Lisa Ko - The Leavers

Between shifts, we lay together, half-dressed. He told me the few memories he had of his parents, who both died young. Once, as a small boy, he had skipped into his house with a ladybug, excited to show off the colorful insect, and his mother, scrubbing pots, had taken the bug and squished it between her fingers. It was a story not intended to be sad, only true, but it made me so damn sad I couldn’t find the right words to say, the comfort and sympathy that was supposed to come naturally to women. I wanted one memory, just one, of my own mother. I worried I couldn’t be a good mother without having known my own.

I told Leon about Haifeng, the riverbank and the factory, the day I walked into the ocean. Our legs were intertwined, his foot brushing the inside of mine, an evil tickle, the sun forming a triangular shadow on the sheets. “Do you ever wish you were with a woman who didn’t have a child?”

“Of course not. I don’t want to be with another woman.”

The more Leon comforted me, the less comforted I was. His solidity was so different from Haifeng’s fawning, but it felt dangerous, it could be a trick, and I had to be careful. I was disappointed at Leon for not being able to properly reassure me and annoyed at myself for needing him to do so. I told myself I didn’t want to be married, especially not to someone without papers. Told him I didn’t care for weddings.

He said, “I’d still like to marry you one day.”

Alarmed, I said, “Let’s wait and see.”

My old roommate Cindy had told me it was a waste to marry a person without papers. And Didi had hit the jackpot: Quan was American-born, so she had a good chance at getting a green card. I imagined being without papers for the rest of my life, unable to drive or leave the country, stuck in the worst jobs. No different than staying in the village. I didn’t want a small, resigned life, but I also craved certainty, safety. I considered suggesting to Leon that we marry other people, legal citizens, for the papers, and after a few years we could divorce our spouses and marry each other. But I didn’t want to marry anyone else, and I sure as hell didn’t want him to either.

If I left him now, it wouldn’t hurt as much as it would if I left him later. I lay beside him, watched him muttering in his sleep.

NAIL POLISH FUMES MADE me dizzy, made my nostrils burn and the skin on my fingers peel off in bright ribbons. When I returned to the salon after a day off, my breathing got shallow and my eyes stung, but after an hour, I no longer noticed it. The tips at the salon still weren’t enough to cover my expenses. If I did nail art, I could get higher tips, but Rocky said I had to put down a $200 deposit to learn. I tried my English out on the customers who talked to me, asked their names, what they did for a living, where they lived in the city. I got accustomed to the awkward intimacy of holding a stranger’s hand while trying to avoid each other’s eyes. All the nail technicians spoke to one another in Mandarin. Joey liked to bake, brought in butter cookies for us to eat, while Coco, who was tall and skinny with a sleek helmet of hair, studied fashion magazines and knew the brands and styles of her customers’ clothes and bags. “That’s a knock-off Balenciaga,” she’d say, “you can tell because of the straps.” She spoke in a monotone, and people called her rude, but I found her refreshing. “The women with the real bags that aren’t knock-offs? They tip crap. They spent all their money on bags.”

Someday I would have enough money to spend on useless things. I wanted a better job, managing a salon like Rocky. There was a woman who used to work at Hello Gorgeous and had quit to run her own business in Queens.

Hana, who had the best English out of all of us, read phrase books on her breaks. “You need to leverage the advantage of having a child who’s growing up here,” she said. “That’s free English lessons daily. I learned the most English from my kids. I had them share their textbooks with me.” At home, I started to try out English words with you, tried not to let my frustration show when you laughed at my pronunciation.

“Let’s look at this together,” I said to Leon, turning the volume down on the TV. Hana had given me one of her old books. “I’m trying to learn twenty new words a week. The book says in two months we can be speaking at a third-grade level.”

“Third grade? That’s for kids. Baby level.”

“If you don’t try you’ll be speaking at a fetus level. Silent.”

“Most of the people in the world are Chinese, but you don’t see Americans trying to learn our language. You don’t need English at my job.” Leon took the remote control and raised the volume again.

Then you’ll be in the slaughterhouse forever, I wanted to say. It was a young man’s job, and when Leon’s back pain got so bad he couldn’t work there anymore, what kind of work could he get? I wasn’t making enough to pay all the bills. When these thoughts kept me up at night I would smooth them over with color, the same way I could brighten a fingernail in a few short strokes. I’d think of Leon and me, talking in bed on a late morning as you and Michael laughed in the living room. You calling Leon “Yi Ba,” the five of us eating in the kitchen together. Our meals were never silent.

And I hoped Vivian would become an older sister to me, the two of us cracking jokes on Leon and taking care of each other’s kids. Short and round, Vivian favored bright clothing, hot pink T-shirts with cartoon characters, pants with silver rhinestones down the sides. She took overflow orders from a factory, and some weeks there was a lot of work, other weeks nothing.

My first morning in the apartment, I told Vivian I liked her pants. She was snipping threads at the kitchen table, the floor crooked, the walls embedded with the remnant odors of past tenants, deep-fried, soggy with cooking oil. A moldy smell arose from behind them, more pronounced in hot weather, and if I could knock the walls down I might find mosses and vines, a trickling stream. Vegetation. Salamanders.

“Thanks,” Vivian said. One hand pulled the thread, the other angled the blade. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I bought pork for tonight.”

“Why, what’s tonight?”

“For dinner. I was thinking pork dumplings. You like steamed or fried? Steamed is easier, right? But Leon loves fried, of course. Which do you make for him?”

“Neither. I have to work late, but I usually bring home takeout for Deming, so you don’t have to worry about cooking him dinner.”

“There’s plenty of food. Plenty for your son.”

“Get Leon to cook. He’s doesn’t have to go to work until after dinner.”

“Cook? Leon?” Vivian laughed so hard she started to hiccup.

She expected that I would cook, even if I had to go to work, that women just loved spending their free time standing in a hot kitchen mincing meat and vegetables, spoiling grown men as if they were children. But I didn’t want to cause conflict. I wanted a sister. So Vivian and I cooked, after we finished our jobs.

She and Leon kept the apartment stocked with the soda you loved. One night, you and Michael sat on the couch with Leon, sucking down Cokes and seeing who could burp louder.

“That’s enough, Deming,” I said. “Stop it.”

“Oh, they’re boys,” Vivian said.

As if he was proving Vivian right, Leon chimed in with a belch of his own. You burped again, and Michael stifled a giggle.

“Deming! Stop that!”

“But Auntie Vivian says it’s fine.”

“Well, I’m your mama and you have to listen to me.”

You stuck your tongue out. A fizzy rage seeped through me like a poisonous gas. I was due back at the salon in the morning, it took almost an hour to get to Harlem on the bus and subway, and I’d already worked seven hours and stopped at the bodega to get food on my way home, where the owner, a nice man from South America, gave me discounts. There were dirty dishes in the sink, laundry to do, and you and Leon were burping while Vivian was trying not to laugh. You were all trying not to laugh at me. “I said, stop it! And you—” I pointed to Leon. “You’re no better than a child.”