Chapter 3 #9
“But that’s precisely it,” said Andrew. “You’re swept up in these historical forces.
That makes it even worse. You watched it all happen, and you brush over it by saying it’s fine, at the end of the day, everyone’s Chinese.
What the fuck does that even mean? It only sounds like home to you because you can’t hear the difference in your accents. ”
My mouth tasted bitter. No matter what I said, it seemed to prove Andrew’s point about something. I couldn’t find the problem with any one of his premises, exactly, but it was cruel of him to mock us for simply wanting to speak our parents’ language.
“Then why are you in Taipei?”
This was the right thing to say. Andrew perked up, like he had been waiting for me to ask.
“Well. So it’s kind of a long story,” he said.
“When I was little, there was this Chinese family who lived down the hall in our apartment building.” The mother worked days and went to classes at night.
He never saw the father around. There was a little girl a few years younger than him named Chuchu, and the grandmother, whom Andrew had called Nainai, which was what Chinese children called their paternal grandmothers, because he went over there so often that he started speaking Chinese.
“So they were your babysitters?” I asked.
“No, no,” he said. “We weren’t paying them or anything—they didn’t work for us.
I just went there a lot after school, and they were always having some food, so they gave me some.
Nainai used to make these huajuan from scratch.
They were so good, huge and fluffy. I liked to watch her knead the dough.
She’d let me sprinkle in the cut scallions.
I loved the moment she took them off the stove.
How the steam whooshed around her face. I really felt like I grew up Chinese, you know.
Sometimes I even went home and kept speaking in Chinese, and my parents told me to cut it out. ”
Andrew’s family moved out of the building when he was ten.
His father had finally found steady work, and they landed somewhere with more space, fewer cockroaches.
They didn’t leave behind a forwarding address or stay in contact with the Chinese family.
He never saw them again. He didn’t even know their legal names.
“I think about them every day,” he said. “I loved them both so much. My Nainai. That woman raised me.”
I drained my Kavalan.
“That’s why my accent is so good. I learned tones when I was young. Non-native speakers struggle so much with tones, but I got them right away.” He asked if I wanted to hear him recite some advanced chengyu, and I told him no, that was all right, I believed him.
I thought about getting up and going home.
But I didn’t want to leave by myself, because then people might think I was antisocial.
Also it was very late. I wasn’t sure the trains were still running, and I didn’t want to walk home by myself.
I glanced around, but I didn’t see anywhere else in the room where I’d be more comfortable, so I just sat still where I was and kept rolling my whisky glass around in my hands.
My stomach rumbled. Something smelled good. I scanned the room and saw that several of my classmates had ordered pizzas. Everyone was gathered around steaming rectangular pans, except for us. I wished Andrew would wrap this up so that I too could get some pizza.
Andrew had begun to cry. I watched him for a while, wondering if the tears were feigned for my benefit.
“I feel so stupid.” He sniffled. “I don’t even have a phone number. I tried looking them up, but I can’t find them. My parents don’t know either.”
I was peeved he was making such a big deal over this.
This didn’t seem like anything to truly cry over.
It’s not like it was his own Nainai, and it wasn’t like they’d died or something.
I also imagined that if he tried hard enough he could reconnect.
All he had to do was make a viral post on the internet.
People reconnected like that all the time these days.
This Chuchu girl had to be on TikTok, or at least RedNote—she’d find him for sure.
People would go wild over that. Maybe they would fall in love.
Maybe they would become an influencer couple: East meets West.
I made a rambling suggestion to this effect, but Andrew kept shaking his head. He was absolutely certain that Nainai and Chuchu could not be reached—as if once he had left the building, the whole family had ceased to exist.
My temples throbbed. I was so thirsty. I took some sips of water, but it didn’t help.
I’d never drunk anything this strong before, and I hated what it was doing to me.
Andrew felt too present. My ears rang when he talked.
I tried to focus, but the ringing just got louder and louder.
All of his physical features seemed too close, zoomed in to garish detail.
My vision did something strange then. I was unable to perceive Andrew’s face in full.
I could only focus my gaze on minute details.
The wet red rings around his eyes. The shine of his saliva, the glint of his single piercing.
There was a fleck of potato chip stuck on his upper lip, and it wobbled whenever he talked.
I kept watching, wondering when it would fall off.
At last I decided I didn’t need to tolerate this any longer.
I was a big girl. I could find my way home through the city.
Taipei was famously safe at night. There were a thousand other places I could be right now, and so there was actually no reason in the universe, aside from inertia, why I had to keep sitting here.
“Hey, so it’s kind of late. I’m really tired.”
Andrew didn’t seem to hear me. He just kept sipping his whisky.
“So I’m going to go now,” I said.
He wiped at his eyes.
I slid off the barstool and maneuvered around his body. Andrew didn’t stop me. Anna’s gaze flickered toward me as I moved to the door, but when she saw that Andrew wasn’t following me out, she turned back to the group.