Lisa Ko - The Leavers

“At P.S. 63. I even remember the principal. Spanish lady with lots of hair. You were having trouble, and I didn’t want you to be in that class anymore. I got you transferred to Michael’s class. He was in an advanced class so it had kids from your grade in it, too.”

“It was P.S. 33, not 63.” Daniel put his elbows on the table and saw the outline of the principal’s face, a memory of walking to her office with his mother, how strange it had been to see her in the hallway of his school, how relieved he’d been to sit next to Michael in another classroom. He saw another scene: his mother yelling at a woman. In the memory the other woman’s son had made fun of his clothes or his lack of English and he had cried — yes, he saw it clearly now, Deming crying in the park and Mama running to him — and when the other mother defended her own son, said he’d done nothing wrong, Mama had let her have it, spitting in Fuzhounese. Fighting for him, being on his side. “Damn,” he said in English. “Tell me something else I should know.”

“When I came to New York, I was already pregnant with you. I had fifty thousand dollars in debt.”

“You were pregnant when you came here? Who was my father?”

“A boy in the village. My next-door neighbor.”

He waited for her to say more. As she told him about how she came to New York, he finished the bagel, chewing quietly, and the rest of his coffee. Then he told her he had grown up in a town called Ridgeborough, that his adoptive parents were named Peter and Kay, and he was taking a break from school.

The sun was coming up. Before she could end the call, he said, “If you found Leon, why didn’t you try to find me?”

“I did try.” She sounded hurt. “I looked for years, even. Leon didn’t know where you had gone. I was saving money to come back to New York. Even if it cost me sixty thousand dollars, I was planning on coming to find you. Even if the first thing they did when I got there was throw my ass in jail. When I heard from Leon that you’d been adopted I wanted to jump off a bridge.”

Her words retreated into a small, strangled space. Daniel’s mind was a jumble of names and motives. It was Leon’s fault they’d been torn apart, Vivian who had given him away. He stood against the counter, brushed crumbs onto the floor.

“But you’re okay?” A hopeful note crept into her voice.

Daniel walked back to the living room. To acknowledge his mother’s regret meant he had to think of what her leaving had done to him, the nights he’d woken up in Ridgeborough in such grief it felt like his lungs were seizing. Months, years, had passed like this, until he became adept at convincing himself it didn’t matter.

“That doesn’t excuse you going away,” he said. “You have no idea what happened to me. You can’t pretend you didn’t mess up, that you did nothing wrong.”

Roland came out his bedroom. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

“Everything all right?”

“Yeah.”

“Deming?” his mother said. “You still there?”

Daniel waited until Roland returned to his room and closed the door. “Yes.”

“There are so many things you don’t understand,” she said. “Ask Leon, you said you spoke to him, so why don’t you ask him?”

He was silent. He heard his mother say, “Yes, I’m in here.” She spoke in a loud, cheery manner, and he heard a man’s voice in the background.

She whispered, “My husband is home. I have to get off the phone. I’ll call you.”

CALL ENDED, the screen said.

Daniel poured himself a glass of water and drank it in several gulps, then washed his face in the sink. As the cold water ran down his neck, he realized her husband didn’t know about him, that she pretended he didn’t exist.

Central Park was covered in a thick matting of leaves, and the smoky smell of October made me think of running through the temple courtyard with Fang and Liling. You were running around the village like that now. I flipped through an English-language newspaper a woman in an orange apron had given me in the subway. Couldn’t read the articles, but I could make up stories. I didn’t often feel self-conscious about being out by myself, but today I wanted you to be there with me, needed someone to play witness to my life.

Five years had passed since I sent you to Yi Ba and the pain of missing you had faded, become amorphous; it was like missing a person I no longer knew. After you left, Didi returned to her bed, and when another roommate moved out I was promoted to my own, the sleeping bag on the floor going to the next new woman that arrived. Now I had a top bunk. Most of the women I’d lived with when I first came had left for other apartments, even other cities. Didi spent a couple nights a week at her boyfriend Quan’s apartment, but she and I remained on Rutgers Street, instructed the new arrivals on how to buy subway cards, where to get the best produce, which stores were rip-offs. I recognized the fear in these newcomers’ faces, watched them absorb my recommendations with grave intention. They said I was brave; they were awestruck when I told them how long I’d been in the city. “You’ll get used to it,” I said. “It gets easier.”

A few roommates had saved enough to buy into marriages of convenience. Didi and I went to City Hall for our friend Cindy’s wedding to a gray-haired white man. “I can introduce you to the woman I worked with,” Cindy said. “Professional Chinese lady.”

“I don’t want to sleep with a hairy American,” I said, then wanted to take it back, because that’s what Cindy had to do.

“You can get a Chinese man who has citizenship. And you don’t have to stay married,” Cindy said, “only long enough for it to work. You don’t even have to sleep with him if you don’t want to. It’s stupid to marry a guy without papers. It’s a wasted opportunity. The way you’re going, it’s going to take a long, long time to get your green card.”

“If ever,” Didi added.

Since you’d left, I’d been working twelve-hour shifts. Sewed more hems than anyone else. On the wall next to my bunk, I taped a piece of paper with two columns, one with the amount I owed, the other with what I’d paid off, the numbers so small I could only see them when I was lying down, and slowly, the number in the first column decreased and the number in the second column increased. But with the months I hadn’t worked after you were born and the money I sent to Yi Ba, it was taking longer than I expected. By the time you were five, I had paid off a little more than half the debt. More than twenty thousand remained.

I called you once a week. At first, Yi Ba would hold the phone to your face and ask you to say hello, and I would talk as you made gibberish sounds. Later, you were able to speak to me, and each time I called your voice would sound fuller and you would know words you hadn’t before.

“Are you listening to your Yi Gong?” I’d ask.

“Yes.”

“What did you do today?”

“Fed the chicken.”

“Do you remember New York?”

“No.”

You turned four, then five, old enough to go to school in New York, but Yi Ba made excuses. “Why not wait until your debt is paid so you can have more time for him,” he said. “Wait until you have enough saved to get your own place. He shouldn’t be living with all those women. And you need to get a better-paying job, with better hours. Who will look after him when you’re at work?” But Yi Ba had softened with his grandson. I’d told him that I’d met your father in New York, though your passport had your birthdate and anyone could do the math. Yi Ba hadn’t demanded details, only accepted the money I wired. For Deming, he said. He told me you had grown three centimeters in a month, that you liked to sing along to music on the radio, had nicknamed the current chicken Feety. I was glad he treated you well; it made me feel less bad about sending you away.