by Alyse Zaftig
The Chinese people had completely freaked out when they saw the US Ambassador to China wearing a backpack. In China, even the most junior politician had people for that. The idea that the US Ambassador was someone who would carry his own backpack was mind-boggling. They loved him for being humble and real.”
“I remember that.”
“I have no idea what secret sauce Governor Key had, but he charmed my dad within days of his arrival. My dad, as DCOM, was in charge of making the trains run on time. Senior Foreign Service members get to become ambassadors of countries that Americans don't normally think about, such as Finland. If they aren't ambassadors, they become second-in-commands for political appointees. My dad is still holding out for an ambassador slot, but he does not mind effectively running the Chinese mission, either.
The entire Foreign Service filed reports with DC under a system that was common in the military. It was called UNODIR, unless otherwise directed. It would be impossible to wait for the Department of State to make every decision in every mission, so most missions were autonomous unless otherwise directed.
The Foreign Service isn't as hierarchical as the military, but grade does mean something. It meant enough to my parents to constantly chase the next promotion all the time. They worked hard, and I was proud of their results. I did wish sometimes that they had time to spend with me; the other kids in my schools got picked up by their mothers, and I just walked home to an empty house. That's the life of an FS brat, though.”
“My mother never picked me up, either. It was always a driver. Most of the time, it was just Fa and I. And maybe a nanny or three.”
I nodded. “When I was younger, I had a multitude of nannies. The tropics are known as the Nanny Belt in the Foreign Service, because it was where the Foreign Service salary could go far enough to hire a nanny and other domestic help. We always had a maid when we lived in the tropics; my parents were far too busy to let mundane tasks slow them down. Even when we lived in more affluent areas, we hired a part-time housekeeper. I'd learned to take care of myself from a very young age, because my parents weren't there. My housekeepers made sure that I had food to eat, but my parents told them to give me free rein. They left me alone outside of meal times and collecting my dirty laundry.
I spent a lot of time online. When I was younger, I went on Neopets on a daily basis, playing games and chatting with my cousins. I was even part of a guild. It definitely fell through as I got older and started getting interested in other things. In middle and high school, I fell in love with mythology after taking Latin class in sixth grade. When I had read as much as I could of Latin and Greek mythology, I switched to Irish with a sprinkle of Norse because of the Eragon series. Irish mythology is laced through quite a lot of literature, possibly more than most Americans realize. I told my parents that I wanted to learn how to play Irish jigs, and they had paid for someone to take me to music lessons and all of the Irish music that my heart desired. Being left alone had its advantages.”
“Yeah, but you’re a bit of a wildflower, aren’t you? You’re your own woman, because your parents haven’t had a large part in shaping you.”
“I guess that’s true.” I yawned. “Man, I’m sleepy. You’re a good listener.”
“Go ahead and sleep. You’ve had a big day.” He nuzzled the back of my neck.
It was like a lullaby, because somehow it sent me right to sleep.
Breakfast
"You two are so bloody cute together."
I opened my eyes, and Fa was standing at the foot of the bed.
"Nothing happened." I was still fuzzy from waking up. "It's platonic."
"I know. You two are still fully dressed. Waste of an opportunity, if you ask me."
"It's respectful." Kyle was awake, too. "I didn't come in here to have sex. She needed me."
"Like I said, cute. Precious. Let's have breakfast. Wake up, wake up, you two. You're already dressed."
I got out of bed, and I followed Fa downstairs.
They had a spread of bao with meat inside. I loved the texture of bao, and it was delicious if cooked correctly. With one bite of the salty goodness, I knew that their chef was legit. The steamed bun’s flavor burst across my tongue.
"Oh my gosh, this is so good. If this is how all of your food is, it's a wonder that your mom is so thin."
Fa took a break from stuffing his face. "She doesn't eat stuff like this. She's vegetarian. She's pretty Buddhist, or she would be if it wasn’t supposed to be covered up.”
"So she doesn't eat meat?"
"She will if our dad is in a situation where it would be awkward if she didn't eat anything. You'll notice that she didn't eat half the stuff last night. She doesn't mind if we eat meat, though, which is good. Dad would never exist without eating meat. He goes hunting sometimes."
Kyle came down the stairs in a new outfit. As he passed me, I got a hit of his cologne. He smelled vaguely of mint.
"Save some for me, pig." He shoved Fa before grabbing a bun.
"You snooze, you lose." Fa took another two buns and put them on his plate.
"This is pretty salty. Do you guys have anything to drink?"
"Our chef made fresh soy milk."
Soy milk in the United State is disgusting, and that's a massive understatement. Soy milk in Asia is a totally different thing. It tastes dramatically different from the gross stuff that you can find in Target back home. In China, I had to develop a taste for soy milk. The water wasn't safe to drink, and my options in the school cafeteria were green tea, water, yogurt as a drink (gross), and soy milk. I went for the least of all evils. Soy milk -- the fresh kind -- was tolerable if I only had to drink it at lunch time. I definitely had to get used to it, and it was a lot better than taking a chance on the water. Even the bottled water was iffy here, with shoddy quality control.
In Africa, we had had to rely on Coke. It was what everyone drank. Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, every Coke, just because it was safe to drink and straight up water wasn't. When we were in the United States, we slapped a Brita filter on our sink. My parents loved enjoying the comforts of the United States, but it was actually weird to me to be able to drink whatever came out of the tap.
In Latin America, I had lived on smoothies and soup. When we were in Colombia, I got used to having soup as our first course all the time. If you were in the Andes, the dry air dried you out a lot. You had to rehydrate more than the 2 liters per day that you would need to drink back in Virginia.
"I'll have that." I stood up and went to the sideboard.
Kyle stood up and got a tea cup. The sideboard had an instant hot water dispenser, which was awesome. It was plugged into a normal water pipe, and you could make tea instantly.
In the United States, we all used tea bags. Chinese people figuratively spat on tea bags, because that's where the dregs go. Kyle opened a container that had tea leaves in it.
"Make me some."
"Get your own tea, lazy," Kyle shot over his shoulder. "You have legs."
"I'll eat all of the buns if you don't."
Kyle sighed. "Fine." He got a second tea cup and put leaves in it. He put both of the tea cups on saucers, and he carried them to the table.
I ladled some of the hot fresh soy milk into a bowl. In China, bowls and dishes are utensils. Americans are confounded by eating fried rice with chopsticks, but it's really not hard when the bowl is a utensil, too. It's there to carry food to your face. The chopsticks are there to shove the food into your mouth. It looks really rude in America, but that's how you eat in China. So I drank soy milk out of a bowl, and not a glass. The first time that I tried to put soy milk into a glass at the school cafeteria, there was a flutter of the Chinese kids at the international school laughing their asses off. Only a newbie American would make a stupid rookie mistake like that. I hadn't understood their Mandarin at the time, but I felt like a gigantic outsider. When you are in Rome, you always do as the Romans do.
So I used my bowl as a utensil, and I didn't use knives. For som
e reason, chopsticks were the only way that you ate. Someone told me that it was a Confucian practice to discourage violence, but I couldn't find anything to verify that on the Internet. The kitchen chopped stuff up into bite-sized pieces, and then chopsticks were there to help you eat. They could also cut soft things, like tofu or fish.
I brought my bowl back to the table. The chef, a nice-looking lady wearing a brown apron, carried in a big bowl of fried rice with Chinese sausage, which was red. It had flecks of eggs in it. Fa dug in, and then he passed the bowl to Kyle.
"Do you want a fork or something? I can get her to bring you a fork."
"Don't worry about it. I know how to eat with chopsticks. I've been using them since before I could read."
"Fair enough." He passed me the bowl of fried rice.
I took the big serving spoon, and I put some into the porcelain bowl at my place. A lot of dishes in China were made out of simple plastic, but these guys had genuine Chinese porcelain with pretty blue designs.
"I feel bad eating out of dishes this nice."
Fa smirked at me. "Then you shouldn't eat out of the actual nice dishes."
"I didn't even know that there was something better than fine china."
"Imperial china."
"What?"
"It's yellow. Only the emperor's court could use it, back in the day. It's rare to find, even now."
"My gosh." I was way out of my depth here. I had a basic smattering of Chinese history, but I definitely didn't know the ins and outs of the Chinese imperial court etiquette. "Wow."
"Mom makes a big deal out of it, because its been passed down on her side of the family. It came with her when she married Dad." Kyle shrugged. "It's not a big thing."
"Your family was imperial?"
"Mom likes to think so. There's some dusty tome with a family tree in it that traces back to our great-grandfather."
"Wow." That sounded way more fancy than my pedigree, which was just normal folks from Virginia. "That's impressive."
"Mom thinks she's a princess." Fa took the big bowl and scraped the rest of the fried rice into his bowl. "I think she's delusional."
"Mom's just high strung," Kyle said, his tone warning Fa away from criticizing his mom. "Anyway, the attack on the American embassy made the newspapers."
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah. Mom and Dad aren't coming here."
"They aren't?"
"They went to our grandfather's estate. It's closer to Beijing, and it's really the only place that Mom feel is impregnable."
"I mean, no place is safe. There was tons of diplomatic security last night, but that didn't mean that someone couldn't throw a bomb or two."
"Tell Mom that." Fa rolled his eyes. "On second thought, don't. It'll just set her off even more."
"Be nice," Kyle reprimanded. "She has been through a lot." He turned to me. "She was kidnapped when she was younger, as part of an extortion attempt on our grandfather. She was 5. She's very cautious as a result. I don't think that there's ever been a day when she hasn't circled the house 3 times after dark to make sure that all the doors and windows are closed and locked."
"That sound like an overabundance of caution."
"Someone came in her window during the summer and stole her, so it's sort of rational."
"That's intense." I ate my rice and swallowed. "So when can I get back to the embassy?"
"I don't think you can right now. You're too visible, and it wouldn't work out. But you can try. We can ring them if you want."
“Let’s.”
Phone Call
I had lost my cell phone in the crush to get out, but that didn’t stop me from using their landline to call my mother’s cell phone number.
“Hello?”
“Mom.”
I heard her sharp intake of air. “Zola! We’ve been looking everywhere for you. We were worried that you were taken. Your phone is still in the ambassador’s house.”
“I know. The twins that I was talking to brought me home. They live in a gigantic, secure estate.”
“You need to come home right now. Dad and I have been looking frantically for you. We didn’t know if you were dead or alive, and the embassy is on the highest level of alert. You were about to start an international incident. Please come home.”
“Mom, it’s not that easy. How do I know that I’m going to be safe?”
“How do I know that you’re safe where you are? The diplomatic security has been ramped up; they’ve flown in extra people until the threat level goes down, and you know that all of them are trained at Quantico. You don’t know these people; you met them last night for the very first time. I’m sure they’re nice, but you need to come home now.”
“Fine. I’ll ask them to take me back. See you later today.”
“Bye, baby girl. I’ll be waiting by the door.”
Mom was not a mushy person; she must have been really shaken after I disappeared after the blasts. I sort of regretted not calling sooner, but I’d mostly been sleeping since then.
Fa and Kyle had listened to my end of the conversation.
“Do you want me to call our driver?” Kyle touched my arm. “I understand that your mother is concerned.”
“Yeah.” I blew out a long breath. “She’s unshakably calm most of the time, so I know that it’s important.”
“Of course.” Kyle whipped out his phone, pressed a speed dial number, and then spoke in rapid Mandarin. “Come on. He’ll bring the car out front.”
I was still wearing my red dress from the day before, horribly crumpled. It was probably gross from being worn so long — I discreetly sniffed my armpit — ok, definitely gross from being worn so long, but it was the only thing that I had or brought. My purse was gone with the wind, and I had used their stuff.
The three of us went back to the car.
“Why are you both coming with me?”
“Nothing better to do,” said Fa. His hands were in his pockets. “More exciting than staying in our boring house.”
I wouldn’t describe their house as boring, but then again I hadn’t grown up in the lap of luxury like these two. They were like little emperors, and I was the daughter of two civil servants. Mom and Dad had a modest amount of power as diplomats, Dad especially, but that did not mean that they were wealthy as a result. When you spent your career in service to your country, you didn’t do it to get wealthy. You did it because it was the right thing to do.
“Whatever.”
I got in. Kyle was in the middle, and Fa closed the door. The idea of going back to Beijing was terrifying. I could feel sweat creeping out. My heart rate was spiking just thinking about going back there. I started to breathe a little bit weird.
Kyle took my hand. “Hey. It’s going to be fine. You’re going to go back to your family, and the embassy will keep you safe.”
I gave him a weak smile. I appreciated the effort. “Thanks. I hope that they can.”
“Mom gets panic attacks, too.”
“I don’t think this is a panic attack. I’ve never had one before.”
“Call it PTSD, if you like, then.”
I guessed that he was right. I’d never ever been directly in danger because of my parents’ work before the dinner got bombed.
I nodded. “PTSD.”
I was quiet for the rest of the ride, and the brothers were, too. Kyle kept my hand in his, and it was oddly reassuring to be holding hands with him. I’d known him for one night, but I knew that he would fight to protect me from whatever threatened, no matter what it was.
Once More
When we got into the city, the driver turned and stopped for a half second.
“Where to?”
“I live within walking distance of the embassy. Our house is off of Xiaoyun road, near Tianze Road.”
The car went, and I quickly had to shout.
“Stop! It’s the next house.”
The car rolled to a stop outside of my house. I extracted my hand from Kyle’s.
&n
bsp; “I’m really grateful for the way that you took care of me last night.”
“It was my pleasure.” Kyle scooped my hand up and kissed it. He hesitated for a second, then he leaned in to kiss my cheek. “You’re welcome to visit us any time that you like. You’re a lovely visitor.”
“Life was slightly more interesting with you around.” Fa gave me a nod. “I hope you do well.”
That was probably the best that I was going to get from Fa. From him, it was practically an hour-long speech on how much he enjoyed my company. I got out of the car, and I headed towards my home.
I had only stepped two feet out of the car when I heard the crack of a gunshot. I didn’t have time to react; I dropped to the ground under the weight of another body. The rough pavement scraped my bare cheek.
I felt someone grab my arm. I looked. It was Fa.
“Get in the car, now.”
Without waiting for me to react, he shoved me back into the car, and he slammed the door shut behind him. “Take us home. Lose anybody who might follow us.”
I wasn’t seated or seatbelted, and I rolled as the car took sharp turns around Beijing. Beijing was not built for wide cars like the roads in America were, so it was a tight fit at the best of times. Right now, when the driver was driving like he was in the Daytona 500, careening around corners, it was hard. I crawled on my knees to the seat.
Kyle helped me buckle my seatbelt in. I looked across to Fa.
“Oh my gosh! You’re bleeding!”
Dark red blood was staining the arm of his shirt.
“It’s nothing. It’s just annoying that my clothes are ruined.” He sighed. “Mom will probably love to go on a shopping spree to replace it with a hundred more. She has no idea of scale.”
“We need to get you to a doctor. That’s a gunshot wound.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“Ok, this is not the time to be macho about this, ok? You need medical attention.”
