Trade Me

by Courtney Milan

  “No! That was the worst part. He refused to even try.” Blake drops his voice in a gravelly imitation of his dad. “‘If those dipshits are so fucking moronic that they’re afraid of a few, short Anglo-Saxon words, why should I give them good fucking money to teach you?’”

  “Okay,” I admit. “That is pretty embarrassing.”

  “He used to do this thing, too, where if he got mad about something I was being taught in school, he’d just show up in class and argue with the teacher. In front of everyone. And they never knew what to do or how to get him to leave them alone, because he was Adam Reynolds.”

  “Let me guess: your dad got mad a lot?”

  “The worst time was when I was eight and they made us make Mother’s Day cards. When my dad found out, he flipped his lid. He went in and…” Blake trails off and looks over at me. “Well, let’s just say that one was ugly. I think the teachers all fought just so they wouldn’t have me in their classes.”

  I know the official story of Blake’s mother, which is that there is officially no story. The only thing that either Blake or his father have ever said in public is that his mother has never been a part of Blake’s life. There’s been no explanation why. Blake’s Wikipedia page is quite clear—someone went and looked up his birth certificate, and the only parent listed was his father. His mother was listed as unknown. How that happens, nobody quite knows. Money, I guess. Lots of it.

  “Are you adopted?” I ask.

  “Nope.” His face doesn’t flicker.

  “Are you sure? Because I wouldn’t put it past your dad not to tell you—”

  “First, it wouldn’t matter even if I were. But second, aside from the obvious physical resemblance between us, we tested a DNA app a year ago. I am one hundred percent certain that I am my father’s biological child. And in case you’re wondering, no, I have never wished I had a mother. My dad contributed about three parents’ worth of child rearing.”

  “I know.” And, strangely, I do. I’m not even being sarcastic.

  “If you’re thinking of asking,” he says, “I don’t even know her name. I’m pretty sure Dad would tell me if I asked. But I haven’t.” He doesn’t look at me. “I don’t want him to think that he hasn’t been enough for me. So I don’t ask.”

  His hands grip the steering wheel tightly as if he expects some kind of argument.

  “Okay,” I say to him.

  After a long silence, he speaks again. “We all have our limits with our parents. You won’t be embarrassed by yours. And I won’t ever, ever hint, think, or in any other way countenance the implication that I need anyone other than my dad. Because it hurts him. Every single time someone asked in an interview if he’d been thinking of getting me a mother, as if he could just pick one out of a store, every time someone asked how he could possibly do it alone—I could just see him gritting his teeth.” Blake lets out a breath. “I don’t want to do that to him. That Mothers’ Day card…I started that one. My teacher told me I had to make a card for my mother, and I refused. She said I should be grateful to the woman who gave birth to me, and I—um—may have thrown a tantrum.” He shrugs. “I regret nothing.”

  I look over at him. “You really love your dad.”

  “Yes. I’d do anything for him.” There’s a roughness in his voice. “Doesn’t mean he’s not embarrassing, though.”

  We drive for a while longer.

  “There is one thing I know about my mother,” he finally says. “One thing that is not a part of the public record. And I’ll tell you if you promise to never tell anyone.”

  “Oh my God.” I press my fingers against my temples. “You mean, nobody except Maria, right? I can tell Maria.”

  “Not Maria. And you can’t ask any questions afterward, either. It’s a strict no-discussion item.”

  I shut my eyes. We don’t need more secrets between us, but…I want to know. I want to know too much about Blake Reynolds, and it’s not a good idea.

  “I promise,” I say against my better judgment. “But this better be a good secret, and not something stupid that anyone could infer from genetics.”

  He smiles. “My dad told me that my mother was the only woman he’s ever kissed.”

  “What!? But—”

  “Nope, no questions.”

  “But—”

  “No discussion either.”

  “That,” I say severely, “was rude. Really rude.”

  He glances in my direction. “Okay. Here’s one you can tell people.”

  “About your mother?”

  “Kind of. You know how most kids, one of their first words is some variant of mother? Mom. Momma. Something like that.”

  “I’m guessing that wasn’t the case for you.”

  “Why would you think that?” His eyes are glinting. “Because I don’t have a mother? Wrong. Think about my dad. One of my first words was…”

  He pauses for dramatic effect, and I have to admit that it works. I lean toward him.

  “It was motherfucker.”

  I laugh.

  He sighs. “Dad was so proud.”

  “That’s good, but it still doesn’t make up for what you said before. That was a good secret,” I admit. “A really good secret. I’m trying to figure out how to pay you back for that.”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

  “Unlikely,” I say with a sigh. “My mother tells everyone everything. There are no secrets.”

  My parents live on the second floor of a concrete three-story apartment building in the middle of Rosemead. Despite my brave words to Blake earlier, I’m all too aware as we pull into the parking lot how my home must appear to him.

  Browning weeds poke up through cracks in the asphalt; a crushed beer can decorates the gravel to the side. The sun is setting, giving color to an otherwise nondescript rusting car from decades past, propped up on cinder blocks in the parking lot. I’ve never seen Blake’s childhood home, but I can imagine. It’s nothing like this.

  I shake my head. Screw this. I’m not dating him. We’re just friends—temporary friends at that—and three years from now, when he’s running Cyclone, he won’t remember this trip.

  He puts the loaner car we picked up twenty minutes ago into park and pops the trunk.

  “Well?” he smiles at me.

  I smile back, but my expression feels like a tense, coiled thing, ready to spring out of alignment at the slightest provocation.

  Before I can say anything, the door to my parents’ apartment bursts open. My little sister darts out, and she dashes down the concrete stairs.

  “Tina, Tina!” She cannons into me; I grab hold of her. We squeeze each other hard. She’s getting so big now—she’s just an inch shorter than I am—and she hugs my breath out.

  “Stop,” I croak. “Mayday, mayday!”

  “I’m so glad you’re here. Can you tell Mom that I am too old enough to go to a coed sleepover?”

  I give her a once over. “Sure,” I say, “as long as the parents kick it off by caponizing all the boys.”

  Beside me, Blake chokes.

  “What’s caponizing?”

  “Removing the testicles,” I say. “It improves the temperament of the male animal. Try it sometime.”

  Blake clears his throat.

  “Oh,” I say. “Mayday, this is Blake Rivers.”

  We’ve agreed—and by we’ve agreed I mean I’ve insisted—that we won’t give his real name. No point opening that door. Mom is bad enough when she thinks he doesn’t have any money. I can’t imagine what it would be like if she knew the truth.

  “Blake, this is my little sister. Her name is Mabel, but I call her anything that starts with an M. Mayday, Maple, and Muggle are my favorites.”

  She wrinkles her nose at Blake. “You can call me Mabel.” Mabel purses her lips and looks at Blake. Blake looks at her right back. Some people say that Mabel and I look alike, and I guess we do, in the most superficial sense. We’re both Chinese. But Mabel’s hair is short and dyed blue, a
nd she wears it pulled over her eyes. Her eyes are set more narrowly than mine. And—this is really unfair, but I swear I am not bitter about this—she is thirteen and she’s already in B-cups. Which, ahem. Is more than I will ever manage.

  Mabel shrugs. “Hi Blake. You’re the guy who is definitely not Tina’s boyfriend.”

  Blake shifts the shoulder strap of his bag. “One of many, I presume.”

  “Nope.” Mabel twirls away. “You’re the only one. The rest of the boys aren’t dating her.”

  “Oh, well,” Blake says vaguely. “That is an important distinction.”

  I try to jab my elbow into his side, but he sidles away.

  “And you’re the only she talks about like this: ‘Mom, he’s not my boyfriend.’”

  Oh, that imitation. It’s just a little too spot on. I raise a finger at her, but she twirls away before I can get her back.

  “Come on. Mom is cooking. This is the first time you’ve brought a boyfriend home from college.”

  “He’s not my—” I stop, because my sister’s lips are twitching.

  “Fine.” I pick up my own bag.

  “Lay on, Macduff,” Blake says.

  Mabel stops and turns to him. “Hey. Only Tina can call me M-words other than Mabel.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Tina and her boyfriend,” she corrects. “So you’re okay. I guess.”

  “Mabel.”

  My sister grins and clambers up the stairs.

  14.

  TINA

  Mabel wasn’t kidding when she said my mother was cooking. Most of the time, my dad cooks. He’s actually pretty good, so that’s not a problem. My mother only cooks on special occasions, and this, apparently, is a special occasion.

  Her cooking style can best be described as eclectic. If I were being generous, I’d call her style “Asian fusion.” But that usually evokes the marriage of delicate Asian-inspired flavors with classical French technique. Mom’s food is more like…Asian Frankenstein: Chinese peasant food stitched together into a meal with boxes of random crap from the 99-cent store.

  As an example, there’s a dish of lion’s head meatballs, huge round hunks of ground meat bigger than my fist. But instead of serving it in a traditional broth with thinly sliced vegetables, Mom has paired it with Hamburger Helper stroganoff and chopped-up celery. There’s a casserole of canned green beans, oyster sauce, and crisped rice noodles. And there’s a dish of stir-fried vegetables, toasted almonds, and tater tots.

  “It only looks horrifying,” I whisper to Blake. “It’s actually really good.”

  My mom takes one look at Blake, shakes her head, and heaps food on his plate. “You,” she tells him, before they’ve even been introduced, “need to eat more.”

  She doesn’t—thank God—tease him about being my boyfriend. Yet.

  “So, Blake,” my father asks as we sit around the table on an eclectic mixture of chairs and stools. “What are you studying?”

  Of my parents, my dad is better at small talk, at putting people at ease.

  “Economics,” Blake says.

  “What do you plan to do after school? Go into business?”

  Before Blake can answer, my mother interrupts. “Business school is a waste of money. Do you know how much it is now? Fifty thousand a year. At least. And not so many jobs anymore.”

  Blake’s eyes dance. “Funny. My dad says the exact same thing.”

  “He must be a smart man. What does your dad do? Tina never told me.”

  Blake glances at me. “Computer repair.”

  Luckily, nobody asks further questions. “And your mom?”

  Blake clears his throat. “She’s not with us.”

  I remember the conversation Blake and I had on the way down and tense. I can only imagine what my mother will say.

  But my mother just smiles brilliantly. “That’s good! Too many boys your age get spoiled by their mothers. They don’t know how to cook, how to do laundry. Tina is going to be a busy doctor. She’ll need someone to do all that for her. Better if you’re not used to having someone else take care of you.”

  I slink down in my seat. Blake is trying not to smile, but he’s not quite successful. “That’s probably true, Mrs. Chen, but Tina and I are just friends.”

  It is obvious from the glances my parents exchange that nobody at this table believes that. Not my dad, who smiles beatifically, the way he does whenever he traps someone into a corner. Not my mom, who’s shaking her head. And definitely not Mabel, who snickers.

  Possibly not even me.

  “Eat more,” my mom advises Blake. “You’re too skinny.”

  “Mom.”

  “What?” She turns to me.

  “Be polite. Please?”

  “How is that rude? It’s just the truth. He has eyes; he knows he’s too skinny. And he’s not eating anything at all.” She tsks.

  Blake, obligingly, takes a bite of Hamburger Helper. I’m not sure if he’s ever had Hamburger Helper in his life. Well, tough. Too bad. He has now.

  “Better,” my mom says. “Good thing he’s not your boyfriend, though, Tina. He’s so skinny, I think a condom would pop right off.”

  Oh my God. She did not say that. My whole body flushes in a wave of heat.

  “Mom,” I mutter in a low voice. “Please.”

  “Better make him wear two,” she continues merrily. “Just in case.”

  I hide my face in my hands. “Gah.” It’s the only word I can manage.

  I want to crawl under the table and take up permanent residence. If I did, at least it would distract my mom.

  And that’s when Blake starts laughing. Not just chuckling, but full-on belly-laughing. He’s laughing so hard he starts to choke; my dad thumps him on the back, and he coughs.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally gasps. “It’s just—on the way down, Tina gave me this huge lecture about how she refused to be embarrassed by you guys. There was this whole spiel about how there were cultural differences and just because you said things that were unusual by American standards didn’t make it wrong. She said that she refused to feel badly about it, so I was just going to have to adjust.”

  “Rub it in, why don’t you?” I mutter.

  “Sorry, Tina.” Blake pats my shoulder. “But—this one is all you.”

  “That’s not a cultural difference,” my dad interjects. “Everyone thought Hongmei was inappropriate in China, too.”

  “Yeah,” Mabel chimes in. “Dad embarrasses me in front of my friends at school. But Mom embarrasses me everywhere. It’s not a Chinese thing.”

  “It is one of my many talents,” my mother says with a modest smile. “I put sand in everyone’s oysters.”

  “That’s what Tina says,” Blake says. “So tell me about Jimmy Ma. What’s he up for?”

  The appeal we’ve come down to see is the perfect topic of conversation. My mom loves talking about her…work? Her hobby? I don’t know how to think of it. She jumps right in. Blake listens and nods.

  And me? Once I get over that flushed, heated embarrassment, I realize that things are worse now, not better. Blake is kind of perfect—drawing my mother out into the most animated version of herself, bringing my father into the conversation, even getting Mabel to talk about music and how she wishes she had her own saxophone. This, I remind myself, is media training in action.

  I have to stop lying to myself. It’s more than media training. Blake’s always been easygoing. Hell, I’ve seen his comments on scripts going back a full decade now. He was like this at eleven: complimentary, interested, kind without being weak. He’s probably been serving as his father’s foil his entire life. His father growls about manufacturing and secrecy; Blake learns Mandarin and compliments the factory owner on the side. His father says that an idea is shit; Blake comes back and points out the good in it. This is what he does: he smoothes things over. He’s so good that Mom doesn’t even notice that he’s eating only a fraction of the food on his plate. I wonder if it’s always like this for him, if he�
�s always fixing things while nobody notices him.

  He passes on the day-old Wal-Mart cupcakes that Mom has brought home for dessert, and offers to do the dishes afterward.

  I help him. We work in silence—mostly. But at the end, when he’s drying glasses, when my parents are watching TV in the other room, he leans toward me.

  “For the record,” he says, “you should stop worrying. Your parents are awesome.”

  I didn’t want to be embarrassed by my parents…but maybe I did. I wanted to watch him not fit in so that I could remember that he doesn’t fit in. But it’s becoming harder and harder to remember that.

  There’s just one reason to keep him at arms’ length now: He’s leaving. We’re over before we ever started.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Also for the record,” he says, “no, I wouldn’t need two condoms.”

  I flush all over again, but this time it’s in heated memory. I’ve felt him, after all. I’ve been on top of him. I know precisely how thick he is, how long his erection is.

  “I remember.” My mouth is dry. I don’t want to look at him.

  But he brushes a strand of hair away from my face, and involuntarily, I look up. I don’t know what I’m seeing in his eyes now. Something raw and hungry.

  Or maybe I’m just seeing a reflection of my own want.

  “Good,” he says. “Keep on remembering.”

  BLAKE

  The Chens’ apartment is small: two bedrooms, a dining/living room, and a kitchen just off it. It’s cozy, and it feels lived in. By the various decorations on the wall, lined deep, and the layered bric-a-brac covering the shelves, it feels like they’ve lived here at least a decade.

  It’s Friday morning. Tina has gone off with her mother to the hearing. Her father, pleading knee pain, has stayed behind. And because I suspect that Tina wants time to talk with her mother without me around, I claim that I have homework to finish.

  After about an hour of playing around with a textbook, however, I stop pretending to work. And when Mr. Chen invites me to join him on the couch in front of the television, I do.