A Paper Son Read online

  I could never quite understand why she’d chosen this life. After my dad had died and my sister and I had left the house, she could have done anything, anywhere. “You don’t even need to work,” I had said to her, on more than one occasion. “Why don’t you just volunteer somewhere so you can meet people, and then you can come back home and grow orchids or tomatoes or something.”

  “Everybody has to work,” she’d say. “I don’t want to meet people. And I can’t sell orchids or tomatoes for hundreds of dollars an ounce.”

  We exited at Highway 84 and began our climb into the mountains. The woods closed around us and blocked out what little glow remained of the peninsula’s electricity. Occasional homes crouched among the trees; light struggled through their windows and lost itself in the rain.

  “I can’t remember the last time I got out of the city,” Eva said quietly at one point, more to herself than to me. She reached up and touched her window as if she could feel the wet trees through the glass.

  The road climbed out of the wooded valley and onto the ridge. Occasionally we caught glimpses of other faraway cars, our counterparts on adjacent hills on their own two-lane roads, headlights held out feebly before them in a wet and immense darkness. The road continued to climb, up and to the west.

  My sister Lucy and I had not been raised like this, the children of mountaintop pot farmers. We grew up closer to the bay, just off 101, in a small house with empty walls and hardwood floors and a yard made of gravel and weeds. For the first ten years of my life I remember little but my father’s battles with cancer. It was an endless series of remissions and resurgences, treatments and medications, clinics and operations and specialists. He had been a software engineer, part of that first wave of scientists and visionaries who helped lay the foundation for home computing and the emergence of Silicon Valley. We had a spare room completely given over to a mainframe the size of a refrigerator. Our dad spent all his time there, sometimes staying up for two and three nights in a row, sweating, gazing through the monitor into the capabilities and future of his machines. My mom tried to get him to take walks, to get fresh air, to eat healthy foods. She made appointments for him with acupuncturists and herbalists. He ignored all her efforts.

  “This is a fight,” she would say to him, carrying away a plate of uneaten broccoli. “You need to think like a fighter.”

  “It’s not a fight, Pam,” he’d say, rising from the table to return to his work. “It’s a race.” It wasn’t until later that I understood what he meant.

  Our mom worked the community college circuit, teaching biology, botany, natural history, and any other subject in which she could pose as an expert for long enough to get past a hiring committee. She never complained, but I don’t think she liked it much. Her schedule changed every semester. We never knew when to expect her. At home her usual spot was the dining room table, with her books and papers spread around her.

  Lucy and I constructed our childhood at the feet of these two monoliths, drawing on the backs of the endless strips of serrated paper the computer’s printer spit out, or reading beneath the table as our mom worked, listening to the scratches of her pen above us. There was no television, no stereo in the house. “Other families stare at TVs,” she would say. “We converse.” And then she’d tell us not to talk to her because she had papers to correct. The walls were bare but for a few yellowing drawings that Lucy or I had done, tacked beside doorways. We rarely used the yard, and when we did, we didn’t know what to do. There were no balls, no shovels. We collected pebbles and threw them at the fence.

  Our dad died, at home and sleeping, when I was ten and Lucy was almost fourteen. It was a bright clear day, and though it was January it wasn’t cold. Mom came into our rooms that morning—first Lucy’s, then mine. “Your father died last night,” she said, giving me a short but tight hug, “so come and say goodbye to him.”

  I wondered if he’d won his race. At the funeral I asked my mom, but she said she didn’t know. A few days later two of the men he worked with came to us and said that they had made a deal with our father—upon his death, everything in his office was to be sold to them for five hundred thousand dollars, payable right then. One of the men opened his briefcase and wrote my mom a check. She thanked him. The man said that it was they who should be thanking her. The company owed its life to our dad, he said. He looked over to where Lucy and I were watching, half-hidden in a doorway. He had kids, too, he said, and our dad’s work fed and clothed them, too. He said he was sorry. They went into Dad’s office and boxed up all his things. A team of men came in a van and took the mainframe away on a metal dolly. The man who’d written the check went on to explain that in addition to the money, my mom now owned twenty percent of the company, and that we’d receive payments every quarter based on the company’s income. The lawyers would arrange it. They said some more nice things about my dad, emptied his room, and left. My sister and I emerged to see what a half-million dollars looked like. It seemed like a prize, so I figured he must have won his race. My mom folded the check and put it in her purse. “Go finish your homework,” she told us, “and then we’ll go get some pizza.”

  By the time Eva and I reached my mom’s gate we were miles from the nearest streetlight. Using my headlights as illumination, I wheeled through the numbers on the combination padlock and then swung the gate open. I locked it behind us and we drove up the long driveway to the house.

  Mom answered the door in her red-and-white striped apron, which was dusted with flour. She looked quickly at Eva, and then back to me. “Hello Peregrine,” she said, and gave me a quick hug. “Did you lock the gate?” I nodded. She extended a hand to Eva. “I’m Pamela,” she said, without smiling.

  “Eva,” said Eva, taking her hand, also not smiling. My mom bolted the door behind us.

  I hadn’t been there in a few months, and things had changed. The front of the house, which consisted of a living room and the open kitchen, had been consumed by her crops. Rows of waist-high plants had replaced the couch, the coffee table, the easy chairs, and the television. Piled in one corner of the room were her bed, a dresser with a few books on it, and a lamp. I could only imagine what had become of her bedroom. The kitchen counter had been completely taken over by low planters, out of which baby plants sprouted. A cheap card table with folding legs now stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, creating a path just wide enough to move around the room. It held her mixing bowl, bags of flour and sugar, chocolate chips.

  “You’ve made some changes,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Market pressures. Have a seat.” There were a few stools hidden beneath the kitchen counter’s lip. We pulled them out and found spots for them in her narrow walkways.

  “What did you do with all the furniture?” I said.

  “Sold it,” she said.

  “This doesn’t look healthy,” I said.

  “What do you mean? It’s an oxygen-rich environment.”

  “These are lovely,” Eva said politely, eyeing the plants. “What are they?” She reached out and touched a leaf.

  My mom had gone back to work, and was now dragging a long wooden spoon through some thick chocolate batter. “Cannabis,” my mom said.

  “Never heard of them,” Eva said.

  The slightest smile touched my mom’s lips. “Give me one minute and I’ll make some chamomile,” she said. Her voice sounded a little friendlier. She poured the batter out into a couple of cake pans and slid them into the oven, then turned the flame on beneath a teapot. She leaned a hip against the counter and we considered each other. She looked tired. At some recent point the gray in her hair had come to exceed the black.

  “So,” she said, “two things. I need you to haul a couple of boxes of your stuff out of here. I found them in the back of the hall closet, and I need the space in there.” She glanced at Eva, and then back at me. “So what are you researching?” she asked. “Aren’t you still a teacher?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But I’ve also been wor
king on a story. I’m publishing chapters of it in a journal in the city. I should have brought a copy of it to show you.”

  “That would have been nice,” she said. The kettle began to whistle. She dumped tea bags into a few mismatched mugs, poured the hot water over them, and brought them to us.

  “It takes place in China,” I said.

  “Well, bring it along next time, and I’ll read it.” She set her mug down on the counter with a clunk. “Let’s go grab those boxes.”

  I followed her down the hallway. Plants lined one of the walls, leaving just enough room for us to slip through. She pulled open the closet door. A giant hooded lamp hung from the ceiling, awaiting more plants. Impeding the process was a large cardboard box on the floor, which I recognized right away. It contained old drawings, elementary school papers, notebooks, collections, paper planes—the unabridged works of my boyhood. I hadn’t seen it since I’d helped her move in, well over a decade ago. I hauled the box into the front room and found the floor was so completely occupied that the only place for it was on the bed. I set it down and pulled a flap open, feeling the years quickly sliding backward.

  Eva was watching us through her tea steam. “Is this where you grew up?” she asked.

  “No, Redwood City,” I said. On top of the box was a report I’d written on the gold rush while in fourth grade. Beneath it was a Thanksgiving story I’d written about a vampiric turkey that had garnered an A-. I rifled through the strata below, the geologic record of my intellectual growth. It would be fun to sit down later and spend some time digging through it. I closed the box and returned to my stool, where my tea sat, still steaming.

  “You said two things,” I said.

  “Your sister is coming back.” She glanced around the room. “Obviously, she can’t stay here, so she’s counting on you. She said she mentioned it to you.” She fished a piece of paper out of her apron and handed it to me. I unfolded it and saw that it was the ripped page of a book.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “Sylvia Plath. I ran out of notepaper. Turn it over.”

  I did. There was a phone number printed on it.

  “She had to change her number. That’s her new one. And she no longer has a driver’s license, by the way.”

  “So I’m hosting and chauffeuring?”

  “I’m sure the two of you will work something out,” she said.

  Eva was asleep by the time we were back on 280. It was a long quiet drive back to San Francisco, with too much to think about. All around the rain fell, moving through the darkness.

  The school is in the next village, an hour’s walk away, and on Henry’s first day it is raining and he is terrified. Li-Yu awakens next to him and he is already crying, quietly, his face turned toward the wall. She wraps her arms around him and instantly finds such great sobs rising in herself that she quickly lets go. After tossing the blanket aside with false decisiveness she rises to her feet. Rose remains curled up in the bed’s corner, her breaths loud and oblivious.

  “Time to get up, my boy,” she says to Henry, briskly. She speaks only Cantonese to them now, and forbids them to speak English to one another. She tolerates neither complaints about Xinhui nor nostalgia about California. “This is where we live,” she tells them often, “and it’s our duty to try to live well.” She can barely form the words without wincing, knowing that her children’s opportunities, especially Rose’s, have all but vanished. Rose is old enough to understand the desolation of her once-boundless future, and when she argues, it takes all the severity Li-Yu can muster to silence the complaints. As for her own fury and desperation, Li-Yu compresses them until they are small and hard as diamonds and then she hides them away, far from the eyes of her children and the rest of the household. She knows where to find them, though. They color her dreams and each morning when she awakens she uses them to fuel the promise to herself that she will do anything—commit any act, seize any opportunity—to return her children to their home.

  Henry stirs to let her know he is awake, but he does not yet rise. She knows he is composing himself; she sees his furtive movements as he hides his tears in the folds of the blankets.

  “Rose, you too,” she says, giving her daughter a gentle shake.

  Rose sits up, grumbling. “Why do I have to get up?” she says, in English. “I don’t have to go anywhere.”

  “You still have your lessons,” says Li-Yu. In the breaks between their duties she has been trying to educate her daughter, an endeavor that earns her the scorn and ridicule of everyone in the household. Some of the men even try to get her to stop. But she ignores them and persists, even though Rose already knows half the things she tries to teach her.

  Henry stands now and attempts a brave face, but looks outside and sees the rain and cannot prevent himself from crying.

  “That’s enough,” says Li-Yu, but she cannot look at him. She helps him into his clothing as his sobs dwindle and become sniffles. Together they walk into the main part of the house where they become the center of some unclear commotion.

  The members of the household—Bing’s father and mother, the uncles, some of the maids—are all gathered, exchanging smiles with missing teeth, gestures of steam rising from their teacups. Mae is in her usual position on the couch, covered in robes. When Henry comes into the room she tosses aside a blanket and unveils a new pair of pants and a jacket. She holds her hands out to Henry, but he does not go.

  “Come here,” she says. Still Henry does not move.

  Li-Yu eyes the clothing. Both pieces are dark blue and look like cheap denim. The fabric looks stiff and uncomfortable. She knows they are unlike anything she would choose for him, or anything Henry would choose for himself, and she can see right away that neither will fit.

  “Come here,” says Mae again, now with impatience. Li-Yu puts a hand on his back and pushes him. He resists at first and then takes two or three steps forward. Li-Yu takes him by the hand and walks him toward the couch. Henry pulls in close to her as if he would like to vanish into her leg. She puts him in front of Mae and then steps aside. He looks up at his mother and tries to reach for her, his face beginning to scrunch with tears again. But Li-Yu nods toward Mae and then steps back, leaving Henry alone to face her.

  “New clothes,” Mae says, “for you.” She picks up the jacket and shakes it. It sounds stiff, almost wooden, like pieces of kindling knocking together. She hands it to Henry. “Here,” she says, “put it on.”

  Henry forces an arm into a sleeve and begins crying again. Behind her, one of the uncles turns to another and whispers something; the men stifle laughter. The jacket is too big for him, as Li-Yu knew it would be, and the fabric is so stiff it pushes up into his neck and jaw.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Bing’s mother asks.

  Mae holds up her hand. “Have patience, Ma,” she says. “He still has American manners.” She smiles and shakes out the pants. “And these,” she says to Henry.

  Li-Yu steps forward, burning. “He’ll finish changing in the bedroom,” she says, controlling her voice. “Henry, what do you say?”

  He issues a muffled thank-you and they return to their room, where Li-Yu helps him into the new pants. Each of his whimpers is a knot in her gut but her face shows nothing while she works. The pants are far too long—she has to roll them up three times before his feet emerge. They have a long walk to school, and she can see the fabric will chafe his ankles. Once he is dressed and in his shoes Li-Yu rises and wraps her arms around him and squeezes him quickly but tightly. It is enough. His face becomes as resolute as hers as she leads him back into the kitchen where the maids make a fuss over him. They have prepared a special breakfast of jook and steamed dumplings, which he eats methodically and without relish. They return to the front rooms in preparation for their departure and Mae calls to Henry again. This time he shuffles over to her, the stiff fabric of his new clothes rustling. She gives him a small cloth bundle tied with cords. He accepts it with both hands, thanks her, and because he do
es not recognize it as another gift, he remains standing there, unsure, rocking himself slightly.

  “Don’t you want to see what’s inside?” Li-Yu asks him.

  Henry nods. He pulls at the cords and the bundle unrolls, falling open neatly. Inside there are sewn pockets with new pencils, sheets of thin, almost translucent paper, and a small abacus. It is a beautiful and elegant gift, exactly the sort of thing Rose would love. Li-Yu does not risk a glance at her daughter, who is standing in the corner of the room, hoping to remain unnoticed. If she were to catch Rose’s eye now, even for the slightest moment, it would serve as an acknowledgment of this injustice, and all the injustices that have come since their arrival in China, and all that are awaiting her. Li-Yu knows her daughter won’t be able to weather a lifetime of this, the way Chinese women do. Even decades here would not wipe out her memories of the way life had been in California. For now, though, the only defense either of them has is stoicism.

  Mae reties the bundle and hands it back to Henry. “Thank you,” Henry says again. He returns to Li-Yu’s side, and together they move toward the door.

  “It’s a pity,” Mae calls. “This should be a happy occasion for him.”

  “He can walk alone,” calls Bing’s father, from the next room. It is the first time he has addressed Li-Yu in all the days they have been there. He rises from his chair and comes into the doorway, his hands clasped behind his back, wearing the look of someone who has never been disobeyed. “He’s starting school, and it’s time for him to start learning to be a man. He can walk alone.”