Beautiful Country (23 page)

When I returned to America, I felt as if I had crossed into a Technicolor world. I returned to our home where the grass was green, the sky was blue, and the clouds were white. I had never noticed how sweet the country air smelled. My father was still in China, so it was only our housekeeper and me at home. It was strange being at home at first. I was worried about how it would feel when I walked into Tom's room. Would his clothes still be there? Would they still smell like Tom?

Somewhere in my heart I could hear Tom encourage me just as he had that summer in Italy when I was afraid to follow him into the dank, frog-infested tunnel that connected the main house to the kitchen house. And I knew Tom would have been proud of me for “venturing forth.” Sometimes even now, as I did then, I have to believe that Tom is alive just so I can tell him things.

My friends from school were still on winter break when I returned, and I met up with a bunch of them at the Brunswick Country Club where we often played pickup ice hockey. We ordered cheeseburgers and Cokes from the snack bar and then sat on the bleachers outside and watched one of the club hockey games. Most of my friends had been away at boarding schools
like Dover and the talk ranged from complaints about their workload to chatting about which school had the prettiest girls. We drifted into the pro shop and looked at the latest hockey equipment. These boys thought nothing about charging whatever they wanted to their parents' accounts.

Some of them asked me about China. I tried telling them, but I found it hard to convey what it was like over there. Most of my friends weren't really that interested anyway. A few of the know-it-alls in my class asked me about Beijing as an excuse to lecture me on what they had read about China in
Time
magazine. Though they had never been there, they expressed opinions on China that I assumed were more their fathers' than their own. They talked about how there was no freedom or democracy and how no country could succeed without both. I thought of the stories I had read in the
China Daily
about how the Chinese government had experimented with democracy with local elections in rural areas and found that almost half the electorate had sold their votes for next to nothing. To those farmers, a kilo of rice held more value than vague ideals.

I didn't even know how to respond to some of the things they said. There was no point in even trying. I wouldn't have known where to start. Having lived for months with Bowen, Hope, Little Mao, Random, and Dali, it now felt as though my American friends were the ones speaking a foreign language. Home seemed farther away than when I left.

I spent a week at home and then traveled down to the Laver Tennis Academy in Florida where I trained until I went to Dover in the fall. The hot humid air felt good and clean in my lungs. The hacking cough I had developed from the pollution in Beijing began slowly to disappear. Being back with old coaches and a
mixed collection of students felt comfortable and familiar. Good players would come and go for three- to four-week periods. It was a relief not to know too much about anyone's circumstances. I could focus on myself and not wonder or worry about anything else. The five-mile fitness runs on the beach that I used to dread were nothing compared to that day in Beijing running stairs. Now I almost always finished first.

I spent the spring and summer working with Lukas and playing on the national tennis circuit. While in China I had lost some of my technique. I had to work hard to get it back, but the work didn't feel so hard anymore. What had once been a chore was now almost a pleasure, an opportunity I was happy to have.

As I was packing my bag for school I came across the seeds I had taken from the Forbidden City but had completely forgotten to plant on returning to America. That afternoon I biked to the local florist and bought a packet of poinsettia seeds and biked home and planted them, along with the seeds from the Forbidden City, in a patch of earth in the back of our garden. It seems silly now, but at the time I really believed those seeds might bring our family luck.

That September, my father drove me the hour and a half from our house to Dover and helped me move into my small room in Brinkley Dormitory—the very same dorm in which he had lived during his first year at Dover.

I enjoyed Dover even though many of my classmates felt immature to me when I compared them with my teammates in Beijing. My speaking ability was strong enough for me to go into third- or fourth-year Chinese, but because of my sloppy characters, the Chinese teacher placed me in second-year Chinese. The companionship of my classmates—going to the snack bar
after class with a friend and talking about a movie or listening to someone's favorite song on their iPod—made everything seem almost too easy.

From time to time I thought about the five boys I had played with in Beijing. I wondered how they were getting on. I especially wondered about Bowen. At first Victoria and I e-mailed each other about once every other week, but slowly the things we had to talk about thinned, and our e-mails became less and less frequent. The boys on the Beijing team didn't have access to e-mail so there was no way to get in touch with them. I once thought about asking Victoria to take the train to Tianjin and see if she could find Bowen, but in the end I decided not to because I knew she would refuse.

Almost a year after I left Beijing, I ran into Bowen in America, his Mei Guo, his beautiful country.

I had continued playing tennis after going to Dover. The intense academic schedule meant that I had much less time to practice and compete in tournaments, but I still improved at a steady rate. Just before the end of the first term, I left to go down to Florida to play the Orange Bowl with Lukas. I had moved up to the Boys sixteen-and-under and had gotten into the qualifying tournament. The draws for the Boys sixteens and eighteens were more international than the Boys fourteens. The main draw of the Boys sixteens and eighteens tended to have many of the top players in the world. Not that many boys from the States made it into the main draw. National teams from Europe and South America traveled to Florida to play a monthlong group of tournaments—the Prince Cup, Eddie Herr, the Orange Bowl. There were no weak players, and by the time these boys reached the sixteens and eighteens, many of them had decided tennis would be their career. In fact, they wouldn't have been there had that not been the case. They dropped out of school, took a few courses on the internet, and fought for survival in each match.

I played my first match against a boy from Argentina. Most South American players grow up on clay courts. They have great ground strokes and generally put a lot of topspin on the ball. They tend to be retrievers and patiently wait for an opening to make a shot. They are prepared to hit the ball thirty times in one rally if they have to. In the warm-up, my opponent proved to be no exception. I figured I would have to take control of the match early to win. I started off playing well. I had nothing to lose and found myself in a 4-1 lead, but then I began to doubt myself. How was I beating a member of the Argentinean national squad so easily? Because I was leading, I became more cautious and tight and didn't go for as many winners. I eked the first set out 7-5. I knew I was going to have trouble in the second set, and I did. My opponent made very few errors, forcing me to beat him with winners and unreturnable shots. The second set lasted for over an hour. Grinding and grinding. I lost 6-4.

I heard Lukas clap his hands several times and say, “Come on, let's go,” as a way to encourage me. The third set was a test of will. The Argentinean had reduced his game to sprinting all over the court to retrieve shots. He edged ahead three games to two. At the changeover, his Argentinean teammates handed him a racket through the fence. It was odd, my opponent had not broken any strings. He examined something on the plastic-covered racket, but he didn't bother to unwrap the racket from the plastic bag. Then I got it. The coach of the Argentinean team was passing a message to my opponent under the guise of his needing a new racket. I forgot my exhaustion, and for the next three games I played as if my life were on the line. I forgot to remind myself that I shouldn't hit down-the-line winners on my backhand or go for an ace on add points.
I went up 5-3, and my legs began cramping. When I served, I had to straighten my right leg immediately or it would cramp as I kicked back. I was worried that my legs would give out and that I wouldn't be able to finish the match, but I managed to hold out and won the set 6-4.

“That wasn't too bad,” Lukas said, then he added, “but it took you three and a half hours.”

After my match, Lukas helped me stretch, and then we went to the tournament desk to examine the draw. I would play the winner of a match between a player from Germany and one from Belgium—their match had started two hours behind mine so there was a good chance the two boys would still be playing. Lukas wanted to check on one of the other players from the academy, and then he would join me. I found the court where the German and Belgian were playing and climbed the stands to watch.

The German boy was winning 6-2, 5-1 and was serving for the match. I had hoped that it would be close so that I would have a good opportunity to assess their strengths and weaknesses—how they dealt with a change in momentum, how they fought when they were ahead and when they were behind, and what patterns of play they followed. The German won his serve game easily to finish the match. I called Lukas to let him know, and he said he would pick me up in ten minutes. I noticed an argument taking place on the next court.

Two USTA referees in their khaki pants and blue-and-red official shirts stood among several coaches and the two players in the center of the court. I couldn't imagine what would cause such a commotion. It was much more than the not-uncommon dispute about lines. A player walking off the court to get a referee who
then stood at the net post and monitored the line calls was about as dramatic as it could get. If a player argued with the referee, the player risked being disqualified by the referee right then and there. Once a referee ruled against you, you had no recourse to overturn his decision.

A few more players and coaches had gathered to watch the dispute. I walked down a row of bleachers to get a closer look. I nearly fell off the stands when I saw that one of the boys on the court was Bowen.

I asked a coach who had been watching, “Is this a sixteen-and-under match?”

“No, it's the fourteens.”

Bowen was at least seventeen now. But sure enough, there he was. He had grown another inch or two, but he was still thin and willowy. His hair had grown long again, and he still wore his trademark bandanna, but instead of a piece of yellow cloth, it was a bright red Nike bandanna. I saw that all of his clothing was from the brand-new Nike winter collection. He played with the same racket he had used in Beijing, but now it had a large red “W” stenciled on the strings—the mark of a player sponsored by Wilson. I almost yelled out to him, but I stopped myself. His opponent was much smaller; in fact, he was almost half his height and based on the scorecard on the court, it looked as if Bowen was about to win the second set easily. Two coaches with the British flag on the shoulder of their jackets were gesturing at Bowen and disputing something with the referee. The referee was trying to tell the coaches that they could lodge a formal protest, but there was nothing he could do. The match should go on. The two coaches were almost screaming—they had traveled from the UK at huge expense—only to have one of their players
lose a match to a player who was clearly ineligible. They did not believe for a second that Bowen was fourteen.

Bowen stood without showing any emotion. How had he gotten to the States? I remember his telling me that his father would have to work one or two years to earn enough money for a one-way plane ticket. A man who I assumed was his coach sat in the stands carefully watching what was going on, but he didn't walk down to the court. He was wearing all Nike gear.

Several times I saw him slowly shake his head when Bowen looked up at him. The referees were telling the British coaches yet again that they could lodge a formal protest, but they could not disrupt the match. After realizing the coaches weren't going to budge, one of the referees went to get the tournament director. I walked down to the court. Bowen lifted his chin in recognition. He didn't seem surprised to see me. He must have seen my name in the draw. He must have known that I was there.

The tournament director returned, and the two British coaches were giving him an earful. The tournament director turned to Bowen and grilled him with questions. The English was coming too fast now for Bowen, and he pointed to me. I saw the same panicked look I had seen for that brief second in the Forbidden City. Only this time it didn't disappear.

“
Yu!
Tell them you know me! Tell them I am fourteen!”

But I had already disappeared.

In the moment that I caught his eye the consequences of his situation materialized like dark clouds sprinting across the sky, a moving storm that was headed straight for me. I wanted to help him, I really did. But at the same time I was overwhelmed with fear of what might happen if I allowed Bowen to pull me down with him, what might occur if I lied for him again. My mind con
jured up images of college coaches crossing me off their recruiting lists. But worst of all, I imagined trying to explain it all to my father. Trying to explain to him why I had allowed Bowen to derail my future for a second time. How I had allowed him to lay waste to all of the hard work that I had put in and all of the effort my father had made to ensure that I would go to a good school and have a bright future. And the danger of jeopardizing my relationship with my father, maybe even more than my future, terrified me. I panicked and fled. I left Bowen to fend for himself.

That night as I lay in bed, I went over and over what I had and had not done. Lines of thought converged and crossed and doubled back. I tried to convince myself that I had acted correctly. I tried to tell myself that I had done the sensible thing this time, that it was unfair for Bowen to lie about his age, that enabling his lies would only serve to hurt both of us in the long term, that it was unfair to pull me into this. I came up with every possible argument to convince myself that what I had done was right, but no matter what I told myself, there was one thought I could not avoid—my friend had needed help and I had turned away. I understood what the consequences of my decision were. I knew that if Bowen were caught lying about his age he would lose his scholarship and any chance he had of making it as a professional. Bowen had never had anyone to help him the way I had. He was trying to survive in a way I had never had to. And yet, even knowing all that, I turned away.

I knew my father would have agreed with my choice. I thought back to how indifferent he had always been about the futures of Bowen and the rest of my teammates. He had seen more of the hardship in China than I ever had, and if I brought up the unfairness of their situation I knew he would remind me of the
people who had starved during the Great Leap Forward, or of the hundreds of millions of Chinese who still lived below the poverty line. He would tell me that for every Bowen I came across, he could point to ten million young men just like Bowen, in fact, not as fortunate as Bowen. Maybe my father had seen so much that he had become numbed by it—the way a journalist in a war zone can leave a child stranded by the side of the road and not see it as his duty to do something. Or maybe in the singular pursuit of goals he had learned to keep emotions quarantined from reason. Or maybe he just understood the unfair algebra of life's opportunities.

But I wasn't like him. I couldn't ignore the pain of others. And that night as I tried to sleep I felt the return of the horrible guilt that I had last felt in the weeks after my brother died.

When I showed up for my match the next day, Bowen's name had been crossed off the tennis draw.