Home Remedies Read online

  In her gravelly smoker’s voice, this bitch said that Lily was not who she said she was. Said Lily was an escort. That her family doesn’t do arms deals and they don’t really have that much money and that’s why she keeps the Four Seasons room because they were whoring her out. That we were stupid to be her friends, that she was using us. Wey said we were trash, too, because we went to public school. Then she started yelling, saying we were all in big trouble now for trying to intimidate her, that her family was politically connected, like that was going to scare us. The only person she scared was Cloud, who kept telling me to calm down. I told him to shut up or scram. But Cloud ended up standing by the edge of the park, waiting, maybe because he was looking out for other cars or because he was scared or didn’t have a ride. The rest of us, we were all children of Somebody. Maybe not tippy top of the food chain, but still she had the nerve to look down on us and our families. Who would we be if we just let that go?

  Lily pushed the bitch first and started slapping her around. I said, “Make her kneel and kiss our shoes.” Then Fat Sam told her to clean up the cigarette butts off the ground with her mouth. Then Lily dumped her milk tea on Wey’s head. “Admit it,” Lily said while recording with her phone. “You’re a psycho and a liar. We won’t let you go until you admit it.”

  What did Wey think was going to happen? That we would just let her get away with saying whatever she wanted?

  I still remember the way that bitch looked when I grabbed her by the hair and told her to take her clothes off. Her flat ass all white as she bent over, trying to hide her floppy boobs with her knees. I laughed in her face. And then everybody started cracking up. By then she was crying, but it was too late for that. Her ugly face was smudged like a clown’s. I remember Lily spitting on her and me burning her with the end of my cigarette before Kenny pulled me off. After that we were all quiet. The mood changed quickly. Walking back to our cars across the big intersection, none of us looked at one another.

  Maybe Kenny thought I’d taken it too far, but I felt pretty numb while it was happening. Why should I care? Nobody cared what I did. I never had anybody to answer to. I watched my friends speed off in their cars. I remember being the last to leave. It was hard to turn the car on because my hands kept shaking.

  It is still early, so I tell the server to bring some fruit platters and another bottle and to welcome some pretty girls in.

  I wake up in Square’s apartment. I know this because I recognize the paintings of brown rocks on the walls, which Square was telling us cost a million dollars each. Also because his mom is yelling my name.

  “Minnie is on the phone and Six Uncle is coming to get you,” she says with a sigh.

  I give her a thumbs-up.

  My parents needed me to give them English names, so I gave them a list and they managed to pick Donald and Minnie, just like the Disney characters. It makes them easier for foreign partners to remember and for Chinese clients to bypass Confucian hierarchy.

  Square’s housemaid leaves a bowl of congee on the coffee table and I sit there staring at it. I would be scared if Donald was on the line. I could see him having to leave his study, not having finished pouring hot water over his collection of clay teapots as if they were living things. My dad has had nothing handed to him. My grandma died when he was just a kid, but he never talks about it. In graduate school he managed to study for a year in Bologna, which is where he picked up Italian, but he didn’t tell me about that either. It was my mom who told me that Dad was once so poor he ate cheap canned meat with rice for months until another student pointed out that it was cat food. How does one go from eating cat food to making himself a millionaire? He doesn’t tell me when I ask. My dad never really let me get to know him. It’s like he thinks he already pays for my life, so what else do I expect from him? To open up to me? I am just something he puts up with because I’m his son.

  Donald used to make me porridge with the cans of sardines he always took with him on trips. He would pour on soy sauce and smash into it whatever was left in the fridge and then at the last minute he’d pour in some hot water and call it the emperor’s porridge. Minnie thought it was disgusting and would open the windows. But when I think about it, I only remember how good it had tasted.

  Then when I got older, he’d order takeout, always the most expensive dishes at whatever restaurant he happened to be eating at with his friends. He always got two orders. “Because my son is a big boy.” Six Uncle usually drove the food back to me fresh. Abalone steak, racks of ribs, and once a dozen live prawns still convulsing in their rice wine bath. Donald uses me to brag to his friends about how complete his life is. The way he uses Mom to show off her closet full of purses right by our front door.

  My mom feels like my sister sometimes because I always remember her looking so young and fragile. In elementary school, I cursed at teachers just to get in trouble, just to see my mom’s worried face outside the classroom window, coming to get me. When I got kicked out of my first school, she sent me to live with her mom and never came to visit me. That was when I felt like no matter how much I acted up, nobody cared about me anymore. I could do whatever I wanted. These days what I’m most afraid of is Mom being nice to me.

  I look for Kenny, but he’s not in the living room and I don’t see his shoes by the door. Maybe he was right to be afraid for his dad. He was a pretty prominent public figure in the municipal government. If all the details got out, I could see it being a pretty big scandal. But as long as Kenny just sticks to the story I told him before, it would be okay. It was all Cloud. We were just watching. We couldn’t stop him from doing what he did.

  The problem with Los Angeles was that there’s no weather and too much space. I needed the weight of a city to distract me. In the suburbs there was nothing going on, so I started focusing on the people around me, and I inevitably found somebody I couldn’t stand.

  It was common knowledge that Cloud’s dad had been in jail for corruption since Cloud was a kid. We all knew his dad used to be Lily’s dad’s right-hand man. Basically that meant Cloud’s education was compensation, a kind of reward for the job well done of his dad’s keeping his mouth shut. We all knew this because none of our parents would stop talking about it. What a good student Cloud was. How humble. How big and strong. How respectful he was to his minders. How he was the only one making the most of every opportunity in America.

  Cloud’s looks didn’t do him any favors either.

  When he smiled, his gums showed above his teeth, like a dog’s. His head was shaped like a Buddha statue’s and he had an effeminate way of talking with his hands, so much that I was always noticing how clean his nails were. When we were having a good time picking out new cars, he inevitably said something to dampen the mood: “Guys, I calculated the cost of insurance for internationals. Those companies are ripping us off. You should really just explore different modes of public transportation.”

  When we were all talking about majoring in business in college, he said, “I am thinking of engineering. Because I think with engineering you really have a chance in this country. There’s the infrastructure for all talented parties to succeed.”

  “Oh god, shut up already,” I would say, but then Kenny kept stopping me. “No, don’t tell him to shut up, I want to know. One day we’re going to be visiting our boy Cloud at Harvard.”

  When waitresses put cans of tea with straws in front of us, Cloud never took one unless I offered, because I always paid. I didn’t like the idea of visiting Cloud at Harvard.

  Had the circumstances been different, I wouldn’t have had any reason to talk to him. Half the time, I was embarrassed to be seen with such a dork in public.

  “They probably only need one person to place the blame on,” I said to Kenny over the phone right afterward. “The white cops looking at photos won’t know the difference between you and Cloud. I promise you that.”

  If Kenny said Cloud was the leader, I hones
tly thought the police would believe it since he is the biggest and tallest of all of us. When they figured out he was already accepted to Johns Hopkins early admission and, more important, a total wimp, they’d assume it was a big mistake and let everyone off the hook. It had seemed like a good idea since Cloud was the only one without the money to run back to China, and for whatever deal he had going on with Lily’s dad, he would never rat her out.

  So it was a huge surprise to me when they didn’t let Cloud go and more shocking when they came to school and pulled Kenny, Lily, and Fat Sam out of class and took them into the station for questioning. Nobody was prepared for it to get so official. How were we supposed to know that the bitch would actually press charges?

  Kenny was lucky to have gotten out of the country before he officially got charged. None of the Chinese newspapers had picked up anything about it yet. I didn’t want to agree with Kenny, but this could turn out really bad for his dad if—well, I could see the headlines. If somebody really decides to push for it, I could see how Kenny’s dad might get flagged for corruption and it would be Kenny’s fault.

  To be honest, if I were in Kenny’s place and I had my family’s reputation to protect, maybe I’d just kill myself.

  I know where to do it, too. I’ve given it some thought. There’s one stretch of the PCH where there isn’t a single traffic light for miles. Every time I drive past, there are always flowers clustered against a pole and right where the road bends. If you were to crash there, nobody would think anything of it.

  Lily somehow found out about my reckless driving case and never told a single person about it. In fact, she said I was lucky to get to start over and there was no point in making it public. That was the kind of thing that got me thinking I liked Lily. She was completely her own creation and never lost her calm, so you could count on her to step up for you. I respected that about her. A girl like Lily, with everything she had, isn’t allowed to be soft. She can’t just cry over a breeze.

  So when she told me about that bitch named Wey trolling her online, spreading rumors about her and so-and-so’s boyfriend from Vancouver, I didn’t care about any of the details because she cried softly as she was telling me. It made me want to grab her face and kiss her. One summer almost a year ago, Lily invited me to visit her hotel room at the Four Seasons. It was just a room with a big bed and all these Christmas decorations still hanging off the wall. There was one of those enormous teddy bears from Costco on a pile of sheepskin rugs and half-empty bottles of water rolling around on the floor. There was nothing else to drink, which is why I think nothing ended up happening between us. Maybe people think I am very experienced with girls, but I don’t really know how to talk to them. Like if I get really wasted, sometimes I end up in bed with a girl without me having to say anything, but I don’t really know how to take it there if we’re both sober. I think my feelings for Lily started that night because I saw something in her that none of the rest of them saw. That she was just as lost as me and even more alone. It was then that I vowed to myself that I’d do anything for her. But she didn’t have the same feelings for me, because she just saw what everyone else saw, that I could be mean and I liked fighting. There was really nothing I could do about that.

  I wait until Square’s mom leaves before I go looking for my shoes. When I find them I stuff my feet in without untying them. I know the servants’ entrance to Square’s building, so I ditch the congee bowl on a table and escape down the stairs and into the hutong entrance behind the apartment complex. I just want to go as far away as I can, but it’s just then I remember I still don’t have any money. My hand hurts and I stick it into my mouth. It tastes like blood and I realize there are nasty cuts on each of my knuckles. I vaguely remember Kenny and me yelling at each other, me throwing a few punches at him that land on a glass wall. I wonder what’s wrong with me, what makes me keep going further and further into fucking up my relationships with people until they give up on me.

  “Young man, that’s going to get infected if you keep doing that.”

  I turn around and see an old man with a shaved head and a tank top sitting on a stool watching me. The words tear down are painted in red script above his head.

  “Come in my house and I’ll give you something to wash it off with,” he says.

  I think it’s probably better to stay off the street in case Six Uncle is looking for me, so I follow him into the shade.

  It is the garbage collector’s house. By house I mean it’s just a room filled with trash. There must be at least ten broken fans in this place. There are three women of different ages watching a small television, and they ignore me. Pieces of cloth cover a moldy cement wall. There’s a baby, so tiny it couldn’t have been a year old, sleeping facedown on a bottom bunk. The baby’s butt is dirty, and it’s lying on an even dirtier bamboo mat. There are long ribbons attached to the ceiling fan, perhaps to keep the flies and mosquitoes flying in circles.

  The old man hands me a pail of fresh water and I dip my hand in it. The coolness stings but feels good. He gives me a wedge of iodine-soaked bandage and I thank him even though it hurts to use it.

  Then the little baby wakes up and starts crying at the top of its lungs. It’s like a signal for the whole family to get ready for some big event. The whole house is in action. I guess it is the mom who ducks out of the room and comes back. She is holding a piece of glass, almost the size of an egg, suspended on a string. It looks like a broken-off strand of crystal from a chandelier. She holds the baby and gently swings the glass above her head. Between the television light, the sunlight, and the lights on in the house, the glass throws a thousand colors around us and, like magic, the baby stops crying.

  I have to admit, if only for that fleeting moment, I feel something, too.

  Home Remedies for Non–Life-Threatening Ailments

  Boredom (Born from general confusion stemming from lack of clear direction/complete misunderstanding of life’s purpose.)

  Stay indoors, in a room with bad lighting but many makeshift ashtrays. Arrange and rearrange your comforter into various malleable structures. Stand back and give names to the newly birthed forms. Now it is a manatee. Now it is Abraham Lincoln’s headless body. Now it is a giant nose. Applaud yourself for your mastery, for now you can be fairly certain of the potential you possess as a visual artist.

  Write a letter to the boy named Bunny whom you met on a train in Croatia. The one who spoke to trees and set his watch to random hours as his way of time traveling; write to him that you hope he is still alive and insane. Tell him you are glad you’re not him and even more glad he’s no longer following you around, talking about modernism.

  Grief (Not your own grief, but your father’s grief, after your fourteen-year-old dog dies. He calls often, sobbing into the receiver. Even though he’s a fifty-five-year-old man who should know that a blind asthmatic basset hound was not going to live forever. Grief that hardens when you realize that life has gradually become very difficult for your father, and you’re at a loss as to how to comfort him. There are many ways of living, places to hang hopes and direct love, and it’s quite obvious to you that a very old dog was probably not a good place to hang his. So it’s specifically that kind of grief.)

  Let his phone calls ring and ring. Delete voice messages robotically, holding the phone away from your ear. If your heart is the fruit from which the nectar of comforting words could be squeezed, that fruit is dry. The dregs could be called mockery. They would sting him bitterly.

  It is better to focus on a problem you can help him solve. How about those giant squirrels that have taken over his backyard? Eating the grass bald in patches, like alien spaceship landings. Order poison that he couldn’t use when he had a dog around. When all the squirrels are dead, the guilt that both of you will share is sure to keep him from calling you for at least two weeks.

  Inappropriate Feelings (Toward married contemporary British drama professors.)

 
Go to his office hours religiously, bringing in new opinions on plays he’d recommended. Show him the plays you’ve written inspired by the plays he’s asked you to read. Fiddle with the framed photos on his desk as you talk about your family, his hometown, your boyfriend, and his wife. Laugh a lot. Babysit his three-year-old daughter, Elaine, and while she’s asleep, go to his room and smell his shirts.

  Agree to go to dinner with him downtown, tell him things about your father you’ve never told anyone else. You will begin to feel queasy when you realize this is the first time you’ve ever been alone with him outside of school. When he asks you up to his studio loft to show you his sculptures, say “Cool! Definitely!” with eyebrows arched. When he goes to stroke your hair, act surprised, say something antiquated like “Oh my!”

  Take his clothes off while making out with him on his couch. Make mental notes of the peculiarity of his needy old-man lips, his loose old-man skin, and his strange rubbery old-man hard-on. Something will happen right then that’ll make him seem less a sexy, gentle intellectual and more just like the guy who “hey hey heys” at you outside the bodega. Your inappropriate feelings will then be dissolved into a satisfied curiosity and now you can pull back, walk out of the apartment, and leave him naked, bewildered, gasping.

  Self-Doubt (In your abilities as a playwright stemming from Inappropriate Feelings toward married contemporary British drama professors.)

  Switch your major to archaeology, to criminology, to library science. Take a semester off to work at a florist across town that specializes in enormous bouquets and fountains.