at a slaughterhouse in the Bronx. It was demanding work, slicing and cutting cows and pigs, evidenced by his thick arms and shoulders, which I snuck a feel of when we kissed on the corner after leaving Quan’s. When I opened my lips it was like being unraveled.
Sometimes, when I saw good-looking men on the street, I wanted to ask if they would take me home. Once I trailed a man for five blocks, admiring how he walked with his crotch pointed forward like a dare, moving with purpose while keeping his hips loose. Stopped when he stopped, stayed steps behind him, checked out his butt while he waited for the light. What if he didn’t speak Fuzhounese, only Cantonese or another dialect I didn’t know? He could be an American-born Chinese, or worse, he might laugh, shout that this crazy woman was propositioning him. I watched him walk off, my breath rushing out of me.
My third year in America, I slept with a guy from Anhui province a few times. He drove a produce truck and had a wife in his village, and I was relieved when he said she was coming to New York. Until Leon, abstinence was another sacrifice I could pride myself on: Look at all I’ve done. Look at all I’ve given up. But when Leon traced the star-shaped mole on my neck as we stood on the frosty little street outside Quan’s apartment, beneath the fire escapes and perilous icicles, when he called me Little Star, there was a tug inside me in a place I had overlooked, like remembering a long forgotten memory. Oh, that. How could I have forgotten that? Leon’s mouth tasted like beer and peanuts. Leon’s tongue nudged up against mine. There was a hard twist inside me, a knot of years loosened. This wasn’t the village. A woman could kiss a man she just met, kiss him on the street in front of strangers, and nobody would care.
In three weeks, you were coming home to me. Because I had lived in the apartment for so long, my roommates said it would be fine if you stayed there, as long as I agreed to pay extra rent, though not as much as a new roommate would pay, since you’d be sharing my bed.
“We’ll move out soon, to a bigger place,” I told them, though I didn’t know how.
I mapped out the best route to the school on Henry Street and rearranged my hours at the factory. I was scared of being Mama again, having to care for a walking, talking, six-year-old boy that I didn’t even know. I remembered how hard it was to be responsible for another person, how some days were like choking. What if I had forgotten how to be with you, or screwed you up by sending you away?
The day after I met Leon, he called to see when I was free. I told him my son was coming to New York next month. I didn’t have to tell him, but I did.
“What’s his name? How old is he?”
I told him you had turned six last month, that I hadn’t seen you for five years.
Leon said, “I can’t wait to meet him.”
A COUSIN I’D NEVER met before delivered you to me on a January evening. I patted your shoulders, but your arms remained at your sides. Your face was longer, your body meatier. “Big boy,” I said, and you jutted your lower lip out at me. Fat clung to your face. You wore a green sweatshirt with an iron-on decal of a soccer ball, passed down from a neighbor or one of the other children on 3 Alley. Your hair stuck up in stubborn quills, like you had forced them out of your skin. Who had cut this hair?
Last Saturday, Leon’s hands had pressed down on my hips. His sister, whom he lived with, had taken her own son to visit a friend, so we were alone and could make all the noise as we wanted. He pushed into me with his eyes closed, and as I moved against him they opened. He said my name, I said his, and then everything was spinning and sliding. “Say my name again,” I demanded, and he did and I laughed. This novelty, my hand on a new man’s back. Such a nice, muscled back. Over five years in New York and this was the first time I hadn’t been surrounded by people, just me and one other person in an apartment by ourselves, and afterwards I leaned against the sink in Leon’s bathroom and cried, not only because of the sex and the beautiful man, but because of how good it felt to not hear sewing machines or honking cars or my roommates sniping at one another. Savor this moment, I told myself, you may never get it again.
“Deming,” my cousin said, “you don’t remember your mother?”
“Of course he remembers me. How could he forget?”
Three new roommates watched us across the room. One of them clicked her tongue and said, “He forgot his own mother!”
“He’s tired after such a long flight. It’s not easy to for a child to travel so far.” I reached for you again, but you turned and ran through the kitchen, and I raced after you and scooped you from behind, pressing my face to the back of your neck. You smelled stale, like old sweat, and at last you sagged against me.
My cousin was off to DC, where a dishwashing job awaited him. He didn’t look that strong, with skinny arms and bad posture, so I slipped him some cash, hoped it would help him. He left, and I showed you the bathroom, gave you a toothbrush and a towel, and after you washed up you fell asleep without a word. I sat next to you hugging my knees and recalling your baby shape and squishy legs, all replaced by this much larger child. I
didn’t know if Leon would see me again, or if last Saturday would be our first and only time. I tried to concentrate on you, this boy who’d been gone so long he had no memory of my face. Leon liked my face. I should have been thinking about you, only you, but I thought, again, of Leon’s hands, and my resolve to not think of Leon retracted like the electric cord on the vacuum cleaner, whipping into its hiding spot.
In the morning I made soup, alone in the apartment with you, and you glugged your food without talking, looking at the kitchen walls and plastic bags stuffed into plastic bags, the grease-splattered square of tin foil taped over the burners. “Eat more,” I said. “You don’t remember when I used to feed you?” It was a dumb thing to say; I knew you couldn’t remember, and I hated when adults spoke to children like they were idiots.
You shook your head. “Soda?”
“You want soda?”
“Yi Gong gave me soda.”
So that was what he’d done with the money I sent him. “No soda here.”
You crossed your arms, challenging me. The fat on your face jiggled and I could sense the heat coming off your skin.
“Talk to your mama.”
“No.”
“What did you say?”
“No.”
I’d sewed thousands of shirt hems to bring you here. “Ungrateful brat.”
You got up and walked to the bedroom, pointed to a hump of laundry. “Dirty,” you said.
“Listen to me. I’m your mother and this is your home. You were born here. You should be grateful I took you out of the village.” I shook your shoulders. “Now wash up. We’re going outside.”
You sulked, but went into the bathroom, and soon I heard the water running.
Snow had fallen overnight. Today it was fresh, sparkling in the sun, and you were hushed by the sight. Rutgers Street was bright and crisp, the kind of cold that went right up your nose. But it would soon morph into a muddy slush that melted into sad mounds dotted with dog poo. Around the corner were the hulking buildings that marched down to the river. We crossed over Bowery, making soft tracks. The city had unbuttoned itself and people walked slower, taking their time, and on Canal the cars were cowed by snow. The drivers steered hesitantly around corners, and at stoplights they didn’t race to beat pedestrians. They sprayed slush, drifting, indecisive. I would teach you to love the city like I did.