The Cooked Seed (33 page)

I ordered Lauryann to lock herself in my bedroom the next time Lady Natasha came. I made Lauryann promise not to open the door and peek.

The violin lessons continued. Although Lauryann was not opening the door nor peeking, she was listening behind the door. By now she was used to not having what Fooh-Fann had, such as lessons in sports and music.

During Fooh-Fann’s toilet break, Lauryann tiptoed out of the bedroom. Sticking her head out from behind a corner of the hallway wall,
she said to Lady Natasha, “Hello, I am Lauryann. I am Fooh-Fann’s friend and I live here.”

Lady Natasha paid no attention.

Lauryann was determined to show her best self. “Are you from Russia, Miss Natasha?” she asked.

Lady Natasha’s answer was a grunt.

“Do you know a Russian song called ‘Moscow Evening’?”

“Uhm.”

Lauryann opened her mouth and sang in Russian:

The snow makes a white night
The great city sleeps in quiet
Let me hold your hand, my love
Let us stride in the beautiful Moscow evening

To Lauryann’s surprise, the song brought tears to Lady Natasha’s eyes. She turned around and grabbed Lauryann by the shoulders. “Oh, goodness, how beautiful! Where did you learn this? Who taught you to sing the song in Russian?”

“You … you don’t like it?” Lauryann didn’t expect the instant affection.

“I love the song!” Lady Natasha cried. “I grew up with the song. Everybody in Russia knows the song! It makes me homesick! So much, oh, excuse my tears. I have to blow my nose. I’m just wondering, how a little Chinese girl like you learned to sing my song?”

“My grandpa in China taught me. He said China used to be great friends with Russia.”

“Indeed! Indeed!” Lady Natasha said. “I am so impressed. What’s your name?”

“Lauryann.”

“That’s right, Lauryann. I’d love to teach you violin!”

“But my mother doesn’t have money.”

“I see. How about I invite you to sing at my concert opening?”

“You mean Fooh-Fann’s concert?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“I’d love to, but you have to talk to my mother first.”

Lady Natasha asked my permission to let Lauryann sing “Moscow Evening” at the opening of her concert. She promised no charge. I was happy for the opportunity. Lauryann became a sensation. She brought down the house. Lady Natasha was thrilled.

Later that night, as I was saying good night to Lauryann, she whispered in my ear that she’d had a wonderful time singing at the concert. I meant to congratulate my daughter, but found myself thinking of Fooh-Fann. It dawned on me that Lauryann’s glory had been at the expense of Fooh-Fann. I felt horrible. Margaret had invested every ounce of her energy and money into nurturing Fooh-Fann so that she could have a moment to shine, and I had ruined it, although unintentionally.

Although I love Margaret to this day, I also understood that we were both protective mothers who, when the matters concerned our children, were not capable of compromising. Margaret and I both felt that it was time for us to go our separate ways.

The parting days were tough on Lauryann and Fooh-Fann. They had become as close as sisters and best friends. It was as if they had sensed the day coming. There were no tears—just simple good-byes.

It took the moving truck less than twenty minutes to load all my stuff. I let Margaret know that she had been a great friend and a teacher. She would remain my biggest influence. Being a Jewish American, Margaret taught Lauryann and me about Jewish history, traditions, and family values, which we would have never otherwise experienced. We loved her Thanksgiving dinners and Hanukkah parties.

We were shocked when we received the news that Fooh-Fann died in an accident in 2010. She was a few days away from her eighteenth birthday and her graduation from a Chicago high school. She was hit by a van driven by an eighty-six-year-old man in southern Illinois. Fooh-Fann was on a bike trip with her best friends. Gifted in math, Fooh-Fann was kind, compassionate, and loved by her schoolmates, teachers, and friends. Lauryann was devastated.

English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, once said, “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” I don’t know if I still believe that after witnessing Margaret’s suffering.

I will never forget the day Margaret met Fooh-Fann for the first time. I was her translator. We stayed in a hotel in the city of Nanchang in China’s Jiangxi province. Margaret had been anxious as she anticipated Fooh-Fann’s arrival. She had barely slept. The orphanage was running late that day, and the children had failed to show up at the appointed time. Margaret was concerned that something had gone wrong. She wanted to go out to the remote town and check things out for herself. I reminded her that she was on the soil of Communist China, and that she had better stay where she was. I suggested that she spray on her mosquito repellant and get ready for a long night.

Fooh-Fann had been the joy of Margaret’s life. The mother and daughter were close and loved each other. Every time Fooh-Fann picked up the phone when I called, I would remind her that it was a Chinese daughter’s duty to take care of her mother in her old age. “Don’t you become too American as to forget the Chinese piety.”

“I know. I know. I know, Anchee Min.”

Perhaps it was too much for Margaret to bear to stay in touch. Lauryann and I never heard from Margaret again after Fooh-Fann’s funeral. I missed Fooh-Fann. I also often wondered how Margaret was doing.

From time to time, Lauryann continued to visit Fooh-Fann’s Facebook page, where she wrote to her friend’s spirit. Lauryann discovered that she was not alone—Fooh-Fann’s other friends also left messages. It comforted me to learn that Margaret finally was able to move on—a mutual friend informed me that Margaret recently got married and moved away from Chicago. I wish her peace and love.

Six months after I moved to California, Qigu visited. To my surprise, he announced that he was getting married. “I thought I ought to let you know,” he said.

I tried not to show surprise. After a moment, I asked, “Who is she?”

“The girl of my dreams. My very first love. I was only a teen when I met her. I lost her to my best friend, who married her. I recently found out that they were divorced. I couldn’t possibly pass up the opportunity, since I never really got over her. I proposed as soon as I could, and she said yes.”

Should I say that it was strange that I felt hurt? The fact that Qigu was capable of passion confirmed that he had never been in love with me. It took six years and my pregnancy for him to propose. I remembered clearly how reluctant he was. I recalled the morning when I dragged him out of his bed so that I could take a photo of our “wedding day.”

“Will you have a ring this time?” I asked.

He smiled. “I already booked a trip to take her on a honeymoon to the Grand Canyon.”

“What an improvement!” I tried to be sarcastic.

I carried Lauryann outside so that she could wave good-bye to her father. I watched Qigu climb into his rented car and drive away. Lauryann saw my tears and asked to be let down. She ran into the house and returned with a tissue box.

When the publishers first rejected
Becoming Madame Mao
, my income dropped to zero. I understood that most authors in America supported themselves by working other jobs. Since I was not able to get any other job, I decided to do what I had done before. I bought a run-down four-unit apartment property and set my mind to fix it. I took out a loan and put in every dollar I had saved as a down payment.

Lauryann helped me even though she was only six years old. In the beginning, it proved to be a challenge, because she had been raised as an “American princess.”

“I don’t like my tomatoes touching my potato,” she would say. She was scared of flies as if they were assassins. “The sun hurts my eyes!” She would cry as we drove. She hated vegetables and drank soda instead of water.

“I helped my mother as a child,” I said. “At the age of five, I was responsible for picking up my three siblings from different nursery schools and kindergarten. I was in charge of buying food for my family at the age of six. As an eight-year-old, I carried a forty-pound bag of rice. I took my brother to a hospital when I was nine. I remember the doctor asking, ‘Where is your parent?’ I stepped up and said, ‘I am the parent.’ ”

I had been driving around the neighborhood in the evenings with Lauryann beside me. I tried to locate the nearest park with a public restroom in case we had to live in the car. “It’s always wise to prepare for the worst,” I said.

Lauryann had to adjust to a new school every time we moved. I didn’t ask her if it was okay. I knew it was not okay with her. It hurt me to see Lauryann lose friends and the teachers she loved. But we had to live below our means and go where the rent was cheaper. Lauryann was forced to adapt. She learned to engage quickly with her new teachers and schoolmates. She tried her best to keep the friendships. As the years went by she would visit her old friends, especially her teachers. I
drove her to those visits before she got her own driver’s license. Lauryann shared with her teachers aspects of her life that she didn’t think I would understand. She didn’t trust that my advice would actually work for her.

For a period of time, Lauryann slept in a closet. Years later, she told me that when she was scared of the darkness, she imagined herself as a friend of Harry Potter. She also said the reason she quit complaining was because she was sick of me pulling “the labor-camp stunt.”

“You are not deprived,” I would say to her. “What do you mean that you don’t have dance lessons? You can learn dancing from the videotapes I bought you. You can learn singing from playing the cassettes. Don’t you dare say I never take you to the movies. Didn’t I play you the
Little Mermaid
I recorded from the TV children’s channel? So what if it had commercials? You’re just too lazy to press the fast-forward button to skip the commercials.”

Lauryann and I finally figured out Michael Jackson’s moves from a videotape. Although we couldn’t quite make the moonwalk steps, I kept saying, “We saved another fourteen dollars by giving ourselves this lesson!”

The air was filled with the smell of fumes. The property I had been trying to fix was in a working-class neighborhood. Stolen shopping carts were scattered on the streets and behind the buildings. The tenants drank beer in their cars, especially in summer and winter, leaving the car idling and the air-conditioning or heat running. They threw their cigarette butts everywhere. Part of Lauryann’s job was to pick up cigarette butts, beer cans, and liquor bottles. Tenants also stripped off the smoke detectors and fire extinguishers we had installed. The carport wall was caved in—the work of a drunk driver.

Income-wise the tenants were poor, but they had expensive habits. They gave lavish birthday parties and went on family vacations to Disneyland while short on rent. Stuffed animals filled their kids’ rooms from floor to ceiling. The kids’ birthday gifts included TV sets and video games, which made Lauryann envious.

On Lauryann’s birthday, I took her to Home Depot. My gift to her was Home Depot’s free lesson on how to use an electric power saw, and how to install ceramic tiles. I also bought her two books,
Plumbing 1-2-3
and
The Complete Fix-It-Yourself Manual
.

Lauryann did not want to wear the child-size orange Home Depot apron on which a clerk wrote, HI, I AM LAURYANN.

Lauryann let me know that she wanted what other kids had at their birthday parties. She preferred to dress up like a princess and receive “normal gifts.”

My answer was, “You are not going to make me slap my face making it swell so that I’ll look well fed!”

Lauryann helped me clean clogged sewage lines, spray and scrub mold, lift sheets of drywall, and carry bags of concrete. She came to call her time with me “jail time.”

Every hour, she would request, “Mom, I’ve got to pee!” She knew I would have no choice but to release her. She took a long time inside the bathroom. When she stepped out and faced my disapproving look, she would say flatly, “Sorry, I was pooping.”