New From Here, page 20
“What?” I ask.
“I can babysit!” Bowen beams.
I look over at my sister. He’s kidding, right?
To my disbelief, Mom takes Bowen’s phone and reads from the website, actually considering this possibility. “Wow, you’re right.” She turns to me and Lea. “Are you two okay with that?”
Bowen beats me to answering. “It’ll be great! I can call Uber to pick us up from school and we can Uber home from track practice!” he suggests. “And Uber Eats for dinner!”
“That’s a lot of Ubers,” Lea mutters. I can tell she’s debating whether to pull a you can’t go on Mom or negotiate for more TV time. She goes for the TV time.
“I’m going to need at least two hours of Netflix tonight,” she tells Bowen.
“Fine,” Bowen agrees.
“And chocolate chip ice cream with sprinkles,” she adds.
“Done!” Bowen says. “Mom got some the other day from the store!”
“Before dinner.”
“Really?” he asks Lea, frowning.
“And I’m going to require a proper tuck-in, with snuggles. One for each of my stuffed animals, too.”
“Now you’re just pushing it!”
Once all of Lea’s terms and conditions are settled, Mom turns to me. She looks in my eyes to ask if I’m honestly okay with the arrangement.
I hesitate, torn between answering truthfully and not wanting to be the reason Mom can’t get her job—again. So I nod.
Bowen grabs Mom’s suitcase and wheels it to the car as we get our backpacks. “Go get ’em, lioness. We’ve got this!”
Chapter 70
Mom steps on the gas on the way to school, reminding us to listen to our brother. “Bowen’s in charge now.”
“Hear that?” Bowen grins.
Great. Now he’s going to lord his new status over us. He probably gave Maggie pink eye. But maybe he doesn’t have to be in charge in charge.
“Hey, what if we set up Dad in the living room like on virtual cleaning nights and he can watch us?” I suggest. Lea beams at the idea; she likes it too!
“Oh no, you can’t Skype with Dad,” Mom says, stepping on the brakes. The car jerks to a stop.
“Why not?”
“Because if he knows I left you three alone, he’d kill me! He can’t ever know about this,” Mom says.
Bowen warns me with his index finger. “That means you, Knox!”
“But what if he calls??” I ask, suddenly panicking. I don’t like this whole lying-to-Dad thing.
“Hello, have you not heard of decline call?” Bowen asks.
For a whole day? I shake my head. No way. I can’t do that. It’s one thing to have Mom so far away, but to have to ghost Dad as well?
But it’s too late to change course. As Mom pulls into the parking lot of our elementary school and kisses us goodbye, I look at the desperation in her eyes and how badly she needs this. How badly we need this.
It’s only one day. What can possibly happen?
I hug my mom back with all my might and wish her good luck on her interview, repeating everything she said to me when we flew from Hong Kong. “Don’t touch anything on the flight. Disinfect everything. Don’t go number two on the airplane!”
She repeats back with a wink, “Don’t worry, I never go number two on the plane.”
I smile.
“Bye, Mom,” I tell her. “Good luck!”
Before she pulls away, I almost forget. I flex my arm up high in the air.
“Power of Mom!” I shout to her.
Mom mouths, Love you, and flexes her arm back at me. As I watch her drive out of the parking lot, I’m left with a hole in my heart so big, it’s gonna take a gallon of chocolate sprinkles to fill it. Bowen better have enough.
Chapter 71
After school, Bowen picks us up in an Uber out front by the flag, right where he said he would. I look up from reading Nextdoor. I’ve been on it all day. Now that I’m more aware and on the lookout, I can’t believe the number of racist posts on that thing! And not just about Asian Americans, but about Latinx and Black neighbors too! Many of them were coming from the same guy, CJ Axel.
“This CJ Axel guy, he’s out of control!” I tell my brother, trying to show him some of the posts. In one post, he called the cops on a Black kid for walking around the neighborhood. That’s it—just walking around!
“Show me later. Hurry up and get in!” Bowen orders, scooting over so we can all sit in the back. “I’m going to miss track!”
Lea and I scramble inside and Bowen changes the location in the app back to the middle school. Then he lowers his voice and says in Mandarin, “It was so hard to get an Uber. They just wouldn’t pick me up.”
I look at him, confused. Why’s he speaking to me in Mandarin? “What are you talking about?” I ask.
“The drivers!” he replies.
“Were you using Mom’s account?”
Bowen nods. “I had to finally change Mom’s last name from Wei-Evans to just Evans and change her profile picture.” He shows me a pic of some blond lady.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“Someone I found off the internet.”
“Are you serious?” I can’t believe our mom hasn’t even been gone twenty-four hours and Bowen’s already replaced her with an Old Navy model.
The driver hears us speaking Mandarin and calls out, “Hey, are you guys from China?”
We immediately stop talking. My mind flashes to the picture of the ice cream shop in Rome that CJ Axel put up.
“No! We just… we’re learning Mandarin in school,” Bowen quickly says.
I sit as still as I can, worried for a second that the driver might kick us out, like the other Uber driver did when we first arrived, but thankfully, he keeps driving.
For the next five minutes, Bowen, Lea, and I don’t say another word. My leg jiggles nervously. It makes me think of what Bowen said about having to reject Lao Lao’s calls in Hong Kong. When can we finally stop hiding who we are?
We arrive at the middle school and Bowen grabs his backpack and track stuff—he can’t get out of the Uber fast enough. My sister and I get out but decide to walk instead of run after him.
“Where do you think Mom is right now?” Lea asks, gazing up at the sky as we walk toward the field.
“Probably somewhere over Chicago,” I guess.
“I miss her,” Lea says. She kicks at the grass under our feet. “It’s weird being orphans.”
I stop walking and turn to my sister. “We’re not orphans.” I realize that as much as I’m struggling inside, I have to make my little sister feel better. “Nothing’s going to happen to Mom. She’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll be here. And we have chocolate-sprinkled ice cream!”
That gets a smile out of Lea. She starts coming up with all types of ice cream sundae combinations as we walk.
“We can make a potato chip sundae!”
I shake my head. “No way, that’s not a sundae.”
“Sure it is! It’s salty and crunchy on top and creamy and sweet underneath! That is totally a sundae!” she says. “Or how about a french fry sundae?”
I laugh. “What is it with you?”
Our laughter is cut off by Bowen’s loud voice as he shouts to his track mates, “I did not!” I look up and see Coach Carter, hunched over, coughing, as he tries to separate the kids.
“Yes, you did!” one of the other kids shouts back, pointing to Coach Carter. “I saw him give you a water bottle! You got Coach sick. I’ll bet you’re the one who brought it over to the Bay Area!”
I gasp. Bowen’s face turns fiery red. I turn to Lea, who covers her ears, looking like she’s about to cry. I lead her away toward one of the soccer goals, trying to distract her with a soccer drill. Still, we can hear Bowen and his track mates loud and clear.
“I didn’t give it to him!” Bowen says. “I don’t have it! Just because I’m Chinese—”
“Well, how’d he get sick then?” the other kids ask as Coach Carter continues coughing and pushing on his chest to stop. All the kids look over at their coach, concerned.
I leave Lea doing free kicks and run over to Bowen.
“Hey! That’s my brother!” I interrupt. “Stop it!”
The other track kids turn to look at me. One kid who’s on the ground tying his shoelaces looks up. I should have said it last week, but I’m going to say it now.
“Just because we’re Chinese doesn’t mean we have the virus! The only thing my brother brought over was his superfast legs, which are gonna beat all of you on the track!”
Coach Carter walks over and starts telling the other kids to cut it out, but his words are swallowed up by another bout of heavy coughing. As he blows the whistle, the other track kids get into position. I watch as my brother’s long legs kick the turf. There’s fire in his every step as he stares straight ahead.
Chapter 72
Bowen doesn’t say anything about what happened at the track on the ride home. He just stares at the Uber app, watching the car zigzag through the city even though we all know the route by heart.
When we get back, there’s a big box from Dad waiting for us! I run over and plop on the ground, trying to open it with my hands.
“It must be all our stuff!” I exclaim. “Finally!”
Bowen helps me drag the box inside. We crowd around the box in the living room. It feels like Christmas morning. Lea even draws a picture of a little tree and puts it up next to the box.
Bowen opens the box with scissors and pulls out the first item—Lea’s stuffed bunny Bugsy. There’s a collective “awww.” Bugsy used to be Bowen’s bunny, then it was mine, and finally Lea’s. He’s helped all three of us through some tough times, like the time I fell on the glass coffee table and had to get stitches. Or the time Lea had the chicken pox.
We take turns pulling out pieces from our childhood. Bowen thrusts his badminton racket in the air and I smile, thinking of the times we used to play down at the Sheung Wan Sports Center. Even though we both moved on to other sports, it was still fun taking the bus with Bowen every Sunday to go and hit birdies when we were little.
I pull out my special lockbox and am delighted to discover it’s still locked! Phew! I take it upstairs and hide it in Mom’s closet. I put in my secret passcode and open it just a peek to make sure all my red packets are still inside. They are. The lai sees are from all the big Chinese New Year dinners we had with my grandparents, before the pandemic started.
Bowen’s pulling out Mom’s work clothes, which Dad also sent, and a pair of track shoes Dad put inside, when I walk back downstairs. “Did those track kids ever apologize?” I ask my brother.
He puts the shoes down. He mutters from behind his badminton racket, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Instead he gathers up all the wrapping paper and starts breaking down the box. I look inside one last time, to make sure that the last missing piece of my childhood isn’t in there.
“Whatcha looking for?” Lea asks.
But sadly, Dad’s not in the box.
As Bowen recycles the package, I fight the urge to call Dad. But I remember what Mom said.
“So what do we do now?” I ask, walking back to the staircase and sitting down.
The house is so still, you can hear the soft murmur of the refrigerator making ice. I never thought I’d say this, but I miss the sound of Mom nagging us to do our homework.
Lea claps her hands. “TV time!”
Chapter 73
As Lea searches Netflix and Bowen rummages through the fridge looking for things to cook for dinner (he insists it’s cheaper than ordering out), I google How to respond to racist comments.
According to Google, when you hear a racist comment directed at someone, you should ICEE.
Wait, what? We should get an ICEE from 7-Eleven?
But as it turns out, that’s not what the website means. ICEE stands for interrupt, correct, educate, and echo. Anytime someone says something intolerant, we should interrupt them, correct the thing they are saying, educate them on why it’s wrong, and echo statements of support for the victim.
The echo part makes a lot of sense. Things have gotten so much better since me and Christopher started echoing each other. Now, when we stand up to Tyler, our voices carry the power of two. I think of what happened today on the track, glad I was able to be there to echo my brother. I smile and close my laptop and walk over to the kitchen.
“Can I help?” I ask Bowen as he pulls out old jars of pasta sauce and dumps them into the pot. I guess he’s making spaghetti.
I reach for a loaf of french bread. “I’ll make the garlic bread,” I tell Bowen.
“Do you know how?” he asks with a skeptical tilt of his eyebrow.
“ ’Course! I’ve seen Dad do it a million times!” We work side by side. While I dice up the garlic, Bowen slices up mushrooms, carrots, onions, parsley, tomatoes, avocado, and whatever else he can find. He says it’s all the same; it’ll only make the sauce thicker and better.
Bowen turns on the news in the kitchen as he chops.
“Health officials in Contra Costa County today confirmed the first locally transmitted case of coronavirus,” the newscaster says.
I nearly cut my finger with the knife when I hear that.
“Contra Costa County, that’s here!” I say. The virus is officially here!
I reach for the house phone to call Mom, but Bowen grabs it and puts it back. “What are you doing?”
“Calling Mom!”
“We can’t call her! She has to focus on her interview!” he says.
I put my garlicky fingers to my mouth, gulping at all the images of doctors in hazmat suits on TV. To think we came all the way over here, left our home and our dad to try to get away from this thing. And now it’s here and there’s no one to protect us, not either of our parents!
“I’m scared, gege…,” I tell my brother.
Bowen stops stirring and puts his tomato hands on my arms. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s just one case.”
“You guys keep saying that,” I say, shaking my head. “But it’s not just one case. It’s a whole bunch of cases now!” I pick up the slippery garlic in my hand and squeeze it, wishing Mom were here. “Mom shouldn’t have gone!”
“Well, it’s too late. She’s already there. Nothing good can happen if we call her. You’ll just ruin her interview and she’ll still not be here!”
I frown at Bowen. I hate it when he gets all practical on me. Can’t he just say, You still have me. I’ll protect us ? That’s all I really want to hear.
Instead, he continues chopping and slicing. So I say the words for him in my mind as I gaze down at the spaghetti pot. Maybe the words are all in there. All finely diced up along with the olives.
Chapter 74
Bowen’s everything spaghetti ends up tasting pretty good, I have to say. The pasta sauce is like a mini scavenger hunt: you never know what you’re going to get. As I search around for a carrot, Bowen pours milk in our glasses, just like Dad used to do.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” I jump up from the table and serve up the toasted garlic bread I made.
Lea takes a piece of garlic bread gleefully as she tells us about her upcoming field trip. They’re going to go to the river to release the baby trout they’ve been raising.
“Wow, that’s cool!” I say to my sister. I’m glad she’s having a better time at school.
“How about you?” Lea looks curiously at Bowen. “Those kids at track… are they in the same class as you?”
Bowen shakes his head, but I can tell what happened today is still bothering him. I take out my iPad and show him the racist posts that CJ Axel guy has been writing on Nextdoor about people of color.
“That’s horrifying!” Bowen says. “I hope you reported him.”
“I did! Five times!”
“Good.”
I tap on my browser and pull up the site on ICEE.
“See, it says here when people are being racist, you have to interrupt and correct. That’s what I did today,” I say, smiling proudly at my big brother.
But instead of smiling back, Bowen just shrugs. “You don’t have to. Sometimes it’s better just to ignore them.”
I furrow my eyebrows. “But you just said to report CJ Axel!”
“Yeah, but that’s different.”
“How’s it different?” I ask.
“That’s online,” he says. “This is real life.”
“So?”
“So I have to keep training with those kids!” he says. “I don’t want to make it a thing !”
Oh, and ignoring racist remarks is so much better? I shake my head at him. I can’t believe I’m the one he’s mad at. “I was standing up for you!” I say, throwing my fork down.
“Well, I wish you hadn’t,” he mutters as he gets up and dumps the rest of his garlic bread in the sink uneaten. I stare at all that wonderful bread, not sure what hurts more—him wasting my bread or wasting my words.
Lea holds up a snow pea from her sauce, in a desperate attempt to keep the peace. “Look, I’m eating snow peas!” she cries, popping one into her mouth.
But neither Bowen nor I say anything. I get up with my own plate and dump my everything spaghetti in the sink too. Even though I’m still hungry. I don’t care what my brother says. It was absolutely the right thing to do.
Chapter 75
After dinner, Lea shovels gobs of her chocolate-sprinkled ice cream into her mouth while watching Turbo. Turbo used to be one of me and Bowen’s favorite rituals. We’d rewatch all the scenes of snail brotherly love when we were little. It was our thing. I wonder when it became just a movie to Bowen.
I tell myself maybe it’s okay that we don’t get along. I think about the Taradippin brothers. Then I remind myself there are other options besides hating each other and starting an evil empire together.
