Troublemaker and Other Saints

Book by Chiu Christina

  “Nobody”

 

It’s snowing. My fingers itch from the cold, but still, I can’t go in. The house is too quiet, too empty. Without Grandma, it’s got that too big, hollow feeling. It’s been three whole weeks, but still, whenever I get home from school, there’s a part of me that goes, Please be there. When she isn’t—when she doesn’t call, “Meme-ah? Is that you?”—I feel this hole getting larger inside me, and if I don’t watch out, it’ll swallow me up.

            Grandma once said, “When someone dies, Meme-ah, maybe she becomes a bird or a butterfly.” So who knows? I go around to the back of the house, move Grandma’s lawn chair to the wall of bushes between our house and the Sheng-Stevensons’, and plant my butt in its snowy seat. The lawn is frosty white and full of animal tracks. Birds. Maybe squirrels. They disappear into the woods, where the ground is covered with pine needles.

            I take out my book and read—slowly and clearly, the way Grandma liked—and what comes back is her pruny-mouthed smile and those fogged-up blind eyes. Snowflakes slip into the back of my collar. I shiver.

Romeo            Tut, I have lost myself, I am not here.

            This is not Romeo, he’s some other where.

Benvolio            Tell me in sadness who is that you love?

Romeo            What, shall I groan and tell thee?

Benvolio            Groan? Why no, but sadly tell me who.

Romeo            Bid a sick man in sadness make his will?

            A word ill-urg’d to one that is so ill.

            In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.

           

A branch twitches in the woods. A gray squirrel hops into the yard. It sees me and freezes.

            “Grandma?”

            My voice scares it. The squirrel scurries up a tree. It hops from one to another, and is gone. Snow falls harder, sticking to my lashes. I wait. But no more squirrels. No birds. The sky hangs dusty white. Scattered clouds drift around like sad feelings. Soon it’s too dark outside to read. My butt’s all wet and frozen, and I’m shaking all over. I know I’ve gotta go in, but the house is so dark and lonely.

            Next door, Sarah, a girl in my English class, comes out on her back porch. Every day it’s the same thing. She smokes one Camel Light, finishing it before her mom comes out of her study. Sarah leans against the porch railing and stares at the woods. She listens for the six-o’clock train to pass.

            Does she see me? I duck low in the chair and pull the top of my jacket over my mouth.

            Sarah puffs and exhales as if the world’s this huge problem.

            Yeah, right. What problems you got, huh? Sarah’s got Chinese eyes but a tall American nose. She streaks her hair blue and paints her nails silver. She wears big turtleneck sweaters with really short mini-kilts. She blasts her music so loud the whole world can hear it, and she doesn’t turn it down, not even when her mom yells. Thing about Sarah is that she goes out with this senior, Evan, so she’s got a trillion friends.

            It isn’t like I care or anything. Grandma once said, “One good friend is better than ten bad ones.” She also said books were more reliable than people. They could disappoint you, she said, but they never just up and disappeared on you. Not like some people I know.

            “Tryouts are Monday,” Sarah says.

            “Yeah?”

            It’s a guy’s voice, so I think it’s Todd, Sarah’s brother, who’s the biggest jock in the whole school.

            I peek through a hole in the back of the chair. Gross—it’s Evan, not Todd, behind her, kissing her neck. He sticks his hands up the front of her sweater. She squeals.

            Gross. I shut my eyes and turn around.

            “I’d make a good Juliet, don’t you think?” Sarah says.

            “Fuck the play,” he says. “You’ve got your Romeo.”

            Sarah giggles.

            “What? Am I not or am I not?” he asks.

            Blah, blah, I think, wishing she’d finish her cigarette already.

            “Really, Evan,” she says. “It’d be so totally phat being up there in front of everyone.”

            I shouldn’t look, I know I shouldn’t, but I peek over again. Evan takes a puff from her cigarette. Smoke funnels out his nose. “Hair’s a little blue, don’t you think?”

            “So I’ll dye it back.”

            Evan smooshes her boobs. From the look on Sarah’s face, it can’t feel good. “I don’t know,” he tells her. “I don’t want some dumbfuck feeling you up onstage.”

            The six-o’clock train blows by. The rails clink, and all at once it’s gone. Sarah puts out her cigarette. They go inside.

 

Mom and Dad bring takeout for dinner. General Tso’s chicken for me, mapo tofu and beef-and-broccoli for them. We eat Chinese style: chopsticks and a bowl of white rice, the dishes in the center of the round table. I’ve changed into dry jeans and a thick sweatshirt. My toes and fingers still burn from the cold. Dad takes off his tie and jacket and hangs them on the back of his chair. He runs a hand through his hair as though he’s got a lot of it. Outside, the sky is black and moonless. My throat feels funny. Maybe I’m going to be sick. Then I’ll be stuck at home by myself. No Grandma to collect snow in the frying pan to make red-bean ices. No Grandma to read to.

            “What should we do about that Ametex order?” Mom asks Dad. They’ve got a textile-exporting business, and they love to talk drapes and upholsteries.

            “What can we do?” Dad replies. “They want to hold off. See what happens.” He’s talking about Hong Kong. Grandma said the British took it from the Chinese and pretty soon they’ve gotta give it back.

            Mom sighs. The strand of white hair she plucked last month is back, the short stub poking in the air. Dad dishes beef onto his plate. He smashes it in his rice and draws his bowl to his mouth. He shoves it all in. “Did you bring home the fax?” he asks, his mouth full.

            “What fax? I didn’t see a fax.”

            “Can I get a dog?” I ask.

            “No,” Mom says, adding broccoli to the beef on Dad’s plate. She knows how he sneaks out of eating vegetables. This way, because it’s on his plate, he’s got to eat it.

            “The fax,” he snaps. “Asiatex. I gave it to you.”

            “Please?” I say. “I swear I’ll take care of it and walk it and feed it and you won’t ever have to do anything.”

            “I said no,” Mom says, spooning tofu onto her rice. It’s greasy red from chili sauce. She turns to Dad again. “You never gave me any fax.”

            “I did.”

            “Why not?” I demand. “Why can’t I? I’m the only one in the whole world who can’t have a dog.”

            “Laurel,” Mom warns. “We’ve talked about this before, and I don’t care to bring it up a hundred times. What about Yu? Don’t you like it anymore?”

            Right. Like a fish and a dog are the same thing?

            “If you have so much time on your hands, you should help your mother more,” Dad says, pulling a folder from his briefcase.

            Blah, blah.

            “She shouldn’t have to work all day, then worry about making dinner when we get home. Your grandmother wasn’t so good at this kind of thing because of her eyes—”

            Something catches in my throat, and I cough. Dinner? That all she means to you?

            Dad plucks a paper from the folder. “Ah—see?”

            I stare at my food and don’t feel even a little bit hungry. “May I be excused?” I ask Mom.

            “Finish,” Dad says, pointing at my bowl with his chopsticks. “Don’t waste. One must never waste.”

            No, I think, I won’t finish. I won’t, you can’t make me.

            I chew each piece of chicken twenty-five, twenty-six times before swallowing, and eat my rice one grain at a time. Finally, when he’s done with dinner, Dad leaves the table and goes to the living room. The TV switches on.

            I look at Mom. Now can I go?

            She tips her head: Go, then.

              Upstairs in my room, Yu sees me and swims to the surface of the water. She’s orange with black spots, and she has one clear eye and one solid black. Her tail fans out behind. “Don’t take it personal or anything,” I say, feeding her. She sucks a flake into her mouth and spits it out.

 

The next morning, I wake up sick. My cough’s so bad Mom tells me to stay home. After she and Dad leave for work, I get the courage to go into Grandma’s room. Incense, Vicks cough drops, dusty books. The smell of her is still there. Maybe it’s in the bed or the carpet. Maybe it’s the books. I lie down and close my eyes, and for a moment I can almost hear her reading to me. Thing is almost. All I’ve really got of hers are two shelves filled with books and a bureau with a porcelain Guan Yin. There’s also a small night table with a framed picture of me on it, and a twin-size bed with my old Pooh comforter.

            Before I know it, I’ve got my jacket on and I’m racing outside. I brush the snow away from the chair and sit down. While I’m reading, my breath comes out in smoky puffs. The cold makes me start coughing, but I don’t care. I can’t move until Grandma gives me some kind of sign: something, anything.

            Later on, the sun starts to go down, but I’m still waiting. An icicle drips from the gutter. Otherwise it’s all quiet. So far I’ve spotted a chipmunk and a couple of black crows. A swallow appears in the dogwood by the back door. I’m eyeing it when Sarah comes out to her porch. She bangs the screen door. The sound scares off my bird.

            I watch through the bushes. Evan’s there.

            Does going out with someone mean you’ve got to be with him every single minute? I mean, how could you think with someone squeezing your boobs all the time?

            Sarah lights a cigarette. “I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just a play.”

            “You my girl or what?” Evan asks. “You want to be my girl?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Well, I need my girl with me,” he says, drawing her close. “You know, here by my side.”

            He kisses her and reaches a hand up the back of her sweater. All of a sudden he jams his fingers into the waist of her skirt.

            “Stop,” she says, holding his hand. “My mother.”

            But even I know it’d take an earthquake to get Sarah’s mom out before six, and so he reaches up her skirt and tugs down her pink panties. She grabs his hand and loses the cigarette. “Evan—cut it out.”

            “You a tease or something?” he says.

            I shrink into the chair. My chest gets that itchy going-to-cough feeling.

            “The guys are right,” he says. “Maybe you ought to go back to your crib.” He hops the porch to the snow-covered lawn and heads down the driveway to the street. I can hear the crunch of his boots in the snow. He gets into his Corvette and screeches away from the curb. Sarah kicks the railing and turns to face the screen door. Maybe she’s looking at her reflection, because she says, “It’s no fucking big deal. Just let him do it and get it over with, okay?”

  &n...