The Chinese Groove, page 5
Yu and Cousin Deng had become sweethearts that spring when he spotted us together and asked me who she was. What a beauty! he’d exclaimed. He pointed out her classical features—a perfectly oval face, arched eyebrows, sparkling eyes, and graceful gestures. She wore her hair gathered in a neat, low bun. She might’ve been marked by the harelip she was born with, but an early surgery had corrected it. Only a trace of a scar remained. Best of all, he told me, she speaks really good English. That’ll come in handy for me someday. I owe you one, Cousin. I was surprised that Cousin Deng already spoke of a future with Yu; there’d been a parade of girlfriends before her that was the envy of his friends and the pride of the aunties, who assured his mother—the richest of the relatives living at the lao jia and so the biggest auntie of all—that her son’s popularity meant he’d have his pick of the crowd. But in Yu he found something special. Before and after class, I’d see them whispering to each other and laughing softly, just as Father and Mother had done. Someday, I thought, I’ll find that kind of love.
“I’d like to introduce my niece, Lisbet,” Miss Chips said. We were standing near the entrance to a public garden. A storm had blown through, stripping the trees around us, but gray clouds were vanishing into a widening blue.
“I’m very pleased to meet you,” Yu said impeccably, earning her a Chipsian nod. I, on the other hand, received a stern look for my open-mouthed stare.
“We’re waiting,” my teacher said.
When Miss Chips told us that she was bringing to tea her niece from California, I’d pictured a blond in a bikini on a surfboard, a run-of-the-wave image that nevertheless produced in me a hummocky moment which I’d handled with aplomb under my covers that night. The girl smirking at me couldn’t have been more different. She stood slouched, one hand in her pocket, as if she couldn’t be bothered to employ it. Her hair was black, not blond, and slashed into short, uneven layers. Her green-brown eyes, outlined in charcoal against her pallid face, looked like the shiny seeds of a secret waxy fruit. The sharps of her swiveled eyeteeth mimicked the narrow point of her chin. She looked vampiric and she knew it. She’d painted her mouth blood red.
“Nice to meet you,” I managed, putting out my sweaty hand. Yu giggled. It was obvious to everyone that a bewitchment was taking place.
“Lisbet, like you, is a student. Her school didn’t suit her, so I proposed Honghe.”
“And Bobby approved since my mother was going to kill me for wrecking her car again,” Lisbet said. Her accent was like a half-ironed shirt: starched in the middle, collar and cuffs limp. America had uncrisped her. She’d been raised in the house in Sussex where Miss Chips had been born. Her mother now lived in Los Angeles “where no one enunciates,” Miss Chips said.
“Who’s Bobby?” I blurted.
“Bobby is married to my mother,” Lisbet said, amused. “Why, were you going to fight him?”
“Darling girl,” Miss Chips said. “Don’t tease. Tulip and Shelley are going to teach you Mandarin.”
My dear old teacher couldn’t have uttered sweeter words. My wits gathered; my windpipe unknotted. The dialogue lines we’d memorized flowed like the Honghe River.
“I’d be pleased to meet with you. Would you care to schedule a date?”
“Are you asking me out?” laughed Lisbet.
“I suppose he is,” Miss Chips said. “I encourage you to accept.”
Lisbet was in a program on the university campus on Chinese language and culture. On the days Miss Chips came to teach in Gejiu, Lisbet accompanied her. She was thrilled to join us. She loved Mengzi. She thought Gejiu was brilliant. She liked her study program with the other international students, but best of all, she said, were the afternoons she spent with Yu and me. After our grammar lessons, Miss Chips sent the three of us off to practice our speaking skills.
“I’d like proper forms of speech from each of you,” Miss Chips would say, giving us money for the teahouse. For the first hour, we were to speak only Mandarin; for the second hour, English. “Speak slowly enough to be understood and, above all, don’t be tedious.”
“Does the old lady pay you to sit and talk to the girl?” Cousin Deng grumbled. We were late meeting him for coffee. He didn’t like that Yu had less time for whispering and kissing. It’s going well with Yu, he’d told me. Any day now, I’ll be getting into her pants. Though I’d listened to plenty of his girlfriend stories and contributed a few of my own, I asked him not to tell me about making it with Yu. She was like a sister to me.
“She’s smart and knows a lot,” Yu said. “She makes our lessons fun. She loves to travel. She wants to sail around the world.”
“Drop the lessons,” Deng said. “Your English is good enough.”
“I want to go further,” Yu said. “I want to work for a global company. Our teacher says I have a gift. She’s promised to teach me French. Lisbet speaks it too.”
“Nobody in America speaks French. When you and I marry”—Yu blushed—“we’ll have a big family of girls as beautiful as you and move to L.A. and be famous.”
“I’m not going to live abroad. My parents need me. Xue Li can go,” Yu teased. “He’s looking for adventure.”
“Look at those circles under his eyes,” Cousin Deng said. “He’s in love with the girl. Too much”—he jacked his hand—“is keeping him up at night. Forget about her. Let Yu find you a willing Chinese girl, not that ugly ghost.” Her pale flesh disturbed him. He compared it to fish belly.
“I think she’s brilliant,” Yu said, imitating Lisbet perfectly. The two of us cracked up.
Deng didn’t like being left out of the joke. “You’re a novelty to her. A cheap amusement. She wants the excitement of being fucked by a foreign guy, then she’s going to run back to the white guy who’s waiting for her at home.”
“That’s not true. We haven’t even kissed.” I didn’t mind admitting it. I had no doubt of our future.
“Then what are you doing with her?”
“Talking,” I said.
Underneath the table, Yu gave my hand a squeeze. I’d confided to her how much I liked spending time with Lisbet.
“That girl’s going to play you,” Cousin Deng warned. His concern for my happiness was touching. Yu was like my sister, and Cousin Deng was a brother.
WITH LISBET, EVERYTHING WAS different. Before her, I’d followed Deng’s advice: proceed to bed with a girl—he meant a couch, an alley, an empty pedicab—or move on to another. I’d slept with a few—nothing like he had—but Lisbet was the first girl with whom I didn’t rush. To promenade, Miss Chips said, is to walk slowly with pleasure. That’s how I felt with Lisbet.
For weeks, we lingered in the teahouses, making up word games to test our vocabulary and try to make each other laugh. Yu no longer joined us; she was spending time with Deng. There were big gaps in our understanding that we filled with pantomime. Lisbet used her whole body to speak, leaping up from the stool to imitate one of her teachers or crowning her head with her hands. She was asking about a woman she’d seen wearing the white headdress of the Bai minority people. I thought white was the color of mourning, but she looked so completely happy it made me want to cry.
Our birthdays were a day apart. We discovered that, at age seven, we’d each been cleaved in half. Lisbet’s father, younger brother to Miss Chips, had died the same year as my mother. Our memories poured out. My mother had liked rowing on the water; her father had built boats. My mother had wanted me to learn English; her father had sailed the world. When she spoke of him, her face glowed like Jin Hu, Golden Lake, the most beautiful spot in Gejiu. It had appeared during huge rains some sixty years ago and swallowed half the city.
We went to the night market, where I bought her boiled peanuts and crispy beetles on sticks. Unlike the foreign tourists, she didn’t squeal with disgust when she tried them. She bought me a ball cap, “Houston Dolphins.” She said it was a total fiction; no such team existed. Don’t buy into all that American dream crap. It isn’t real. But when I asked her which she liked better, England or America, she said, The U.S. is the bomb. It’s my mother I hate.
She wanted to be a singer. She had a pliant voice that reminded me of Father’s, suited to singing ballads. Instead, she belted out rock tunes that she wrote herself, saying rebels didn’t croon. Her eyes, she taught me, were a color called hazel.
“My mother died on an iron-shoe night,” I told her. “Not a body-on-fire night.” The memory cut deep. She’d been sitting with her back to the wall, her eyes resting on Father as he spun her a tale from his day. At just the moment when the swift-footed heroine was about to outrun the greedy man who’d cheated her father, Mother put a hand to her mouth and gasped. Then she slumped over and died. “It wasn’t supposed to happen in the middle of a story. Father wasn’t prepared.”
“My father was killed when a building crane collapsed.” She pointed at a crane in the distance erecting modern Gejiu, raised her arms high, and slammed them on the table. “They had to scrape him off the sidewalk.”
We both sat silent, picturing the bloody mess.
“That’s why I’m here,” said Lisbet.
AS THE DAYS GREW longer, I took her to Jin Hu, where Father used to walk with Mother. Often there was music playing or a balladeer along the path where young couples strolled in shy romance. Birds flew between the trees and the air smelled of lake. Children ran to vendors, who sold sweets and drinks, or sat atop a father’s shoulders to get a closer look at the tall figures with giant puppet heads who paraded past, bowing and waving. One day, as we walked in a lightly falling rain, we saw a young couple on a bench sharing an umbrella. The boy was reading aloud to the girl, and she looked up as we passed. I could see she was wondering if we, like they, were in love.
“What’s he reading?” Lisbet asked. Books were her foundation. She especially liked Russian novels, the big, fat ones like my mother had read though of course in different translations. Father had kept Mother’s books in a carton tied with string until we had to move and didn’t bring the books with us. I couldn’t recall the names of any of them, but when I told her that my mother had loved the same books as she did, Lisbet recited a long list of possibilities, the syllables flowing like strange-sounding music off her tongue.
“He’s reading her a love poem,” I said. I wished I’d brought an umbrella so that I could draw her close.
“Did you see her face?” Lisbet said. “She’s luminous.”
I had to ask her what it meant. “I was kidding,” I confessed. “He’s reading to her from his chemistry book.”
Lisbet elbowed me with a laugh. My heart flew open at the touch.
“My aunt read me poetry from the earliest I can remember,” she said. “That’s why I started writing songs. I’ve got those beats in my head.”
“I’ve got beats in my head,” I hastened. “I love poetry, same as you.”
“Really? You never mentioned it before.” Her smile was skeptical, but her face brightened.
Headless, heedless, I didn’t hesitate. “Someday I’m going to be a poet.”
“Oh! I’d love to hear your poems.”
“Not now but maybe later. When I’m ready.” I tried to look mysterious, but I liked her so much that honesty overtook me. “I haven’t written any yet. I’m not sure how to begin.”
“You should try. You’re good with words, you know.” Her lips seemed to glisten. My heart beat bravely, making the treetops swim. I saw the giant puppet heads bow in my direction, urging me to take a chance.
“How many poems shall I write to you?” I asked.
She laughed, and I was mortified that I’d said the wrong thing, but then she touched a fingertip to lift a raindrop from my lashes—she was bolder than me in love.
“Write three. Three splendid poems. One for your mother, one for your father, and one for me.”
“All for you,” I declared.
ON LISBET’S EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY, the day after mine, I picked her up at the station and we went straight to the park. She wore a new dress of slithery green fabric. I bought us sweet cakes and water and spread a plastic bag on the sooty bench, though I knew she liked being careless, even in a pretty dress, and wouldn’t mind a little dust. She sat down and stretched her milky legs in the June sun. I perched on the bench beside her. I had something big to ask and was almost afraid to speak. I told her that Father and I had talked the whole night long, he soaked in tears and whiskey, I in my mother’s love, about my leaving for San Francisco. I’d be the first Zheng in sixty-five years to leave Yunnan.
“Don’t tell me this,” Lisbet protested. “I like you in Gejiu.”
“My family is no good, and I can’t make any money. I have an uncle in the U.S. who’s very rich. I’m going to live with him.” I sketched San Francisco in the air, the hills and the famous bridge. “Clang, clang,” I rang for her, a cable car climbing.
“You’re talking like the students at Honghe, the ones born here who want to leave China. Meanwhile, the international students want to come here and work. They all sound the same, thinking there’s someplace better.”
She’d seen the world, or more of it than I had. Didn’t she want the same for me?
“Don’t compare yourself to me!” she said with a grimace. Her nose was turning pink in the sun. Her eyes looked very green that day; perhaps it was the dress. “I’ve tried to tell you, I’m a horrible mess. You know that, don’t you?”
“Father wants me to go. He knows it’s best for me.”
“Like my mother. She can’t wait to get rid of me, then she misses me and begs me to come home. I go running back but I never last long.” She turned away and uncapped her water bottle. After a long motionless second, she sipped.
“It’s not like that with Father. He wants what Mother wanted for me: to learn English and become a big success.”
“I’m sad, that’s all,” Lisbet said, turning back. “I’ve been happy here. This place feels more real to me than anywhere I’ve lived.”
My hopes jumped for the treetops. Sure, Gejiu was Tin Capital of the World and Alpine-like as a picture, but I knew what she was really trying to tell me. It was love, not tin, that turned the ground solid beneath her restless feet.
“When I leave—”
“Oh, don’t talk about that, Xue Li. Not today.”
“Will you come with me?”
She buckled halfway over as if I’d landed a punch. Spilled water streamed about our feet. I bent to help her, frightened, but she pushed my hands away. When she finally straightened, bottle crunched in one hand, the other gripping the bench, her nose shone garishly pink in her blanched face.
“I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t make those kinds of plans. I wish I could, but I can’t.”
My lips felt thick as thumbs. I swallowed half my throat. I wished to run to the lake, dive in, and sink to the bottom.
“I’m sorry,” Lisbet said. “I’m really going to miss you.”
We sat in silence, the sun beating down. Later, when we left the park, she took my arm and kissed me.
THE NEXT TIME WE met, her dark mood had vanished. She seemed buoyant, as if I’d never upset her, and my hopes rose again that she’d come with me. In the days that followed, we saw each other often, always parting with a kiss. When I wasn’t with Lisbet, I took care of Father and handled jobs for Cousin Deng. He knew he could count on me to do whatever he asked, and it put a few jiao in my pocket. You spend more time with her than you spend with your father. Somebody’s got to pay for all those sweets and tea.
On a fine July day, I went to see her in Mengzi, head up and hopeful. By then I’d convinced myself that we couldn’t live without each other, and I was planning to ask again for her pledge. My bus arrived late; Lisbet wasn’t waiting. I walked up and down, searching, until I thought to go look for her on campus. She lay like a downed kite, arms flung wide, on a patch of grass in the shade. She felt dizzy in the heat, she said, and had to rest. She knew I’d find her.
“Most guys go running around in circles. You go straight to what you want. I love that about you.”
I lay down beside her, thinking that perhaps today our kisses would lead to more. She draped an arm over her eyes. She was wearing a white blouse, long blue cotton skirt, and red embroidered slippers she’d bought in the tourist market. She drew her knees under her skirt but stayed where she was, eyes hidden. Couples strolled by giving us curious looks. I half expected a college worker to come out and scold us for lying on the grass. I’d chase him off if I had to, but Lisbet was a foreign student and could do as she liked. Sweat along her hairline and at the part in her hair gleamed through the black. She smelled of grass; I smelled like diesel fuel. I’d scrubbed my face and hands after leaving the station, but the stink stayed in my clothes the way it clung to Father.
“I have this feeling that there’s some other life I’ve missed,” she said.
That was my feeling too! Our futures awaited, intertwined.
“I know. The future. You talk about it a lot.” She spoke into the distance, as if she’d sent her thoughts away and was reluctant to recall them from their travels. “Is it possible that this other life, this other existence is behind me? Not in front of me, like yours, but behind? Like I accidentally veered away from what I should be doing.”
“It’s sad that your father died.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. There’s nothing to be done about that.” She uncovered her eyes but stayed pinned in place, peering straight up into the trees. I’d seen melancholy settle on her before but not like this, like a pall above us, blotting out the light. Her lassitude alarmed me. I wondered if she was ill.
“Nothing feels right to me,” she said. “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what country I belong to, or who my family is.”
“Your family is Miss Chips!”
“Not really. I wanted to think so, but it’s not working out that way. She’s been really sweet to me, but I can’t be what she needs. That little bit of home that she’s missing.”
