twenty-eight
greasy breakfast sandwich wrapped in foil and a teetering cup of coffee that I carefully set down in the empty seat next to
me so it wouldn’t spill. The sun was just starting to come up.
My flight was boarding at eight.
I had promised my parents I would call them before I got on the plane. I debated whether to dial Mama’s phone or Baba’s. I
decided to call my father.
He picked up after two rings. Mama was at his side. It must have been fairly late. They were at the hospital together.
“At the airport?” Mama asked anxiously without introduction.
“Yes. Checked in. It should be on time. Is everything okay there?”
“Everything is the same. Not better, not worse. We will be leaving for the night soon.” Baba repositioned the phone in his hand. “Gu Ma will come pick you up at the airport tomorrow. You can come straight here if you want, although maybe you will be tired.”
“I’ll sleep on the plane.”
“Good. You should get some rest. Everyone is very excited to see you. Nai Nai is asking for you.”
“And Sam?”
He looked uncomfortable. Baba had always been so certain of everything. Confident of all his decisions. For once, he seemed
unsure.
“She still doesn’t know,” I said. I wasn’t asking. I was mainly confirming what I would be dealing with.
“She fades in and out,” he replied by way of explanation. “It is hard to get her to concentrate on a single thing. It’s not—
She will be gone soon.”
“Right.” I still couldn’t quite swallow how wrong it seemed, but then, everyone had taken it out of my hands. I hadn’t talked
to Nai Nai without supervision in a year. Baba was saying that it wouldn’t be long before our choices wouldn’t matter, one
way or another.
We lapsed into silence. Mama’s eyes connected with mine nervously.
“Your mother told me about what you decided for next year.”
I waited, wondering whether he was going to yell at me or tell me I’d thrown everything away in one singular moment of weakness.
Under his scintillating gaze, it was hard not to feel like I’d messed up.
“It could be good,” he said.
I blinked, barely able to breathe.
Baba was one of those old-school fathers, the never-cry, chin-up, don’t-show-emotion kind. Whenever something underneath was
threatening, he’d cloak it through a rough cough or an artful face wipe. But he wasn’t doing that. His lower lip was practically
quivering. It hurt to see him like that, but I couldn’t look away.
“I’m sorry you had to wait until afterward to tell us. We should have talked about it before.”
A bubble of protest surged up inside me. I wanted to, but he didn’t seem to hear it.
“Mei mei, am I bad to you?”
“What?”
“Do you think I am bad? Is that why you do not tell us things? Is that why Sam didn’t tell us he was using drugs?”
I was at a loss for words. Baba wasn’t like Alan’s father. He wasn’t cruel or harsh. He was impatient sometimes and had a
rigid worldview, but he tried to love us, in his way. It was just that his love seemed hard to access. Distant. It wasn’t
as though I didn’t want to talk to him. I wanted nothing more than to have family dinners where we could talk about everything,
but for some reason, we never could.
Even now, I couldn’t conceive of telling him that I knew about Sam’s drug problem before the overdose. Maybe one day. But
not today.
“I don’t think you are bad, Baba,” I said finally. “I don’t know why we are like this.”
“Your ma says, maybe we should talk to someone together.”
“Talk to who?” I didn’t understand.
He shook his head, seemingly embarrassed. He looked at my mother. “You know. Americans are always doing it.”
“A therapist,” Mama said in English.
“I don’t know,” Baba said helplessly, palms toward the sky. “Do these things help? I’m not sure. But maybe we can try.”
I was amazed. I didn’t know what my parents talked about, but I never imagined that they would suggest this.
“Anyway,” he said, obviously looking to move on, “it’s an idea. We can consider it.”
“I think it’s a good idea.”
He blinked rapidly. “So we will have time to do it, with you staying close. I will be happy to have you around for another
few years.”
“Yes,” I said.
I looked into their faces. Each of us, slightly cracked but still hopeful. It was not too late, maybe.
“You will have to go soon,” said Baba, gathering himself. “I don’t want to keep you. But first, since we are here, do you
want to talk to Nai Nai? She is awake. We will leave you with her.”
I could hardly believe it. “Really?” I asked, my voice leaking air.
But then: My parents were standing up and walking out of the seating area.
Like a dream, I watched as we went down the hallway and into an elevator.
The ping of the doors opening on another floor.
We traveled down another two hallways, and then they paused in front of a room.
I caught a flash of the number: 719. I heard the sound of a knock.
A million wingbeats rising and falling inside me.
We were in the room. For all that I’d hoped and wished, I was unprepared for what came next.
Nai Nai was in bed, sitting up and alert. She had an IV stand rolled up next to her, the tube taped against her wrist.
The screen kept shifting as Baba walked around the bed, the phone in his hand. “I can prop this up on the bed tray table,”
I heard him say in the background.
Nai Nai waved her hand dismissively. “I can hold it. It’s a phone, not a brick.”
I could’ve laughed, but nothing could come out.
Her face swam into clearer view as Baba handed the phone to her. “Mei mei?”
“Hi,” I said.
“We’ll be outside when you’re done, Ma,” Baba said to her. I heard him leave.
It was just the two of us. I drank in the sight of her. She was thin, but her eyes were still bright, and she was still herself.
I was so grateful for that.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Not as good as I could be.” She squinted and cracked a smile. “Getting old. Everything falls apart.”
The screen was like a window between time and space. Seeing her was seeing another slice of my life, one that I hadn’t known
for a long time.
“When are you coming, eh?”
“When you wake up again, I’ll be there.” Hang on , I wanted to say to her. Don’t drift off without saying goodbye.
She closed one eye slyly. “You don’t have to sound so worried, like I’ll disappear before you can make it. I look weak, but
I’m still strong.” She made a fist. “I’ll jump right out of this bed when you walk in the door. I have to conserve my energy
until then.”
“Are you eating okay?” I asked her, reversing the question that she had always asked me.
She grimaced. “Nothing here tastes good. I can’t wait to go home. I used to think the bao mu’s cooking was terrible, but then
I came here.” I knew she wasn’t eating because she was nauseous, even though she didn’t mention it. She was hiding the things
that hurt from me, just as we were doing for her.
“What about Gu Gu and Gu Ma? Can’t they bring you food?”
She lowered her voice, as though confiding a secret. “I don’t want that. Don’t tell your aunties, but their cooking has never
been good.” She sighed. “It’s because I never made them cook growing up. They got too spoiled with my food.”
“You cooked for me growing up.”
“Yes, but you won’t need to cook for anyone. It will be someone’s privilege to cook for you.”
“Only you think that.”
“You’re my granddaughter. Of course you are the best.” She served up praise as a steady diet, the way my parents never did. That was the way of grandparents. What was it about skipping a generation that softened a person? Between us, there was never a wall.
She sniffed wistfully. “Since I had to move into that new building in the city, I’ve had the most terrible time. The air is
bad, and it’s unnatural to live so high up, like a stranded bird. I miss the water and the mimosa trees. But at least when
I meet up with my neighbors, I can tell them about my American grandchildren and their success. I raised those children, I
tell them. They are forging their own paths, moving through the world. They will be what we couldn’t. They will make us proud.”
She was so confident. She always put me in the exact same bucket as Sam, as though we were equals. But he went to Harvard
and followed all the points along the path my parents had laid out. He was the one everyone meant when they talked about being
proud. I felt that she included me out of pity—or a kind of unworthy generosity.
I suddenly felt a pang of fear. The one that was coming less lately but still lurked there in the background sometimes. It
was the fear that everyone wished Sam were the one here instead of me.
“What if I’m not?” I blurted out. “What if I disappoint you? And Baba?”
She furrowed her brows. “What are you talking about, foolish girl?”
“Baba and Mama came to America so we could have the type of life they wanted. What if I waste their efforts?”
Nai Nai stared at me, her gaze never wavering.
She could be funny and wry, but she could pin you with a single look.
That’s why she was the matriarch. “Is that what you think? They went to America so you could have the type of life you want. As long as you are working toward that life, you are not wasting their efforts.”
There was a tightness in my chest that seemed to grow until I was fairly sure I was going to burst and split open, but somehow,
I stayed intact, holding it all in. I had a feeling like lying on the ground and staring into the sky until you were falling
or flying but you couldn’t tell which. All those years apart, and so much had changed, yet while all the love was distant
and hard to access sometimes, it didn’t go away. It would never go away.
She was so beautiful, I thought.
She lowered the phone. “Ah, my wrists are tired.” The screen wobbled as she balanced the phone against the breakfast tray.
“That’s better.” It left her image slightly askew. “Don’t be worrying about these silly things. You worry too much, always.
You are so young. Life is long.”
Except when it wasn’t. I had brought a book from Sam’s college boxes with me to read on the plane. It would be with me, but
he wouldn’t.
“I’m lucky,” she continued. “Lucky to have had all those years with you and your brother and sent you off to America to grow
up. Your grandfather would’ve wished to see this.” Her hands smoothed the sheets across her lap. “I am so happy you are coming,
but I confess that I miss Chen Wei. It feels like it has been a long time,” she said.
This was it. I knew I could tell her, if I wanted.
We were alone. My parents had left me here.
I could change everything. It was all spinning around in my head.
Did she deserve to know? Was I a monster for keeping it from her, or would I be a monster for telling her when I could see for myself that she was waning?
“Nai Nai,” I choked out, “Chen Wei would want to visit. He can’t. It’s because—”
Honestly, I did not know what I was going to say after that, even right up to the edge. It didn’t matter, because she cut
in before I could finish.
“You don’t have to say it.” She shook her head sharply.
I was silent. Surprised. The air itself seemed to hover breathless between us. Her jaw was tight and clenched. We didn’t say
anything for an extended period of time.
“It doesn’t matter where he is,” she said finally. “I know wherever it is, he wishes he could come. I know that.”
I wiped my face, mildly damp, and quelled my hands from shaking. I didn’t know what else I could say. Nai Nai settled farther
back in her pillows, letting out a slow exhale. “When I go to sleep, I dream about when you were still babies, out in our
village. Do you remember the hot summers?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“The past can be a gift. I am grateful for the memories. They’re good for me, an old woman. Future hopes are for the young.”
“You still have a future.”
She laughed and sounded like crackling autumn leaves. “You are a flatterer, my granddaughter. I always thought you were the funny one. Can you do something for me?”
I sat up. “Yes.”
The gate agent announced that the plane had arrived and was being cleaned out. Boarding would begin in fifteen minutes.
“Tell your brother that he’s in my heart.”
I looked and looked at her, searching for a sign of clarity, whether she really knew the truth or not. But all I could see
was that she was sleepy and that our conversation was winding down to its end. She was waiting to drift off into her dreams,
where she didn’t live in that drab building in the city, where Da Ji Cun would always exist and the three of us were locked,
perpetually, in a sun-drenched story, our shoes dusty with that familiar yellow dirt. And I was going to let her go there.
“I will,” I said.
Her face softened, the lines around her lips going slack. “Thank you.”
“I have to go now. We’ll talk more when I get there. I’m about to get on the plane. I’ll see you very soon. Tomorrow.”
Her eyelids were drooping. “Yes,” she said sleepily. Her breath evened out and turned into gentle snoring.
I watched her for a minute, sleeping peacefully, and ended the call. Then, I gathered all my bags, walked over to the line
at the gate, and boarded, at last, the flight that would take me home to my family.