Repeat After Me

by Rachel Dewoskin

  Her face broke open into a smile of such relief and gratitude that I laughed. This was how it was going to be. We were going to be okay.

  “Which one?” she asked, collecting herself.

  “He’s Chinese,” I said. I wasn’t sure whether to say his name.

  “Wow,” she said. I could see her scrambling for nonchalance, for a return to our normal way of speaking. But when she asked, “Are you going to be one of those teachers who goes to jail,” I felt invaded.

  “He’s not fourteen,” I said. Even though I had invited it by coming over and telling her a secret, I resented that she felt entitled to take a tone of intimacy with me ever again. She sensed the change in my mood instantly and was cautious.

  “Do you like him?” she asked politely.

  I shrugged.

  “Can he speak English?”

  “That’s enough talking about it,” I said.

  “That came out wrong,” she said. “I didn’t mean it to sound so—”

  “No, it’s fine.” I cleared my throat, contemplated giving up the whole project, leaving, and never having another friend. I could feel Adam’s presence. He had been in her bed. I willed myself not to look over at it. Try again, I thought. She’s your only friend, and you need her. I inhaled.

  “He was involved in the protests in China last summer,” I told her.

  “Really? In what way?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is he a dissident?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Does he tell you about it?”

  “Of course.”

  “So what does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. Just that he’s intense and political. And his mother is dead; apparently she killed herself. And he and his father are estranged. I don’t really know the details,” I admitted.

  “Oh,” she said.

  We both waited.

  “None of that sounds good to me,” she added, unable to lie, even though she owed me a lifetime of niceties. We were in a movie about ourselves.

  “I know what you mean,” I gave her, “but it makes him interesting. I mean, he’s cared about something in his life. Something more than himself or his own neuroses. In some ways I think he’s like me, but a better version.”

  “I think that might be a weird perception,” Julia said. She had promised after my breakdown that she would tell me if she thought I was being paranoid or delusional. But predictably, I didn’t want to hear it and didn’t agree. And now that she had slept with Adam, she had no right to tell me anything at all, ever again. I reminded myself again that I had decided to be forgiving, that she would have for given me, had the situation been reversed. Of course, I would never have slept with her boyfriend, no matter who he was or what the circumstances, and we both knew it. For a reason still difficult to articulate, this was more about her weakness than anything else, and it made us both feel bad for her, not me. I may have been crazy and friendless, but somehow I was confident about boys in a way Julia wasn’t. Maybe I just spent enough time in my own mind to have a certain hard-to-get allure. Julia was too good, too eager to please, too organized, too kind. So she got dumped a lot. Guys like a bitchy girl. This has been a bonus for me.

  “Thank you for being honest,” I said, meaning to mean it. But it came out so hostile that we both recoiled.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “that came out wrong, too. I didn’t mean to—”

  “No, no—it’s fine,” she said. We waited, as if some third person might speak and save the day. It didn’t happen.

  “All I meant was that I’m not sure what makes you two alike,” Julia said. I could never remember her ending a pause before, and I was grateful.

  “We’re both different from everyone else.”

  “He because he’s Chinese, you mean? But there are a billion Chinese people in the world. How does that make him different from everyone else?”

  “That’s not why. He’s just—unusual.”

  “I see. And you?”

  “Because I’m, I don’t know—a peripheral person somehow. You know what I mean, on the edges of things. You’re my only friend, and, well, Da Ge makes me comfortable. We understand each other.”

  “Okay, then I guess that’s good,” Julia said, but she didn’t sound convinced or convincing. “As long as he’s nice to you, I guess.”

  We both thought about how Adam hadn’t been nice to me, and it was Julia’s fault.

  “I should go,” I said.

  “Do you have plans tonight?” Her voice broke over the words.

  “Um, yeah.”

  “Aysh,” she said, “Thank you for stopping by—I just wanted to say again how—”

  Before she reached “sorry,” I held a hand up to stop her, started to say it was okay, that we didn’t need to talk about it now, that I loved her enough that we could pretend it had never happened, but I wasn’t sure it was true. So I left without saying anything.

  All these years later, I still miss the Julia One who existed before the Adam slip. She and I are long-distance friends now, and of course I’ve forgiven her and long since let Adam go, but something was broken in those moments. What a stupid, lonely waste.

  On the phone that night, without knowing why, my mother was worried.

  “Can I come over?” she asked. I was tempted to tell her about Julia and Adam, but my mom has an impossibly long memory, and I knew she’d never forgive either of them. Even though that’s what I wanted short-term, her anger on my side, I also knew I should preserve the possibility of getting back together with at least one of them without my mother disapproving for life.

  “How about tomorrow, Mom? I’ll come for dinner. I’m about to go to bed now.”

  “Yes! Tomorrow. I’ll make lasagna and bake a cake. Do you want cake? How about applesauce chocolate? You sound skinny,” my mom said.

  “Mom, you can’t sound skinny.”

  “You can.”

  “I’m not skinny.” I walked to the kitchen and crunched down on a chip, half expecting her to tell me that it’s rude to eat when you’re on the phone.

  “I can hear how stale that is, Aysha.”

  “Mom! Try to be reasonable.”

  “Promise me you’ll eat my applesauce chocolate cake, and I’ll be reasonable.”

  “I’ll eat cake,” I said, “and can I bring a friend?”

  “Really?” she asked, ecstatic. “Of course! What’s his name?”

  “Her name,” I said. “Xiao Wang.”

  Today for our weekly date, Old Chen’s driver came to get Julia Too and me early because Old Chen wanted to take us to the Summer Palace.

  “It’s best in cold weather,” he told me on the phone. “Fewer people.”

  “Good strategy,” I said. Julia Too, listening from the kitchen table, giggled.

  We’ve been to the Summer Palace three years in a row, always on the coldest day in March; Old Chen just likes to remind me of his logic. And he wants to keep us here.

  So he tows us everywhere, even after all these years, maybe ticking off his own personal cultural checklist. When the ice festival happened outside of Beijing last winter, we went to look at the life-sized model-worker Popsicles. Julia Too and Lili raced about, posing, skating, sliding their mittened hands along ice walls and animals and public works. When an art gallery opened next to the Forbidden City, Old Chen insisted we go as his dates. Julia Too looked like a traffic light in the red velvet dress Old Chen’s assistant had been sent to get her, and I wore something similar. Old Chen likes to see us dressed in red. Maybe it reminds him of his roots. Or the Ha Ha Water corporate offices. Or maybe he just doesn’t like women in understated, Maoist colors.

  I like the Summer Palace best in winter, too, especially at sundown when light slinks across the lake and sets over Empress Cixi’s marble boat. I knew Old Chen would soap-box Julia Too and me about what happens to countries when women are put in charge of them—and she would roll her eyes but secretly love the lecture, the attention and
seriousness Old Chen pays her, the whole Saturday stretching out in front of the three of us. She loves everything about Old Chen. He lets her draw on the whiteboards in the Ha Ha conference rooms and gobble up their executive buffets. He’s given her every corporate gift he’s ever received; her room is full of engraved pen sets, globes, and paperweights. He has repeated the same Chinese zodiac lessons thousands of times. They never tire of each other.

  In the car on the way to the Summer Palace, Old Chen handed us surgical masks. “Put these on,” he said. “There are more cases of this flu than they think.”

  Julia Too put the mask on. “Yeah. They told us about it at school,” she reported, her voice muffled.

  “About the flu?” Old Chen asked. “What did they say?”

  “That we should stay home,” she said.

  “From school?” he asked, scandalized.

  “Nope, just everywhere else.”

  “Oh, good,” he said. “Is your classical Chinese improving?”

  Julia Too nodded diligently, grinning. Her cheeks creased up above the top of the mask. “We’re learning the xuzi,” she said, referring to the particles, or “empty words,” around which Classical Chinese is organized. She lifted her mask up onto her head like sunglasses and smiled gleefully in my direction, knowing how much Old Chen would love this invitation to tell her about xuzi.

  He turned around gravely from the front passenger seat and spoke in Chinese.

  “Oh,” he said. “Xuzi. Don’t be confused by this term,” he advised. “Even though the empty words don’t mean anything themselves, they change the meaning of what’s around them.”

  She nodded lovingly. “What else?” she asked in Chinese. In the rearview mirror I saw Old Chen’s driver smile.

  “They can mark an utterance as strongly imperative, link two phrases in a causal relationship, express uncertainty about the content, or identify something as ‘commonly said.’ So in this way, they are like a certain Chinese ideal, the Dao, where nonaction, nonassertiveness, or being like water, accomplishes all things,” Old Chen said.

  Julia Too scrunched her nose. “Do you actually believe that, though?” she asked. Old Chen and I were both surprised by this. The driver kept his eyes on the road now.

  “Believe what?” Old Chen asked.

  “That thing about ‘being like water’ accomplishing the most. I mean, you’re not really a go-with-the-flow person yourself, are you?”

  “Sometimes xuzi can be tied to a thought about quiet actors amidst the chaos,” Old Chen said. “You don’t have to be loud, fat and famous to be the one who shapes events and influences people. Sometimes it’s the quiet people in the back who are having the most effect.” He smiled, but the corners of his mouth twisted as if they wished to frown. “Not so much like me, really. More like your mama.”

  “Xie xie,” I said. Thank you.

  “I should have been quieter,” Old Chen said, letting the smile disappear. “Maybe I would have heard more.” He reached into the glove compartment and handed me a China Post envelope.

  “Open when you get home,” he said. Then he turned to Julia Too. “Put your mask back on, Little Treasure,” he said in Chinese. “It only works if it’s covering your nose and mouth.”

  At the Summer Palace, Old Chen and I sat on Empress Dowager Cixi’s stone boat and took off our masks to chat and eat sausages wrapped in plastic. Knowing I would like it, he decided to stay all day, watch the sun set. We drank tea from a kiosk to stay warm, while Julia Too danced on the deck in her surgical mask, like a sci-fi ballerina.

  April 1990, New York, NY

  Dear Teacher,

  Lately I try to have hobby, as you suggest to be New York life. I watch old American movie and go to see baseball game. Those movie were big and dramatical, with explosions and violence. I must remark that the women were frequently naked. I watch Scarface and Dog Day Afternoon. Albert Pacino is a talent. And I like this new public enemy music about power. Maybe you know? Everybody in the U.S. like to listen to music or watch movies, and wish their life will be movie. In New York even when there is no violence you can feel that there will be soon. America gives movies to other countries like China, and the people in other country become more American. They wish for movie life, for democracy or violence. And when they fight for this they are killed. Like my friends.

  I move to America and sit in theater to watch Glory and Goodfellas and Total Recall and even this stupid joking movie Home Alone. This American child left alone and become independent and violent. That make me want to see my Grandmother. But she is gone. I go to Yankees game with the brother of my father. He bring his colleague from New York so now I know many fact including Yankees win three “world series” or Mariano Rivera is the great pitcher ever. I know American women like to watch sport only with the personal information about the players. Actually Chase and Russ say this. I think its valuable knowledge for me to have to approach American habits.

  Maybe the strategy of a government or country is not different from baseball. This could be why people enjoy so much to watch baseball. Here is funny thing, I think. The baseball players must be are the best ones in the world. But that is not true for those government leaders. This situation is stupid. Why do you have to be big talent to be athlete or Albert Pacino in America but you can be cruel or stupid and still can be leader? Like Reagan. My father say that commoners in America have better life than commoners in China. But leaders in America have bad life compared to leaders in China. Leaders in America are mocked by American commoners and newspapers. Maybe my parents believe this is not suitable. But I think the leaders deserve it. Maybe Chinese leaders behave better if they became mocked by Chinese commoners and newspapers. But I guess it hasn’t made America’s leaders smart. So maybe the tryout for leaders should be like that one for baseball or your American Hollywood.

  Da Ge

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Aprils

  ON APRIL 9, 1990, I FOUND OUT THE FIRST HORRIFYING TRUTH about Da Ge. I was by then planning our city hall wedding and lying and omitting with tremendous flair to my mother, the only person at this point in a position to ask me probing questions.

  That night she walked into Cucina de Pesce where she’d arranged to meet me and Julia One for dinner, and threw her arms around me as if we lived thousands of miles apart. In fact, I had been at her apartment every day for two weeks, had introduced her to Xiao Wang, and Xiao Wang to matzo ball soup.

  “Look at you,” she said to me, hugging and then gazing at me.

  “Just me,” I said, pleased.

  “How are you, honey? Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “Julia, you’re spectacular as always,” she trilled, hugging Julia. A surge of unhappiness moved through me like a current.

  My mother ordered a Bombay Sapphire martini and calamari. When the squid arrived, she used her fork to pick up a single fried ring and dip its edge into the marinara sauce. I picked a lemon wedge from the side of her plate and squirted it all over the food.

  “Maybe Julia doesn’t like lemon on hers,” my mother said.

  “I like everything,” Julia said.

  I tried to wash down the sarcastic feeling with a swig of my mother’s martini.

  She and Julia glanced at me nervously. You’re not supposed to drink on mania drugs, and mostly I didn’t. Some -times I had red wine, but I was never much of a drinker, am still not, which surprises me. I strike myself as the drinking type, but maybe Jews tend not to be alcoholics because we’re in touch with our neuroses, and therapy and interrupting your relatives and shouting about politics reduce the need to self-medicate.

  The waiter brought my Diet Coke with lemon. I was tempted to squeeze more juice onto the calamari too, but I resisted, ate my mother’s olives. She and Julia asked me repeatedly how I was. It started raining, and having established that I was fine, we talked about whether we’d be able to get a cab uptown, and the mystery of why as soon as a drop of water falls from t
he sky, every cab in New York City turns on its “off duty” light. We moved from there to a spate of kidnappings in New Jersey.

  Then my mother inhaled. “Um. Jack asked me to marry him, and I said yes.”

  “You’re kidding!” I said, stunned. Now ravishing Emily and I would be stepsisters. My mother was peering into my eyes, almost shyly.

  “Congratulations, Naomi!” Julia said.

  “Yes! Congratulations, Mom.”

  My mother blushed. Julia grinned at me, and I felt bad for having despised her a moment ago for “liking everything,” since now she had reminded me in this important moment to congratulate my mom.

  “How did he ask you?” I asked.

  “What do you mean, how did he ask?”

  “I mean, what words did he use?”

  “We went out to dinner and he said, ‘Will you marry me?’”

  “On one knee?”

  “No, not on one knee.”

  “Did you leap into his arms?”

  “Only figuratively.”

  “When are you getting married?”

  “Next spring.”

  “With a huge, real wedding?”

  “No. Something understated. I hope you’ll read a poem or make a toast.”

  “Of course.” I looked out the window, saw rain bouncing off the streets, tuned out. When we left the restaurant, my mother took a compact umbrella from her handbag and tried to hold it over all three of us. The cab we had fought to get swam up the West Side Highway. I watched the wet city glitter and rain pound the river. At 96th Street my mother asked if she could come over. I disliked the idea, since I thought Da Ge might stop by. But she was so excited about having told us her news; I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I suggested we all go to her apartment instead, but she said she didn’t want to inconvenience Julia and me. In fact she wanted to check my fridge and make sure the place looked sane and clean. My mother liked to sneak visits in, and pretend to be peeing while she scrubbed the bathroom—or to be having a glass of water while she mopped my kitchen. I couldn’t say no. So we arrived at my place, dried off, and turned on Casablanca. I paced back and forth, agitating Naomi. This is precisely why pacing is calming—it makes everyone else nervous, they share the burden, and you relax.