Finally Seen, page 2
“To your left is the Westside,” Dad explains on the freeway. “It’s where the beach is. And actually, if you take the beach highway all the way up, you’ll end up in Ventura County, where we live!”
“Can we go there sometime?” I ask, putting my ice water down on the hot seat. I sit up. “Oh, please! I love the beach! I saw the ocean from the plane—it looks so blue!”
Mom and Dad exchange a glance. “We’ll see. Your dad usually has to work,” Mom says.
“Even on the weekends?” I ask, picking at the duct tape on the seat with my finger.
Millie gawks at my hand, like What are you doing? I instantly stop tugging at the tape. Note to self: Don’t destroy our car.
“Weeds and insects don’t understand weekends, unfortunately,” Dad sighs.
I furrow my eyebrows. Insects?
“Dad works on an organic farm!” Millie says, bouncing in her seat.
Millie seems to always be moving. If she were in China, the teachers would definitely label her a zuo bu zhu, or can’t-sit-still kid. Definitely not the best kind of apple, but still redeemable with a little work and discipline. First, the teachers would try to scare the bouncing bean out of her. And if that didn’t work, they’d call up her parents and demand she be taken off all sugar.
But Millie reaches into her pocket and gleefully tosses orange Tic Tacs in her mouth, bouncing so hard I can hear the duct tape go squish-squish-squish. I look at my parents, but they don’t seem to mind. It really is a totally different country.
“Yes, an organic farm! It’s pretty amazing. Actually, it’s also a regenerative farm,” Dad says proudly.
“Wait, I thought you were a scientist,” I say, looking at my parents, puzzled. “That’s what you wrote in all your letters. A microbiologist!”
“I am,” Dad says. “That’s what I studied in graduate school, when I first came to America. Now I work on a farm for Pete Burton. He’s one of the first organic regenerative farmers in Winfield.”
“What kind of stuff do you grow?” I ask.
“Carrots, tomatoes, beans, you name it.”
So Dad’s a legit farmer. Why didn’t he just say so in his letters?
I think of the farmers Lao Lao and I met in Bei Gao Li Village. It’s out in the countryside, about three hours from Beijing. Twice a year, Lao Lao and I used to go and volunteer there. It was the only time she left Lao Ye at home. And even after he passed, when walking started getting painful for her, she insisted we go.
We had some of our best memories in Bei Gao Li Village.
It used to be a farming village. But over the years, as the locusts ravaged the land and the droughts sucked the soil dry, folks went in search of new opportunities in Shenzhen and Shanghai, leaving behind young children with grandparents.
Bei Gao Li became a waiting village.
I think that’s why Lao Lao always took me there. I smile a bit, thinking of little Tao, a five-year-old boy with a teddy bear he carried around everywhere. Little Tao would run around, helping Lao Lao pass out her homemade pork buns.
At the thought of pork buns, my tummy rumbles. Mom must have heard it because she turns and asks, “You hungry?”
This time, I shake my head. I don’t dare risk going into a restaurant and making a fool of myself ordering again, just to come out with a bowl of napkins.
“I’ll make us some lunch when we get home,” Mom says. “Just as soon as the bombs harden.”
Did she say bombs?! My heart lurches. Who are my parents??
“Maybe you can help!” Mom says. “The more hands, the faster it’ll be.”
“Yeah, it’s fun!” Millie adds.
She’s making bombs too??
I put a hand to my forehead, horrified that I left my lao lao in a nursing home to join a family of carrot-chomping criminals.
“Uhhhhh… I don’t know,” I say, chewing on my lip. “I’m not really good with explosives.”
“Explosives, what are you talking about? We’re making bath bombs,” Mom says.
I stare at her.
“It’s like a soap, for the bath,” Millie says. “And they smell really nice! You’ll see when you get home.”
“Oooooooohhhh,” I say, sighing in relief. How did I forget? American homes have bathtubs! I imagine myself soaking in a warm, soothing bath, surrounded by candles, in our beautiful American home.
I close my eyes for just a second, the word home tickling at my lashes. It feels almost too good to be true.
Chapter 5
I drift asleep in the car, dreaming of Lao Lao. If Beijing is a waiting place, my dreams are like meeting places.
In my dream, the two of us are running around the fields of Bei Gao Li Village. We’re playing the Eagle and the Chicks, my favorite Chinese playground game. In my dream, Lao Ye’s still alive and Lao Lao’s chasing me, her arms stretched as she laughs and tries to catch me. Lao Lao’s the eagle, trying to chase us “chicks.”
There’s a long trail of village children behind me. We make a giddy, squealing dragon as we run around the field, dodging Lao Lao.
Every time a kid runs near Lao Lao, she tries to hug them in her arms, her silvery hair glistening in the wind. But she’s too slow. Finally, she sits down on the green field to catch her breath, and I sit down next to her.
I put my head on her shoulder and twirl a blade of grass around my finger.
“I’m getting too old for this game,” she says, patting my head. “You guys keep playing without me.”
“No you’re not,” I insist. I try to pull her up to standing but she won’t budge.
The other village kids are waving me over, shouting, “C’mon, c’mon! Lina jie jie, we want to keep playing!”
I look at them and gaze back at my lao lao, torn between joining them in their screaming, giggling fun and staying here with my grandmother.
“Go on,” Lao Lao urges. “Have fun! Your friends are all playing!”
In my dream, I do not choose my friends. I sit right by Lao Lao, shoulder to shoulder until the sun sets. It feels like the right choice.
Until I wake up and I realize, it’s not the one I actually made.
Chapter 6
Two big eyeballs blink down at me from the top bunk. I scream, which prompts Millie to scream back.
“She’s awake!!!” Millie shouts.
I look around, disoriented for a minute. My parents must have carried me in while I was sleeping. Millie jumps off the bunk and tries to pull me to standing.
“Do you like our room?” she asks. She pounces from one corner to the next, like a proud tiger cub showing me her cave. The room is bare and small, but the sun reflecting off the apartment wall next door tints the space light pink.
“I do,” I tell my sister.
Millie walks over to my suitcases and examines them curiously.
“Here,” I say to her, reaching over and unzipping one of them. I pull out the big bag of Chinese candy and hand it to her.
“YESSSSSS!” she squeals. “I love candy.”
She grabs hawthorn flakes, Meiji biscuits, and rabbit candies and rips them all open. I laugh at her enthusiasm. She takes five rabbit candies and stuffs them all in her mouth.
“What is this?” she mumbles, chewing.
“Rabbit candy!” I tell her.
She immediately spits it out into the trash can. “These are made from rabbits?” she asks, making a face.
“No! They’re just called rabbit candy because they’re creamy.”
“But rabbits aren’t creamy,” she says, confused.
“You know what—never mind. Just try it. They’re really good.”
I get out another piece, urging her to try it. I unwrap it for her. Lao Lao and I went around to five different stores, which was not easy with Lao Lao’s arthritis. Millie has to give the sweet chewy vanilla candy a chance—it’ll melt her mind!
“No thanks, I’m good,” she says.
I frown at Millie, trying to brush off her rejection. Whatever.
Millie walks over to the closet and opens the mirrored doors. “This is our closet. You can unpack and put your stuff in here!”
I stare at “our” closet. The whole space is packed with Millie’s clothes, crinkled-up posters, and stuffed animals. I don’t know where I’m supposed to put my clothes—tape them up to the back of the door?
Mom walks in.
“Are you settling in all right?” she asks.
“Uh, where do I put my clothes?” I ask her, pointing to my three stuffed suitcases.
Mom glances at the packed closet and then scolds Millie. “I thought we talked about this. You were supposed to put all your stuffies in a bag and gift them to the little kids in the apartment building, to make more space!”
“But Unicorny and Deery will be so sad to leave,” Millie protests. “And so will Liony and Piggy, and Mousy. And don’t forget Rabbity!”
Rabbity? Okay, we have got to come up with some better names. Millie grabs each stuffed animal from the closet and holds them tight in her arms.
Mom sighs. “We’ll talk about this later. Let’s eat first! I made some lunch while you napped.” At the mention of lunch, Millie drops her animals and bolts out of our room.
I follow her down a long corridor. There are framed family pictures hanging in the hallway, and I peek curiously at them.
I see baby Millie trying to walk at the park. My parents holding her at the zoo. My dad in a Texas cowboy hat holding hands with my mom. Mom and Millie jumping on a sand castle at the beach.
They look like the perfect family… but I’m not in any of them. I plunge my eyes to the ground.
I feel the temperature rise as I try to shake the feeling of being completely left out. Why am I not in any of the pictures? Lao Lao and I sent them so many over the years. There was the one of me at the Bird’s Nest and at the Beijing Zoo, when my grandfather was still alive. I even remember Mom writing back, Wow! Lina’s so tall now!
So what happened? Did she run out of frames? She could have just used tape! As my mind runs through millions of other possible adhesives, a powerful scent wafts up my nose—lavender. I look up. There are bath bombs everywhere in the living room—on every corner, every surface, every square inch of the carpet.
“Whoa!” I exclaim. Mom and Millie weren’t kidding about their fizzy hobby. “You guys must take a lot of baths!”
“Oh, they’re not for us,” Mom says, picking one up and carefully wrapping it in paper. I notice that Dad’s not home. It’s just Mom and Millie.
“We don’t even have a bathtub!” Millie adds.
I knit my eyebrows. Then…?
“We’re selling them!” Mom announces. “Twenty dollars a box on Etsy!”
I’ve heard before of people selling things on the internet in China. One of my classmates’ moms sold pencil pouches on Alibaba, but she had tons of employees working for her. Is Mom doing this all out of our home? And wait, whatever happened to the spacious two-story home with a garden they wrote about in their letters? I look around.
This apartment, crammed full of plastic buckets of Epsom salts, is decidedly single story. Was anything they said in the letters true?
Mom quickly moves aside the blankets and pillows on top of a thin yoga mat on the floor. I stare at the mat—is that where my parents sleep? Mom sees the shock on my face. “I know this isn’t what you imagined… but your dad and I… we’re working hard.…”
My face heats in embarrassment. “No, it’s fine!” I quickly say. I’ve been here two seconds and I’m already making my mom feel bad. I leap past the buckets of Epsom salts toward the bath bomb molds on the kitchen table. “How can I help?”
Mom gives me a smile.
“You can help by moving those bombs outside so I can get lunch on the table. We’re having stir-fried eggplant!”
The name of one of my favorite dishes puts a big old grin on my face. How I’ve missed stir-fries! Lao Lao used to make the best ones, my favorite being chicken and mushrooms. But with her arthritis, she hasn’t been able to cook as much as before. We’ve been living on steamed dumplings that I’d defrost from the grocery store. My heart leaps at the prospect of stir-fried eggplant.
Home may not look the same as I imagined—or even smell the same—but I’m glad it’ll still taste the same in my belly.
I think.
Chapter 7
How long have you guys been doing this?” I ask Millie as we set down the last of the bath bombs in the courtyard.
The sparkles from the powdery balls sit on my fingers. They look pretty under the sun.
“Ever since they announced the rent Morse code’s due.” Millie says “rent Morse code” in English.
“Rent what?” I ask, confused.
A Black man watering his hanging flowers at the apartment next door chimes in. “Y’all talking about the rent moratorium?” he asks.
Doors open and a couple of other neighbors gather.
“What have you heard, Joe?” a Latinx woman walking a small terrier asks.
Millie and I both bend down to pet her adorable dog.
“State says it expires in six weeks. After that, landlords be coming around here, demanding their back rent. And if you can’t pay up, they gonna evict you,” Joe says.
Mom steps out of our apartment.
“It ain’t fair! So many of us lost our jobs during the pandemic,” a worker in blue overalls says. “We’re just getting back on our feet. Now we gotta come up with six months of back rent?”
“Down at the dry cleaners, we’re still not at the same volume as before,” a woman adds.
Mom shakes her head.
Joe gestures with his hands to stay calm.
“So long as we applied for rent relief, should be all right,” he says.
“But that takes forever and a day!” the overalls man says. The neighbors jointly sigh. “I applied back when I lost my truck. Still waiting for my relief check.”
“Should have known better than to count on the US government,” the lady with the dog says. “Been in this country nine years, never asked the government for a cent. And the one time I do, we waiting like grass for rain. And now with groceries up thirty dollars a week…”
Are groceries more expensive here, too? Lao Lao was complaining about the price of cooking oil right before I left. (The only thing she appreciated about moving into the nursing home is she wouldn’t have to worry about groceries anymore.)
“The check will be here. They may be slow as molasses, but it’ll be here, and so long as we apply before the deadline, the landlords can’t evict us,” Joe says. “Come six weeks from now, mark my words, they’ll be here swarming like flies!”
I look over at Mom, who looks like she’s about to pass out. She quickly takes my hand and Millie’s and tells us to come on home.
My mind is full of questions as I walk into the apartment. What’s back rent? And do we owe that too, I wonder as I slide into the plastic kitchen chair. Is that why we can’t buy more frames for my photo in the hallway? But I’m temporarily distracted by the sweet, tangy aroma of stir-fried eggplant.
“Where’s Dad?” I ask, picking up my chopsticks. The eggplant melts in my mouth. It tastes just like my lao lao’s—soft and sweet, with just enough kick. It’d be even better without the tiny bits of parsley.
“He had to go back to work,” Mom says, handing me a spoon and a bowl of egg drop soup. I sip the soup. “It’s farmers’ market day. We’re lucky he could come with us to the airport.”
Lucky to come pick up his daughter, after five years apart? Whoa.
“Dad’s always working,” Millie says, reaching for the eggplant. I watch her expertly pick up the delicate vegetables with her steel fork. She doesn’t even bother with chopsticks. She really is an American.
“True, but he also brings us lots of vegetables,” Mom says, pointing at the heads of fresh lettuce and little bunches of radishes on the counter. “And that’s important, at a time like this.”
Millie nods as she eats. Mom picks out all the little bits of parsley from the eggplant dish for my sister. I wonder if I should tell Mom I don’t like parsley either. I decide I haven’t earned the right to change her dishes. Not yet.
“Because of the back rent?” I study Mom’s eyes. “What were they talking about out there?”
Mom hesitates. I wish she’d just tell me, now that I’m here. I want to know every detail of our life. The real details, not just the version she writes in letters.
“During the pandemic, times were hard,” Mom says. “A lot of people lost their jobs, including me.”
“Mom used to paint nails!” Millie declares.
At least that part about Mom working in a salon was true from the letters. But I’m sad to hear Mom lost her job.
“I was lucky enough to get a job at the only Chinese nail salon in Winfield. The owner hired me even though I’m only on your dad’s student visa,” Mom says. Her face falls. “But during the pandemic, the salon went out of business.”
“Can’t you get another job?” I ask her.
“Not without a green card,” Mom says with a sigh. “Which is how I started selling bath bombs online. To pay for the back rent…”
I swallow hard. So we do owe back rent.
“But also to launch my new career,” Mom says emphatically. “As an entrepreneur! Being in charge of my own destiny! And the great thing is, this is something we can do together.”
“I’m Mom’s head of product design,” Millie brags.
I feel a twinge of jealousy that my sister’s beat me to that role. “What about me?” I ask.
“You can be… in charge of issuing receipts or something.”
I make a face. Do I look like a fifty-year-old accountant?
“We’ll figure it out, we only started a few weeks ago! But look!” Mom says, whipping out her phone to show me the Etsy app. “Got ten more orders, just today!”
“But what about what Joe said about the rent relief program?” I ask. I didn’t understand every word, but I distinctly remember hearing the word relief. It made me think of an episode in The Simpsons when Marge Simpson gushed, “What a relief!” when the doctors saved Homer after a cart of bobbleheads fell on top of his head.
