Chapter Six
Chapter Six
Sabrina
On her way out of the Asian American Immigration Coalition office on Vine Street, Sabrina squinted at the afternoon sunbeams that blurred her vision.
She walked, her feet moved one step in front of the other down the hot sidewalks.
Car horns sounded impatiently in the slow-moving traffic.
A courier on a bicycle, who stood upright on the pedals, shouted at pedestrians, Move your bodies!
She recalled how she loved and hated downtown Philly.
The dirt landed on her skin, a film of black soot from the exhausts of tired, trawling cabs and garbage trucks.
She loved the scruffy streets in Center City.
Even the magnificence of the city hall spires was edged with unlovable side streets littered with unhoused men and women panhandling, and young boys in baggy tank tops and low-slung jeans who paced up and down as if to say What can I get for you today?
She passed row houses that looked like they had been stuck together haphazardly.
When the streets started getting gentrified, she saw lofty brownstones.
She imagined the polished wooden floors she’d seen at Kit’s house.
In the winter months, when the Herzogs turned on the underfloor heat, Sabrina and Kit would lie down on the floor and laugh as they pretended to make snow angels.
I’m never getting up. They shrieked and giggled.
When Mr. and Mrs. Herzog were there, she never knew quite how she was expected to behave.
Did she need a coaster for her drinks? The kitchen island had marble finishing and separate sinks—one for washing up and one for prep—so which sink should she wash her hands in?
How should she stack the dishwasher after they’d eaten?
Her worst evenings were when Mr. and Mrs. Herzog invited her to join them for dinner to do “small plates,” where they shared dishes, and she felt frozen to her seat and waited to be offered a spoonful of different dips and tried to eat with a smile on her face.
In Sabrina’s mind, these fancy houses bore some resemblance to Kit’s house, although Kit’s house was a sprawling suburban home compared to these narrower city townhouses.
But these brownstones and Kit’s house on Gravers Lane had walls so thick you couldn’t hear your neighbors sneeze, unlike the flimsy walls of her own home.
Sabrina imagined the elaborate blooms of flowers from the garden or an expensive local florist’s arrangements in every room; she thought about the heated floors and cool silent, air-conditioning that didn’t shake the room as it revved up like it did at hers.
At Kit’s house, Mrs. Herzog tended to a patch of vegetables that Mr. Herzog had built a protective fence around, and sometimes they sat eating croissants in the breakfast alcove overlooking the backyard.
Sabrina was mesmerized by the blue jays and northern cardinals that came and feasted at the bird feeder.
The thought that her mother would enjoy that sight always passed through her mind when she sat there watching the colorful birds fly in and out of the garden.
Lee Lee loved birds—she always said that their freedom had no end.
The couches in Kit’s house, and there were several—in the great room, as Mr. Herzog referred to it, and the TV room—were so enormous that Sabrina was swallowed up by the plush upholstery when she sat down for movie nights.
She loved to rub her hand up and down the armrest and look at the changing texture of the forest-green velvet.
In the winter months, Sabrina had loved to go over for sleepovers, especially if Mr. and Mrs. Herzog were out and they left the fireplace on.
Kit brought blankets, and they sat in front of the TV, her whole face flushed by the heat radiating from the hearth as she pretended to watch whatever show Kit had chosen, staring into the flames that cracked and spat out sparks against the fireguard.
She loved how her clothes would smell of burning wood afterward as she stepped out into the icy winter air.
···
Sabrina walked the length of Vine Street.
In the distance, she saw the neat rectangular silhouette of the Franklin Institute, where the length of the Schuylkill River in the distance expanded to the west, and she remembered how her mother would take her to sit on the steps and watch people walking by in the spring.
They sat outside because Lee Lee refused to pay the entrance fee.
It was only when Sabrina went for her first sleepover at Kit’s that she went inside the Institute and walked through the giant model heart installation she’d heard the other children at school talk about.
Kit had run through the main exhibition, calling This way, Rina!
But Sabrina wanted to slow down, to run her hands over the uneven walls and imagine she was really inside a beating heart in someone’s body.
It was a boring outing for Kit, who had complained in the car to Mrs. Herzog that they had only just visited last month, and that she wanted to go to the Philadelphia Zoo instead for cotton candy.
But Sabrina’s eyes were greedy, and she took in everything.
Kit rushed her through the Electricity Exhibit, where children lined up to spark their own circuit boards.
Sabrina hadn’t had her turn, but Kit wanted to leave, so they left.
Kit had seen it all before, and Sabrina knew she had to fall into her friend’s rhythm or she wouldn’t be asked over again.
For a moment in that museum, Sabrina wished that Kit did not exist and that she were there alone.
But by the time they licked the edges of their ice cream sundaes outside, she had forgotten this and looked, eyes filled with admiration again, toward her friend.
···
Unlike the closed gated driveways of Chestnut Hill that told anyone on the outside to Keep Out —the straight lines of Center City Philly gave Sabrina comfort.
There was an equality here. She felt an entitlement seep into her, as though she could take a risk on anything as much as the next person.
She was not expected yet to stay within her box, because everything was up for grabs.
Nobody knew her, there were no invisible lines.
It could have been the chaos that emerged in unexpected places from street to street: one minute she was walking through a financial district and surrounded by men in suits on their cell phones, the next she saw overflowing trash cans and lines outside the PECO Building, made up of people mostly asking for their electricity to be turned back on in spite of defaulting on payments.
She had stood in this very line with Lee Lee for the same reason.
The low-rises that clustered around the Comcast Center and skyscrapers respected one another’s vistas.
Back in Chestnut Hill, at school, there were invisible lines everywhere: between Kit and her, between Lee Lee and Sally Herzog and all the other mothers and daughters at CHA.
Sabrina often wondered what lay beyond state lines, in a way that Kit would never understand.
The world was always there for Kit to take, but for Sabrina, within the boundaries of her home and high school, she waited to be asked and never stepped out of the place she was assigned.
The Delaware River to the east was too far for her—beyond the boundaries of her familiar, sometimes claustrophobic hometown.
And yet, she felt hopeful here in the city, miles away from school and Kit.
There was something in the grime that reminded her that things happened here, no matter where you came from, no matter how little you had, that something was afoot even though it could be dangerous.
No matter how much she felt, she stood still, waiting, looking upon the horizon for something to happen to her.
When Sabrina realized she was no longer going to China, she applied to work at the country club. She would be paid double what she had earned at Mrs. Moskovitz’s café in Roxborough the previous summer, and the job became more appealing with Kit away all summer.
“You’ll see, my xiao haizi , you’ll make more use of your summer holidays right here at home than Katerin all the way over there doing whatever she is doing. Nothing serious, nothing useful.”
“That’s not the point, Mom.” She huffed and regretted it the moment she saw her mother’s eyes flick to her face.
“We have the life we have. We have to make the sacrifices. Another trip will come,” Lee Lee said.
Sabrina said nothing. She knew better than to argue with Lee Lee about the injustice of having to give up her hard-earned savings for a household emergency.
Every paycheck that Lee Lee ever made went to their household emergencies and non-emergencies, this was just life.
At least, that is what Lee Lee would have said in response.
···
At the beginning of senior year she had decided that she would take an internship along with other summer jobs before any hopes of travel had taken shape.
She had gingerly pushed the door open to the college counselor’s office for their first meeting.
Mr. Jenkins was a short, wiry man with skin that was the shade of yellow chalk, and while his arms and legs were thin, his stomach protruded over his belt like a watermelon.
She noticed his college diplomas on his wall: St. Austin’s University and DeVry University in Illinois.
Behind him were family photographs: A wedding photograph of a younger, strawberry-blond version of the man sitting before her, dressed in a pale blue tuxedo beside an unsmiling woman.
His three children, miniature versions of their parents, with flaming red hair and the same translucent, pale skin.