The Leavers

“I had dinner with him and Vivian. He told me she had gone to court as my guardian and given me away to a foster family.”


A longer silence ensued.

“Hello?” He should end the call. This had been a mistake.

“That bitch,” his mother said, but her words were too measured and quiet, lacking the fire he remembered. “How could she do that?”

He wished he could see her face, wanted to be able to place her in a room. “Mama?”

“Yes?”

“What do you see right now?”

“I’m in my apartment, in our office room. I see curtains, a desk. We’re on the twelfth floor. If I look out my window, I see other buildings. Fuzhou is a big city these days, like New York. What do you see, Deming?”

“Some shelves. My computer, my clothes, my guitar. There’s a window, but it faces another building.”

She asked if he remembered riding the subway, and he mentioned the time they had met their doppelg?ngers. In Ridgeborough, when Deming Guo was no longer a name that was said aloud, he used to picture the Other Deming and Other Mama, still living in Queens. It was a sort of comfort, bittersweet; at least they’d remained together.

“I have to go,” she suddenly whispered. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

SHE CALLED HIM THE next day, Wednesday evening in New York, Thursday morning in Fuzhou. He was at work, didn’t see the message until later. “Hello, Deming,” she said. “I wanted to say hello, but you’re probably at school. Don’t call me, we need to set up a time to talk in advance. But I’ll call you again tomorrow.”

All next day he kept his ringer on high, but she didn’t call. After work, he called and left her another message, asking her when they could talk next.

He went back to the apartment, ate takeout enchiladas from Tres Locos, and tried to work on a song, deciding against going out. He hadn’t touched his own music in weeks. If he made himself unavailable she would call, like bringing an umbrella for insurance against the rain. He took a long shower, changed into sweatpants, folded his clothes, did the dishes crusting away in the sink. Finally, he looked at his phone. She’d called, left him a message suggesting five thirty Friday morning, New York time. That night he slept well for the first time all week.

The next morning, he was ready. He got up earlier than he ever did, bought a cup of coffee and a bagel at a deli on Sixth Avenue, then sat at the kitchen table and dialed.

At first it was the wrong number and the call didn’t go through. Panicked, he double-checked, dialed again.

She picked up. “Deming?”

“Is this a good time?”

“Yes, my husband is out. I’m on our balcony right now.”

He’d made a list of things he wanted to ask. “Remember the time you pushed me off a swing?”

“What made you think of that?”

“I just remembered it.”

“I never pushed you off a swing. You fell off. I remember when I asked the school to put you with another teacher. They wanted to move you to a remedial class.”

That had been Kay, wanting to put him in a higher grade. “I don’t remember that.”

“At P.S. 63. I even remember the principal. Spanish lady with lots of hair. You were having trouble, and I didn’t want you to be in that class anymore. I got you transferred to Michael’s class. He was in an advanced class so it had kids from your grade in it, too.”

“It was P.S. 33, not 63.” Daniel put his elbows on the table and saw the outline of the principal’s face, a memory of walking to her office with his mother, how strange it had been to see her in the hallway of his school, how relieved he’d been to sit next to Michael in another classroom. He saw another scene: his mother yelling at a woman. In the memory the other woman’s son had made fun of his clothes or his lack of English and he had cried—yes, he saw it clearly now, Deming crying in the park and Mama running to him—and when the other mother defended her own son, said he’d done nothing wrong, Mama had let her have it, spitting in Fuzhounese. Fighting for him, being on his side. “Damn,” he said in English. “Tell me something else I should know.”

“When I came to New York, I was already pregnant with you. I had fifty thousand dollars in debt.”

“You were pregnant when you came here? Who was my father?”

“A boy in the village. My next-door neighbor.”

He waited for her to say more. As she told him about how she came to New York, he finished the bagel, chewing quietly, and the rest of his coffee. Then he told her he had grown up in a town called Ridgeborough, that his adoptive parents were named Peter and Kay, and he was taking a break from school.

The sun was coming up. Before she could end the call, he said, “If you found Leon, why didn’t you try to find me?”

“I did try.” She sounded hurt. “I looked for years, even. Leon didn’t know where you had gone. I was saving money to come back to New York. Even if it cost me sixty thousand dollars, I was planning on coming to find you. Even if the first thing they did when I got there was throw my ass in jail. When I heard from Leon that you’d been adopted I wanted to jump off a bridge.”

Her words retreated into a small, strangled space. Daniel’s mind was a jumble of names and motives. It was Leon’s fault they’d been torn apart, Vivian who had given him away. He stood against the counter, brushed crumbs onto the floor.

“But you’re okay?” A hopeful note crept into her voice.

Daniel walked back to the living room. To acknowledge his mother’s regret meant he had to think of what her leaving had done to him, the nights he’d woken up in Ridgeborough in such grief it felt like his lungs were seizing. Months, years, had passed like this, until he became adept at convincing himself it didn’t matter.

“That doesn’t excuse you going away,” he said. “You have no idea what happened to me. You can’t pretend you didn’t mess up, that you did nothing wrong.”

Roland came out his bedroom. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

“Everything all right?”

“Yeah.”

“Deming?” his mother said. “You still there?”

Daniel waited until Roland returned to his room and closed the door. “Yes.”

“There are so many things you don’t understand,” she said. “Ask Leon, you said you spoke to him, so why don’t you ask him?”

He was silent. He heard his mother say, “Yes, I’m in here.” She spoke in a loud, cheery manner, and he heard a man’s voice in the background.

She whispered, “My husband is home. I have to get off the phone. I’ll call you.”

CALL ENDED, the screen said.

Daniel poured himself a glass of water and drank it in several gulps, then washed his face in the sink. As the cold water ran down his neck, he realized her husband didn’t know about him, that she pretended he didn’t exist.





Ten

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