Repeat After Me (22 page)

“God, he’s like a total spaz, Mom,” she said.

“It’s his first time rock climbing,” I reminded her. “It’s brave of him to try.”

“Because he’s old and frail, you mean?”

Anne, hearing this, smiled at me over Julia Too’s head, and I felt a surge of something I can only describe as the opposite of loneliness. Julia Too stepped onto a small rock jutting out and began propelling herself back up.

“Don’t fall, sweetie,” I called. I hate watching her swing off the wall. What faith can I really put in a pair of elastic underpants?

Julia Too twisted around to face me. “When you fall, it’s like flying,” she called. “Falling is the fun part.”

“Oh,” I said. “So fall, I guess.” I blew her a kiss. Let go, I thought again, let go. An image of her first shoes flashed into my mind. How I bent to buckle them and she stood, waiting to run into the first school she ever attended, a festive place on the Upper West Side called Basic Trust. Julia Too cried less at “good-bye” than the other toddlers, and I used to wonder if this was because she expected less than they did, that her heartbreak was set in motion before she was born. Even on days when she felt mixed about seeing me go, her way of putting her mittens in her cubby and pulling out her mat for morning meeting seemed to me especially stoic. Julia Too blew me kisses through the windows of classrooms for years, butterflied her way through swimming, dance, and pottery lessons, made and kept friends from every corner, including Beijing. I thought the impossible circus of moving and being the international new kid might shatter her, but she’s apparently made of some trauma-proof material; I’m the glass one.

Yang Tao rappelled off the wall, hanging in space for what must have been a terrifying moment—before returning to the ground. He was unable to disguise his relief.

“You hated it!” I said.

“Hate is a big word.”

I smiled. “Remember when you said I could ask you anything?”

“Did I say that?”

“Who was it that Shannon meant when she said you weren’t married because you’d had your heart broken?”

“You’re still on that question? A girl from Hubei,” he said.

“Hubei! Where is she now?”

“She married my college roommate.”

I tried to see his facial expression, but he was shading his eyes from the sun, and I couldn’t make much out.

“Were you crushed?”

“It was a long time ago,” he said.

“Right. Was your heart really broken, though?”

“Yes.”

“How long did that last?”

“Unclear,” he said, in Chinese.

“Are you ready to belay me?” I asked.

He nodded, and I roped myself to him and climbed until I reached the bell at the top of the wall. Ringing it, I had the thought that rock climbing is like sex. The exertion narrows your mind to a single focus: where the limbs go next. Don’t fall. Or do.

Our processed marriage license arrived, and I passed it to Da Ge in class. Now all we had to do was go to city hall for a “ceremony,” and we’d get the real certificate. A marriage certificate! I wondered if I would hang it on my wall next to the fat fat white white baby picture of me and Benj. I hoped so. Maybe Da Ge would ask to move in with me. He said nothing after class but called me late that night.

“I like to see you,” he said.

“Come over,” I said. “Now that we’re almost married, maybe you’ll kiss me.”

“Do you want?”

“Yes.”

I went downstairs, propped the lobby open with a Bedford grammar handbook, and left my apartment door unlocked. When he arrived, I was lying in the dark, undressed, the covers up to my neck. He closed the door, bolted it, and pulled the chain across. I heard two controlled thumps as he set his shoes in the hallway: one shoe, two shoes. His socks brushed the wood floor toward my room, the door creaked open, and a little hallway light washed over the bed.

He walked to the shelf and set something down. The textbook. Then he appeared at the side of my bed. I thought he’d ask was I asleep, and that I wouldn’t respond, even though I had just brushed my teeth and had a pounding cardio pulse. But he said nothing, simply lifted his shirt over his head and then undid his belt buckle. He took his jeans off and folded them. Then he stood in his boxers in front of me, touching the bed. I turned onto my side and propped myself up. His stomach tensed when I reached out to touch him, wrapped my hands around his straight hips. He put his hands on my face, and I closed my eyes. It was too dark to see when he slid into the bed and pressed himself against me until our bodies were touching entirely. I could feel his thighs against mine, and remembered wondering what it would feel like to touch him, taste him. This was what. He felt like beach glass, tasted minty and urgent. The city was dissolving out my window, lurching forward without me. I could feel the muscles in Da Ge’s back, the pulse in his neck where I pressed my open mouth. A car outside came to a grinding, screeching halt, and I listened for the smash of metal, but it never came. Da Ge’s arms were under my waist, lifting and arching me toward him. He smelled like shampoo and newsprint. He had brought the city inside my apartment with him; the skin on his face was still cool
from the night. When his hips were moving against mine, and his breathing jagged and rough, he put his mouth over my ear. His voice was like heat, his words so clear I can still hear their edges. “I want you unbelievable bad,” he said.

When Da Ge and I slept together that first time, it was March of 1990, and I had two friends: Julia One and Xiao Wang. Telling Xiao Wang was not a possibility. I had no idea how she’d react, and I didn’t want to risk our friendship. But I wanted to tell someone, and it couldn’t be Dr. Meyers or my mother since I was on such a lie roll with both of them. So I had to forgive Julia. There was no one else to keep me company about how weird or not-weird it was, or to help decide if he was a stalker or the love of my life. Julia might not approve, but she was my best option.

I decided to start a conversation as if she and I had just left off the day before by some accident, and not to acknowledge the Adam debacle at all. Maybe we could just pretend so hard that it hadn’t happened that it wouldn’t have. But I would leave out the part about marrying Da Ge, I decided. I could handle the salacious sex with a student, the no-condom aberration, the general slut narrative, but the marriage part felt like too much.

Weirdly, I put on lipstick before going to Julia’s apartment. When she opened the door and saw me, her eyes watered. But she stood there, maybe scared. “Hey,” I said.

“Hi.”

“Um. Could I have some coffee?”

“Of course,” she said, turning. “Come in.” We sat in her kitchen, on the stools, the red and white floor twirling up at us.

“So,” I said. “I slept with one of my students.”

Her face broke open into a smile of such relief and gratitude that I laughed. This was how it was going to be. We were going to be okay.

“Which one?” she asked, collecting herself.

“He’s Chinese,” I said. I wasn’t sure whether to say his name.

“Wow,” she said. I could see her scrambling for nonchalance, for a return to our normal way of speaking. But when she asked, “Are you going to be one of those teachers who goes to jail,” I felt invaded.

“He’s not fourteen,” I said. Even though I had invited it by coming over and telling her a secret, I resented that she felt entitled to take a tone of intimacy with me ever again. She sensed the change in my mood instantly and was cautious.

“Do you like him?” she asked politely.

I shrugged.

“Can he speak English?”

“That’s enough talking about it,” I said.

“That came out wrong,” she said. “I didn’t mean it to sound so—”

“No, it’s fine.” I cleared my throat, contemplated giving up the whole project, leaving, and never having another friend. I could feel Adam’s presence. He had been in her bed. I willed myself not to look over at it. Try again, I thought. She’s your only friend, and you need her. I inhaled.

“He was involved in the protests in China last summer,” I told her.

“Really? In what way?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he a dissident?”

“I guess so.”

“Does he tell you about it?”

“Of course.”

“So what does it mean?”

“I don’t know. Just that he’s intense and political. And his mother is dead; apparently she killed herself. And he and his father are estranged. I don’t really know the details,” I admitted.

“Oh,” she said.

We both waited.

“None of that sounds good to me,” she added, unable to lie, even though she owed me a lifetime of niceties. We were in a movie about ourselves.

“I know what you mean,” I gave her, “but it makes him interesting. I mean, he’s cared about something in his life. Something more than himself or his own neuroses. In some ways I think he’s like me, but a better version.”

“I think that might be a weird perception,” Julia said. She had promised after my breakdown that she would tell me if she thought I was being paranoid or delusional. But predictably, I didn’t want to hear it and didn’t agree. And now that she had slept with Adam, she had no right to tell me anything at all, ever again. I reminded myself again that I had decided to be forgiving, that she would have for given me, had the situation been reversed. Of course, I would never have slept with her boyfriend, no matter who he was or what the circumstances, and we both knew it. For a reason still difficult to articulate, this was more about her weakness than anything else, and it made us both feel bad for her, not me. I may have been crazy and friendless, but somehow I was confident about boys in a way Julia wasn’t. Maybe I just spent enough time in my own mind to have a certain hard-to-get allure. Julia was too good, too eager to please, too organized, too kind. So she got dumped a lot. Guys like a bitchy girl. This has been a bonus for me.

“Thank you for being honest,” I said, meaning to mean it. But it came out so hostile that we both recoiled.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “that came out wrong, too. I didn’t mean to—”

“No, no—it’s fine,” she said. We waited, as if some third person might speak and save the day. It didn’t happen.

“All I meant was that I’m not sure what makes you two alike,” Julia said. I could never remember her ending a pause before, and I was grateful.

“We’re both different from everyone else.”

“He because he’s Chinese, you mean? But there are a billion Chinese people in the world. How does that make him different from everyone else?”

“That’s not why. He’s just—unusual.”

“I see. And you?”

“Because I’m, I don’t know—a peripheral person somehow. You know what I mean, on the edges of things. You’re my only friend, and, well, Da Ge makes me comfortable. We understand each other.”

“Okay, then I guess that’s good,” Julia said, but she didn’t sound convinced or convincing. “As long as he’s nice to you, I guess.”

We both thought about how Adam hadn’t been nice to me, and it was Julia’s fault.

“I should go,” I said.

“Do you have plans tonight?” Her voice broke over the words.

“Um, yeah.”

“Aysh,” she said, “Thank you for stopping by—I just wanted to say again how—”

Before she reached “sorry,” I held a hand up to stop her, started to say it was okay, that we didn’t need to talk about it now, that I loved her enough that we could pretend it had
never happened, but I wasn’t sure it was true. So I left without saying anything.

All these years later, I still miss the Julia One who existed before the Adam slip. She and I are long-distance friends now, and of course I’ve forgiven her and long since let Adam go, but something was broken in those moments. What a stupid, lonely waste.

On the phone that night, without knowing why, my mother was worried.

“Can I come over?” she asked. I was tempted to tell her about Julia and Adam, but my mom has an impossibly long memory, and I knew she’d never forgive either of them. Even though that’s what I wanted short-term, her anger on my side, I also knew I should preserve the possibility of getting back together with at least one of them without my mother disapproving for life.

“How about tomorrow, Mom? I’ll come for dinner. I’m about to go to bed now.”