Her grandparents lived in a tall building with more buttons in the elevator than Ona could count. Nearby, there was a private elementary school, and more than once Ona’s grandmother had badgered her mother about transferring the child there. She was at it again this Sunday.
“I’m telling you, I know the woman who works in admissions,” Grandmother said. “There’s an impossible wait list, but she owes me a favor.”
“Ona’s happy at her school now,” her mother replied.
“The son of Chiang Kai-shek’s first cousin goes to that school. What does that tell you?”
“She adores her teacher.” Ona’s mother glanced down at her. “Don’t you, bao bei?” The girl nodded. Her mother smiled, and Ona smiled back.
Grandmother sucked her teeth. “How easy it would be for me to pick her up from school, and in the afternoons, we can keep her here while you’re at work.” She cast her gaze toward Ona, then back up at the girl’s mother. “Maybe you can go back to school, too. You’re always carrying on about how you want to finish your courses, get your degree.” Her expression softened, and she reached out and put a hand on her daughter’s arm. “There’s still time for that, Wen.”
Ona stared up at her grandmother, waiting for her mother’s reply. She studied her grandmother’s eyebrows with fascination, the two arched lines tattooed underneath the brow hairs, a few of which were gray at the outer corners. The ink was fading from black to dark blue. The same color rimmed Grandmother’s eyes, under her lashes.
“Where’s Ba?” Ona’s mother asked. “He’s out?”
“Why are you so stubborn? I’m trying to help you! The best thing for the little girl, and for you—”
“Ona,” her mother said. “Do you see him hiding somewhere?”
The glass door leading to the balcony slid open, and Ona’s grandfather poked his head into the living room, as if he heard himself summoned. He motioned with his hands for Ona to come outside.
Still a little shy around him, Ona shrank against her mother’s leg. “Go on,” her mother said. She gave Ona’s shoulders a gentle push.
Grandfather beckoned with his hands again. “Hurry—I want to show you something exciting—you really have to see this,” he said, making his eyes wide.
She left her mother’s side slowly.
Her grandmother kept on about Ona’s schooling, asking where the teacher earned her credentials. Ona heard her mother sigh as her grandfather pulled the glass door shut after them. Then she couldn’t hear her grandmother’s voice anymore.
“Look down there.”
Ona peered over the gray concrete ledge of the balcony. A large unmarked truck was being unloaded in the gated park in front of her grandparents’ apartment building. The trailer had windows on its sides with vertical bars running across them, the bed much longer than the squat delivery trucks that skirted the streets and alleys of the night markets Ona was used to seeing. Three men stood at the truck’s rear. A wide mechanical ramp slowly unfolded before them.
Her grandfather lit up a cigarette and asked Ona what she thought the men might retrieve from the truck.
“Carnival games,” she said. “Basketball hoops and pachinko, things like that.” The girl answered with confidence. She was one of the top students in her class, bringing home penmanship worksheets with “100” written across the top, math quizzes with all check marks. She thrived under the attention of adults who wanted to probe the contents of her mind, those who didn’t condescend to children.
Grandfather smiled. “You think so, eh? What makes you so sure?”
He was retired now, but Ona’s mother had told her that he’d been a professor in Beijing, a highly respected scholar of classical Chinese literature. This was before the Maoists won control of the mainland, before the family escaped to Taiwan during the civil war. There was still an air of the stern professor about Ona’s grandfather, that wild head of hair still entirely black despite his age. After more than three decades in exile, Ona’s grandparents had long ago let go of believing in Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s promise to reclaim the mainland from the Communists. Though the Beijing they knew no longer existed, they still hoped to return one day, if political relations between the two regimes improved. In the meantime, they’d managed to send all their children abroad for Western educations, to get their college or graduate degrees in the US or Canada. All except Ona’s mother.