Lisa Ko - The Leavers

There was this one Sunday, about a year before we were separated again, that we rode the subway to a point you picked out on the map. It had been a long time since we had done this. We ended up downtown, at the tip of Manhattan, walking on a winding pathway that overlooked the water. I missed it, the water.

“We used to come to this park when you were a baby.”

“I don’t remember,” you said.

You were looking more like me, the same eyes and mouth and nose, the broad shoulders and bony legs, though when I saw your face in profile, I’d see how much you could also resemble Haifeng with the point of your chin and your bushy eyebrows. Then you would turn another way and look like me again.

We sat on a bench and put our feet up on the railing. The water sparkled. I pointed into the distance, to a large boat moving away from the city.

“I have a new nickname at school,” you said. “Number Two Special.”

“What does that mean?” I felt self-conscious, like when I took you and Michael to that carnival and you made fun of me when I mistook the English word octopus, the name of a ride that spun you around in circles, for lion .

“It’s a joke. You know, from a Chinese takeout menu? That’s how they order the dishes. Number one special, number two special. Get it?”

I watched the boat until it became a white speck, fading into the skyline. “You don’t work in a takeout restaurant.”

“Yeah, but I’m Chinese.”

“You better tell them not to call you that.”

“It’s a joke, Mama.”

I TOOK OUT ANOTHER loan to cover fees for nail art training. Intricate designs became my specialty. I could draw palm trees, diamonds, and checkerboard patterns, even a recognizable depiction of a person’s face on a thumbnail, though I didn’t know why people wanted that. On a good week, I made more in tips alone than I had earned working at the factory. Rocky called me a customer favorite, and everyone said I had a steady hand, an eye for the best color combinations.

I was gratified when I heard Rocky’s laugh, several soft puffs out her nostrils, but when her voice was strained, her face worried, I pushed myself to learn more new designs and act extra nice to the customers, not only for tips, but because I recalled the story of the woman who had gone on to manage her own salon. Once, I overheard Rocky saying to a friend in her office: “I bet Polly could run this place as well as I could.” Didi said Rocky had been talking on the phone about taking out loans and speculated she might be opening another salon. A new salon would need a new manager, and if Rocky hired me to be one, she might also sponsor me for a green card.

The nail techs gossiped about Rocky when she was out. “She lives in a mansion on Long Island,” said Joey. “Her husband runs an import-export business for fruit.”

“Her husband doesn’t work. He stays home and takes care of the house and cleans,” Didi said. “He takes care of their son and drives her around, too. Haven’t you seen him pick her up from work?”

“I heard she married him because they were in love, but he was illegal and about to get busted by Immigration,” Coco said. “They were going to throw him in one of those immigration jails.”

“What immigration jail? I thought her husband was Chinese mafia,” I said.

Joey snickered. “Mafia would explain a lot about her personality.”

On a slow Tuesday morning, I sat on one of the pedicure chairs and flipped through a magazine.

“You’re here until two, right?” Rocky stood in front of me holding a ring of car keys, eyeliner on her right eye, but not her left. “I have to run home for a minute because I forgot something. Come with me?”

It turned out Rocky didn’t live on Long Island, but in northeastern Queens, which was almost in Long Island. The drive took half an hour, over highways and bridges, and she talked about her bad ankles and high blood pressure. “Getting older is a bitch, Polly, you know that?”

“You’re not old,” I said. She was probably ten years older than me, in her forties.

“You’re so good to me. But seriously. High blood pressure! I’m going to have to give up coffee, red meat, fried foods, you name it. Take pills. And I’m forgetting things right and left. I have these forms I was supposed to bring in today and I left them at home. I even wrote myself a note to remember.”

Rocky’s house was at the end of a block of similar-looking houses, with two stories and a front yard and an attached garage. The outside was brown brick, with a dark red roof, a low gate separating the yard from the sidewalk. It wasn’t a mansion; the new houses in Minjiang were far bigger. But it was a real nice house. I followed her into an entranceway with a full-length mirror on the wall and into a living room with a nice leather couch and two tall windows. There was an electronic keyboard in the corner with paper piled on top, and a school picture of Rocky’s teenage son, whose smile exposed a mouth full of plastic braces.

“You want water?” She gave me a plastic bottle of Poland Spring from a cardboard box. “Take a seat on the couch. I have to run upstairs to find this form.”

I sat, but as soon as I heard her walking on the floor above me, I got up. Down a short hallway was the kitchen, which had a dishwasher and a microwave, boxes of cereal and bags of chips on a round table. The sink was full of dishes, and the counter stained with dried sauce and crumbs. On the other side of the kitchen was a small room. I heard voices, the sound of a motor revving.

It was the television. I leaned closer to the open door and saw a man in a reclining chair, dressed in striped pajama pants, slippers, and a baggy white undershirt. One hand gripped the remote control, the other rooted inside a bag of Cheetos. He crunched in a mechanical motion and sighed, content.

Rocky’s husband was home in the middle of the day, eating Cheetos and watching action movies in his pajamas. He didn’t look like the owner of an import-export business, or even a househusband who cooked and cleaned.

“What does your husband do again?” I asked Rocky on the drive back to the salon.

“Oh, he’s in between jobs right now, so he spends too much time at home. Let me tell you, I’m glad I have this salon. Speaking of which, I wanted to talk to you. Where you live, in the Bronx, are there a lot of nail places?”

“A few,” I said. “Smaller places. I’ve never been to any of them.”

“Are they nice?”

“They aren’t trying to be spas.”

“Is your neighborhood near Van Cortlandt Park? Riverdale?”

“No, those are north of where I live.”

“I’m going there later today.” Rocky turned onto the highway. “There’s a space for lease in Riverdale and I think there’s a market in the Bronx, especially in those higher-end neighborhoods. Lots of people with money who don’t mind paying for a clean nail space.”

We got to the bridge entrance and Rocky slowed down at the toll. The E-ZPass sensor clicked to green. I took a breath and counted from one to ten. “If you do open another salon,” I said, “and you are looking for a manager, I would be good at it.” I tried to catch a glimpse of Rocky’s profile without looking directly at her, and thought I saw her nod.

She looked over her shoulder as she changed lanes. “Yes, I’ll let you know, of course.”

I took you and Leon out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant, the room cheery with red and yellow streamers, and told you it was too premature to say for sure, but there was a good chance I might get promoted to become the manager of my own salon. A man fed a dollar into the jukebox and a raucous chorus of trumpets kicked up. You kicked your legs under the table and I didn’t tell you to stop.