Repeat After Me Page 5

  Da Ge

  CHAPTER THREE

  Novembers

  I BOUGHT MY ENGLISH-TO-CHINESE DICTIONARY THE DAY I read about Da Ge’s mother’s suicide. I still have the plastic book, with its dirty red cover and shredded pages. Xiao Wang calls it the Aysha primer, because it’s red and I carry it with me like a believer.

  The first words I ever looked up in Chinese were “Da” and “Ge.” I was sitting in my thimble-sized living room on 115th with his desperate essay. The Chinese section was alphabetized easily. I found da, which had dozens of meanings, including “big, great, and beat (as in hit, with a stick or fist).” Ge meant “cut off, lyric, spear, place, knot.” I could not tell then what they mean when put together: big brother.

  I flipped to the English section and found suicide. Zi sha. Zi meant self, and sha, kill. The English word “kill” seemed suddenly flimsy and pale yellow. The Chinese characters were purple with metal edges. I closed the book and stood up, poured myself a glass of wine.

  Then I called Adam. Adam was my ex-boyfriend and former poetry instructor at Columbia, an advanced-degree fetishist for skinny undergraduates. He was a guy who liked bruisable skin. He wouldn’t have hurt anybody, he just appreciated the potential violence in paleness. If, for example, I died of insanity or consumption, he would have wanted to carry me away and then write a tragic narrative in which my face had wobbled on a string-bean body, and my kewpie-doll mouth had breathed its last breath. Maybe that’s too mean; even Adam probably wouldn’t have used “breathed its last breath.” He was a pretty good teacher and crossed out clichés in our poems.

  When he arrived, we stood in the doorway together. He was just as I had left him. It had been four months since we’d broken up, and two since we’d slept together. He had glasses on, as he had the first day of the class he taught, as he always did. The metal rims looked cold against his face. His hair flopped down over the tops of the glasses. He was nerdy and earnest, in brown corduroy pants and a wool jacket. I wanted to unwrap him, undo the buttons of his coat, and peel it off his shoulders, press my mouth to his neck.

  “Come in,” I said, turning.

  He followed me into the living room, where I poured him a glass of wine.

  “Thanks.” He sat on the futon, and I turned the stereo on, hoping whatever was in there wasn’t too embarrassing. Tom Waits’s “Blue Valentines” came on. Adam was looking at me.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Why does everyone ask me that all the time?”

  “Because you’re delicate,” he said.

  “Spare me, Adam.”

  He grunted. “Don’t be hostile.”

  I gulped my wine.

  “Jesus,” Adam said. “Are you drinking a lot lately?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  “Is teaching going okay?”

  “It’s interesting,” I said. “I have a student I think is a dissident from China.”

  “No shit. Did she say she was kicked out?”

  “It’s a guy. He implied it. And he’s the kind of guy you can imagine standing in front of a tank.”

  “Is he seeking asylum here?

  “I have no idea—I just met him, and he’s quiet and surly.”

  Adam looked me over. “Surly, huh? Do you have a crush?”

  I grinned. “Dating you hardly constitutes a history of liking surly guys.”

  “It’s a bad cliché to sleep with your students, Aysh.”

  “I’m glad you came over nevertheless,” I said.

  He looked at the floor. “I meant him.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “I’m seeing someone.”

  “I know.” The girl who was now there whenever I called. I never asked about her, didn’t want to know. And I didn’t think Adam would have shown up at my house if he didn’t want to have nostalgic sex. I waited, quietly, and Adam suddenly laughed, flaunting rows of straight white teeth, the skin on his jaw stretching to accommodate them. When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple rode down his neck. We both knew we were going to keep sleeping in our post-breakup bed, even though that’s almost always an unhappy backwards crab walk. Adam, finished laughing, stood up bravely, and faced me. It was a clumsy moment, and I loved him for his awkwardness. I laughed until he put a hand over my open mouth.

  The gesture reminded me of Xiao Wang, covering her mouth whenever she giggled in class. Adam pulled me close; he smelled like soap and his suede jacket. What I liked about him was precisely the opposite of what he liked about me. He was vaguely blond and sleepy looking; even his coloring suggested a carefree inner state.

  “Stop laughing,” he said. “This is a romantic moment.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry,” I said, reminding myself again of Xiao Wang.

  I reached my hand down the collar of his T-shirt and stretched the cotton from his neck. Feeling the groove of his collarbone, I closed my eyes. He unbuttoned my shirt, pushed me onto the couch and deftly took off the rest of my clothes. I undressed him, listening for the varied rhythm of his breathing, counting his breaths as they came close together. Counting A-d-a-m i-s h-o-m-e. When his hips were pressed against mine, I rested my hands in the small of his back. When he rose, I slid my hands up to his shoulder blades, sharp and expansive as wings. I thought of the dragon scroll, realized Da Ge’s words—pretty and extravagant—were fluttering around in my mind. As was the phrase when I find her. There were occasional sirens in the street.

  I kept seeing Adam that November, even as my interest in Da Ge intensified. Adam made me feel safe. Maybe like a dad. Whenever I was with Adam, the Da Ge business seemed like an innocent and contained crush. Da Ge skipped class more than he showed up, and we hadn’t spoken since he turned in the suicide essay. So I was free to call Adam while I cultivated my fantasy of Da Ge: one that involved my lifting him out of his dangerous, difficult life into mine, being his Adam, keeping him safe.

  Da Ge finally came back to class one day in mid-November when I had assigned my students to do “chat skits.” It was almost Thanksgiving; people were in a holiday mood. I put them in unlikely pairs and situations: Xiao Wang and Chase, whose native language was Spanish, were strangers in a bar, having a “casual conversation.”

  “Hello, lady!” Chase said, as soon as Xiao Wang had settled in a chair. I bent to take notes, stifled a laugh. I didn’t want to interrupt and prevent them from feeling casual.

  “Hello, Chase,” said Xiao Wang. “Oh! I’m sorry. I forget! Hello, mister.”

  “How are you doing?” Chase asked. It’s amazing what a difference the word “doing” can make at the end of “how are you.”

  “I am doing okay,” said Xiao Wang. I had told them that “okay” sounds better than “well” in conversation, even though it’s grammatically less accurate. She smiled out at me from the skit stage, to see if I’d noticed her apt use. I smiled back.

  “I would like to treat you to a drink,” said Chase. “It will be my treat. Is it okay?”

  I scribbled a note to tell him about “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “It’s okay for me to have the drink from you,” said Xiao Wang.

  “What will you like?” Chase asked.

  “I cannot drink beer,” said Xiao Wang.

  “You do not enjoy beer. What will you like?” Chase repeated.

  I turned a little bit to find Da Ge in my peripheral vision. He was watching Xiao Wang, perhaps with concern, but when he felt my eyes on him, he turned toward me and smiled, holding my gaze until I looked away.

  “I would like the water with gas,” Xiao Wang said. I wasn’t sure what this meant, but Chase was, since apparently in Spanish water comes with and without gas, too. He nodded and beckoned an imaginary waiter.

  Da Ge had turned his attention back to the performance, and now he said something to Xiao Wang in Chinese, in which the English word “bubble” made a cameo, and Xiao Wang covered her face with her hands.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Don’t stop.”
r />   “Excuse me,” she said to Chase. “I would like bubble water,” she said.

  “I will go to the bar to get bubble water,” Chase said. He stood.

  “Thank you,” said Xiao Wang. She dipped her head in a kind of bow.

  I clapped with the rest of the class.

  “I’m sorry! This mistake of the bubbles!” Xiao Wang said. “I think you know that this in Chinese is like to carry gas.” She said two Chinese syllables. “I don’t know what this is in English.”

  “You can call it mineral water, seltzer, or sparkling water.”

  “Seltzer,” Xiao Wang said, without the l or the t.

  “Yes,” I said, “seltzer.” I pushed the t out, tongue to the roof of my mouth.

  “Seltzer,” she said again, this time with the t, but an r instead of an l in the middle, and an l instead of an r at the end.

  “Good.” I called Da Ge and Russ up to the front. They were supposed to be in a library.

  “Hi, Da Ge,” said Russ.

  “Hi, Russ.”

  “What are you doing at the library today?”

  “Just hanging out.”

  “Really? I am here to check out books.”

  “What books?”

  “English books,” said Russ.

  “I am here to check out girls,” said Da Ge. Chase and Russ and I laughed, but Xiao Wang scrunched her eyebrows. Ingyum looked up from her notes. I felt the room lift with Da Ge’s unusually good mood, felt a surge of something for him, affection maybe, or desire. When he looked at me again, I thought I saw that we had agreed to be in love. I smiled back this time.

  “Do you have homework to do at the library?” Chase asked Da Ge.

  “Fuck homework,” said Da Ge, “let’s go to the bar and have some beer.” I waited to see how Russ would respond to this “real life” situation.

  “That sounds good,” said Russ. “I prefer beer to book.”

  I applauded enthusiastically, keeping Da Ge in my line of sight. He was wearing a cream sweater, jeans, and work boots, and looked somehow more American than he had before. Eager to talk to him, I dismissed everyone and stood in the doorway waiting. As soon as he approached, my pulse sped.

  “Hi, Aysha,” he said. There was something calm but suggestive about his voice, my name he’d never said before, how close he was standing to me.

  We walked outside together. His skin was flushed across the cheekbones and bluish under his eyes. He lit a cigarette with one hand cupped over the flame. He was wearing a jade ring.

  “Did something happen?” I asked.

  He looked confused.

  “You haven’t been to class in two weeks.”

  “I’m sorry for that,” he said. “Sometimes I am not—how do you say—feeling so good to come to class.”

  “Have you been sick?”

  He looked side to side, as if trapped and searching for an escape. I did not want him to leave. He dropped the cigarette and crushed it with his right boot heel.

  “Your essay was terrific,” I said quickly, “the one about your mother.”

  “My writing English is better, right?”

  The combination of this response and my having said the word “mother” made me feel callous. “I hope it’s not, you know, none of my business,” I corrected, “but I wanted to say I’m sorry about your mother. I was surprised when I read your—”

  “Well,” he said. “I’m—how do you always say—use to it.”

  “Right.”

  We stood awkwardly, and my vision panned out. I saw us there in the slush over fall leaves, Da Ge motherless and me fatherless, and I thought again that I could love him. I felt myself spin a bit, brought my eyes back to his, stayed put looking at him.

  “What about your father?” I asked. Maybe he found this odd. He squinted, lit another cigarette. I felt relief that we had at least enough time left for him to smoke it. I wanted to slow time down when he was around. This, I now know, is a kind of love.

  Da Ge said, “My father work for Ha Ha bottle water. He is fat cat.”

  I laughed, in spite of my feeling that he might not like it. Two teachers, Emmanuel Stern and Ben Rosenbaum, walked by, and I took a small step back away from Da Ge, cleared my throat.

  “Hi Aysha,” Ben called.

  “Hi,” I said. Ben’s eyes were on me, and I looked off into the distance, watched two squirrels chasing each other up a tree as if they were a fascinating documentary. Da Ge grinned as if he had seen something, knew me. He lit a third cigarette off the one he was still smoking.

  “My English teacher in China teach me how to say that, ‘fat cat.’ It’s funny to say that?”

  “You used it very well,” I said. “Was your teacher American?”

  “No, he’s Chinese guy. But he know a lot about America. And my father can speak English,” he said.

  “Right, you said that in your essay.” I thought of his father, speaking into an empty house, his wife dead and his son in America. I wondered what he was like; maybe he had a mistress-wife like my father. “He must miss you, now that you’re here.”

  “I don’t think so,” Da Ge said. He dropped the cigarette, didn’t light a fourth. “Anyway, I don’t have choice to stay in China. I am dissident.” He gave the word an extra hiss, either proud to call himself one or to pronounce the word properly.

  “A dissident. Really?” I asked this with interest, which he mistook for doubt.

  His voice sped up, turned white like heat. “You don’t think I am? You think it was only bookworm like Wang Dan?”

  “Who?”

  He looked at me, and his face softened as if he had remembered something.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “Don’t worry that.” I hoped it was me that he had remembered, that had made his face sweet like that. But then he said he had business, and left.

  At nine that night Da Ge rang my doorbell, unannounced, carrying groceries. “I can cook some food for you,” he said, when I buzzed him in. He set down the University Food Market bags hanging from his arms.

  “Wow,” I said. “Okay. Come in.” I did not ask what he had been planning to do if I wasn’t home. I thought maybe this kind of pop-in was culturally acceptable in China.

  In my kitchen, he chopped chicken and bell peppers into quarter-inch pieces as perfect as jewels, and expressed such shock over my lack of a wok it was as if I had killed a person he loved. I watched his arms move over the food. He saw me looking and pushed the sleeves of his cream sweater up. Then he mixed thick condiments he’d brought and coated the cubes of chicken. He threw roots into a frying pan, put the chicken in, took the chicken out, and braised pepper gems until they turned neon green and red. As a finale, he fried everything together in a splash and sizzle that turned my entire kitchen into a stir-fry. I had never seen a bigger mess.

  I was rapt, spelling out I’-m i-n l-o-v-e w-i-t-h h-i-m on my fingers as he presented his glistening chicken exhibition and apologized that it was inauthentic.

  “It’s perfect,” I said, “I don’t cook.” I was thinking should I be nervous? That he’s in my house, that I don’t know him, didn’t ask him over? That he’s my student?

  But it was cold outside, and I wasn’t nervous. I was happier to have him in my apartment than I can express, even now. He made me feel dangerous and interesting even as I dreamed that I might make him feel safe. Da Ge was like having a working fireplace; every room he entered heated up with him in it, and just out the windows was instant winter wherever he wasn’t.

  He was rummaging through my silverware drawer, and I was relieved to have a few pairs of disposable chopsticks left over from takeout. We stood across the table from each other, and I poured water from a Brita into mugs while he spooned rice into my bowl and put chicken and peppers on top.

  I sat down. He sat, too, waited for something. I took a bite of chicken, and the sesame oil and ginger and sugar bloomed in my mouth.

  “It’s fantastic,” I said. “Thank you for making dinner.”

&n
bsp; “It’s nothing,” he said, delighted. “Many Chinese men are excellent cook. Next time I make a fish.” Then he served himself, picked his chopsticks up, and mysteriously rubbed them together before taking a bite. The food seemed to cheer him up. He smiled at me. It was very quiet in my living room.

  “So.” I thought I should probably ask what he was doing coming over uninvited to make dinner at my apartment, but couldn’t think of a polite way to frame it. He took another bite, chewed.

  “What’s your scar from?” I asked, surprising myself.

  He reached up as if remembering it was there, and ran his fingers over the rise of flesh. “It’s from accident. Long time before,” he said in a cold orange voice. Wanting to avoid the trapped glance I had seen at school, I changed the subject fast.

  “How’s New York? You adjusting okay?” My inner critic berated me for being tedious, but Da Ge was looking straight at me like a laser. I would have liked to know what he saw.

  “In America I think I am good guy. Not like Beijing where I am hooligan.”

  I laughed. “Hooligan? Did your English teacher in China teach you that word?”

  He ignored this. “One time I was smoking with my artist friend Hong Yue, and I put the cigarette down on some paper. Maybe I am drunk, too. It’s accident. But the room, in my father’s house, burn quickly. A kind of surprise this burning. Exciting.”

  “You burned your father’s house down?”

  “It’s accident. Actually, we think it’s kind of funny, me and Hong Yue. But later my father make me work for many months to pay him the money to repair that room.”