The Great Wall of Lucy Wu

by Wendy Wan-Long Shang

  “Okay, yeah, that was something,” agreed Madison. “But she’s entitled to her opinion. And why does it have to be one or the other, anyway? Can’t they both be important?”

  “Not if they’re both on Saturday morning!” I declared. “I can’t be at basketball practice and Chinese school at the same time.”

  “Anyway,” said Madison. “You could still be nice to her. I think sometimes she’s kind of insecure under all that bossiness.”

  “And under all my rudeness is a real and true desire to play ball, which Talent shouldn’t mess with. She can take her insecurities out on someone else.”

  “Speaking of someone else,” said Madison. “Should we worry …”

  She didn’t have to finish her sentence. As I glanced over to the linens department, I saw it. Talent was talking to my mom.

  Madison and I scoured every department, every inch of Sharpe’s. We were looking for stuff to decorate my room, but I was also hiding from Mom. I wanted to delay the moment the words came out of her mouth. Chinese school. You should go to Chinese school.

  Mom caught up with us in the pet supplies aisle. She didn’t even ask what we were doing there, since neither one of us has a pet. She just started right in.

  “Isn’t it wonderful? A Chinese school, right here in town,” Mom said. “Your friend Talent told me all about it.”

  I didn’t know what part of her statement to argue about first. Whether Talent was my friend or whether Chinese school was a great idea.

  “Yeah, some friend. What friend wants you to go to school on Saturdays?” I said.

  “Lucy …” Mom warned.

  “And, anyway, I can speak some Chinese.”

  “It’s passable,” said Mom, “but we don’t speak much Chinese around the house, and this would be a great way to improve during Yi Po’s visit.”

  “Mom, it’s at the same time as basketball practice. Saturday mornings, remember?”

  “We-e-e-llll …” When Mom said a word like that, she usually was about to introduce a plan that she knew I would not like. “Maybe you could just skip this season and give Chinese school a try. Then we’ll look at things again in the spring.”

  Yeah, I knew what that meant. It meant that this spring, the argument would be You’ve already missed a season, why don’t you just stick with Chinese school?

  “Mom, I really, really, really don’t want to go to Chinese school.” Mom looked at me. “I have to play basketball.” I have to breathe. I have to drink water.

  “Let’s see what Daddy says when he gets home,” Mom suggested cheerily.

  It was a long shot, admittedly, but better than nothing. I closed my eyes and sent a mental message to Dad in China. You’re my last hope, Dad. Don’t let me down!

  “If I do say so myself, it looks awesome,” said Madison.

  I had to agree. As I looked around my redecorated bedroom, I thought it was just as good as any of the makeover shows.

  Madison had come up with the great idea of decorating around my middle name, Snow Dream. With Kenny’s and Mom’s help, we had painted the walls a cool pale blue. Mirrors in different sized circles were stuck to the wall to look like falling snow, and my stuffed animals were now dressed in scarves and hats. Madison’s mom had even let us have an old pair of Madison’s white leather ice skates, and we propped them up on my bookshelf. The only thing that really didn’t look quite right was my bed, which still had the old quilt on it, now with a bumpy seam where Mom tried to fix it. Mom wasn’t about to earn her Girl Scout badge for sewing anytime soon.

  Now I was sitting on my bed, cutting out snowflake after snowflake and tying string to each one. Madison was standing on the stepladder, hanging them from the ceiling.

  “We should take pictures, so that when we’re rich and famous, we’ll have a picture of our first decorating project,” said Madison.

  “So rich, and so famous,” I agreed, putting on what we called our la-di-da accent.

  “Oh, dahling,” said Madison. “Did you hear? Pat Summitt wants us to decorate her home after we’ve finished here. She saw this room and said that it was just fabulous.”

  I giggled. “Oh, I just don’t know, dahling. We’re just so very busy … and fabulous.”

  I cracked up. We couldn’t stop using the word fabulous while we hung up more and more snowflakes from the ceiling. “Could you pass the tape? It’s fabulous!” “Isn’t this new wall color fabulous?” “Your shampoo smells fabulous!”

  Kenny walked by the room. “Kenny! You look fabulous!” Madison shouted. This made us laugh harder.

  He poked his head in. “Man, you guys are weird.” He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling. “Uhhhh — did you make sure that it was okay to put up all of these snowflakes?”

  We stopped and looked around. Maybe we had gotten a little carried away. Once we had figured out how to hang the snowflakes using a pole and some double-sided tape, we couldn’t stop. My room had gone from Winter Wonderland to Blinding Blizzard.

  “Normally, I don’t think Mom would care, but with Yi Po coming and all …” Kenny shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

  “It’s no big deal,” said Madison quickly, glancing at me. “We’ll just take a couple down.” Kenny had popped the bubble, deflating all our silliness.

  For a moment, I had forgotten Yi Po was coming and was taking over half of my beautiful new room. She would be here in four days, right after school started. I began ripping down the snowflakes.

  I decided to throw myself into getting ready for school. I finished the assignments that I had been putting off all summer. I read Number the Stars, the book that had been assigned for reading, answered the questions on the worksheet, and I even proofread my answers. Mom and I went shopping for new sneakers and a new backpack.

  I think even kids who don’t usually like school look forward to the first day of school. The teachers are in a good mood, everything is new, and there are friends to catch up with. For the first day of school, Madison and I agreed, dress nicely, but don’t look like you’re trying too hard. I picked a white polo with thin, light blue stripes and a matching blue skirt. Madison had to drop off a form at the main office, so I waited for her in front of the big glass trophy case at the main entrance. Class started in five minutes.

  “Hey, Lucy!” Serena and Haley came over to me. “What’s up?”

  “Just waiting for Madison. How was your summer?”

  “Too busy. I went to debate camp, sailing camp, French immersion camp, and intensive math camp. School will be a nice break.” Haley was an only child and always had about a million things going on. She had also been our class president for the last three years.

  “I finally did a back tuck!” Serena was a gymnast and had been one since kindergarten. When she got excited, she bounced up and down until her knees were practically at chin level.

  “How was your summer?” Haley asked.

  I thought of saying, My family and Talent Chang have wrecked the best year of my life, but decided that might be too much of a downer on the first day of school. “It was okay, not great.”

  “Well, cheer up!” Serena put an arm around me. “This year we’re going to rule the school!”

  This was true. In spite of everything that was going on, being a sixth grader was something that could not be taken away from me. There was no denying that sixth grade was the best year at school. I watched a sobbing kindergartner walking by with her mom, and thought how sixth graders seemed like giants, practically adults, when I was that little.

  Madison showed up. “Hi, guys! What’s up? Any word if we’re having a dance this year?”

  Before Serena and Haley could answer, the warning bell rang. We started walking to our room, and over the ringing, I heard Haley ask:

  “So, do you know anything about this new teacher, Ms. Phelps?”

  Ms. Phelps is twenty-nine years old and has a boyfriend who is a semi-professional baseball player. She has two cats, drives a purple VW, and loves red shoes. This i
s her fourth year teaching. Her first name is Carla.

  We found this out playing one of those get-to-know-you games in our first class. I decided that I really liked her because she included herself in the game and she let us sit wherever we wanted. Madison and I chose desks next to each other, and Harrison was two rows in front of us — good for sneaking peeks.

  I also had to give her points for a nice-looking classroom. The windows were lined with leafy ferns in terra-cotta planters. There was a reading nook in one corner with a rug, beanbags, and a bookcase topped with an aquarium. She also had posters of the Swiss Alps, the Grand Canyon, and a rocky coast with a lighthouse. She said that she hoped beautiful places would inspire us.

  At lunchtime, I grabbed the end of a long table so that Madison, Serena, Haley, and I could sit together. I saw Talent looking for a place to sit, too, but I looked away. Every time she came near me, it was like Chinese school was getting closer.

  “Ms. Phelps seems nice,” said Haley. Madison nodded in agreement.

  “She doesn’t seem like a yeller,” added Serena.

  “Oh, yeah! Remember last year? Ms. Pendergast?” Andrew leaned over from the next table to join the conversation. “I will not tolerate this behavior for one more minute!” He narrowed his eyes and snarled in a perfect imitation.

  Madison winced at the memory.

  “Yeah, but would you rather have someone like that substitute we had last year at Christmas? The college guy?” Lauren called from the end of the table. Lauren loved to play Would You Rather? For my money, at least Ms. Pendergast seemed to care, while the college guy just wrote our assignments on the board and spent most of his time checking his cell phone.

  “College guy,” agreed Madison and Serena.

  “Ms. Pendergast,” said Haley.

  “Pendergast,” chimed in Andrew.

  “What about you, Lucy?” asked Lauren. “C’mon, be the tiebreaker.”

  I opened my mouth to answer when Harrison suddenly appeared next to me. “What’s up? Can I vote?” he asked. Harrison. Harrison Miller. With the cutest smile. His long dark hair fell playfully into his eyes.

  Harrison looked straight at me. Were his eyes brown? Or were they almost green?

  Suddenly, my mouth went dry. Any thought I had about yelling teachers versus apathetic teachers evaporated and was replaced by two extremely loud thoughts. HARRISON IS CLOSE BY! yelled one part of my brain. Don’t do anything stupid! advised the other half. I tried desperately not to stare at Harrison but I also tried not to look as though I were turning away from him. Our arms were practically touching.

  What was the question? Something about teachers? “I really like Ms. Phelps,” I finally managed to mumble. Did I really just say that?

  The group groaned and the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch. Lauren rolled her eyes at me. “Um, hello, Lucy? Ms. Phelps wasn’t one of the choices.”

  Ms. Phelps wasn’t a yeller, but she wasn’t a pushover, either. A lot of teachers spend the first week going over stuff we learned the year before, but Ms. Phelps plunged into new things right away. We were only supposed to have an hour of homework a night, but between strange word problems about painting houses with people named Mary and Steve, and having to write an essay about our three favorite books, I was lucky if I was done in three hours.

  By Friday, I just wanted to go home and relax in my room one more time before Yi Po arrived. But when I got home from school, Mom was home early from work so that she could clean the house. As if Yi Po were traveling thousands of miles to see how clean our house was.

  “Oh, good,” she said as soon as I walked through the door. She was on her hands and knees, washing the tile floor in the family room. “You can help.”

  No How was your day? or Would you like to help? Hadn’t she realized what a rough week it had been? I took off my backpack and let it drop to the floor, near where we kept our shoes.

  “Lucy!” Mom barked. “I just washed the floor! Pick up that backpack!”

  “It’s not like my backpack is covered in dirt or something,” I argued. “I’ll pick it up in a minute.”

  “Now,” Mom said in her do-it-or-else voice. “I don’t need you undoing what I’ve already done when there are a million things to do before Yi Po arrives.”

  Something inside of me snapped. Mom was so concerned about making a good first impression that she had forgotten about me. I was the one who had to share her bedroom with a stranger. I was the one who was looking at the very real possibility of Saturday at Chinese school instead of basketball. Would you rather go to Chinese school or play basketball? Yeah, like it was even close.

  “You want me to get ready for Yi Po? Fine.” I ran up to my room and slammed the door shut.

  I looked around the room. Madison and I had arranged it to maximize open space in the room by making an L-shape with the beds in one corner, and a study nook with a desk and bookcase in the other.

  I’ll get ready for Yi Po! I dragged the beds away from the corner and put them on opposite sides of the room. There! Then I pulled my desk to the middle of the room so that it stood between the two beds. For good measure, I dragged the bookcase until it was lined up next to the desk.

  Now the desk and bookcase formed a wall between the two beds. The Great Wall of Lucy Wu. When I lay down on my bed, all I could see was my side of the desk and the front of the bookcase. And I hid my favorite picture of my grandmother, the last one we took before she got sick, in my bookcase.

  “Lucy? What’s all that racket? What is going on up here?” Mom pushed the door open. The beautiful room that Madison and I had made was gone. She turned and left. Kenny poked his head in, but didn’t say anything.

  You want ready? I’m ready. I was still breathing heavily from pulling all the furniture around. I folded my arms and lay in bed, waiting for a feeling of satisfaction to come, but it never did.

  Mom, Kenny, and I went to the airport the next day. While Dad’s trips make me nervous, I like watching other people coming and going. You can feel this buzz of energy — people getting ready to travel to some exotic place, or just arriving home. There are the business travelers in their slick suits and people who look like they might have their own private jets. I like the grungy college types — the boys have ponytails or goatees and the girls have braids and cool-looking jewelry — who carry everything they have in tall, complicated-looking backpacks.

  But I was not in a good mood. All I noticed today was the slight aroma of sweaty people everywhere and the fact that everything in the airport was incredibly expensive. My small Coke was three dollars! And we had been waiting for two hours already. The plane had finally arrived, but Mom said Dad and Yi Po were probably stuck in customs.

  Kenny, Mom, and I sat in a row of beige plastic seats. I kept thinking that if we sat there much longer, our butts would take the shape of the chairs. Mom polished off a cup of coffee and I finished a bag of trail mix. Kenny had a fruit smoothie and a banana nut muffin in the first hour we were there, and then announced he needed an eight-inch meatball sub.

  Kenny tilted his head toward the bank of monitors listing arriving and departing flights. “Have you noticed that most of the trips going east and north are even numbers, and the trips going west and south are odd numbers?”

  “You are such a weirdo, Kenny,” I told him, which he appeared to take as a compliment. I mean, he can’t find his backpack when it’s right in front of him, but he notices this?

  I was so bored I was actually reading articles in the business section of the newspaper someone had left in the seat next to me. One article was about some business that specialized in finding Chinese-speaking nannies for parents in New York. Maybe those kids would like to go to Chinese school.

  Then Mom jumped up. “They’re here! Steve, over here!”

  I saw Dad first, coming out of a long tunnel. He was walking more slowly than he usually did, and he was pulling a suitcase behind him. And then I saw her.

  So this was going to be my
roommate for the next three months. Her hair looked like short gray wire and her entire outfit was made of navy blue padded cotton. She looked like a tumbling mat with hair. When she saw us, she smiled, and I could see that she was missing a tooth.

  This was my grandmother’s sister? My grandmother had long soft hair, which she had let me brush for hours when I was little. She always wore something — a necklace or a scarf — that made her look special. And her smile was beautiful.

  My mom hurried up to meet them and let loose a stream of welcoming Chinese. Hello! Welcome! How was your trip? Have you eaten?

  Yi Po put up a hand and nodded. Mom dragged her over to meet Kenny and me.

  “Ni hao,” said Kenny. He put out his hand and they shook hands. Yi Po looked at Kenny and nodded approvingly. “Ta hen gao!” she said to Dad. He’s so tall! Dad smiled and nodded.

  Now it was my turn. My plan was to do exactly what Kenny did. I stuck out a hand and said, “Ni hao.”

  Yi Po looked at me and said, “Ni hao.” Then she turned to my Dad again and this time she said, in Chinese:

  SHE’S SO FAT!

  Okay, technically, she didn’t scream. It only felt that way. She also didn’t say fat exactly. She said da, which means big. But for a person of limited verticality, big can really only mean one thing: You are big in the horizontal sense. It certainly felt like she was calling me fat.

  I’m not fat. I’m not super skinny like Serena. I’m normal.

  I turned around and started marching toward the parking lot. I would have given anything to have my grandmother here instead of her.

  Mom grabbed my arm. “Why are you walking so far ahead of us? We’re in no hurry. Show some manners.”

  “Manners?” I hissed through my teeth. “Did you hear what she said to me? You’re talking to me about manners?”

  Mom shook her head. “You two have barely spoken. What could she have said?”