Chapter 7: It's Nothing

My grandmother always got out of bed at precisely six in the morning. The first thing she always did was turn on the radio to an English learning program, and take diligent notes. This went on from around the time I was five years old to well into my early college years. Grandma had stacks and stacks of notes in her bedroom, some stapled, others bound with string, all written one-sided on used printer paper in blue ballpoint pen ink. She loved listening to the radio, fiddling with it constantly, sometimes falling asleep to music at night. My room being next to my grandparents room, every morning I would hear the staticky voice on the radio haltingly introduce “K AZN, Pasadena, 1300… welcome to today’s segment of ‘let’s talk in English’”, followed by bouts of white noise whenever the signal was bad. I would then roll over and fall back asleep. Even after I lost her in my mid twenties, I would sometimes hear the radio static in the middle of the night, only to find that it was all in my head.

In the fall of 1997 I was six years old and starting the second grade. That year when I wasn’t in school I found that I was alone with my grandparents most of the time. My parents became busier, creating multiple sources of new income to pay the mortgage to our new home in Hacienda Heights. I didn’t mind their absence at first, as our new house had many fun hiding places for me to play in such as the area under the stairs, a low storage closet underneath the landing, and an attic on the second floor. My grandparents seemed happier too, grandfather often reading books while enjoying the view from the second floor and grandmother phone calls to China more often. Every weekend I would hear her talking loudly on the phone calling old colleagues and classmates asking "did so and so die yet? Is so and so still alive?" I thought it was such a bizarre habit. Isn’t it supposed to be sad when people die?

One of the new items my parents purchased was one of those very large rear projection TVs back then, a bulky black square behemoth taller than I was that stood at the far end of the family room. We received cable channels that included Cartoon Network and I got to see programs I never watched before, excitedly making my way downstairs on Saturday mornings to watch shows like Dexter’s Laboratory, Cow and Chicken, and Johnny Bravo. I would often laugh with grandmother as we watched reruns of classic Tom and Jerry shorts. My parents would drop me off sometimes at the Hacienda Heights Library with my grandfather, and we would spend hours there, him sitting on a couch and reading the magazines and newspapers in Chinese, me in the children’s section poring over whichever books caught my eye. That year I loved looking at books about space, enamored by pictures of planets, stars, and rockets. At home in my room, my dad had helped me set up a small indoor plastic play tent that we bought at a clearance sale at Big Lots. I often spent my time hiding in there, laying on stacked pillows and looking at library books with a flashlight.

Not long after we settled into this new house, my parents enrolled me in Los Molinos School a few blocks away, down the street from Hu’s new home. Before my first day, my parents walked me to school one night before sunset so that I would know the way. We peeked in through the closed glass doors at the hallways that were painted with a continuous dinosaur mural. The campus felt safe and enclosed compared to the open-air hallways of Baldwin in Alhambra. On the doors outside were taped several pages listing the classroom rosters for the new years. Mom and dad looked for Liwei’s name out of curiosity but he was nowhere to be found. After a few minutes of scanning, they found one Larry with the last name Hu. As the sun set, we walked to the Hu’s house to pay a visit and they confirmed that they had indeed anglicized Liwei to Larry so that he could fit in better. Larry came down the stairs asking what’s for dinner, in English, though his parents still answered in Chinese. 

I spent a Saturday at the Liangs’ new house not long after to play with Andrew. We spent the morning chasing one another in their yard that was surrounded by two or three fruit trees and after we got tired, we watched Jackie Chan movies that Andrew borrowed from the library while munching on fried noodle snacks that his grandmother had made. The Liangs’ home was on top of a hill, up the street from Thomas Burton park. After lunch we ran down the hill to meet with Andrew’s new friends, two white kids who lived in a large house across the street from the park. They were playing baseball, lending Andrew a mitt as well and taking turns playing pitcher. The boys told me to back further away and play “outfield”. I watched them running around, hitting the ball or catching, but I felt confused about what my role was. It seemed “outfield” really was the person who stood on the side and watched. Afterwards we went to their house, where they played video games. I stayed in the corner of the room, trying to take up as little space as I could.

We now lived a little too far away from Ms Kuo, so my mom hired a new piano teacher for me. Instead of going to someone’s house, this teacher came to us, sitting by me as I played on our old upright in the living room. My parents bought a used copy of an old sheet music book that had abridged, simpler versions of famous pieces more suitable for younger pianists. One day as I was sight reading with my piano teacher, I noticed a strange title. I asked her why the song was called the “unfinished” symphony. She explained that the composer died before finishing the song. I couldn’t stop thinking of that story as I continued practicing alone that week. My mom didn’t like how this teacher seemed to spend most of our sessions talking to me instead of getting me to play, and we switched teachers before long.

On the playground, weeks into starting second grade, I noticed a girl who looked Chinese but also did not look Chinese. She seemed to be the same age as me, from the classroom across the hall. She must have caught me staring because she came over and began to make cooing noises and flapped her arms, smiling, and told me that she was a condor and that she was the biggest bird in the world. As she ran off, I thought she was a little strange but very pretty. 

A week later I learned her name was Emily because she came to our house with her parents. Her mom and my mom seemed to become very good friends, as they spoke together downstairs in Chinese, though mom had trouble talking with her dad, who was white. Emily and I spend the day upstairs, playing a fighting game on Super Nintendo. She kept beating me by using the same skeleton character and repeatedly crouching and lunging. The move looked ridiculous. I saw her at school the next day. She greeted me by making the same lunging move and the strange noise. 

There was a popsicle they served occasionally in the cafeteria, sitting in the little corner of the lunch tray. It wasn’t really a popsicle. It was a kind of frozen cherry flavored treat packaged in a paper pyramid. Very tasty but incredibly hard to open and handle. It seemed I was the only kid who didn’t know how to eat this strange dessert and I struggled as it melted, dripping down my hands and into the tray. I forgot who I was talking to that lunchtime because, being the new kid, I really didn’t know anyone, though in hindsight I don’t know either why I didn’t go look for Larry or Emily. At this point I must have become pretty used to mean children because I remember my classmates making fun of me for my inability to eat the popsicle and, without batting an eye, I jokingly told them it wasn’t a melted dessert all over the tray but my blood. This probably scared one of them because I was soon called to the principal’s office and my parents were told that I was banned from the cafeteria for that year. 

A week later during lunchtime, I sat on a bench outside and ate grandfather’s fried rice out of a small tupperware box. I recognized Lillian, a girl who lived across the street from us, whom my grandfather and I greeted on the way to school our first month in the neighborhood. Wanting to sit with someone I actually knew for once, I moved next to her. I said hi, and she seemed nice at first until she looked at my boxed lunch and made a disgusted face. “He kicked me”, she said, to a playground aide who walked by. “No I didn’t”, I said, before the noon aide moved me to another bench across the playground. I sat for a while, wondering what would happen next, before my teacher came out and asked me why I kicked Lillian. “I didn’t”, I said again. The teacher grabbed me by the hand somewhat roughly and pulled me over to Lillian, asking her to explain what happened. She mumbled something, looking at the ground, that I kicked her lunch and her cookie was on the floor. Before I understood what happened, I was sitting in the principal’s office yet again. I tried to explain to my mom what happened but she wouldn’t hear a word. “Didn’t I tell you not to touch girls?”, she said. “You need to promise me, you must never fight at school again. I don’t care if they hit you first. If they hit you, you just have to turn the other cheek.” I looked down and nodded. 

At home, I began to act out that year. Little things, at first, like refusing baths, sulking when my dad turned the TV off. I started pouting when my parents weren’t home, telling grandfather I was sick of waiting. On those days, my grandmother would try to distract me. She’d sit on her low stool in the yard, her bad leg stretched out in front of her, and teach me to play chess, or hit the badminton birdie back and forth. Sometimes she’d hand me the basketball and tell me to throw it higher and I’d practice shooting into the little hoop my dad bolted to the patio wall.

One day, I told her I hated everything. I hated that mom and dad were never around. I hated that Liwei was Larry now. That he didn’t even want to play with me anymore. She was peeling vegetables, pulling the ends off of string beans. Without looking up, she said, “It’s nothing. People leave. Things change. That’s just life.”

She rinsed the basket of string beans and set it aside  “You know what forever means? It’s a fake word. There’s no such thing.” She went quiet for a moment. “There was a war, back when I was small. Japan used to send planes, and the sirens would howl like the worst thing you could ever hear. One of my uncles worked at the post office. A manager, a very serious man. The kind who always lectured other people on responsibility. That day the sirens came, everyone ran. But he went back. He said he needed to grab some papers. Maybe records. The building fell on him”  

She wiped her fingers on her apron and looked at me for a long long time. “My mother died too. On Christmas, can you believe it? She was walking to church, in the rain. A truck hit her. The driver was just a boy. He cried and cried. She told him, ‘It’s alright. Don’t cry. This is nothing.’ And then she died.” She reached out and took my hand. Her fingers were cool and damp from the vegetables. She looked at me very gently.

“It’s nothing,” she said again. “Everyone leaves. One day, even I won’t be here to play with you. One day, maybe not even your mom or dad. But don’t be afraid. That’s how life is. You’ll still have yourself. And your cousin Xuechen. And Mimi. And Sunjian. That’s why you hold them close. That’s why we don’t waste time being angry.”

Around spring of that school year, I joined the talent show. For some reason until then, as a kid I never talked about piano or even told anyone I could play. But I guess I saw that other children seemed to always have a “thing”, and I wanted one too. Grandfather stayed with me after school as I played Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen from the stage at the far end of the cafeteria while other children listened. Neither of us knew it was actually only the audition until a nice volunteer parent who spoke Chinese flagged us down the next week to ask us why we didn’t attend the information session for students who made the audition. She told us the talent show was supposed to be the following week. 

The night of the show I caught a cold. In the backstage room, I sat in the corner feeling dizzy, away from the other children. Even though it was the first time I ever performed, I don’t remember much of that night other than I walked onstage, played, and ran back into my parents’ arms wanting to go home.

I don’t remember if it was before or after the talent show that my piano teacher taught me to play Swanee River out of the used songbook of abridged tunes. I remember that it was tricky to play, being one of the first polyphonic pieces I learned, with my left hand playing a meandering countermelody that accompanied the main theme on the right hand. Once I mastered it, it became a joy to play. It was near the end of the volume and pretty soon my parents would begin looking for more sheet music books for me to learn. One day, as I finished playing I noticed my grandfather sitting behind me, staring into space. “Can you play it again, more slowly?”, he asked. 

I played it again, almost standing up to reach the pedal, wanting to give the music a bit of extra sustain and presence. It echoed off the walls of our new home and I realized there was no one else at home other than grandfather and I. “They played this at my mother’s funeral”, he said. “It was a long long time ago.” 

My grandfather never spoke about his mother again.