Chapter Four
Chapter Four
Sabrina
Things had changed between the two girls.
Kit became more guarded. She rushed home at the end of day, no longer waiting for Sabrina by her locker, and she stopped talking about whatever had been happening between her and Dave.
But if Sabrina had to pinpoint the moment the air between them started to swell, it was the moment Kit had announced that she would be traveling too, over the summer.
It wasn’t just a regular vacation that Kit was going on, it was her own version of Sabrina’s trip: a rite of passage, self-discovery in the distant country she was meant to be from.
“So my mom has organized this whole thing in Japan for me. I guess we have these family friends there. I’m going to do something different this summer, before college.
” Kit had said it so fast that if Sabrina hadn’t been listening she would have missed it.
They were walking along the edge of the soccer fields after school on a Friday afternoon.
“Wait, so you’re going to Japan? When did you decide to do this?”
A mixture of emotions passed through Sabrina. She was jealous, curious, and angry. A rage started to run through her like a fire catching on kindling.
Kit shrugged. “I don’t know, I think I told you, right after we talked about the summer.” She played with the chewing gum packet in her fingertips.
“Did you? I can’t remember that. But wow, this is all happening so soon. Like you just wanted to go…and then you just, go?”
“I guess, yeah. Hey, do you want to have dinner at mine tonight? My mom said you can come over, we can order in?”
And so Kit would go to Japan—her parents would pay for all of it.
Kit had asked for something, and her parents gave it to her.
Sometimes Sabrina allowed herself to imagine what that must feel like—to want something and be able to have it immediately.
But then, Sabrina reminded herself that she didn’t understand the inner workings of Kit’s feelings.
Kit would be going to a place that could be her birth mother’s origin, and move a little closer to knowing where she was from, to understanding her identity.
And for this, Sabrina always forgave her friend, even when jealousy threatened to eat her up.
If Sabrina hadn’t been so distracted by her college applications, she might have been more angry at Kit.
But her gaze had settled elsewhere. That night she lay in her bed, after applying her face cream and closing her laptop.
Lee Lee was already asleep, and she could hear her soft snores through the corridor.
Sabrina had taken to wearing earplugs at night to block out the sound, which had started to bother her.
Once Lee Lee’s breathing settled, Sabrina reached under her mattress and pulled out the envelope she had retrieved from the mailbox when she got home.
She ran her finger over the college name and read it again.
PROMPT ACTION REQUIRED. She slowly pulled the envelope open and took another breath before unfolding the letter.
It was thin. Thin was never good news. Perhaps it was better this way, she thought.
If she didn’t have the place, there was less to lose.
Dear Sabrina,
Congratulations! The committee has reviewed your application and we are happy to offer you admission for the Class of 2019.
Princeton received a record of more than 17,000 applications this year, and your accomplishments, extracurricular activities, and personal qualities stood out among a strong pool.
She couldn’t read the rest of the letter, her hands were shaking too much.
She would need financial aid, and she was afraid she would not be granted any.
Sabrina decided to tell her mother later, once she had the offers and the money in place; she would fill all the forms in as Lee Lee, she wouldn’t say anything until she had all the information.
What would Lee Lee do with her in another state?
Even if it was just over the river in New Jersey?
She carefully closed the letter and put it under her mattress again.
Suddenly Kit’s news of her trip to Tokyo didn’t bother her so much.
“Americans love to tell you what nothing town they’re from.
The towns they spent their whole lives trying to get away from and then deserted the moment they were old enough to leave.
Why do I need to know if somebody comes from Michigan and it rains there for five months every year?
Why? What is so interesting about that for me?
It’s always an uninteresting fact they want to tell you.
The weather, some boring baseball player who was from there.
” Lee Lee complained as she sat back in her La-Z-Boy in front of the TV.
She rubbed her feet together, then crossed her ankles.
She threaded a needle and began to mend a hole in her favorite green dress.
It was a murky, deep green. Sabrina wished she would throw it away.
She had worn it last to the parent-teacher conference, paired with a pale lilac blazer, and Kit had said, Wasn’t your Mom wearing that at the church barbecue last weekend?
She wanted to believe that Kit didn’t mean it unkindly, but lately Kit had been angry.
In fact, Kit had been angry for almost an entire school semester for reasons she had not shared with Sabrina.
Kit had always dominated their relationship and liked to be in the driver’s seat.
Decisions on what they would do over the weekend, which coffee shop they’d hang out in, and what movie they’d go and see always fell to Kit.
And Sabrina was happy to let her decide.
Because in Sabrina’s life, there were plenty of other things that required decision-making.
She welcomed the space to be led instead.
Lee Lee was overbearing in many ways, but nothing could really be done in their household without Sabrina.
It fell to Sabrina to deal with the school communications.
It fell to her to pay the bills. If the house had a leak or a damaged window, it fell to her to speak with the landlord and arrange for someone to fix it.
She didn’t know what it felt like to know that a home was forever.
This was the seventh home she had lived in with Lee Lee.
And she was now poised and ready for a sudden announcement from their landlord that they had to move out. She adapted fast.
Sabrina was good with computers and numbers, and Lee Lee would stand over her mesmerized as she would type their monthly budget into a spreadsheet.
When money became tight at the end of the month, Sabrina reallocated their funds in just a few swift movements of her mouse.
The gas in the car would only be filled half or quarter.
They would postpone dentist appointments and endure the pain a little longer when the balance got low.
Lee Lee was capable of doing this alone, but she took comfort from her daughter sharing these decisions.
Sabrina’s days were full of decisions—decisions other teenagers who attended her high school didn’t have to make.
When it came to deciding where she would drink coffee or what movie she would see, she was happy to defer to Kit, who didn’t know the extent of Sabrina’s responsibilities at home.
Kit never looked out beyond the realm of her own existence, and Sabrina never asked her to.
Kit’s anger that year, though, had unsettled their friendship’s neatly formed pathways.
Sabrina didn’t really understand how the girls at school became consumed with rage toward their parents.
She had seen Casey Steinham scream at her father in the parking lot.
Sabrina wondered, if her father had been in her life at all, whether she would ever feel so angry she would make a scene of this kind.
She couldn’t imagine such a thing, namely because she couldn’t even picture the man who was her father.
In turn she never felt sad or missed him, and it was easy to accept that it was only her and Lee Lee, because it was all she knew.
Whenever she asked her mother, she said, “Not now, xiao haizi , I cannot talk about such things.”
···
Sabrina dreaded Sundays because Sunday was church day.
Lee Lee had decided that the best way to create guanxi was to be a good churchgoer.
Sabrina stood beside her mother, whose voice rose higher and higher during the hymns, until she reached a new octave Sabrina had never heard before.
She suspected her mother enjoyed the singing, and she noticed how the members of the congregation greeted Lee Lee with gentle familiarity.
Sabrina knew her mother would never say it, but she enjoyed being part of this American church, and that she was invited back time and time again.
It happened during one of her visits to Lee Lee’s favorite church, the Episcopalian Church of Chestnut Hill. The building is most churchish for the most serious of Christians , she exclaimed. One morning, at choir rehearsal, Lee Lee met Sally Herzog for the first time.
“Hi there, Sabrina,” Sally had called out.
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Herzog,” she replied.
“Are you here for choir practice?”
Sabrina nodded. She could hear the rustling of her mother’s bag stop, the sound of her standing up right behind her. Don’t come over, don’t come over , Sabrina said to herself in an inaudible whisper.
“Ah, so you are Katherine’s mother? Yes?” Lee Lee asked.
“Mrs. Chen. I’m so pleased to meet you,” Sally said, her hand extended, eyes downcast.
She had seen that expression on Sally’s face before. It was the same one she had when she talked to Kit and Sabrina’s PE teacher during parent-teacher conferences.
“Your daughter Katherine is very charming. Sabrina and her have become very good friends,” Lee Lee said, shaking her hand for too long. Let go, let go.
“Yes, Kit talks about Sabrina all the time at home,” Sally replied. “We must have you both over one of these days. We would love to get to know you better.”
Sabrina could see the lies coming out of Sally Herzog’s mouth, forming clouds of air in the entrance where the biting cold from outside seeped inside, fading as the words lost their meaning. Dragon’s breath.
“Yes, we would like this. When shall we do it?” Lee Lee pressed on.
“You know, I have got to look at my calendar. I will call you or get a note through Kit to you. It was so nice to meet you, Mrs. Chen.”
Sabrina breathed. They would part, and it would be forgotten.
“Mrs. Herzog,” Lee Lee persisted.
“Sally, please.”
“Sally. I will call you. For the girls. We can meet—I have no husband, sometimes it’s good for us mothers to come together. This is what you do here, isn’t it? The children play, and the mothers, we can do something.”
“Oh, I’m sorry…I didn’t know you were alone…I mean…” Sally stuttered. Sabrina thought, Yes you did .
“No, no sorry. No need. This is life sometimes.”
The interaction was in painful slow motion to Sabrina.
“Yes, sure. I’d love that, Mrs. Chen,” Sally said as she started to move away.
Sabrina willed the interaction to be over fast; she hated to see people lie, especially to her mother. And she knew there would be an onslaught of questions from Lee Lee about the Herzog family on the way home in the car.
No matter how bad a day Sabrina had, or how frustrated she was with her mother, Lee Lee’s cooking was a fast-acting balm.
Lee Lee Chen’s passion was cooking. Sabrina loved to watch her face when she sliced through garlic, ginger, and spring onions with a giant cleaver.
This familiar action filled Sabrina with a feeling she couldn’t name.
Was it pride, love, home, belonging? The wok that Lee Lee shook over the open flame still made Sabrina nervous, but in her seventeen years, not once had she ever seen Lee Lee burn herself.
Her favorite dishes were the ones that her mother loaded with chili.
She loved the heat and how it reached the back of her throat, and she had to suck in an extra breath to cool her mouth down.
She loved Lee Lee’s homemade pickled cucumber salad with its tart vinegar and fresh, tiny, savage red chilis, the clean smell of which would fill the room.
Her favorite dish was the bright chicken and garlic chunks with green chilis and peppercorns she spooned over her glistening white rice.
Radiant, ostentatious, morning glory stems bunched neatly as they were cut and served into three sections on the plate.
None of Lee Lee’s cutlery and dishes matched, but Sabrina saw an elegance in the pink and orange plates. She saw their elaborate patterns.
When her mother was finished serving the food, Lee Lee pulled up a chair and watched her daughter with a crooked smile.
“Eat, eat,” she said “Oh, I loved Lazi Ji when I was little too. This is my own mama’s recipe…”
“Tell me about her, Mama.” Sabrina asked.
All Sabrina knew was that her grandmother had died when she was nine.
Sabrina remembered the exact week because it was the only time her mother had lain in her bed with the curtains drawn for six days.
Sabrina was afraid, and hungry, and ate only peanut butter sandwiches that week.
She’d always asked her mother to make her peanut butter sandwiches like the other kids, and now that the time had finally come for her to eat them, she hated the taste.
She missed her mother’s rice, her mother’s fruit and eggs, she missed her mother’s hands busily preparing food on the narrow kitchen countertop.
When the six days passed, Lee Lee appeared in Sabrina’s doorway early one morning and offered to drive her to school. It was the best morning.
But whenever Sabrina tried to ask after her grandmother, Lee Lee always had the same answer, just like she did for her father, “Not now, xiao haizi , I can’t talk about such things.
” One day Sabrina would try to understand all the pain her mother felt about her past and the pieces of Sabrina’s life that were missing.