I DIDN’T GET a letter from Amir this time. Instead I got a postcard, with a picture of Niagara Falls on the front. On the back, Amir had hastily scrawled:
Happy holidays! I’m sorry I haven’t had the time to write lately, but I thought I’d send something over anyway. Hope your family is doing well.
I shoved the postcard under my pillow and didn’t bother to write a reply.
“Ro invited you over for Chinese New Year dinner?” Mom had said dubiously when I first brought it up. She stirred the pasta in the pot and pushed her poufy bangs out of her face. “I didn’t know your friend was Chinese.”
“Half.”
Mom stared at me like she didn’t understand. “What?”
“Like, her mom is Chinese and her dad is . . . you know. Not.”
She took a minute to process that. “Oh,” she said, stirring the pasta some more. “Huh. That’s interesting.” She covered the pot and wiped her hands. “So, what do people eat at Chinese New Year dinner? You should bring something, right?”
“No clue,” I said. “I’m probably just going over to her house and eating some food.” But as I walked up to Ro’s house, with a plate of chocolate chip cookies that Mom had made from a bucket of cookie dough, I saw the warm light spilling out from the windows and voices chattering words I couldn’t understand.
This wasn’t just a dinner; it was a big dinner party.
But before I could change my mind, the door opened and Ro’s mom practically waltzed out, with a spatula in hand. “Benji!” she said brightly, and then swept me up in a fierce hug. “Our very special guest.”
I held out the plate as she shepherded me inside. “I brought cookies,” I said. “Should I set them in the kitchen or—”
I stumbled into the dining room full of people, where promptly, three women turned and stared at me curiously.
Ro’s mom didn’t seem to notice. “I’ll take them,” she said, taking the plate from my hands. “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable and I can introduce you to some of the—”
“I’ve got it, Mom,” Ro said, coming down the stairs. I exhaled in relief.
“Hi, Aunties,” she said, grinning brightly at the three women who, to be honest, looked like they’d never lost a staring contest in their lives. She turned me away. “Come on, let’s go to the kitchen.”
“So this is your family?” I whispered to her.
“Sure is,” she said. “Those were my great-aunts. Laolao and Wai-Gong—my grandparents—are probably in the kitchen or something.”
“They’re all from around here?”
“Well, most of my mom’s side of the family—the Lings—live in San Francisco. But everyone switches off hosting the dinner every year.” She leaned in, lowering her voice. “Don’t mind them staring. It’s because you’re the only white person in this room.” She paused. “Well, one and a half, if you count me.”
I realized that I couldn’t see her dad anywhere.
Where was he?
Something sizzled and spat in the kitchen as it got dropped in the large round pan. A large plume of steam and smoke engulfed the pan.
Whoa. The aroma alone made my mouth water.
“Here.” Ro pushed a plate at me. “We can start you off easy before we move on to the chicken feet.”
Chicken feet?
“Kidding,” Ro said, seeing the look on my face. “I wouldn’t make you do that.”
We found a quiet corner of the living room. Ro pointed to the things piled high on my plate. “Do you know what any of this is?”
I poked it with my fork. “Is this like bread or something?”
“You’ve never had Chinese food before, have you?” Catching the look on my face, she grinned. “I’ll get to see you have your first char siu bao.”
“The what?”
“This,” Ro said, pointing to a round bun. “It’s stuffed with barbecued pork. It’s kind of sweet and smoky? Here, try it.”
I bit into the hot bun, and my eyes widened. “Dis,” I said with my mouth full, “isshogood.”
I’d inhaled it before I knew it. Ro held up something that looked like those fried Oreos Mom would never let me eat at the fair, except it was perfectly spherical and covered with sesame seeds. “Try this sesame ball next.”
The crispy shell crumbled into a sweet gooey bite.
This was way better than a fried Oreo.
“I can’t believe you grew up on this stuff,” I said.
“Sort of,” Ro said. “We eat a lot of stir-fry. But my other grandparents come visit on Christmas and Thanksgiving, so sometimes I get a lot of shepherd’s pie.”
“You’re so lucky,” I said. “My mom burns the pasta sometimes.”
She smiled and looked down. “I mean, I like it, I guess. But it’s . . . definitely different.”
“What is it like—” I couldn’t put it in words. “Growing up like that?”
She sighed and looked out. “It’s kind of hard to explain. It was weird when people would come up to my dad at stores and ask if I was adopted. Or when my Chinese grandma asks Mom if my freckles can be scrubbed off. Or when grandparents tell my other cousins that they look so much like their mom, or their dad, and I don’t really look like either. Or when someone guesses I’m Mexican, or South American, or if they don’t even bother to guess in the first place and just ask, ‘What are you?’ I feel like a freak.”
She sighed again. “But they were so similar. That’s the part no one understands. My mom and dad both liked the same rock bands. They used to go on road trips down the coast. They liked the same awful Italian restaurant. But just because they didn’t look like each other, well . . . some people thought they didn’t belong together.”
Silence. Used to. Where was her dad, anyway?
Ro drew her knees up to under her chin. I wanted to tell her that she wasn’t a freak. Or that it would be pretty sad if her freckles were scrubbed off, because they matched mine and because I couldn’t imagine a Ro without freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose. I didn’t even know if my parents had ever gone on a road trip. Maybe they had. They probably hadn’t. I wouldn’t know.
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “I guess . . . it just wasn’t something I thought about.”
Ro shrugged. “Yeah, most people don’t have to.”
“You get these dinners, though,” I said. “And this bun is the best thing I’ve ever had in my life.” I looked up. “So what are these chicken feet you told me about?”
“Don’t even try,” Ro said.
“You know I eat all kinds of stuff.”
She laughed. “You can go see for yourself.”
We padded into the kitchen. The pantry door was ajar, and I heard Ro’s mom talking to what sounded like . . . her grandma? One of the aunties? She spoke in clipped English. “I just worry about Ro.”
“Ma—”
“Aiyah, you should move closer to us. More healthy. Chinese families grow up with their grandparents. And San Francisco’s better than this place. You remember the Chus, right? They’re still next door to us. Good support system.”
“I can’t,” Ro’s mom said. She sounded exhausted.
“I know this is a hard time for you,” Ro’s grandmother said. “He was a good husband. Your ba and I are sad, too. But we want to help. The Ling family stays together.”
I turned to see Ro’s face pale. She was frozen for a minute.
And then she turned and ran.
“Ro!” I called, running after her, and the conversation in the pantry stopped. “Ro!”
I found her outside on the patio, leaning against the wall. Her arms were crossed.
I stood by her for a few moments. The chill seeped in.
“Your dad,” I said. “Did he leave too?”
She looked up. Finally, she said, in a small voice, “He was killed by a drunk driver.”
I stopped. I exhaled. “Oh.”
Neither of us said anything. I asked finally, “When?”
“Last March.” Her voice sounded tight, like she was trying hard not to cry. “That’s why I moved schools.”
I paused.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t know what to say after that. My mind raced through all the things you’re supposed to say after something sad happens to a friend. I understand. I’ve been there.
But the thing was, I didn’t understand. I knew what it was like to have a dad who didn’t show up for birthdays or baseball games. A dad who was generally absent on all fronts and could be in Nevada or Arizona or Greenland for all I knew, but I didn’t know what it was like to have a dad who was there and then was gone.
Someone who would never, ever, ever come back.
And so I did the only thing I could do. I opened my arms for a hug, and she leaned her forehead on my shoulder. I kept not saying anything, but I guess she was okay with this. And then a couple minutes later I heard hiccuping sounds, and Ro pulled away and mumbled, “Sorry. I’m getting snot all over your sweatshirt.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I really am sorry about your dad.”
“There’s nothing I can do about it.” Ro said. “About anything. My grandmother’s been trying to push Mom to move to San Francisco because that’s what everyone else thinks is best for us and they keep saying that I love the city. And I do, but I can’t even think about moving. Because that would be like leaving Dad behind.” Her voice rose. “And sometimes I can’t help thinking about it, you know? That night. I try to figure out how fast the other driver was going and if he just slowed down a little bit more or turned more or something Dad might still be here, but he’s gone and I can’t do anything about it.” She wiped her face with the sleeve of her windbreaker. “Sorry,” she mumbled again.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I used to cry about my dad too.”
She nodded and sighed. She leaned back, looking up. “He used to point those out to me,” she said, pointing up to the inky sky. “Constellations. See, there’s Orion.” She traced a line. “That’s his belt.”
I peered closer and could make out three bright stars. “Did your dad like building rockets, too?”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “We were supposed to work on it together.”
And then my stomach grumbled. Ro looked over. “Still hungry?”
“Nah, I’m fine,” I said, but Ro was already standing up.
“Okay, fine,” I said. “You got any more of those pork buns lying around?”
“They run out pretty fast,” she said. “Come on!”
And then we scrambled back to the warmth of the house, where Ro forced a smile at her grandmother as she scooped up two pork buns. We went outside again despite her grandma’s protests that it was too cold. Because somehow, it was more comfortable out there. We heard the lone hooting of an owl and the rustling of the grass and all those sounds I usually didn’t pay attention to because I never went outside just to look at stars. If I could sketch this moment, I’d mix dark against light blues. I’d blend in deep greens for the trees and dark gray for the shadows that stretched across the grass. We huddled in our sweaters and windbreakers, and Ro pointed out the constellations of a big bear and a small bear and what Ro said was supposed to be someone named Cassiopeia but I thought looked more like a flying squid instead. And so we stayed out there for a while, making up our own constellations, like the Intergalactic Octopus and the Massive Flying Saucer, the pork buns warming our hands and the universe in our ears.