Girl Overboard (14 page)

“Look,” Age says heavily, “the only way things are going to work out with me and Natalia this time is if you and I—”

“Okay,” I interrupt. “I get it. She can’t handle that we’re friends.”

“Look at it from her perspective. You’ve got everything. There are nothing but open doors for you.”

“What?” The word explodes out of me.

But before my disbelief can gather momentum and build to anger, Age cuts me off neatly: “If you want something badly enough, you’ll find the way, Syrah. You’ve got the means to do whatever, whenever.”

“Right.” I think about how there’s no one on the staff back home who I can trust enough to drive me to Whistler without tattling to my parents.

“For all your talk about being locked inside The House of Cheng, have you ever thought that you’re the one locking everybody else out?”

“That’s so not true.”

“Oh, yeah, so when were you going to tell me about Hong Kong? It was in Friday’s paper, Syrah. All I’m saying is—” He breaks off and sighs. “All I’m saying is, I’m tired of never being your front-door friend. That’s all I’m saying.”

A
fter school a few
days later, I dump my backpack in the mudroom, nod at one of the groundskeepers through the bank of windows, and try to ignore the feeling that I’ve misplaced something. Say, my entire heart. And now, without Bao-mu bustling about, clucking over my day, force-feeding me some Chinese dish that she whipped up (never mind that Lena prepares a low-fat, low-carb, low-calorie snack for me per Mama’s instructions), I can’t get rid of Age’s words still ringing in my head with the perfect pitch of truth.

I rush upstairs to finish packing Bao-mu’s suite, but when I get there, her sitting room is empty. Everything, and I mean, everything, is gone—furniture, artwork, pictures. I stride into her bedroom. Even the macaroni necklace I made for her in preschool, which she displayed next to her bed, is gone. Fifteen years of being with our family, with me, vanish as though she was never here.

Packing up for Bao-mu, the one thing I could do for her, wanted to do, is no longer necessary. Disappointed and feeling about as useful as the one stray dust bunny on the hardwood floor where her sofa used to be, I shuffle out of the suite, my footsteps loud with nothing to muffle the sound. Down the hall, I spot a note hanging like a public notice in the middle of my door. Great, maybe Mama’s announcing that I’m about to be evacuated without warning, too.

Mama’s spiky handwriting reads:
Syrah: The Fujimoros canceled tonight. We need you to fill the table. See you after my pedicure. Mama.

When I rip off the note, I see the invitation to a black-tie event paper-clipped underneath. My parents have been gone since the family meeting on Saturday, virtually an entire week, and seeing me ranks lower than toenails on Mama’s to-do list.

I fling open my bedroom door and slam it closed. In the middle of my room, I scream, “I don’t want to go!”

No one hears me, not the house manager nor Mama’s personal assistant, who are no doubt in a shopping-organizing-errand-running tizzy now that The Empress is back home.

The last thing I want to do tonight is truss myself in a girdle, hobble around in heels, and smile until my cheeks go into spasms. I kick my antique bed, the one that makes me feel caged with its carved canopy and three walls, immediately feeling guilty. Besides, now my toes throb inside my scuffed-up sneakers, the ones Mama hates because they make me look like a poor waif.

Funny, isn’t it, because a waif is a hungry-thin girl, not a hungry-fat one like me.

If I can’t be thin, I can at least feel thinner. That is The Syrah Cheng Way, after all. So after I check my messages—no RhamiWare, and naturally, no Age, I run to Mama’s pavilion, not her office on the first floor, but her workout studio on the second. Mirrors span the entire light-filled space. Why, may I ask, would anyone want a 360-degree view of their butt, even if Mama has the cutest one on the Pacific Rim? Her scientifically calibrated scale, the one she has serviced once a quarter, dominates the front corner of the studio. I avoid it since according to my scale this morning, I’ve regained one of the two pounds I’ve lost in the last week. On the opposite side of the room is Mama’s Reformer, the medieval-looking Pilates device she uses to stretch herself into a lean, mean shopping machine.

For forty-five minutes, I run on the treadmill. The first four miles are easy enough, mostly because I keep thinking about Bao-mu’s empty room and how much I wish she were here so I could talk to her about Age. As I approach mile five, the front of my knee starts aching.

So I hop off the treadmill and lunge down the room, gripping fifteen-pound weights in my hands. My knee wobbles, my balance off. What I wouldn’t give for that false sense of security of a custom brace. As I work hard at keeping my abs tight, chest upright the way my physical therapist taught me, I make three circuits around the room when I wonder if that’s what Age was getting at. That he was my crutch, only good enough to squire me when I needed him. But that’s not true. Or is it?

On my sixth circuit around the room, my legs can’t take a single squat more and I don’t want to face the fact that I never ask Age over when my parents are around. As much as I tell myself it’s because I don’t want Mama to make some derogatory remark about him or Baba to interrogate him about his future plans, I wonder if it’s because I don’t have the guts to stand up for Age. I pit-stop at the water cooler. As I inhale cup number three as if that will wash away my guilt, I spot a floral notebook on the floor.

Partly out of curiosity and mostly out of procrastination because who, truly, likes doing lunges, I open the planner.

There’s no doubt whose this is. Like a sales ledger, Mama has tracked her daily workouts in red ink: one hour treadmill (600 cal.), half hour weights (300 cal.), forty-five minutes Pilates (300 cal.).

This is no journal to pour out thoughts, make sense of feelings, or, in my case, rewrite history. It’s a personal profit-and-loss statement where being calorie-poor and exercise-rich is the goal. Sickened because I now have physical evidence that what I eat at breakfast is more than Mama’s entire caloric input for a day, I lunge away from her journal, adding bicep curls to intensify my workout. That’s got to be worth another ten calories.

Halfway across the room, I can’t help it.
Don’t do it! Don’t do it!
I tell myself, even as I stop to examine my reflection. My right thigh, the one used to harvest hamstring muscle for a new knee ligament, is still thinner than my left. Instead of bulking it up, I wonder how I can lose the fat on my good leg, make it atrophy, too. I turn to my side and press at the bulge of my stomach, wishing that it were as flat as Mama’s. That greenish-yellow bruise still flowering on my shoulder? It’s the least of my worries.

I add another fifteen minutes on the elliptical machine, pumping my arms hard, watching my calories add up on the digital board. But no matter how hard and long I go, I can’t run away from Age’s words and the image of him sneaking into my
hsuan,
never using the front door.

T
he last person I
expect to see in my closet, shoving aside hanger after hanger with the swift precision of a professional shopper, is my mother. With her hair swept up in a loose French knot, her jawbones jut out, even more knifelike than normal. Her eyes rake me from my sweaty head to my sweaty tank top to my sweaty socks, and she smiles more approvingly than when I’m in Prada.

“Hi, Mama. When did you get back?” I ask her, self-consciously tucking a wet tendril behind my ear.

There’s no answering “good to see you, Syrah.” No “D.C. was lonely without you.” And definitely no hug.

Instead, she cups my face and inspects one side after the other like I’m a Tang horse she’s evaluating before acquiring for her collection. “You lost a little weight. Brilliant. We got back a couple of hours ago.” She drops her hands off me to examine her forehead critically in the mirror, her fingers reading imaginary wrinkles like braille. “Can’t you tell? I look horrid.”

“You look great, Mama.”

And she does. Effortlessly elegant and always put-together, four-hour flight or not, Mama is impeccable, fashionable, and breakably thin. The stats in her notebook blink in my head, a scorecard where I am always the loser: She’s three inches taller and ten pounds lighter than I am. As I turn away from my reflection, I catch sight of my bruised shoulder. Casually, while Mama returns to her futile search for my perfect outfit, I hug my arms around myself, hands cupped over my shoulders like epaulets on a jacket.

Mama pushes aside the last hanger and turns to me, frowning. “Honestly, Syrah, where are all your nice things?”

“Right here,” I say, considering my closet packed with clothes from designers whose names I mix up or mangle. I point to one of the short black dresses. “What’s wrong with this one?”

“You wore that to the company party two years ago.”

“I did?”

“Yes.” Mama looks impatiently at me, fashion amnesiac that I am. “People will think we’re too cheap to buy you new clothes.” Her lips thin to the point of disappearing. As if wearing an outfit twice would really hurt the all-important Cheng Family Honor. She sighs, pressing newly manicured fingertips to her temples. “I knew I should have picked you up something from San Francisco, but I just didn’t have time.”

“San Francisco? I thought you were in D.C.”

“We made a quick stop in California this morning.” Crossing her arms, Mama stares at me. “You won’t fit into anything of mine.”

Of course I won’t. A strand of my hair wouldn’t fit into Mama’s size negative four clothes.

Her eyes settle on my hands, still clutching my shoulders. Mama says, “You didn’t get a tattoo while we were in D.C., did you?”

If only the bruise were a tattoo, and not evidence of my disobedience.

Mama pries my fingers off my shoulder and sucks in her breath when she sees the bruise, big as a peony, her favorite flower, the one that represents beauty and wealth.

“How could you do this to me? Tonight of all nights?” she says, her voice growing louder. “What happened?”

I shrug.

“You went snowboarding, didn’t you? After we told you not to anymore.” And before I can stop her, Mama summons Baba as if my bruise is a matter of national security, “Ethan!”

In no time, it’s we three Chengs in my closet.

Baba demands, “What’s wrong?”

“Ethan, Syrah has been snowboarding again,” Mama says.

“I told you snowboarding is dangerous,” Baba says impatiently, like he’s talking to a dog who won’t obey simple commands: sit, stay, shut up. So begins his instant recall of every scary stat about snowboarding: “Snowboarders get in more accidents than any other participant in winter sports. Those accidents are more serious than other sports. Last week, a sixteen-year-old died in Utah going off a cliff. That’s the ninth death this season alone.”

Just this once, couldn’t Baba have an Alzheimer moment? Nothing permanent. Just a temporary glitch in his perfect recall brain.

But data, facts, and numbers are what Baba built his billions on.

“We warned you before your surgery,” he says.

“But—”

“No more snowboarding,” he says, his voice harder.

Ever his backup chorus, Mama chimes in, “We don’t want to see you hurt.”

Something in me snaps. Maybe it’s the latent shock and hurt from seeing Bao-mu’s room emptied out or hearing the truth about what Age thinks of me, but I mutter, “No, it’s just that you don’t want to see me at all.”

Mama gasps like her ears have never heard such insolence. They haven’t, not from me, anyway, the good girl who tries to be perfect to get into everybody’s good graces. Baba’s eyes narrow, because I dared to talk back, dared to show the real me.

As if I’m just one more disposable employee, Baba says harshly, “What will it take for you to learn? Another avalanche? Do you want to be paralyzed for the rest of your life? Die?”

“No, I just—”

Baba takes a step closer to me, his fists curled like he’s barely containing himself from punching some sense into my snow-addled brain.

“Are you so stupid that you would risk your life?” Baba demands, his eyes cold, forgetting that I’m his youngest daughter, the one Grace and Wayne say he spoils.

My resolve withers under this verbal attack. I gulp, the “sorry, sorry” on my lips. God, no wonder Grace and Wayne talk about
surviving
The Ethan Cheng Way, like their childhoods were spent in the war years. I shake my head, unable to stop my tears.

“For what? For fun?” Baba spits out the word as if it’s a disgrace to say. His hand makes a sharp, slashing motion, a guillotine for my dreams. “I didn’t work this hard to support a paraplegic daughter for life. You will not snowboard again. Do you understand me?”

Frozen in place, I nod, acquiescing the way I’ve seen Wayne and Grace do under the force of Ethan Cheng’s will.

“Good.” Baba shifts his eyes to Mama. The snowboard discussion closes, and Baba, all business again, informs Mama calmly, as if nothing has happened, no lambasting, no lectures, “We need to get ready. The dinner starts in an hour.”

“Wear this,” says Mama, yanking a red dress with long sleeves out of the closet, one I’ve never worn before because every time I try it on, I feel like my hips balloon wider than they are. As obvious as I feel in that loud dress, I might as well wear a neon sign on my back, one that flashes
CASH COW! CASH COW!

United arm in arm against me, Mama and Baba leave, and I follow them to my door, dress in my hand. While they disappear down the stairs to their wing, I gaze not at their retreating backs but at Bao-mu’s empty room.

No, you just don’t want to see me at all.
What I said is the truth, I think, as I look at myself in the mirror. I haven’t wanted to see me at all, either.

In the six minutes before our departure time, I check my e-mail inbox, willing Age to instant-message me, but find another message instead. The one from the RhamiWare rep. My hand trembles as I click on the e-mail that holds the key to my snowboarding dreams.