The Natural Laws of Good Luck (16 page)

She threw me an icy look, her lips pressed into a tight bud. “Family?” she spat out. She spun around in her chair to face me. “This is family? Puh! This is stupid family. I don't like. I don't need. Just myself! My own life! Myself! You not my mother. Get out!” Her rag-doll persona was gone, and her whole body tensed like a viper. I left a space between us longer than a sword blade. This was the most words in English that Sweet Sweet had ever spoken. Actually,
I was relieved to see the fiery side of Sweet Sweet. Ice baffled me, but I could work with fire.

She had singed me, but my head quickly cleared. I had already raised four children. “That's right, I'm not your mother. I am the mother of this house. If you cannot respect this family, then you need to lose this computer.”

Her lips trembled. “But this is my computer. My cousin gave to me.”

“Yes, and your cousin can take it away.”

Sweet Sweet fell silent and stared miserably at the computer screen. I understood that everything outside, everything and everybody not accessed through that screen, was unreal to her. She was an addict who needed a fix. I tried another tactic. “Everyone has reached out to you, but you do not reach to them. Others do for you, but you do not do for others.”

The light sliced her eyes. “I like my aunt. I like Paroda and my cousin. I like my teachers. Just you I don't like. Because you are liar.”

I fell right into the trap. “A liar?”

“Yes, you are liar!”

“How? What lie?”

“You take time, think about!”

I recovered my balance somewhat as I realized the absurdity of this accusation, at the same time considering the possibility—had I lied? Not intentionally, of course, but I was capable of lying, certainly. Wow, I thought to myself, with her fifty words of English, she could already work black magic. “Hmm. OK, I will think about that,” I told her, as if she had just mentioned the title of a good book. “But you need to know one thing: I don't need you to like me.”

She pulled back as if I had thrown cold water in her face. She had been struck. Then she played her last card: “I don't care.”

“I also don't care,” I said firmly. And that was a lie. If I was anything, I was a mother. I would always care, because mother-caring
was autonomous. How many times had Paroda or Athan shouted at me “I hate you, Mom”? I had answered “And I hate you” with conviction, but that was different. Where there is certain love, people can talk like this. Zhong-hua couldn't bear for Sweet Sweet to be angry with him. I would have to be different in order to do my job. I had never been unable to relate to a teenager, but could I be a worthy opponent to her nastiness? I thought not, but I had to try. It would mean being outwardly stern while remaining inwardly fiercely resolved in her favor. Sweet Sweet was in a strange land without her mother. She had an eccentric stepmom and a culture-shocked father. I couldn't let myself give up on learning the enigmatic language that was Sweet Sweet. I wasn't her real mother, but she was my real daughter and I didn't want to lose her. “Good night,” I said, and closed the door.

Stumped, I related my dilemma to a Chinese friend. She explained that my stepdaughter, like other urban Chinese children, was the only child of parents who had themselves grown up through two decades of starvation and deprivation under Chairman Mao. The parents cherished abundance. They came home at night, arms laden with groceries—always first for her, to share with no brother or sister and with nothing expected in return. Even my husband admitted that she would often take one bite of an apple and discard the rest. She ate only the freshest, best food, never leftovers. He noticed this all the more because, when he was a child, his stomach was always grumbling and his skin blistering from a diet of boiled tree leaves and wild roots. My friend said that spoiling the only child happened in so many Chinese families that it was now considered a national disaster.

The next day Sweet Sweet had an appointment for immunization shots. This meant I needed to pick her up from school. I did not relish the thought and tried to push the appointment off on her father. He reminded me curtly that he did not know where the Health Department was and could not fill out the forms, which were all in English. “She need understand,” he said, “she not like you, but she need.”

“Great,” I said, “just great. Put the computer in the trunk of the car, please. I'm taking it back to Xiou Mei.”

I waited in front of the school. Sweet Sweet got in the backseat, and neither of us spoke. I took her downtown to the Health Department, and we walked up the two flights of stairs to the clinic. Sweet Sweet followed a few steps behind me, hanging her head. We sat in the waiting room, and I pretended to read the brochures on sexually transmitted disease. I didn't try to talk with her as I usually did.

On the way home, I stopped at the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a permit application for Sweet Sweet. I had to wait ten minutes. I stopped at the pharmacy, the grocery, and the hardware store. Then I stopped at an outpatient office for internal medicine to make an initial appointment for my husband, who had been inexplicably weary and had begun having night sweats. He always said, “This small problem will quickly pass. Not big deal.” He probably would refuse to go because he was wary of Western doctors with their arsenal of pharmaceuticals, but I made an appointment anyway. I waited in line for another fifteen minutes. Each time I spoke to Sweet Sweet with flat affect, “Wait here,” and left her sitting in the car. It felt better to be acting exactly the way I felt inside. I had my husband as a role model: never fake nice, fake polite, fake apologetic, or fake chatty. We arrived home, and my stepdaughter rushed upstairs to get on the computer. I wasn't there to see her face register the space in which it was not.

She should apologize. That's what I believed. I always insisted my kids apologize if one hurt another's feelings, called a bad name, or threw a punch. Usually, the victim was not satisfied with the apology: “It's not sincere” was the usual complaint. The one who had blurted out “asshole,” swatted, punched, or stolen invariably moved to make it right. It might be a few days or a week later, but the two parties made their own perfect peace without me. This oft-repeated scenario replayed in my consciousness but didn't release me from indignant expectation. “Sweet Sweet should say she is sorry for disrespecting me,” I told myself, and then Zhong-hua.
This contradicted Lu family protocol, which deems spoken apologies inappropriate, even insulting, to another family member because everyone knows that, within the family, all is forgiven. My husband studied my face solemnly. “You think this way?”

“Yes! This is the American way.”

“This is family. Inside family, no need say ‘Sorry.'”

“This is family, but this is not China.”

“Why not take short time—let herself understand she this time make big mistake, let herself think about how to fix?”

“Hfuh.” I had no actual answer to this. It was a novel idea, and I would allow the possibility of its efficacy just because it piqued my curiosity. Yes, let her think about that. Good. He was offering to take the burden of correction from me, a burden I carried as ungracefully as the burden of patience and disengaged inaction.

For her part, Sweet Sweet demanded to be allowed to go and live with her aunt, Da Jie, whose house contained candy, Klondike bars, computers, and Chinese cable TV, just forty minutes away from our sugarless cupboard and dilapidated farmhouse at the end of a dirt road. Horrified at the prospect, Da Jie told me how she scolded my husband when he relayed this request: “No! Why you teach your daughter this way—teach her she is princess and don't need do anything? Don't need? Really? I don't think so. Whole family rake leaf—just Sweet Sweet sit on couch, watch cartoons. Whole family carry heavy things—just Sweet Sweet carry hanging-down hands. This good way? You think? I don't want princess! I don't like! You want take care baby. This not baby. This woman. Brother, you forget: when I sixteen-year-old, I take care of you; take care of mommy, daddy; take care three sisters. Every day I go to factory, bring home money for feed family. Your daughter is big baby. No good. This not her fault. This your fault. Little Brother, you do wrong way.” My husband hung his head.

Life went on almost as usual. Every night the three of us sat down to a single bowl of food placed in the center of the table. Proper etiquette dictated that each person capture small mouthfuls with
chopsticks from his or her own side of the bowl, never digging into the center of the food, and never rooting around for the biggest piece of meat. Also proper was the spitting out of bones and skin onto the table, occasionally corralling them into localized refuse heaps, or not. I observed this through my mother's eyes and never got used to it. Chewing with your mouth open while making loud smacking noises, slurping broth noisily, and burping were also not frowned upon. Our three heads almost touched over the family bowl. Silence was a great equalizer. Since Sweet Sweet's blowout, she and her father hadn't been talking much in Mandarin, and that did make me feel less paranoid, even though I had learned enough of the Shandong dialect to know that they only exchanged such comments as “too much pepper” or “this tastes no good.” They never talked about ideas or events or people or anything other than the food in the bowl.

Sweet Sweet mostly stayed behind her curtain of hair and maneuvered the chopsticks through a narrow slit to her mouth; I didn't engage in my usual routine of telling funny stories to Sweet Sweet, asking her questions, and talking slowly to her father so that she could catch the meaning. No. The hell with the little bitch. I soberly contemplated four more years of high school and beyond. I even went to a counselor to try to get a grip on my emotions. He suggested I tap my collarbone and sternum while imagining my stepdaughter far away and no more than two inches high. This was not helpful, and I didn't go back. My dread of being ruled by a surly, demanding giantess was incongruous with the lonely, helpless, hunched-over teen at my kitchen table. I surprised myself by handing her the thickest, most buttery slice of toasted bread. Who did that? I was more surprised when I sent the check to school for her school photograph and even felt excited to see how it would come out. Apparently, I had a mother on automatic pilot inside me that strove to nurture, even while my hurt feelings held out for recompense. Apparently, I loved her, and it was OK that she didn't love me.

I began to take note that, despite the nastiness in the air, whenever I engaged Sweet Sweet, she was either faintly sweet or neutral.
The nastiness I felt like many small daggers in my chest wasn't coming from her. I told my husband I felt unsafe in my own home, as if I could not breathe. I felt as if someone wanted me dead.

“I might be crazy, but I feel this is coming from China.”

“Yes. Not one person want you dead. Three people want you dead.”

“Who?”

“Sweet Sweet's mother, grandmother, grandmother's sister.”

“My God, what should I do?”

“Don't think about.”

I practiced not thinking about the Chinese juju trio, and gradually the pressure on my chest subsided.

Christmas was coming, and I wanted to make my grandmother's recipe for coffee cake. I rolled the soft dough on the wooden counter, inhaling the yeasty fragrance. I had prepared a bowl of chopped walnuts and another of brown sugar for the filling. I was patting the dough with my hands and sprinkling handfuls of nuts on top when the sound of the sliding door behind me signaled that Sweet Sweet was home from school. The next thing I knew, she was beside me, her whole right side pressed up against my left side. Her book bag had dropped to the floor. Looking down at the dough and following my example, she reached for a handful of nuts and sprinkled them over the dough. Next she sprinkled the sugar.

“This is my mother's mother's coffee cake,” I said softly. “It's French.”

Sweet Sweet nodded, still looking down. She stood with the whole side of her body pressed against me until the sugar and nuts were all spread on the dough. Her beautiful impassive face was both relaxed and intent. My heart submitted to this somatic apology.

It was spring before Sweet Sweet said “OK” again and went adventuring with me into the roar of the Little Hoosick River where it rushes toward a cement bridge on Route 2. The river crashes down the giant slanted cliffs and sluices into natural channels it has carved for itself. At one side it thunders straight into a deep pool it
is eternally drilling into a deeper, rounder hole in the rock. The waterfall was very difficult to approach. First we had to descend the sheer riverbank facing backward and leaning into the steep slope while grabbing onto tree roots. At the bottom of the gorge, we worked our way between jagged rocks, bracing ourselves on the dripping graffiti wall of the underpass, then crawling on hands and knees over boulders until we reached the river's edge.

We stood together gazing at the pine tree lying a foot above the rushing torrent. The waterfall was on the other side of the river. We would have to balance on the tree trunk to reach a ridge of rock that offered diagonal passage across the middle of the river to the waterfall. I acted as if this were an ordinary activity, except that I put a life jacket on Sweet Sweet. She looked doubtfully into the treacherous channel. The water was dark green, swift, and deep. It was impossible not to imagine being carried away. I didn't know how sure-footed she was, so I sat down on the slippery tree and inched myself along. “It's OK,” I said. “You can do it like this. Come on, hurry up before the spray makes you cold.” She did it. We jumped into the foaming din beneath the waterfall, where liquid thunder churned with air. It couldn't be called swimming, this thrashing around in the maelstrom, and our gasping for breath couldn't be called anything as ordinary as breathing. The excitement made our hearts pound, and we laughed and screamed while paddling furiously against the current to keep our heads above the frigid froth. We shared at most five minutes of an exponential awareness of being alive and potentially dead.