Page 16 of If You Could See the Sun
There are other memories too: the bright, stacked aisles at Costco, the crumpled In-N-Out burger wrappers littering the back seat of our rental car, filling the tiny space with the smell of salt and grease, and Baba’s voice, with its uneven inflections and stuttered pauses, reading me a bedtime story in English as I drifted off to sleep...
But simmering beneath it all was this—this tension. A tension that grew with every odd look and ill-concealed insult and racist joke tossed my way, so subtle I didn’t even notice it building inside me day by day, the same way the teachers failed to notice Rainie Lam’s slowly changing hair color over the years. It wasn’t until I stepped out into Beijing International Airport, suddenly surrounded by people who looked like me, suddenly both seen and blended in, that I felt the full weight of that tension right as it lifted off my shoulders. The relief was dizzying. I was free to simply be a child again, to shed the role of translator-chaperone-protector, to no longer feel the need to constantly hover around my parents in case they needed something, to shield them from the worst of America’s many casual cruelties.
“...you to stay, but, well, I didn’t have enough to lend to your Mama at the time,” Xiaoyi says, moving the dumplings around with her chopsticks to stop them from sticking.
The clink of plates pulls me from my thoughts, and it takes a moment for my brain to register the rest of Xiaoyi’s sentence. My heart seizes. “Wait. Mama...came to you for money? Why?”
Xiaoyi doesn’t reply right away, but deep down, I already know the answer: For my education. My school fees. My future.
Me.
But Mama is even prouder, even more stubborn than I am; she once worked a twenty-hour hospital shift with a sprained ankle just because she didn’t want to ask for a break. The thought of her bowing her head to ask for money from her own little sister makes my chest ache. Mama and Baba would really do anything just to make my life easier, better, no matter the cost.
Maybe it’s time I do the same for them.
“Xiaoyi,” I say, and the urgency in my voice gets her attention at once.
“What is it?”
“There actually is something I came here for... Something I need to tell you.” I push my bowl aside. Take a deep, steadying breath. “I can turn...” I pause, realizing I’ve forgotten the Chinese word for invisible.Yin shen?Yin xing?Yin...something.
Xiaoyi waits, patient. She’s used to these abrupt gaps in conversations with me by now, sometimes even tries to fill in the words I don’t know. But there’s no way she could predict what I want to say next.
“People can’t see me,” I say instead, settling for the closest translation and hoping she’ll understand.
Her tattooed brows knit together. “What?”
“I mean—no one can—my body becomes—” Frustration boils inside me as the words jumble around in my mouth. There’s no correlation between fluency and intelligence, I know that, but it’s hard not to feel dumb when you can’t even string together a complete sentence in your mother tongue. “No one can see me.”
Understanding dawns upon Xiaoyi’s face. “Ah.You mean you turn invisible?”
I nod once, my throat too constricted for me to speak. I’m suddenly afraid I’ve made the wrong decision by telling her. What if she thinks I’m hallucinating? What if she calls Mama, or the local hospital, or someone from one of her many WeChat shopping groups?
But all she says is, “Interesting.”
“Interesting?”I echo. “That—that’s it? Xiaoyi, I just told you—”
She waves a hand in the air. “Yes, yes, I know. I can hear perfectly well.” Then she falls into silence for what feels like eons, her large earth-brown eyes thoughtful, her lips moving soundlessly.
I can’t help squirming in my seat as I wait for her verdict. It feels like the buns in my stomach have turned to stone, and in hindsight, I realize I probably should’ve told her all thisbeforewe started eating.
Finally, Xiaoyi glances up and points to some spot behind me. “Yan Yan, can you fetch me that statue of the Buddha over there?”
“What?” I twist around, and locate the little bronze statue sitting atop an old bookshelf. Old worn copies of classics likeJourney to the WestandDream of the Red Chamberare stacked beside it. “O-Oh. Yeah, sure.” I nearly trip over my chair in my haste to grab the statue for her, my fingers trembling as they close over the cool surface. I’ve never been the super religious type (when I was five, Mama told me that all humans are just a clump of cells waiting to decompose) but if I can lose all visible shape and form without warning, who’s to say a mini bronze Buddha can’t give me the answers I need?
I hand it over to Xiaoyi with both hands as you would a sacred artifact, heart hammering in my chest, watching intently as she unscrews the Buddha’s foot, reaches inside and pulls out...
A toothpick.
“Um,” I say, uncertain. “Is that for—”
Using one hand to cover her mouth, Xiaoyi slides the thin wooden stick between her teeth with a loud sucking sound. She snorts when she sees the expression on my face. “What, did you think this was for you?”
“No,” I lie, the rush of heat to my cheeks giving the truth away. “But, I mean, I was kind of hoping you could...”
“Offer you guidance? Explain to you what’s going on?” Xiaoyi offers.
“Yes.” I plop back down on my chair and look pleadingly across the table at her. “That. Anything, really.”
