Lisa Ko - The Leavers

He waved in her direction. “Deming!” Yimei said. “Catch.”

He saw the ball bound across the air, a swift yellow blur, and lifted his arms, letting it nestle against him. “Heads up, Yimei,” he shouted, and threw the ball back.

Beijing was a city of circles. Six ring roads, each one larger then the next, a series of concentric donuts. The train station was in the third ring. The high-speed train out of Fuzhou took twelve hours, and Daniel had only managed to sleep in spurts, his legs sore from sitting. He ignored the throng of motorcyclists outside the station and instead hailed a cab to the Park Hotel, and the closer he got to the inner rings, the more intricate the architecture, whether it was neon high-rises or older buildings with scalloped rooftops. Thick smog hid the upper stories of the tallest buildings, and some people on the sidewalks wore masks or scarves wrapped around their mouths. Frantic techno music leaked out of the radio, spasming reds. “Turn it up,” Daniel asked the driver. The cab filled with overproduced vocals, a guy rapping in Mandarin. “Louder, please.” The driver complied, the colors deepened. “Louder.”

The Conference for English Educators was taking place on the ground floor of the Park Hotel. Daniel paid the driver and said thank you in Mandarin, got out on the corner carrying his backpack. The street was full of shops selling fake jade jewelry and Buddha figurines to tourists, and he heard one man say in English, “Goddamn I need a nap,” the long vowels funny and exaggerated, almost painful to hear.

He walked through the revolving doors of the hotel, through the lobby, past the front desk, and around a corner, where two women with white nametags sat at a table with books and magazines. A conference schedule, in both Chinese and English, was displayed on a metal stand, and he saw his mother’s name, Polly Lin, listed as one of the speakers on a panel called Teaching Young Adult Learners, from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. He looked at his phone. It was 11:05.

A man in a blue suit, whose nametag announced him as Wei from an English school in Suzhou, intercepted him. “Do you have your nametag?”

“I’m sorry, I must have left it in my room. Should I go and get it?”

Wei turned to check with the two women at the table. As the three of them conferred, Daniel slipped into the auditorium and into the first empty seat he saw, two rows from the back, his view partially blocked by a pillar. Two women and a man were sitting on stage, and one of the women was his mother. A third woman, the moderator, was in a separate chair. His mother had the mic. “That’s what I mean,” she said, her words clear and forceful. She was making emphatic gestures with her right hand as she held the microphone with her left, and Daniel was glad to see she still spoke with her hands. “You cannot apply the same methods to younger learners that you do with older ones. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.” Several people in the audience clapped, and Daniel joined in, making his claps extra loud and resonant.

The moderator asked the man a question about creating an English-language curriculum with Chinese references. His mother passed the microphone. She wore glasses with small gold frames, a snug brown blazer, a cream-colored blouse with an energetic ruffle, and a silk paisley scarf. Her hair was short, puffed, and wavy. She didn’t look ten years older, he couldn’t see any wrinkles or gray hairs, at least from afar, but she looked neater, polished. Not like the professors at Carlough with their former hippie stylings, not like Peter and Kay in their L.L.Bean, but like a real estate broker or a bank teller. She was wearing a skirt. She looked like someone else’s mom.

The man handed the microphone to the woman who was next to his mother. After she spoke, his mother spoke again, and Daniel felt himself puffing up, proud at how confident and intelligent she sounded, how smooth her Mandarin was. The man stuttered, the microphone amplifying a catch in his voice, and the other woman’s sentences were peppered with excruciating pauses, but his mother spoke without hesitating.

The moderator asked the audience if they had questions. A woman near the front rambled on about a program she had created until the moderator cut her off. Daniel raised his hand, and the moderator walked over. He’d played enough shows to know his mother wouldn’t be able to see the back of the auditorium from the stage, not with the pillar in the way. He spoke in his best imitation of a northern accent, trying not to crack up because it was a terrible caricature of Mandarin. “I’d like to learn more about bilingual education in Chinese schools. Do you teach Chinese and English at the same time? What about students who can speak both?”

The man onstage answered the question, talking about an initiative at the college where he worked, but Daniel saw his mother look around the auditorium, trying to find him, as the rest of her face struggled to remain still. He suppressed a laugh.

She found him after the panel ended, pushing past people waiting to talk to her.

“Deming! You scared the shit out of me!”

Her eyes widened. They stared at each other. She was wearing makeup — he didn’t remember her wearing makeup before — and her skin was powdered and oddly even. He was relieved to hear her curse, to know a part of her remained the same beneath this new exterior polish.

“Hi — Mama.” His face and hands grew warm. Why did saying the word feel so embarrassing? It felt like he was claiming something that didn’t belong to him.

Her mouth wobbled. His heart was beating so loudly he could hear the blood thump in his ears. People were trying to move past them, but Daniel and his mother could only stand there, looking at each other. He felt the intensity of her stare and had an urge to duck and hide. He wanted to apologize to her for growing up, for also becoming unrecognizable from his former self.

The moderator rushed over. “We’re going to get lunch, Polly, with the group from Shanghai.”

“I can’t,” his mother said, not taking her eyes off him. “My son is here.”

The moderator turned. “This is your son? You must be a bilingual education teacher, too.”

“Something like that,” Daniel said. He wanted to tell the moderator to leave them alone. Couldn’t she see that they didn’t want to be bothered?

His mother linked her arm in his and he could feel her trembling. “Let’s go,” she said, and they walked across the lobby and out of the hotel. She wore high heels, black and spiky, and there was a sense of overcompensation to her movements, her features carefully set to a neutral expression. She kept her arm in his, steered them onto a busier street and into the backseat of a cab, directing the driver in rapid Mandarin. Then they were stuck in what appeared to be endless traffic.

“You came all the way from New York,” she said.

“I flew from New York a few days ago.”

Her voice got high and choked. “You traveled so far!”

“Well, today I just took the train from Fuzhou.”

She took a handkerchief out of her purse and blotted her forehead, then her eyes. “I don’t like being onstage like that, being watched.”

“But you were great.” He noticed the muscles working in her face, the labor it took to hold herself together. “What about when you’re teaching, up front in a classroom?”

“That’s not so bad. I don’t teach much these days, though. My work is more administrative. Are you hungry? Yong e-mailed me to say you came by the apartment.”

“I wanted to surprise you.”

“Some asshole stole my phone on the train. I had to get a new one, change my number. Such a pain. I hope you still have yours with you.”