The Rising(12)

So the Chins panicked. Grabbed hold of Alex and tried to run toward a darkened gap between the tilt-a-whirl and a stretch of rigged games. Ran right into a cop with a hand on his pistol. The cop grabbed Li Chin and jerked him aside. Next thing Alex knew his mother was pleading, practically begging the cop with hands clasped in a position of prayer before her, all in Chinese; and blaring only a single phrase to his father Alex could make sense of:

Wǒmen de mìmì …

“Our secret.”

Another cop dragged her away, forcing her to stumble and lose her balance; she fell to the concrete, now layered with stray candy wrappers, peanut shells, and popcorn shed by the wind.

It was at that moment that Alex became a football player, launching himself headlong into the cop with a throaty scream. He hit the man square in the knees, all eight years and seventy pounds of him, toppling him upon an oil-stained patch on the makeshift midway and pummeling him in the chest with his small fists.

Alex didn’t remember much after that. Other cops pulled him off and held him while he cried and screamed. Things got settled, apologies were made, and the Chins left with free passes to all the rides for the remainder of the carnival’s stay in town. They never used them, not that year or the next or ever. The Big Top carnival returned to Golden Gate Park for years afterward, but Alex had never returned, even at the urging of his friends. The mere thought of it always brought a lump to his throat, reminding him how much he loved his parents then and how much he loved them now.

Wǒmen de mìmì, Alex remembered his mother saying for the first time in a very long time. Our secret …

Which was what, exactly?





11

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

“EVERYTHING WILL BE ALL right,” his mother said, comfortingly, squeezing his hand. “You must have faith.”

Alex pulled his hand away, his mind veering to a different secret his parents had been keeping. His head had begun to throb, but he pushed his thoughts through it.

“Like you have in me?” he said, words seeming to echo in his head.

His mother and father exchanged a befuddled glance, Alex suddenly able to think of nothing else but opening his mother’s drop desk drawer in search of a pencil a few days before. Feeling it balk at his initial tries before he jerked it toward him to reveal a clutter of brochures jamming up the slide. He grabbed the pencil he’d come for, just then noticing the brochures were all for prep schools featuring fifth-year post-high-school programs.

“I saw what you were hiding in your desk,” Alex heard himself say to his mother from the emergency room bed, as if it were someone else’s voice.

“Alex, this isn’t the place or time to talk about this—” his mother said, about to go on when his father squeezed her arm and she went quiet again, embarrassed by the presence of the doctor inside the cubicle.

He wanted to stop himself but couldn’t. “There’s nothing to talk about. I’m going to college. I’m going to play football. Next year.”

“Alex,” his mother continued, pulling free of his father’s grasp. “Your grades…”

Leaving it hanging out there, like she didn’t need to say anything more.

“They suck.” His head began to really pound, a pain that radiated all the way down his spine, almost as if it were bouncing off his bones. “But the colleges offering me scholarships don’t care, so why should I? Why should you?”

Now it was his mother taking his father’s arm in both of her hands. He seemed to stiffen under the grasp, never taking his gaze from Alex.

“Because,” his mother started, her voice ringing with conviction, “you should go to a better college, not just one that wants to give you money. The Ivy League, even.”

The doctor cleared his throat, as if to remind them he was still there, but Alex responded anyway.

“The Ivy League? You call that football?” He stopped, the pounding in his head intensifying.

His mother whispered something that made his father stiffen even more.

“We’ll talk about this later.”

“No, we won’t. We don’t need to talk about it. And I’m playing football next week. Do you hear me? I’m playing football next week.”

Alex’s head felt ready to explode, as if someone were taking a brick to it from the inside, trying to crash their way out through his skull.

“My head,” Alex said suddenly, the doctor looking up from a check of the nerve endings on his feet. “Oh man, my head…”

The doctor returned to his side, checking his pulse. “Try to breathe normally.”

“Hitse marwa vesu luvi,” a voice in the room said.

“Alex?” asked his father.

“Hitse marwa vesu luvi.”

Alex heard the voice as if it were someone else’s, the words making no sense to him. Just jibberish, not unlike when his parents spoke Chinese late at night when they were afraid he might overhear whatever they were discussing.

“Hitse marwa vesu luvi!”

The voice louder now, more demanding and demonstrative.

“Son?” came the doctor’s voice. “Can you hear me, son?”

Alex could hear him just fine. But he wasn’t in the exam room. He was somewhere else, somewhere different and dark. Running, bouncing. At least it felt as if he were running, and it was the world that was bouncing around him. He watched it shift and shake, gazing upward toward the sky. Except the sky was a ceiling, and he heard rattling sounds and the desperate wheezing of someone struggling for breath.