Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Sabrina
Sabrina remained annoyed with Lee Lee after she paid for the burst pipe with her money for her China trip. Though in truth, this seemed to open a gateway for resentments that had successfully been buried over the years.
The day Kit left, Sabrina woke up with a gloominess that quickly transformed into sulking. She wore a pout that she could not remove from her face and she knew her mother would not be able to ignore.
“Why you care what Katerin does? She has a different family, different life. You are you. And for her, maybe it’s more important she knows where she is from.
She has white parents, she doesn’t know how it is to be Asian.
Poor kid. Must be so confused.” She had started to refer to children as “kids” only in the last four months, since starting her cleaning job downtown at the South Philadelphia public school.
The agency that had placed her in her previous cleaning job had suddenly closed down.
But Lee Lee was happy in her new job at the school.
No mice like the offices , she announced after her first week there.
“I guess I don’t think of Kit as Asian.”
“That’s the problem.” Her mother slapped her own leg.
A shine formed over Lee Lee’s eyes, and her tiny, nimble fingers gripped harder on the edges of the plastic bag she folded into a meticulous triangle before placing it into a shoe box beside the sink.
Sabrina thought about how she had never once reached for any of those plastic bags, ever.
“This is why she needs to go back to Asia even more. She doesn’t feel Asian.
She doesn’t think Asian. But she is Asian. She doesn’t know who she is.”
“I’m not sure I feel that Asian, really.” Sabrina sighed. She regretted the words the moment they left her mouth. Lee Lee stared at her and put the next triangle down. They were getting smaller and smaller, the edges tighter.
“You do. I have brought you up so you do. You understand about duty. Your school is full of spoiled kids, but you are my child. You know you must respect, you know about the shame of not being dutiful and respectful. You do your homework, you wash the dishes, you make your bed, you obey . I know children your age can be naughty, the girls around you in your American school especially. But you’re a good girl, my Sabrina.
Yes, girls like Katerin, Western mixed girls like her especially, believe they’re special.
We always say they get the good genes. They believe they have something different to everyone else.
That they’re unique .” Lee Lee crossed her fingers as she made quotation marks and wiggled her fingers up and down, a habit Sabrina and Kit had once teased her about years ago, which only led to Sabrina enduring three days of silent treatment from Lee Lee, disrespecting her mother in public.
“I know, I know, you have never been to China,” Lee Lee continued, in an animated conversation with herself now.
“And in many ways you are American too, something I will never be. But you understand. This is why it is so good you are the way you are, my girl. And you will have greatness, great chances that I never had. If you keep being good, you will have it all.”
Sabrina said nothing, she knew her mother was waiting for her to nod. If you keep being good.
“The thing about Katerin, you will see. Later in her future, she will be so confused. She won’t know where she belongs.
Is she white? No. Is she Asian? Why is nobody treating them special when they become older and middle-aged and no longer look so charming.
It’s different for you, Sabrina. You know who you are.
Your character is strong. Because the home is strong, and your heart is strong. ”
Sabrina knew this too. Sometimes she felt a surge of happiness under her mother’s eye, her approving nod as Sabrina set out and achieved everything she was expected to. But she simultaneously hated this part about herself: the unquestioning obedience.
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Sabrina’s sulking over Kit’s departure lasted just a morning, and by the following day she felt brighter, as a rush of freedom that was new, a jittery adrenaline ran through her body.
She had her offer under her mattress for the Ivy League school she had always dreamed of going to, and she might see Dave at the country club when she began her shifts.
Sabrina jumped down the final three steps into the kitchen and helped her mother unload the weekly bag of expired groceries onto the table.
Lee Lee peeled away the brown outer leaves of the spring onions and muttered under her breath, “Americans so wasteful—look at this, perfectly good, fresh inside, like new.”
“I don’t know, Mom, this looks like it’s done,” Sabrina said, pointing at the sprigs that had turned brown.
“Yes, but you’re still saving when you get the expired stuff nobody wants. There is goodness there. No matter what it looks like on the outside. Don’t forget that.”
“I guess…but isn’t that a waste too? To force yourself to cook with everything and then possibly leave that food to go bad?”
“To have an abundance is never bad, Sabrina.”
Sabrina turned her cell phone camera onto herself to check her mascara. There was a small smudge of inky black at the outer edge of her eye. She licked the edge of her finger and tried to wipe it away.
“Sabrina,” Lee Lee said sharply. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” Sabrina glanced at her reflection again. The smudge was gone. “I’m getting ready for my shift at the country club, then downtown.”
“Are you wearing makeup? What is that around your eyes?” Lee Lee’s voice had sharpened.
“No, I rubbed it off, was just playing around.” Sabrina turned away from her mother.
“You are distracted since you have these jobs. Make sure you get your focus back before college, my girl,” Lee Lee said.
“I will, Mom, don’t worry. I just need to go send an email before my shift,” she said as she rushed up to her bedroom, checking her phone. Was she hoping for a message from Dave or Kit? She didn’t know who she was waiting for exactly, but there was nothing.
Soon after graduation and Kit leaving, Sabrina settled into her summer routine.
She split her days between the country club and the Coalition office.
She walked down to the country club from the bus station every morning, listening to music.
She blasted Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” and loved the freedom of nobody knowing how loud her music played, or how old the songs were that she listened to.
As the last guitar chords faded, she paused the song and took her headphones out before she walked through the staff doors at the club. She always arrived early. Lee Lee said this was a sign of valuing the time of others, and if she wanted to get far in life, that was the first step.
Mornings at the club were always reserved for the older members who exercised before their working day began.
The fury of the sun was still dormant. Instead, there was a golden blanket over the tennis lawns as a single groundsman pushed a roller along the edges of the grass tennis courts.
She listened for the sprinklers in the distance that swayed over the golf course.
A lone F-150 drove past her, and she watched the swallows diving in the shape of the number eight through the clear, cloudless sky.
Sabrina had hoped to see Dave Harrison at the club, but eight shifts had passed already and there was no sign of him. She knew he was a member and played tennis, because of all the times she and Kit had walked past the grass courts last summer to catch a glimpse of him.
Sabrina settled into her routine quickly.
After she set all the tables for the summer camp kids, she arranged the refreshment counter for the adults in meticulous order: tea bags and coffee capsules in lines according to color.
By ten, the first wave of campers came in from their tennis clinics, their sweaty, dirty hands messing up the surfaces, fingerprints smudging the shiny countertops.
She waited until the last kid left and then polished everything again with Windex and paper towels.
Some middle schoolers, who should have known better, left juice cartons and empty packets of chips and granola bars strewn across the tables.
By the end of the first week, Sabrina knew which kids cleared up after themselves and which ones didn’t.
Every day she absorbed something new in the behavior of these rich kids: the cliques that quickly formed during these breaks; the turns of phrase I was legit over it , so thirsty ; to the roughhousing between the boys that swung between aggression and affection.
A slap across the groin led to hysterical laughter.
The persistent taunting was bullying really, but somehow it also translated to male bonding.
She couldn’t understand it herself, she never had when she saw it in the school corridors either, but she accepted its place within the walls of the clubhouse.
Playing in the background on the mounted plasma televisions were tennis matches taking place somewhere else in the world.
Sabrina was strangely mesmerized by the sound of the players grunting as they hit, bestial, but cathartic.
She wondered what it must feel like to pelt the ball the way they did.
The battle between the two men was hypnotic, rushing between painted white lines, the flex of the muscle sinew in their legs.
She stared at the slow-motion playbacks on the screen and the subsequent final rulings of In or Out.
The tournament was taking place in Europe somewhere, and she could hear the voices of the umpires, calling for the crowd to quiet down.
She heard Dave before she saw him.
“Hey, Thompson, pick up your trash, you animal.”