The Unpassing

by Chia-Chia Lin

  How he adored the Time magazines. The bold font, the shine to the paper, the photo spreads in full color. Back then, pages might be blacked out or torn away by censors, or even entire issues banned. That was the real reason he had come to the States, my mother said. He wanted to read the magazines without any missing parts.

  “So at least there is that,” she said. She stretched her mouth, and I saw now that her smile was as much gums as teeth. “Everything else might tumble down, but at least, at least”—and here she switched to English—“he have his good Times.” Then she laughed so relentlessly that I felt I had to laugh, too.

  10

  On the rare occasion when my father was home during waking hours, he hounded me to eat. I hid from him, but eventually he came for me. Crouched on the far side of the dresser, I heard the knob turn, the latch dart in, the door open.

  “Let’s go.” My father wrapped his hand around the burl of my shoulder, then pushed me out to the hallway and into the bathroom. He kicked the scale out in front of the toilet. The scale hopped as the rubber feet dragged. “Get on,” he said.

  I stepped on. I watched the needle jump, tremble, then hover traitorously.

  “How?” he said. “Shrinking. You’re shrinking.”

  He knocked the toothbrushes into the sink. As they clattered, he grabbed my shoulders. “You want to starve like an idiot while there’s food in the house? Fine. Go ahead.” He released me. I stumbled off the scale and into the wall.

  My father closed the toilet lid and sat on it. The plastic squeaked as it flexed. “I’m not yelling at you just to yell at you.” He rubbed his knees. “You need to eat more. Who ever heard of a shrinking boy? If you don’t grow, you won’t have all the things you’re supposed to have. Or you’ll have to work harder just to get the same things. Every small thing, every tiny thing, like how to hold your wallet and how to scratch your head, you’ll have to study and learn. And even then you’re not really seen as normal. Even though you are better than normal, you are not even seen as normal. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re the oldest son of an only son. You are passing on the family name. It matters what you do and how you conduct yourself.”

  “There are a lot of people with our last name,” I said.

  “That is not what I mean.”

  My father got up and kicked the scale roughly back into place. As he left, I arranged the toothbrushes in the cup he had toppled. Five toothbrushes that touched at the handles and pointed away from one another. Once there had been six. I pressed my thumbprints into the mirror.

  In our bedroom my father knelt in front of the wall, before a spread of butcher paper he had taped up a few months back. “Rules for Long Living” was scrawled across the top in my father’s teetering handwriting. Beneath it was a list of actions we had to do every day, compiled from his readings on longevity. Chew each bite at least ten times. Flap the arms upon waking to get the energy flowing right. Eat five dried jujubes. At the bottom, in red pen, my father was scrawling an addition.

  “Come see,” he said. He swiped his hand across the crooked words. A few letters smeared, sprouting horizontal whiskers. “‘Jump for fifteen minutes a day,’” he read.

  “Jumping,” I said.

  He raised his hands. “Up and down. It makes your bones and muscles stretch. It encourages them to grow.”

  “Just me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do I have to jump?”

  “Think of it as, why do you get to jump? Think, why am I so lucky, that I can still grow?”

  “I don’t want to grow,” I said.

  “Don’t say that,” he whispered. He patted the floor, searching for the pen he had dropped, keeping his panicked gaze on me. “Don’t say that out loud.”

  * * *

  HOYT STAMPED HIS BOOTS in our doorway and then stepped right on top of the plastic slippers my mother had laid out for him. The soles of his boots were so thick he probably hadn’t noticed. It was a Saturday and the first time he had come into our house, maybe the first time anyone had—I couldn’t recall a single repairman or utility worker. “Suey, this is the narrowest, skinniest house I ever been in,” he said. “From the front it looks like a two-by-four.”

  My father laughed, a whinnying sound. “A tour,” he declared, as though the idea had just struck him. All morning we’d been shoving things under our beds, behind the sofa, into cabinets and closets. Books that didn’t fit in the crates were crammed in the freezer and oven. My father had hauled stacks of cardboard to the garage and tossed two cases of expired vitamins onto his truck. His enormous collection of pristine Time magazines, usually boxed up, was on display—a pile on the kitchen table, a few on the counter, a stack on the bathroom floor, and even one on each of our beds.

  My mother grimaced at Hoyt, her attempt at a smile. The rest of us took in the spectacle of the first guest in our home. We had seen him only from a distance. Close-up, he had hair all over his face—and feathering the back of his neck—and he was big. The top of my father’s head was level with Hoyt’s collarbone. Hoyt felt his bigness, too. “You’re all as little as Suey,” he said. He laid a heavy hand on my head, and I was afraid he would push me into the floor like a stake.

  Natty said, “Suey.”

  Hoyt bent over and boomed in his face. “Your pops.”

  “My pops.”

  “’Cause Sue’s a girl’s name and I can’t pronounce his first name.”

  “Tour!” cried my father.

  Natty slipped his hand into Hoyt’s. He’d never been so familiar with strangers before. As we trekked up the stairs, Hoyt was overly careful as he led Natty, turning around to check that he’d made it up each step.

  We peeked into my parents’ room, the bathroom, our bedroom. I walked behind Hoyt, who was so heavy he left temporary footprints in the carpet. He liked to touch things. He trailed a finger along the wall, and in our bedroom he scratched at the butcher paper. I was afraid he would stand there and read it. But he was more interested in the arrangement of beds. “All together like that?” he kept asking. “They’re practically sleeping in one bed.”

  Pei-Pei had pushed our beds together to create more floor space for practicing her angry dance moves. The fused bed filled more than half the room. She said, “You should’ve seen it before. It looked like an orphanage.”

  In the kitchen, my mother set out tea and sesame crackers. “I thought these would be sweet,” Hoyt said, talking around the cracker he’d jammed in his mouth. He took a seat at the kitchen table, and the wooden chair creaked.

  “Just wait,” Pei-Pei said. “We’re going to bake cookies.”

  Natty mimicked Hoyt and slid a whole cracker into his mouth. He had to force it, and it stretched his cheeks. I could see the exact form of the cracker. He stood behind Hoyt’s chair, fingers wrapped around two back spindles, blinking panicked, shiny eyes.

  My father, Pei-Pei, and I slipped into the other chairs.

  “Not much yard,” Hoyt said, nodding toward the window.

  My mother leaned over the table. She held the back of her hand to the clay teapot to check if it was hot enough.

  Hoyt shifted in his seat, listing to the left so he could see the far window in the den. “Not much there, either.” He paused, and when no one responded, he gestured at the closer window again. “But you could get a deck back there.”

  My mother perked up at this. “Or fence. Fence the best. I tell him, build the fence”—she slapped my father’s shoulder—“but he lazy. Or he don’t know how to build the fence. Maybe you teach him.” She gestured vaguely outside.

  “You don’t need a fence,” Hoyt said. “You don’t have any neighbors.”

  My mother swatted at the hair in her face. “Fence is good for children,” she said. She turned and walked to the sink.

  Hoyt leaned back and dangled his arms toward the floor. He tilted a chin in my father’s direction. “The Bonner lady’s almost come around,
” he said.

  “Push it closer?”

  “Yeah. Figure we’ll save a couple hundred, with the piping and trenching. Plus the half-horsepower pump instead of three-quarters.”

  “She agree?”

  “I’ll get her there. She thinks her kids are going to fall in. I told her, ‘Lady, even if the well was a mile away, your kids could still fall in.’”

  My father said something about a submersible pump that had been struck by lightning.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Hoyt said.

  “No, I will.”

  “He still of the mind he can keep it there?”

  My father shrugged.

  “I’ll convince him to pull it,” Hoyt said.

  “No, I am talking to him.”

  “I’ll just drop by and have a quick chat.”

  My father pushed his chair back. He stood at the sink and ran his hand along its edge, then in one swoop he pulled down a bottle of clear liquor from the cabinet above. He pinched together two plastic cups from the drying rack and clapped them down on the kitchen table, where they made a hollow sound.

  Hoyt chuckled. “Man gets straight to the point.”

  My father unscrewed the cap and tipped the bottle twice, splashing out two portions.

  “Jesus, that smell. What is this?”

  “Baijiu. Chinese for white wine—”

  Hoyt took a gulp.

  “—but it’s not wine.”

  “Fuck me. What is this, Chinese Drano? Is this going to make me blind?”

  “Pretend it is water.” My father tipped his cup back and emptied it. “Or you want beer?”

  “Nah.” Hoyt swirled the liquid in his cup, and I recognized his expression. I felt it myself at mealtimes; he was gathering will.

  I wanted my father to tell Hoyt about his childhood. I wanted to hear it again. He had grown up in a brewery village. The whole town smelled like burnt bread and soured oatmeal. When he was a boy, a huge vat of beer had ruptured and spewed a river of lager down the hill, and people brought pails, bins, pots. My father had dragged over the wooden tub his family used for bathing.

  “Everyone drinks this in China?”

  “I think so,” my father said, though no one in our family had ever been to the mainland. There was a ban on traveling there from Taiwan, and on phone calls and mail as well.

  “Down in one,” Hoyt said.

  “Yes.” My father was pouring again.

  “I’m going to hold my breath.”

  My father hit Hoyt’s cup with his own and drank. “Too strong? I have beer.”

  Hoyt snorted, which triggered a coughing fit.

  As they worked on the bottle, my mother stood in the kitchen, unsure of where to go. She touched the handle to the fridge but didn’t open it. She walked a few steps to the drying rack and started putting away the cutlery, though it was still wet.

  “Am I going to be able to drive after this?”

  My father was pouring again.

  “My cousin, he got a second DUI, and now he gets around on his lawn mower.”

  My father traced the lip of his cup with a finger. “The well casing,” he said. “I do everything right. Not my fault it cracked.”

  “Sure.”

  “I do everything right. You know this. I need you write a—a document for court—say I do everything right. Steven, he won’t do it. He say he never see the install, he say, ‘That’s all you guys.’ But you see it. You did the grouting.”

  “Hey, now,” Hoyt said. “It’s not the grouting that’s the problem.”

  “I know—”

  “Well, what’s going on with the insurance?”

  “He say no coverage for subcontractor’s—for subcontractor’s”—my father slid his jaw forward—“negligence. Poor workmanship.” He swept a hand in front of his face as though clearing something away. “But it’s not—”

  “Hey, I didn’t come out here to talk shop.” Hoyt hooked his elbow over the back of his chair. “Look at your nice family, and here we are, going on like this.” He palmed the side of Natty’s head. “This one’s starting kindergarten?”

  “Yes,” my mother said.

  “Sweet boy,” Hoyt said. “And this one?”

  “He just finish grade five,” my mother said.

  “Five? You kidding me? He’s almost as small as the little one.”

  “I not kidding you.” My mother took a few quick steps to the table and stood beside Hoyt, so close to him it looked like she was about to investigate the dusky roots of his hair. “I work at his school,” she said.

  “That right? You teach?”

  “Crossing guard.”

  In fact my mother had only subbed for Paula, the teary-eyed, frosty-lipped lady who limped us across the intersection outside school. For three weeks, while Paula recovered from a surgery to reposition a toe, my mother worked a half hour in the morning and a half hour in the afternoon. She wore a neon-yellow vest and held a stop sign in front of her like a longsword, poised to make a downward slice.

  “Yeah,” Hoyt said. “Sure. Crossing guard.”

  “Keep children safe.” Layered over her turtleneck was an old hoodie of Pei-Pei’s, unzipped, and she tugged on the bottom corners of it. Her eyes were getting huge. “If someone don’t drive safe, I remember license plate number.”

  “An important job,” Hoyt said.

  “Nobody walk until I walk,” she said. “I walk first. Protect the children behind me.”

  Hoyt gazed up at my mother. Her hands were up by her throat, and if she lowered one just a few inches, she could grab his large, geological nose. “It’s a good thing,” he said, and when my mother did not move, he mumbled, “a marvelous thing.”

  I ran my half-eaten cracker around on the vinyl tablecloth. My father sat low in his chair with his legs spread and his arms falling away from him.

  “Let’s go see about that fence,” Hoyt said, and stood up. My father straightened, nodded, and grabbed the liquor bottle by the neck. Then Hoyt bent down to kiss Natty on top of his head, right on the whorl from which Natty’s hair grew clockwise. And Natty let him.

  They left through the front door so my father could yank on his shoes, and soon I saw them walking up the slope of our patchy side yard. My father was on the far side, and for a moment he disappeared completely behind Hoyt, so that I couldn’t find a single hand or shoe that belonged to him.

  Pei-Pei tossed her head back; her glasses slid down her forehead and came to a crooked rest on her nose. “The cookies,” she said to my mother, and got up to switch on the oven. “First, preheat.” We weren’t permitted to use the oven except in winter months, when what was wasted in energy could be used as heat. But on this night in late June, my father had asked Pei-Pei to take charge of what to serve to Hoyt, and she had chosen thumbprint cookies. Such a choice. I knelt on my chair to get a better view. Sometimes it seemed to me that Pei-Pei knew every corner of the world.

  My mother heaved an unopened seven-pound sack of brown sugar onto the counter. “I don’t know why you can’t just use regular.”

  “Because it says brown!” Pei-Pei wailed. She flattened the recipe on the back of the Hershey’s bag and underscored the words with her fingernail. “You didn’t have to buy so much of it. But we have to follow it this time. I’m going to do it myself.”

  She put Natty and me to work unwrapping the Hershey’s kisses, but a few candies in, Natty began rolling the flimsy foil wrappers and paper flags into tight, wrinkled beads, which he flicked across the table at me.

  “Stop that,” I said.

  “Get out,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Leave.” He flicked another bead, and it hit me on the chin.

  My mother pressed herself against the wall, just past the edge of the window frame. She craned her head to peek out. Through the window, I could see two figures in the backyard. Their hands were in their pockets and their legs were swallowed up by dark grass. Above their bowed heads was the jagged silhouette of
treetops against the coppery sky.

  Pei-Pei opened the sack and dipped a measuring cup in, packing the brown sugar so hard that the plastic handle bent backward. She dumped it into a bowl and slapped my hand when I tried to break the fragile shape with my finger. As Pei-Pei scanned the recipe, my mother returned and stared into the bowl. For Pei-Pei’s birthday last year, my mother had made a pound cake. She kept murmuring, “What a thing, a cake made from a whole pound of sugar,” shuddering at the audacity of the granulated sugar as it poured smoothly out of the measuring cup. In the end she had tripled the flour. “This is bread,” Pei-Pei complained, and would not take another bite even when my mother whapped the back of her head. My mother picked up the whole loaf from the top and flipped it, feeling its heft, and said, “Someone should make a cake for me, since I’ve raised you for another year.”

  As Pei-Pei reached for the butter now, my mother shouted, “No!” Pei-Pei froze, but my mother was looking at the wall clock. It was nearly seven in the evening. “No,” my mother wailed. She unhooked the phone from the wall and jabbed at the rubber buttons. While she waited, she wrapped the phone cord around her fingers, weaving it in and out, like a string game I’d seen Ada play. Suddenly she jerked and expelled a flurry of Taiwanese. “Hello? Hello? Yes, I’m the daughter. I know. I know. But—how long did they wait for me to call? They didn’t wait too long, did they? Heavens. I don’t know, I just—we had a guest, we were preparing—I know it’s Sunday morning there. It wasn’t chilly while they were waiting, was it? No, I know it’s too late now. I’ll try again next month. Tell me, how did he look? Did he look like he’s been eating? I know they waited a long time. I know I made them wait.”

  As my mother continued her chatter, I became aware of a chemical smell filling our kitchen. I took a long sniff. Pei-Pei looked straight through me for a few seconds before slamming down the can of baking powder, which wheezed up white dust. She dashed to the oven, wrenched open the door, and pawed at the books as they tumbled out.

  I strolled over and picked up a paperback. The edges and corners were toasted brown. As I riffled through the warm pages, they crackled. At my feet was a glossy softcover book; its plastic laminate had taken on a whipped, raised texture. I squatted and put my face close to it, inhaling the burnt electrical smell a few times and holding my breath until I felt the sweet forward creep of a headache. The kitchen glowed yellow, and Natty hopped off his chair. He scrabbled at the sliding door to the yard and pulled it open just a foot, maybe less. He turned sideways and slid through it like a coin through a slot.