Lisa Ko: The Leavers

Now the only mother in the apartment was Vivian, and the fact that Deming’s mother was gone was no secret. It was a car alarm cutting through an empty street in the middle of the night. He could curse as much as he wanted, but the words tasted like they had gone rotten in his mouth. He tried to remember as much as he could about her. Such a brief time when she had belonged to him alone. She cuffed her jeans twice so they wouldn’t drag on the ground. She pulled the sleeves of her sweaters down like oversized mittens. The pleasing incongruity to her cackle, how she’d pinch the fat under his arms and call him a meatball, the delicate prettiness to her features. You had to hunt for her beauty, might not even catch it at first. There was a sweetness to her mouth, her lips lightly upturned, lending her a look of faint amusement, and her eyebrows arched so her eyes appeared lively, approaching delighted.

He looked away so Michael wouldn’t see the tears that came so fast he almost let them fall.

They turned the corner. “Deming?” Michael sounded hesitant, like he was talking to a teacher or a friend’s mom. “Did you hear? Travis Bhopa’s moving to Pennsylvania.”

“So?” Deming didn’t know where Pennsylvania was.

“His mom left his dad for another man and now he’s got to go live with his grandma.”

“What other man?”

“Some neighbor.”

Deming dug his fingernails into his arm, ten sharp half-moons sparking pain. But what if she wasn’t dead? “That sucks,” he said. “For Travis.”

THEY ATE DINNER AT the folding table in the kitchen, the plastic top printed to look like wood, a corner peeling and exposing a foamy underlayer. Deming snatched a piece of chicken from Vivian’s plate.

She tried to grab it. “Stop it. Bad boy.”

Vivian’s fat was rearranging itself. Her belly and arms were thinner but extra skin had appeared beneath her chin and around her mouth, like plaster hastily slapped on top of an existing structure. She huffed when she walked upstairs, no longer danced to music on the radio, and fell asleep at the table, gave the boys food and claimed she wasn’t hungry. Deming had seen her look in her wallet and curse, and when he opened the refrigerator she yelled at him to shut it. He heard her and Leon fighting about the rent, who would watch the kids.

He licked the chicken before she could get to it, ran his tongue up and down the salty skin. Leon glared at Deming and passed Vivian the rest of his food.

Leon looked like hell, reminded Deming of pictures of cave men in a school textbook, standing straight and de-haired into upright Homo sapiens. Leon after Mama was reverse-order evolution; he had developed a stoop, a paunch, a spotty beard specked with gray. It scared Deming, like Leon had aged a hundred years while other people remained the same.

Once, riding the Staten Island Ferry with his mother and Leon, the wind had stung his face but he felt warm, as if nothing could go wrong. His mother had said, “Do you like this boat, Kid? Isn’t it better than Yi Gong’s fishing boat?” And Leon had laughed, a belly chuckle that made Deming feel like he’d outrun the other kids at the playground. Now he couldn’t recall he last time he had heard Leon laugh. Had Mama left, refused to marry Leon, because Leon got ugly? Deming chewed chicken. They had a lot of neighbors. Mrs. Johnson, Tommie Not-bad-not-bad-not-bad, Miss Marie with the baby girl. There was the bodega owner, Eduardo, who’d been asking, “Haven’t seen your mother lately, how’s she been?” Deming would say good, busy.

“Eduardo’s always asking how Mama is.” Deming watched Leon for a reaction.

“Who?”

“The guy at the bodega.” Leon’s face was blank. Deming tried again. “I saw Tommie the other day.” No answer. “Yi Ba? Can we go to Florida?”

He had never referred to anyone but Leon as his father, and when his mother had first told him he could call Leon “Yi Ba,” it had seemed a little illicit. In school, spacing out as the teacher chalked the multiplication table, trying to ignore the other kids who were hyped on sugar and rocking back and forth, busting out in Tourettes-y curse strings (one particularly restless kid liked to chant Balls, titties, balls balls titties all day), Deming would mouth his own words: Yi Ba, can you come here? Yi Ba, can I watch TV?

Leon looked up. “Florida? Why?”

“If Mama’s there, we’re not trying hard enough to find her. What if she’s in danger?”

“She’s not in danger.”

“But how do you know?”

“I know. She’ll call soon.”

“Mom?” Michael asked. “Can we go to Florida?”

“No,” Vivian said.

“I want to go to Disney World,” Michael said.

“No, no, no, no.”

As Deming scooped rice out of the pot, a clump fell on the table. “Don’t waste food!” Vivian swept the spilled rice onto her plate and took his bowl away. “Maybe your mama left because she was tired of feeding such an ungrateful boy.”

She took Deming’s plate to the sink. “Don’t listen to her,” Leon said. “She didn’t leave because of you. We’re all going to stay together, you and me and your mama. We just have to wait.”

Vivian said, “I’m going to the store.”

Leon went to work. Michael fell into the couch like it was eating him. Deming didn’t know what he was doing here. Leon wasn’t his real Yi Ba, Michael and Vivian not his real cousin and aunt. If his mother ran away with another man, he had to let her know that she couldn’t get rid of him that easily. He grabbed clothes and stuffed them in a plastic bag.

“Stop blocking the TV,” Michael said.

“I’m going to Florida to find my mom.”

Laughter from the studio audience rattled out. Michael stared at Deming, his eyes enormous behind his glasses. “Then I’ll go, too.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course. We’re brothers, right? Like brothers.”

“Okay, then we have to hurry.” Deming dumped a ball of Michael’s clothes into the bag. “We have to go now.” He took his keys, tossed Michael’s shoes at him, and they moved out the door.

“How are we going?” Michael shouted as Deming ran up University, taking a right on 192nd. He didn’t know which store Vivian had gone to, which block she’d take back to the apartment. “My shoelace!”

“I have a plan,” Deming said, though he didn’t. As they neared the subway station they heard a train pulling away, and they ducked into the stairwell, panting.

“I don’t have a MetroCard,” Michael said.

Deming swung the bag of clothing against his leg. It was heavier than he’d expected. “Me neither.”

“I’m going to tie my shoelace now.” Michael bent down, tied one loop, then another.

“I don’t have any money,” Deming whispered.

“We can ask my mom maybe.”

“She won’t let you go if you ask her.” Michael looked so serious, so trusting. He couldn’t ask Michael to leave Vivian. Then they would both be without mothers. “Let’s go home.”

“What about Florida?”

“Another time.”

They turned back. “I’m hungry,” Michael said. Inside the bodega, Deming lingered in the aisles, fingering a candy bar, but Eduardo’s bushy white beard kept catching his eye.

“Whoo,” Eduardo whistled from behind the cash register. A giant metal fan batted warm air around. “This stinking heat.”

“It’s a heat wave,” Michael said.

“How’s your mama doing? She all right?”

“She’s great,” Deming said. “And we’re late for dinner.”

They walked out with nothing. By the time they got to their building, his arm ached. He asked Michael, “You seen Tommie lately?”

“Not for a while.”

They paused outside Tommie’s door. Deming wanted to kick it, but it didn’t sound like anyone was inside. “Where’s Pennsylvania, anyway?”