by Jean Kwok
Annette said no more about it.
Every time Aunt Paula gave us one of my score reports, she would come by a day or two later to complain about some aspect of our work. We were careful not to let her know how good my results were, but she must have guessed anyway. If we hadn’t done something at the factory perfectly, we had to redo it. If a shipment was going out, she would come days in advance to harass us about completing everything on time.
“If you send this out late, I cannot be responsible for the consequences,” she said one day.
“We’ve always been on time,” Ma had answered quietly, but I saw the sorrow in her eyes that her sister was treating us like this.
Aunt Paula pushed past Matt at his steamer and then was gone.
He walked over to me. His hair was spiked and dripping wet from the steamers. “What kind of a problem does she have?”
“Jealousy,” I said.
“Why?”
“I think I’m doing better at school than her son is.”
Matt nodded, then started to turn around to go back to work.
To keep him there just a moment longer, I asked, “Where’s your ma and Park? I hardly see them anymore.”
“Ma doesn’t feel so well these days, and when she stays home, she keeps Park with her. I can take care of them now.” He was obviously proud he could be the breadwinner of the family.
It still tore at my heart to have him so close. “You’re doing really well, Matt.”
He looked at me intently, then he finally spoke. “I miss you.”
Heat rushed to my eyes. So that he wouldn’t see my sudden emotion, I turned away. “You have Vivian.” When I finally looked up, he was gone.
Sometimes Curt told me stories that made me realize how different we were. Once, he was talking about his meal at an Italian restaurant with a few friends.
“We waited but that arrogant waiter still didn’t come with the bill, so we just left. I looked back as we walked out the door and you should have seen his face! Like he was going to have to pick up our tab himself.”
“He probably did have to,” I said.
“Really? Well, serves him right.” Curt looked a bit shamefaced.
I didn’t say anything more, but I thought about the fathers and brothers of the kids at the factory who worked as waiters, “standing by tables,” as we called it. What would they have done if they’d had to pay for such an expensive meal out of their tips? Many of them weren’t paid anything but their tips. This was something Matt would never do. Curt had no comprehension of what it was like to be working class.
But he was also surprisingly sweet sometimes.
Once I was sitting with him in the art studio when he said, “I just went to the junkyard this past weekend. You can find the most incredible things there. I brought you back something.”
I thought about where I lived. “I, um, already have much junk.”
Curt reached into a garbage bag and pulled out the skeleton of an umbrella, but he had put in metal supports, twisted and twirled the metal prongs so that it looked just like a flower. The silver links shone, as if he’d polished it.
“Beautiful,” I said, caressing an intertwined petal.
He lifted an eyebrow. “I can assure you that this will never be worth a lot of money, so you can feel free to accept it.”
“This is now my favorite piece of junk.”
The day of the naturalization test was in the middle of January. I was at home when I was surprised by a knock at the apartment door. The thick door downstairs hadn’t been closing properly lately, and I’d hurried upstairs after school that day, probably without getting it to latch. Earlier that year, Ma had failed the examination yet again, but I was eighteen now and could take it myself. Though I expected to pass easily, I still wanted to do a bit of last-minute studying before going to the naturalization office later that afternoon.
When I opened the door, Annette was standing there in her lumber-jack jacket and her L.L. Bean boots. She looked over my shoulder to stare at the cracked walls and open oven; then her gaze found the stuffed-animal vest I was wearing. Her mouth fell open, but when she saw the white clouds from her breath, she snorted in disbelief.
Instead of pity or embarrassment, there was pure anger on her face. “You should have told me,” she said.
I faltered for an answer. “I didn’t know how.”
Now her face became blotchy and she looked like she was going to cry. “I knew you didn’t have a lot of money but this is ridiculous. No one in America lives like this.”
I stated the obvious. “Actually, they do.”
The words poured out of her. “This is the stupidest place I’ve ever been. I spent years wondering why you never let me see your apartment. I told myself I shouldn’t do something you didn’t want me to do. I had theory after theory: that you were hiding your father here, that it was some kind of Chinese secret, that your mom was incredibly sick and you were taking care of her. When the show got canceled today, I just wondered if you were telling me the truth about the test and why I never got to come here, so I decided to visit.”
I pointed at the naturalization book on the table.
She nodded, acknowledging the book. “I couldn’t stand it anymore. But if I hadn’t come here, you’d never have told me. You would have lived here all these years and you would never have asked me for help.”
At this, the idea that she would have helped me, I reached out and hugged her. She didn’t pull away.
I said, “There was no use. Look, once I get a bit older, I’ll be able to get us out of here.”
“I don’t want you to stay here one day longer.” Annette gave me a quick squeeze and started walking around the apartment. She glanced down at the kitchen table and recoiled. “Your soy sauce has iced over! And there’s a roach drinking from it!”
I had been in the middle of putting the food away when she knocked. I ran over and banged on the table to scare the roach away, then hurriedly dumped the saucer in the kitchen sink. I had to wash it right away so as not to attract any other creatures, and Annette continued her own tour of the apartment.
“Why did your show get canceled?” I asked.
“There’s some kind of electrical problem with the lights, and the whole system blew out during dress rehearsal yesterday. They still haven’t been able to fix it.”
She called over her shoulder, “Good thing you’re so smart.”
“I’m lucky.”
She was back now and she crinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t say that. You need to report your landlord. This isn’t legal.”
“I can’t. It’s complicated.”
“Well, you can’t stay here any longer. We have to talk to my mom.”
“No, I don’t want anyone to know. Annette, don’t tell.”
“Kimberly, you remember my mom’s a real estate agent. I bet she could help you.”
“We don’t have any money.” Now that it was so obvious, I could say it.
“Please, let me ask her and see if she can figure it out.”
“I don’t want her to know.” The utter shame of it burst upon me now, like a garden hose turned on full blast.
“I won’t tell her. I’ll just say that you’re looking for something dirt cheap.” At my look, she added, “I mean, not expensive.”
“Take it from me, Kimberly, life in the suburbs is hell on earth.” Curt and I were taking a break from his tutoring session. He lay sprawled across the floor of the classroom we had borrowed, leaning on his right elbow, the math book closed in front of him. A few other books were scattered around him in a semicircle.
Life in the factory is hell, I thought, although aloud I said, “It doesn’t sound too bad to me.”
“You only say that because you’ve never been there.”
“How would you know?”
“Well, have you?”
I was stumped. “No. But when have you ever lived there?”
“Actually, never. But aside from this”—
he tapped the paperback cover of Rabbit, Run by John Updike, which he was reading for English class—“I’ve seen movies about it, which naturally makes me an expert. Life in a suit, nine-to-five job, that’s not living.”
“What do you want, then?”
He was silent, and then he let himself fall backward on the floor. The mane of his hair spread gold across the dark carpet. “Greatness. To exalt myself. And to be free.” He sat up again and stared at me with his sapphire eyes. “No one can live an extraordinary life in the suburbs.”
“I don’t need to have such a special life.”
“You could never be ordinary. That’s why I like you.” He leaned over and kissed me.
I pulled away to answer. “I wish I were. That’s my dream: a satisfying career, with a nice husband, in a clean home, a kid or two. To achieve that, that would be extraordinary enough for me.”
“I’ll come visit you in the suburbs, then.”
A month later, Annette’s mother invited me to her office. As the thick glass door shut behind me, I felt out of place in my shoddy jacket. I saw Mrs. Avery at her desk and there was a woman in a camel-colored suit sitting in front of her. Mrs. Avery looked up and smiled at me, then gestured for me to take a seat in the large waiting area.
Finally, it was my turn. Mrs. Avery stood up and shook hands with me as if I were a grown-up. She didn’t ask where my mother was.
“So I may have something for you. It’s in Queens, in quite a green area.”
My heart beat a little faster. In New York in those days, most Chinese immigrants lived in Chinatown, a few were scattered in places like Brooklyn like us, and the ones that really became successful moved to Queens. It was considered to be even nicer than Staten Island, where Aunt Paula lived.
Mrs. Avery continued. “I don’t normally get apartments at such a price, but I’ll be honest with you, the place has been rented for a long time so it’s not in optimal condition. Most of my other clients wouldn’t even want to see it.”
I began to get worried. “Does it have heat?”
She looked startled. “Do you mean central heating?”
“Yes, does it have radiators that work?”
“Of course it does. I mean, don’t worry, the heat works great.” She blinked and hurried on. “It comes fully furnished, with all of the normal appliances: washing machine, dryer, refrigerator, oven, you name it.”
A washing machine and dryer in your own apartment! We would no longer have to wash everything by hand and hang our clothes out to dry. The simple idea of a warm, heated apartment was like heaven to me. I knew I was giving myself away with my questions but I had to know before I could be disappointed again. “Are there insects in the apartment?”
She didn’t flinch this time. She was prepared. “You mean like ants and roaches? No.”
“Rats?”
“No.”
“Then why did you say it was not in optimal condition?”
“Well, it’s not very big. And the paint’s peeling off the wall in a few places—not a lot, you understand, just a bit—and the carpet is wearing thin. That kind of thing.”
“That’s okay.” I couldn’t believe how good it sounded, but I still braced myself for disappointment. Now came the crucial question. “How much is the rent?”
She wrote it down for me on a piece of paper. To my surprise, it wasn’t much more than what we were already paying if you included the amount we’d had to put in each month to pay off our plane tickets and visas for Aunt Paula, plus the interest she’d added. I was glad we’d just paid off our debt to her a few months before. My face must have brightened, because Mrs. Avery raised a warning finger.
“Wait, Kimberly. It’s not that easy. They want to make sure that the new renters are reliable people. They want a deposit and some paperwork. We’ll need a salary slip or some proof of employment, and a character reference.”
My mind ticked away. For the first time, Ma and I had a bit of financial breathing room, especially with the extra hours I was working at the library. We’d be able to manage the deposit if we were given a bit more time. But where would we get the reference?
As if she’d read my mind, Mrs. Avery said, “Maybe one of your teachers at school could write you the character reference?”
“They’ve never even met my mother.”
“That’s true. Let me think about it, but I’m sure we can work that out.”
“We have some money in savings, but it will be easier if we have a few more weeks to finish saving the money for the deposit. Also, the salary slip, well, it’s not very much.”
“That’s okay. They just want to make sure that your mother can work, that’s all. Maybe you could also include your own salary slip from your work at school. If they see from your character reference that you’re dependable people, that will be enough.”
“Will someone else get the apartment before we do?”
“I’ll talk to the owners and tell them I have someone very reliable in mind for it.”
“I will give you the salary slips and other paperwork as soon as possible, so they know we are serious.”
When I told Ma later that evening, her entire face glowed. “Ah-Kim, another place to live!”
We had been trapped in that apartment for so long that we’d stopped daring to dream of fleeing. But our escape still relied on getting that character reference for Ma.
It was March, and Curt and I had taken to holding hands in public. I felt safe with him, knowing that he wasn’t going to demand anything from me I didn’t want to give. I don’t know how things might have progressed with us, taking step after step down the road of love, or at least acting as if we were, if events hadn’t unfolded as they did.
We’d just left Milton Hall together. Curt had stolen one of my pens and I was trying to get it back from him. I had him by the arm and was playfully batting him on the shoulder when I caught sight of a tall figure standing in front of the shrubbery of the main hall.
“Matt.” I couldn’t imagine what he would be doing here at Harrison. He was as poorly dressed as usual, in workman’s slacks and a thin wrinkled jacket, but girls walking by still turned their heads at the way he stood there, proud as a young dragon.
Matt had seen us by now and the shock in his eyes was swiftly eclipsed by pain and jealousy. He shook his head as if to clear his vision and then strode away as fast as he could. At first, I felt sorrow at his hurt, then anger because I knew exactly what that pang felt like, had felt it every day.
Curt too had frozen. “Now I get it.”
“I have to go,” I said, and without a backward glance, I hurried after Matt.
It was raining and I almost slipped on the slick sidewalk as I chased him. I could just make him out through the rain, a blur in the distance, but then he grew closer and closer until I realized he’d turned around and was now coming toward me.
Then his hands were on my elbows and he gripped me, hard. “That your boyfriend?” he yelled.
“What about your girlfriend?” I screamed back. My hair and face were soaked.
He stopped moving, then seemed to deflate. He let me go. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m made of stupid material.”
I saw then that his face was wet not only from the rain. His eyes were swollen and bloodshot. He’d been crying.
“Did you and Vivian break up?” I asked, more gently.
“My mother died,” he said. He gave a hopeless little shrug.
I took him by the hand and I led him into my arms. He bowed his head and started to weep, great shuddering sobs. I held him like that, on the sidewalk of the Harrison Prep campus, and let the rain come down.
Then I got us both into the subway and took him home with me.
We hardly said a word to each other until we arrived at my apartment. We were filled with so much emotion that there was nothing but complete recklessness left to us. His quick eyes took in the garbage bags over the windows, the roaches on the countertop and the plaster falling off the walls. If
anything, the apartment was in even worse shape than it had been in when we moved there, because it was now seven years older. It still held the chill of winter. Our clothes were wet and I got the two thin towels from the bathroom.
I handed one to Matt, but instead of starting to dry himself off, he took it and wiped it gently over my face. I stood there, motionless, while he lifted my hair and dried the base of my neck with the towel. He unzipped my jacket and pushed it off my shoulders. It fell on the floor.
His lips were all I could look at, and I abruptly disengaged myself and started walking toward the kitchen.
“I better find another towel,” I said, knowing we didn’t have any other towels.
But he’d caught me by my sleeve and his hands were pulling me back. I closed my eyes. I felt his arms go around me and before I knew it, his hands were under my shirt, stroking and tantalizing. He kissed me and I stopped breathing. He was filled with need, he seemed unable to control himself.
“Please,” I whispered. “Wait.”
He already had my shirt off. We fell back on the pile of stuffed-animal blankets. He pinned me to the mattress, his weight was delicious, and now he was moving his lips against mine, agonizing and luscious, the brush of stubble against my temples, the sweep of his hair. I felt I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move, I was his and he was mine. I could feel the heat of him burning through his wet clothes. He was a man possessed, by grief and passion together.
Finally, I made myself say, very clearly, “We have to use a condom.” With some embarrassment, he regained control of himself. He took a deep, shuddering breath, then said, “I have a couple in my wallet.”
“Let’s use two,” I said. “Just to be sure.”
“Okay.”
But once he started to kiss me again, the taste and smell of him overwhelmed me and I became frantic to get his clothes off too. I felt hypnotized, as if I were in a dream, and I kept thinking, This is Matt, he’s mine now, mine, at last. I looked at him up close and he was more beautiful than I’d ever imagined, the shimmer of his lashes, the thin white scar that ran across his collarbone, the darkened hollow of his throat. Despite all of my experimentation, I’d never been naked with a man before, and Matt’s skin felt warm and rough. He must have taken care of the condoms somehow and then suddenly he was inside me. I gasped, but it hadn’t hurt as much as I’d expected it to and then I couldn’t think at all anymore.
