I wonder what could be the problem. It’s six a.m. Don’t my aunt and uncle ever sleep?
Auntie Yingfei kindly says that she has already “order new clothes” for me. I nod, embarrassed and grateful. I fell asleep wearing Ruby’s pink cotton-candy jumpsuit with the cotton balls and admittedly, when I got sick, I puked all over it. The jumpsuit is wrecked.
Of course, Ruby does not take the news well. The second garment that I have destroyed. Then it doesn’t help when Auntie Yingfei leaves for work, not before ordering Ruby to help me study.
“Why don’t you just go home?” Ruby asks me, openmouthed. She crosses her arms and looks seriously aggravated.
“I can’t!” I say.
“I’ll pay for your ticket back,” she offers. “No one asked you to be here.”
“No one asked me if I wanted to come here,” I say. “I didn’t even know you existed until a few weeks ago.”
“How do you think I feel? No one told me about you coming here until your flight landed. My dad wanted to surprise me with a cousin my age. I used to beg him for a sibling to play with when I was a kid, and he thought I would be happy when you came along. I just can’t believe we’re related.”
Incredulous, I stare at her.
Her eyes twitch.
I sigh. We’re definitely related.
No wonder Ruby is so angry and disappointed with me. She’s still reeling from the news. I didn’t take it well either when I found out that she was a long-lost family member. It somehow made being Chinese more like a Wikipedia fact, having this instant weirdo connection to Beijing, whereas my cultural identity had previously been Sephora and Nordstrom department store. Chinese was just a type of late-night take-out food: greasy, gassy, but always delicious. Suddenly, my dad’s stories and superstitions about zodiac animals and people with flower-hearts seemed REAL. My parents never once mentioned their past lives in China. They never talked about going back “home.”
Poor Ruby.
Poor me!
“Well, when are you going home?” Ruby finally asks in a resigned voice.
“My dad says I have to learn how to be Chinese,” I say miserably. “It might take a long time.”
Like a ravenous water buffalo, Ruby lets out a huff of unceasing frustration.
I want to join her too, but I don’t. Howling out loud would make my stomach hurt more. My insides already feel as if they have been trampled by a herd of overzealous elephants.
Seeming to recover from her anguish, Ruby finally speed-dials housekeeping to help her dispose of the suit. She won’t even touch it. I don’t blame her. The Shangri-La sends two chambermaids and a well-dressed manager with rubber gloves and tongs to dispose of the garment. When the staff all see me again, they sigh deeply.
Afterward, Ruby disappears into the maid’s quarters and shuts the door.
* * *
When Uncle Dai and Auntie Yingfei come home at lunch to check on me, they insist that I drink more tongue-scalding herbal tea and ingest more chicken broth. I honestly have no appetite. Every fifteen minutes, I run to the toilet. The powder doesn’t seem to be helping. Neither do the pills.
“Doctor say you are okay!” Uncle Dai says. “So now you can help Ruby with English. Time for language exchange.”
I stare at him. Is he kidding?
He’s not.
I should know by now that people in Beijing do not have a sense of humor. At least the people that I have encountered so far.
“I’m not feeling well!” I say in a meek voice.
“Nothing wrong with your mind!” my uncle says cheerfully. “Just stomach problem, right?”
I keep staring at him, horrified. Who makes someone work when they have fainted from some mysterious illness called “traveler’s diarrhea”?
I know that I’m definitely not related to these obsessively studious people at all when he forces Ruby to come out of the maid’s quarters and makes her hand me a twenty-page typed paper on Proust. The font is practically unreadable. It’s so tiny. Like little polka dots. I squint.
“You need your glasses, Weijun?” Uncle Dai asks.
Glasses? What is my uncle talking about?
“Oh! I have 22/22 vision,” I say proudly, and bring the paper close to my nose. This is ridiculous. Is the font somehow smaller in China? Do people have super eyesight in Beijing?
“Proust? What country is that?” I say, not understanding what I’m reading. I flip through the pages anxiously. “Is that a new name for Persia?”
Geography is always changing. I can’t keep track.
Ruby stares at me.
I try again.
“So, what country do they speak Proust in?” I ask. “Is that a region in the Middle East?”
Uncle Dai looks at Ruby. Like he’s asking her a question.
“Joking!” I quickly say, and Uncle Dai starts laughing.
“Weijun is very funny,” he says, patting me on the back.
He suddenly gets an important phone call and exits the living room. I stare at the paper, and I can feel my mind turn to mush. Surely this isn’t English literature?
Marcel Proust was one of the most profound and influential writers to come from France. He is the father of modern letters …
Immediately, I start yawning nonstop. It’s like my mouth won’t stop making noises of angry protest. I know I’m being rude, but I honestly can’t help it. I get through the first sentence and realize that I’ve fallen asleep when Ruby taps me on the shoulder, like she’s furiously texting me another rant-message. She has to literally whack my shoulder a few times for me to even wake up from this boring hallucination of reading about someone I don’t know.
If a paragraph is longer than 142 characters, it’s hard for me to pay attention. It’s like my brain disconnects from my body and I have an out-of-body experience. I have no idea how I will ever master Chinese, a brand-new language, when I failed AP English Composition and AP English Literature.
“You were sleeping!” Ruby accuses me.
“I was not!” I say.
“Yes, you were!” she says.
“Sometimes when I’m concentrating, I just zone out!” I say.
“Well, what do you think of my paper?” she says.
“It’s excellent!” I say brightly.
“Do you think the thesis statement needs to be refined more?”
I have no idea what Ruby is talking about.
“Is it too general?” she persists, frowning.
“How can an essay be too general?” I ask, feeling smart for knowing the answer to her trick question. “Essays should be about one subject.”
Uncle Dai and Auntie Yingfei overhear us and walk over to the couch, carrying more cups of strong-smelling tea for us. I take a sip; it tastes like jasmine, nectarines, and walnuts. I take another. It’s wonderfully soothing and delicious.
“Ruby is good at English?” Uncle Dai asks, looking pleased.
He doesn’t see his daughter’s exasperated but hopeful expression. The way that she wants her dad to approve of her, just like how I want my peer group to appreciate me.
“Yes,” I say, even though I haven’t read the paper, but grudgingly, I have to admit that it seems that my cousin is above-average smart based on the opening sentence. Ruby is definitely more advanced in English writing than me.