Was I a math statistic?
But Fang pushed on.
You need to advocate more for yourself.
You need to do this and that.
Negotiation 101: If a person doesn’t ask, she won’t receive.
All this being said, he still found my overall problem to be one of perspective. I didn’t view success in the same way he or Tami did and I didn’t care for the outward appearance of it, even though maintaining a facade, however superficial, was essential to moving up. Why I couldn’t grasp these points had something to do with my attitude, he believed, that I found any sign of wealth repulsive. I chóu fù–ed them, a verb that means “to hate the rich.”
I don’t chóu fù anyone, I said.
Tami feels the same way.
She chóu fùs you too?
She thinks you don’t respect our progress, that you don’t engage with us on the right level and you downplay everything we’ve worked for.
Again, not everything Fang said was wrong.
In his concluding remarks, he emphasized that if he didn’t care about me, nothing I did would ever matter to him. But if he didn’t voice his concerns, then who would? I was part of this family and he simply wanted to see me do well. So, when they returned from Colorado, he expected some things to change. You’re coming to see us more. You’re coming for Chinese New Year. Nonnegotiable.
* * *
—
SOMEWHERE OUT THERE IS a video of this amoeba eating its meal. Magnified four hundred times and at double speed, the appendages of the amoeba begin to extend and to encircle a jumpy paramecium. The large and translucent appendages touch as fingers do, thumb to index. A-OK, this amoeba says as its fingers fatten, shrinking the small circle of space until the paramecium is absorbed. Talking to my brother could feel a little like that. Me, the paramecium; him, the amoeba.
* * *
—
AS A TEAM, MY parents had worked well together. My mother was better with big picture, long term; my father was able to think through daily affairs. He would leave notes for her around the house to turn off lights, to jiggle the toilet knob when it wouldn’t stop running, to always use the security chain when he wasn’t home. He kept all our passports and important documents in one place. He placed her and his reading glasses on either side of their bed.
Text from Mother: Can’t find my reading glasses. Don’t remember where I put them.
Try the bathrooms.
Tried all the bathrooms.
Use your second pair.
That was my second pair.
Phone call from Mother: We’re about to leave for the airport soon and I can’t find my passport. I can’t find my green card.
Nightstand?
Why would I put something like that in there?
Can you look in your nightstand?
Loud rustling. The phone is set down, picked back up.
Did you find them?
But how am I supposed to know if this is my passport?
Is your name on it?
I can’t find my reading glasses.
The lodge has too many fireplaces, she wrote after they’d made it to the airport, barely, boarded the plane as the last ones, flown five hours, deboarded, and checked in. And they’re too tall, these fireplaces, they’re taller than me.
Did you see me take my blood pressure medication this morning?
I said I did not. Because I couldn’t have.
Tami said she saw me take them, but I don’t think I did. Did I mention to you about taking them?
I said she had not.
Did I turn off the lights?
The lights?
I’m in the lodge now, but I don’t know if I turned off the lights back in my room. Tami said I did, but should I go back and check?
* * *
—
NEW YEAR’S EVE SERVICE. My entire team wore party hats, and when midnight hit, some of us twirled our fingers and said a woo-hoo.
Resolutions?
Older nurse: Yeah, the completion of my divorce. Moments before the young nurse announced that she’d recently gotten engaged.
Oh, hon, congrats, said the older nurse. Don’t mind what I just said. The divorce was going better than she’d expected.
My parents weren’t superstitious, but my paternal grandparents were and on occasion my father would indulge me with something out of Chinese lore. I knew the year 2020 to be particularly inauspicious. The earliest of Chinese calendars followed a sixty-year cycle, a sexagenary cycle, of which the thirty-seventh year was one of extremely bad luck. On the thirty-seventh year of previous cycles: 1840, start of the First Opium War against Britain; 1900, Boxer Rebellion; 1960, continuation of the Great Famine and the Great Leap Forward, during which millions of Chinese died of starvation and my father was still a young boy. Then in his teenage years, starting in 1966, came the decade-long revolution.