Searching for Sylvie Lee

by Jean Kwok

  Pa and I had just moved to the Beautiful Country, and on all sides were the songs of Chu—we were isolated and without help. I already had the big stomach with Sylvie. There was no way to mend the pen after the goats were lost. Neither of us could speak a word of the Brave Language, English. Pa hunched over his bowl of bare rice with no meat or vegetables, only soy sauce, hiding his eyes with his roughened hand as he ate. He still loved me then with the innocence of his green years, and the hollows of his young face filled with guilt rather than accusation when he gazed at me.

  We ate bitterness and tried a thousand ways, a hundred plans, but when the tiger ventures from the mountains to the plains, it is bullied by dogs. No one would help us or give us work until, finally, Pa found a job at the fish market in Chinatown. That was but one strand of cow hair among nine cows. How could it be enough? And things would only get worse after I delivered my baby. Many other couples like us sent their little ones back to China to be raised by family. That was their plan before they ever came to the Beautiful Country. But I swore I would never let go of my lovely swallow-girl.

  Then Ma’s letter arrived. She had moved to Holland with my possessing-money cousin Helena and Helena’s husband, Willem, and they had just birthed a baby boy named Lukas. Grandma spoke of the cool air conditions, the ample broadness of their house, how Helena burdened her heart that Lukas would grow large as the only child of the Central Kingdom in their neighborhood. There were too few Chinese in Holland, as Helena herself knew well. That was the reason she’d returned to our village in the Central Kingdom to snatch up the good-to-look-at Willem as her own.

  I scanned the letter, jealous that Helena had stolen my ma to care for her son. I would have given anything to have Grandma with me here in this strange and hostile Beautiful Country. But when I looked around the tiny space Pa and I were crammed into, I brought my heart in accord with both emotions and reason. Helena’s family possessed money and they could provide for both Grandma and their baby. I made myself eat my discontent. Helena’s own parents were too busy with their multipatterned lives to help Helena and Willem with their child. I should be grateful they had offered Grandma a better health situation than she had had in China.

  I read on and realized Helena was putting forward more than that. My heart stem, Grandma wrote, if you were to entrust your most precious fruit to me, perhaps it might alleviate some of your burden. It is at the asking of your cousin Helena that I write this. She and Willem would care for your child like their own cub until you are able to care for her yourself. Or come to Holland simply to see your old ma and accept the gifts only a mother can pass on to her child.

  I puffed air. Helena’s flowery words and cunning language did not deceive me. She did not like me very much. From one fact, I could infer three. Her offer was to her own advantage, of course. She did not need to worry about my taking Grandma away, her babysitter and serving woman, and she would gain a play companion for her son. To be fair, Helena was asking for another mouth to feed, a body to clothe, and for that I was grateful. She would even pay for my flying machine ticket. But I would only bring my child to her as a last resort.

  Then Sylvie was born. Sally, I named her in English. That is still what is written on her birth certificate. But in the language of the Central Kingdom, she has always been my Snow Jasmine, Sul-Li. It was the Holland people who did not recognize the name Sally, the Holland people who renamed her. She left me as Sally and returned as Sylvie.

  She was so dainty, a small people-loving bird, clutching my finger as if it were a branch, Pa’s great hands caressing her cheek, which was as flushed and tender as a peach. We had exhausted our meager savings by then. Earlier, no one wanted to hire a big-stomached woman who did not speak the Brave Language, and now, no one would allow me to come to work with a baby. What path would the fates have chosen for us, my Snow Jasmine, if only I had kept you here with me?

  In that blistering New York summer, Sylvie wept sobs, and the little wind stirrer in that narrow room, stuffed with me, Pa, and her, offered no relief. I did odd jobs—bits of sewing, stringing fake pearls into bracelets—to earn more money. I washed her pee cloths in the bathing vat. Pa started a second job, standing tables at a meal hall until deep into the night. It ground us down until, in the eighth moon, the white ghost took my purse bundle.

  I had gone into Chinatown with the hope of finding a job in a bread-baking shop. They had taken one look at Sylvie strapped to my back with a piece of cloth and sent me out the door again. With low breath and no strength, I was the last off the underground train at our stop in Queens. I was half running, trying to catch up to the other passengers, when the white ghost cut them from my view. He had eyes as blue and flinty as the blind old beggar of our village in the Central Kingdom. With one hand he grabbed my purse strap and with the other he shoved my shoulder so hard I stumbled and fell to the ground.

  Desperate, I twisted to avoid landing on Sylvie. A flash of agony burned its way up my arm, footsteps running away. The white ghost wailed over his shoulder, “Fokkin’ Chinee!” That much of the Brave Language I already knew. I lay there, stunned, with my cheek bleeding against the concrete, glad to hear Sylvie weeping on my back, glad she had survived to cry. What if he had grabbed the straps of the baby carrier cloth along with my purse? What if I had landed on top of her? What if we had fallen onto the train tracks?

  I wrote to Helena to say I would bring my baby girl in the tenth moon. I still should not have done it. But I was twenty-three years old, newly married, newly emigrated, and struggling not to drown in this vast ocean called the Beautiful Country. I told myself it was only for a year, and then we would bring her back. I did not know it would be nine years until I saw her again.

  I held my girl close to me that endless time in the flying machine until we landed in Holland on a black day of excessive water. Then I understood: I had brought my daughter to a landscape of tears.

  Chapter 3

  Amy

  Monday, May 2

  Sylvie’s fine, of course she is. I hang on to my seat as the subway car rattles its way to Brooklyn Heights and try to think. Aside from all of her other qualities, Sylvie’s like a female James Bond. Overachiever doesn’t even begin to describe her. If our faucet leaks, Sylvie fixes it. She’s enhanced my old laptop with so many extra drives and so much memory that I nicknamed it Frankenstein. Even if her plane crashed, Sylvie would be the one to parachute to safety, after saving all of her fellow passengers. I’ve never been on an airplane, but she’s told me a million times to always count the number of rows to the nearest exit door, so that in case of an emergency, I could crawl there in the dark. She even learned how to shoot a gun at a shooting range. You never know, she said.

  One of the few things Sylvie can’t do is swim. When we were born, Ma and Pa had our prophecies written by the monks at the temple and Sylvie’s forbade her to go near water. When I’d heard this, I’d said, “Isn’t that kind of self-fulfilling? If she doesn’t learn to swim, she’ll definitely drown if she falls into the water, right?” But Sylvie didn’t want to take swimming lessons anyway and everyone ignored me as usual. Our parents didn’t share anything more about our prophecies. When I pressed Ma years ago, she said, “Must not open book too far. But your bone weight is heavy. Good fortune will come to you.”

  “And Sylvie?” I asked, proud to have a substantial bone weight, whatever that meant.

  Ma’s lids lowered, shuttering her thoughts. “Mountains of gold everywhere, but thirst too.”

  I get off the subway at Brooklyn Heights and try to call Jim again. It goes straight to voicemail. How can a guidance counselor be so hard to reach? If I were a suicidal student, wouldn’t I be dead by now? I leave another message and try Sylvie’s number too. Again, it goes straight to voicemail.

  “Hey, it’s me,” I say. “People are getting worried about you so please get back to me, okay? I’m going to use that key you gave us for emergencies and break into your house. I hope you’re okay with that and tha
t Jim isn’t there, showering or something. All right, bye.”

  Not that I’d mind seeing Jim nude. He’s pretty hot, if you’re into the blond scruffy type. But ever since Sylvie brought him home from Princeton, I’ve always been slightly irritated by the way he leans in too close to everyone, his hand casually resting on their arm or shoulder. We Chinese are pretty much the opposite of touchy-feely, although Sylvie drinks up his warmth like a thirsty plant—and I’m happy for her. Sylvie needs to be in control and hides her affection most of the time, but I’ve caught her watching him, the look in her eyes so tender and open. I’d give anything to experience that kind of love. At first, Ma and Pa didn’t like that Jim wasn’t Chinese, but since he was Sylvie’s boyfriend, they accepted him. Sylvie always could get away with anything.

  I exit the subway station and step out into the kinder, gentler world that money can buy. I brush past a nanny pushing a pram along the shady, tree-lined cobblestone sidewalk and hurry to reach the waterfront, where Jim and Sylvie live. Along one side of their street, sloping walkways lead to the Promenade. As I hurry past, I glance down at the long esplanade and see a model surrounded by reflective screens posing against the spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline. In the distance, I hear little kids whooping as they chase each other around the large playground at the end of their block. What Sylvie and I would have given for a place like that when we were small, filled with tire swings and a huge jungle gym.

  “So Jim and I will be moving again,” Sylvie had told me a few years ago, right before they married. I was meeting her for lunch at Rockefeller Center, where she had just started a new job as a management consultant. She was rubbing her short, roughly bitten fingernails against the gleaming tabletop. They had moved back to NYC a couple of months earlier, after Sylvie finished her MBA at Harvard. They were renting a studio apartment in the East Village.

  They wouldn’t leave New York so soon, would they? I’d just gotten my sister back. “Where are you going?” I’d asked, taking a big bite of my burger to cover my alarm.

  “His parents have given us an apartment in Brooklyn Heights as a wedding present.” Her voice was determinedly casual, as if gifting someone a place worth more than a million dollars happened every day. She didn’t meet my eyes and toyed with her salad with her fork.

  I stopped chewing. I’d heard Jim’s family was rich but it had always been theoretical, with his battered car and wrinkled T-shirts. I’d even wondered if Sylvie had invented that part of his background to appease Ma and Pa for her marrying a white guy.

  Sylvie looked up and saw my face, her eyes bright. Her dimple appeared in her left cheek. “Close your mouth, Amy. You’re going to choke.”

  I finally managed to swallow. “Now I feel bad. I’m getting you guys a blender.”

  We both giggled.

  I exhaled. Sylvie was staying. That was the important thing. “How do you feel about it?” I asked.

  “Fine, of course. It’s a lovely present,” she said, but I heard the undercurrent of shame in her voice. Sylvie loves to show off her nice things, but she’s also proud. In high school, she once had a math teacher who was infamous for saying girls didn’t belong in his classroom. I still remember her intense, rigid back as she bent over her math books night after night until she’d beaten everyone in that class.

  When I arrive at the tall, sleek brownstone where their garden apartment is located, I open the gate next to the outside staircase and pass by the large glazed dragon pot Ma and Pa gave Sylvie. It’s filled with some indestructible shrub she never remembers to water. I go down three steps and reach their blue front door.

  I ring the doorbell a few times. Come on, Sylvie, open up. You’re inside sleeping off the jet lag. Your phone broke, that’s all. My breath quickens as I wait. Finally, I pull their key from my pocket. But when I unlock the heavy door and try to push it open, it jams.

  A large pile of newspapers and mail blocks the entryway. What the hell? Sylvie’s been away for about a month, but where on earth is Jim? The air in the hallway is still and musty. I step inside and look around.

  The apartment has been beautifully renovated, with tasteful recessed lighting, large bay windows, and a sleek modern kitchen, but Sylvie and Jim still live in it like two college students. There are piles of books everywhere and stacks of magazines on their upright piano. Sylvie has never cared about anything remotely domestic. She’s a terrible cook, blackening every slice of toast and attempted pot roast. A couple of months ago, I accompanied her and her colleagues to a Broadway show when their company had free tickets. The conversation was stiff and none of her coworkers asked me anything about myself. After a while, I felt like I was interviewing them. How did Sylvie survive among such uptight people? At one point, I mentioned what a disastrous cook Sylvie was in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere and she glared at me, later chewing me out for my unprofessionalism. I wanted to say, Sylvie, if people know you’re human, they’ll like you more, but I remained silent, as usual.

  I peek in a few kitchen cupboards and find the pots and pans pristine, of course. Neither of them ever cooks. They live on takeout sweet-and-sour pork and tikka masala. Despite Sylvie’s chronic messiness, I’m unprepared for the chaos I find when I open their bedroom door. A pair of slacks has been tossed across the turquoise footboard of their large bed. Wrinkled shirts are strewn all over the floor and small piles of scarves and earrings lie scattered on the mattress, as if Sylvie packed in a hurry. Then I notice that every item I see is Sylvie’s. Where are Jim’s belongings? I open their closet door. It’s a violation of their privacy, but I need to know—and, indeed, only Sylvie’s pressed suits are hanging there. The other half of the closet is bare.

  My chest constricts. It’s clear no one has been here for a long time.

  Chapter 4

  Sylvie

  Saturday, March 5

  Two Months Earlier

  People call French the language of love, but the only language lodged deep in my heart was that of my childhood, Dutch.

  He had told me his name was Jim. It was only later that I learned his true name. My first semester at Princeton, I focused solely on my grades and my future. After all, when poverty enters, love flies out the window. I understood better than anyone that smoke does not come out of the chimney from love alone—and never forgot that Amy, Ma, and Pa were counting on me back home.

  In a writing seminar, my second semester at Princeton, I noticed Jim. We were working on a practice exam in a lecture hall with soaring, pointed arched windows and slender columns that made the room feel like a Gothic church. I finished long before the others and rechecked my paper for style, spelling, and grammatical issues but was still surrounded by bent heads and pens scratching lined notebooks. I gazed out the window, watching as the angels shook out their cushions atop the backdrop of trees. At first, I was so hypnotized by the snow I did not notice how the cool sunlight cast a halo of gold upon the guy sitting in front of the glass. His hair curled in loose gleaming waves, unrestrained and free. He was sprawled in his chair—legs spread wide, jeans so torn I could see bits of hairy leg through the holes. I could never take up space like that, as if I had been born unfettered, as if this world were my birthright. Then I met his eyes. So warm and wicked, I could drown in them. He had been studying me the whole time. I quickly looked away, but found him waiting for me by the doorway as we left.

  “I’m struggling in this class,” he said, his mischievous eyes now entreating. Even his feathery eyelashes were golden. He bent closer and almost breathed into my ear, “Please help me.”

  It was a lie and also our beginning. For many years, I found the excuse he had used to meet me charming.

  Jim was the perfect combination of high- and lowbrow. He bought a wreck of an automobile for six hundred dollars and named it after Grendel from Beowulf. I was delighted to have a boyfriend with knowledge unfathomable to Ma and Pa. We rode around in his car, feeling young and carefree. Jim wanted to do things that would never have occurred
to me, like scoring beer even though we were underage. Neither of us liked the taste but we drank it because it was the sort of thing normal college kids did in the movies—and that was what we wanted to be. I sputtered, unused to alcohol, and Jim, driven by his desire to seem ordinary and manly, disguised his distaste. He was more accustomed to the fine wine of his parents’ collection.

  I wanted to escape my poor background and forget about ugly Sylvie with the crooked tooth and eye patch, and he was pretending to be someone other than James Quaker Bates II, a name I never even heard until he took me home for Christmas during our second year. I should have known that was why the prep school kids always trailed after him and laughed too hard at his jokes. I had naively thought it was his charisma that overcame all boundaries. It was not until Grendel drove through the gate at his family’s coastal estate on Lake Michigan and continued past a half kilometer of landscaped garden before reaching their Georgian mansion that I began to understand that he had a life like a god in France.

  Now, many years later, I was not sure if we had truly loved each other or merely the versions of ourselves we had seen reflected in the other’s eyes—as if we had acted out a play together, both of us player and audience alike. I was what he had dreamed of as well: someone who had gotten into Princeton based on drive and brains alone. My lack of connections and money had reassured him that he too had made it there on his own.