A Paper Son (21 page)

At school, Henry proves to be a quick study. The speed with which he picks up the language astounds Li-Yu. He comes home from school and teaches lessons to her and to Rose, correcting their pronunciation in a voice she assumes is a mimicry of his teacher, and it makes Li-Yu laugh to herself. Some of the other boys in the village befriend him, and sometimes when Li-Yu sees him playing with them after school it is hard for her to remember what he'd been like before, playing with his toy cars in his bedroom in California, or playing board games with Rose at the kitchen table. Rose pays only half her attention to Henry's short Chinese lessons, and makes no other attempts at speaking Chinese beyond monosyllabic conversations with Li-Yu, and as a result she makes little progress with the language. She disappears for hours on end, occupying herself somewhere on the property. Li-Yu does not press her for details because her daughter has no privacy but this.

School lets out again when the days begin to shorten. The farmers drain the fields, sending the water rushing back into the river, and again the villagers spread out across the paddies, which are now bright green with the mature plants. They slog through the mud, pulling the stalks from the earth and heaping great shaggy bundles on wooden racks to dry. Once the plants have been collected they beat the bundles against woven mats, shaking the rice from their hulls. The mounds grow to waist-high and the elders of the village circulate, stroking their chins and nodding.

The days continue to shorten and cool; winter comes and the river surges. The Year of the Tiger becomes the Year of the Rabbit; the paddies take their annual inhalation and exhalation of water. The Year of the Rabbit becomes the Dragon. Rose is now as conversant in Chinese as Henry, and seems to be fully a girl of Xinhui. Only occasionally does Li-Yu detect in her daughter the weight of memory, the heaviness of the phantom life elsewhere that once promised to be their future. The children never speak English anymore; not even when they are alone together, and do not know she is listening.

Li-Yu now keeps both her money and the immigration papers hidden safely in a wooden box in Zhang's shop, where she has become a secretive partner of sorts. He knows her story well—he has heard several different versions of it now. She finds ways to bring things into his shop, and when he sells them he puts the money into the box and returns it to the same spot every time. She has become not only an expert thief but also a skilled trader—she makes withdrawals from Zhang's box on occasion and returns with more merchandise than the money should buy. Meanwhile the rice stalks rise and fall; the fields flood and drain, flood and drain.

The Year of the Snake draws to an end among heavy rainfall. Rare snowstorms sweep across Xinhui, covering the fallow fields in flat white blankets. The villagers stay inside by their fires, drinking tea and eating
jook
, burning incense to keep disease away. On one cold day, Li-Yu returns from Zhang's shop with a small silk purse of coins pinched in her armpit. Rose has asked for more paper, so she has made a tiny withdrawal from her hoard in the shop. She is hoping to slip quickly into her room to hide the coins until she can make the purchase, but Mae calls her name as soon as she comes through the door.

“Come here,” Mae says. She is sitting on her usual couch, looking tired, and suddenly older somehow. Li-Yu wonders how it is that this can come as a surprise. Perhaps it has been that long since she has taken a close look at her. Li-Yu pinches the coins against her side, wondering what explanation she might offer if the coins should jingle together.

“I have something of yours,” Mae says. Though her eyes are on Li-Yu she keeps her face turned to the side, her eyelids heavy. Li-Yu waits, motionless, saying nothing. Finally Mae produces an envelope from within her robes and thrusts it toward Li-Yu.

“Read it to me,” she says.

At first Li-Yu is confused. Unlike many of the women in the village, Mae knows how to read. Why should she need this help now? Li-Yu takes the envelope and turns it over, and a burst of light flashes through her body. It is addressed to her. In the envelope's top corner is a San Francisco address, and above that her sister's name, written in a beautiful hand that Li-Yu had almost forgotten. It has already been opened, and when Li-Yu pulls the letter from the envelope it is obvious that the letter has been refolded and stuffed back. She wonders how long ago the letter arrived, and what attempts Mae has made to find a translator.

“What's wrong with your arm?” Mae asks.

“I slipped and fell,” Li-Yu says. “I bruised my shoulder on a rock, but it will be fine.” She will not move the arm even the slightest amount.

“You should be more careful,” Mae says. “We can't afford doctor bills.”

Their household is one of the richest in the village; even the maids receive doctor visits when they need them. “I will,” Li-Yu says. “I'm sorry.” She unfolds the letter, wincing slightly from the fictional pain in her shoulder. In California, her sister's letters had always been in Chinese, but this one is in English. She skims it quickly, her eyes darting down the page, grabbing random words and phrases. They have nearly saved enough money to bring her back, they write. In just a few more months they should be able to bring all three of them home, if she can hang on for just that much longer. Li-Yu is weightless, all of her skin alive with warmth and hope. She gasps and widens her eyes, and makes her hands shake. She tries to make her shoulders droop and sink, despite their desire to rise to the ceiling.

“What?” Mae snaps. “Read it, all of it.”

“It's my father,” Li-Yu says. “The children's grandfather. He is dying.”

Mae looks down. She adjusts the silk blanket over her lap, and then looks away. Li-Yu thanks her for the letter, sniffles, and walks back to her room, her head down, the letter in her hand, the few silent coins hidden in their silk pouch and a ball of light in her chest.

Monday the storm leaned hard against the city. The wind rushed in off the ocean and twisted through the streets, blowing raindrops like bullets against the sides of buildings. Awnings tore loose and unmanned umbrellas raced along sidewalks like tumbleweeds. I arrived at school and found that the drains on the far side of the school had clogged again and the kindergarteners were back in the cafeteria. “We're used to it,” Annabel said, when I saw her in the teacher's lounge before the first bell. “The lunch ladies have been baking cookies so it smells homey.” She leaned in close when she said it, and gave my hand a surreptitious squeeze before heading back to her class.

When Kevin came through the door he gave me the storm tally (twenty-one days) and the damage report on his block (a broken tree branch on a neighbor's windshield). My kids were captivated by the mazes' transformations, and a number of theories emerged about the leaking window seal. Being well-trained Californians, they decided it must have had something to do with fault lines. I could think of nothing that sounded more plausible. The seal had stopped leaking water, but the room was about ten degrees cooler than it should have been. Albert, the custodian, told me there was nothing he could do until the rain stopped. Until then, we'd have to crank the heater up.

“That's pretty cool, how the mazes look like Chinese characters,” Eliza said. “I didn't notice that last week.”

I wasn't about to offer further information. “Thanks,” I said. “Do you speak Chinese, Eliza?”

“No,” she said.

“I do,” Kevin said. “It says ‘bing bong ching chong chung.'”

Eliza whirled around. “That's not what it sounds like.”

Kevin shrugged. “Sorry, but it does to me.”

At some point that morning I remembered my progress reports. I was facing seven or eight a night for the rest of that week—hours' worth, each evening. I tried to push the thought from my mind and pressed on with my day. For the block of time just before lunch I'd planned a science exercise, an activity about mass that required a baseball and a tennis ball—neither of which I could find in my cabinets where I thought I'd stashed them.

“I'll go get them for you,” Kevin volunteered.

“From where?” I said.

“The sports shed.”

The shed sat against the tall fence, across the puddle-ridden playground, across forty yards of sopping wet grass and mud. We could barely discern its outline through the thick gray rain.

“I appreciate the offer,” I said, “but that storm will ruin you.”

“I have my raincoat,” he said, “and I'm wearing these.” He hiked up his pant legs to show me knee-high rubber boots. “I'll go and be back in one minute. Sixty seconds. You can time me.”

I didn't have a backup activity planned, and I couldn't go knocking on the doors of other classrooms, asking for balls. “You'd better take the hall pass,” I said. He snatched it from its nail and flew out the door. We watched him run across the playground, deliberately steering through the centers of the largest puddles. He ran onto the field and the storm erased his details, reducing him to a bouncing, shrinking patch of gray.

And then one of my students, a girl named Violet, let out a cry. “The shed!” she shouted. “It's moving!”

She was right: The outlines of the shed were shifting. The corners rounded and sank down and the roofline sagged. There was an awful second of electric silence, and then the shed simply vanished. I was out the door, down the hallway, and across the playground within seconds, my arm up to shield my eyes from the rain, my heart frantic. The field was more water than dirt, and after two steps I was soaked up to my knees. I churned across, fighting to pull my feet out of the muck.

Where there should have been a shed, earth, and a retaining wall, there was now a gaping hole. The ground began to slope; I could feel myself sliding toward the opening. Through it I could see nothing—empty space and beyond it parked cars lined up far below along the sidewalk. I turned and scrambled back up to level ground and bolted for the school's driveway. Panic ripped through me; it felt as though my heart were pumping sand through my veins. Images of Kevin's little body, broken and ruined, shoved their way into my head. I reached the edge of the grass and turned and ran down the sidewalk, mud flying from my shoes, my feet slipping on the concrete, everything inside me screaming.

The shed's wreckage lay in the middle of the street, a mass of bent corrugated metal and broken wood, half-buried in mud. The handles of hockey sticks and baseball bats jutted out of a tangled soccer net. A steady stream of brown water was falling through the gap in the broken retaining wall, bringing with it gobs of mud that splattered against the rubble and burst on the street like wet bombs. A few brightly colored rubber balls dotted the mud mound like toppings on a sundae. There was no sign of Kevin.

I continued to run, searching the street and sidewalk. I reached the edge of the wreckage and leapt into it, kicking chunks of concrete aside, slicing my fingers as I pulled at crumpled sections of metal, looking for a protruding arm, a leg, any hint of clothing. I could hear myself roaring, yelling Kevin's name as I searched. I was breathing in such great sawing drafts that I was pulling rain into my lungs. I launched into a spasm of coughing. My vision began to darken; the colored balls around me began to lose their color.

“Hey Mr. Long,” a voice said. I whirled and found Kevin standing a short way up the road. In one hand he held a baseball, in the other a tennis ball. The hall pass stuck out from his pocket. “You ran right past me!” he said. He looked up at the hole in the wall. “Am I in trouble?” he asked.

***

When I arrived home that afternoon I found Lucy sitting on the top step of my building, beneath the awning, smoking a cigarette. The smoke mixed with the smell of the rain and made me feel for a second like I was somewhere far away. I ducked under the awning and dropped back the hood of my raincoat. Lucy looked down at the burning cigarette and then she looked at me. “I know,” she said. “I shouldn't be doing this.”

“I've heard people say it's not good for you,” I said. “How'd you make it back? I was expecting I'd come down to pick you up.”

“Trains and taxis,” she said. “Jesus Christ! What happened to you?”

She was looking at my hands, each of which was wrapped with multiple Band-Aids. They were still raw and stung like hell, but none of the cuts had required stitches. The blue-gray smoke of her cigarette tinted the air between us as I told her about the shed. Albert, the custodian, had found a pair of pants in his truck for me, too large but clean and dry. My socks were in the school dumpster. I had hosed off my shoes and attempted to dry them over my room's heaters. Inside them my feet felt like cold bread dough.

Franklin Nash had helped me deal with the aftermath. He suggested I put on a movie and while I stayed with my kids he ran through my class's phone list, summoning parents who were available, offering reassurances to those who weren't, leaving detailed messages when he couldn't get through. As their rides arrived he called my kids to his office and had them collected there. I told him I wanted to talk to parents myself but he said I'd have the chance later. He said I should focus on my class, or what remained of it, until the final bell.

Kevin had handled the rest of the day well enough for an eight-year-old who'd just sidestepped oblivion. He returned to the classroom to an uproarious reception, dripping rainwater, still holding the balls like trophies. He absorbed the attention and questions with his usual humor and energy, but once we'd dried off and eaten and settled and the adrenaline was gone and the movie was rolling he grew very still. I took a seat nearby and watched him, descending along with him into reimaginings of the morning's incident, into the full realization of what a shift of a few seconds would have meant. By the movie's halfway point my confidence as a teacher was badly rattled.