Page 68 of This Time It's Real
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
After years of celebrating the Lunar Festival in places that focus mostly on Christmas and New Year’s, it’s nice to finally get an actual public holiday for it.
The two-week break is a blessing in more ways than one. Whatever changed between Caz and me that evening in his apartment—and something did change; I felt it down to my toes on my way home—is put on hold while Caz leaves for Hengdian for the whole length of the holiday. I manage to polish up my first batch of college applications just in time for the approaching deadlines. And Ma manages to organize a long-overdue family reunion at a seafood restaurant; turns out that getting over sixty family members together in the same place at the same time is, in Ma’s words, a logistical nightmare.
As soon as we enter through the restaurant’s lantern-lit double doors, we’re greeted by an open display of fish tanks: crayfish scuttling across the glass and barramundi swimming through the murky waters. I stare at them for a few moments, at their gaping mouths and blank black stares, then tear my eyes away. Knowing how these types of places work, one of them will end up on my plate pretty soon. Better not to get too attached.
A cheery, baby-faced waitress leads us toward a massive private room at the far end of the restaurant, where we hear our relatives long before we see them. My stomach flutters with nerves. I can only pray my mediocre Chinese skills pull through.
And then it begins.
It feels like some elaborate, extended-family version of a meet-and-greet. Ma, Ba, Emily, and I line up on one side of the room, our backs to the floral folding screens, bright smiles arranged on our faces, while our relatives come up one by one to pinch our cheeks and offer gifts: bags of fresh red dates and apricots from their own gardens, and expensive calligraphy sets to help us “get back in touch with our culture.” Fat red packets are shoved into our hands (despite Ma’s polite protests that we’re too old for Chinese New Year money) and many unnecessary, supposedly well-intentioned comments about my weight are made.
There are the sharp-eyed, hard-to-impress uncles asking about my grades and the gossiping aunts who I can distinguish only by the size of their perms. Then there are the relatives I don’t know how to address: If it’s something-yior something-yilaolaoor if they’re actually our much-older cousins,so Emily and I end up sneaking glances at our phones to search for the right names.
It’s all very loud and overwhelming and chaotic and . . . I’ve missed this. The energy in the air and the warm press of laughter from all sides. The strange sensation of looking out into a crowded room and recognizing variations of my mother’s smile, my sister’s eyes.
Our laolao—Ma’s mom—is the last person to come greet us, and people part for her the way you would for the queen. Thereissomething regal about her, even in her late sixties: The hard creases of her face, the steely look in her eyes. The history there. She’s wearing the same faded purple blouse she wore in one of the few photos of us together, and her silver-streaked hair has been pinned up in an elegant bun.
“Laolao hao,” I say dutifully when she stops before me.
Without a word, she pulls me into a fierce, bone-crushing hug, enveloping me with the sweet scent of herbs and jasmine tea and some kind of laundry powder. I awkwardly pat the back of her shirt, unsure how else to reciprocate.
“I’m so glad you came home,” she whispers, her breath warm on my skin, her calloused grip tight around my shoulders, as if she’s scared I’ll vanish the second she lets go.
When she does let go a few moments later, I’m alarmed to see that her eyes are rimmed red. Yet even more alarming is the faint burning sensation behind my own eyes. I blink hard and pull my lips into a broad smile.
“Of course we came home,” I tell her in my clumsy, childish Mandarin. “You’re here.”
She smiles back at me with so much love that it feels like a tangible weight before moving on to Emily.
But I remain rooted to the spot, thinking. About family. Abouthome.
Around five years ago, at a school I can barely remember the name of anymore, our English teacher had asked us to write an essay on the topic of home. Everyone else knew immediately what to write: their childhood house in Ohio, their family farm in Texas, the city they’d lived in their entire lives. Simple. Only I had balked at the idea.
Then, like a complete idiot, I’d actually raised my concerns with the teacher in front of all my classmates.
“What if we don’t really know where home is? Or what if—what if we don’t have one?” I’d asked.
A few people laughed, as if I was being funny or difficult on purpose.
The teacher just stared at me for a beat. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Everyone has a home.”
I’d tried to explain what I meant, but by then, the teacher had lost his patience. He said I was lazy, that I was trying to get out of a straightforward assignment by making up nonexistent problems. He didn’t understand; none of the other people in my class seemed to either. They hadn’t spent half their childhood attending family gatherings and eating Peking duck rolls and flying kites in Beihai Park, only to be whisked away to a country where they couldn’t speak the language, couldn’t even spell their own name. They hadn’t learned to ride a bike on the wide, sunbaked roads of New Zealand, only to have to sell that bike two months later when they moved to Singapore. They hadn’t spent their tenth birthday on a plane, and their eleventh birthday crying in the bathroom in England, because they didn’t know anybody there and some kid in their new class had made fun of their accent.
Home for them was one piece, one place, not something scattered all around the globe, fragmented into something barely recognizable.
This was what I ended up writing about for my essay, but the teacher had given it back to me, unmarked. Said I didn’t understand the point of the assignment. Asked me to do it again.
So the second time around, I made a story up. I chose one of the cities I’d lived in at random and wrote a bunch of bullshit about how I belonged there. In return, I got an A-plus, and the comment:That wasn’t so hard, was it?
But as I gaze out at the room now, I wonder if maybe the answer to that assignment was as simple as this. Right here. Thinking of all those rooms I walked through at eight, ten, fourteen years old and all the people I met in them . . . if maybe I left a piece of myself in them and took a piece of them with me too; isn’t that what homes are made of? A collection of the things that shape you?
My heart feels a little lighter as I take my seat between Second Aunt (the one with the biggest perm) and Third Aunt, waiting for the dishes to come. So far there are only prawn crackers and salted peanuts spread out over the red tablecloth.
“. . . I’m telling you, they would be so cute together,” Second Aunt is saying as she picks up one peanut after another using only her chopsticks. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were also dating in real life. It’s common with actors, you know. Like Tang Yan and Luo Jin. Or Zhao Youting and Gao Yuanyuan. All that time together on set—something’sboundto happen.”
“Yes, yes, and they’re both very good-looking,” Third Aunt agrees. “Their children would be beautiful—I can just imagine it.”
