Repeat After Me

by Rachel Dewoskin

  As if reading my mind, he switched. “What are you reading in English class?” he asked in Chinese.

  “Nothing,” she said in English. Then she excused herself, left for the bathroom. I saw her take her cell phone out, wondered who she was calling.

  “I have something for you to read,” I told Yang Tao, hoping to make up for Julia Too. I handed him the treasure I’d been saving, an article I had clipped from China Air’s in-flight magazine, entitled “Custom of Wedding.” It described a ceremony in rural Anhui province, in which, it said, “in accordance with local custom, the bride shall be screwed off the fine hair on the forehead on wedding day.”

  “You win,” he said. Our contest was for who could provide the other with the worst translation copy. It started when I showed him Julia’s “dog-end cast from high” flyer and he, perhaps in a quiet protest, brought me a photo of an American basketball player with the Chinese character for broccoli tattooed on his neck.

  “So as a victory gift, maybe you can tell me what this means.” I was laughing.

  “You have to rescind your victory if you ask the native person for a translation.”

  “Wow. Rescind! Show off. Fine, I rescind.”

  “I’m going to guess it either means tweeze or braid. Probably tweeze. Is this what you’ve been spending your time researching? Rural wedding customs in Anhui?”

  Just then, a girl roughly Julia Too’s age came into the restaurant selling roses wrapped in individual plastic sleeves. She wore a man’s army green coat and shoes that looked like they had belonged to someone else first. She shuffled from table to table, looking at the floor, repeating “Buy a flower for her” to the men at each table. I was justifying in my mind why not to buy flowers: her boss was a tyrant who took her money anyway, working children are part of a despicable mafia, giving money is giving in to the system, and so on. But before I had convinced myself, Yang Tao was beckoning her over.

  “Buy a flower for her,” the girl said.

  “How many do you have to sell?” he asked. She shrugged.

  “How many to be done for today?” he asked.

  She looked at him. “Buy a flower for her,” she said. She didn’t look at me, just nodded her head in the general direction of where someone might be sitting.

  Yang Tao took three one hundred Yuan notes from his wallet, almost fifty dollars. “Here,” he said, “Please give them to me.”

  “How many, mister?”

  “All of them.” He handed her the bills. She paused for a moment, incredulous, then tossed the flowers onto our table and ran.

  I looked up to see Julia Too standing there. She blew her bangs out of her eyes in a gesture that struck me as uniquely adolescent. She moved her eyes slowly from the roses, which now looked naked and grotesque to me, to Yang Tao.

  “Show off,” she said.

  That night at bedtime, Julia Too climbed under her tiger blanket. “Let’s tell the story,” she said. I sat on the edge of her bed, tickled her back.

  “Which one, Bean?” I asked, because there are two.

  “The one about my birth.”

  “The night you were born, the moon in New York was a white sliver. I could see it from the cab on the way to St. Luke’s and again from the window in my room. Naomi and Julia were there, and we sang Xiao Wang’s Mekong River song, about the light over Lijiang. When you arrived, everybody said, ‘She’s perfect,’ and you were. I said you looked like your daddy, Julia One said you looked like me, and Nomi said you looked just like yourself, and ‘give her here.’”

  “Did you?”

  “Of course. She snuggled you half to death.”

  “Now the other one,” Julia Too said.

  “Your daddy was very sick.”

  “Was I there?”

  “I was pregnant with you.”

  I sighed. We have had this conversation many times, and I don’t mind—it’s my retribution, I guess. But sometimes, even now, when I’m telling it, I can feel the two sections of my heart—one red and the other white, slide apart like a puzzle. Julia Too doesn’t like to vary the wording or the cadence.

  “He didn’t know me.”

  “Right. He didn’t know you. But he would have loved you. I am certain.”

  She turned away from me. “Let’s stop there,” she said.

  “Okay, sweetie.”

  “It’s a pity, right, Mom?”

  I leaned down and kissed her. “Yes. It’s a pity.”

  After she had closed her eyes and started breathing sleepily, I took seventeen steps from her bedroom through the living room, past the roses Yang Tao had bought, now in a tall vase on the coffee table. I poured a glass of Dragon Seal wine and sat up alone, watching my favorite TV series, Don’t Talk to Strangers, about a doctor who flies into jealous rages over his schoolteacher wife.

  I fell asleep hours later and dreamt of a wedding in Anhui. Julia Too and I rode horses side by side, our hairlines plucked, our matching taffeta dresses sounding like prom, looking whiter than an overexposed photo or a ghost. I woke glazed with fear and stumbled from the couch into Julia Too’s room. She was safe in her bed, one flannel pajama’ed leg sticking out from under the covers. I tucked it back in.

  I used to wonder what it felt like to be as estranged as Da Ge was from the world, what it made nights like to have had a mother who couldn’t bear to stay alive. I didn’t have my dad anymore exactly, but I could always go home to my mom. The first time I started rereading Da Ge’s early essays was that February, and I made a conscious, stricken decision not to return them. How much did I already suspect about what I’d need to keep? Or what I’d lose? I never took notes on his work; he wrote in red ink, making my teacher pen redundant. And since I never gave him any feedback anyway, I began to read his essays over and over, and keep them. As soon as I’d admitted to myself that I was going to do it, I set about organizing his assignments into my journal.

  It was one of many projects I created in the weeks after Julia and Adam betrayed me together, leaving me with the feeling that my life was a shallow sitcom and I had no friends. Alone in my apartment, I kept busy. I was too proud to call Julia and too annoyed to call Adam, so I made collages, typed up comments on student papers, wrote an essay to Columbia about why they should let me back in, and reread Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Angle of Repose, and Gatsby. I like reading books I’ve read before, because they remind me who I am. That February, I read Lu Xun, too, thought he might remind me who I was about to be. Reading someone new can make you someone new, I find.

  But every time I closed a book, I landed hard on the same thought: Julia. Julia in her leotard and tights, Julia in primary school, hanging from the playground bars, Julia at fifteen, smudges of Kohl eyeliner shadowing her eyes, Julia eating Koronet Pizza, laughing, a dimple creasing her right cheek, Julia making tea in her studio, painting silver stars on my toe-nails, Julia asleep in her investment banker bed, Julia in the moment she made the conscious decision that selling me out was worth a few minutes of guilty fun with Adam. Or worse, finding the guilt fun precisely because it was at my expense. Or worse yet, not thinking of me at all. Maybe they were in love.

  Movies became a montage of the two of them, him hoisting her up in the nurses’ station at St. Luke’s, railing her while I languished. So I watched nothing. Music was a soundtrack for their skipping through sunny fields somewhere without me, weightless until they tackled each other in the tall weeds, ablaze with lust. So I watched nothing, just read books that didn’t involve us, and told myself I had moved on anyway, was engaged.

  I told Dr. Meyers that Julia and Adam had had sex. She did not say, “How does that make you feel?” Instead she said, “Shit.”

  I laughed. “That’s how I felt, too,” I said.

  Then Adam called me. His “hello” came down the wire and wound my stupid heart up like a jack-in-the-box. I put a hand on my chest, kept the lid on.

  “What?” I asked, pleased that it came out sounding angry rather than panicked.
/>   “Oh, Aysha.” There was pity dripping out of his voice. I remembered sponges he used to forget to squeeze out in the sink, filthy, rotting, and reeking. I threw out dozens of moldy sponges while we were together. And he never once wiped a counter or sink. I used to think maybe guys just weren’t taught how to make a wiping motion. Maybe since they pee standing up.

  “Yes?” I longed to wring the words out of him. Open the cabinet under the sink, let the smell of the plastic garbage bag rush out, see Adam’s words stuck to its sides.

  “Julia said you and she had an extremely awkward conversation.” He swallowed. I couldn’t help laughing. “You mean about how the two of you were fucking above my ceiling right after you fucked me? That wasn’t awkward.”

  “Uh. It sounds worse than it is,” he began, “but I just—”

  I couldn’t hear him out. “Nothing sounds like anything other than what it is,” I said, “except when you open your mouth.”

  He sighed. “I don’t know why I try,” he said. “But here, I’ll try: you and I haven’t been a couple for ages, Aysh. Julia and I were worried about you. We’re only close because of you. The fact is, we drank a lot, and we made a mistake. It was weird and desperate, and I’m so sorry. If you never want to be my friend again, I can accept that, but please forgive Julia.”

  “You repulse me,” I told him. “How dare you call me on her behalf? Do you think she and I don’t know each other better than you and she do? Or better than you and I know each other? She’ll laugh when I tell her.” This was only partially true, of course. I couldn’t imagine ever speaking to Julia again, let alone laughing with her about Adam.

  I could hear my voice bubbling but I didn’t stop. “Let me understand this, Adam. You’re calling me after you came over here and slept with everyone at this address—to tell me that you’re worried about me? You’re the one who walks the halls of our building, shedding your pants, asking for takers. Julia and I are worried about you.”

  I hung up and the silence around me buzzed. I allowed myself one minute to think about Julia and Adam. It was 7:06. 60, 59, 58 . . . How many times? Just that once? Unlikely. Did it start while I was sick? Did they congratulate each other on how generous and loving they were being, bringing candy to the crazy ward? 19, 18, 17 . . . Had they come in separately to fool me? I couldn’t think of an instance. Had my mother suspected? I was out of time. Did Adam put his hands over Julia’s mouth while she laughed? The phone rang again.

  It would be Julia, I thought, confirmation of their partnership. He had called her as soon as I hung up, reinforcing their superior intimacy. I let the machine get it. Waiting for a voice, I thought how Julia’s was as familiar as water, food, or paper.

  “Hi Aysha,” said the machine. “It’s Xiao Wang.”

  I grabbed the phone.

  “I hope it’s okay for me to call,” she said.

  “Of course,” I said. “I’m so glad you did.”

  “Maybe you would like to watch movie with me.”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “What movie?” she asked.

  I laughed. “What movie do you want to watch?”

  “Maybe you can decide for this.”

  And so began our Wednesday movie nights. I said we could watch at my place, and suggested Casablanca, The Godfather, or Lawrence of Arabia, classic films.

  “No, no,” she said. “These we already have in Chinese, or with Chinese subtitle. I want to see the movies you watch when you are young American. Not this kind of classic movie, but the movie you think are cool when you are growing up,” she said.

  So I rented Pretty in Pink, which Xiao Wang found almost as stunning as my apartment. She went through everything as though the place were a museum, commenting that my teddy bear and old doll were “cute and pretty,” and that my quilt, which I explained Naomi had made out of my baby clothes, was “artist’s love.” She came upon the picture of me and Benj in pajamas.

  “You are so pretty baby here,” she said. “Pang pang bai bai de!”

  I couldn’t resist. “Fat and white?” I asked.

  She raised her eyebrows. “How do you know this?” she asked.

  “Aren’t you impressed? Da Ge told me.”

  She took this in for a second before managing a complete recovery. “Maybe we can both help to teach you some Chinese.”

  “I would love that,” I said. “I’d like to go to China someday.”

  “Maybe you can visit my family in Jinhong. Meet my parent and Jin. We smiled at each other, both thinking it would never happen, both wrong.

  “Let’s watch the movie,” I said. “It will give you a sense of teenage life here.”

  Xiao Wang asked why Molly Ringwald was a star, why “Ducky” was in love with her when he was so clearly “same sex love,” and why the rich guy was desirable. I said it was a materialistic moment for America and that for hundreds of years gay people had to pretend to be straight in Hollywood movies. And not only the actors, even gay characters had to pretend. Chinese people, when they appeared in the movies we watched that year (almost never), were buck-toothed emasculated minstrels, innocent exotic lilies, or dragon ladies. For this I had no explanation.

  It was in describing those nights to Dr. Meyers that I realized I had never noticed anything about my own culture until Xiao Wang sat me down on my couch and showed me the movies I was showing her. She and Da Ge were the first people who ever forced me to pay attention, to look out and see in.

  Julia Too threw a combination Valentine’s and birthday party for her twelfth birthday last Saturday. With her signature little-kid bangs pulled off her forehead in a silver barrette, she looked like she had high cheekbones. She wore a denim skirt and the pointy red shoes Naomi had gotten her. Her eyes were lit with excitement, and sometimes when she turned toward me, I felt like I could project forward and see her adult self. At other moments, when she was busy, serious, or thoughtful, it was as if Da Ge had spun into the room in a gust. Then she’d catch me staring at her and grin—and he’d be gone.

  Because this was the first boy-girl party Julia Too had ever hosted, I had called Naomi ninety times in the two weeks preceding the party, to beg her to come or, short of that, at least tell me how to bake cupcakes, make nonalcoholic punch, string up balloons, and not embarrass Julia Too.

  “Why would you embarrass her?”

  “I don’t know. Standing too close, looking too parental, looking un-parental, serving the wrong things?”

  “Here’s what you serve: enough food for an army. Chips, salsa, cheese, crackers, vegetables and dip, cookies, nut mixes, candy, birthday cake. And have one main food station so that kids will have an excuse to congregate. And don’t stand too close to it.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Did I ever embarrass you?”

  “Of course.” We hung up.

  Two minutes later, she called back. “Is Old Chen coming?”

  “I don’t know. I invited him, but I sort of doubt he’ll make it. I don’t think it’s really his kind of scene.”

  “I want to come!”

  “Last I heard, there are direct flights on United and Air China.”

  “Wah!” she said, “I wish I had retired so I could go to your birthday parties.”

  “You can’t give notice tonight?”

  She laughed. We hung up.

  Ten minutes later I called her back.

  “Are balloons stupid? I mean she’s almost a teenager.”

  “Ask Julia.”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “She said she wants them.”

  “Okay then.”

  “I think she might be humoring me. Might think I want her to stay a baby.”

  “Put the balloons up, Aysha, and calm down.”

  “When you say put them up, what does that mean exactly?”

  “What kind of ceiling does the venue have?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, if you can’t tack them into the ceiling,
then tape them in bunches to the walls. Or get some helium balloons and tie them to chairs. Streamers, too. Those prevent the balloons from looking shriveled or lonely.”

  “Shriveled? Jesus, Mom.”

  “I didn’t want to say limp.”

  “Well, now you’ve managed both.”

  She gave me a cupcake recipe, bossed me about the details of buttermilk and muffin tin papers, and then said she had a lunch date and told me she’d be out of reach for an hour. I didn’t know if I could handle it.

  When the kids arrived at Julia Too’s party, they looked like little approximations of grown-ups, so nervous that they glittered under the thousand eyes of our borrowed disco ball. Julia Too hung close to Phoebe, who trailed Sophie, and Lili dragged behind them. I hoped they were all being kind to each other, and that Julia Too would not betray Lili by excluding her in favor of the ever-cooler Sophie and Phoebe. Xiao Wang and Phoebe’s mother, Anne, were there. Jin was in Yunnan, tending to various businesses I can never keep straight. He and Xiao Wang have apartments in Jinhong, Beijing, and Guangzhou, but Xiao Wang and Lili stay mostly in Beijing. She does not want Lili to lead the life of a big shot’s daughter, doesn’t want her spoiled or shallow. Whenever I suggest she live it up a bit more, Xiao Wang piously invokes her Nai Nai, reminding me of the sacrifice her Nai Nai made, moving to America.