Page 18 of Never Thought I'd End Up Here
Cyrus stares at me for an extra beat, like he’s not entirely sure what’s happening.
The beginning of the path to perfect, crushing humiliation, I vow in my head.Enjoy.
While the outside of the ferry is designed with neon signs and the carved head of a dragon, its scales glowing yellow, fangs closing around a pearl, the ferry’s interior is laid out like a restaurant. Rows of round tables stretch from one end to the other, with just enough chairs to be filled by our group. The only two remaining empty chairs are by the open windows in the back.
Which is how I find myself sitting next to Cyrus once again.
I glance over at the papers already set in front of us. I’m really hoping it’s a menu—I haven’t eaten anything today except the stale bread rolls handed out on the plane—but then I realize it’s actually—
“A test?” Oliver demands from the table next to ours. “We’re on this cruise to take atest?”
Not just any test. It’s written entirely in Chinese, most of its meaning obscured by all the lessons I skipped over the years. And here I thought I had found a way to escape anything academic-related.
Wang Laoshi claps his hands. “Listen up,” he says, raising his voice over the whispered complaints. Well,mostare complaints. One of the girls—Lydia—looks genuinely excited by the prospect of schoolwork on a ferry. She’s already whipped out a sharpened pencil and eraser and has her curly hair scraped into a bun, as if she’s been training her whole life for this. I’ve never related to anyone less. “The test is to help gauge the extent of your Chinese abilities, including your reading and writing proficiency. I’ll give you half an hour to finish. And if you have any questions,” Wang Laoshi adds, “please do hesitate to ask me. It’s best you work it out yourself.”
***
I end up stuck on the first question.
We’re meant to construct sentences using different vocabulary words provided at the top of the page, but I barely know enough words to string together a sentence to begin with. The only characters I can write with reasonable confidence areI,horse,mother,you,have, and a few numbers. This works out well enough for a couple sentences, but I run out of variations pretty quickly:
I bought ten horses.
The horses have fruits.
I have a horse in my sink.
The horse is suspicious of my mother.
My mother is a horse.
The horse is my mother.
“What do you mean bydespite the horse, my mother can still have ten sinks?” Cyrus asks, shifting forward to read my answers.
I quickly hide my paper with my elbow, but it’s harder to hide the heat flooding my face. “No cheating,” I tell him.
“I don’t think you have any reason to worry about me copying you,” he says, resting his head on the table like it’s the perfect pillow, his face angled toward me. He put his pen down before I’d even flipped the page. “Though I definitely couldn’t have thought of that sentence by myself. The teacher should give you bonus points for creativity.”
“You can stop now.”
He regards me with an expression of well-feigned innocence. “Stop what?”
“Talking,” I say.Looking at me, I add mentally.Breathing.
“I really enjoy the implication that the horse poses an obstacle to sink ownership,” Cyrus continues like he didn’t hear me, his mouth curving with quiet amusement. “And that the mother can only have ten sinks, specifically. Eleven would just be too many.”
I put my head down, committed to tuning out his existence. But the next few questions are even harder than the first, almost impossible for me to decipher. Out of desperation, I start drawing wonky circles in place of characters I don’t know, hoping I might remember them later, but then it just looks like I’m doodling eggs all over the page. Before Wang Laoshi comes up to collect our tests, I already know that I’ve failed mine.
Well, the good thing is that it’s over, I comfort myself. Until we get the results back anyway.
Most of the other group members have left their chairs to walk back and forth along the ferry, chatting and taking photos of the stunning night scenery, their voices rippling over the rhythmic splash of water. Shanghai lies before us in all its magnificence, with its laser lights and soaring skylines. It’s still hard to believe that I’mhere, when only a day ago I’d been packing my pajamas in my bedroom, with my familiar view of the cherry tree and picnic table in the backyard. Now my views include the Huangpu River, curving out for miles and miles like a giant serpent, and, farther down the banks, the gleaming domes and rooftop bars and art museums and cinemas, the places where the city’s past clashes with the present in a jigsaw of neoclassical architecture and ancient bell towers and soaring skyscrapers. Animated hearts pop up over screens that stretch wide across the sides of buildings, beckoning to tourists.Welcome to Shanghai, the massive text reads, appearing for seconds at a time, then vanishing like an enchantment. I Love Shanghai.
I take it all in from my seat, massaging my sore fingers.
It’s been an embarrassingly long period of time since I last attempted to write anything in Chinese. At this point, I have to wonder if it’s too late for me. If I’m a lost cause. Everyone says that there’s an ideal period of time in your life to pick up or retain a language, and I stumbled past that deadline ages ago. Maybe I’ll never be fluent like Cyrus. Never speak my mother tongue without it getting tangled in my mouth. Maybe my aunt was right, and I’ll never be anything more than a foreigner in this city.
The thought weighs heavier than I expected. It wouldn’t have bothered me as much in LA, yet it’s different to physically be here, surrounded by sights I should understand but can’t. I can barely read the advertisements flashing on the sides of buildings and the ships gliding by.
