by Kelly Yang
My mom and I sleep side by side. She tosses and turns, and despite what Mrs. De La Cruz says about how it’s a Tempur-Pedic mattress, I can feel her shifting. With every move, the contents of my stomach jerk up and down like we’re at sea. Mrs. De La Cruz made chicken afritada for dinner, a Filipino chicken stew, which, while delicious, was also heavier than I’m used to.
“Stop moving, Mom,” I whisper. “You’re making the whole bed shake.”
“I can’t help it,” she hisses back. “This bed is too soft. How can anyone sleep on something so soft?”
She thrusts her body against the mattress, trying to find a comfortable spot. I feel the chicken ramming up against the back of my throat.
“Mom, I think I’m going to be—”
Before I can say the words, it happens. I don’t have time to make it to the bathroom. I throw up, and it splatters on top of the blanket.
My mom jumps out of bed and screams.
“Tressy!” she yells, forgetting we’re not in Shanghai.
I cover my mouth—there’s more coming—and with my free hand, point to the trash can.
Instead of giving me the trash can, my mom starts waving her arms. “Don’t! Stop it! Not here!”
I jump out of bed and run to the trash can, where I puke up the rest of the chicken.
When I look up, my mom’s gone. She’s not in the room.
Dani and Mrs. De La Cruz come running in. I cringe with embarrassment, wishing my mom hadn’t woken them up, as I sit on the floor hugging the trash can.
“Don’t worry! We’ll help you!” Mrs. De La Cruz says. Dani quickly hands me a towel and leads me to the bathroom to wash up.
When I return, I see Mrs. De La Cruz bent over the floor, scrubbing up my mess while my mom pats awkwardly at the floor with flimsy squares of toilet paper, trying to help but making more of a mess. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen my mom clean. And it shows.
My mom’s phone rings.
“It’s your dad,” she says. She looks to Mrs. De La Cruz. “Do you mind if I take this?”
“Go,” Mrs. De La Cruz tells her. “We’ll take care of this.”
My mom puts an appreciative hand on Mrs. De La Cruz’s back as she leaves. Dani takes her spot and scrubs next to her mom silently. In the silvery moonlight, I can see her frowning. I can’t believe my mom would leave them to clean up my mess. Then again, of course she would. It’s what she’s been doing her whole life.
I bend down and join Dani and her mom. Mrs. De La Cruz squirts bleach on the floor, and the smell clogs my throat. Not at all how I imagined my first night in America.
Ten
Dani
You should have seen my mom—“yes, madam,” “no, madam.” And the Wangs, the way they sat there at dinner like it was a restaurant. They didn’t even offer to help clear the table or wash the dishes. And later, when Claire threw up, the way her mom just left us to clean up the mess, it docked on my forehead like raindrops how utterly spoiled they are.
Early the next morning, Claire’s mom’s driver takes us to school. Heads turn as Claire gets out of the car. She’s in white frayed jeans and a blue silk tank top. Wisps of long jet-black hair fly in the wind as she throws her leather backpack over her shoulder. The boys stare at her—all legs and boobs and silky skin. Standing next to her, I feel myself disappearing into the background, like a pygmy seahorse.
Claire seems oblivious to all the eyeballs on her, or maybe she’s just used to it. She moves her aviator glasses up to the top of her head as she follows her mom to the main office.
“I gotta go to class,” I tell them. “Good luck today.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you later!” Claire says.
I open my mouth to say, “Maybe at lunch,” then close it. I’m certain by lunchtime, she’ll have firmly established herself at the top of the crazy-rich-Asian pecking order and she won’t want to hang out with me and Ming.
Zach’s at the library waiting for me after school when I arrive.
“You’re here!” Zach says when I walk in. He looks and sounds so surprised.
“Of course I’m here,” I say. I take a seat next to him.
“I was worried you weren’t going to come,” he says.
A few kids walk by. Zach opens his laptop and pulls up his English paper. Zach’s not in the same English class as me. I take a look at what he’s written, our fingers brushing as I pull the computer toward me. It’s a narrative nonfiction piece about his mom. Zach wrote about the time his mom came home and she was really sick and he had to take care of her all by himself. As my eyes move across the page, I’m surprised by how honest it is. Yes, there are some grammatical mistakes. But there’s also truth and pain to it.
“It’s awful, right?” he asks. “Should I start over? Let’s just start over.”
I shake my head. “No, no,” I tell him. “It’s good. You just need to expand on it.”
He looks relieved. I ask him questions to help him flesh out the details. How old was he when this happened? Seven. How’d he take care of her? He cleaned her up, put her to bed, and made her get up to drink water every couple of hours.
“What did she have, the flu?” I ask out of curiosity.
He looks down and shakes his head.
“No,” he says quietly. “She was just drunk.”
Oh. I follow his gaze to his hands. His fingernails are short, his knuckles calloused like mine. My mom says you can tell a lot about a person just by looking at their hands. I look at the worry in his eyes at what he’s just revealed. It makes me want to tell him about all the times my mom’s gone out looking for my dad in the wee hours of the morning.
But instead, I say, “That must have been really hard for you.”
Zach shrugs. Doesn’t elaborate. He rubs his nose and points to his essay. “So you think it can be fixed?” he asks.
“Oh yeah, totally,” I say. I put my hands to the keyboard and start fixing his run-on sentences and his misplaced modifiers. I show him how to add some of the details in. Our arms touch as I type, and I keep mistyping, I’m so distracted. When he reads back the essay, a smile beams on his face.
“How’d you do that?” he asks.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “They’re your details.”
“But the way you put them together . . .” He marvels at me like I’m a wizard. “It’s better than anything I could have imagined.”
I smile.
“Thanks for helping me . . . edit this? Cheat?” he jokes. “Seriously, I don’t know what to call the magic you worked.”
“Well, it’s not cheating,” I tell him, muttering under my breath. “What Heather does . . . that’s cheating.”
“Heather McLean?” he asks.
I bite my lip, not wanting to get into it, but Zach gazes at me with the same discerning eyes I’m used to sneaking glances at in band, and he gets it out of me.
“That’s so messed up!” he exclaims. “You should call her out on it!”
I don’t know about that.
“Once there was this guy who lied about being on the swim team for his college applications.”
My eyes bulge.
“Oh yeah. Everyone knew,” Zach says. “Even the coach, but he didn’t want to say anything because the kid’s parents were major donors.”
“So what’d you do?” I ask Zach.
“I went up to him and told him if he didn’t take it off, I’d tell the school,” Zach says. I look up at him in awe.
Heather walks into the library as he’s telling me this. Zach scoots closer to me, eyeing her as he leans over and says, “Seriously, you gotta say something. Don’t let her get away with this shit.”
“Heather!” I call out, running after her as she walks out of the library and down the hall. I can’t believe I’m taking Zach’s advice. “Your speech the other day, I was just wondering, what kind of research did you do?”
Heather flips her ash-brown hair to one side and texts on her phone. “Oh, you know, the usua
l,” she says. She rattles off a list of periodicals: The Economist, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times. “Why?”
“It’s just really similar to a speech I heard against UCLA at El Camino,” I say. I’m completely making it up, I have no idea what they said at El Camino. But I remember Coach Evans mentioning this when he was over at her house.
Heather looks up from her phone, her cheeks crimson.
“So?”
“So . . .” I take a deep breath, mustering up the strength. “Heather, we can’t win at these tournaments if our speech is just copied from somewhere else. We have to come up with all original points.”
She tosses her phone in her Kate Spade bag and crosses her arms at me. “Every argument is derivative,” she informs me. “Every point is based on a previously established point. There are no original points!”
“Yeah, well, there’s a difference between deriving and outright copying,” I say.
This sets Heather off. “You’re one to talk! You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have extra help!”
My mouth dries, and I feel the expensive glass walls of our hallway closing in around me as Heather turns and walks away.
“Watch your back, Thunder Girl,” she warns.
Eleven
Claire
There are a lot of Chinese kids at American Prep. Mrs. Mandalay, the headmistress says they come from all over: Beijing, Chengdu, Shenzhen, etc. Many of them live with host families too, though some live alone, she says, as she leads us on a tour around the school.
“They love it here,” Mrs. Mandalay says. “Some don’t even want to leave for the holidays.”
My mom pokes me. Hear that? I intend on catching the first flight back whenever there’s so much as a long weekend.
“Do you guys have any . . .” My mom searches for the right word in English. She tells me in Mandarin.
“Discipline problems,” I translate for her.
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Mandalay is quick to say. “I assure you, all the kids here are very good.”
My mom nods, satisfied, and turns her attention back to her phone while I continue gazing at the Chinese kids. Many of them are carrying MCM backpacks. The girls wear shorts we would never get away with wearing in China. There’s a couple in the corner making out. The boy has his hand inside the girl’s shirt, and even when we walk past, they don’t stop. I look over at my mom. She doesn’t seem to notice.
The white students stare at me as I walk. They don’t seem to be mixing with the Chinese kids. They keep to themselves. I can’t tell if they are fascinated or disgusted by the arrival of yet another Asian person.
“How are the teachers?” I ask Mrs. Mandalay.
“We only recruit the finest!” Mrs. Mandalay declares. “And the ones who teach the international students are especially patient.”
My eyebrows bunch together as I turn to her. “Wait a minute, we’re not in the same classes as the American students?”
Mrs. Mandalay laughs. “Of course not, there are major language barriers, for one thing. And culturally, we just find it easier . . . for everyone.”
I glance at my mom, but she’s already moved on to other questions, specifically about dining. As she and Mrs. Mandalay talk, I fall quiet, thinking about what Mrs. Mandalay said. It’s odd to move all the way over here to go to an American school and not take classes with American kids.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Mandalay, are you saying I’m not allowed to take classes with the local kids?” I interrupt.
The question catches Mrs. Mandalay by surprise, and she stops walking. She chews the inside of her cheek, glancing down at her watch. When she looks up, she’s all smiles. “No, of course not! I’m not saying that at all! You just need to test into them, once you’ve proven you have a sufficient English proficiency.”
Okay, that sounds better. Mrs. Mandalay jokes to my mom, “Your daughter’s feisty—I like that! Are you sure she’s not American?”
“Good God, I hope not!” my mom replies with a laugh. “We want an American education, not an American daughter.”
After the tour, Mrs. Mandalay takes us to her office and gives me my schedule. I’m in English foundation, precalc, world history, biology, and psychology. She assigns me a student mentor, Jess Zhang, who comes over to the office looking like she’s dressed for Milan Fashion Week. She’s wearing the latest Fendi boots I’d had my eye on for weeks and greets my mom, “Ah yi hao.”
My mom smiles. “So polite!” she remarks to me. My mom extends a warm hand and introduces us.
“Claire, you’re from Shanghai?” Jess says in Mandarin, her eyes brightening. “I’m from Shanghai too! Well, originally, until we moved to Wuhan.”
“Jess, do you mind taking Claire to class?” Mrs. Mandalay asks.
Jess nods at Mrs. Mandalay and says, “Follow me,” in English. I note her English is nearly perfect, like mine. No accent. I wonder if she had a Filipina nanny too growing up, or did her mom just cram her full of tutors?
“C’mon, let’s go, we’re going to be late,” Jess says.
I glance at my mom and muster a brave smile. This is it. This is what she wanted. For a second, she looks like she’s having second thoughts. Regret washes over her face.
“She’s going to do great here,” Mrs. Mandalay assures her.
And the moment passes. My mom smiles at me and wishes me good luck.
“So you know any other parachutes here?” Jess asks as she walks.
“Parachute?” I ask.
“That’s what they call us. Kids from China who come to the US on our own, without our parents. We parachute in . . . get it?” she tells me. Her silky hair flows over her white top. A few white boys holler at us as we walk.
“Hey, girl, you wanna meet at Panda Express this weekend?”
“Ignore them,” Jess says, linking her arm with mine. She whispers in my ear, “American boys are all the same. They’re all horny as hell and cheap as fuck. They never pay for dinner. What they lack in wallet size they make up in catcalls.” She stops walking and smiles at me. “But they give the best shoulder rubs.”
I laugh. Sounds like she has some experience.
“How long have you been here?” I ask.
She tells me she’s been at the school for a little over two years. Like me, her parents were worried about the gaokao, so her mom made her come.
“I wouldn’t talk to the bitch for months,” she says. “But I’m glad I came. You should come out with us this weekend. We’re going clubbing in San Gabriel Valley!”
I don’t know. I’m not a big partier. Even in Shanghai, where people are a lot more relaxed about drinking, I wouldn’t go crazy. I like to have a glass of Clicquot once in a while, sure. But you won’t find me dancing on tables, downing Grey Goose and slurring my words. I’m confused though.
“Aren’t we underage here?” I ask her.
She shrugs. “There are ways. . . . Don’t worry about it.”
When I don’t say anything, Jess reaches out and touches my arm.
“Hey. We’re all stuck in this together. We might as well have fun.”
Jess pushes open the door to my English classroom, and the teacher, a white guy in his late forties in jeans and a wrinkled khaki shirt, turns to us.
“Welcome!” he says. “Or shall I say, huan ying.” He turns to his class, full of Chinese kids, and asks, “Did I say that right?”
Some parachutes nod at his Chinese, others barely look up, as Jess goes to her seat. The kids around her are playing with their phones. The guys in the back are pounding so hard on the keyboards of their MacBooks, I wonder if they’re gaming . . . in class?
“I’m Mr. Harvey,” the teacher says to me.
“Claire,” I say.
“Claire, that’s a pretty name,” he says. “Did you just make that up for yourself?”
My cheeks color. “No . . . I’ve had it since I was little,” I tell him. Jess stifles a laugh from her seat at Mr. Harvey’s reaction.
“Your E
nglish!” he exclaims. “Wow. It’s amazing!”
Jess throws both palms over her cheeks at her desk in feigned surprise. That girl. She’s too much. “Thanks, I speak it with our housekeeper at home . . . and my parents have taken me to San Francisco a few times.”
“San Francisco, really?” Mr. Harvey asks. “Did you go to Angel Island? A lot of Chinese people came through Angel Island. Of course, now they fly through LAX.” He laughs. He glances at the clock and tells me to go to my desk. “It’s good to have you here, sweetheart.”
Jess pats the empty seat next to hers and adds, “Yeah, sweetheart.”
I slide into the desk next to Jess and get my computer out from my bag. I look around the room. I spot a couple of girls shopping online. My eyes stop at a Chinese boy sitting near the front. He has deep brown eyes and jet-black hair falling over perfectly chiseled cheekbones. A smile plays at his lips like he’s enjoying his own private joke.
“Who’s that?” I ask Jess.
Jess glances at the boy.
“Oh, dream on,” she says. “That’s Jay. His dad owns like half of Beijing.”
Jay looks over at me, and I quickly shift my eyes.
“He’s single too,” Jess continues to dish. “I think. Can you imagine landing a guy like that? We’ve all been stalking him on WeChat for months.”
My own WeChat dings. It’s a text from Teddy.
Hey babe. How’s your first day of school? I love you.
Mr. Harvey walks by and passes out the assignment for today. I quickly put my phone away and turn the piece of paper over.
Please write two paragraphs on your favorite American food and why.
NOTE: If you can’t write the English, you may use Google Translate.
I turn to Jess. He’s kidding, right? This is the assignment?
She shrugs. “You can write whatever; they don’t check. One time I literally wrote, ‘This sucks balls.’ And Mr. Harvey still wrote ‘great job’ at the top,” Jess says.
The other kids in class have barely flipped their papers over. That boy, Jay, is talking on his phone, while Mr. Harvey sits at his desk, with his feet up and his headphones on. His headphones! If this were in China, our teachers would be walking up and down the aisles, scrutinizing our every character stroke with their hawklike eyes.