by Cara Chow
“Was your mom okay with your going away?” I ask.
“She was the one who suggested it in the first place,” Ms. Taylor says. “She wanted me to have a good education, spread my wings and fly. My first month in college, I cried every day and called home asking to drop out or transfer. But Mom encouraged me to stick it out one semester. By the end of the semester, I loved it. I just needed time to discover that I could do it on my own.”
“Wow. Your mom sounds pretty liberal.”
“That’s one way to look at it. You see, my dad was a real dud, and my mom realized that she didn’t want me to walk the same path that she had, so she really pushed me in a different direction. That’s what every mom wants for her kids, to do better than she had done. I’m sure your mom feels the same way.”
That’s exactly what my mom has said, yet her methods are so different from that of Ms. Taylor’s mom. I wonder if Ms. Taylor’s mom is one of a kind, or if there are other moms like her too.
“Where are you from originally?” I ask.
“North Carolina.”
“Really?” She doesn’t sound the least bit Southern. “Is it hard being away from your mom?”
“Not really. I mean, I miss her a lot, but we talk on the phone once a week, and I visit during holidays. In a way, distance doesn’t matter. When you’re close, distance can’t tear you apart. Likewise, if you’re not close, then living close by won’t bring you together. At any rate, consider Scripps. I think it will be a good match for you. Either way, let me know if you need a letter of recommendation.”
Suddenly, Ms. Taylor’s car starts to lose control. It swerves back and forth, unable to stay within the lane.
“What’s going on?” Ms. Taylor says as she grips the steering wheel.
I hear rumbling and crumbling sounds outside the car. Moments later, it is over. Ms. Taylor turns on the radio. A newscaster announces that there has been an earthquake.
Ms. Taylor swears under her breath. I’m too shaken to be shocked by her language. “Is your mom home?” she asks me.
“Yes,” I reply. As I stare at the houses along Balboa Street, I remind myself that all the homes in our area are still standing, even if their brick facades have fallen into piles on the ground. There are no fires or explosions. As long as our building is still intact, my mother should be fine. But I can’t be completely sure. Suddenly, I’m gripped with the fear that our apartment has collapsed and my mother is crushed under the rubble. I picture her smashed body in a pool of blood, her arms, legs, and head angled in unnatural positions.
Finally, we arrive at my apartment. To my relief, it looks more or less the same, still three stories, windows intact. As Ms. Taylor pulls into the driveway, I notice a white piece of paper stuck to the metal gate. I get out of Ms. Taylor’s car and notice that my name is on the note. I open it. It is in Theresa’s careful script. It reads:
Auntie Gracie is at our house. We’re okay. Come over without Ms. Taylor.
“What is it?” Ms. Taylor calls through her rolled-down window.
“My mom’s at Theresa’s house,” I say.
“Great. Let’s drive over.”
“No. You’ve spent too much time on me already.”
“I’ve spent an extra couple of hours. What’s another few minutes?”
“Um, I need to walk. It’s only a couple blocks.”
“If something falls on you along the way, I’m going to feel responsible.”
“You’re not responsible,” I insist. “I need the air. To clear my head. It’s just a couple of blocks. I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?”
I nod and start walking away.
Ms. Taylor drives alongside me. I wish she would just drive away. I am nervous that Mom or Nellie will notice her from Nellie’s front window. Ms. Taylor doesn’t pull away until I reach Theresa’s home. Before I can ring the doorbell, Auntie Nellie opens the door.
“Wah! Fei Ting! We’ve been so worried!”
Moments later, Theresa and Mom are hobbling down the stairs. Theresa is propping Mom up as she descends the steep, pink-carpeted steps. Mom is hunched over, clutching her abdomen. Once she reaches the foot of the stairs, she grabs my arms and weeps.
Then Nellie starts pushing us inside. “Don’t stay outside! It’s dangerous!” Even when Nellie is calm, she sounds like she is shouting. Now that she’s excited, my ears are ringing. Theresa and Nellie take Mom by the arms and help her up the curving stairs. I follow closely. Once we’re upstairs, Theresa and Nellie help Mom settle down at the dining table. I remain standing, unable to endure the luxury of sitting. To my surprise, the floors are clean. The only way I can tell that an earthquake has passed is by the open kitchen cabinets, which are half full. The rest of the dishes and bowls must have fallen and broken and been cleared away.
Nellie says, “Let’s make tea.”
“You can’t use the gas stove, Mom,” Theresa says.
“Oh.” Then Nellie begins flipping the light switches on and off. “Hey! The lights don’t work.”
“The electricity’s out,” Theresa says.
“Oh. Then go find some candles.”
“We can’t use candles.”
“Why not?”
“Because if there’s gas in the room, they might cause an explosion.”
“Then what do we use? It’s getting dark!”
“Flashlights.” Theresa’s talking to her mother as if explaining things to a five-year-old.
Theresa leaves the room for a while. Meanwhile, Nellie finds a flashlight and begins flicking the on-off switch back and forth. “Hey, how can the earthquake affect this too?” she says.
Theresa comes back with new batteries. She takes the flashlight from Nellie, changes the batteries, and turns on the flashlight. It seems that without Theresa, Nellie could not survive in this world. I imagine myself in Theresa’s shoes. I wouldn’t have known not to turn on the stove. I probably would have lit a candle and blown my mom and me up.
“Look how smart Theresa is,” Mom says. “She’s really worth the rice you feed her.”
“When the earth was shaking, I was so scared, I just started running around the room screaming,” Nellie says. “Then Theresa grabbed me and pushed me under the dining table. Good thing too, because I probably would have gotten hurt from all the flying dishes.”
Mom is probably wishing she and Nellie could trade daughters. And who could blame her? Theresa was there for Nellie during the quake. She was there for Mom when she needed comfort and protection. Where was I? Practicing for a speech competition behind my mother’s back.
“Where did you go after school today?” Mom says to me.
“Princeton Review. Remember?” I try to spy Theresa from the corner of my eye, but she is looking at her lap.
“How come you weren’t there when everyone else was leaving?” Mom says.
How did she know that I wasn’t there?
“I tried to call Princeton Review, but the phone didn’t work,” Mom says. “Then I ran to Nellie’s house, even as the ground was shaking, in case you were there, but you weren’t. Then I made Nellie drive me and Theresa to Princeton Review. We waited outside the building and looked for you as everyone else left, but you weren’t there. Nellie and I began asking the kids if they knew where you were, but no one did. Then, I found your teacher.”
I stifle the urge to gasp.
“I asked him where you were. He said something like ‘She’s not with you?’ ”
Had Mr. Engelman said, “Frances wasn’t here today,” I would have been caught for sure. How much longer before my luck runs out? Maybe I should just surrender the truth and get my punishment over with.
“My heart nearly fell into my bowels,” Mom says. “Then Theresa said that maybe you had left and were on your way home. Then I told Nellie to drive me home to find you, but Theresa told me to stay at her house. She offered to walk to our apartment, risking her own life, to wait for you and bring you back. But Nellie and I were too sca
red for her, so she said she would leave you a note and come right back.”
I picture Theresa sitting nervously in the backseat of Nellie’s car, scared of what would happen once Mom and Nellie discovered that I wasn’t at Princeton Review. She probably nearly peed in her pants when they ran into the teacher. It would have been so easy for her at that moment to give up and drop our charade. I watch Theresa from the corner of my eye. She is still looking at her lap.
“Why weren’t you with your teacher? Why weren’t you with the other kids?” Mom asks.
Theresa looks up at me, her eyes wide with alarm.
“Well,” I say, “like Theresa said, I had already left. I was worried about you, so I rushed out the door.”
“But how did you get home?”
“I just …” I can’t say that I walked. It is too far. But would the bus still run in a time like this? “I just found a way,” I say, aware of how lame I sound.
“Aiyah! Gracie!” Nellie fans the air in front of Mom’s face, as if to slap some sense into her. “Who cares how she got home? The important thing is she’s here! See what a good daughter she is? She risked her own life to return home and make sure you were okay!”
“Theresa is the true hero,” Mom says. “Not only did she figure out how to get us all together, she helped sweep the floor of all the broken dishes and bowls. Right now my kitchen is littered with broken things. We better head home soon to clean up.”
“No!” Nellie holds out both arms as if stopping an oncoming bus. “Stay with us tonight. You can go home tomorrow.”
“I can’t be a burden,” Mom says.
“You’re not a burden. We need you too. Daddy’s in Hong Kong and Ben is at MIT, so we need the company.” By “Daddy” Nellie means Theresa’s dad, her husband.
That night we eat cold leftover chow mein and chow fun from Nellie’s fridge. Mom and Nellie are stuffing themselves past the point of fullness. Even a dangerous crisis cannot erase their aversion to wasting food. Theresa warns everyone not to overuse the flashlight.
After dinner, Mom gets the guest bedroom and I get to sleep in Theresa’s room. Minus the lack of street lighting, everything in Theresa’s room looks the same. Her giant New Kids on the Block poster still hangs on the back of her door. Her rainbow comforter still drapes her full-size bed, and her stuffed Hello Kitty and Care Bears still sit on her pillows, like magic animals on clouds.
As Theresa and I get ready for bed, Theresa is quiet and does not look at me at all. She turns her back to me as she changes into her long white cotton nightgown. I change into Nellie’s orange polyester pajamas with dark pink flowers. Her waistband sags around my hips. I wonder if Theresa is mad at me, but I lack the courage to find out for sure. All I can think is mm ho yee see. I don’t know if there is a perfect English translation. It’s what people say when they feel embarrassed about imposing, or when someone does them a big favor and they can’t reciprocate.
Theresa crawls into bed and flips her rainbow comforter over her. I hesitate, unsure if she wants me near her. But Theresa stays on one side of the bed and says, “Aren’t you getting in?” Relieved, I crawl in next to her.
As I look out the window, I expect to see the streetlights filter through the blinds, painting streaks on Theresa’s white walls. Instead, all I see is pitch-black. I realize then that in the city, it’s never really perfectly dark. We think it’s black when, in fact, we can see our hands in front of our faces, and the shadows of light gray cast upon darker gray. In this cloak of darkness, I muster what little courage I have and turn to face Theresa. “Thanks,” I say.
“It’s okay,” she replies.
“Sorry,” I add. I choke back the urge to cry.
“It’s okay,” Theresa says. I immerse myself in the luxury of her forgiveness.
“This upcoming competition,” Theresa says, “maybe you should think about quitting after that one. Or tell Auntie Gracie that you’re competing in speech and sell her on it. I don’t think I can take this anymore.”
I wonder if that was why Theresa continued our lie, not so much to protect me but to protect my mother from heartbreak.
Chapter Five
The following day, Mom and I finally go back to our apartment. In the living room, our fifteen-inch television has tumbled facedown onto the floor, its glass splintered in every direction. The white Gwun Yum statue has also fallen and has broken in two. Now that it is broken, I can see that it is hollow inside. Popo’s photo has also fallen facedown. There is shattered glass everywhere. Mom runs to the picture and picks it up. There is a big harsh diagonal scratch across Popo’s face. The scratch pains me. It looks as if a knife has slashed her face. Mom is crouched over and kneeling as she clutches the photo, oblivious to the broken glass all around her.
“How do we remedy this, Fei Ting?” she says. “This is my only picture of her, no negatives, no copies.”
I have no answer for her. Not putting it up isn’t an option, but displaying the big scratch also seems offensive. Instead, I avoid the issue. “Don’t move,” I say. I get a broom and begin sweeping away the glass so she won’t get hurt. Mom stays frozen like a large round boulder. The photo in her hands has become a part of the boulder, like a piece of quartz embedded in stone. Even her tears are frozen. They are vibrating just under her eyelids, but no sobs come forth. I continue sweeping around her in a circle, like a satellite revolving around the earth.
I turn over the broken television.
“I worked so hard to buy that TV,” Mom says.
It is thirteen years old. It’s black-and-white, even though everyone else has color. But to Mom, it’s still money. She mourns every grain of rice that is not eaten. She cringes at every pair of panty hose that runs, scorning its owner for her carelessness. She stoops into gutters to pick up pennies, as if each penny were a nugget of gold. Quietly, I shuttle the TV away, to remove this assault from Mom’s field of vision.
In the kitchen, our cabinets and drawers are all open. The porcelain bowls, plates, and cups, and ivory chopsticks have spilled onto the linoleum floor. After cleaning the living room, I begin stacking our dining ware, separating out the broken pieces. Once that is organized, I sweep those floors as well. Mom is still hunched over in the living room.
After cleaning up the kitchen, I proceed to the bathroom and then to the bedroom. As I clean, I notice how this work wears down the body and saps the spirit. It seems endless, relentless. I want to take a break, stop for today and continue tomorrow, but I can’t. The punishment is cleansing, proof to Mom that I am not lazy or incompetent. I remind myself that this is how Mom must feel, day after day. No time for rest, no time for fun.
Once I am done with the bedroom, I go back to the living room to tend to Mom. I peel her hooked fingers from the photo frame, remove the remaining shards, and place it back on the mantelpiece in the shrine, ignoring the big streak across Popo’s face. Then I help Mom up from the floor and draw her a hot bath.
We go over to Theresa and Nellie’s for dinner, but afterwards, we return home. Mom’s stomach is worse than ever. She is so hunched over that she is nearly crawling up the stairs to our apartment.
Once we’re inside, I wrap Mom in blankets on the couch and make her a pot of loose-leaf oolong tea. Since we now have no television, I bring out my plastic childhood record player, another relic Mom has refused to throw away or donate. Under my desk, I find the stack of records Mom brought over from Hong Kong. She has Elvis; the Beatles; Peter, Paul and Mary; and several Canto-pop records from the sixties and seventies. I play one of the Canto-pop records. The music sounds like Western music with Cantonese lyrics. The singer’s voice is smooth and sweet, not nasally as in the Peking operas. I sit next to Mom, and the two of us scan the room. There is a giant crack running from one corner of the ceiling to the other.
Mom heaves a deep, sad sigh. “Look at all these cracks,” she says. “I can work so hard to make everything perfect, to put everything in order, yet in one moment, all that can be wrenched aw
ay from me. It is a mockery of my efforts. That is how cruel nature can be.”
I smart with indignation. I just spent hours cleaning up, but all she can focus on is everything I can’t fix, as if I haven’t done anything at all.
Then Mom rises from the couch to survey the apartment. Immediately, I tense up. She will find some flaw with my cleaning. It will never measure up to her standards. But instead, Mom nods and smiles. “Good girl. The apartment looks so nice now, almost as if the earthquake had never struck.”
This is the first time she has ever complimented me.
“As long as I have you, they can take everything away from me—my TV, my picture, my dishes, even my home!” Mom says. “To hell with them all! When you become a successful doctor, we can get all these things back!” She releases a big belch, as if punctuating her declaration. To an outsider, that would sound comic. But I know that passing gas is a sign that Mom’s stomach is recovering. I can give back to her what others have taken away: money, health, and dignity. All this time I have seen her expectations as pressure, when really they were the sign that she believed in me.
Mom returns to the sagging couch and sighs. “I am so old and broken, Fei Ting, just like this apartment.”
“That’s not true,” I say.
“Yes it is,” she says. “I’m also getting fat.”
“No you’re not.”
“You just don’t notice, because you’re around me every day. But I’ve had these pants for over twenty years and they don’t fit me like they used to. Also, my hair is turning white.”
