Lisa Ko - The Leavers

He kept me up to date with village news, which we both claimed to not care about but I always looked forward to hearing. Haifeng was engaged to a woman from Xiamen, whom his mother said was from a good family. I was happy for him, for landing a city woman, as well as for myself. I had escaped.

Visiting his parents on New Year’s, Haifeng had seen you — you were too young to remember — and asked Yi Ba for my phone number. He called me several times, but I never called him back. But maybe I should have let him meet you; it might have made things easier.

It wasn’t even noon yet, I had the day ahead of me, but I could no longer feel as good as I had when I left Rutgers Street for Central Park this morning, wrapped up in a long gray coat Cindy had given me. When I wore the coat over my jeans and sweatshirt, I’d walk a little taller, blend into the crowds on Canal.

I took out my phone and called Yi Ba. It was past eleven at night there, too late to be calling, but I wanted to hear your voice. The phone rang for such a long time I thought I had dialed the wrong number. When someone answered, it was neither you nor Yi Ba, but a woman who sounded familiar. “This is Peilan,” I said. “Who is this?”

“Peilan,” the voice said. “It’s Mrs. Li. Haifeng’s mother.”

“What are you doing there?”

“I need to tell you. Your father died. He had a heart attack last night. I didn’t know how to reach you and I was hoping you would call.”

A high-pitched ringing churned in my ears, like a train squealing to a sudden stop. “No.” My voice sounded strange, but I refused to let it waver while talking to Mrs. Li. “I spoke to him on Sunday.”

“I’m sorry. It was quick. I don’t think he was in much pain.” The ringing intensified. “Deming has been staying with us. I ran over to your house as soon as I heard the phone inside. Will you be able to send him to America soon?”

Somehow, I was able to inquire about the funeral, which my relatives would arrange and which I could not afford to attend, and to walk to the subway and back to the apartment, where later Didi found me in my bunk with the newspaper spread over my face. My father and I had been apart for so long he only existed on the telephone, but I’d always hoped we would see each other again.

I cried into my sleeves when walking down the street, tried to sniff the tears away at work, and when I couldn’t hold them back I let them drip, let my nose run onto the sewing machine. I thought of how, when I returned to the village after working in Fuzhou, one of the neighbor women had pulled me aside and said, “Your father is proud of you.”

I called Mrs. Li every night so I could speak to you, to make sure you were still there. I cried for weeks, lay in bed on my days off. Mrs. Li called and said one of Yi Ba’s cousins was able to get a loan due to having a relative in America — I was the relative — and apply for a tourist visa. He agreed to take you with him on the flight to New York, as long as I bought the tickets.

THREE WEEKS BEFORE YOU came back, six weeks after Yi Ba died, I went to a party at Quan’s apartment. The men played cards while the women talked and watched TV.

I saw a man in the corner tip a bottle of beer to his mouth. Built like a block, he leaned back, mouth curled up at the ends, like he was daring me to come to him. He noticed me looking and unpeeled a large, open smile. There was a gap between his two front teeth, wide enough to slip a watermelon seed inside.

“You don’t play cards?” He shuffled the deck in his wide hands. His Fuzhounese had retained the rural tones I’d been trying hard to sand down.

“No money for cards,” I said. A commercial blared on the TV, a deep voice narrating as a sports car looped the sharp curves of a mountain.

“You don’t have to play for money.” He cracked a peanut shell in his mouth. “We can play for peanuts.”

“I don’t like losing.”

“Then you won’t lose,” he said. “Then you’ll always win.”

I picked up a peanut and snapped it in half. “So when did you come over?”

“Nine years now.” He cut the deck. “You?”

“Six.”

He said the name of his village, which wasn’t far from Minjiang. “Better to be the one who leaves than the one who’s left behind.”

“You think?” I saw the man’s secret smile, his weighty brow, the eyes that tugged down at the corners, and wanted to unlock him. He was familiar to me, but nothing like Haifeng; he looked like if you got to know him, there might be something there. “Working our asses off in America? Maybe it’s better to be home, fat and happy in a brand-new house.”

“And daydream of being here? You wouldn’t stay there,” he said.

I smiled. He was right.

His name was Leon, and he worked nights at a slaughterhouse in the Bronx. It was demanding work, slicing and cutting cows and pigs, evidenced by his thick arms and shoulders, which I snuck a feel of when we kissed on the corner after leaving Quan’s. When I opened my lips it was like being unraveled.

Sometimes, when I saw good-looking men on the street, I wanted to ask if they would take me home. Once I trailed a man for five blocks, admiring how he walked with his crotch pointed forward like a dare, moving with purpose while keeping his hips loose. Stopped when he stopped, stayed steps behind him, checked out his butt while he waited for the light. What if he didn’t speak Fuzhounese, only Cantonese or another dialect I didn’t know? He could be an American-born Chinese, or worse, he might laugh, shout that this crazy woman was propositioning him. I watched him walk off, my breath rushing out of me.

My third year in America, I slept with a guy from Anhui province a few times. He drove a produce truck and had a wife in his village, and I was relieved when he said she was coming to New York. Until Leon, abstinence was another sacrifice I could pride myself on: Look at all I’ve done. Look at all I’ve given up. But when Leon traced the star-shaped mole on my neck as we stood on the frosty little street outside Quan’s apartment, beneath the fire escapes and perilous icicles, when he called me Little Star, there was a tug inside me in a place I had overlooked, like remembering a long forgotten memory. Oh, that. How could I have forgotten that? Leon’s mouth tasted like beer and peanuts. Leon’s tongue nudged up against mine. There was a hard twist inside me, a knot of years loosened. This wasn’t the village. A woman could kiss a man she just met, kiss him on the street in front of strangers, and nobody would care.

In three weeks, you were coming home to me. Because I had lived in the apartment for so long, my roommates said it would be fine if you stayed there, as long as I agreed to pay extra rent, though not as much as a new roommate would pay, since you’d be sharing my bed.

“We’ll move out soon, to a bigger place,” I told them, though I didn’t know how.

I mapped out the best route to the school on Henry Street and rearranged my hours at the factory. I was scared of being Mama again, having to care for a walking, talking, six-year-old boy that I didn’t even know. I remembered how hard it was to be responsible for another person, how some days were like choking. What if I had forgotten how to be with you, or screwed you up by sending you away?

The day after I met Leon, he called to see when I was free. I told him my son was coming to New York next month. I didn’t have to tell him, but I did.

“What’s his name? How old is he?”

I told him you had turned six last month, that I hadn’t seen you for five years.

Leon said, “I can’t wait to meet him.”

A COUSIN I’D NEVER met before delivered you to me on a January evening. I patted your shoulders, but your arms remained at your sides. Your face was longer, your body meatier. “Big boy,” I said, and you jutted your lower lip out at me. Fat clung to your face. You wore a green sweatshirt with an iron-on decal of a soccer ball, passed down from a neighbor or one of the other children on 3 Alley. Your hair stuck up in stubborn quills, like you had forced them out of your skin. Who had cut this hair?