Trade Me (5 page)

After years of helping others, her vocabulary is larger than most people would expect. It’s also peculiarly specialized.

Long experience allows me to translate my mother’s immigration shorthand. One of my mother’s many, many friends/distant acquaintances/internet message board buddies from her Falun Gong practice also tried to get asylum in the United States. The immigration judge—that’s the
IJ
my mother refers to; she’s picked up all the immigration lingo—didn’t believe that her friend had actually been persecuted by the Chinese government for practicing Falun Gong, and so denied his request for asylum. So Jack Sheng is going back to China.

“I don’t know why Jack Sheng is not credible,” I say, which is the simple truth. I stand up, pushing away from the frozen video of smiling child Blake, and cross the room to lean against the wall.

“Of course you don’t know. I don’t know, either. There is no legitimate answer.” I can imagine my mother waving her arms, tucking the phone between her chin and face. “This is the question we must ask. Why is Jack Sheng not credible? We have to raise money for an appeal.”

I pull my arms around myself. “Mom…” It’s not so much a protest. I have forty-three dollars and twenty cents in my checking account right now, and that has to last until my next paycheck, nine days away.

“I know, I know,” Ma says. “You’re a student. You don’t have so much. I’m not asking for your help.”

I nod, even though she can’t hear that.

“But I gave your check to Jack Sheng. So don’t be surprised if you see his name on the back.”

I swallow hard, leaning against the wall. Even with that support, my legs have all the strength of a rapidly falling soufflé. I slowly sink to the floor. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. And—I remind myself—I can’t scream at my own mother.

“This month,” my mom says, “Mabel can just try harder.”

God, it hurt so much to send that thirty dollars. That thirty bucks I sent means I can never take the easy way out and order pizza when I’m too exhausted to cook. It means that on Saturday nights, when my friends are taking time off to recharge, I’m the one frantically trying to get a head start on my homework for the coming week, because God knows I won’t have the time on weekdays. That thirty bucks means I never, ever get to take a break.

It was also supposed to mean that Mabel would get the meds she needs.

“Mom.” My voice is thick. “I didn’t give you that money for Jack Sheng. I gave it to you for Mabel.”

“But Jack Sheng practices Falun Gong,” my mother says, as if that’s the end of the conversation. And for her, it is.

“Yes, but I don’t,” I snap out.

I can hear the silence on the other end of the phone.

“Oh?” my mother asks.

I don’t say anything.

“It’s true,” she concedes. “When your father was in prison in China, you were not practicing Falun Gong.”

There is no response I can give to that.

“When our neighbors hid us so that I would not be taken away and tortured, too, you were not practicing Falun Gong.”

I shake my head. I was
six.
I remember almost nothing—nothing except a thick blanket of guilt, a dark wave of feeling that this was all somehow my fault.

“Falun Gong practitioners raised the money to bribe the authorities, smuggle us out of China, and fly us to America. You don’t practice Falun Gong. You don’t need to; they just saved your life, that’s all. But it’s okay if it’s not so convenient for you to remember that any more.”

“You said you wouldn’t guilt trip me,” I manage to choke out.

“That,” my mother says quietly, “was only the truth. Any guilt comes from you, not me.”

I don’t know how to answer. So far, I’ve managed to get everything right, even working as much as I do. This year, though, my classes have reached a new level of hard. I thought Organic was hard, but physical chemistry is that much worse. And if I thought introductory programming classes were difficult, now I’m drowning. Instead of turning in assignments that search and sort lists of numbers, we’re designing our own programming languages. There aren’t enough minutes in the day, and I’m not sure I can maintain the grades I need to make everything come together.

I can feel my entire future slipping from my fingers.

I don’t know Jack Sheng, but right now, I hate him. I hate him so much for needing my money. I hate him because I’ve heard his story a hundred times before—tortured because he practiced Falun Gong in China, escaped to the US, and is now being sent back home.

This is what Blake Reynolds will never understand: that when he and his father give money to charities, it never hurts them. To them, it’s just a check. It makes them feel good. It’s a pat on the back. He will never understand what it means to hate someone over thirty dollars. He probably spends more than thirty dollars on his jeans. Fuck. I don’t know what rich people spend on jeans. He would probably scoff at the idea that you could
get
a pair of jeans for thirty bucks.

“Mom,” I say. “You have to get Mabel her medication.”

“Next month, maybe.”

“No.” I swallow. “It’s not fair to her to skip around like that.” When you have as little as I do, you know it to the last dollar. I had thought about splurging, about getting my sweater dry-cleaned. But this is it; I can’t afford my superstition any longer.

“I can send you a little more,” I say. “But you have to promise you’ll get her meds. Okay?”

I can manage twenty dollars. That should be enough. It’ll leave me with twenty-three bucks for nine days. That’s not that bad. I still have most of a twenty-five pound bag of rice. I’m practically rich, as long as nothing comes up.

There’s a long pause. From that, I gather that Mom didn’t just sign over my check to Jack Sheng’s appeal account. She’s given more than my parents can really afford. I’m not going to be the only one figuring out how to eat on dollars a day.

“Please,” I say. “It’s really important.”

People say that money doesn’t buy love, and maybe they’re right. I don’t need money to love my parents or my sister. I love them so fiercely and so much that it hurts sometimes. I love them so much that I think of them every time I want to give up, which is practically every day. If I play my cards right, if I don’t mess everything up, by the time Mabel is in college I can make sure that she never has to feel like this. I won’t have to worry about my parents’ nonexistent savings. I won’t lie awake at night wondering if they accidentally forgot to pay their health insurance premiums this month. I’ll just be able to take care of it all.

Money may not buy love, but it buys something like it. Not having any money makes love complicated. No matter how much I love Mabel, I can’t quash the part of me that resents her existence. Part of me remembers that in China, she wouldn’t even have been born. And while I would never want that—while I would take on anyone who tried to hurt my little sister—sometimes I think of a world without anyone who needed me. I imagine being able to breathe, being able to rest. I imagine being able to get pizza with my friends after class instead of making polite excuses. I imagine getting coffee with Blake Reynolds.

I don’t want a lot out of life. I just want enough money to love without being tangled up about it.

“Okay,” my mom finally says. “I promise.”

“Thank you.”

“And you… You are taking care of yourself? You are eating enough? Getting enough sleep? I hear about college students, and the…” She pauses. “The all-nighters. You aren’t having all-nighters, are you?”

“No,” I lie. “I sleep well, Ma. I have to take care of myself, right?”

“Good,” Mom says. “And maybe, you’ll meet a rich boyfriend.”

I let out a snort. “Right.”

But as I speak, my gaze strays back to my laptop. I can see the little rectangle where I paused Blake’s video.
I saw you the first day we crossed paths, and I’ve been seeing you ever since.
That little burn in my stomach comes back.

Stupid. He doesn’t know me.

At that moment, my laptop dings—the two-tone note of a Facebook notification.

It has nothing to do with him, I’m sure. Still, my heart jumps. I stand up and move over to the computer.

“Right,” I say more slowly, and I hope, very sarcastically.

I switch to the Facebook tab. I have a new friend request. My heart thumps as I click on it. It’s from Blake Reynolds. I let out a little gasp.

Confirm. Ignore.

“Right,” I repeat a third time, this time to remind my stupidly accelerating pulse. “Don’t hope too hard, Ma. I don’t have time for any boyfriends at all, let alone a rich one.” I shake my head and push away from the computer. “Is Mabel there? Can I talk to her?”

My mind races as I talk to my sister, though. What does this mean? Why did he send me a friend request?

I sigh. Better question is: Why am I being so dramatic? I don’t let myself think about Facebook for ten minutes. When I finally hang up, I tell myself I should start on homework. I should definitely not think about Blake Reynolds. And I
do
close the other tab without watching the interview.

But that brings the Facebook tab to the forefront. The request is still pending.

Confirm. Ignore.

Those are my choices. My heart is still beating at an accelerated rate, and I’d like to pretend I don’t know why. The truth is, there’s a part of me that’s following my mother’s wishful thoughts. A rich boyfriend would make things a lot easier for me. If I were the kind of person who could let someone take care of me, that is.

But if there had ever been any chance of that—and there never was—I bashed that over the head for good today.

Confirm. Ignore.

I should just ignore him. Ignore this. He’s nothing but a distraction, and I don’t need more distractions.

But instead of clicking ignore, before I let myself think what I’m doing, I click “send a message” and type out a short sentence.

Does your dad know the meaning of the words “age appropriate?”

He responds a few moments later. He doesn’t ask why I want to know. He knows his life; it’s obvious why I’m asking.

Of course he does,
Blake writes.
He just didn’t believe it applies to me.
And then there’s a box with a question mark—undoubtedly some emoji that my computer is too old to decipher. It could be a smile. It could be an eye roll. It could be anything, and I’m not going to find out what it is. Because I don’t have the money. And—I tell myself—because I don’t care.

It’s not very convincing. I turn away from the computer instead and go make dinner.

The request is still waiting when I come back.

Confirm. Ignore.

I close the tab.

Confirm. Ignore.

Two days later, I still haven’t responded to Blake’s friend request. I don’t know what it means and I don’t have the time or the energy to think about it. Truth is, I’m a little too attracted to him to allow myself any closer. And yes, I understand that Facebook friendship is to real friendship as cigarette lighters are to intercontinental ballistic missiles. But somehow, this seems to represent a line. If I cross it, it will lead to…

Admittedly, whenever I try to map out the progression, it never seems terrible. Step one is Facebook friendship. Step two is unreadable emoji. Step three is probably going to be occasional head nods in each other’s direction, not the destruction of the world as we know it.

But my feelings aren’t logical. Every time I tell myself to accept the request, I cycle back to that memory of Blake looking in my eyes and telling me that I’ve never been invisible to him.

And yes, my attraction makes a little too much sense. Blake has symmetrical features and meets generally accepted standards for masculine appeal. In addition, he’s rich, smart, and powerful. I can tell myself that it’s ridiculous as often as I like, but I’m fighting years of social programming. Even a hint of interest on his part is enough to spark my subconscious desire.

That’s precisely why—logically—I want nothing to do with him. Television and books have all led me to hope, to believe that magic happens. Experience tells me that fiction is fiction and that hope leads to disappointment. Even assuming that he liked me, we’ve already proven that we’re too different to get along in reality. Nobody will ever take care of me but myself, and I can’t let myself believe anything else.

Friendship with Blake is not safe. It’s not even Facebook safe.

I slip into a seat in the hall for the class we share a minute before lecture is scheduled to start. Blake always sits in the third row. Not that I’ve looked for him before; it’s just that he’s the kind of guy that I can’t help but notice.

I’m taking out my notebook when there’s a rustle beside me.

“Hey.”

I swallow at the sound of that voice and turn my head. Blake is tall—so tall I have to tilt my head back to look at him. He’s standing beside my chair. I have nowhere to run, as I’m locked in place by the little desk arm in the theater seat. And it’s just as well, because running away right now would be ridiculous.

“Mind if I sit next to you?”