by Kelly Yang
My mom tucks a lock of my hair behind my ears. “You know the rules. You don’t have a foreign passport, honey,” she says.
It’s so unfair. While some of my friends’ parents had the foresight to give birth to them in America, my parents were too busy scrambling to get their wedding photos taken before my mom started showing.
When we get back to our villa, my father is waiting for us in the living room.
“Dad!” I exclaim. What’s he doing here in the middle of the day? My mom must have texted him EMERGENCY. I’m glad at least one good thing came out of my refusal to cheat.
“Hi, sunflower,” he says, walking over and kissing the top of my head. The sound of my nickname on his lips makes me want to forget about the fact that I flunked Chinese, that I haven’t seen him in weeks. “I heard about your teacher.”
My mom kicks off her Manolos and plops down on the couch. “What a pompous ass,” she says, calling to Tressy to get us some Pellegrino. “You can just tell she’s one of those people who love wielding her power and just milking it, drop by drop. Is she like that in class?”
I sit down beside her while Tressy brings over three tall glasses of sparkling water and think about the question. I want to say, Yeah, Zhou Lao Shi is arrogant, but what I really want to know is How do you do this? How do you just carry on and have a conversation with your spouse, whom you haven’t seen in weeks and literally have no idea where he’s been, like nothing happened?
“You know, I’ve been thinking . . . ,” my dad says, walking over and taking a seat next to us on the couch. “What about going to America for school?”
My mom puts her sparkling water down and sits up.
“There’s a guy in my office. He was telling me about this school in California . . .”
“You mean for college, right?” I ask. I’ve been considering it myself, going to America or the UK for university.
“No, I mean now, right now. For the rest of your junior year and your senior year,” my dad says excitedly.
He’s kidding, right?
“What are you talking about?” my mom asks for the both of us.
Thank you.
“I’m talking about getting out of this broken system,” my dad says. “You said it yourself, Claire’s teacher is insane. And it’s not going to be any better next year, what with the gaokao. And if you don’t do well . . .”
“Ugh, I don’t even want to think about that,” my mom groans, closing her eyes and massaging them with her fingers. “Your mother’s going to kill me.”
I want to say to them I won’t not do well! I swear I won’t! But then again, I did just get a forty-two. My mom sits sullen on the couch, head buried in her hands, contemplating her future . . . because if you’re a Chinese mom whose sole measure of success is how well your offspring does, when your offspring screws up, you screw up.
“If you go to America now, you won’t need to do the gaokao,” my dad says. He’s offering us an out, and judging from the depressed look on my mom’s face, I don’t know who needs it more, me or her. “You can graduate and go to a college in the US. One of the UCs.”
“You can’t just get into one of the UCs,” I say. He says it like they’re M&M’s.
“Yes, you can,” he insists. “There are so many of them!” He takes out his hands and starts listing UCs. “And besides, even if you don’t, at least you’ll still be foreign-educated.”
My mom mouths the words. The gears are turning in her head. Foreign-educated. I can work with that.
“I’m not going,” I say to the two of them, nipping this crazy talk in the bud. I am not about to run off to another country just because I failed one exam. “Sorry. I refuse to go to boarding school.”
“Who said anything about boarding school?” my dad asks. “Wash your own clothes? Eat cafeteria food? Live with roommates?” He shudders at the thought. “Besides, you don’t have time to take the SSAT.”
OMG, he’s actually serious. I thought this was all angry talk, which is why I indulged him, but now, looking into his manic eyes, I wonder how long he’s been thinking about this. Maybe I should have just memorized my tutor’s stupid words.
My mom chews her fingernail. “It would make things a lot easier,” she says. “And when you come back, think of how much you’ll stand out.”
“I don’t want to stand out,” I say.
“Well, you should!” she retorts. “There are 1.3 billion people here! Why do you think people are always shopping, trying to grab whatever label and slap it on their asses? To stand out!”
I roll my eyes. Please, with the shopping psychology.
“Your mother’s right,” my dad says. “We have to be smart. This is the right move for your future.”
“And what about my friends? What about my boyfriend?” I ask. My eyes water under my contacts at the thought that I might not be able to see Teddy again, that we’ll have to Skype . . .
“What boyfriend?” my dad asks. He turns to my mom. “You didn’t tell me she had a boyfriend.”
“He’s not a boyfriend,” my mom quickly denies, trying to calm him down. Her eyes urge me to go along. She always does this, whenever my dad gets mad at me, and I used to love that about her, but lately, it’s made me wonder. Why do we always have to massage the truth for him?
“Yes, he is,” I say. “Which you would know if you actually lived here.”
“Claire!” my mom shouts.
My dad jumps up from the couch, his face red. But I don’t let him off the hook.
“Where have you been?” I ask, following him to the kitchen.
“I’ve . . . I’ve been traveling,” he mutters.
Ah yes, “traveling.” The word my dad uses to avoid any and all responsibility. Why didn’t you come to my swim meet? I would ask. Oh, was that today? Sorry, I’ve been traveling so much, I can’t remember, he would say.
I cross my arms. My dad reaches into his pocket for his second favorite get-out-of-jail card—his phone.
“I have a deal blowing up,” he says, fingers tapping his phone. “I have to go back to the office.”
I look to my mom for help. Is he just going to walk away from this? Finally, we’re talking about it, having the conversation we should have had many years ago, and he’s just going to walk away? My mom’s frown carries the same heavy weight of disappointment, but she says nothing.
“Did you know Mom cries herself to sleep at night?” I blurt out. I don’t know what else to say to get his attention.
My mom jumps from the couch and walks over to us. “Stop it,” she orders. She starts apologizing to my dad, saying I’m not myself, I’m too stressed out, too upset over my grade. Why does she always do this? Why is she so afraid of him?
A second passes. Then another. My dad takes his hand and slips it into my mom’s, accepting her apology, and the two of them stand side by side in the kind of nauseating solidarity that makes me sad for womankind.
My dad looks to me and says, “It’s true I’ve been working a lot of late nights at the office,” by way of explanation.
“Yeah, right,” I mutter.
My mom shoots me a look. Watch it.
“But I’m going to be home more often from now on,” he promises. My mom looks like she doesn’t know if she believes it, but she’ll take it. “I’m going to be more involved, starting with your education. First thing next week, I’m going to take you to the agent who’s going to help get you into the American high school.”
I turn to my mom and plead with her. I promise her the moon and the stars—I’ll write whatever the tutor wants me to write; I’ll get better grades; I’ll never talk back, ever. “Please, Mom, I don’t want to go to America,” I beg. “Where am I even going to live?”
“Oh, don’t worry, the agent will take care of it,” my dad says. “You’re going to American Preparatory. It’s in LA. And you’re going to live with a wonderful host family.”
My dad dishes out the death sentence like it’s dessert.
Four
Dani
I try to push the image of the guy having sex in the big Mediterranean house out of my head as I ride the bus home from the agency. We didn’t have time to wait for Eduardo. Ming and I got out of there as fast as we could, Ming nearly tripping with her chunky boots on the dragon statue by the door. I’ve seen some weird stuff cleaning houses, but this is a first. And the way he said, Wanna join in? Like it was a video game. I hope when I finally have sex, it’s with a guy who respects me.
“Mom?” I call as I walk inside my house. “I thought you were picking me up today from the agency?”
I waited for her for a half hour, trying her on her cell.
“Dani!” my mother answers from the spare bedroom. “Come in here and help me!”
I dump my backpack on the floor and walk over to see her kneeling, reaching under the bed. Three large trash bags sit next to her, and she’s pulling out more junk from underneath the bed: newspapers, old Christmas ornaments, little bottles of shampoo she’s been hoarding.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Clearing out this room,” she says, sitting cross-legged on the floor in her whitish stretch pants. For all her separating other people’s laundry all day long, my mom never bothers to separate her own whites. Says it wastes too much water. As a result, her whites are gray.
“Why?” I ask.
We never use the spare bedroom. Ever since my dad left, it’s been just the two of us. My mom’s relatives are all back in the Philippines. I’ve met my grandparents only once, as they’re too old and weak to make the trip from Manila to the US. Still, my mom prides herself on the fact that we have a spare bedroom. “See? We’re not strapped. We have extra,” she’d say.
“I’m renting out the room!” she announces to me.
“What?” The news cramps my throat. “To who?” I ask.
“A nice girl from China, you’ll like her,” she says. “She’s gonna go to your school. Her parents are paying us two thousand dollars a month just for her to live with us!”
I don’t know what to say—$2,000 is a lot more than Ming pays Underwear Kevin. On the other hand, we’d be giving up so much more than a room.
My mom frowns. “Look, you know the property taxes are going up, the mortgage payments are killing us . . . ,” she says. My eyes slide over to the stack of tax bills on top of the trash bag. She doesn’t have to remind me. My dad may have left us this house, but he didn’t own it. Not even close.
“What if we didn’t send so much money back to the Philippines to Lola and Lolo . . . ,” I suggest. Every month, my mom sends $500 back to my grandparents in the Philippines. That check’s the first one in the mail before any of the other bills get paid.
“You know I have to send money home!” my mom protests. “We’re Filipino; that’s what we do—we take care of each other!”
So take care of us, I want to say.
“Let’s not fight. It’s going to be okay. We’ll take her in, and we’ll make her feel at home,” my mom says. “I’ll cook her Chinese food. Pick her up from school . . .”
Funny how my mom will remember to pick up this girl, a girl she’s never met, but she doesn’t remember to pick me up, her own daughter, from the agency. I cross my arms. “So you’re basically just going to be her mom. You’re renting yourself out.”
I can hear Mr. Connelly’s voice in my head shouting, “Whoa! Tone it down!”
My mom sticks her hands into her pockets. “What will you have me do?” she asks. “Beg Rosa for more money?”
I can hear Rosa’s shrill laugh in my head, Poverty’s the result of laziness. A smart person grabs opportunity by the throat. That’s what she did when she stole my mom’s idea. The two of them used to work for an old lady, cleaning her house together. One day, my mom got the idea that they go off on their own and start a house-cleaning business. There were more and more wealthy Chinese families moving in, buying up houses, and they needed people to help keep them clean. But before Mom could do it, Rosa went out and bought a van with her husband’s money. Now there are ten vans and twenty-five of us cleaning for Rosa. Ideas are cheap, vans are expensive, according to Rosa.
My mom looks down at the mattress, her face tired.
“My coach is probably going to pick me for Snider,” I tell her, hoping my good news will cheer her up. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been using my good news to try to fill the void my dad left.
Her face blooms. “That’s great!” she gushes, pulling me into her arms.
I smile and breathe in her pride as she holds me. “But I need quiet, Mom,” I tell her. “I can’t have someone else living here, distracting me while I’m trying to train.”
My mom swats at my concern. “She won’t distract you. And besides, a little distraction could be good for you in case . . .”
I pull away. I know what’s at the end of that sentence, and she’s wrong. My mom thinks my debating is like a hot night in Vegas. Everything good comes to a disappointing end. But it won’t. I’ll show her. And when I win, our lives are going to change. I’m going to get into Yale, and we won’t have to ever worry about not making another mortgage payment again.
I get to band early the next day to take my loaned flute out before anyone sees. Zach is also there. As I’m cleaning my flute, Zach blows too hard on his clarinet and makes an eek sound. He turns red and apologizes to me. And I think maybe today’s the day when we’ll finally talk, like in one of those romantic comedies where the dorky girl somehow ends up with the hot guy and it turns out she’s not really so dorky, it was just the glasses.
But no. We don’t talk. He just goes back to playing his sheet music, and I sit there, wishing I was his sheet music.
Ming walks over. “You ready for the fund-raiser tonight?”
Mrs. Mandalay requires us full-scholarship students to attend the American Prep cocktail fund-raisers she’s always putting on to solicit donations for the school’s already inflated endowment. It’s an opportunity for new parents to ingratiate themselves with her, usually in the form of a five-figure or six-figure check. But at least there’s good food. I usually have to make a speech, and Ming does a solo performance. All the new parents ooh and aah and it feels a bit like we’re on display at a zoo. I remind myself it’s a small price to pay. My old public school had more security checks than an airport.
“You guys going to that thing too?” Zach asks.
My head snaps. Did he just speak?
“Yeah, are you?” Ming asks. She smiles at me, raising her eyebrows suggestively. She knows all about my crush on Zach.
Zach nods and goes back to fiddling with his reed.
I can hardly sit still the rest of the day, thinking about the fact that Zach’s going to be at the fund-raiser tonight. The sports-scholarship students don’t usually have to come to these things. If he’s going, he’ll hear my speech. I walk through the halls, reciting it in my head. It’s the same one I made the other day, about tracking in schools. And it has to be perfect. I’m so immersed in my speech that when Mr. Connelly calls my name in the hallway, it takes me a second to respond.
“Dani!” Mr. Connelly calls. I turn around. Jokingly, Mr. Connelly waves his hand up and down in front of my eyes. “Earth to Dani! What’s up? You thinking about your boyfriend?” he teases.
I blush. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” I tell him.
“Really?” he asks. “Hey, I’m glad I bumped into you. I’m thinking about making you team captain for the next tournament. You think you can handle that?”
My eyes widen. That would be amazing. I’ve never been team captain before. It’s usually Heather or Audrey. I nod enthusiastically.
“Good!” Mr. Connelly grins. “I’ll see you at practice on Wednesday, Thunder Girl!”
I’m still smiling later that day when I walk into the annual-fund cocktail fund-raiser. I’m in my formal debate attire—black dress and pumps, the same ones I wear for debate. And just in case I get close to Zach, a spritz of
the sample Lancôme perfume one of my mom’s clients threw away and she fished out of the trash. The auditorium is lit up and packed with parents, mostly from China. Ming is in the corner tuning her violin. As the caterer offers me a glass of water, Mrs. Mandalay waves at me. Her wild red hair bounces above her shoulders as she strolls over to me in her power suit, looking every bit like the tough-as-nails headmistress who single-handedly quadrupled our school enrollment.
“There you are, Dani!” she says. “Are you ready?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. I hold up my note cards. I look around for Zach but don’t see him. Mr. Connelly is in the corner, talking to a parent. He waves, and when the parent turns around to get another glass of wine, pretends to shoot himself in the head.
I stifle a laugh.
Mrs. Mandalay walks up onto the stage and calls everyone’s attention.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mrs. Mandalay says, stepping up to the podium. “Welcome to the annual-fund cocktail fund-raiser. We thank you for spending the evening with us, and by spend I mean spend.”
There’s a wave of laughs. Mrs. Mandalay is the Olympic champion of fund-raising. She can squeeze a quarter out of a squirrel. She once got $200 out of my mom, a check that thankfully bounced the next day. Ever since then, I’ve told my mom to stay clear of these events.
I’m up first. Mrs. Mandalay introduces me to the podium.
As I take the stage, I look out at the room full of people. Eager prospective parents mixed with bored alumni roped in to attend through guilt. I smile at all of them. To me it’s all the same. I welcome the chance to fire up any crowd.
Tonight is no exception. As I deliver my last line, the room bellows, “Bravo!” The alumni clap, while the parents’ eyes go wide. I can tell what they’re thinking—Wow. I want my kid to speak like that girl. Maybe if they come to this school, they will. One by one, they whip out their checkbooks.
“Danielle De La Cruz.” Mrs. Mandalay beams. She looks at me and nods, pleased. “We’re so proud to have students like Dani at our school, thanks to the generous donations to our annual fund!”
The crowd cheers. As Ming steps onto the stage with her violin and fills the room with the soothing sound of Brahms, the crowd takes out their phones and snaps pictures of the talented young violin prodigy.