Fall 1985
IN AN ALCOVE BETWEEN TWO bookcases near the front of the store, I sit on a low stool, hunched over a box of hardback books. I reach for the nearest one, its cover green with gold lettering, wipe it down with a damp rag, and put it into one of eight piles gathered like schoolchildren sitting for story time at my feet: fiction, history, poetry, art history, philosophy and religion, sociology, women’s issues, and drama. The dust makes me sneeze every so often. The stacks of history and sociology are growing tallest, mostly because I assign titles there for lack of a better choice. By now my back hurts, and my sweatshirt is smeared with my own dirty fingerprints. No one has come into the store for half an hour. On the radio, Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor keeps me company.
Laura has promised to visit me this afternoon. It will be the first time I have seen her alone for more than a year. Since she graduated from Kenyon and moved back to San Francisco, she has always had Min with her. They are lovers now. When Min told me, over two months ago at the end of summer, my immediate reaction was: of course. They belong together. Their friendship has always contained an element of wooing. My second feeling, following fast on the heels of the first, was a mixture of dismay, discomfort, even anger. I thought, I hope they don’t kiss in front of me. I thought, Now they’re going to shut me out. These are feelings that still stir around inside me. I am happy that Laura is visiting me today, and I know that one reason is because I will have a chance to claim her back.
I pick up another book, blow the dust from the top edge of its compressed pages. Despite my sore back, I like the rhythmic monotony of this work. I like categorizing the books, escorting them properly labeled to their respective shelves. I like the dreamy time inside these four walls, as lasting and as irrelevant to the outside world as time is inside the pages of a novel. Surrounded by row upon row of books that other people have read, other people have handled, cherished, and perhaps reluctantly let go, I feel I’m among an extended family of parents and spouses and siblings who’ve come to live with me for a while before moving on to other homes, their future lives. I only wish I could live with people this way: inviting them into my life without conditions, allowing them to leave without the fear they will never come back.
I have been dreaming more about Laura. This week I’ve dreamt about her almost every night. She takes me by the hand to the ocean’s edge, then vanishes. Or I search for something I have misplaced, and Laura comes to help me. Or I look for something missing and finally discover it is Laura, who is my daughter, my lost daughter. The daughter I gave birth to. Each time I’ve woken up from these dreams in the dark, sweating. Each time I’ve realized immediately that in the dream I forgot about Min; she didn’t exist. That scares me. I don’t know why it happens, and I am afraid of it. In the night I lie curled up at the edge of the bed, my sweat cold on my skin, willing myself to fall back asleep. In the mornings I am exhausted.
The little bell on the front door of the bookshop tinkles as the door creaks open. I swivel my body around and look up to see Laura clicking the door carefully shut behind her. On the other side of the front windows, a white pickup truck slowly drives down the street, while a young man and woman walking hand in hand past the store glance at the book display but do not stop. Laura’s gaze moves from the tall bookshelves to the empty counter where the cash register sits to the poster on the wall behind it, a portrait of Emily Dickinson looking very proper and yet defiant. Then Laura’s eyes shift as she sees me bent over my boxes with my rag in one hand and a hardbound book in the other. In the dim light it seems to take her a moment to recognize me. When she moves forward, my heart is dazzled by the light of her smile.
As soon as she grins at seeing me, I find myself inside my nighttime dreams of her. The feeling is exactly the same: this is my daughter; this is the child I have been missing all these years. It is as though I have never looked at her closely until now, when all the while the proof was in plain sight. The joy I feel is sharp, like the cold ache of ice cream in summer. For a second I experience a sense of completeness I haven’t felt for many years and never expected to find again, though I have dreamed it. She approaches me, that radiant smile still on her face, her arms extending toward me. If she is saying anything, I cannot hear it. Somehow I get to my feet, move toward her. I haven’t lost her. She is right here in front of me.
As soon as I feel the warm, living weight of Laura’s body against mine, I remember Min, and I am overwhelmed by guilt. How can I wish for even one moment that Laura was my daughter, as though Min had never existed? How can I think of Laura as the daughter I would have had, when it is Min who has been my daughter for the past twenty-two years? Is it because Laura and I are more alike and see things in similar ways? My relationship with Laura is so much simpler, more relaxed than mine with Min that perhaps it is normal to feel that Laura could be related to me. Yet I am uneasy, almost afraid. I remember when the girls were growing up, strangers on the street used to assume it was Laura who was my daughter. Because she looked more like me than Min did. Because she was white too.
My limbs go cold. That’s why she inhabits my dreams. I feel frozen by surprise, horrified by my own impulse. Laura is the daughter that Andy would have accepted. Because she is white. I can’t believe I have this wish. I want the daughter that Andy would have loved.
At the thought of Andy, I begin to cry. I never cry. Even more alarming, I can’t get myself to stop. I sob, half-hicupping, trying to swallow to keep down the huge balloon of sorrow that is suddenly swelling inside me. I feel Laura’s surprise in the way her arms start to lift from my back, uncertain. Her head pulls away from where it was resting against my shoulder. Then she tightens her grip, holding me more firmly. One hand makes small rubbing motions up and down my back. This only makes me cry harder. I stand sobbing in Laura’s arms, silently asking for Min’s forgiveness.
I try to get a grip on myself, but I can’t do it. Something long stopped up has been forced open in me. I am afraid I will never stop crying. I can’t bear it that I am capable of denying my daughter, even for a moment. How can I possibly feel the same thing Andy did? I hated that it mattered to him that Min was Asian and so couldn’t be, or even pass for, my biological child. As we walked silently back to the car, I could only feel how irrevocably I had become her mother. No one, I thought, not even Andy, could come between us.
Suddenly my despair is so great, I can hardly feel Laura’s reassuring presence against me anymore. I couldn’t hate Andy. And I couldn’t forgive him. The balloon of pain spreading from my chest seems much larger than my fragile body’s ability to hold it. I’m afraid I will burst apart. I hear a groan, like a tree sawed through starting to fall, and I realize it’s me. I am still waiting for him. For twenty-one years I have not allowed myself to accept that Andy is dead. I need him alive too much, to set right what he put askew in me. He told me my daughter was too different to be mine. Then he died. I’ve been trying to prove him wrong ever since.
I let him come between us after all.
I am holding on to Laura now to keep from sliding away, carried off into a whirlwind of grief and regret. If I open my eyes, I am certain everything will be spinning around me; already my head seems to be floating somewhere above the rest of my body. All I can do is cry and hold on tight. Behind my closed lids, I can see Andy clearly: brown curly hair, straight long nose, generous face. He’s still young, not even out of college. It’s as if I was with him just yesterday. He is looking at the ground as I speak, his thick brows lowered in concentration. He starts to nod. He looks up at me, and his eyes change, becoming warmer, softer. He doesn’t agree, but he understands my feelings. This is my memory of who he used to be, and this is my dream.
Finally the tears start to subside. I become aware of my trembling legs, my feet still standing on the firm floor, of the traffic sounds out on the street. My chest and throat feel sore, raw, but the sadness feels manageable now. As Laura pulls slowly away from me, I register with shock how separate her small body is from mine. And then she is Laura again, standing uncomfortably before me, and I am a woman puffy-eyed and snotty from crying. I have no idea how long it’s been. I pull out a crumpled tissue from my jeans pocket and blow my nose. Laura plunges her hands into the pockets of her wool jacket and offers me another tissue. I blow into it too, then use the dry edges to wipe my cheeks and chin. I feel as if my face has swollen to twice its size. I feel as though there’s still a reservoir of tears pooled inside me, deeper than I could ever dive.
“Thanks,” I say, starting to hand back the tissue. Then I realize what I am doing and pocket it. Laura smiles at me. She has such a kind face, open and intelligent. Her newly shorn hair suits her. I look around and remember where we are. There are the tall shelves full of books, the racks of cards near the front, the bulletin board filled with notices of rooms for rent and jobs wanted, the radio playing a piece for horns I don’t know. There are the cardboard boxes I was rummaging through, and the piles of books I have dusted and divided to be sold. The store is still empty, except for the two of us. If a customer came in while I was crying, I never knew it.
“Are you all right?” Laura asks me. She looks worried, as if at any moment I might launch into something else unforeseen.
It occurs to me that I have frightened her. And why shouldn’t she be scared? I was afraid myself. I put my hand on her arm and try to smile reassuringly. “I will be. Why don’t we go to my office in back? I could use some tea.”
She nods, her gaze dropping away from mine.
At the front door I turn the lock and flip over the “Open” sign to “Closed.” On the sidewalk outside, the wind scuttles a crumpled brown paper bag underneath a parked car. The sky is a uniform dark gray, threatening rain. I hope for a thunderstorm, crashingly loud and blindingly bright, but those are rare here on the West Coast. In Northern California there is no dramatic weather like back east, only the threat of earthquakes. There are no snowbound winters or dripping hot summers, only seasons of fog and rain. I miss the landscape I grew up in. I glance at my storefront display of books and make a mental note to change it tomorrow. It needs more fall colors, red and yellow to catch the eye.
In the tiny room I use as an office, I gesture at the desk chair, the only place to sit, and take the electric kettle to the bathroom. I’m glad there’s no mirror in there; I don’t want to know what I look like. A wave of exhaustion breaks over me. I take off my glasses, splash cold water on my face, and fill the kettle. When I return to my office, Laura is sitting down, looking idly at the overdue bills and notes to myself I have taped to the wall above the desk. She looks around at me guiltily as I enter the room.
“Oh, go ahead, snoop around,” I tell her, plugging the kettle into the wall socket. “I don’t have any secrets. Chamomile, Raspberry Zinger, or Earl Gray?”
“Raspberry Zinger. Thanks.”
“I bought a package of Pepperidge Farm cookies for the occasion,” I say, holding it up. “I remembered that you like them. How are your parents? Did you have lunch with them?” I crank open the small casement window, letting a cool breeze into the stuffy room.
“Oh, they’re fine.” She pauses, then says rather meekly, “Catherine? I don’t mean to pry. I mean, it’s probably none of my business. But about what just happened . . . did I do something?”
Surprised, I turn around. I’m dismayed by the look on her face. “No, no, please don’t think that, Laura. It has nothing to do with you.” What can I tell her that isn’t a lie? “I was thinking about my brother.”
“The one who lives in New York? I forget his name.”
I shake my head, clearing off a corner of the desk to sit on. “No, my younger brother, Andy.”
“Oh, the dead uncle.”
I look at her sharply, and she smiles, apologetic. “That’s what Min calls him.”
“Not Uncle Andy? I always refer to him as her uncle Andy.”
Laura shakes her head. “No. She said you hardly ever talk about him at all.”
I look away. “No, I don’t suppose I do,” I answer. I remember walking with Andy, Min on my back, in the hills above the ocean, imagining our lives twenty years in the future. She doesn’t even have my memories of him. He is a cipher to her, someone from my distant past she doesn’t even know enough about to call by name. I close my eyes, squeezing the tears back. I will not cry again.
I take a breath. “Andy died a long time ago. He was your age, twenty-two. He went sailing with a couple of friends off the coast in Maine. The boat capsized. Only one of them survived.”
“I’m sorry,” Laura says, her voice subdued.
I look up. She is squinting at me, the skin around her eyes flinching as if she can feel a little bit of how painful his loss was to me. My throat aches. I swallow, and swallow again.
“Thank you,” I answer her. It is all I can say; then I realize it’s all that is needed.
Outside the window, the rain has started falling with a soft patter. Laura asks, “You were close, weren’t you?”
I can’t speak now, my throat is too constricted. I nod, staring at the silver handle on the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. My head hurts. I close my eyes. Andy is there behind my eyelids, grinning at me as he walks into my arms, as alive as ever. I miss you, I want to tell him. If I let him be dead, I’m afraid he’ll disappear, no longer even a memory I can keep close to me.
The tea kettle whistles, startling me away from Andy into the present.
“I’ll get it,” Laura says, jumping up from her chair. I lift my glasses and brush my hand against my wet cheeks.
Laura pours boiling water into two mugs and hands me one. I hold onto its warmth with both hands, blowing at the rising steam. The tea-bag floats at the surface.
We drink our raspberry tea in silence. Its sweet-sour taste on my tongue soothes me. The heat strokes my throat, warms my chest. It’s very companionable sitting here with Laura in my little office, sipping tea.
“He was incredibly focused,” I say. Laura turns her face slightly toward me so that I know she is listening. “Not so much when he was little. During the summer we’d go down to the stream and make up stories to play. But when he got older he’d lie on his stomach looking into the water while I read or sketched. He liked to observe things up close, like insects crawling from one blade of grass to the next. He always had a scientific side.”
“What was he looking at in the water?” Laura asks. Her question surprises me. It is so specific, as if he is a real person to her.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I assumed he was watching the fish swimming around the bottom, but maybe he was interested in the water’s surface. Maybe he was listening. I always liked the quiet down there.” I still remember it, the humid, still air, the call of birds above us, the trickle of the water. The last time I was in Rhinebeck, Min was about five. The stream was still the same, but I had become someone else. Now, perhaps, other children play in the water. My parents sold the house and moved to Florida six years ago, when my father retired. “I remember once lying in the grass looking up at the trees. There were only a couple of weeks left before I was leaving for college, and Andy had been mad at me all summer. I had spent most of my time with my friends from school, knowing I might not see them again, or if I did, that we might have all changed. Andy came and lay next to me under the trees. I told him about the countries I wanted to visit when I graduated. He had plans too for when he was old enough to travel by himself. I still remember the places he named. The coral reefs off Australia. The ruins of Pompeii. He was interested in everything at one point or another. I never knew what I wanted my future to look like. I just knew I wanted to get away from my family. Andy always had specific goals, even if they kept changing.”
It is searing to remember, knowing Andy will never do these things. But I like speaking about my brother, sharing who he was with someone else, someone whose only connection to him is through what I tell her. “He was very disciplined,” I continue. “He always followed through once he made up his mind. He was going to go to law school that fall. I don’t think it was what he really wanted.” I stop myself. This isn’t right, what I am doing. I lift my tea to drink it, but the cup is empty. I set it on the desk beside me, pushing aside a stack of mail.
“Laura, I shouldn’t be talking with you this way. I’ve never told any of this to Min.”
“Why not?” Laura asks.
I hesitate. “Because if I talked about her uncle Andy, I’d have to tell her what happened during his last visit with me. It would be painful. For both of us.”
Laura doesn’t say anything. If it were Min I was having this conversation with, she’d be on me in a minute, pressing me to explain myself, asking for details, seeking out the words that wound. So often when we talk she expects me to say something that will offend her. Of course, she has every right to be sensitive, but her bristliness doesn’t ease our conversations. I feel a breeze through the window. I glance out at the rain.
“I’m glad you came to visit me today,” I say. Laura looks skeptical. “No, really, I know you couldn’t tell from my breakdown out there, but it’s nice to see you.”
“I’m glad too,” she says. “You know,” she ducks her head down, “I used to be jealous of Min because she had you for a mother.”
Immediately I have the feeling again of rightness—this is my daughter, she has been looking for me too—but weaker this time, as if it is washing away. I want it to go, yet I am sorry too.
“Oh, I think almost everyone wishes they had someone else’s mother,” I say, trying to diffuse her shyness and my undeniable pleasure. It sounds insensitive. I don’t want to diminish her feelings. Or mine. But at the moment my affection for Laura has a bitter taste. “I’m flattered, Laura,” I say carefully, adding, after a moment, “You’re very important to me.”
“I am?”
Does she really not know? I nod. Then I say, “Sometimes I think about when you and Min were younger, when you used to come over to the house all the time. A lot has changed since then.”
A creeping pink tinges the clear, milky skin of Laura’s face. I hadn’t realized before that their sexual relationship embarrasses her, at least in relation to me. I was thinking of other, less recent changes: my divorce from Jonathan, Min’s becoming a lesbian, her move to the city, Laura’s years away at college. Perhaps they don’t matter now. We’ve all come through relatively intact. Even Min and I. How did we do it? How did I change, accept her lesbianism? It wasn’t just because of my desire not to do to her what Andy had done to me: deny the truth of her life. It was Min herself. She was my daughter.
Except for the light, rapid tapping of the rain on the trees outside the window, it’s very quiet in the room. Even the radio out front is momentarily silent, before the soft drone of a man’s voice announces the next piece. Laura’s empty cup sits between her thighs. Intent, she circles her index finger along its rim, back and forth.
“Catherine, I was wondering . . . was it weird at Min’s brunch when I said I was in love with her?” She looks up at me suddenly. I’m startled by her question, embarrassed.
“Well, truthfully? Yes.”
She nods, glances down at her circling finger, moves her hand away from the mug.
“Do you think that’s homophobic?” I ask. “Min would. But I have to add that when you said it, I wasn’t exactly surprised.” I pause. “I think, in a way, you and Min have been in love since fifth grade.”
Laura flashes me a quick smile, shy again. “I don’t know about that.” But she seems pleased that I would think it.
“When I was younger,” she continues, “I always felt that I could talk to you about anything. I knew you wouldn’t blame me or tell me how stupid I was. You were really helpful to me.”
I look at her closely. Her hair is short enough now that even with her head bent, it no longer falls forward, hiding her face. “You can still talk to me, Laura.”
She hesitates. “I don’t know who else I can go to about this. I’m sorry, I don’t want to burden you or anything. The problem is that Min isn’t in love with me back.” This time she doesn’t raise her head, as if she is admitting to a great failing within herself.
I need to tread carefully here. Anything I say could carry too much weight, and in the end it might prove useless, or worse. I wait.
“I feel like I’ve finally found the love that I’ve been looking for all my life. Like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz. Home was in my backyard all the time. I thought Min would feel the same way. Maybe it’s not the same for her because she’s had so many girlfriends already.”
She looks up at me pleadingly, desperate for help. Does she think I can tell her something my daughter might have confided in me? Does she think my age and experience give me the power to stave off a breaking heart?
“Did Min tell you she doesn’t love you?” I ask.
“Oh, she loves me, the same way she always has.” Laura stresses the word “love” as if it no longer holds meaning for her. Not enough, apparently. “But she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life with me. I can’t imagine myself alone anymore, without her. I sometimes look at her and I’m afraid I’ll split open from so much love. I worship her. The only thing I want in my life is to be with her.”
“I see.” I am humbled by Laura’s bare passion, this force of nature tearing through the landscape of her daily life. I don’t think I could say I was ever in love, not even with Jonathan. Since my marriage broke up, each successive relationship seems to have ebbed in intensity, waning to a pale sliver of devotion, to mere affection, until now I feel, with Lloyd, as if I’m with a friend, not a lover. And isn’t this what I wanted? Like the bookstore, where all the titles are labeled, shelved in their proper place. Like what I want my garden to be: something pruned, held back, controlled. Something predictable, something known.
The rain has stopped. When I stand up I realize how tightly I have been holding myself. The muscles along the right side of my neck are rigid with pain.
“Why don’t we go for a walk?” I suggest.
Before we leave, I tape a note to the front door for Mark, who works in the afternoons after school lets out, explaining why the store is closed. The brisk air has the clean, sweet after-rain smell I love. It helps dispel the claustrophobic atmosphere from inside the store. I turn to Laura, who has stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets, and I slip my arm through hers. She grins at me, that radiant smile. We set off down the street.
I am half-hoping we don’t need to speak, that the walk itself will shake up and clarify something for Laura. I don’t know how to help her. She said that in the past talking to me was useful, but back then her problems were containable, and they were separate from me. How can I advise her about my own daughter? Overhead the sky is brightening slightly. I steer us left, toward the edge of town and Deer Park, where there are trails leading up into the wooded hills.
“Catherine, does Min ever talk about me?” Laura asks.
I take a breath, telling myself that the least I can do for Laura is be honest with her. “Well, no, not really. She doesn’t like to discuss her . . . involvements with me.”
Laura nods thoughtfully, then says, “She’s had so many lovers, I don’t think I even know about them all. And she remembers their names, even the one-night stands. For me, this is all so new.”
Who are all these women Min has been with? I somehow assumed that the six or so girlfriends she has rather summarily informed me of were all there were. I feel naive suddenly, and old, as though my own life has already gone past, insignificant. We enter the woods, walking side by side until the trail rises steeply and narrows to a washed-out gully. All around us, trees drip with rain. I am so relieved to be outside. What happened at the bookstore has faded a little, become tinged with unreality.
I suggest, “Maybe Min is afraid that once the novelty wears off, your feelings will change.”
Laura nods. “She’s always telling me she expects me to go back to men. How can I prove to her that’s not true?” Laura falls silent, then says, “Besides, she wants my feelings to change. She says I’m too intense.”
“Min?” I interrupt, then start to laugh. It’s so ironic.
“Yeah, well . . .”
Seeing Laura’s face, I stop laughing. “Min struggled with a lot of things while you were away at school. She may be confused about what she feels. Try to give her time.”
“What if she never feels the same way I do?”
There’s no sound here beneath the trees except for the squelch of our shoes on the soggy mulch of fallen bay leaves. I can’t think of an answer.
After a while, Laura asks, “Do you think being adopted is hard for Min? I don’t mean that she’d wish she had another mother,” she adds quickly, glancing at me.
I smile, but her question makes me uneasy. “We adopted her as an infant. Her life has always been here.” I’m speaking slowly. It’s an effort, trying to find the truth. I’ve never given much thought to what her adoption might mean to Min. “Jonathan and I were always open about Min being adopted. Of course, we had to be, she’s Korean.” Abruptly, I stop speaking. The words Andy and I exchanged at Point Reyes hover nearby, perilous, just beyond my memory.
“There’s that part of it too,” Laura says.
“What?” I ask, not following her.
“Her being Korean. Racism.”
“Yes, well, people are idiots.” I hear the anger in my voice, feel it surge inside me. I remember how Andy looked as he stood on the beach that day, scuffing at the sand, unyielding. I couldn’t even tell Jonathan about our argument that afternoon. I knew he would say Andy was immature and then tell me to forget about him.
Laura and I switch over to a wider trail. We’re in the open now, surrounded by tall golden grasses and the view of hills, one folding back into the next.
“Laura . . .” This is a mistake, I warn myself. At the same time I am summoning my courage. Laura is not Jonathan. “What I said before about Andy’s last visit to me?”
“Yes?” Does she sound afraid? Am I being unfair to Laura by unburdening myself? But I can’t stop now. I don’t want to.
“Andy visited Jonathan and me a few months after we adopted Min,” I say. As I start to recount it, my memories wash up, like ocean waves smoothing out the sand. “I was so happy that week. I had everyone I loved with me.” Laura smiles, encouraging. I look away, concentrating on what I have to say. “We fought the last day because he said he couldn’t accept Min as my daughter. Not because she was adopted, exactly, but because she was Asian. She was too different from me. From us. He’d never talked like that before. All I knew was that he was rejecting my daughter because of how she looked. I was livid. And helpless. How could he not love her too?”
“Yes,” Laura says softly. It feels like a hand on my back.
“None of what I said to him seemed to make any difference. After he left, we didn’t have any contact with each other. Then he died that summer.”
I stop speaking. I don’t know how much she will comprehend about the position I was in.
“Oh,” Laura breathes out, barely audible. As we walk, she reaches out and puts her arm around me. My eyes tear up again. I look over at her quickly, not really seeing her before I look away, back at the trail. I feel a rush of relief. She understands. I reach up and squeeze her hand on my shoulder. She lets go, stuffs her hands in her pockets.
“When he died, I lost any way to resolve it with him. How could I ever have told Min that her uncle disavowed her? And for something so basic to who she was? How could I do that to her?”
“You couldn’t.”
“Then why do I feel I’ve done something wrong?”
Laura frowns. “I think you did the best you could. What happened with your brother is over. It would only hurt Min to bring it up now. Maybe you need to be easier on yourself. I don’t think you can control what other people say or do. Or think.”
The sun, low over the hills, finally breaks through the clouds in gauzy strands of light. I stop to look at it, unwilling to admit to Laura that I need to rest. The entire sky is astounding, changing every moment, in shades of gray and silver and blue. On the edge of the trail, pennyroyal’s tiny purple flower is blooming. I breathe in peppermint. There’s another plant I don’t know that smells like chamomile but probably isn’t. I have the feeling that I’ve never actually smelled them before, and I’ve never seen so many gradations of color in the sky.
Three days later, Min arrives at my house, hauling her table in its teal carrying case from her car. I have been needing this massage ever since the afternoon I spent with Laura. It is clear to me now why I’ve had so many headaches and stomach cramps. It has been about Andy all this time. The headaches have gone, but I still feel a constant knotting in my stomach like a fist of fear pressed hard inside me. I don’t know if this is something she can help me with.
We hug and chat a little, small talk about the traffic and a movie she and Laura saw last night. There are dark smudges under her eyes. She doesn’t seem particularly happy. “You look tired,” I say.
“I am. Laura and I stayed up late talking. We’re having a hard time.”
I don’t want to get in the middle. It’s her life, hers and Laura’s. I can’t protect them. Besides, Min isn’t asking for my advice.
In the living room, I help her push the chairs and coffee table to the side. Then, as she sets up her table, unfolding the sheets and warming her oil bottle on the electric heater I plugged in half an hour ago, I prowl through my rooms in search of cash to pay her. I sit at the end of my bed, having forgotten what I am looking for. I realize I am nervous. I need to tell Min what I told Laura.
On the wall to my left is a framed photograph of Min, four years old in a grassy, wind-flattened field on Mount Tam. It’s a photograph I love for her unselfconscious glee at being alive, at being her very self. She is wearing a t-shirt stitched with daisies that I had made for her, and strands of her chin-length hair blow across her eyes. Her mouth is wide open with laughter. She looks as if she might float away, she is so suffused with joy. That day we climbed to the top of the mountain up the rutted dirt paths, and when Min grew tired, Jonathan and I traded off carrying her. He let her sit on his shoulders, holding her by her ankles while she clasped his forehead where the hair was thinning. I carried her on my back, my hands grasping her legs, her arms around my neck. In the field where Jonathan took the photograph, we had stopped to share a Hershey’s chocolate bar. We sat in the tall grass on the gentle slope of the field, looking out on the sun-dazzled city of San Francisco in the distance, trying to imagine what it had looked like when the Indians lived there. I remember the heat that day and Jonathan breaking off the softened sections of chocolate. He didn’t divide the bar in thirds but handed the squares out one at a time, to make it last. I remember how much Min enjoyed receiving her small piece, letting it melt on her tongue, then reaching toward her father for more. When I stand up to look at the photograph closely, I see a smear of chocolate on Min’s raised hand.
I think of Laura asking me for advice, Laura holding me while I sobbed. I told Laura things about my family that my own daughter doesn’t know. Even though they affect her. Our family. I raise my fingertips to the glass as if to touch Min’s gleeful four-year-old face. I want so much for Min. Most of all, I want her to be happy. I can’t tell her now.
When I return to the living room, Min goes to wash her hands, closing the bathroom door behind her. For a moment I stand in front of the glass door looking out beyond the deck at the eucalyptus trees towering behind the garden. I never cut the flowers back or pruned the bushes as I hoped to do last summer. I turn away, take off my terrycloth bathrobe and my glasses, and get on the table to lie on my stomach, pulling the top sheet up above my shoulders, around my neck. I turn my face to the left. The laurel bay beyond the side window is a blur of green. I hear Min entering. She asks if I’m warm enough. She rests her hands on my back over the sheet, runs them down my legs, my arms. All this is ritual, formal and familiar, and right now I depend on it.
She begins. Head down in the face cradle, I keep my eyes open as long as I can, watching Min’s bare feet move in and out of my range of vision. The oil is warm, comforting. As Min spreads it on my back and I feel the weight of her hands glide over my skin, my eyes close, heavy, but I don’t fall asleep as I usually do. Instead, as though Min has flipped some switch inside me, I am plunged into long-forgotten memories so vivid I can hear and smell them. Andy consulting with me during one of my vacations from college about how he should ask out a girl at school that he liked. My excitement, even pride, when he called to tell me he’d gotten into Vanderbilt, his first choice. Ten years earlier, the bewildered look on his face when all the Christmas presents were opened and he realized our parents hadn’t given him the one thing he’d asked for, a book on tropical fish. Tears leak from my eyes; my throat is raw, my stomach queasy. Everything feels sore. Min’s fingers press into my back, push beneath a shoulder blade. Her touch is more penetrating than it has ever been. Neither of us speaks. If she knows I am crying, she gives no indication.
She picks up my foot by the ankle, lifts and shakes my whole leg, then lays it gently down again. She smoothes oil on my thigh, digs her fingers or knuckles, I can’t tell which, into the flesh around my hipbone. It is excruciating in a way I’ve never felt and, oddly, I want more. I remember the never-ending plane trip east, the days waiting for Andy’s body to wash up on shore, the funeral in the tiny chapel in Rhinebeck where my parents went to Sunday services. I remember the feeling that none of it was real, none of it made any sense. I had been waiting for a phone call or a letter from him for four months. When Min asks me to turn over, I realize that the small towel covering the face cradle is soaking wet. She hands me a tissue, then two more. I prop myself up on my elbows and blow my nose. I tell her I’m sorry. She says there’s no reason for me to be. I can see that my tears don’t frighten her; if anything, she is relieved.
I lie down on my back beneath the sheet. My body no longer feels part of me. It is in pieces, scattered about. Min is collecting them, pressing them back together. There is my skin, oiled and leathery, there are my arms and legs which stretch far away, and there is the inside of me, where pain resides. The air rushes loudly in my ears. I am here inside my head, nauseated. Min is down at my feet, cupping one in her hands like something newborn and fluttery. She tells me to breathe. I hear my bones creak. I think of the sound of a mast in high wind, the sail whipping, the boom swinging over, capsizing the boat. She presses the flat of her palm deep into my stomach, rocking. It feels like being gored; it feels deeply satisfying. Min pushes down, her hands sliding over my skin, then lets up. Under my ribs, around my hip bones, to the center of my abdomen. Down, around. Over and over. It feels as though she has reached the center of my being at last.
I push down the plunger of the coffee press, slowly forcing the freshly ground beans to the bottom of the glass container. Min comes into the kitchen, having folded up her massage table and gathered everything she came with. I take a mug from the cupboard, pour the coffee, hand it to Min. “Thanks,” she says. It’s the first time either of us has spoken since the massage ended. She turns and opens the ice box, gets the milk from the door.
I’m completely wrung out. Sitting down at the kitchen table, I cross my arms and run my hands over the sleeves of my bathrobe.
“Here, you should drink water,” Min says, filling a glass at the sink and bringing it to me. “You’ll get dehydrated.”
I sip, then drain the glass. My body feels rearranged, weightless; when I got off the massage table I had trouble balancing to walk. Min won’t mention my tears earlier under her hands. As a masseuse she has very clear boundaries, as my therapist used to put it. It is up to me to reveal what I want to. But the habit of silence is hard to break. I don’t know where to begin, what words to use. I stand, refill my glass at the sink, sit again. Min spoons sugar into her mug, stirs it, sips her coffee.
“Min, I can’t tell you how amazing I feel now.”
She sits back and regards me, running a hand through her spiky hair. “You don’t have to. I can see it in your face. It’s brighter. It’s totally different.”
“I was crying for Andy, my brother,” I say. Instantly she’s alert, paying minute attention, though she hasn’t moved. But where I start is not with the history of my relationship with Andy, or even with his death, but right in the middle of that afternoon on the beach. I recount everything we said, as well as I can remember it. You’ve been acting like she’s not a real person. Why didn’t you adopt a white child who might look like you? She’s my child, you have to accept Min someday. She’s not part of you; you’re born into family.
“I’m sorry I never told you before, Min. I couldn’t begin to talk about it with you, let alone think about it, because of his death.” I am rushing my words, relieved at how easy telling her is after all. “I wanted to make it all come out okay somehow, make him not be dead, make him not feel the way he did. I wanted him to love you. I wish you had known him. He was dedicated, fun to be with, very affectionate. He would have loved you, I know he would have.”
I am hopeful. Everything is changing again. There will be nothing held back between Min and me now. I should have done this a long time ago. I look at her, full of my passion and faith. She is frowning.
“You’re full of shit, Mom. I’m sorry he died, but your brother was a fucking bigot.”
For a moment I am stunned. This was not the reaction I was expecting. Then my old instincts rush in. “No. He wasn’t, Min. That’s the point. I guess I haven’t conveyed who he was. He wasn’t usually like that at all.” Even after twenty-one years, I still protect him.
“He was that day. He didn’t like me because I have yellow skin and slanted eyes. Right?”
I wince at her choice of words. Her anger burns away all decorum, and her willingness to hurt—to be hurt—makes me go on the defense. “He didn’t know you. He was not a bigot. Not usually. I think he felt threatened by how much I loved you.”
“And you’re as bad as he was. Why are you defending him?”
“What? Of course I defend him. I don’t condone how he felt. I was infuriated. I was screaming at him I was so angry.”
“Why did you bother? Why didn’t you just walk away?”
I am shocked into silence, made as stupid and speechless as I was on the beach with Andy. Finally I manage, “I couldn’t, Min. He was my brother.” It is the only explanation I have.
She stares at me, her face slowly turning a dusky rose. “Yeah? Well, then I guess he was right, wasn’t he? Family is what you’re born into.” She says it with barely controlled fury, then scrapes her chair back and stands up, turning and striding toward the living room all in one motion. This time I know that if she leaves, she won’t come back.
“Min.” I say it sternly, a mother reprimanding her child, and she stops, blinking at me with a child’s surprise. I soften my voice. “You’re right.” She watches me, her jaw hard. I am trying to tell the truth, but I am afraid that I might not say the right thing. I cannot count on the familial bond between us. “You’re right. I thought I was defending you. I thought if he changed his mind, it would be all right. I am as bad as he was.”
Min stands in the doorway half-poised to flee, her head down. I can tell she is hesitating, uncertain. For the first time, I see how much she relies on the immediacy of her feelings. She wants to act on her fury. She can’t come back into the kitchen with me, not so soon. I watch her all the way across the room, and suddenly, I don’t know why, I feel how deeply I have hurt her, not in telling her, but in the ways I have tried to shield her from him all her life. As though he was the only person who could wound her because of who she is. As though ignoring her race could make her white.
Min says, not moving from the doorway, “You know, you admit you’re racist, and you assume that’s enough. Mom, do you realize . . .?” She hesitates, then plunges on, rage fueling her. “I remember the first time other kids called me ‘slant-eyes.’ That was the day I came home from kindergarten and figured out that you and Dad didn’t look like me either. You sat with me and told me the facts about my adoption, but you never said anything about why those kids were mean to me or whether I had a right to want them to stop. I thought you were scared of me. I thought I had done something wrong when you got pissed off at people on the street who were curious about me. For the longest time I tried . . .” She closes her eyes and turns her head away from me. I want to go to her, but I know she won’t let me touch her.
“Min, I’m sorry. I really, really am. I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t realize what I was doing. All I wanted was to protect you.”
She is still facing away. “You think it’s not obvious how much you and Laura get off on pretending to be mother and daughter?”
My breath catches. I had no idea I was so transparent. “Min.” I try not to sound like I’m begging or demanding. “Please come back and sit down.”
“No.”
“Then listen to me. This is important. And I’m not trying to make excuses for myself. What happened with Andy was not a contest between the two of you. I was not rejecting you because I couldn’t cut him off. I loved him.” I’m crying again, something I’ve never done in front of her before today, but I simply wipe my face and keep talking, letting the tears come. “I can’t defend how I acted, who I was. Who I am. If I had to do it over again, I couldn’t do anything differently, even now. I can only tell you what I told Andy. I chose you for my daughter. I do it every day.”
She is looking at me now. I wipe away more tears with the heel of my hand and look back at her steadily.
“I have to go,” she says. She retreats into the living room, laces up her sneakers, pulls on her knapsack.
I stand in the kitchen doorway where she just was. She does not look at me. It’s a very lonely feeling, having her leave like this. I don’t know, in fact, if we will ever speak again. But I do know that I have to let her go, for the first time, really, and trust who we are to each other. That she is my daughter is the least of it.
She bends to put the carrying case strap over her shoulder and grabs the handle, then straightens, hauling the table off the floor. I slide open the door for her. “Bye,” she says as if it just slipped out, and she steps out into a windy, sunlit day.