Hyphen magazine - Asian American arts, culture, and politics

Theresa turns on the radio and hits the garage door button. The space moans to life, gray light creeping over the family car that her mother promised would already be moved. It's the same every Saturday morning, even the radio, which launches out of a commercial into electric guitar, music her mother plays because it "reminds her of Daddy." Theresa finds her own station which is heavy on advertisements for mattresses and, lately, a traveling ice show. The music is a piece she isn't familiar with, piano and saxophone, instruments she can play but chooses not to. "I ran out of notes," she tells anyone who asks. Preparing for the day, she adjusts the light blue barrettes she's chosen to match her T-shirt, the one with a pair of smiling blueberry kittens. It was a gift for her 11th birthday and though it's a bit tight, she wears it to remind herself how little she's grown in the past two years.

Fully lit, the garage reveals a perimeter lined with books three shelves high, some on roll-away carts leaving just enough space for the car. Theresa squeezes through to the end where outside, the neighborhood hisses with automatic sprinklers, liquid circles wider than the square lawns. Wet sidewalks reflect silhouettes of queen palm trios. Tarantulas on flagpoles, she thinks. A perfect day to run away, something she's been thinking about more and more. I'm not one of these people, she tells herself, thinking of her parents. In the garage she has a red backpack stuffed with granola bars, water, and a city map, a stash she's maintained for weeks, just in case. She knows the route she would follow, has counted the number of steps it would take to be out of sight. But now, as always, she thinks of her books and the people who need them. Within an hour, there will be joggers and dog walkers and people coming to see Theresa.

"Mom," she yells, turning inside. "The car. I need to open."

Wagon in oleander bushes two blocks away.

Last year it was Franz Liszt with Ozawa conducting. This year it is books, hardcovers, Ayn Rand and Charles Lindberg. China on Horseback and The Land of Emperors, Norman Mailer, Virginia Woolf, any book that sounds like knocking on a door when you thump it with a knuckle. What started during the school year as an obsession with scouring thrift stores and yard sales has turned into a garage full of books, those purchased and those given to her; a library of one's own. Now, actually, a library for the neighborhood every Saturday from 8 am to 5 pm.

Because it is a normal weekend, Theresa's mother is leaving for Bikram yoga, and afterward she will meet Theresa's father for their weekly counseling session, about which she only hears "Your dad and I are trying." They have been trying for two years with the counseling, lunch afterward, and once a week sleepovers at his apartment without Theresa. She has honed a line to explain this, complete with dramatic pause. "My mother and father are separated and dating-each other."

Out of the house with her water bottle and lavender yoga mat, Theresa's mother offers a smile. "Morning, Sweets," she says. Theresa thinks of her mother as basically kind but excessively bouncy and a bit obvious about trying to act younger than she is. Her clothes are tight and cut too short at the midriff. Today, her red hair is pulled into a thick, braided ponytail that swooshes back and forth like a hyperactive metronome. Theresa plays a game with it. trying to find even a flash of discernable beat. She pulls at her kitten shirt from the bottom so that it's flat against her body. She wonders if her mother will recognize the old gift, perhaps notice that her daughter will never have a figure like hers. Not a gene in common, Theresa thinks.

"Yoga," her mother says as she throws her gym bag into the backseat of the car. "Then counseling with Dad. You know the routine." She slips inside the car, but popping back up briefly, "Hey," she says, "cute shirt. Be nice to Mrs. Peeger."

It would be impossible not to be nice to Mrs. Peeger. Theresa thinks. She is the woman across the street who's watched her ever since they brought her home from China as an infant. Mrs. Peeger would get the kitten shirt. She has never forgotten a birthday or Christmas, comes over with pieces of coconut cake and potted orchids she grows in her backyard. Once, she allowed Theresa to wear her daughter's childhood sari to school. In exchange, Theresa does small things, the pinching and twisting things that Mrs. Peeger's arthritic wrists can't handle anymore. A week ago Theresa repaired a decapitated concrete gosling the gardener hit with the mower.

As Theresa's mother pulls out of the driveway a line of morning light drools across the roof. Theresa fixes her face into a stern, narrow-eyed expression and crosses her arms, hoping for the perfect pose to gnaw at her mother if this turns out to be a final memory of her daughter. As usual, though, the car accelerates down the street without another glance from her mother, the yoga mat mocking Theresa from the back window like a favored child headed for ice cream.

Mrs. Peeger, always on cue, steps outside in her denim gardening clothes and tattered straw hat. She waves and calls to Theresa. "If you need anything, Sanam, I'll be out back," she says. Her voice is high and informally melodic. "see you at lunchtime." If it weren't for Mrs. Peeger, Theresa thinks, I could disappear. Just walk off. Maybe to Chinatown. Blend in. This is something on her mind a little more every day. She wonders if her parents considered even for a second that their daughter would look nothing like them. Adopted. She knows it's the first thing people think when they see the three of them together, which lately, isn't that often.

A green van. No license plate.

"I haven't read this since I was a boy," Mr. Halvo says, handing Theresa The Red Badge of Courage. He's a regular, returns his books promptly. Theresa judges by his white hands and arms with their random plinks of gray hair that he's rarely in the sun. His face is the same, except pinkish in the cheeks and nose.

"So how are you?" he asks as she logs his selection.

Theresa doesn't look up. "Adequate," she says. It's her new word to replace "fine." This term seems less ambiguous, more honest. Adequate means nothing in excess. All needs are being met at least at a minimal level.

"Well," Mr. Halvo says, caught off guard, "could be worse. Listen. I guess you've never heard of Audie Murphy?"

This Theresa likes. Questions suggesting strange information. She writes the name and breaks it down. A. Murphy-Murphy, Auoy-Oddy. She looks around at the garage with its rows of bookshelves rolled into place. Not an author and definitely not anyone she's ever checked a book out to. "Does she live in this neighborhood?"

Mr. Halvo laughs and takes a pen out of his shirt pocket, writing the correct spelling above Theresa's note. His print is unsteady, jagged, but readable. "Audie," Mr. Halvo says, sounding pleased he knows something Theresa doesn't. "He was a war hero. Movie star too." He points to the book he's about to take home. "Made a great one out of this."

"I'll look it up." Although she is not fond of chit chat, Theresa is relieved that Mr. Halvo is the first person to drop by and that he's in no hurry to leave. Last Saturday her mother allowed a news crew to do a segment on Theresa's summer library.

"Why are they here?" Theresa asked.

"It's a surprise for you, Sweets," her mother said. "Your father will be here too."

Theresa immediately forecast the consequences and she was right. All week people have been driving through the neighborhood looking for the house where "the world's youngest librarian" lives. Someone even left a box of used romance novels on the driveway, which Theresa promptly threw into the recycling bin. Except for one called The Hindi Hero, which she and Mrs. Peeger had a good laugh over.

This morning, Theresa is relieved to be talking about not much with Mr. Halvo without a stranger in sight. She'd watched the news feature about her book lending with her mother, horrified at the forced shot of her and her parents thumbing through a fat copy of Gone with the Wind. At the end of the newscast, the anchorwoman said, "That little girl must have amazing parents." Adequate, Theresa thought.

Across the street, Mrs. Peeger's hat and dark eyes poke above her fence as she waves with a glove full of clippings. "Namaskar!" she calls.

Theresa returns the greeting as she delivers Mr. Halvo's selection into his pale, spongy hands. "Something new this week," she says. "I'm letting everyone keep whatever they check out. But don't go telling. I only want people to keep the books they want, not the ones they might want."

Mr. Halvo offers a look of saddened surprise. "Then why write everything down?"

This question strikes Theresa as odd. "Consistency."

"So you're closing down?"

"More like fading away." Theresa walks Mr. Halvo to the lip of the garage. "When people get too used to a thing, it's not special anymore."

Mr. Halvo's face flushes. He looks hurt, abandoned. "It'll be a shame," he says quietly, almost to himself. "The highlight of my week is these little visits with you."

Final entries, Anne of Green Gables, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

By 11 o'clock Theresa has given away 53 books, hardly a dent in the shelves. The multi-colored spines surrounding her look like some elaborate musical keyboard. She looks for patterns in the colors but instead finds probability. Green and blue spines are the most likely to sit side by side. Those in her China section are all red or black. She'd brought these out from her personal collection. There were a few months when she read everything she could about the country because if she ever found her biological parents she thought she should know about the place they lived. But then she came across a number, one billion. Once a day for a week she wrote it in her journal just to see if familiarity would make it less impossible. 1,000,000,000. 1,000,000,000. 1,000,000,000. 1,000,000,000. 1,000,000,000. 1,000,000,000. 1,000,000,000. It would take her, she calculated, 31 years, 251 days, 7 hours, 46 minutes, and 39 seconds to count that high. How could she ever find her biological parents in all that humanity? It wasn't like the blonde woman on television who flew to Oklahoma and met her biological mother at the airport. Tears and flowers and television cameras.

Theresa is left with the one thing her mother will say about her adoption, the phrase she is supposed to hold onto like a precious gift made to open any time she needs reassurance that she is special and chosen. It was late at night, dark, when her mother placed her hands on Theresa's cheeks and spoke. "We took one look at you and said 'Yes, her.'"

Now, the light beyond the lip of the garage has brightened to a hazy white, the middle part of the day when very few people visit Theresa's library. She stands just out of the sun holding To Kill a Mockingbird which someone pulled off the shelf and didn't replace. The only person on the street is Phillip Brauer who's been riding his new bike around the neighborhood all day. Theresa has never been one for crushes. She finds boys her age to be distracted and clumsy. But Phillip is smart and not her age, fifteen, and sure, a bit show-offy, but with good reason.

For the millionth time Phillip rides by standing on his pedals, jeans sagging below his waist, newly broad shoulders triangulating his torso. His black hair is different than Theresa's, wavy and out of control. This time he makes a sharp turn and rides toward her. What feels like a lit match flares in her chest. "Hey, Treece," he says, his front tire halting a few inches from her. "Hear you're giving away your books."

"Not exactly." But she wants to say, Yes, Phillip, come in and take all you want. She wants him to ask her to ride on the handlebars of his bike like she's seen Marrissa Stallers do. At the same time she rushes with hope, Theresa is acutely aware of her smallness.

Philip begins a series of figure eights in the driveway. "I finished it," he says, without looking at Theresa.

She knows exactly what he means. Three weeks ago Ulysses was the first book he went to, not because he had any interest in James Joyce, but because it was the fattest book on the shelves. She'd made a cover for the tattered volume out of a grocery bag and wrote the title in thick black ink on the spine. "What's it about?" Theresa asks.

Phillip drops his feet to the concrete, stopping the bike in mid curve. Behind him, a blonde woman approaches with four books from last week, Mrs. Corson. Theresa returns to the small, wobbly desk where she keeps her records, each title with its own page. She notices how Phillip waits, almost statue-like but irritated, as Mrs. Corson declines the offer to keep the books, though she does move back to the shelves.

"Ulysses," Phillip begins with an unsteady and teacherly voice, "is about this guy Leopold and his family. And Dublin." He pauses, showing in his expression the enormity of summary before him. "It's being young, and getting old, and going crazy with a lot of words in between."

Theresa laughs. "Are you going to keep it?"

"If that's cool, yeah."

It's a word she hates, cool, so overused, not even adequate, but somehow, on Phillip, it feels authentic. "It's cool," she says, and it comes out easier than she ever imagined.

"Thanks, Treece," he says. "We'll have to go riding some time like when I was a kid." He points to Mrs. Corson and winks. "But seems like I can't ever get you alone."

It is not lost on Tharesa that the wink means she isn't included in his leap toward maturity. She knows that as far is Phillip is concerned she is still the little girl with the purple bike. Normally this would be a moment where she would burrow down and dwell but Mrs. Colson steps up with From Crossbow to H-Bomb.

"You're busy," Phillip says, "Catch you later. Thanks for the book."

Dissappointed, Theresa begins writing down Mrs. Corson's selection to satisfy Phillip's observation. "Cool," she says to Phillip, only this time it comes unplanned, something casual from inside her that she recognizes immediately as the edge of some undiscovered territory. She looks up to see if Phillip heard it in her voice, but he is already off the driveway, legs pumping, narrow back and wide shoulders slanted forward and away.

Theresa lakes a breath and explains again to Mrs. Corson that she should keep the book. The summer library is winding

Mrs. Corson clutches the history of weaponry, her long maroon nails raking the cover. "What a shame," she says shaking her head. "You're quite a little prodigy."

Not really," Theresa says, "merely precocious."

No witnesses.

A little after one there are five people in the garage including Mrs. Paeger who delivered a bowl of curried rice with cubed chicken, most of which sits in front of Theresa as a yellow aftermath. She stares into the dish, visually connecting the grains into constellations: Monoceros, Draco, Canis Major. But then she stops because everything is there between poultry moons. The galaxy and all the known universe collapsed into her bowl. Everything condensed and knowable and at the mercy of a god who's quickly losing interest.

"Sanam," Mrs. Peeger says, still in her denim garden outfit. "I must get back to my orchids. Are you alright for a while?

"Yes thalk you," Theresa says. Mrs. Peeger looks at her with mock disappointment and Theresa corrects her error with a sheepish grin. "Dhanya-waadh."

As Mrs. Peeger steps across the street Anna Marks presents Theresa with her selection. "I'd like to checkout Horton Hears a who, "(she says. "And these." She sets down six other books. "For my sister." Theresa knows better and looks at Anna who is seventeen but still wearing her blond hair in two ponytails which she eagerly admits she highlights with lemon juice and plenty of sun. [Theresa imagines Anna reclined at the beach, bathed in light arid armed with citrus and Seuss.

But, Theresa thinks, I didn't open the library not to check out books. She wonders how she might have turned out if Anna's parents had adopted her. Would Anna's personality be her fate? And what does lemon juice do to Chinese hair?

"Yeah," Anna says as if replying to a question that hasn't been asked. "My mom told me to tell you that Day has asthma again."

Eight-year-old Day Keese lives two blocks over in the white house with a concrete yard that her father washes down every morning before he drives Day to school where she is loaded down with inhalers and tissues and hand sanitizers. She stays healthy all week, but when the weekend comes she falls into another asthma attack. Theresa is beginning to believe this is all somehow induced. No matter what, her parents will not allow her to leave the yard, and so, on the weekends, she is inside and in bed. Even when Theresa delivers books, she never sees Day. Just hands them to Mrs. Keese who wipes them down with a white cloth.

Theresa thinks about what's left that she might bring Day. The first time her parents rejected the book on Greek mythology. "This isn't age appropriate," Mrs. Keese said, the book handed back between pinched fingers. Today, because this will be the last time she delivers, Theresa decides to load her wagon with a few basics, Anne of Green Gables, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. At the same time, she thinks of another book for Phillip.

Anna huffs, irritated at the wait.

"Tell your mother the final thing I'll do today is bring Day some books."

Last seen in a blue t-shirt with blue kittens. Possibly carrying a red backpack.

Theresa is rereading the titles she's given away today when the phone rings. She looks at the brown unit on the wall with its cord that hangs, python-like, to the concrete floor. Her father stretched it out on weekends when he inspected the paint on his blue Mustang for scratches and nicks and road tar. Pen light and magnifying glass in hand, phone secured between ear and shoulder, no flaw was too small for concern as he spoke to men Theresa never met, repetitive men apparently, who never got tired of discussing things like oil viscosity, carburetors, and rubbing compounds. Things, Theresa wanted to point out, her father had no particular expertise in.

She recalls an evening before her father moved out when he was polishing the car, the garage dizzying with lemony fumes. She'd come out for his company, though now she wonders why she was that desperate. "Dad," she said, "what do you know about China?"

He stood up straight and sighed, a sound that had become his frequent first response. "We were only there for a few days. I remember lots of bikes."

"Oh," Theresa said, bailing out. "Bike's are cool."

"We'll talk about it later, Sweets," her father said. "Think about what kind you want."

It's her father on the phone now, as she expected, because he always calls on Saturdays after couples therapy. "Hi, Sweets," he says with a forced brightness. "Mom and I just finished up lunch. She'll be home in an hour or so."

Theresa knows the script. The "or so" part means at least two. "Great," she says.

"So what's up?"

"The same." She sits down at her desk and turns to fresh pages in her checkout log where she free-hands straight lines down the ruled paper, challenging herself toward a perfect grid. On the other end of the line she hears her father tapping on something.

"Listen, Sweets," he says. "Next week I want to take you to the ice show."

"Oh."

"And Mom too. The three of us. Won't that be cool?" His tone is more matter of fact than plaintive, as if he's reading from a prescription bottle. Take one family weekly as needed. Non-refillable. "They have all your favorite characters."

Has he called the wrong daughter? Theresa wonders. Not even in an alternate universe would she be interested in anything even resembling an ice show. And favorite characters? Years ago when he scooped her up in that Chinese orphanage is this what he projected? That some day he'd take her to a darkened sports arena with a frozen core and call that fatherhood?

As he explains what a wonderful evening they will have, Theresa finds herself drawing figure eights across her finished grid. My favorite characters? she repeats in her mind, smiling. She thinks of one, but not from television or movies, imagines a white spotlight moving across a black field, Boo Radley on skates, Scout lifted above him in her ham costume, a drunken Mr. Ewell chasing them both. All of it choreographed to Liszt's Totentanz, his Danse Macabre. She imagines the opening chords, the low notes pounding from the piano, Seiji Ozawa conducting the orchestra at arena's edge, he in all white with trademark mop of silvering black hair.

"So what do you think, Sweets? " her father says.

"Great," Theresa says. But she's thinking "needs a finale," a swift, interceding chorus line on blades, sensibly dressed men and women carrying stacks and stacks of glittering books. Allegro animato, the final two minutes of dark descent born from the keys of a black piano, vortex of skaters swallowing Mr. Ewell with text, the mass of them whirling him away, disappearing behind the large black drapes where true resolution will do its dirty work.

"Me, you, Mom, and all those big fuzzy guys skating around. What could possibly be better?"

Amused by her production, Theresa replies with the one thing she's certain of. "Librarians on Ice!"

"What?" her father asks, "Oh, right, your little project. I guess you have to go." It's clear he is seizing the opportunity to conclude, and Theresa doesn't mind because she is thinking she will not attend an ice show with this stranger who is checking off a box on some responsible father list. He might have said concert or gallery instead. She thinks of how often he is one or two words short of understanding. She feels accumulation, critical mass, and knows she cannot be here when her mother gets home.

After she hangs up the phone, Theresa returns to the page filled with her doodles. On it she cannot find Boo or Scout much less see Mr. Ewell swamped by books. But in the looping congestion of scrawls disrupting the grid, she hears Liszt again, reads each curve as a musical note. She holds up the ledger, the lead from her pencil refracting light, every mark permanent as a skate line on ice. It is possible, she thinks, to erase your tracks.

Finnegans Wake left in the mailbox of Phillip Brauer.

The garage door lowers slowly like an eye giving into sleep. Theresa stands before it as if she's just commanded a giant to slumber. Staying a wagon loaded with the red backpack and her deliveries, she watches her shelves of books darken and disappear beyond the beige door sealing the contents with an emphatic thump. In her other hand, Theresa holds the remote control, and for a moment considers reopening the door. She has never closed the library this early and worries about someone who might have a specific book in mind. But the street is largely empty on both sides. Down the block, Mr. and Mrs. Palmer are washing their yellow lab, Dolbey, in the front yard, and a green van sits at the intersection while its driver smokes a cigarette.

Mrs. Peeger calls at Theresa from her front door. "Closing up so early?"

"Day Keese again," Theresa says, knowing she need not say more. She waves and turns back toward the house. Mrs. Peeger has given her the first real pangs of reconsideration. She will deliver the books, she tells herself, and after that, she'll see. Maybe this isn't the day. She looks at the backpack knowing that its contents won't get her far.

Age 13. Chinese Ancestry. Possible Runaway. Adoptive Parents.

The husband and wife have crossed the border between remorse and regret. They remain in darkness facing the garage where they have been sitting in the car without speaking. It's been nearly seven months, but tonight at dinner they heard a child's voice so close to Theresa's they both turned to look. The girl was about their daughter's age, but nothing like her at all. This girl was round and wearing a denim jumper and she wasn't Chinese.

The wife turns from the garage toward her husband. His features are deeply shadowed but the man she loves is there. Beyond him, the dark yard is bruised at the edges by greenish light. "This is ridiculous," she says. "It wasn't our fault. The therapist said so."

Looking at the ceiling of the car, the husband pushes the remote, the garage door sounding deep and constant like a disturbed hive. Fully opened, it snares the couple in yellow light, stares at them. It is a wide and unblinking eye. At the back are the husband's few remaining moving boxes. Each side of the garage is lined with white sheets draped over shelves of books mountainous as gurneys in a hospital morgue. "Maybe it's time we did something with those," he says.

The wife is reluctant. "If she comes home, she'll be upset with us. And besides, we can't just trash them."

"Of course not," he allows, but he wants to say that after this many months the odds of their daughter turning up are miniscule.

"She'd want people to have them."

"I agree," he says. "I'll call a used bookstore tomorrow. see what they're worth."

As her husband talks about selling the books, the wife looks into the space waiting to receive their car. It makes her feel ill. On the concrete floor is a narrow pile of kitty litter to soak up leaking oil. When the police came, it was swept away and tested. They found engine oil. Not blood.

"I keep thinking about how none of this would have happened if we hadn't adopted her."

"Don't be silly," the husband says. The light from the garage shows his wife's eyes on the verge of tears but he knows neither of them is anywhere near crying.

"Why did we have to have a baby?"

The husband is silent. This is the one subject their therapist seldom got them to discuss. They wanted a family, certainly. But then the question again became why. And for that, their answer, when they had one. changed, pitched, each a structure built on shifting sand.

"I remember our first day home," his wife continues. "She was so small."

"With all that black hair. And crying."

The wife recalls her husband's arm around her waist the first time they watched Theresa sleeping in her crib. "We were just so relieved when she fell asleep. Unprepared from the start."

"We weren't that bad."

"We were," the wife says, placing a hand on her husband's neck. "Our first bit of family bliss was about her silence. You held me and said 'What could possibly be better?'"

The husband is startled, recalling his last conversation with Theresa. "I know the answer to that question now," he says. "Librarians on Ice."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

The husband releases a lungful of air. "I wish I'd asked," he says.

Frustrated, the wife starts the car and pulls into the garage "What good's an answer without meaning?" On either side of them Theresa's books are shrouded beneath white sheets.

In front of the car, the husband's stacked moving boxes read kitchen, bathroom, laundry, and entertainment. It occurs to him that there wasn't a single book in any of his boxes.

Neither the husband nor wife makes a move to exit the car. Taking a deep breath, she speaks. "Didn't you think it would make a bigger difference? I mean, the first month was hard. But now?"

The husband considers the tattered flyers posted all over town, of that initial door-to-door canvassing and the first two weeks when local newscasts showed Theresa's photo every day. And for both of them, there were in fact sleepless weeks of worry, spontaneous wincing at thoughts of what the person who abducted their daughter might have done to her. They could never believe she would run away. In those first weeks every phone ring was renewed loss, exhaustion throwing their limbs into spontaneous cramps and shaking.

"How long." the husband asks, "is long enough?"

"Parents shouldn't have to ask that question." The wife reaches out and holds her husband's hand, though they continue to look forward. "Sometimes," she says quietly. "I think if she was ours, I mean not adopted, that somehow we'd still be wrecks."

The husband looks at his wife, who is still young and beautful to him. Despite their problems she is the woman he wants a family with. But the truth is, Theresa was part of their difficulties and if they can't say goodbye to her soon, there may be no second chance for happiness. He is thinking these things and at the same time knows he can never say them. He wonders, in the history of human mourning what percentage is performance?

Minutes pass and the husband and wife continue to hold hands in silence. Though they do not say it to each other, neither wants to squeeze by Theresa's bookshelves with their odd volumes that poke from the sheets like grasping hands. Instead, the couple waits for the light on the garage door opener to turn itself off. In darkness, Theresa's library will disappear and maybe one of them will find the strength to say what they are both thinking, that their daughter is gone and it is beginning to feel normal. Theresa's disappearance was a shock, but they are coming to understand the trajectory of loss. It is birthed whole and then contracts.

In the seconds after darkness begins its snaps and sutures, the husband and wife arrive at something foreign, something close to unity. Without light it is easy for them to imagine that their long-ago journey to a pillbox orphanage in Shaanxi never really happened. Now. the couple looks in each other's direction, knowing there is nothing to see, creating one another from memory. It's as if they have emerged from an experiment as part of the control group, the pair of them stronger, if unhealed. and still candidates for the cure. Tonight they are a husband and wife holding hands in the dark, thinking it was placebo all along and wondering if they can ever again say Yes, her.