Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty
Lee Lee and Sabrina
Even years later, Lee Lee Chen insisted that taking the baby that day at the airport was fate.
That all she did was give kindness and love to a child who had been left behind and would have faced a miserable life otherwise.
Lee Lee had raised her, clothed her, fed her.
She had taken responsibility for this abandoned baby.
What would Sabrina’s life have been like if she hadn’t rescued her from the airport floor that day?
A life of destitution in a deportation center in Philadelphia, or worse, falling into the system as an orphan, into foster care.
Lee Lee had provided a stable home and a privileged education.
She couldn’t admit even to herself that it had actually been about serving Lee Lee’s own needs, about her own sense of failure to give her mother a grandchild, to make a success of America. Her familial duty.
Lee Lee had felt the emptiness in her body, the loneliness without Daming. And then this baby appeared and suddenly there was an opening. An opening for more to Lee Lee’s life. She was no longer alone.
The invisibility she struggled against was the very thing that allowed her to find Sabrina. No one even glanced at her twice as she clocked out of her shift at the airport with a baby in her arms.
Over the years, nobody stopped to take in the difference in their features, the difference in the shape of their eyes, the way her hair fell differently, she didn’t have the same square jaw, her skin tone ever so slightly different than her mother’s.
Nobody asked why Sabrina looked nothing like her mother.
After all, China was a big place, someone from northern China looked completely different from another from the southern provinces.
Lee Lee still asserted that her own mother would have known immediately.
But would she? She would have been so relieved at the news of an expected baby, she might have just ignored the differences altogether.
She had never met Daming after all; she could have just said he was from a southern province of Yunnan or Guangxi, just across the border from Vietnam.
Maybe the next one will be a little boy , Lee Lee’s mother had cooed on the phone when Lee Lee told her the good news, and that she had named her baby Sabrina.
As her daughter grew up at this nice fancy school, nobody questioned it, because nobody really looked there either. When she walked out of that airport, Lee Lee never imagined she’d get this far.
Five days after Sabrina met Mimi Truang on Gravers Lane, she sat in a Dunkin’ Donuts with Eva Kim and Lee Lee and felt true heartbreak for the first time.
The exquisite pain was not from her unrequited love for Dave Harrison, but from her mother, a woman who had pretended to be her mother.
As she understood the complete hopelessness of Lee Lee’s situation, her heart shattered.
“My xiao haizi …”
“Don’t call me that, I’m not your child.”
“You are my Sabrina. Oh but you are.”
Sabrina stared at her mother. Lee Lee’s eyes were sunken, and her slight frame looked frail and weak.
Nobody knew yet what would happen, whether Lee Lee Chen would be deported or if she would face charges for everything she had done.
Sabrina could not stand to know the truth yet.
But she knew that beneath her sorrow, she cared for this woman, whoever she was.
Since the afternoon that had changed everything, she had been staying with Eva Kim.
“Are you eating?” Sabrina asked.
“A little.”
“What?”
“Rice, I eat rice.”
Lee Lee’s skin had a yellow tinge, especially around her nose and jaw. Jaundice maybe. She remembered looking it up once when Kit was convinced she had it.
“Have you been to work?”
“No, xiao haizi , Ms. Eva Kim told me to wait. So I listen to her.”
All the strength and fight that Sabrina had always known from her mother was gone. She was a shell of a person. Eva Kim returned and placed three bottles of water on the table and a box of donuts that nobody touched.
“Mrs. Chen,” she said, “we really don’t have a lot of options.
The worst-case scenario is that you get charged with kidnapping.
If you’re found guilty, you’ll be put in a maximum security prison for a long, long time.
It could be the remainder of your life, and they may even send you home to serve this sentence.
I know you are a tough lady, but I think we can all agree that we do not want that. Agreed?”
Lee Lee, who had been leaning forward to catch every word that Eva said as though she might lose something precious if she missed anything, now nodded furiously.
Sabrina looked down at her hands. She couldn’t bear to look at her mother’s face.
“A translator and I have been talking to Mimi Truang. Your biological mother,” she said to Sabrina.
“Right now, she only wants to reconnect with you. That was her sole purpose in coming here. She also doesn’t want to stand in the way of your future.
She has been very clear about that. She hasn’t talked about pressing charges.
I’m sorry, we need to get that part out of the way.
And it’s something we have to talk about.
But I think there is a way for us to exercise some damage control. ”
Sabrina sighed. Such mercy from this stranger.
“Lee Lee, you got here illegally. Your status has always been illegal. You know as well as I do how small communities can be. I’m not saying the Herzogs or anyone in their immediate circle will tell the authorities, but it takes just one person to say something to someone who would , and then word starts to travel.
The undocumented part is one thing, the abduction of a child…
” Eva paused and looked at Sabrina. ”Well, I’ve already spelled it out.
The best thing you can do, Mrs. Chen, if you agree to it, is to turn yourself in to be deported, but you will be able to live freely back home.
But you will never be able to enter the United States again. ”
Lee Lee’s eyes widened and Sabrina took in Eva’s words. Never be able to enter the United States again.
“ Never?”
“Never. I’m sorry. That will be nonnegotiable.”
Lee Lee nodded, and then she looked at Sabrina. “And what about my xiao haizi ? What about my girl?”
“I’m working on that. I’m doing everything I can.”
There were tears in Lee Lee’s eyes now.
The overalls that Lee Lee had to wear in the Pennsylvania Detention Center swallowed her up. She had lost more weight in the week since she had been taken away.
“Do they let you out?” Sabrina asked, fighting back tears.
“They let me walk around. There is a yard. I go there sometimes. To breathe some fresh air. We’re waiting. Your friend Eva says I might be able to get back to China soon. Maybe…we see.”
“Are you scared?”
“I’m not scared. You know me. I am strong. I’m big dragon and you’re the little dragon, remember.”
A weak smile pulled at the edges of Lee Lee’s mouth. Sabrina couldn’t smile. She wanted to show her mother she would be all right. But she couldn’t pretend—she didn’t know if she would be.
“Are people, are they…do they threaten you?”
Lee Lee looked at her and tilted her head. She didn’t know the word…or did she?
“Do the people here say they will do bad things do you?”
Lee Lee smiled and shook her head, but Sabrina wasn’t sure if she believed her.
“Now tell me, xiao haizi . What did you decide about college? Did you get the funding? I see Eva! God bless you, Eva!” she shouted through the glass to Eva, who came in and sat behind Sabrina. Her support.
Eva had been with Sabrina every day, and had hardly left her side.
It was only a matter of time before people found out what Lee Lee had done.
Eva said they had to get ahead of it and take control immediately.
They waited to hear what would happen to Lee Lee, and then to make a case for Sabrina’s status, forging a path to legal citizenship in the only world she had ever known.
“Hey, Mrs. Chen. How you holdin’ up in there?”
Eva Kim never slowed her speech or changed her tone when she spoke to Lee Lee. She spoke to everyone in the exact same way. And Sabrina loved her for it.
“Oh, I’m a survivor, Eva Kim. Always okay.” Lee Lee forced a smile. Sabrina felt the fracture in her heart deepen as she looked at her mother’s face.
“So, I’ve been doing some research, and I am going to be totally honest with you both.”
Sabrina smiled. When would Eva Kim ever tell them half-truths?
“For you, kid, I made an application for DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. You can stay with me, if that’s okay with you, as we figure this thing out.
You will be able to stay in this country.
On the documentation side, I’m confident we can eventually get you a green card and naturalization, but it will all take a bit of time.
All right? We just have to be patient and get everything together. ”
Lee Lee nodded, and Sabrina could see her mother taking in the words. Sabrina would stay with Eva Kim, but would she ever see Lee Lee again?
“So, my girl, she will still go to college?”
“Yes, she will go to Princeton and get her degree.”
“And she is safe? She can stay here in America? Nobody will come for her? Nobody will send her away? She can have the papers?”
“Yes, Mrs. Chen. I will make sure of it. Sabrina’s future is secure.”
“What if something happens? Who will she go to?”
“She will come to me.”
“You adopt her?” Lee Lee’s eyes widened.
“No. She’s a legal adult now. But I will be there for her, in any capacity she needs as an adult, as a friend. I’ll be her emergency contact, I’ll be her legal counsel, I’ll even have her at Christmas if she doesn’t have other plans. She’s stuck with me. Okay with you, kid?”
Sabrina couldn’t speak. She never expected so much from Eva Kim, and she had nothing left in her heart in that moment.
“I think, Mrs. Chen, we can both agree that you raised one hell of a young woman here, who is probably ten times the adult that you or I are.” Eva put her arm around Sabrina and squeezed her close and Sabrina’s eyes welled up. Her face was quickly soaked with tears that would not stop.
She felt her mother’s eyes on her.
“This is all that matters,” Lee Lee said quietly and placed her hand on the glass pane between them. “This is the best way.” Sabrina raised her hand and placed it against the thick glass that separated them, meeting her mother’s palm.
···
Everything had been arranged swiftly in the weeks following their meeting at Dunkin’. Donuts. Lee Lee cried with gratitude when she saw Eva Kim. Sabrina had never seen her mother cry until Mimi Truang came back into their lives. Now she cried every time they saw each other.
The day Lee Lee was taken away to the detention center, she grasped at Eva’s hands and sobbed God bless you, Eva Kim, bless you bless you .
With each declaration of thanks, another piece of Sabrina’s heart broke away.
She watched her mother being driven away in a state vehicle, her eyes fixed on the silhouette of Lee Lee’s head in the window until the car disappeared around the corner of Ridge Avenue toward Kelly Drive.
Sabrina wondered if she would ever be able to go back to seeing her mother the way she did before any of this.
Would she be able to love her in the same way?
Sabrina’s life was falling apart, but for the first time she could remember, somebody was taking care of the things that felt beyond her capabilities.
She had placed her full trust in Eva Kim’s hands.
You leave it with me. Out of all this mess, we are going to get you a passport, a green card, and you will get your degree if it’s the last thing we do.
Hell, I’m even going to personally take you down to that dump of a DMV to get you a license.
In the week before Lee Lee’s departure for China, Sabrina continued going to her jobs at the country club and at Eva Kim’s office.
One afternoon she overheard two women talking about Sally Herzog in the clubhouse.
She hadn’t shown up for her usual ladies’ tennis clinic because she was away at the shore for the final two weeks of August. How strange to go away before the end-of-summer party.
Everybody’s back in town to show off their suntans.
Maybe it’s because their daughter is starting college?
That afternoon, as Sabrina sat on the bus on the way back to Eva Kim’s apartment, she messaged Kit.
SAbrINA: Hey, I heard you went away or something. The shore?
Almost immediately, a response came back.
KIT: Hey Rina, yeah, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. We’ve been busy prepping for college. And I didn’t know if you wanted to be left alone or not with everything that happened. Ryo’s family are still here too, so we brought everyone down to the shore for the rest of the summer break.
Sabrina felt a pain in her chest that rose up to her throat. Was it Kit’s idea to get away or was it her parents’? Maybe they just wanted as much distance as possible from her, from all the mess on their doorstep that day. Another message alert.
KIT: I hope you’re OK. I can’t imagine everything you’ve gone through.
Sabrina stared at the words, but she didn’t know what she expected from her friend. It wasn’t this. So she sent the easiest response she could bear to write.
SAbrINA: I’ll get there.
···
On the day before Lee Lee was deported, Sabrina went to see her mother and sat with her at a table, supervised by security officials. They held hands, and Sabrina could see the white in her mother’s knuckles. They were told they had one minute left.
Sabrina could hardly speak as she felt Lee Lee’s arms hold her so tight, like never before. And when she pulled away and looked at the pools of tears in her mother’s eyes, she couldn’t stop herself from asking.
“Why did you do it, Mom …Why?” Her heart throbbed inside her chest.
Lee Lee answered, “Because I had to. You needed me. And I needed you.”