— Ignore them! I said. You have no idea what you’re talking about. And why do you have to talk like everything is my own fault? Plus Monique has nothing to do with it. I’m not, like, from someplace. I’m from America, remember? Whereas she is French or something. She has this accent.
— So she has an accent. You’re beautiful and articulate and courageous. Doesn’t that count for something?
I so hated these questions she asked, not one of which was ever a real question. Like every single one of them led somewhere she wanted to go.
— You completely don’t get anything, I said.
— I guess I don’t, said Mom, moving on to cheese chopping. —But I’m sorry that I don’t. Honestly.
— You are not sorry! You’re sick of me!
— I didn’t mean to upset you, she said, stopping again, but not until she had gotten to the end of that piece of cheese. Which was so typical of her—acting like she cared so much she couldn’t go on, while the cheese all sat there in these perfect cubes. As if I might not notice.
— If you were my real mother, you would understand! If you were my real mother, you wouldn’t be this brick wall! If you were my real mother, you’d be like Lanlan!
WENDY /
That’s when I start to hear her in Chinese.
Ni bu shi wode mama, ni bu shi zhende, ni shi jiade.
— I am your real mother, says Mom, sighing. — And you are my honest-to-god fifteen-year-old.
I can hear a lot of things in Chinese if I want, things Lizzy says and other people too, and sometimes I do that with Elaine and she doesn’t seem as scary. And sometimes I do that with Miss Tobey even though she is trying to be nice.
— She’s a sensitive young lady, and that’s wonderful, says Miss Tobey. We like to see that. And we respect everyone’s feelings and support diversity, but we can’t change the curriculum every time someone feels bad. We have to keep everybody on grade. And now there are state tests too, you can’t believe what we’re expected to do.
BLONDIE /
Lizzy did have those outbursts. By the time the new millennium began, though, she was trying to learn Chinese anyway. And she was not blond anymore. Now she dyed her hair black, so she could look like Lan. Of course, because of the sort of dye she used, her hair came out flat black, like stove paint. It didn’t shine like Lan’s.
WENDY /
Lanlan’s hair is shiny. Like mine, Lanlan says. Lanlan says my hair is naturally shiny too, I just can’t see it.
— I love China, Lizzy says now. China has issues, but America has issues too, and the Chinese economy is growing every day. It’s a shame you can’t say whatever you want in China, but in truth you can say a great deal and at least people don’t get shot on the streets the way they do here.
BLONDIE /
— Oh, really, I said. And what about Tiananmen Square?
— Or at least when they do, they get shot by soldiers and not by just anybody. And at least not in high schools, Lizzy said. They don’t have, like, metal detectors. It happens seldomly.
She went on: — Someday the Chinese are going to stand up again, and then the whole world will shake. The Chinese have five thousand years of history, after all, compared to America, which is only two hundred years old but thinks it can bully everybody.
— Oh, really.
— That’s why America is afraid. Because it knows it is—wait, Lanlan told me. I forget the saying. But it means strong on the outside, while actually weak inside.
— Oh, really.
— On the other hand, there is no place like America, this is the second-greatest country in history. China is the oldest, but America is the most successful today. The CIA controls everything. Everybody has to do what America likes, because if you don’t, the CIA will bomb your embassy.
— Oh, really.
WENDY /
Lanlan says America is very Chinese, really. The Chinese invented everything and now Americans invent everything, China used to be the Middle Kingdom, and now America is the Middle Kingdom, that’s why everyone has to learn English.
— Oh, really, says Mom.
LIZZY /
Russell was thinking about becoming a Communist. In fact he got this Communist tattoo to express his total disgust with capitalism. But Lanlan said no no no, he definitely should not become Communist.
— Have you ever heard of the Cultural Revolution? she said. The Red Guards killed my father.
WENDY /
She’s changing Bailey’s diaper while she talks, which she has to do with him standing up these days because he completely won’t lie down. Also she has to wrap tape around his diaper so he can’t just take it off. Because he loves to take it off.
LIZZY /
— They sent me to the North to the countryside, do you know how cold it is there? said Lanlan. All day long you want to cry. Except you cannot cry, because someone will report you. You do not know who will make a report about you, practically a goat can decide whether you will go home someday or never go home.
LAN /
How to convey the insanity of that era? The blind devotion of the Red Guards, and other people too. How they believed Mao was the sun, bringing us into the day. How people would work for days to buy a Mao badge, even if they had hundreds already. How they pinned them all over their army fatigues. One of my classmates pinned them to the skin of his chest. A neighbor in our courtyard was struggled against by his own daughter for putting a cup of tea down on a newspaper. Because the picture on the front page was a picture of Mao, she said. He failed to respect Mao.
Of course the badges were beautiful, everyone thought that. Even I thought that until the Red Guards killed my father.
It was crazy, and yet in some ways life was better then. People were more equal. You didn’t feel looked down on because you didn’t have a college degree. We had less, but we didn’t feel poor because no one was rich.
LIZZY /
— Even China has market economy now, said Lanlan. Even China is Communist with Chinese characteristics.
— What does that mean? I asked.
— It means no one really believe in Communism anymore, said Lanlan.
— Not even the Communists? Then how can they be Communist?
— Still Communist, she explained. They are Party members.
— You mean they’re phonies? said Russell.
Phonies were a big thing for Russell, because his mother died when he was little, and then he had three stepmothers, all phonies.
WENDY /
So that’s like the thing he and Lizzy agree about most, that mothers come and mothers go.
LIZZY /
If you asked Russell, he’d say the problem is that no one’s honest, no one can say things like,
This is just not my child.
Or,
I can’t love this child as if he were my own because he isn’t.
As for my not feeling like I belonged to this family, he’d say probably I never would, but who would admit it?
Which was, like, so true.
My old boyfriend Derek was really smart, but he never got stuff like that. On the other hand, there was stuff Derek got that Russell didn’t.
I hated having a special problem that other people didn’t get.
WENDY /
— But we know like so many people who are adopted, I say.
— You know all these people, says Lizzy. But I don’t. I’m not like you, adopted from China. I’m plain adopted from nowhere, I’m soup du jour, it’s completely different. Everybody wants to talk about where you’re from. It’s different to possibly be the grandchild of a Japanese soldier, which nobody wants to talk about.
— Japanese soldier? I say. What Japanese soldier?
— Some Japanese soldier.
— Are you sure? Says who?
— Says Lanlan, she says.
BLONDIE /
How to explain about Mama Wong? The way she talked? The way she looked at Lizzy?
— We did wonder such things, I said. And we did indeed decide not to mention them. Because who knew what the truth was? How would we ever know? And what good would come of such talk?
Carnegie, strolling into the kitchen, tossed a cherry tomato up in the air and caught it in his mouth.
— We thought it would only hurt your self-esteem, I went on, glowering at Carnegie. — Please act your age.
— This is worse, sobbed Lizzy. This is way worse. To have people thinking things all along and not saying them.
— We’re talking about whether Lizzy might have some Japanese blood, I told Carnegie. We’re talking about whether she might be the grandchild of, say, a Japanese soldier.
He gulped down his tomato.
— And who says this? he asked. Pray tell?
— Lan, I said. But you know how Mama Wong always . . .
— Your not saying it all this time makes it seem like it must be true! cried Lizzy.
— That may be, said Carnegie. But the fact is, we don’t know, and can’t know, barring a fact-finding mission.
— We were just trying to protect you, I said.
— And so what if it is true, anyway? said Carnegie. What does it matter? Aren’t you still our Lizzy? Growing up here, where, let’s face it, most people can’t tell Chinese from Japanese anyway.
— You lied to me! she cried.
— You know, mixed kids are going to be in the majority before you know it, said Carnegie. It’s going to be such an asset. You’re going to be able to move in all kinds of worlds. And it’s going to be cool; in fact, I was reading about that just the other day. How cool it’s getting to be already.
— It is not cool, she said. Maybe in the city it is, but here, in our town, it is not cool.
— Well, from the city to the suburbs, said Carnegie. Believe you me, ambiguity is in.
— But why did you lie to me? she cried. You lied. You lied.
Wrote Gabriela:
i would definitely say something to lan if i were you. talk about inappropriate! to be telling lizzy stuff like that!
But how to explain what was inappropriate about it?
CARNEGIE /
How was Lan supposed to know we’d carefully never discussed this? Thanks to the boundless love and exquisite tact with which dear Mama Wong broached the subject.
BLONDIE /
In the end, we didn’t say anything. In the end, I chose to focus on improving my relationship with Lan. For while Lan talked to the girls more and more all the time, she barely talked to me. It was strange. And always in English—she always spoke to me in English, though I’d tried, a few times, to speak Chinese.
Wasn’t I a person people talked to?
it’s her inner child,
wrote Gabriela
. it has nothing to do with you. you’re a good egg to try to connect with her, given the situation.
It wasn’t a matter of being good, though. I would have wanted to be friends with anyone living in my house. And I felt sorry for her—fellow pawn of Mama Wong’s that she was.
what a great idea, to try and make common cause!
Lan, though, was not interested in making common cause. Indeed, I could not even get her to talk to me in a regular way. If I asked, Are you hot? Lan would answer, Not too hot. If I asked, Do you have something you need to do? Lan would answer, I can do it now or do it later. If I asked, Would you like to go shopping? Lan would answer, If you are go out shopping, I am happy to accompany you.
— She treats you like her superior, in other words, said Carnegie. Which, dearest, you are. And think how the Chinese write, traditionally: top to bottom. Think how they talk about time, even time runs top to bottom, with events above or below each other. Lan has that ladder-like outlook.
— You’re defending her, I said.
WENDY /
Lanlan knows her way to the video store. She’s surprised we don’t have a DVD player, not that she and her great-aunt did, they didn’t have anything. But in China even their neighbor had one. First he had a VCR, and then he got a DVD player he let her use.
LIZZY /
Never mind that the neighbor was this old geezer who used to paw at her while she watched. I was, like, how could you put up with that? But she said she used to just ignore him. She said probably she should have married him. Probably she shouldn’t have cared he was so short. Of course I asked, like, how short? Which is how we found out that he came up to her shoulder.
WENDY /
She says that in China people have these things called VCDs of every single movie we have here. And not like months later, they get them right away, and for really cheap. But anyway, the VCR is okay, and it is okay it is not Sony.
LAN /
In China, people buy
Sony.
Of course,
Panasonic
is okay too.
WENDY /
Because she hates America, but she loves American movies, and on the VCR she can watch all the same stuff she used to watch in China. Stuff like
Mulan
and
Titanic
and
The Matrix
. And this old stuff too, anything really famous. Like
Gone With the Wind,
she watches that a million times, even though she doesn’t like it when Clark Gable says, Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
— That is one hundred percent rude, she says.
And how terrible that Scarlett O’Hara! Talk about spiritual pollution!
But then she rewinds the tape and watches it again. She loves the remote control, when she first got it she spent hours just playing with it. Practicing, sort of. It’s like the one thing she won’t let Bailey touch.
LAN /
In China, I used to see people with calculators, with mobile phones, with electronic dictionaries. I loved to watch their thumbs fly. I always wanted my thumbs to fly like that too.
WENDY /
Sometimes she watches this guy Charlie Chaplin, she really likes Charlie Chaplin. And if she could get them, she would watch these movies her father used to talk about, stuff like
Waterloo Bridge
and
An Affair to Remember.
She tells us how much she’d like to see them as if everybody wants to see stuff their father used to see, while Lizzy and me are like, wow. Who knows if Dad even ever watched movies when he was young.