“Mar-tee isn’t doing so well,” Daddy announces.
“Daddy,” Ma says.
“I think she wants to be a dropout. I think she doesn’t care about getting into a good school like her jie-jie.”
“I don’t want to go to boarding school. I want to stay at home.”
“Stay at home and fool around.”
My sister lets out a sigh that flutters her bangs.
There’s a silence, and then my mother says brightly: “Marty has star part in the Christmas pageant.”
“I’m the Virgin Mary.” My sister’s smile is ironic.
“I won a prize,” I say casually.
“Oh, what?” Ma asks.
“It was for a pastel drawing. They chose from the whole freshman class. They’re going to put it in the spring art show.”
Daddy clears his throat. “Yale only takes the best grade point average.”
Ma nods. “When I was young, you know what I wanted to be? A neurologist. I wanted to learn all about the brain and nervous system and perform surgery.”
My sister and I exchange glances. This is news to us.
“You could become academic, do research,” Daddy suggests to me.
“I don’t like math.”
“Who’s talking about math? This is science.”
I don’t want to be you, I think. Never. I hate you. My father is sucking up his spaghetti like Chinese noodles. I think how ashamed I would be if Fran, if anyone I knew at boarding school, could see him.
“You keep on,” Ma tells me. “Be determined. Not lazy, like you did with piano lessons. You don’t understand, you try again.”
Daddy points his finger. “That Xiao Lu, he’s entering the Westinghouse competition. You know every year who wins?” No one answers. “Chinese,” my father says triumphantly. All our lives we’ve been hearing about Xiao Lu. I wonder who his parents hold up to him as an example.
I ask my mother if Nai-nai is coming for Thanksgiving.
“No,” Ma answers. “Her hip is bothering her. Your Nai-nai doesn’t like turkey anyway. That Su-yi will cook a big fish.”
Our own Thanksgiving dinner is fancier than usual. Ma actually buys fresh cranberries and simmers them with orange peel and honey. I have two helpings of everything, including the pumpkin pie home-baked by our new neighbor, Lally Escobar. Marty’s acting friendlier now. After dinner we put on our down jackets and mittens and go for a walk up to East Rock, where she tells me about her new boyfriend. His name is Schuyler, he attends the private day school in town, he’s fifteen and has his learner’s permit. The cigarettes we’re smoking were stolen from his older brother. “Dad can’t stand him,” Marty says. She takes a long drag and stares out into the dusk and then she says: “We’re doing it.”
To tell the truth I’m shocked. Drugs is one thing but sex is something else. Who would want to? We’re sitting out of the wind, on a gigantic flat rock that’s famous in the area as a glacial formation. I wrap my arms around myself, squashing the down until I hear it sigh. “What’s it like?” I ask, trying to keep my voice normal.
“Mmmmhmmm,” she says. Schuyler’s parents are always away on cruises and safaris and he and his brother are left the run of the house, ostensibly under the care of the maid. Marty tells me about the parents’ bedroom, the sheets with the giant chrysanthemums on them, how they always put on the Rolling Stones.
“Do you like it?” I ask.
“It’s okay,” she says, so offhand that I want to belt her. She’s perched on the edge of the rock, her blue-jeaned legs—grown long for her height—dangling over. The hood of her parka is thrown back and in the fading light her lashes cast half-moon shadows against her cheek as she contemplates the smoke from her cigarette. I picture her lying back naked on a giant four-poster bed, entwined with some silent clumsy boy.
It makes me so upset that I have to look away.
“I’m the only Oriental at school,” I tell her. “Except this girl, Jane Chu, who’s from New York Chinatown. She was born here but she talks with an accent.”
“Kind of like Mimi.” Mimi is our age, the youngest daughter of the family who owns the Sung Trading Company downtown.
“You could go away to school too, Mar. It’s a lot of fun.” It’s almost dark now, but I can feel her watching me.
“No, I’m okay here. Besides, Ma wants me to stick around. Not that she says anything, but I can tell.” Marty crunches her cigarette out and with a practiced motion flicks it over the barbed wire into Lake Whitney.
“How about him?”
“Oh, he’s nothing. He just yells a lot. He can’t do anything. I don’t give a fuck about him.” She turns directly to face me. “He’s an old man now, can’t you see? He can’t hurt us anymore.”
Since we were kids we’ve never talked about Monkey King, my sister and I, and even now I’m not sure that she remembers exactly what happened. I’m not sure what she’s telling me. I look away from her again, because if I don’t, I know I’m going to throw up my Thanksgiving dinner.
During Christmas vacation Marty makes herself scarce. Schuyler has turned sixteen and gotten his license. I meet him a couple of times—he’s blond and beefy and taciturn, the prototype of all my sister’s subsequent boyfriends. I notice once that my sister is wearing the gold scarf Ma refused to buy for her. Sometimes when she comes in late I hear Daddy yelling. “You are useless! Useless girl!” His voice grates, getting more and more high-pitched until I want to scream. Somehow, my sister manages to ignore him.
One evening Ma knocks on my door and says she needs help deciding what to wear to the faculty Christmas party. I lie on my stomach on her bed as she stands in front of her closet flipping through hangers. “You think I should wear dress or pants?”
“Pants. It’s chicer.” I’m flattered that she wants my opinion.
She pulls out a pair of black trousers, and after some consideration, a cherry-colored tunic, and puts them on while I watch from the bed. She catches my eye in the dresser mirror.
“You know, Sal-lee, you could be nicer to your daddy.”
“How am I not nice to him?”
“You disappoint him. He try to be kind.”
“He’s always been crabby, Ma. It’s not my fault.”
Ma twists to examine her backside in the mirror. “Your father is not a cheerful man,” she admits.
“Maybe he should help around the house once in a while instead of just sitting there reading his newspapers.”
“I know Marty and Daddy don’t get along, but you were always his favorite. Don’t you remember?”
“No.” Ma’s up to her tricks again, trying to pretend that everything’s hunky-dory.
“When you were born, he did everything. Change your diaper, give you bath. Even make your baby formula.”
“I don’t remember.”
“It’s true. You know Chinese don’t talk about love, but there’s nothing like a Chinese father. In Monterey every Sunday he take you to the beach to watch the seals. You really don’t remember? Sealy. Your nickname is Sealy.”
“So what.”
Ma fiddles with a jet necklace lying on the bureau. “Most children love their mother more, but not you. You wait all afternoon until he comes home and then you bring him his tea in the living room, ask him how his school went.” She picks up the necklace, loops it in double strands around her neck, and turns around. “What do you think?”
“Looks good,” I say.
“And these earrings to go with? Or should I wear the black pearl ones from Nai-nai?”
“No, stay with the jet.”
“Ma, are you ready?” It’s my father calling from the bottom of the stairs.
“Just a minute,” Ma calls back, annoyed.
The house itself seems to breathe a sigh of relief when they are finally gone. I put on an old nightshirt that belonged to Fran’s grandfather—white flannel with very pale blue stripes. She gave it to me when I admired it. I feel that it’s armor, that it will protect me somehow. I take out my pastels and a sketch pad and set up my easel by the window, planning to draw a view of our new yard, with its dramatic trees that I can’t yet name, but soon it’s too dark to see. I turn out the lights and light a candle and with a broken-off piece of indigo begin to sketch in the shapes of my room: the bed, the baby rocking chair, the row of miniature Peking opera masks, the quivering giant shadow of the carved wooden horse on my bureau. I’m still at work when my parents come home.