You’re ten and walking out of your école élémentaire when some kids holler, ‘Your maman’s a smelly boat person!’
You clench your fists, retort that she left Vietnam before the war, and next thing you know, the one with the buzzcut whips around and shoves you to the ground. It’s four against one, and you go home with your nose bleeding, your glasses cracked.
Outside Papa’s study, you bite your lip as he yells at you to quit the knocking; he’s writing up some research. Whatever that means.
You want to tell Papa that those little white faces have been making slanty eyes at you since Day One. You’ve been putting up with it, as he’d expect you to do, but they crossed the line this time. And yes, you’ll admit you couldn’t control your tears, but surely Papa would understand, and let you cry on his chest, holding your little hand in his burly one.
*
At sixteen, you move to Canada for Papa to be Associate Professor in a medicine faculty. In high school, you’re branded by your light brown eyes and jet-hair black, your continental French among the Quebecers.
You’re opening your locker after English when half a dozen students surround you.
‘What are you?’ asks the one in the letterman jacket.
‘Human.’
‘Smart-ass chink.’ He lifts the corners of his eyes. The girl next to him – endless legs, luscious blonde hair – laughs the loudest.
Did you really think things would be different? You shove the ringleader against the lockers. Panic flashes in his blue eyes as you grip his collar and ram your fist into his cheek. His hands fly to his face, so you punch his stomach and he doubles over. You’re about to knee his groin when someone – a teacher – yanks you back.
The principal tells Maman he’s suspending you. In the car, you try explaining, but she guns the accelerator, cranks the music. At home, you simmer in the living room as Papa storms out of his study. Whether he’s more enraged about being disturbed or what happened at school, you’re not sure. Maman slinks into the bedroom and shuts the door.
‘What happened?’ Papa says.
‘Someone called me a chink.’
‘No, what did you do to get suspended?’
‘I punched him. So?’
‘So?’ He grabs your tennis trophy, which you won in your last school, and hurls it at you. It grazes the side of your head.
‘You’re a good-for-nothing,’ he shouts, and slams his study door.
Maybe that’s all you are. You’re neither here nor there: not European, not Asian, not the right type of French, not Canadian. You are the wispy coils of smoke unfurling from your spliff, curling upwards into the air, disintegrating, disappearing.
*
Papa becomes Dean of a medicine-biology faculty in Brittany. You’re nineteen when you return. Ignoring your protest that university isn’t for you, Papa makes you enrol, threatening to cut off your allowance.
You drag yourself to your first molecular biology lecture. The girl beside you drops a pen. You return it, and she averts her eyes, cheeks pink.
At the local creperie, Alize laughs at your jokes, echoes your love for Star Wars, and compliments your Air Jordans. Unlike previous dates who made you feel like a social experiment, she talks with no trace of irony, and doesn’t take her eyes off you, as if she sees past your ambiguous features – as if she sees you.
Your heart is a caged little bird. Outside her front door, you taste butter and sugar on her lips.
Alize says yes to another date. And another. When you make love to her for the first time, the universe implodes and it’s just you and her. Squeezed into a single bed, you trace the contours of her face.
‘No one has ever made me feel so – seen.’
She finds your hand under the duvet, laces her fingers with yours. ‘I think I’m in love with you.’
For once, your future sharpens and beckons, and it’s not interested in a good-for-nothing son-of-a-not-boat-person.
You decide to cure cancer.
*
You’re thirty when, a month after Alize gives birth to a baby girl, you’re offered a postdoc to work with the leading scientist on acute myeloid leukaemia. In Heidelberg.
With clammy hands, you approach Alize, who’s trying to latch Eloise onto her bleeding nipple. Your daughter wails as you tell Alize about the offer.
Her head snaps up. ‘Are you serious?’ she says, her eyes wild and frazzled. ‘It’s in another country.’
‘I know, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’
‘I don’t care. You’re not moving to Germany.’
You take a deep breath. ‘I thought we could all go.’
She makes a sound that’s between a laugh and a sob. ‘I don’t want to go to Germany.’
‘Why not?’
‘My family’s here. I don’t even speak German.’
‘Please. I’ve worked hard for this.’
Eloise screams. Alize shifts the baby to her other breast. ‘I thought you said you weren’t going to be like your Papa.’
‘I’m not,’ you start to say, but Alize is crying, and even though your heart clenches as you embrace her, you promise yourself you’ll make it work.
Eloise is two months old when you leave.
*
You’ve been driving between Brittany and Heidelberg on the weekends and dozing off in your lab. Your supervisor chides you for falling way short of expectations, and you promise to work harder. But the weekend’s here again, Eloise waiting for her Papa. Or so you think.
The truth is, when Alize hands Eloise to you, your daughter howls and squirms out of your arms. You don’t know her favourite toys, the songs to soothe her, the exact rhythm to which to rock her to sleep. Alize corrects the way you tape the nappy, chides you for forgetting the Mustela, rolls her eyes when you put Eloise in a too-small bodysuit.
You and Alize sleep in separate rooms.
When it’s time to leave, you’re red-faced with relief. You mumble another apology even though you know you should be saying more, something real. Such as how Alize made you believe you could be someone. And how you might explode from burning all this love on the tarmac, all 990km of it, shuttling between your ambition and your heart.
But you start the engine, and Alize shuts your front door.
On your next visit, she mentions the name of a mutual friend.
‘He’s been coming over.’
‘Oh.’ You fight to keep your voice neutral. ‘What for?’
‘Nothing. Just, you know, helping out.’
*
You’re thirty-two when Alize marries this friend, whom Eloise calls Papa.
You splurge on whiskey and collectors’ Air Jordans, stuff your wardrobe with Gucci shirts. You get drunk in clubs and go home with strangers who kick you out when you slobber about losing your daughter.
After your money’s gone, you hole up in your apartment, douse your insides with alcohol, and call Alize at 2am.
She answers after many, many rings. ‘What do you want?’
‘I fucked up. I want to come home.’
‘You know it’s too late.’
‘She’s my daughter.’
‘Yes.’ She pauses. ‘You can come see her anytime.’
In the background, you hear the backstabbing, Machiavellian mutual friend telling her to hang up.
‘Who does he think he is?’ you say. ‘That fucking snake.’
‘You’re drunk.’
‘I’m not.’
She exhales. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t want you near Eloise until you’ve cleaned up.’
‘You can’t,’ you say, to three flat beeps.
Your subsequent calls go straight to voicemail. She doesn’t return your messages. You hug Johnnie Walker like a stuffed animal, and in the bloated hazy moments before you surrender to fatigue, you see the kids making slanty eyes. You hear them jeering at you, the son of a boat person.
And then there’s Papa. His closed door. His turned back. His words: good-for-nothing.
*
You seek therapy at thirty-four. Christian says you need to interrogate Papa’s influence on your actions. What did you want to achieve with this postdoc? How much of that was what you wanted, and how much was what would impress Papa? Does it matter he’d approved of you coming to Heidelberg? And do you really want your daughter to see you like this?
You dump Johnnie, sell your Jordans, give your shirts to charity, and hunker down for your final year. Your postdoc ends in two publications on which you’re second author. It could be worse.
You return to your parents’ to figure out your next step, and startle when you see Papa in the living room.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s my home.’
‘No, I mean – you’re not teaching today?’
‘I shuffled things around.’ He looks back down at his reading. You’re about to look for Maman when he says, ‘I would’ve used a different analytical method. But yours wasn’t the worst.’
You stare at him, stutter ‘thanks’ and wander into the kitchen, where Maman’s rolling bánh cuốn. You kiss her cheek, sit next to her and spoon some tofu filling onto a wrapper. The rice cakes begin to stack up. She arranges them in her steamer.
‘This is still your favourite, right?’
*
Later, while in bed, you call Alize.
‘I’m clean now. Can I see her?’
It’s been a year since your last voice message, railing about how meeting her was the worst thing that ever happened.
‘I’m sorry about those messages,’ you add. ‘You were right. I was a mess.’
Silence for a few seconds. ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘I’ll text you my address.’
Their house overlooks a sprawling front yard. You park opposite and spot a girl who’s twice the size of your daughter. She’s lost her baby fat, and her blonde hair has darkened. Instead of running to her, something keeps you in the car.
She’s holding a neon orange-green water gun and attacking someone. The mutual friend. Clement. A dark patch runs down his shirt and he’s running away with a manic grin. Their laughter trickles into your car, through your rolled up windows. As your daughter shrieks full sentences at Clement – when did she start speaking so well? – Alize emerges from the house, cradling a baby. Eloise yelps, throws down her gun, skips up to her mother and bends over her sibling. Clement wipes his face with his t-shirt and joins her, kisses Alize’s cheek, and puts his arms around his wife and stepdaughter.
All you can do is imagine the delight on her face, fantasise about this being your life.
No, that’s not quite right. There is more you can do.
You turn on the engine and drive away.
A year later, you’ll move to Cambridge for a second postdoc, and you’ll meet a woman at the tennis club. During changeovers, she’ll ask about your background, and you’ll say you’re French-Vietnamese. On your third date, you’ll stammer about Eloise, brace yourself for her excuses. But Jialing will say she doesn’t mind; she likes you.
On your two-year anniversary, stiff in a rented Moss Boss white-tie suit while she’s ethereal in an emerald satin gown, you’ll sip juice on the porch of Magdalene College’s Master’s Lodge, fairy lights strung across the garden like sparkles of fireflies. You’ll tell her you regret leaving Eloise. She’ll squeeze your shoulder and say she’s open to the idea of children. That is, children with you.
And the day will come when the surgeons pull your son from your wife’s womb. In the recovery ward, you’ll take Kai from Jialing’s exhausted arms. Tears will prick your eyes at his scrunched-up face, eyes shut, adrift in his little world.
‘I’m here,’ you’ll whisper, and cover his baby-fist with your Papa-paw.
Ya Lan Chang is from Singapore and lives in Cambridge, United Kingdom with her husband and their three-year-old son. Her writing has been published in Every Day Fiction, Litro Magazine, Cha: An Asian Literary Review, and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. She has a PhD in Law from Cambridge, works full time as a law lecturer, and is a writer at heart.
