— How could he not know she was an opium smoker? says Lizzy.
Lanlan says because the husband didn’t even meet the wife until they were married, that used to happen a lot in China. Also a lot of people were addicted to opium, it wasn’t just a few, and because the mother was addicted, when the child was born it was addicted too.
LAN/—
Baby like that you have to blow the opium smoke on it, otherwise the baby will die. You can blow less smoke every day so the baby can get rid of the addiction, but you must go slowly, slowly. So she is try to go slowly, slowly, but when the baby is one month old there is a big big party to celebrate, because he is a boy. Here come many many visitors. Mother try to blow smoke on the baby, but there are so many visitors she cannot take the baby away so often. And so not enough smoke, and the baby die.
LIZZY /
— Wow, I said.
— What exactly is opium, anyway? said Wendy.
— A kind of drug, said Lanlan. Kind of like what Lizzy smoke.
— Weed, I said, is completely different. And at least I’m not doing Ecstasy or raiding my kid brother’s Ritalin like some people.
— Drug is drug, said Lanlan. You should stop. Period.
WENDY /
She says it in that soft Lanlan voice, as if she is telling Lizzy what color shirt she has on.
— You’re as bad as my parents, says Lizzy.
But she says it in a soft voice too, as if she knows her shirt is black, that’s just what color it is. Anyway, she says, she only does a little, to be social, she’s not like her stoner friend Xanadu.
LIZZY /
Lanlan said I shouldn’t sleep with Russell either, or he would never marry me. But I told her if I didn’t, he wouldn’t even be my boyfriend. I told that, in fact, I’m lucky. In fact, some people sleep with guys and don’t even get to be their girlfriends. They’re just ‘friends with benefits’—that’s what the guys call them.
— Anyway, I don’t care about getting married, I said.
But she said I should care, and one day would care.
— You will see, she said. Getting married is very important.
— But you’re not married, I said. Right? You never got married.
— That is why I know what is important, she said. I have that experience.
WENDY /
We love the strange stories even though they’re sad, they’re kind of like those opera videos Lanlan used to watch, except that these don’t make her cry, in fact she doesn’t even look upset. She just tells them in this plain old way. Lizzy likes them because they’re real, she says they’re not all dripping with syrup like the stories Mom tells.
LIZZY /
You had to watch those farm stories—too many, and your cheeks turned pink.
WENDY /
Lanlan thinks we have too many stories, we should
talk something nice
instead. But if she says that Lizzy gets almost as mad at her as she does at Mom.
— Come on, tell us a strange story, she says.
And after a while, if Lizzy goes on long enough, Lanlan will tell another story. She has this stool she sits on, it’s this stool me and Lizzy used to stand on to brush our teeth when we were little. She sits up on it while we sit at her feet, and she likes that. She likes us screeching when her stories are scary and groaning when they’re gross.
LAN /
My old
ayi
used to tell me these stories all the time, when I was little.
One day the story is about a baby girl.
—That baby, when she was born, her father not happy. Her father wanted a baby boy, have two girls already. So he take that baby, and he hold her by the feet like a chicken. Then he swing her and just like that, smash her against wall. And of course that baby die.
WENDY /
— He smashed it against the wall? I say.
— And the baby died? says Lizzy, picking at the carpet.
— Of all things, says Lanlan.
Nobody says anything for a long time.
— That one is too gross, says Lizzy finally.
— Too gross, agrees Lanlan. Of course, that kind of thing happen in the countryside. How about next time I tell a story, not so strange?
— Okay, we say.
But the next time Lizzy asks for a strange story just the same.
BLONDIE /
I would talk to Carnegie. Carnegie would talk to Lan. Lan would promise to stop. But a week or so later, the girls would report back with another charming tale.
The new stories were mostly about the Cultural Revolution. It was as if they were done with the baby horror unit, and now were doing this one.
— Last night we heard how the Red Guards made this guy stand for hours and hours in front of thousands of people, with a big tall dunce’s cap on, said Lizzy. It was like this rally. And then after he confessed to everything, they killed him anyway.
And: — Last night we heard how Lanlan’s father got killed. She said they slit his throat and then threw him out the window to make it look like he committed suicide. But he didn’t commit suicide. She knows because they killed him right in front of her, she saw it happen. She was a witness. In fact, they had to tie her to a chair to keep her from attacking the people who did it. They tied her to a chair and left her in front of a window, so she could see her father’s body lying down there on the ground in the courtyard, with nothing to even cover it. Only someone did cover it, finally, with a straw mat. No one was allowed to move it, but someone did cover it, she never knew who. Can you imagine?
What to say?
— No, I said. I can’t imagine. No.
— That happened to Lanlan, said Lizzy. To Lanlan. It really happened.
— Poor Lan, I said. I am so sorry. Poor Lan.
— And that’s the real truth, said Lizzy. People suffer, it’s just not something we like to talk about in our comfortable American suburb.
WENDY /
We listen and listen to Lanlan, the person who doesn’t listen is Bailey, in fact everybody has to listen to him. Like when he wakes up Bailey wants to be carried downstairs with his blankie and his animals, he won’t walk down the stairs and he gets really mad if anyone puts him down, even if it’s because one of the animals fell, which happens all the time, seeing as how there are so many of them. Like Big Pooh, and Medium Pooh, and Little Pooh, and Piglet, and Tigger, and sometimes Baby Beluga. Then he decides what to have for breakfast, like maybe a waffle that he wants cut up into pieces, but Lanlan can’t just cut it right up into pieces. Not right away. She has to wait until he tells her to, otherwise he throws a big fit. Or if she puts the wrong thing on the waffle, like raspberry jam instead of blueberry, he throws a fit. Then he decides what to have to drink, orange juice or milk, and which cup to have it in. Lanlan holds up all the cups.
— This one? This one? Blue one? Yellow one?
Of course he wants the one that’s in the dishwasher, so Lanlan has to get that out, and wash it, and bring it over with the juice if that’s what he pointed to. If she opens the carton before he points to it he has a fit, and if she pours the juice before he points to it he has a fit, and sometimes he wants to put the sippy-cup cap on himself, which of course he can’t, so then he spills the juice and has a fit.
It’s like this really terrible computer game.
Sometimes Lanlan doesn’t mind. Sometimes she just says, A child cannot understand things like a grown-up. Or else she just shrugs and says in Chinese,
Little Yellow Hair.
And then we all sigh and say,
Xiao Huang Mao
and feel better.
But one morning he doesn’t want the cup he had before or the blue cup or the yellow cup or the Tigger cup, he wants the dog-and-fire-truck cup that’s out in the car. Or that’s what we guess at least seeing as how he doesn’t want any of the other cups. So Lanlan has to put on her coat and go outside while I go to the bathroom, and when she comes back Mom is in the kitchen wanting to know why Lanlan left Bailey alone. And when Lanlan says because Bailey wanted the cup with the dog and the fire truck, Mom says Lanlan has to learn to say no to him.
— That’s what love is, Mom says. Doing the best thing for the child, not just the thing that will make the child love you.
Says Lanlan then: — If you want me say no, I say no.
And she does. When Bailey wants this, wants that, she says:
— Your mother said no. You cannot have it, no.
So there are fits all the time now.
One day he is throwing a fit because he doesn’t want his dirty diaper changed, and finally she holds him over the toilet and says: — In China, no diaper. In China, parents hold baby and baby goes
xuxu, eheh,
how about you? Just because you have yellow hair, you think you are better than those other babies? Yellow hair, black hair, make no difference, you understand me?
Za zhong,
she calls him. Meaning soup du jour, like Lizzy.
Then she shakes him. And he is so scared he cries even more and right then Mom walks in.
It’s just lucky Mom didn’t see the shake, even so she’s really mad.
— We don’t talk like that in this house, she says. Do you hear me?
But the way she says it, mad like that, she’s even scarier than Lanlan, who at least didn’t yell.
BLONDIE /
He didn’t come to me. He clung to Lan and would not come to me.
And the next day, I understood why.
LAN /
If Blondie would let someone sleep with the baby, he wouldn’t be so fussy. He wouldn’t act so spoiled. I told her that one day. But Blondie believed Bailey should be independent, and sleep by himself. Independent! A baby! Sometimes when I looked at Bailey, I could feel how lonely he was. I could feel how small he was too, much too small to sleep by himself. Lately they put him in a
big-boy bed
because he was climbing out of his crib. They thought that was dangerous. But that bed! I felt so sorry for him. I could feel how it was too big for just him and his blankie. Too big and too cold. No wonder he never wanted to go to sleep. Sometimes I lay down with him to help him fall asleep. Of course he loved it. And sometimes I fell asleep too, it was only natural.
BLONDIE /
— Get up! I said when I found them. — Get up. Get up!
I had expected to have to unsettle a couple in bed one day, but honestly had expected it to be Lizzy and Dreaded Dreadlocks.
— Get up! Get up!
CARNEGIE /
What was the matter with their napping together? I failed to see the crime in this.
— She already has the girls, she cannot have Bailey too, said Blondie. Bailey who she does not even love. Yellow Hair, she calls him. Yellow Hair! What kind of way is that to talk? Even the girls call him Yellow Hair sometimes. And when I say, We don’t talk that way in this family, guess what they say? But Daddy calls you Blondie.
— How egregious.
— I want my home back, she went on. Where this is my house, and these are my children, I get to decide what the rules are. I get to decide who sleeps with who.
— And I? Do I get to decide too?
— I want my home back.
— Just asking, I said.
— Do you understand me? Carnegie?
I allowed silence its eloquence.
She glowered in reply, the corners of her mouth drawn tight, the asterisk on her nose much in evidence. I had never seen her eyes so hard. The house was perfectly still; the air around her seemed to be crystallizing.
Finally I said: — You want your home back.
And: — I beg your patience.
And with that I took her hand and walked her to my office, where I sat her down in my infinitely adjustable chair and swiveled her toward my computer. Together we e-mailed our infamous Hong Kong relative. In the subject window we wrote: Returning Lan Now.
The reply read:
Your mother’s mind was clear as a bell when she wrote the will. I have no choice but to honor her dying wishes. She wrote years, plural. In my mind that means at least two.
— Please, I begged Blondie then.
— Does she even want to stay? Blondie asked.
LAN /
A good question, which no one did ask me.
CARNEGIE /
— Only twelve more lousy months, I said. Just let her live here; we can find someone else to do the child care. We can even ask Lizzy to do some. Isn’t Lizzy old enough?
— Lizzy! said Blondie.
WENDY /
— Think if there was a sinking ship and only one life ring, says Lizzy. Who would you throw it to, Lanlan or Mom?
— To both of them, I say. They could share.
— But say they were on different sides of the boat, so you had to choose.
— Dad would not choose Lanlan, I say. He would definitely choose Mom. And so would I, I would throw the life ring to Mom and then jump in to go save Lanlan.
— What if you couldn’t save Lanlan?
Lizzy is doing her hair while we talk, making these two little high pigtails, like rocket engines.
— I would still try, I say.
— Well, Dad would try too, and that’s why Mom is mad.
— But wouldn’t she try, if she was on the ship?
— It’s one thing for her to try, and another thing for Dad.
— Why?
— Because she’s jealous, says Lizzy, looking at me and, before I even ask her, starting to do my hair too. — That’s what I’m trying to explain to you.
CARNEGIE /
I strolled over to Lan’s apartment one Saturday afternoon; the refrigerator was reportedly making noise. She was not home. I thought to come back later, but then—seizing this golden opportunity to avoid her—I let myself in.
As I had not been in her apartment for a while, and had in any case rarely ventured past the kitchen, I was startled to stand in her space and realize how much it had come to resemble my mother’s. Recall: she had started out with my mother’s massive furniture. But over time, other things of my mother’s had been ferreted out of the attic for Lan as well. For example, my mother’s bedding. Come last winter, we had liberated my mother’s quilt from its storage box; also my mother’s blankets. No one wanted to see these things go to waste. While rummaging around, we came upon my mother’s red corduroy reading pillow too, with its stuffed arms and pockets.