Regina’s mouth twitched. “Oh, is that what you think?” she purred.
“Well, duh, you’re leaving, so yes, that’s what I think.”
Regina leaned forward until our heads were almost touching. “Then, let’s just say that it’s really too bad you don’t speak Chinese better. You might have learned some important information tonight.”
She’s bluffing, I thought. She’s just making something up to show how bad my Chinese is. Yet, for a moment I held my breath and looked at Kenny to see if he could help. Unfortunately, Kenny had fallen asleep.
I looked out the window so that Regina wouldn’t think she had gotten to me. I was going to have the perfect year once she was gone. I was going to have my own room, and I was finally going to be in sixth grade at Westgate, the oldest in the school, the best year. Someone heard that we might even get a dance this year.
When Regina goes, my life will be perfect, I chanted to myself. When Regina goes.
I should have known something was up because the next day Mom made a big breakfast, with bacon and waffles and fruit salad. Usually we just have cereal, unless it’s Christmas or someone’s birthday.
Dad waited until Kenny had staggered down the stairs to join the rest of us. Kenny’s not much of a morning person — he slumped at the table, blinking slowly. His hair looked like a black porcupine was attacking his head.
“So,” said Dad, rubbing his hands together. “I have a special announcement to make. I am leaving for China next week.”
My stomach dropped. Even though Dad had been to China many times, every trip made me nervous. China was so far away — it wasn’t like he was flying to New York or Boston, or even Chicago or Los Angeles. If something happened in China, how could we ever find him?
“Do you have to?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“Yes, Lucy, I have to go for work, but there’s also something else.” Dad paused, enjoying the drama for a moment. “I just confirmed everything yesterday. I’ll be bringing someone back with me. Po Po’s sister — Yi Po!” He said it like a game show host, announcing a prize.
“Say that again?” said Kenny.
The room seemed to tilt.
“What are you talking about? Po Po doesn’t have a sister,” I said. Po Po, my mom’s mom, had taken care of me every day after school until she died two years ago. We talked about everything. She had never mentioned a sister.
“It’s complicated,” Mom said. “I didn’t know about this sister until Mom told me, right before she died. They never saw each other after they were little girls.”
The Chinese part of my life just doesn’t make sense sometimes. Like there are a bunch of women I call ai yi, which means aunt, and when I was little, I thought my mom had a ton of sisters. But they weren’t my real aunts, they were just friends of my mom’s.
Maybe this was something like that — they’re saying she was my grandmother’s sister, but she’s not really.
“Okay … so, she’s coming to visit, like when Aunt Lin and Naomi come to visit?” Naomi, my cousin, is three years older than I am — we see them a couple times a year.
“Kind of. It’s a big deal to fly from China to the States, though, Lucy, so she’d stay longer than just a couple of days … and …” Mom paused. She and Dad glanced at each other.
“… the only space we have for her is … um …” Mom slowed down, not finishing her sentence.
Suddenly, I put it all together. She was going to stay in my room.
Regina smirked at me from across the table. I told you so.
“… but it will only be until Christmas — that’s not so long, right?” Mom smiled at me, as if that made everything better. “Then she’ll go visit Auntie Lin.”
My room was disappearing. Going, going, gone.
“What? Only if eternity is a week-long vacation,” I said. “You can’t do this to me. I’m supposed to have my own room, remember?” Today was August 10. I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. By Christmas I would be wearing sweaters and jeans. And be twelve, not eleven. And practically halfway through sixth grade. Basketball season would have started.
This was a long, long time.
“I know you’re disappointed,” Mom started.
“That’s an understatement,” I said, pushing away from the table. I swallowed hard, pushing down the tears that were threatening to come up. “Thanks a lot for including me in this life-changing decision.”
“There was no decision to make,” Dad said. “She’s family. It’s an honor for us to have her come visit. End of story. I got word yesterday that her paperwork was finalized.” Dad gave me a look that meant end of discussion.
“Yeah, Lucy,” chimed in Regina. “We’re Chinese. We honor and value our elders. We don’t think about whether we get our own room.” She looked at Dad and plastered on an extra big, aren’t-I-wonderful smile. Dad nodded approvingly. Regina is such a kiss-up.
“We’re Chinese-American,” I snapped. “And this American would like her own room!”
I grabbed my basketball and went outside to play in the driveway. I was too mad to talk — I needed some hoop therapy. After a couple of dribbles, I faked a pass to the left, whirled around, and went for a top-of-the-key jumper. Lucy Wu goes in for the buzzer-beater! The ball thudded off the backboard. No basket.
When I tell people that I play basketball, I usually get two kinds of reactions. The first is an awkward pause while my entire height of four-foot-nothing gets examined up one side and down the other, followed by something like, “O-kaaaay. What other sports do you like?” The second, while more positive, is really not any better. It’s a big fishy grin, followed by, “Oh! Just like Yao Ming!” Like I have anything in common with a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall male basketball player, other than the fact that we’re both Chinese.
But I love basketball. The day I got the hang of dribbling the ball through my legs counts as one of the best days of my life, and that feeling I get when I know the ball’s going in because everything has lined up perfectly is the greatest rush. To me, getting the ball to an open teammate on a no-look pass is a thing of beauty. And tell me there’s something more exciting than the last few seconds of a tied-up basketball game where tenths of a second count.
I crouched down, eyed the basket, and fired again. This time the ball went in.
“Hey! Luce! Get me the rebound!” I turned around even though I knew who it was.
Madison Jameson and I have been best friends for five years, ever since we snuck out of ballet class to watch a pickup basketball game outside. We’ve been playing together on a league team ever since then, and we have our whole lives planned out. After playing varsity hoops for all four years in high school, we’re going to the University of Tennessee so we can play basketball for Pat Summitt. Just about every person who has played for Pat Summitt has played in the Final Four, the legendary best-of-the-best round of the national tourney, and they’ve won the women’s championship more times than anybody. After we win our NCAA tournament, Madison and I will play professional ball in the WNBA for a few years, and then open a design store for girls who love sports. No frilly pink princessy stuff, but not boy stuff, either. Just cool stuff, like lockers to hold your sports equipment and specially designed boards to record your team schedules and workout routines. We’re going to call it At the Buzzer.
“C’mon.” Madison snapped her fingers impatiently. “Move that ball!” She sounded just like Coach Mike, the coach of our team, the Inferno.
I snagged the ball and whipped it to her. Madison grabbed the ball and went in for a layup. The ball went in. It must be nice to be the tallest girl in the class.
“What’s up? You doing your fifty?” asked Madison. Coach Mike had told us to do fifty free throws every day during the summer. Free throws can make or break a game, he says.
“Not exactly. My life just exploded.” I told her the news. Madison’s eyes widened. Madison doesn’t have surprise relatives from foreign countries. Her family practically came ove
r on the Mayflower.
“I guess we better hurry up and decorate your room, huh?” she asked. Madison and I had been talking all summer about how we would redecorate my room once Regina was gone. We like the same colors — violet and ice blue.
“Yeah — maybe we can go to Sharpe’s soon,” I said. I didn’t feel very enthusiastic. Knowing I was getting a roommate was taking out the fun.
Madison poked me. “Cheer up. I have some news.”
“What?”
“Mom says the class assignments are out. We’re in the same class!” Madison’s mom volunteered at the school, so Madison was always the first to know what was going on.
That was good news. I don’t think I could stand it if we weren’t in the same class. Certain kids never get to be in the same class, like Paul Terry and Jamie Watkins, because they are troublemakers. “Who’d we get?” I asked.
“Some new teacher, Ms. Phelps. Mom didn’t know much about her.”
“Who is in our class?”
“Let me think … Steven, Nate, Anil, Rick, and Andrew … Haley, Anne, Serena, and Lauren … Alexa, Oscar …” Madison’s voice trailed off.
“Anyone else? From our class last year?” I tried to sound casual, but I was pretty sure I had yelped. Please say he’s in our class.
“Who am I forgetting? Oh, yes, Talent, of course.”
“Oh.” I sighed. Talent Chang. Everyone seems to think we should be friends because we’re both Chinese, short, and in the same grade. The resemblance ends there, though. She dresses, acts, and talks like an annoying miniature adult. There’s a rumor that when her family moved here from Taiwan, her parents made her watch public television until she learned English.
“Lucy, be nice.”
“You be nice,” I retorted. I lined up on the crack that acted as my free-throw line and shot the ball. The ball swirled in the hoop and then fell out.
“Now I remember who else is in our class,” said Madison.
“Really? Who?” Oops. I sounded a little too enthusiastic.
“That new kid from last year. What’s his name? Oh, yeah, Harrison Miller.”
“Oh, okay.” I bit my lip to keep from shrieking. Even Madison didn’t know about my crush on Harrison Miller, and I planned to keep it that way, at least for a while. When Harrison moved here last year, some kids nicknamed him Mr. California Cool. He wore his hair long, and a necklace with a little carved dolphin. Some of the other boys, like Jamie Watkins, tried to tease him, but it just seemed to slide right off him. Haley, who was assigned to Harrison’s lunch table last year, said he was a vegetarian and didn’t eat just peanut butter and jelly all the time, like when Andrew tried being a vegetarian for two weeks. Harrison ate stuff like brown rice with lentils and cashews.
Other kids thought this was weird. I didn’t.
Suddenly, I wondered how long I had been daydreaming about Harrison. And whether Madison knew that I was thinking about him. I started dribbling the ball again.
“Listen, I gotta go,” said Madison. She lived two blocks away, on the other side of the street. “Call me later, Leaping Wombat?” This was our private joke: We made up names according to our initials.
“See you, Magenta Jelly,” I said. As I watched her walk away, Regina came out and dumped two garbage bags full of clothes in front of me.
“Mom says that we need to start cleaning up the house for Yi Po. You need to go inside and help clean out the basement.” If Regina’s favorite thing is to give orders, her second favorite thing to do is give orders on behalf of Mom and Dad.
“I’m still playing ball,” I said, holding the ball on my hip. “And you need to move those clothes out of my way.” I poked the bag with my foot.
“Mom said now,” said Regina.
I tried to give the ball one good thump, so Regina and the whole world would know I was still mad, but instead of bouncing high in the air, the ball hit an old shoe, flew back, and hit me in the knee. Even my own ball had turned against me.
There was one thing Regina hadn’t figured out while she was busy enjoying the fact that I wasn’t getting my own room. If Dad was going to China, he wasn’t taking her to college. Suddenly, honoring our elders wasn’t at the top of Regina’s list, either.
“He could wait,” she whined on her cell phone. “He could wait a couple of days until his first child goes to college.” Her eyes were red and her nose made a terrible snoggy sound. So much for piao liang.
“Big baby,” I said as she laid out her sob story for the umpteenth time.
Regina scowled and stuck her tongue out at me. She managed to do this without skipping a beat on her phone call.
Even though Regina was acting all neglected, Mom and Dad couldn’t seem to say a sentence without including her name. Should Regina sign up for the linen service, or should we buy her more towels? Regina, do you need anything from Sharpe’s? Does Regina need new clothes? (Regina stopped whining long enough to say yes, she did.)
Regina, Regina, Regina. I was so sick of her! And her stuff, too. She had somehow managed to take over our entire room with her packing. I couldn’t wait for her to leave.
One day I walked into the room we shared and discovered Regina folding a quilt into a big plastic bin. My quilt. Her quilt was now on my bed. I knew immediately what was going on. Even though our quilts look similar, hers is seven years older and it’s a bit more worn.
“Regina! What are you doing with my flower quilt?” The quilts were special, made by Po Po. Each quilt had a green border with flowers growing toward the middle, so that it looked like a garden. I could still picture her working on the quilt, patiently stitching flower after flower until she thought it looked just right. For a long time, I didn’t even want to wash it because I could still smell all the things that reminded me of Po Po — her lavender and chamomile soap, the slightly mothbally smell of her sweaters, a little Tiger Balm.
Regina threw her hands in the air. “I knew you’d say something like that, Lucy!” she said, as if this were my fault. “I’m going to college, okay? I have to take nice things because I’m making all new friends and I can’t go around with a ratty quilt.” I looked at her. She tried a different approach. “C’mon, Luce, pleeease? I really want something from home that’s special. It’s bad enough Daddy won’t be there.”
My mom walked in at that point. “Ma! Can you tell Lucy that I need her quilt at school? It’s nicer than mine,” Regina pleaded.
Mom rubbed her hands over her face. “I can’t believe your dad is taking another trip,” she said, more to herself than to us. “Regina, honey, it’s Lucy’s quilt. You can take your quilt, or find something else from home.”
I made a face at Regina from where Mom couldn’t see me. So there.
“Fine! I can see that no one cares about me!” Regina cried. She picked up the quilt to throw it at me, but part of the quilt caught on the edge of the metal bed frame. We all heard an awful rrriiippp, and suddenly I could see the batting through a gash in the quilt. My quilt.
“Look at what you did! I might be a banana, but at least I’m not a selfish brat!” I screamed at Regina. My words burned my throat. Regina, for once, had nothing to say, in Chinese or English. She looked at me with wide eyes and let the quilt fall to the floor in a pile.
I scooped up the quilt in my arms and buried my face in it. How could she? Out of all the rotten things Regina had ever done, this was the worst. Mom put her arm around me, saying she was sorry and that we could probably fix it. But that wasn’t the point — it wouldn’t be the same as when Po Po made it. Now it was ugly, damaged. I wasn’t just not having the perfect year anymore — it had become downright horrible.
I ran to Kenny’s room, too choked up to say anything. Kenny let me sit on his bed until Regina finished packing.
Mom felt pretty bad about the quilt — bad enough that she invited Madison over for dinner when Dad said he had to work late to get ready for his trip. Regina disappeared with some friends.
“Nothing fancy,” Mom
warned Madison, “but you’ll have a lot of leftovers to choose from.” Mom wasn’t kidding. When we sat down to dinner, we had half a quiche, Caesar salad, green beans, two hot dogs, sesame noodles, almost a whole container of General Tso’s chicken from Panda Café, and my favorite, bao zi, which is Chinese for yummy steamed bun with a delicious ground pork center.
“Try this,” I said to Madison, putting one of the bao zi on her plate. “Dip it in some soy sauce.”
Madison took a bite. “Pretty good!” she said. “What is this? A Chinese hamburger?”
“They’re called bao zi,” said Mom. “Though I think your name for it is pretty good, too.” They smiled at each other. My mom and Madison have always gotten along really well, sometimes even better than Mom and me. “Take more,” urged Mom. “There’s plenty without Regina and Mr. Wu here.”
“No Regina,” I cheered. “More food, more fun.”
Mom pulled out her favorite line. “You two are sisters and one day …”
“I know, I know. One day, we’ll be the beeeeeessst of friends,” I finished for her. Fat chance, especially after the quilt.
“You’re lucky,” Mom reminded me. “Po Po never got to be friends with her sister.”
Well, there goes a perfectly good dinner. I pushed back my plate with the bao zi still on it. I wasn’t hungry anymore.
Madison, however, seemed to perk up at the mention of Yi Po. She took another bite of her bao zi, and said, “Po Po never got to be friends with her sister? Yi Po? Did she talk about her at all?”
For a second, I felt mad at Madison. If I didn’t want to think about Yi Po, then she shouldn’t, either. But I had to admit, it was a good question.
The Great Wall of Lucy Wu Page 2
