Becoming Who We Are Ch. 05

"Well...maybe you're right."

"Of course I'm right."

They arrived around noon and strode so quickly to the nearest subway station she hardly had time to take in the view.

"Don't look like such a country bumpkin," Bryce commanded. "Head down, eyes ahead, and for God's sake, don't stand in the middle of the sidewalk with your mouth open. You look like a tourist."

"I am a tourist."

"That doesn't mean you have to look like Cousin Ida come to town. Come on."

He grabbed her hand and led her into the subway. He bought four tokens -- "That way, we don't have to stand in line when we come back" -- and they trotted onto a platform.

"Where are we going?"

"Surprise. State secret. Can't tell you or I'd have to kill you."

She laughed. Did other girls feel this way when they went on dates? She doubted it. No one could feel happier than she did at this moment.

The entire afternoon fulfilled her fantasies of a perfect date. How wonderful, she thought, to see the city with someone who knew it so well. She stared at the crowds of people, who seemed to have come from everywhere on earth. She felt very cosmopolitan as she washed her hands in the bathroom at the Met, listening to ladies speaking Spanish on one side of her and German on the other. As evening fell, she heard her stomach growl, despite the enormous ice cream sundae she had eaten not too long before.

"Dinner?" she asked hopefully.

"Sure," he said, draping one arm over her shoulders. "What's your pleasure, birthday girl?"

"Surprise me again," she said.

His eyes twinkled.

"Back to the subway," he said. "I know just the place."

They emerged at Centre and Canal. She gasped.

"Welcome," he said, "to Chinatown."

Lucy Tang shook her head. No use thinking about that golden day with that golden boy, or the wondrous times they had shared kissing and exploring one another in her bedroom, in his basement, under the secluded maple tree in the cemetery. He had shattered her dreams quickly enough. She remembered the astonishment she had felt one spring afternoon when she saw a girl who looked very like Marlene Helms glide up his porch's front stairs. She saw the door open. Saw Marlene fling her arms around him, saw them kiss, saw the door close. She had stared at the house for two hours before she saw Marlene and Bryce emerge and exchange a languorous kiss before Marlene sauntered away. Bryce had glanced up at her window and Lucy had backed away, but not before he had seen her pale face. She had cried for days, refusing ever to speak to him again. Not long after that, they had graduated. Lucy had packed her things and headed away to college in New York City.

After Bryce, she had determined she would not have anything further to do with white boys. The few that pursued her either wanted sex, which she, as a nice Christian girl, did not, or the offbeat caché of dating the pretty little Oriental girl who spoke such good English. None seemed to consider her a real woman, much less a real human being with thoughts and ideas of her own. So, swept up in the cultural transformation that suddenly decreed everybody beautiful, she turned her back on her white classmates and sought out Chinese men.

She found herself wooed by second-generation Chinese who understood perfectly how she felt negotiating her way through a mostly white society. It felt like heaven, eating Chinese food, learning to speak some Mandarin, and exploring Chinese history and culture, alongside her economic studies. Her dive into all things Chinese dismayed and befuddled her stolid parents, who just couldn't understand why she would do such a thing. Weren't they enough for her? Hadn't they given her a good home? Why would she reject them? She'd better make the most of her scholarship, because they had no intention of footing the bill for this Oriental foolishness.

She glanced down at the invoices on the desk, but her mind stubbornly refused to consider them. Some part of her brain seemed determined to dwell on the past, something Lucy seldom allowed herself to do. Unbidden, her memory of Wei Tang as she had seen him for the first time came to her. She almost smiled. How handsome he had been.

She first saw Wei one spring day on campus, perched on a bicycle, white jacket flapping in the breeze, brown paper bags of food in the rack. He happened to look toward her then, and she felt her knees go weak and her mouth go dry at the sight of his face. She watched him, her heart pounding, until he rounded a corner and disappeared from sight. She tottered to the grass and sank to her knees in a daze. Good lord in heaven! She had never seen such a magnificent, beautiful man before. She sat staring into space for fifteen minutes until a voice above her spoke.

"Hello," it said.

She looked up and into the eyes of the man on the bicycle.

"I hope I not bother you," he said.

She shook her head wildly.

"No, you're not bothering me."

He smiled.

"May I sit with you for a minute?"

She nodded and patted the ground next to her.

"I hope you have patience with my accent and English," he began.

"You speak very well," she managed to say, drinking in the sight of his sparkling brown eyes, full lips, strong jaw, broad shoulders... Good lord, what a man!

He smiled and shook his head.

"No, I speak poorly," he contradicted. "But I learn."

They looked at one another for a long moment.

"Where are you from?" she asked.

"China."

"Where in China?"

"Canton. Near Hong Kong."

She nodded.

"How long have you been here?"

"A few months. And you? Where are you from?"

She smiled.

"Upstate. I was born in America."

"Very nice! I want become citizen too."

"Why?"

"How do you say? It is long story." He looked at her, assessing her face. "I must return to restaurant. Perhaps we can have coffee and talk more? Am I too forward?"

She smiled again.

"No, you're not too pushy. I'd love to go for coffee sometime."

They had made arrangements to meet, and she had watched him ride away. She sighed, glanced at her watch, and gasped. Microeconomics had started twenty minutes ago, and her professor loathed tardiness. She picked up her books and rushed away.

Lucy Tang laughed without amusement. How drawn she had felt to Wei back then. She had adored everything about him, his charming accent, his eagerness to learn English -- "all these infinitives and articles make my head hurt. Ai-ya!" -- his growing skill as a cook, his stories of China, how he looked up to her as a "real American." She had felt that she had found a missing part of herself, the part her parents had denied all those years. When he had proposed six months after they met, she had accepted almost before he could finish. They would open a restaurant of their own. She would run the business side; he would cook. They would do tai chi together, have beautiful children together, and be happy together.

And then -- marriage itself. The fights, the reconciliations. The lack of money at first, after her parents refused to make them a loan to open their own restaurant. The babies, and the pride they took in them. He managed to sponsor his mother to America. She cared for the children until she died when the twins were just six. And somewhere along the way, not long after John died, her love for Wei had listed and then sunk. His hair thinned, his voracious interest in the world around him narrowed to a trickle, and he increasingly thought only of his business. They stopped spending time together; they usually did their tai chi separately, and since he awoke so early to go to market, and worked so hard during the day, even sex became sporadic and perfunctory.

She frowned, dissatisfied. Her mother had warned her that the qualities she loved so, including the very Chinese-ness which had drawn her to him, would one day get on her nerves, and that he would soon ache for the companionship of people who shared his language and background. As always, events had proven Mama correct. Even though he could speak five languages, his accent bothered her. His brilliant Chinese cuisine became routine. And now that they had left New York, she missed her contemporaries who shared and understood her cultural contexts: the jokes and events of her youth and university days in particular. Lucy barely remembered her dreams of becoming the first female Asian-American financier, the passionate arguments she had had with her classmates about the Cultural Revolution and the economics of Communism, but she recalled her friends with a fondness that would have astonished her children, had they known. How long ago that all seemed.

Her thoughts turned to her children. Mark and Mary she enjoyed, insofar as she could enjoy anyone. She remembered her darling John with a sigh. What a great boy he had been, so full of fun and laughter, just like Wei when they first met. She scowled as she thought of Luke. The boy, so unlike his brothers, grated on her. Lucy had spent a lifetime ignoring what she did not want to see, and she refused to realize how much and how painfully Luke reminded her of herself. She never consciously heard the echo of her own mother's voice, urging her to excel in English. She saw only a failure of a boy, determined to thwart her by writing silly stories and rejecting her beloved math.

And now, she thought grimly, what now? Her children had only a few more years at home. Then she would have nothing in her life but a business and a husband, both of which bored her to tears.

Enough! She relentlessly pushed these thoughts from her mind and returned to her invoices. She was startled to find a teardrop on the top paper.