by Lisa Ko
Yong took off his sunglasses and studied Daniel’s face. “What did you say your name was again?” Two of his teeth had gold caps.
“Deming . . . Guo.”
“Oh, you’re her son! You look so much like her. I can see it, the nose, the mouth, the jawline! How incredible. She mentioned she spoke to you recently and you lived in New York?”
Daniel caught Leon’s eyes and laughed. “Yes, I’m here visiting.”
“She’s going to be so upset when she finds out she missed you.”
“Where is she?”
“Beijing. The school she works for is looking to expand their branches, so she’s traveling to research the markets. There’s a conference there this week on education, so she’s there for that, as well.”
“I’ve been trying to call her for days. I’ve left her so many messages.”
“Her cell phone was stolen on the train. She called me from the hotel yesterday.”
“When is she coming back to Fuzhou?”
“This weekend.” Yong passed his cell phone to Daniel. “This is the name, the Conference for English Educators. At the Park Hotel.”
Daniel gave the phone to Leon to translate. “I can’t read Chinese,” he said.
THE NOODLES AND LAMB were as delicious as Leon promised, especially washed down with cold beers. When they returned to the apartment, Yimei and three other kids were riding their bikes around the parking lot. Shuang and another woman sat in lawn chairs, drinking cans of iced tea.
“Guess who’s going to Beijing tomorrow?” Leon said.
Daniel listened as Leon described their day. As the conversation shifted into talk about a family who’d recently moved out of the building, he excused himself and walked around the lot. There was a slight breeze, and the sweat on his arms and scalp was drying. The sky was a light purple, and the garbagy smell had faded with the day’s heat. The other children abandoned their bicycles to toss a ball, and he heard Yimei say to her friends, “That’s my cousin from America.”
He waved in her direction. “Deming!” Yimei said. “Catch.”
He saw the ball bound across the air, a swift yellow blur, and lifted his arms, letting it nestle against him. “Heads up, Yimei,” he shouted, and threw the ball back.
Sixteen
Beijing was a city of circles. Six ring roads, each one larger then the next, a series of concentric donuts. The train station was in the third ring. The high-speed train out of Fuzhou took twelve hours, and Daniel had only managed to sleep in spurts, his legs sore from sitting. He ignored the throng of motorcyclists outside the station and instead hailed a cab to the Park Hotel, and the closer he got to the inner rings, the more intricate the architecture, whether it was neon high-rises or older buildings with scalloped rooftops. Thick smog hid the upper stories of the tallest buildings, and some people on the sidewalks wore masks or scarves wrapped around their mouths. Frantic techno music leaked out of the radio, spasming reds. “Turn it up,” Daniel asked the driver. The cab filled with overproduced vocals, a guy rapping in Mandarin. “Louder, please.” The driver complied, the colors deepened. “Louder.”
The Conference for English Educators was taking place on the ground floor of the Park Hotel. Daniel paid the driver and said thank you in Mandarin, got out on the corner carrying his backpack. The street was full of shops selling fake jade jewelry and Buddha figurines to tourists, and he heard one man say in English, “Goddamn I need a nap,” the long vowels funny and exaggerated, almost painful to hear.
He walked through the revolving doors of the hotel, through the lobby, past the front desk, and around a corner, where two women with white nametags sat at a table with books and magazines. A conference schedule, in both Chinese and English, was displayed on a metal stand, and he saw his mother’s name, Polly Lin, listed as one of the speakers on a panel called Teaching Young Adult Learners, from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. He looked at his phone. It was 11:05.
A man in a blue suit, whose nametag announced him as Wei from an English school in Suzhou, intercepted him. “Do you have your nametag?”
“I’m sorry, I must have left it in my room. Should I go and get it?”
Wei turned to check with the two women at the table. As the three of them conferred, Daniel slipped into the auditorium and into the first empty seat he saw, two rows from the back, his view partially blocked by a pillar. Two women and a man were sitting on stage, and one of the women was his mother. A third woman, the moderator, was in a separate chair. His mother had the mic. “That’s what I mean,” she said, her words clear and forceful. She was making emphatic gestures with her right hand as she held the microphone with her left, and Daniel was glad to see she still spoke with her hands. “You cannot apply the same methods to younger learners that you do with older ones. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.” Several people in the audience clapped, and Daniel joined in, making his claps extra loud and resonant.
The moderator asked the man a question about creating an English-language curriculum with Chinese references. His mother passed the microphone. She wore glasses with small gold frames, a snug brown blazer, a cream-colored blouse with an energetic ruffle, and a silk paisley scarf. Her hair was short, puffed, and wavy. She didn’t look ten years older, he couldn’t see any wrinkles or gray hairs, at least from afar, but she looked neater, polished. Not like the professors at Carlough with their former hippie stylings, not like Peter and Kay in their L.L.Bean, but like a real estate broker or a bank teller. She was wearing a skirt. She looked like someone else’s mom.
The man handed the microphone to the woman who was next to his mother. After she spoke, his mother spoke again, and Daniel felt himself puffing up, proud at how confident and intelligent she sounded, how smooth her Mandarin was. The man stuttered, the microphone amplifying a catch in his voice, and the other woman’s sentences were peppered with excruciating pauses, but his mother spoke without hesitating.
The moderator asked the audience if they had questions. A woman near the front rambled on about a program she had created until the moderator cut her off. Daniel raised his hand, and the moderator walked over. He’d played enough shows to know his mother wouldn’t be able to see the back of the auditorium from the stage, not with the pillar in the way. He spoke in his best imitation of a northern accent, trying not to crack up because it was a terrible caricature of Mandarin. “I’d like to learn more about bilingual education in Chinese schools. Do you teach Chinese and English at the same time? What about students who can speak both?”
The man onstage answered the question, talking about an initiative at the college where he worked, but Daniel saw his mother look around the auditorium, trying to find him, as the rest of her face struggled to remain still. He suppressed a laugh.
She found him after the panel ended, pushing past people waiting to talk to her.
“Deming! You scared the shit out of me!”
Her eyes widened. They stared at each other. She was wearing makeup—he didn’t remember her wearing makeup before—and her skin was powdered and oddly even. He was relieved to hear her curse, to know a part of her remained the same beneath this new exterior polish.
“Hi—Mama.” His face and hands grew warm. Why did saying the word feel so embarrassing? It felt like he was claiming something that didn’t belong to him.
Her mouth wobbled. His heart was beating so loudly he could hear the blood thump in his ears. People were trying to move past them, but Daniel and his mother could only stand there, looking at each other. He felt the intensity of her stare and had an urge to duck and hide. He wanted to apologize to her for growing up, for also becoming unrecognizable from his former self.
The moderator rushed over. “We’re going to get lunch, Polly, with the group from Shanghai.”
“I can’t,” his mother said, not taking her eyes off him. “My son is here.”
The moderator turned. “This is your son? You must be a bilingual education teacher, too.”
“Something like that,” Daniel
said. He wanted to tell the moderator to leave them alone. Couldn’t she see that they didn’t want to be bothered?
His mother linked her arm in his and he could feel her trembling. “Let’s go,” she said, and they walked across the lobby and out of the hotel. She wore high heels, black and spiky, and there was a sense of overcompensation to her movements, her features carefully set to a neutral expression. She kept her arm in his, steered them onto a busier street and into the backseat of a cab, directing the driver in rapid Mandarin. Then they were stuck in what appeared to be endless traffic.
“You came all the way from New York,” she said.
“I flew from New York a few days ago.”
Her voice got high and choked. “You traveled so far!”
“Well, today I just took the train from Fuzhou.”
She took a handkerchief out of her purse and blotted her forehead, then her eyes. “I don’t like being onstage like that, being watched.”
“But you were great.” He noticed the muscles working in her face, the labor it took to hold herself together. “What about when you’re teaching, up front in a classroom?”
“That’s not so bad. I don’t teach much these days, though. My work is more administrative. Are you hungry? Yong e-mailed me to say you came by the apartment.”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“Some asshole stole my phone on the train. I had to get a new one, change my number. Such a pain. I hope you still have yours with you.”
He touched his pocket. “Right here.”
“You’ve never been to Beijing before, have you?”
“No.”
“This is the second time I’ve been here this month. I’ve been traveling more for work.”
“Do you like Beijing?”
“There’s a lot of change happening here.”
“There was construction all over Fuzhou when I was there.”
“Here, too. The government rips down these homes where families have been living for years. They say they’re going to compensate them properly but they get shoved out to a crappy apartment on the outer ring.”
“That sounds like New York. There are big new buildings in Chinatown, now, with doormen and white people.” Daniel watched the traffic clear, stop again. They were moving up the road in ten-second increments. Wherever his mother was taking him, they’d get there next year.
Trucks bumped along in the next lane. “Ten years ago, that would’ve been a bicycle lane.”
“You’d rather be riding a bicycle?”
“Never.” She laughed.
“In Ridgeborough, the town I lived in after you left, you need a car to go anywhere. One time I told a friend I’d hop on the train to see him, but then I remembered there’s no train.”
“Your Chinese has gotten better. You don’t sound as illiterate as you did on the phone.”
He basked in her barbed teasing, recalled her toughest, most resilient love. How different it was from Kay’s exposed emotions. His mother had never demanded his reassurance.
“I’ve been in China for almost a week now.”
“You don’t lose a language,” she said. “You need be exposed to it again, and the brain remembers.” The cab rolled forward. “It’s elastic, the brain.”
“Would that be the same for you and English?”
“If you heard me, you’d laugh. But compared to the other teachers, I’m practically fluent. Very few of them have gone abroad, so they learn from watching movies and listening to recordings. It’s not the same.”
“I’ll help you practice if you want.”
“It’s all right.”
“When do you need to return to the conference?”
“Not until tomorrow. I’m going to skip the rest of the day, spend it with you.”
He felt his shoulders loosen. The cab stopped at a group of old buildings with elaborate rooftops.
“This is the Summer Palace,” his mother said. She led him across a bridge and down a long pathway, the ceiling an intricate mosaic of blues and greens. Suddenly it was quiet, and Daniel was mesmerized at the colors. They crossed into an open space where tour groups gathered, the guide speaking into a megaphone in Cantonese, and entered a quieter corridor, passing through another pavilion until they arrived at an expansive lake. Daniel stopped, taken aback by the sight of so much water at once.
They sat on a bench, next to each other. “This is my favorite place in Beijing,” his mother said. “The Empress had her summer vacations here, in the Qing Dynasty.”
He saw an arched bridge, small boats with yellow roofs. Fatigue rippled through his body. He was fried. Four days ago, he’d been in Ridgeborough.
“It’s a man-made lake. Like West Lake Park in Fuzhou. I go there when the walls start to come. Did you go when you were there?”
What did she mean by walls? “Leon and I just walked around the neighborhood.”
“And Leon, he’s doing well?”
Her fingers knotted over one another like pigeons fighting for a discarded hotdog bun. Daniel did the same thing when he was nervous, played with his hands. He wanted to separate her fingers and calm her down.
“He’s good. I met his wife and his daughter. They have a nice apartment.”
“Yong said in his e-mail that my son and his father came to visit and for a minute I didn’t know who he was talking about. I thought he meant Haifeng. Your real father.”
“Haifeng?” She’d never mentioned his name.
“I haven’t spoken to him in years. Before you were born, even. I hear he’s in Xiamen now.”
“Yong seems like a good guy.”
His mother’s expression brightened. “He is. When I told him I wanted to travel more for my job, he didn’t like the idea at first. He said he’d miss me. But eventually he understood.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t like to stay at home for too long. The same walls and roof. I get a bad feeling. I get nightmares.”
“So he knew about me. Even before I saw him.”
“Yes, he knew.”
Daniel smiled. His eyelids patted open and shut.
“Where do your parents work?” his mother asked. “The ones who adopted you?”
“They’re teachers. In a university.”
“They must be smart.”
He didn’t know when he would see Peter and Kay next. He dreaded the prospect of talking to them again, yet he was scared they wouldn’t want to talk to him either. This woman next to him, his mother, a stranger, was the only true family he had. “They want me to be like them, to go to college and study what they study.” He struggled against his impulse to defend them. “I’m not sure if it’s what I want, though.”
They watched the boats float. Daniel needed a nap. He wondered when they would talk, really talk. His mother picked up his hand, squeezing so hard he nearly pulled away. But he held on and sandwiched his hand between hers. He remembered how trapped he used to feel when Kay kissed his cheek and told him she loved him, as if he was supposed to respond in the right way. He didn’t feel like that now.
She released her grip. He wasn’t sure when the Qing Dynasty had taken place, only that it was long ago, and he imagined the Empress being rowed across the water on a long, gliding boat, the pavilions and temples full of people. Now the rooms were empty and the only sounds they heard were shouting tour guides. It was a sad place, a palace of ghosts.
“Are you hungry?” His mother let go of his hand and tapped his arm. Did they look as alike as Yong had said? “I want to take you out to eat.”
He wasn’t that hungry; he’d eaten a big breakfast on the train. But he let her take him to a café in a neighborhood where the storefronts were glass and chrome and people carried shopping bags and leather handbags. The café had a French name.
“Take a seat,” his mother said. “I’ll go in and order.” Daniel found a table on the patio and watched her walk inside, a slight shake in her heels. She rubbed her temples and shut her eyes, th
en opened them, her features rearranged into a blank pleasantry.
It was like being at a Starbucks in SoHo. He leaned back in his chair and was drifting off when his mother came out with a tray full of food.
“This café is famous for sweets.” She passed him a plate with a slice of chocolate cake, the icing already melting, and a plate of egg tarts. Two coffees, one for her and one for him, and a pile of sugar packets and plastic pods of creamer.
“Thank you.” He took the spoon she offered and a bite of the cake. The frosting was so sweet it made his tongue curl.
His mother watched him. “Is the cake good?”
“It’s good.”
She took a small piece and washed it down with coffee. He could see a smudge in her eyeliner, and she’d drawn in her eyebrows with a pencil that left a tiny clump in the hairs. “Have an egg tart.” She nudged the plate toward him.
He picked up a pastry and took a bite. “It’s good,” he said, though it was a little stale.
“You always loved sweets.”
He pressed cake crumbs beneath his spoon, self-conscious under her gaze.
“Have more.”
He took another bite. It was true, she had his eyes and mouth. Their lips had the same curve and dip in the middle—he’d always thought his mouth was a little too delicate for a guy’s—and their eyes the same large pupils and thick eyelids. Whenever he had looked into a mirror during the past ten years, it had felt like nobody resembled him. But she had been with him.
She rested her palm against his cheek. Just held it there. Her hand was warm, and he couldn’t move. Like if he twitched, the ground would open up beneath him.
When she took her palm away it left a hot patch on his skin. He said, “I’m here, Mama” and she made a long sighing sound.
THEY WALKED THROUGH AN old hutong neighborhood, wandered through the Forbidden City, each building more marvelous and intimidating than the next. As the day progressed his mother showed no signs of impatience, didn’t act like she was in a hurry to get back to the hotel. But when he said even the most innocuous things about the Bronx—remember Tommie? Mrs. Johnson? The bodega, the 4 train?—or mentioned Leon or Vivian or Michael, she would change the subject, steer them back to the present, talk about Beijing, architecture, teaching.