by Lisa Ko
You slid down the wall until you were buried under the hotel sheets.
“And that was it?” you said. “You forgot me?”
“I didn’t forget. I just survived.”
I TOOK A CLASS in business Mandarin so I could bury my village accent and get a better job. When the teacher heard I had lived in America, he said he was also opening up an English school. I told him I’d studied in New York and gone to America on a student visa. Even if my English wasn’t good, it was better than some of the other teachers’.
“Working for World Top can’t get you an urban hukou right now,” Boss Cheng said, after I moved into the teacher dormitory, “but we’ll see about the future.” I decided I would work this job, make a lot of money, and figure out a way to go back to New York so I could find you.
I’d been teaching at World Top for almost a year, working and saving as much as I could, when Yong appeared in my class. He didn’t manage to learn much from me, but on the night of his last class, he said in English, “I’d like to see you sometime.”
He started to take me out to dinner twice a week, a few hours during which my grief would retreat, a momentary break. I liked his steadiness, his ambition and kindness; I’d forgotten what it was like to have someone pay attention to me, to have someone to talk to. Here was someone who could be a partner. And this was my chance to marry into an urban hukou, to get a permanent city residency permit. Without one, I’d always be a migrant. The city could kick me out any time. Those five days with Leon, the feeling of the floor dropping out from beneath me? That could never happen again.
After two months, I kissed Yong. Six months later, we had our wedding at a hotel in Wuyi Square. Twelve courses were served, eight of them seafood.
THERE WASN’T ANYTHING I could do,” I said. “I couldn’t go back to America after being deported. I couldn’t go anywhere. If I thought about you too much I wouldn’t be able to live.”
I knew how it must sound to you: I hadn’t tried hard enough, I didn’t love you enough. But I could have kept looking forever. I needed you to understand.
“You forgot me,” you said.
“No. Never.”
“You didn’t even tell your husband about me.”
“I did tell him. You met him. You know.”
“You didn’t tell him until I called you.”
My head sagged. You were right.
“I thought he’d be angry, and then he would leave me.” But that, too, was a lie. I’d only told myself that. I had never believed it.
“I thought you went away because I did something wrong. I was a kid!” You pounded the mattress with your fists. You must have wanted to punch me, too.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “When I returned to China and learned Leon had paid off the rest of my debt, I knew you were okay. Even if I hated the idea of you calling a white lady ‘Mama’ or ‘Mom’.”
You snorted. “Leon didn’t pay off the loan shark. Vivian did.”
Now I felt like I had really been punched. “But you were safe, weren’t you? With your adoptive parents?” I could hear the pleading desperation in my own questions, how badly I wanted to believe you’d been fine, that I had done all I could.
There was a long silence. Finally you said, “I never call my adoptive mother ‘Mama’ or ‘Mom’.”
You shut off the light. For a moment we lay together, on our separate beds, as your words pulled a warm blanket over us and made us less alone.
Nineteen
He hadn’t expected to like teaching so much. Today he split his students out into groups of three for role-playing: ordering at a restaurant, asking for directions in English. The other instructors, even his mother, laughed at him for making work harder for himself and not teaching the workbook. But his students were awake, engaged, and he was willing to be held up for their amusement and curiosity. When he said they could ask him anything they wanted, as long as they asked in English, they shouted out questions. What kind of clothes did people wear in New York? What did they eat? Did he have a girlfriend? Boss Cheng had reprimanded him, said his class was too noisy, but when Daniel’s students told their friends about him and these new students enrolled and requested to be in his class, Boss Cheng stopped bugging him. “Boss Cheng doesn’t know his head from his ass,” his mother said, cackling her old laugh. He leaned toward her compliments, always craving more. “You’re the best teacher at that school. You should be director.” That was her new plan for him. He’d stay in Fuzhou, follow her footsteps. It made him feel proud, yet also unsure. He didn’t know if he wanted to be the director of World Top English. But then she would look at him and smile and he would smile back, thinking, Yes, this is where I belong.
He had been living in China for three months, hadn’t spoken to Peter and Kay since leaving Ridgeborough in August. People no longer laughed at his accent; his Mandarin and Fuzhounese had slipped back into native-speaker levels, and the gaps between translating and speaking had grown smaller and smaller until they were nearly imperceptible, his brain automatically shifting into Chinese.
His tourist visa was expiring soon, and his mother was in the process of sponsoring him for a real work visa. The forms had been in his room for weeks, and he needed to fill them out. Until then, he couldn’t legally receive a salary, wasn’t on the official payroll at World Top English, but Boss Cheng paid his mother extra money, which she then deposited into his bank account.
After his morning class, Daniel went out for lunch with two of the other teachers, Eddie and Tammy. They usually insisted on McDonald’s or Pizza Hut, places where he would never voluntarily eat. Today they were going to a spaghetti restaurant that Tammy said was sophisticated, though Daniel would have been fine going to a noodle stall and slurping down a cheap bowl of soup. They walked the three blocks from World Top to the restaurant, Daniel familiar with most of the streets in downtown Fuzhou, accustomed to mopeds coming at him at in all directions. The summer in Ridgeborough, the liminal New York winter that had preceded it, seemed like another lifetime ago. It was astounding to think that that had been him, tromping across the ice on Canal Street, not knowing that by the end of the year, he would have not only have seen his mother again but be living with her, seeing her every day.
Inside the restaurant, an old song was looping on the speaker, the moon hitting the singer’s eye like a big pizza pie. The waitresses wore red, white, and green uniforms. It was a Macaroni Grill on steroids. Eddie climbed into the banquette next to him. “Is the menu authentic?” Outside of class, they spoke Fuzhounese.
Daniel flipped through the pictures of pastas drowning in red and white sauces. If it wasn’t a Chinese restaurant, Tammy and Eddie always made him order. “Yes,” he said.
Tammy brushed her bangs away from her eyes. Unlike Eddie, she avoided eye contact at all costs. “Restaurants where the waitresses wear uniforms are always authentic. Deming, you order for all of us.”
Daniel asked the waitress for three bowls of spaghetti and meatballs and a platter of garlic sticks. Eddie’s unblinking gaze felt like being cross-examined. Tammy said she’d heard that the restaurant served the best American food in Fuzhou.
“This food isn’t American,” Eddie said.
“Well, it’s Italian,” Daniel said. “But the dishes are more of an American style. They would call it Italian American.”
Tammy said, “But is it Italian or American?”
“It’s both.”
“But Italians aren’t American,” Eddie said.
“Sure, they can be Italian American. Like if your parents were born in Italy, but you were born in America.”
“Then you’d be American,” Tammy said. “Because you were born in America.”
“Well, you can be Chinese American. I’m Chinese American because I was born in America.”
“But you have a Chinese face so that makes you Chinese,” Tammy said.
“Americans can have Chinese faces. They aren’t only white people.”
Tammy and Eddie glanced at each other and Eddie muttered a quick sentence in Fuzhounese that Daniel couldn’t catch.
“I’m right here, you know,” Daniel said. “I can hear you talking about me.”
“We’re not talking about you,” Tammy said.
The tomato sauce was too sweet, the pasta overcooked, and Daniel ached for a proper New York thin slice, folded in half and chowed down while standing at an oily pizzeria counter. Tonight, he’d pick up food on the way home and eat in front of the TV. If he was in Manhattan or Ridgeborough his friends would be buying him shots, but instead he would return to an empty apartment. His mother was supposed to be coming home late, on the bullet train from Xiamen, where she had spent the last two days for work. She no longer watched him so carefully, like he was in danger of vanishing, and on weekends they spent hours walking around the city together, having long, easy meals, and he would feel warm and full. But when she made plans for him, mentioned people she wanted him to meet or a trip they might take in the future, he would feel a sticky dread, like he had overslept on a winter day and woken up to discover it was already dark.
He didn’t want to be alone, not today. “What are you two doing tonight?”
They exchanged another glance. “We have dinner with our families,” Eddie said.
HE WAITED FOR THE bus to West Lake Park after his last class of the day. Yong would be working late tonight, or at a business dinner. One night he had taken Daniel to his factory, and Daniel had looked down from the executive office at rows of women at sewing machines. “Your mother doesn’t like to visit me at work,” Yong said.
Once or twice a week, Daniel took the bus out to Leon’s place to eat with him and Shuang. He played with Yimei in the park, showing her how to toss a Frisbee and do wheelies on her bike, and wished she were his real sister, or at least his real cousin. When he mentioned these visits to his mother, she said, “Maybe I’ll come with you sometime.” But tonight Leon was also busy; he’d said he had to work late.
Now that Daniel was making money again, he had started to pay Angel back, little by little. He had cut up his credit card and was chipping away at the balance, but whatever extra he had left over, which wasn’t a lot, he sent to her. She never responded, but deposited the money.
He hadn’t heard from Roland either. The last time he had googled Psychic Hearts, several weeks ago, he had read a review of their latest show with the headline “Don’t Believe the Hype”:
While guitarist Nate Lundstrom—a former member of a number of Meloncholia projects—is technically and stylistically astute, Psychic Hearts’ new, dancier configuration lacks the claustrophobic, manic-depressive, and almost mystical cohesion of its original pairing. The looping beats have gotten frayed and agonizingly repetitive, and Fuentes’ howls grown stale, like a fifth-rate Lightning Bolt meets bubblegum pop . . . How can something so heavy sound so damn minimal? Sure, it’s cool, kids, but there’s no there there.
The bus arrived. Of course, all the passengers were Chinese. It had taken him weeks to not find it surprising that everyone around him, including the people on TV, including the hottest girls, were all Chinese. Being from America made him an object of desire, which was both flattering and strange; girls flirted with him when they found out he was from New York. Even Tammy, who had a boyfriend, walked a little too close when they went to lunch. He’d hooked up a couple times with a girl who’d gone to high school with one of the other World Top teachers, a sales manager at a company that manufactured plastic slippers. There was another girl, too, a friend of a friend of Eddie’s, who lived in the suburbs with her parents and texted him sporadically.
There was a comfort in belonging that he’d never felt before, yet somehow, he still stood out. The bus driver eyed him for a beat too long when he bought the ticket, as did the woman in the seat across the aisle, a bag of groceries on her lap. Yong and his mother assured him his Chinese sounded close to normal now and not as freakish as it had when he first arrived, but Daniel figured it was his clothes, his bearing, or the way he looked or walked or held himself, something that revealed he wasn’t from here. Even if he encouraged them to ask questions, he often grew tired of the students and other teachers at World Top finding him a source of perpetual fascination. His students asked him why he was so tall, even if Eddie was taller than him, and prodded him to sing songs to them in English. When the other teachers asked what he did for fun and he said he liked to walk around and listen to music on his headphones, they laughed.
He called his mother to see if there was a chance she would be home for dinner, and when she didn’t pick up, he didn’t bother to leave a message. He shouldn’t have to ask her to be home tonight. If she forgot what day it was, he would know what to do. God, he hoped she hadn’t forgotten.
He plugged his headphones into his phone, feeling rubbery as the music kicked in, a mix of old favorites, Suicide, Arthur Russell, Queens of the Stone Age. His phone buzzed and he expected to see his mother’s name, but it was a wrong number, a guy who said in Mandarin, “I thought this was someone else.” It was stupid being here again, waiting for her. Disappointed by her.
He had thoroughly searched the apartment when he was there alone, combed through the drawers and cabinets, even scoured beneath the beds and leather couch (finally, his mother had the nice couch she’d always wanted), but found only clothes, folded and neat, a binder with documents pertaining to work and the apartment. He was looking for hidden facts, a sign that would point him toward what he should do next. Yet there was not a single photograph in the apartment, no squirreled-away shoebox of sentimental keepsakes, no hidden diaries or items that could confess any aspects of his mother and Yong beyond what they portrayed to him. They existed only in the present, their lives as brand-new as their apartment. He had hoped this would allow him to trust them, but still, he worried, didn’t want to be left the fool.
The woman across the aisle was staring at him openly, and he noticed the tension in his jaw, how tightly he was squeezing his hands. He turned the music louder, but couldn’t regain that initial rush. Apprehension lingered, the fear he was letting somebody down, that he was the one who was being let down.
AT THE APARTMENT GATE, carrying a bag of takeout from a restaurant near the bus stop, Daniel greeted Chun, the security guard. “Have a good night,” Chun said, and smiled. Daniel used his key to open the front door of the building and rode the elevator up to the twelfth floor.
He stopped before switching on the light, was in the process of using one foot to loosen the heel of the other shoe when he heard a scuffle along the floor. “Who’s there?” he said, and a second later the lights were blazing and there was a chorus of people shouting “Surprise!” His mother was at his side, and Yong, and a blur of other faces.
She hadn’t forgotten his birthday. Not only had she remembered—of course she’d remembered; how could he have thought she hadn’t—but she had filled the apartment with everyone he knew in Fuzhou: Eddie and Tammy and the other teachers at World Top, his Speed English Now students, her and Yong’s friends. Even Leon and Shuang and Yimei were there. The living room was crowded, balloons tied to the chairs, and there was food on the counter, platters of fruit, grilled meat, and noodles. Music was switched on. Someone put a beer in his hand.
It was a real party. “Were you surprised?” his mother asked. “People thought it was strange when I said we were having a surprise party. I remember seeing it in a movie once.”
“Tammy and Eddie kept it a surprise when I had lunch with them. And my students didn’t say a thing.”
She laughed. “I said I’d get them fired if they said one word to you.”
Daniel looked around the room again. People sat on the couch, eating chips and peanuts, while others drank beers in the kitchen.
“You don’t like crowds, though,” he said.
“I don’t mind.”
“You don’t like parties.”
“That’s not true. I used to love parties.”
“Used to.”
“Now, too.”
“You invited Leon.”
“I wanted everyone here who’s important to you. He called me the other day and we talked for a little while. I met his wife, his daughter . . . ”
She sounded genuinely glad about it. “Thank you,” he said.
“Happy birthday, Deming.” She patted his arm. “My son, the future director of World Top English.”
“Well,” Daniel said, “it’s true, I don’t see Boss Cheng here tonight.”
He wandered around the apartment, stopping to talk to people. Pop music with auto-tuned Mandarin shot out from a pair of portable speakers. Shuang and his mother’s friend Ning were dancing with Tammy, the two older women following Tammy’s more intricate steps.
Leon and Yimei were talking with Yong in the kitchen, and Yong waved him over. “Let’s take a picture.”
Daniel grinned, hot and buzzy. “Send me a copy,” he said, and put his arms around Yimei, Leon behind him, as Yong snapped pictures with his phone.
“Do you have anything to draw with?” Yimei asked.
He wondered if they looked alike in any way, even if they weren’t related. “I don’t have crayons, but I have paper and pens. Let me go look.”
In his mother’s guest room, which had become his bedroom, his laptop was furiously dinging. He pressed a key and the screen came to life, flooding him with messages from Ridgeborough and New York City, even Potsdam. Michael had sent a video of him and Timothy and Vivian singing “Happy Birthday” in their kitchen in Sunset Park. Roland e-mailed: Happy birthday, D. Miss you. Even Cody messaged: when r u coming home?
Daniel read the messages, one by one, read them again. There were so many of them, and seeing them made him giddy with sadness. He hadn’t been forgotten.
From the living room came a round burst of laughter, and he remembered why he had come into the room. He rooted through a pile of papers, pushing aside the visa application he had promised his mother he would fill out by last week, and found a notepad and a few pens for Yimei. He was about to close his laptop when a new window popped up.