The girl scowled. Her ponytail hung like a mouse tail against the back of her shirt. She bent closer to her customer, her body rigid, too nervous to do good work. Her customer tapped her feet.
I began my customer’s second coat. One of the new girls was smearing hot wax onto a woman’s upper lip. The new girls chattered to one another in Vietnamese and to the customers in limited English, and the speakers in the front of the salon played a radio station with American songs while Michelle watched Korean movies on a TV in the back office. I could hear operatic crying and swelling string music.
I would finish this lady’s nails, and if nobody else came in, take my break. Didi was off today, at her English class, and I thought again about Star Hill, the house you and I and Leon could live in.
My customer’s hand twitched. I’d painted her skin by mistake.
“Sorry,” I said.
She met my gaze at last, sucking her teeth in one long intake. I wiped the blob of polish off. The second coat was glossy and dark.
I finished the left hand, picked up the woman’s right, concentrating so hard on applying the polish that I didn’t notice the men who had come in, not until the customer had yanked her hand away and the girl at the next station had jumped up and there was a clatter, voices shouting in English and Vietnamese.
Men were yelling. “Down! Down!” They were policemen, uniformed.
Customers grabbed their purses and ran out with their nails still wet. One woman left with a stripe of wax above her lip. My customer fled without paying. “Stop her!” I yelled, and then I was shoved into a mass of bodies.
The new girl with the ponytail spat out words that sounded like curses. “What is going on?” I shouted.
Static voices buzzed over the men’s walkie-talkies. “Stay down,” one of them said, and pointed at me.
The door was closed now, guarded by another uniformed man. A third man had handcuffed Michelle, who was cursing in English.
The first man turned to me. Years ago, riding in the truck from Toronto to New York, bumping over potholes, stiff with fear, I had thought, This is what it’s like to be dead. Now, as I felt my arms pulled back in a decisive motion, like trussing a hog, I thought of you. It was you that I thought of. Always, it’s been you.
Eleven
Yong was practicing his speech again. “I come from humble beginnings.” He looked at his notepad. “Like so many of you.” His gaze traveled to a point over me, landing on the wall behind the couch. “Many, uh, obstacles were met.”
“Wait.” I leaned forward. He stood before me in a pair of boxer shorts and a white undershirt. “It sounds a little braggy.”
“But how can it be bragging if I say I grew up poor?”
“That’s the thing. You didn’t.”
“Sure I did. We lived in an apartment. One bedroom for three people.”
“But you always had enough to eat. You were a city person and you could go to school wherever you wanted.”
“This is the Fuzhou Business Leaders Forum awards. Everyone makes speeches about being from humble beginnings.”
Seeing him there in his underpants made me want to shower him with clothes. “I guess it just seems dishonest.”
“I don’t even want to give this speech. I’m no good at speeches.”
“Take a deep breath before you talk. I do that when I’m teaching a class. Or you can pretend you’re speaking to your friends, like you’re telling me and Zhao a story.”
He tried again. “I come from humble beginnings.”
“You have to project, talk louder.”
He took it from the top, louder this time, his words forced and exaggerated. “I come.” He swept his arm in front of him. “From humble. Beginnings!”
My cell phone buzzed and I grabbed it, saw a string of numbers, the kind I’d been hoping to see every time it had rung over the past month. Five weeks had passed since you called me and I hadn’t called you back. I was scared of what you would say to me, that you’d be angry. I was scared of a lot of things I hadn’t been scared of before.
“Hold on,” I told Yong. “I have to take this. It’s a business call. Keep practicing, I’ll be back in a bit.”
I took the phone and walked down the hall to our guest room, which we used as an office. Shut the door, locked it, and sat on the floor by the window, against the one wall that wasn’t shared with the living room.
“Hello?” I tried to even out the nervousness in my voice.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Deming. I’m glad you called again.”
“Hello, Mama,” you said.
“It’s you,” I whispered, delighted and anxious.
From the living room I could hear Yong repeating the first lines of his speech, varying the intonations of the words. I-come-from-humble-beginnings. I come, from humble . . . beginnings. I come from humble beginnings?
You told me you were in school, that you had a job and played guitar. Your adoptive parents had insisted on changing your name, not only your first name, but also your last, so there was no longer any trace of me. What the hell kind of name was Daniel Wilkinson? I could never call you that. You told me Vivian had gone to court so that you could get taken in by a white family, but I already knew.
“Deming,” I said, and each time I said your name I felt a tiny thrill, “remember the times we used to ride the subway together? That was fun.”
“We went to Queens and met the other mother and son and pretended they looked like us.”
“They did look like us, didn’t they?”
“Sure.” You paused. “Do you remember what you told me that day?”
My little Deming, freshly returned from China, both of us still without English. Your stubby legs and fat cheeks and oversized winter jacket. Gripping my hand as we crossed the street, afraid of all those fast cars.
“No.” I couldn’t remember; it was so long ago.
There was a knock. The doorknob jiggled, and I heard Yong say, “Polly?”
“I have to go,” I whispered, then said, loudly, “Thank you for your phone call. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I opened the door. Yong was in the hallway. “Can I run the speech by you again? I think I’ve got it now.”
I nodded, wiping my sweaty palms on my thighs. My smile was taped onto my face.
“Why’d you lock the door?”
Yong was so unsuspecting, it pained me. “A phone call from a client. Aren’t you cold? Let me get you some clothes.” I took a pair of his pants out of the closet, tucking a note into the pocket. On it, I had written: The award for best speech goes to you.