Repeat After Me

by Rachel Dewoskin

  “But didn’t she make that sacrifice precisely so that you and Lili could enjoy a more comfortable life than the one she had?”

  “We already do,” she says. “I don’t want Lili to be—how to say—fancy.”

  Lili wore a simple white dress to Julia Too’s birthday. Xiao Wang looked so stuffy in her pantsuit that I teased her mercilessly about dancing with other men, even though there weren’t any there. Anne stood by, listening. Shannon showed up with a Baskin Robbins ice cream cake and Mylar balloons, dying to hear about Yang Tao.

  “It’s working out, right?” she shouted. “I knew it! That’ll be fifty dollars!”

  Xiao Wang had to work not to shush her. She thought talking about men in proximity to the girls inspired bad behavior in them. But I smiled at Shannon.

  “You did well this time,” I told her. “He never talks, so I should be curious enough to draw it out at least another day or two.”

  She rolled her eyes. “He’s fantastic,” she said. “You should give him the benefit of the doubt. He and Zhang Sun were classmates—they’ve known each other for like twenty years, and Zhang Sun can vouch.”

  “What’s he doing unmarried?”

  “Well, he apparently was engaged, but the woman broke it off.”

  “No kidding. When was that?”

  She shrugged and gave me a vague look. “Quite a while ago,” she said.

  “Quite a while like fifteen years? Or like two years?”

  “Closer to fifteen, I think. You should ask him.”

  “He’ll never tell me.”

  “He is very Chinese,” Xiao Wang piped up, and I couldn’t help laughing. “I don’t think he is likely to tell you about this earlier business,” she continued.

  “You’ve been happily married to a Chinese guy since you were a teenager,” I reminded her. “I don’t know why you keep trying to keep everyone else out of the club.”

  “I’m happily married to a Chinese guy, too,” Shannon reminded us.

  Xiao Wang raised her eyebrows, as if she knew more about Shannon and Zhang Sun’s marriage than Shannon did. Shannon, who liked Xiao Wang, pretended not to notice.

  The party was not going well. Boys were glued against the far wall, girls in a giggling amorphous mass a mile away. Nobody came near the dance floor. One of Julia Too’s friends was deejaying, and he came on the mic and insisted that people come out and dance. He put on “Macarena,” and a few especially brave twelve-year-olds scuttled out and waved their arms up and down for a few minutes before retreating to various corners of the room. Only the dauntless Sophie remained on the dance floor, sticking out her legs and swinging in a way that suggested a windmill. She wore a Band-Aid sized miniskirt and a blouse she had hiked up and tied at the waist. She had a hoop earring through her bellybutton, and a tattoo on the small of her back.

  “Shannon—is that a real tattoo?”

  “Of course not. Did you see that thing? It’s a motorcycle surrounded by roses. Eventually it will fall off, thank God. But it’s only a matter of time before the fight for a real one kicks in.”

  “Well, she’s a fabulous dancer.”

  Shannon laughed. Sophie is adorable, and during our conversation, either in spite or because of her dancing, an invisible flip switched and the party became a rollicking success. Since there was no alcohol, it’s hard to say what happened, but all of sudden a Canadian boy named Kevin asked Phoebe to dance and then pecked her on the lips at the end of the song. I happened to see it, and then to see her and Sophie grab Julia Too and Lili (to my delight and relief) and pull them into the bathroom to begin what I guessed would be a year-long series of debriefings on the kiss.

  It was right as they emerged from the bathroom, looking serious with whatever pact they had made, that Yang Tao appeared. Julia Too had tied her blouse at the waist, and taken off the tights she’d been wearing under her skirt. Yang Tao was carrying a giant box. Julia Too noticed him right away, and noticed the box, but did not walk over. She looked suspicious. I hoped the present was neither ungenerous nor too ostentatious—I didn’t want her to be mean to him, and I didn’t want her to feel like it was a token or an overstated effort to buy her affection. Why are small gestures so difficult to get right, and why am I so uptight? Why couldn’t I just enjoy the fact that he appeared, that he was courting my angry baby, and that he brought her a gift at all?

  Yang Tao and I went outside so he could smoke. I had asked him please not to smoke around Julia Too. It was bad enough that her lungs were full of coal smoke and diesel fuel. I leaned up against the wall of the building. He lit a cigarette.

  “Are you having an okay time?” I asked.

  “I never had a party like this when I was a kid.” He blew out thin smoke.

  “Of course not. You probably weren’t allowed to date until you were twenty.”

  “Good guess,” he said. “I was pretty innocent, in fact.”

  “Until you met me?”

  He laughed.

  “Shannon says your heart was broken.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Who broke it?”

  “Mei shi,” he said. “It’s a long time ago.”

  “I’m curious.”

  “You don’t seem curious.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You never ask about this kind of thing,” he said.

  “Do you wish I did?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I like to respect your privacy,” I said.

  He smiled and tossed the cigarette butt down, put it out with his heel. “Except about Chinese riots.”

  I laughed. “If you wanted to tell me about your love life, you would, right?”

  “This is my love life. This right now,” he said.

  I found that quite charming. “Good enough,” I said.

  A black sedan pulled up to the side of the curb, and Old Chen climbed out, astonishing me. Yang Tao looked at me, curious.

  “You came!” I called to Old Chen in Chinese. I approached and hugged him, and he patted me awkwardly.

  “Should I wait here?” his driver asked through the window.

  Old Chen shook his head no, indicating that he wanted to stay for more than a few minutes, and his driver headed toward the parking lot.

  Old Chen turned his attention to Yang Tao.

  “This is Yang Tao,” I told him, “a good friend of mine.”

  “Glad to meet you, sir,” Yang Tao said. Old Chen nodded and they shook hands.

  I was not in the habit of introducing Old Chen to male friends, and watched for any sign of discomfort or angst on his face, but none registered. He glanced toward the party, and we walked in together. When Julia Too saw him, she held up a hand to cut off whatever conversation she was involved in, and glided over to the door to say hi.

  “Happy Birthday,” Old Chen said, and slid a red envelope into her hand. She grinned. I wondered how obscene an amount of money was in it, and sighed.

  “Xie xie,” she said.

  Then he handed her a red belt with a gold horse buckle.

  “Wow,” she said, and set about fastening it around her waist. Even without the blouse tied up above her waist, it would have looked absurd. But Old Chen beamed. Julia Too was born in the year of the Horse, and since the Chinese zodiac repeats its animal every twelve years, her year is coming up.

  “You should wear this every day,” he said, not joking.

  “I think I just might,” Julia Too told him. Her dimples deepened.

  Old Chen loves to remind Julia Too that if China used the inferior Western calendar, she’d be a sheep, which he considers less auspicious than a horse. This is because in 1991, the year she was born, the Chinese New Year fell on February 14, three days after Julia Too’s birthday. It wasn’t until the fifteenth that the sheep moved in.

  “Do you want to dance?”

  Julia Too was clutching Old Chen’s hand. His eyes widened in horror, but she had already shoved the envelope of cash into my hand and begun dragging him
out to the dance floor. Some of the twelve-year-olds tittered and whispered, but Julia Too either didn’t notice or didn’t care. She danced with Old Chen to Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” for the entire duration of the song. He held her formally, at arm’s length, and they looked like an old Chinese couple, ballroom dancing outside in Beijing on a summer night. I didn’t know whether to laugh or weep. Xiao Wang’s reaction helped me clarify though.

  “Wo de tian,” she said. “My God! This is difficult situation for old Chinese man.”

  After their dance ended, Old Chen retreated from the floor with Julia Too, his burning face reflecting light from the disco ball. She delivered him to Xiao Wang and me, and he accepted a cup of fruit punch before shaking hands with Yang Tao again and heading to the door.

  That night, in an uncharacteristic move, Old Chen called me after ten. Without any mention of who it was or why he was calling, he blurted out: “I think she has a big, natural talent for dancing. If you agree, I will start formal lessons.”

  “I’ll talk to Julia Too about it,” I told him. “Thank you for offering, and for the generous gift.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Other business you want to chat about?” I asked.

  “Your friend,” he said. I waited uncomfortably.

  “Um. I think he has a kind nature.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” I said. “Thank you for telling me.”

  “Maybe he can join us for dumplings sometime.”

  I hung up and returned to the living room, where Julia Too, Sophie, Lili, and Phoebe had opened their Valentines and Julia Too’s birthday presents into a heap on the floor, including the silver charm bracelet I had given her. Yang Tao was watching from the couch as the girls organized and analyzed cards, candy, some makeup Julia Too and I were going to have to negotiate about, and finally, the only gift left, Yang Tao’s big box. I wasn’t sure whether she left it for last to honor or to insult him. But as she opened it, she reverted instantly to her joyful, baby self. It was a collapsible stage and curtain, made up of several dozen red boards and an enormous piece of red velvet with gold ropes. It included a hand-held mike and a portable spotlight.

  She looked up at Yang Tao with an expression so utterly Naomi that I did a double take. “Holy shit!” she said, “I love it!”

  I didn’t say anything about her vocabulary choice. Yang Tao responded, “I know you’re a good actress and dancer, so I considered it a professional investment for you.” He couldn’t mask his delight.

  Later that night, when I tucked in Julia Too and kissed her good-night, Sophie was on the phone in the kitchen and Phoebe was in the bathroom brushing her teeth.

  “Happy birthday, brilliant girl,” I said to Julia.

  “Thank you for my party,” she said.

  “You’re welcome. Where’d you learn the expression ‘Holy shit’?”

  “Soph.”

  “Right.”

  “Mom? Do you think he would he have gotten me good birthday presents?”

  “I do. You can consider whatever I get you to be from him, too, okay? And/or whatever Old Chen gets you.”

  “Red and gold horse belts and cash,” she said, smiling. Neither of us mentioned the red stage Yang Tao had brought her. Sophie and Phoebe and Lili emerged, unrolled sleeping bags, and argued over who would sleep in the other half of Julia Too’s double bed. I left them to work it out. When they were asleep, I showed Yang Tao the first pages of this story. It was a test, and he passed.

  “I like the story of you,” he said, setting the pages on the coffee table. He moved closer to me on the couch, put an arm around to pull me in. “You’re a pretty good writer. And a great mother. I wish you were my mother.”

  I laughed. “Well, wouldn’t that be sexy.”

  March 1990, New York, NY

  Dear Teacher,

  You tell us we should write about a cultural convention of our country. Marriage is a cultural convention of the world. People marry for various reason. Sometimes because they are in love they will marry. Other times their parents will complain so much that they will finally sacrifice to marry so that their family will be quiet about this. Some people will marry because they want to make forceful team that work for the government of their country. There are many reason to marry, not easy to say right or wrong.

  My parent marry because the revolution. China like all its people to marry so will not be chaos. But my parents marriage become unhappy. This is bad luck because maybe in the beginning there is chance for them to turn out love each other. But it turn out they have stupid marriage that end in tragedy and chaos. I am sorry we are all just like our parents. This is something hard to avoid it. Even if you are not old person yet, even you have no knowledge, you can know this if you read a few books. Everybody will become their parents. It’s such, as you often like to use this expression, obvious fact.

  Da Ge

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Marches

  IN MARCH OF 1990, DA GE BROUGHT A BROCHURE FROM THE New York justice of the peace to class. I read it. A couple who intends to be married in New York State must apply in person for a marriage license to any town or city clerk in the state. The application for a license must be signed by both the bride and groom in the presence of the town or city clerk. Once you have your license, you can have a ceremony and get a certificate of marriage; you just have to wait twenty-four hours.

  Da Ge had highlighted half the words and written characters next to them.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Xin niang,” he said. “Bride.”

  “And this?”

  “Guan. Groom.”

  I felt a little chill. We walked out of the classroom together and passed Bonita in the hallway. Self-conscious about whether we might be walking too close to each other, I said, “Your work on the last one was good.” Bonita smiled at us.

  “The last what?” Da Ge said.

  “Looking up these words, I mean.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  I said nothing.

  “You say this so that woman thinks we talk about homework.”

  I was annoyed. “Look,” I said. “It’s not as if our relationship is exactly normal. You are, in fact, my student, and I don’t want to lose my job.”

  “You will not lose job for marry me,” he said. “We have friendship. That’s all.”

  “Can I ask you something?” I asked, hurt.

  “Okay.”

  “Why do you want to marry me?”

  I don’t know what I was expecting. Something either revelatory or euphemistic, I guess, because when he said, “I need to be American,” I felt bitterly disappointed.

  Perhaps in an effort to raise the stakes, or maybe just because I wanted him to, I asked Da Ge to hold hands with me when we got to the city clerk’s office. He looked at me and smiled.

  “Good idea,” he said, and he took my hand right away, even though we hadn’t even gotten on the train yet. His hand sent a shock up through my arm, and I moved my fingers around a little bit, sexily, I hoped, but he didn’t seem to notice. His hand was bigger than mine; he was like a basketball player, palming my hand effortlessly. Maybe he would bounce it onto the table when I had to sign our marriage license application.

  The office of the city clerk was in the municipal building downtown. We got out of the subway at Park and walked over, still holding hands. Da Ge only let go when we stopped to buy pretzels from a street vendor. I squeezed a perfect skeleton of mustard along the middle of mine while Da Ge brushed the salt off his onto the sidewalk. The white grains looked sad, as if they were leftover from winter, when they’d had a job protecting people from slipping. I stepped over them.

  When he finished his naked pretzel, he forgot to take my hand again, and I was too embarrassed to suggest it a second time. Inside the municipal building, we rode in a mirrored elevator to the second floor. The smell of Lysol reminded me of St. Luke’s. I began to spell out on my fingers: i-t w-i-l
-l l-a-s-t and w-e w-i-l-l not g-e-t d-i-v-o-r-c-e-d.

  A sign on one of the office doors read, “Marriage License Applications,” and when we pushed it open, we immediately saw all the pregnant couples waiting in line. I wondered how those girls felt about getting married, wished for a moment that I was pregnant, too, that that’s why we were there, a passionate accident rather than a calculated maneuver. At the window next to the one we finally approached, a seventy-something man wearing a bowtie sat with his hand on the thigh of a woman who was probably forty. She wore a giant diamond ring and a gold skirt two sizes too tight; she was pretty and tense. The bureaucrat behind the glass was asking the old guy about three previous divorces. “Who initiated that one?”

  “She did!” the old man said of his ex-wife. “They all did!”

  “Maybe that’s because you refused to pay,” suggested the bureaucrat.

  The old guy laughed uproariously, but his new wife looked away. I hadn’t realized that if you try to get married at City Hall, they’re allowed to ask you about all the other times you accidentally married the wrong person. I hoped my dad’s mistress-wife had been embarrassed when the official reminded her she’d been his second choice.

  Da Ge had someone there, waiting for us, which surprised me. Would he be our witness at the actual ceremony? New York had a twenty-four-hour waiting period so that people at least had to commit to taking the subway to City Hall twice. That way, you couldn’t get married while still drunk or under a delusion that lasted fewer than two days. Da Ge’s friend hardly looked at me, until Da Ge said, “Zhen Ming, this is Aysha.” Zhen Ming nodded at me and finished filling out forms.

  “Aysha, this is my uncle, Zhen Ming.” I felt slighted that he introduced us in this order, making me known to his uncle before making his uncle known to me. Now, knowing the Chinese rules for face, I realize it couldn’t have been the other way around.

  I stared at Zhen Ming. He had a bowl cut, straight chopped hair that poked down his forehead in a Frankenstein way. His eyes were set wide apart, and his glasses exaggerated this quality, since they had heavy, black frames. He wore a dark business suit and carried a briefcase. I thought he couldn’t be older than forty. He was handsome in a disturbing way, with a face so tight and inexpressive that it looked cast out of wax or plaster. His skin was as clear as a child’s, gleaming in a thin sheen of sweat, and his jaw was set with a determination that suggested the capacity for ferocity. Yet when he spoke, he was mild-mannered. I instantly disliked him.