Girl Overboard (10 page)

How does he know? That’s what I get for confessing my dream to his kids the last time we got together before I left for snowboarding camp. Out of my mouth, straight into their dad’s ears.

Wayne glares at me, unable to believe that someone this stupid could have sprung from his same gene pool. “We didn’t fix your knee, much less spend a million dollars rescuing you, so that you could go out and break your neck the next time.”

You would think that I just declared my intention to be an exotic dancer, the way everyone is staring at me.

“I thought you were more ambitious than this,” says Wayne.

What?
I want to say to him.
Like making another couple of million at the end of the quarter is supposed to make me feel fulfilled, good about myself?
Naturally, adoring little sister says not a word.

“I’m just being honest here,” chimes Grace. “There simply aren’t many companies who’ll sponsor a Chinese-American girl, much less one who was skewered for her snowboarding. Look at Kristi Yamaguchi, who, I hate to say this, is more… media-genic… than you are. She didn’t get half the endorsements that the other figure skaters did, even with her gold.”

Endorsements. I grab that word as if it’s an avalanche probe. “Actually,” I say, thinking fast about how Natalia’s community service project did double duty, introducing at-risk kids to snowboarding and reintroducing herself to Age. And about Frank at the hospital with his spiky wet eyelashes. And Derek from the third floor cancer ward. “I was thinking about organizing some sort of charity snowboarding contest for Children’s Hospital.”

“Fundraisers are a lot of work,” says Mama, folding her hands in front of her on the table. “The last auction I chaired was practically a full-time job. Even with the Evergreen Fund’s staff helping me.”

Wayne drops his pen onto his legal pad, where it rolls off and lands on his agenda. “This is just Syrah trying to get us to sponsor her.”

“It isn’t,” I protest.

His “no chance in hell” is set in his stony stare. “What are you going to do once your so-called career is over? Teach snowboarding?” Wayne’s tone is so ridiculing, his words so realistic, I look away, sliding my video résumé and manga under the table and onto my lap. “You’d make more in a couple of hours on this,” he taps the Cheng family memo emphatically, “than you would in five seasons on the slopes. With or without endorsements.”

Just as aware as I was in the split second after I heard the unmistakable
whump
of snow cracking under my snowboard in Whistler, I know I’ve bungled it now.

“Your time would be better served studying for the SAT,” agrees Baba. And then in his ultra-controlled patient voice, the one he uses when he wants to make sure there’s no mistaking his message, Baba continues, “Syrah, I can understand how you might want to snowboard again, but if those rescuers hadn’t found you when they did, you’d have died of exposure. So it’s just not possible.”

I wait for the second verse in his statistics-filled monologue. How the number of snowboarding injuries are on the rise every year. How more snowboarders are getting killed in avalanches in the backcountry where I love to ride.

Instead, Baba leans back in his chair and touches his fingertips together in a steeple. “However, it’s a moot point,” he says finally.

All I want to do is run for cover, clutching my résumé, so I don’t have to hear his pronouncement that I’m never, ever to touch a snow-covered mountain again. That the only mountain I’m allowed to ride is a gold one named Mount Cheng. Instead, I sit still, focus on the dragon robe displayed behind Baba, rich yellow and embroidered with the twelve symbols of imperial authority, including the sun, moon, constellations, and twinned dragons. And I wait for his judgment.

Baba places his hand atop Mama’s and smiles at her. For a moment, I wonder why Grace thinks that I’m the beloved one when their Royal We doesn’t include me, either.

“We’re moving to Hong Kong,” he says.

B
ut I don’t want
to move,” I say.

Those six little words rip the tenuous ligament connecting what is allowed to be said and what remains unsaid in this family. Support for Baba’s strategies to further the Cheng name, increase the Cheng fortunes, gild the Cheng legacy: glory, glory hallelujah! Sing your praises to the high heavens for all to hear. But an issue or a complaint? Those treacherous thoughts are locked down, never-to-be-uttered outside the privacy of your own head.

The pavilion falls silent: Baba and Mama because I challenged their plans; Wayne and Grace because I’m getting another Golden Opportunity they didn’t have as kids during the Ethan Cheng, struggling entrepreneur era.

“We’re moving in September. Right in time for you to start the International School,” Baba continues smoothly as if I haven’t spoken up.

Grace and Wayne exchange another eyebrow-lifting look:
Hey, if we talked back like that when we were Syrah’s age, we would have been pelted with rebuke.

But Baba’s cell phone rings, cutting off any further protest on my part and any potential grousing on theirs. “Yes?” he answers impatiently. Nodding his head once, he trots upstairs to his private office, phone to his ear.

How many times have I seen jealousy at school and camp gain momentum like an avalanche? It’s no different now. My new so-called opportunity releases an entire block of pent-up resentment in Wayne.

“I’ve already warned Baba that you’re spoiled rotten,” he says, eyes narrowed. The way Wayne’s jaw works, I get ready for his you-were-born-with-silver-chopsticks-in-your-mouth tirade. He doesn’t disappoint. “How many kids get a chance to live abroad? You’ll improve your Cantonese and be trilingual. So what are you complaining about?”

What am I complaining about? I blink at Wayne in disbelief. Honestly, in this family where money is the official language, I might as well be speaking Mandarin since no one aside from Bao-mu understands me anyway.

“That’s an excellent point,” agrees Mama, nodding, all eager agreement. “Being trilingual would be such an asset in business.”

My breath catches disbelievingly at my mom’s words. She’s the one who forbade me from using Mandarin, because my grandmother complained that it was corrupting my Cantonese, their mother tongue. Even though I guzzle my glass of water, that sharp piece of irony remains lodged inside my throat.

“If I had this chance when I was your age,” Grace says, stroking Mochi, “I would have grabbed it.”

“You would have wanted to move during high school?” I ask Grace, noting that she goes quiet.

“Of course, she would have. How can you be so shortsighted? Jack and Cindy would move in a heartbeat,” says Wayne.

In my frustration, I drop my adoring little sister act. “Then they should.”

“Easy for you to say,” Wayne says, low and lethal.

My gaze falls to my lap where my hands are clutched over my CD in a tight, punishing ball. Sink or swim, those are your choices in an avalanche. Do the breast stroke and break to the surface fast, otherwise you risk getting sucked down and buried in snow the consistency of cement. The problem is, just the way I felt alone in the benched cliff at Whistler, I’m a girl overboard, and no one’s riding to my rescue. Mama’s muted “Wayne” sounds more weary than warning. Still, he reacts like his younger-but-not-wiser stepmother has ripped into him. His chair scrapes across the hardwood floor, and he slams the door behind him so that I hear the “bitch” in its echo, loud and clear.

“Can’t I just stay with Bao-mu?” I ask Mama softly.

Mama plays with her enormous jade pendant, the one she never takes off, the one that Grace snickers is so apropos. After all, a jade is an adulteress, no? Foreboding expands balloon-like in my belly until I can’t breathe as Mama swings the pendant from side to side, hypnotically. Finally, matter-of-factly, she says, “Bao-mu’s granddaughter is having a baby. She’s moving to California to take care of her.”

“What?”

“Excuse me,” she corrects me before answering, “Any day now.”

“For good?”

“For good.” As if she has just informed me of nothing more important than a forecast of rain, Mama skates one of her youth-enhancing vitamins around her plate, unconcerned.

A life without Bao-mu is far worse than a life in Hong Kong. She has been the one constant in my home since I can remember. Other nannies have come and gone, a blur of girls who hauled me around since driving is the one thing that Bao-mu is afraid to do. At my first sniffle, Mama breathes out impatiently. So I blink away my tears.

“Bao-mu’s too old to take care of a baby” is my last-ditch protest, and I ignore Grace’s loud sniff that insinuates I’m infantile myself.

“It’s her decision.” Mama busies herself with a piece of imaginary lint on her jacket, flicking it off like it’s Bao-mu, gone in a moment. “She gave me her notice.”

“When?” I demand.

“A few weeks ago.”

A few weeks ago. My life for the last month has been nothing but glittering surface hoar, that gorgeous layer of downy snow that slides once anything breaks through it. Which just goes to show that beauty is as deceptive as it is dangerous.

The most beautiful woman in the room now shakes her head at me, her long, glossy hair gleaming under the overhead lights. “Close your mouth, Syrah. It’s unbecoming.” Mama picks up another vitamin. “We’ll live in Hong Kong during the school year only. Summers in China are too hot and humid.” Her thin body shudders delicately as if the mere thought of humidity is melting her thick surface hoar of makeup. A vitamin disappears between her red-lacquered lips.

“Summers?” I repeat numbly.

“One? Two?” Mama answers, throwing her hands up, a carefree girl celebrating Hong Kong, an adventure we’ve all been waiting for. “Your father wants to leave it open-ended.”

This time it’s Grace who sputters in surprise, “He does?”

I don’t blame her. Our dad has been known to play a single game of Go, an ancient strategy game, for two years, plotting his moves as if he were Sun-Tzu, his hero of a military expert from two thousand years ago.

“Your father is really embracing retirement. Isn’t it wonderful after all his years of hard work?” asks Mama, her smile so decidedly bright, I realize that she has no idea she’s derailing my snowboarding dreams. I tighten my grip around my video. There will never be a good time to show them, to make my case. “We can summer in the south of France. Or Barcelona.”

Mochi yelps, a piercing sound as if Grace has squeezed him too tightly. Grace’s geisha girl mask of serenity doesn’t slip. But I know. I know exactly what she’s thinking, just as Mochi knows what she’s feeling. The last thing I want to be is the poor little bitch girl the way Grace and Wayne think I am.

No sooner does Baba walk down the stairs, Wayne returns inside, pretending he’s just stepped out to take an important call himself. Grace announces, an incredulous look on her face, “Europe, Wayne. Betty’s thinking about summering in Europe.”

“Yes, how does that sound to you, Ethan? A villa? We can have our summer meetings there. A family reunion overseas,” says Mama, her eyes gleaming with possibilities. Another home to buy, another place to decorate, more things to shop for.

“Why not?” says Baba, squeezing her bony shoulder before taking his seat. “We can talk about it on our way to D.C. tonight.”

“D.C.?” I repeat.

“Your father’s been asked by the CTIA to help open Asia for American telecom companies,” Mama says proudly like she’s the one who’s been asked.

Both my half-sibs look impressed at the real reason for our move to Hong Kong. Over dinners with the bigwigs in the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, I know that the international trade organization has been courting Baba to take the helm again and fulfill the group’s mission: expand the wireless frontier.

Excitement glitters in Baba’s eyes at this new challenge, yet all he admits to is a modest, “A small project for my retirement. We’ll kick it off at the World Economic Summit in two weeks.”

“Luckily, that’s in Hong Kong so we can look at properties at the same time,” says Mama, pleased as if this is a sign that our move is meant to be. “Our next month is crazy. I have to squeeze in another trip to San Francisco, too.”

That’ll be the third, or is it fourth, trip to San Francisco in the last couple of weeks. Oh, no, we wouldn’t want to infringe on Mama’s shopping time. Not even when it means breaking her promise to me.

Without thinking, I say, “But that’s winter break. I thought we were going to the World Championships.”

“God, what’s more important?” asks Wayne, his hand snaking around his teacup as though it’s my neck he wants to strangle. “A snowboarding contest or a meeting with world leaders?”

Tears prickle my eyes again. I’m kicking myself for believing that my parents were actually going with me to Whistler. For hoping that they’d watch the snowboarders and see why I loved riding the mountains. See that these kids aren’t aimless punks with no future. See that I was good at something that had nothing to do with them. See
me
for the first time.

I think of ice so I don’t cry in front of Grace and Wayne. The cold, ice-packed crud that trashes snowboards. That I need to become right now. I ask, “Can’t someone else drive me?”

“What? Everyone should drop their plans to help
you
?” Wayne asks incredulously. So I drop my suggestion to ask the house manager or Lena the chef to drive me.

“Unless…” Mama looks over hopefully at Grace, bypassing Wayne altogether. It’s obvious that he’d never help me out, even if he lived right here in The House of Cheng with us instead of in California near his mother, the first Mrs. Ethan Cheng.

Grace immediately checks her electronic scheduler as if she needs proof that she’s always too busy for me. “I have a trip to Tokyo then. A very important client pitch.” She pauses for maximum impact. “A two-million dollar account.”

Ah, money soothes the savage beast, and Baba nods, understanding perfectly well the all-important call of money.

So does Mama, because she changes tactics. “Tokyo. Well, maybe Syrah could go with you?” Her wide help-me look might work with Baba, but it has the opposite effect on Grace.