The Great Wall of Lucy Wu

by Wendy Wan-Long Shang

  I glared at Mom. “She said, ta hen da. She’s soooo big.”

  Mom stopped walking and started laughing. “Lucy — don’t be silly. She didn’t mean that you were fat. She meant that you were older than she expected. You know, in English, like when you say someone’s a big kid.”

  Oh. I stopped marching.

  Mom walked back and repeated the story in Chinese to Yi Po, Dad, and Kenny, and they had a jolly good time laughing at my expense. Then, to make things worse, Dad pulled out Matilda in front of everyone in the parking lot to explain that Yi Po thought I was younger because I had given him a stuffed animal.

  I hated them all right then and there, enough to drill a hole in a ground. I hated them for embarrassing me and laughing at me. But I also hated Yi Po for who she wasn’t — she wasn’t my grandmother, who had always known how old I was, and had given Matilda to me.

  When we came home, Mom and Dad showed Yi Po around the house. Then Mom told me it was my job to give Yi Po a tour of the bedroom. Our bedroom.

  I opened the door to our room and hoped that the wall in the middle would explain everything. My side of the room was on the same side as the door; my bed was against the wall to the right, my dresser was behind the door, and the closet was at the end of the room. Her side also had a dresser, plus a bed under the window with a nightstand.

  Kenny had brought up her suitcase and left it on her bed, in case there was any question of whose side was whose. Maybe she would figure out the whole deal, unpack her stuff quietly, and stay on her side of the room for the rest of her visit.

  No such luck.

  As soon as we walked into the room, she decided to take a tour of my side. “Wah!” she said. She pointed to my large collection of stuffed animals. Then she ran her fingers over the books in my bookcase.

  How did you say Don’t touch my stuff in Chinese? I walked over and slid the door open to her side of the closet, hoping that would bring her over to her side of the room. I smiled tightly, and waved my arm like a game show hostess. Look! You’ve won half a closet!

  She didn’t see me. She looked at the log cabin diorama I had made two years ago and picked up a picture of Madison and me in goggles and hats. We had been skiing. Did they have skiing in China?

  I walked over and tapped Madison’s face in the photo. Peng you. At least I knew that much. Friend.

  I walked back to her side of the room now, hoping to lure her over to her side with a demonstration of the dresser and nightstand. She didn’t follow me.

  Now she was looking at my trophies, my basketball trophies from four seasons of league play plus two years of making it into the play-offs. She reached out and gently touched my favorite one, the one with a player in the middle of a hook shot.

  She pointed to the trophies and asked a question. Uh-oh. I smiled politely and stood on her side of the room, waiting. This did not satisfy her. She pointed again and asked, but the sounds slipped by me again. I felt my heart speed up. What was she saying? I thought of the one question that everyone asked me, You play basketball? and decided to go with that. I pointed to the trophy and pointed to me. Yes, those are mine.

  Yi Po sighed and shook her head, disappointed. That wasn’t it, and a hot flush of embarrassment crept up my neck. She probably thought I was an idiot.

  She walked slowly to her side of the room, and looked on as I pointed out her closet and dresser. Then, without another word, she started to unpack.

  “So, how did you find Yi Po?” Kenny asked that night at dinner. Mom had made one of my dad’s favorites, shi zi tou, or lion’s head. When I was little, Kenny used to tease me that the baseball-sized meatballs were actually made from real lions, instead of ground pork.

  Dad repeated the question to Yi Po in Chinese, and his face broke into a huge grin. It’s the face he makes when he has a good story to tell.

  “As you may be aware, I had been conducting my search for the world’s most perfect bowl of noodles for some time now,” he announced. “The search had reached worldwide proportions.”

  Kenny, Mom, and I gave a soft, collective sigh. Dad wasn’t looking for just any bowl of noodles. He was looking for noodles like the ones Po Po used to make. My dad used to joke that he acted like the perfect son-in-law so Po Po would make him noodles, but the truth was they had just really adored each other. Dad repeated his announcement to Yi Po in Chinese, and she giggled.

  Dad continued. “It became a running gag at the office. When will Steve find the perfect bowl of noodles? Then one day, Josie walks in and says that her cabbie told her about a noodle place that we have to go to. So at lunchtime, a bunch of us jumped into a cab and set off to find the place.”

  I picked up the serving spoon and helped myself to another lion’s head and some of the cabbage.

  “We finally get there, and it’s this hole-in-the-wall type place featuring all kinds of noodles. There’s a line out the door, and Sam’s getting nervous because he’s got a ton of work back at the office. We decide to stay, though, because everyone’s talking about how good the noodles are and it smells incredible. We can even see the guys making different kinds of noodles — one of them is slicing noodles off a big block, another guy is pulling them. There’s another guy who just shouts out the orders. We stood in line for fifteen or twenty minutes, and finally, we got our noodles.”

  After Dad translated, Yi Po nodded and moved her hands in a long stretching motion.

  The way my dad used his hands and his voice, he made me feel like I was there with him. I could almost see the big pots of soup and the man in a greasy shirt yelling out orders as they come up. The restaurant was warm, almost hot, from cooking and the crowds of people who were talking, shouting, eating.

  Dad paused. “I ask for a bowl that seems closest to Po Po’s beef noodle soup. If you’re looking for the world’s most perfect noodles, after all, you have to have some sort of baseline for comparison. When the waiter delivers the bowl, it already looks very promising. The noodles are long, cut to the correct width. The broth smells lovely, and there are just a few green onions floating on the top.

  “Is it too good to believe? After the first bite, I can’t believe it. I want to weep. They are perfect. They are just like Po Po’s. Perfect texture and the combination of beef and vegetables is just right.” Dad leaned forward in his chair and we did, too, waiting for the bowl of noodles to appear.

  I can’t remember what Po Po’s noodles tasted like anymore. I wish there were a way to record flavors the way you can record music, and then you could play it over and over in your mouth.

  When Yi Po hears Dad’s description of her noodles repeated in Chinese, she waves a hand modestly and shakes her head. “I finish my bowl and then get up and beg the guy to introduce me to the person who made the noodles. I have to know. I have to know what they did to make the noodles like Po Po’s. At first he looks at me like I’m crazy. I know what he’s thinking — it’s flour, eggs, and water. The noodles are good, but how good can they be?

  “I keep asking, though, and finally he relents, I think, just so I’ll leave him alone. I figure it’s one of these guys doing the noodle tricks at the front of the store, and I’ll just wait until the right guy goes on break. But then, the guy I’ve been bugging walks out with Yi Po.”

  Dad shook his head. “For a minute, I thought I was hallucinating. Maybe I’ve been wanting Po Po’s noodles for so long that now that I have them, my mind is making me think she’s here again. But it’s not her.”

  I couldn’t believe Dad actually thought Yi Po and my grandmother looked anything alike. It wasn’t even close. Then I had a thought — Maybe she’s an impostor! A con artist! I started listening more closely for clues. Maybe my year wasn’t ruined after all.

  Yi Po added something to what Dad said, laughing the whole time. Mom translated: My boss came into the kitchen. He said, Go out there and see what this guy wants. He’s crazy!

  Yeah, right, I thought. Your boss probably said, If you play your cards right, you can
go to America with this businessman!

  Dad kept talking. “I couldn’t say what I thought. Not right away. I don’t want to scare her. And what if I’m wrong? So I start off, complimenting her on her noodles, how perfect they are. And she’s nodding but waving off the compliments at the same time.”

  Kenny leaned forward. “What did you say next?”

  “I’m thinking to myself, how can I get her to start thinking about this? It’s a trick we use sometimes in negotiations — you drop little bread crumbs but let the other person think it’s their idea. So I say, ‘Your noodles remind me so much of my mother-in-law’s. Maybe you’re from the same place. She was from Shanghai.’ Sure enough, her face lights up and she says, ‘I’m from Shanghai, too!’”

  Yi Po nodded and pointed from herself to me and Kenny. She said something in Chinese but all I could figure out was Shanghai and noodle. I wasn’t fooled, though. You would say you were from any province Dad asked about. You’d say you were from Mexico!

  Mom shook her head in disbelief. “Only you, Steve,” she said.

  “Now she’s really interested in me. I’m not just some crazy guy anymore,” Dad continued. “She says, ‘What was your mother-in-law’s surname? Maybe I knew her family.’” Dad puts up both hands, slowing down. “I turn to her and look her right in the face. I don’t say anything for a moment so I know she’s really listening. Then I say, ‘I think you knew her. Her name was Bao Lihua.’”

  Dad and Yi Po glance at each other. “She sat down and wiped her face,” said Dad. “Then all she said was, ‘Yes, I knew her.’ And she looked at me, and we both knew what that meant.” Yi Po looked at us and smiled.

  No one said anything but I was practically bursting. That’s it! Dad gave her Po Po’s name! He asked her if she was from Shanghai! She’s never proven she’s Po Po’s sister! She could be anyone! I felt like one of those lawyers on TV, ready to make the witness break down on the stand.

  Before I could open my mouth, Dad started in again. “I started visiting Yi Po every day, eating her noodles and just letting us get to know each other. And then one day, I asked, ‘Why don’t you come with me to meet your family?’ And do you know what she said?”

  I narrowed my eyes at Yi Po. She might fool Mom and Dad, but she wasn’t fooling me. Yeah, I know what she said. Yippee! This sucker’s finally invited me to America!

  “What did she say?” asked Mom.

  “Of course, the first couple of times she said, ‘No, it’s too much trouble …’”

  You got that right.

  “… but after a few more times she agreed. She said, ‘Well, who wants to be a frog in a well?’” said Dad.

  Yi Po nodded and added, “Jing di zhi wa,” as if we hadn’t heard that phrase a million times before.

  My accusations melted away. Po Po’s favorite phrase. I looked at her hands, tapping the kitchen table. Perfect oval fingernails, just like my grandmother’s. I couldn’t deny it. This was her sister, and her noodles had ruined my life.

  Within a few days of Yi Po’s arrival, I realized that I should have built a much bigger wall, instead of just the desk-bookshelf wall down the middle of the room. I was in the middle of an all-out assault on the senses. Even if I walked around my room with my eyes closed, I could still smell her and hear her. There was no escape.

  My room — or should I say, our room — now smelled like the main factory for Vicks VapoRub. Yi Po really seemed to love the mentholated stuff, even though she wasn’t sick, and I was fairly sure that I would not be having any respiratory problems just from the secondary fumes. I told Madison that I wanted to hang a huge plastic shower curtain down the middle of the room to protect me from the smell, until Madison pointed out that the smell of a new plastic shower curtain is not a huge improvement over Vicks. And, anyway, a plastic shower curtain wouldn’t protect me from …

  WCHI — your station for Chinese news, music, sports, and weather! Okay, I didn’t actually know whether that was what the radio announcers were saying, but I did know that within twenty-four hours of arriving, Yi Po had managed to find a radio station that provided all-Chinese programming throughout the day. Who knew? We had lived here for years without knowing about the station. Although reception wasn’t perfect, Yi Po seemed perfectly happy to listen to whatever staticky news that station served up. Crrrrkkkk! Sssccccrrrtttccch! Zwakkkk! The noise drove me crazy.

  For that I thought about having a five-inch-thick steel wall. Sure, it might be a little awkward, unattractive, and expensive, but it might deflect the radio waves, and also block the smells and the other sounds that came from across the room. And by “other sounds,” I mean the ones that started at five o’clock in the morning.

  Yes, Yi Po woke up every day before the sun even peeped out. And did she tiptoe out quietly? Not without making the bed! I lay in bed and listened to her every morning, walking around in her flat slippers that made a fwap-fwap sound with every step. I soon noticed that she had a little pattern every morning. Whoosh fwap-fwap. She pulled up the blankets. Swish fwap-fwap. She smoothed the bed. Poom fwap-fwap. She puffed up the pillow.

  By the time she fwap-fwapped out of the room, I was too fwapping mad to go back to sleep.

  I tried complaining to Mom, to see if Mom could get her to stop. Mom wouldn’t help me. “Old people are pretty set in their ways,” she informed me. “I doubt she can help it. Why don’t you try going to bed earlier?”

  “How much earlier?” I asked her. “When I get home from school?”

  The truth of the matter was, when I really thought about it, there probably wasn’t a wall wide enough, tall enough, or thick enough to keep me from forgetting Yi Po was here for a long, long time.

  One night I grumbled to Kenny as he read a fat book on World War II. “You’re so lucky you don’t have to share a room with her,” I said. “It stinks in there and she’s up at the crack of dawn. I hate it.”

  “It could be a lot worse, Lucy. She’s been through a lot, you know,” Kenny said, half-reading his book.

  I sighed. “Yeah, I know. Her mom, dad, and sister went to the U.S. and never came back for her.” I held up my hand and made the blah blah blah motion.

  “No, not that,” Kenny sat up. “I mean, yeah, that’s a lot, but she’s been through much more than that. War, of course, and famine. And you know about the Cultural Revolution in the sixties, right?”

  I had heard the words Cultural Revolution before, but I thought it was about music and painting.

  Kenny shook his head. “Mao Zedong, China’s leader, said that China needed to let go of their old ways, have a huge revolution. And some students, called Red Guards, took it to the extreme.”

  “Extreme? Like …”

  “Mao also told people to get rid of their Four Olds — old ideas, customs, habits, and culture. The Red Guards used this idea as a reason to go after people, tear apart their homes, making sure they didn’t have any Four Olds objects, or anything Western. Sometimes kids even informed on their own parents to prove their loyalty to Mao. I mean, we’re used to Regina ratting us out to Mom and Dad, but what if Regina reported on Mom and Dad, or one of her teachers? That’s what it was like.”

  I pulled my knees up against me.

  Kenny went on. “And the crimes people committed, they weren’t crime crimes. Not like robbery or murder. They were crimes like teaching Shakespeare, or having a father who had been a landlord.”

  “That’s not fair,” I objected. “You can’t control what your parents did.”

  “It happened anyway, Lucy. And many people didn’t even do what they had been accused of, though the Red Guards tried to force them to confess by beating and humiliating them. There were a lot of suicides.”

  “So what are you saying? I should sleep with the lights on?” I didn’t want to talk about the Cultural Revolution or Yi Po anymore.

  Kenny leaned over. “I’m saying, she probably saw some pretty horrible things. Take it easy on her, okay?”

  I didn’t say anythi
ng.

  “Okay?” Kenny repeated.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  There was only one way I could think of to take it easy on Yi Po. I started staying outside for as long as possible. I either stayed at Madison’s house, or if Madison wasn’t home, I hung out in the driveway, practicing. Ten layups, ten three-pointers from the right, and then ten from the left. I even did fifty free throws a night, like Coach Mike wanted me to. As the days went by, more and more of my shots started going in, especially the free throws. If Yi Po doesn’t leave soon, I thought, I might make the Olympics.

  I saw her watching me from the window once. After that, I had a special dribble, just for her:

  Go home! Go home! Go home!

  Madison and I have this joke that everybody has secret powers. The problem is, the powers are not all that powerful and they’re really secret, so secret that you might not know you have them. Madison’s secret power is that she always knows exactly which pair of shoes to wear. My secret power is that I can sharpen a pencil perfectly the first time, without the lead breaking.

  My dad’s secret power is that his hair always looks perfect, even after a long day at work. We like to say that Dad has Anchorman Hair. Now, even though Dad was at the office all day, every hair was positioned exactly where it should be. This is what I was thinking when Dad said he wanted to have a talk with me about Chinese school.

  When your parents say they want to have a talk, what they really mean is you need to have a listen. I had been hoping that maybe my parents would just forget about Chinese school in the excitement over Yi Po. No such luck. I decided to take a different approach.

  “Qing zuo, qing zuo.” I said, patting the chair next to me. I wanted to remind him that I could speak some Chinese after the disaster at the airport.

  Dad pretended to wobble as he high-stepped over a pile of laundry. “Ni bie na me ke qi,” he teased back. Don’t be so polite!

  Maybe this was going to be easier than I thought.