A Paper Son Read online

  “You’re kidding,” I said. “How come?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” she said. “It’s a long and sordid tale.” She sounded a little out of breath, like she was walking somewhere, fast. From around her the sounds of the city seeped through the phone line—traffic, car horns, a blaring radio. “So what’s been going on in good ol’ San Fran?” she asked. “Man, I can’t wait to get out there. It’s going to be like a vacation in the countryside after this goddamn place.”

  “Not much,” I said. “What happened with Greg?”

  “We broke up a couple of months ago,” she said. “He revealed himself to be a colossal prick. So listen. Can I stay with you? Mom says she doesn’t have any room.”

  “Sure,” I said. “It might be a little crowded though.”

  “How’s that? You got somebody else staying there?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact . . . .”

  “What, like a girl?” She sounded excited.

  “No. A lady.”

  “Oh, well ex-cuse me. A lady? What is she, a goddamn duchess or something?”

  “No, she’s kind of old. It’s a long story.”

  “You got an old lady roommate?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “An old lady fetish?”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s it. I guess it’s not a long story after all.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “All I need is some floor space and occasional access to a shitter. So listen, I’ll be there on Thursday. This Thursday. Two days hence. Can you come get me at the airport?”

  “I’m a teacher, remember?” I said. “Thursdays are usually school days.”

  “I’m aware of your strenuous schedule,” she said. “I get in at six or seven o’clock, I don’t remember exactly. I’ll let you know later, I gotta run. Sleep tight now.”

  She made a kissing sound and hung up. I pocketed my phone, took a final look at the pool, and headed for the door.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” Doris asked me on my way out.

  “No,” I said.

  Li-Yu and Henry grow accustomed to the walk to Jianghai. At first, Rose accompanies them each day, but the following week she asks to remain at home, and by the end of the next month she is a rare companion on their trips. Li-Yu misses her company but reminds herself how important it is for Rose to find ways to sustain herself. She turns her attention to the walk with Henry. The hill that once left them short of breath seems to shorten, and they devise games to play along the way. They find faces in the bark of the trees along the ridge, and give them names, and devise stories to explain why one looks upset, and another happy, another frightened. They watch tiny wildflowers emerge from the grass and they notice when leaves appear on the branches. They begin to recognize the habits and patterns of the people of Jianghai—an old man who is always walking down the same alley, a woman with three missing teeth who always watches the street through her front window. Li-Yu drops Henry off, hurries back to Xinhui for the middle of the day, and then hurries back to pick him up, snacks hidden in her pockets. They walk slowly on their return to Xinhui. Henry tells her about his day in class, and Li-Yu tells him about her day at home with Rose.

  The days grow longer and warmer and the hills flush bright green with grasses, which release their fragrance as the sun’s heat steams the dew away. The rice seedlings in the planting beds reach knee height and the men of the house begin to talk about the task of sowing. A new sense of purpose falls over the village of Xinhui. The men unhook their plows from the water buffaloes and replace them with logs, which they drag sideways across the fields, smoothing out the bumps and filling the depressions.

  “You have no idea how your back will hurt,” Mae says to Rose one afternoon. Li-Yu hears this from around the hallway corner, just as she is about to enter. “Everybody with big feet like yours has to work all day long, and then it is all you can do to make it home to bed, only to rise and do it all again the next day.” Li-Yu flushes with anger, and has to take a moment to compose herself before she can continue into the room.

  “Do you know why Mae said you have big feet?” Li-Yu asks her daughter that night, when they are in their room, in bed. Beyond their whispers and Henry’s soft breathing, all is quiet.

  “Yes,” Rose says.

  “So you know you don’t have big feet?” Li-Yu says.

  “Yes,” Rose says. There is a silence, and then Rose asks, “Why does she hate me?”

  “She doesn’t,” Li-Yu says. “Some people are just unhappy.”

  “Well, I hate her,” Rose says.

  “Enough,” Li-Yu says. “Come with me to take Henry to school tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you later, after we drop Henry off.”

  The next morning, when her children are eating in the kitchen, Li-Yu darts back into their room and stretches across her bed. She reaches down beneath the bed frame and back up into a small hollow in the structure, where her fingers find a piece of fabric. She listens for sounds in the house, and then pulls the sock free. The coins hidden inside it rattle together but she closes the bundle in her hand and squeezes it, and listens again. She quickly pulls two coins from the sock, and then a third, and then returns the stash to its hiding place. She hides the coins in separate places inside her clothing, tight against her waist, and returns to the kitchen.

  “Okay,” Rose says, once she and Li-Yu have kissed Henry and watched him walk through the school’s gates. “Why did you want me to come?”

  “Close your eyes,” Li-Yu says, “and turn around. No peeking.”

  Rose complies, and Li-Yu extracts the coins. “Now, keeping your eyes closed, turn back around and open your hand.” Rose’s eyes snap open when she feels the metal in her palm, and Li-Yu has to stifle a laugh.

  “Where . . .” Rose begins, but Li-Yu holds a finger to her lips, and then she takes her daughter’s hand and leads her into the center of Jianghai. All night she struggled with the question of what she should tell Rose about the coins. Back home in California she never imagined that she might have to steal, but she feels no shame about it. The growing sock beneath her bed is the result of her patience and vigilance, and she is proud of it. She would love to tell Rose the true origin of the coins—dropped by one of the men during a drunken mahjong game, perhaps, or left on the table for just a few minutes by one of the maids after a shopping trip—and she promises herself that on the day they sail from China she will announce to both her children that their escape was financed by her willingness to lie, to cheat, to steal, to do anything that might bring them back home. But Rose can’t know this yet. It will give her a glimmer of hope, and a glimmer would be too much. And while Li-Yu does not allow herself to fear the possibility of failure, she understands that this endeavor might take a very long time.

  She doesn’t know how much the passage back to California will cost for the three of them, but she knows where the money is kept in the house. When the maids are sent out to buy things, or when they return with change, Mae presides over their transactions with a red silk purse, which ties closed with a braided gold cord. The purse she keeps locked in a heavy lacquered cabinet of open woodwork in her bedroom. Mae doesn’t know how much is in the purse. Li-Yu has seen her drop handfuls of coins into it without counting, and she has seen her hand money to the maids without keeping track of how much change she is due. There must be a good amount in the purse, Li-Yu figures. When Mae shifts the purse in her hands the coins make a sound like a small rainstorm.

  Mae almost never leaves the house, but one day Li-Yu returned from taking Henry to school and found Mae had gone to visit a sick cousin. The men were in the fields, the maids in town. She sent Rose out on an invented errand and walked quietly into the front room, where she sat down and listened. When she was sure the house was empty she waited another ten minutes, and then another five, and then, with her heart thudding, she slipped into the back of the house and into Mae’s room. She went straight to the cabin
et and stood before it. It was taller than she, its wood dark and heavy. Through the open spaces of the cabinet’s woodwork she could see the red purse, in the middle of the center shelf, red and round like a heart. She tugged at the cabinet door but it barely shook in its frame, and the lock made no sound. She orbited the cabinet, testing joints with her hands, feeling for weaknesses. There were none. She leaned into it and it seemed to push back. With a running start, she figured she might be able to move it a few inches. She sat down on the floor, crossed her legs, and frowned at it for several minutes before rising and slipping from the room.

  Beyond the carelessness of the men and the occasional sloppiness of the maids there are few other sources for money, so the three coins she has selected for Rose today represent much work and diligence, but it is all worth it when they stop at the first stall they find and buy sticky pork buns. It has been weeks, months, since she has had the pleasure of buying a snack for her children. It was the dockside congee stand in Canton, she remembers, when they first landed, before Bing died, before Mae and China ensnared them.

  They wander through town, eating and talking happily, looking through shop windows and exploring back alleys. They discover a small courtyard with a pond in it and they linger there, flicking pebbles into the water and watching the ducks paddle around. When they are hungry again they venture back into the alleys and find a restaurant where they order bowls of noodles in broth with bean curd and vegetables. They are the only women in the restaurant.

  Occasionally Li-Yu’s mind flits back to the house and the questions she will face when she comes back that evening with Henry and Rose. Why were you gone all day? What about Rose’s chores? What about yours? Isn’t she hungry? What kind of mother are you, who would keep your daughter from food, all day long? They will feign concern for Rose to make her look like a bad mother. We weren’t hungry, Li-Yu will say.

  Rose happily slurps the dregs of her soup from the side of her spoon. Li-Yu leans forward and places a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “Rosie,” she says, her voice low enough so that nobody around them will hear her. Rose leans forward to receive the secret. Li-Yu points to the table. “Nobody can know about this,” she says, in English. She hasn’t spoken English to either of her children in weeks. “Not even Henry.”

  Rose nods, her eyes wide.

  “I wasn’t supposed to have those coins,” Li-Yu says, switching back to Chinese. “But I wanted them to be for us. For you. Do you understand?”

  Rose looks unsure, but she nods. Li-Yu hopes she won’t ask any more questions. Rose has always taken an interest in the affairs of the adult world, and back in California she had liked to involve herself in conversations about auto repairs, the cost of groceries, local politics.

  “Where did they come from?” Rose asks, true to form.

  “I found them,” Li-Yu says, wincing, knowing immediately that Rose won’t believe her. “Here and there.” She stands abruptly, hoping that will be the end of it.

  “Why do they have to be a secret then?” Rose says as she stands, her voice rising above a whisper.

  Li-Yu heads for the door with Rose right on her heels. Once they are outside, Li-Yu says, “Because Mae would have wanted me to give them to her. For the food and the clothes and things they buy for you and for Henry.”

  “They don’t buy me anything,” Rose says.

  “That’s why I wanted it to be for you,” Li-Yu says. “Now that’s enough questions. We have an afternoon to spend together, and we have some money left.”

  They wander into the maze of a shopping district where busy food stands and little businesses spill out of the front rooms of the small houses that form the sides of narrow, twisting alleys. They wander along slowly, enjoying the smells, examining the wares. Li-Yu sees many things she knows Rose would like, and she waits for her to ask for something, but she never does. It is as if her daughter has come to understand the worthlessness of everything here to them.

  Just before it is time for them to collect Henry, a final shop catches Li-Yu’s eye, not so much because of its goods but because of its proprietor. He stands still as a statue among tables heaped with miscellany, staring into the alleyway. There is nobody in his shop. Nailed to his door frame is a small sign, reading, “Things bought and sold.” Li-Yu cannot help but slow down, and as she drifts past his shop she runs her eye over his wares. She realizes he is watching her. There is the slightest change in his face—a hint of a smile, maybe, or just the twitch of an eye. It is there and then just as quickly it is gone.

  “Let’s go in here,” she says to Rose. The man smiles at her and bows as they enter. There are irregular patches of white hair on his cheeks and chin. Li-Yu nods to him. He clasps his hands behind his back and looks away, the smile lingering at the corners of his mouth. Li-Yu scans the piles on his tables. There are teapots and dishes, bamboo chopsticks, shoes, knives, and threshers for rice, most of them worn, some of them at the ends of their serviceable lives.

  “Are you looking for something?” the man asks her, after a time.

  Li-Yu shakes her head.

  “Nothing you want? Nothing you need?”

  Li-Yu shakes her head again and moves on to the next table, which contains a picked-over stock of gloves and used rubber boots. The clerk watches her.

  “I buy things, too,” he says. “Maybe you have some things to sell. I pay good prices.” He nods and Li-Yu thinks she sees a wink.

  Li-Yu thanks him and pulls Rose back out into the alleyways. On her way back to the main road she memorizes the route, taking special care to pick out markers from amid the noise of the crowded alleys—a faded red awning, a noodle stand. They collect Henry and hurry back to Xinhui.

  SEVEN

  “What’s next month?” I asked my class the next morning.

  “February,” they said, in loose unison.

  “Right,” I said. “So when will it be Feb-you-ary?”

  They looked around at one another, sensing the danger.

  “Next month,” answered a handful of the less wary.

  “No,” I said. “It will never, ever be Feb-you-ary, because there is no such thing. Next month will be . . .” Here I pointed at my mouth and drew out the syllables. “Feb-ru-ary. Say it.”

  They said it. “Now I’m going to come around and listen to each and every one of you,” I said. “Pull out your homework and look it over while you await your turn. And if I hear any ‘yous’ in the middle of your Februarys, there will be no recess.”

  “We’re not going to have recess anyway,” Eliza said, pointing at the rain.

  “Right,” I said. “So let’s not make it any worse.”

  She ignored me. “So is today Wed-nes-day?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “Today is Wendz-day.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because yesterday was Tuesday,” I said.

  When I was halfway through my pronunciation inspection I heard the squeak and tromp of little rain boots in the hallway and I looked up to see Annabel leading her class toward the cafeteria. I hurried to the doorway. She gave her students a signal and they all stopped in their tracks, turned to their partners, and began playing pat-a-cake. Annabel came over to my side.

  “We got flooded out again,” she whispered. “We’re on our way back to our class away from class.”

  “Bummer,” I said. “We’re still on for Saturday, right?”

  “We are,” she said.

  “Good,” I said, “I’ll come get you.”

  “I live in the Outer Sunset,” she said. “I’ll come to you.”

  “We’re in this neighborhood all week,” I said. “I could use a change of scenery. I’ll come out there. We can grab something on Ocean Avenue, maybe.”

  “Maybe we could meet there, then.”

  “It’s not a big deal. It will probably be raining, and there’s no need for us to be looking for two parking places on a Saturday night. I’m happy to come by and pick you up.”

  “I’d rath
er we just met there,” she said. “Please.” She gave me an unconvincing smile and I knew I’d strayed off some course whose delineations I couldn’t see.

  “Okay, sure.” I said. “Whatever you want to do.”

  “Thanks,” she said. She put a hand on my arm, guiding me back on course. “I’m looking forward to it.” She returned to her spot at the head of her class, issued another wordless command, and her students followed her down the hall.

  I returned to my February quiz; Kevin was next on my route. “Hey, Mr. Long,” he said.

  “Hey, Kevin,” I said.

  “It’s been sixteen days in a row now. Do you think it will rain until Feb-ru-ary?”

  “I hope not,” I said. “Good job.”

  ***

  The next night I headed for the airport to collect my sister. Because of the weather her plane was two hours late, and because I failed to check her flight’s status before I left home I had to spend the time on a bench just outside the passenger-only zone, watching people emerge from their respective gates, converge in the hallway, and stream toward baggage claim. Flights arrived from Phoenix, from Austin, from Spokane, from Tulsa and Boise and Denver, and then finally from JFK.

  She came down the hallway in a long white coat, her cheeks flushed, her black hair tied up in a bun, her gait a little unsteady. Her skin was paler than I’d seen it in a long time, drained of color by a northeastern winter.

  “Perry!” she said. She threw her arms around me and kissed me on the cheek. I returned her tight hug. She smelled like a gin and tonic, and her face was cold.

  “Look at you,” she said, letting go, grinning, looking me up and down. “You’re all freakin’ skinny.” She shifted a heavy purse from one shoulder to the other. “So I have a ton of crap to pick up. I hope you have room in your car.” She made for the escalator that led down to the baggage claim carousels. Once aboard she pulled a little mirror out of her purse and checked herself. “Jesus, planes make a girl look like hell,” she said. She snapped her head up. “What’s with this crazy-ass weather, anyway?” I wasn’t sure if I should answer or if it was a rhetorical question.