The Leavers(16)

“This is Deming and me time,” Vivian said. “We never spend time together, right, Deming?”

“Michael should come, too.”

“I’m coming, Mom.”

Vivian told Michael to stay inside the apartment. “I’ll be back soon.”

“No, don’t leave.”

“Put the deadbolt on right away. I’ll make you a nice dinner tonight.”

Michael was crying again. “Please don’t leave.”

“I’ll be back very soon.”

“I’ll? What about Deming?”

“We’ll be back.”

Michael stopped crying. Vivian and Deming waited in the hallway, Vivian holding a plastic bag, until they heard the lock click shut. Deming heard a loud sniffle from inside the apartment and wanted to go back in, but Vivian was already walking toward the staircase.

They got on the Bx12 bus, taking a pair of seats near the front. Deming wondered which stores they would go to.

“Face it,” Vivian finally said. “Your mother isn’t coming back, and you need a good family. I can’t provide for both you and Michael right now. I’m sorry, Deming. I don’t have the money. I’m going to have to move to a smaller apartment, get roommates. I’m getting people to look after you until Leon makes enough in China so he can come back to New York. You’ll be okay, and when Leon returns, we’ll see each other again.”

The wall tightened. He could barely breathe. “When?”

“Soon,” Vivian said.

“How soon?”

Vivian didn’t answer.

“I’ll get a job! I’ll be twelve in November.”

They got off on the Grand Concourse and entered an office building. He sat in a chair near the door as Vivian spoke to a woman in awkward English, her voice much softer than usual. He heard her say, “I have his birth certificate.”

The woman came over to him. She was tall and Black; her glasses had gold frames. “Deming? Why don’t you wait in here while I talk to your aunt.” She led him into a smaller office, with a folding table and ceiling fan, gave him crayons and a stack of coloring books, then reached into a drawer and handed him a box of apple juice and a bag of chips. “Here’s a snack. You can draw if you want.” The woman’s smile was small but kind. “I’ll be back.”

Deming opened a coloring book. It was for younger kids, with large outlines of animals, and most of the pages were already filled in. The crayons were all snapped in two. He scratched large X’s over the faces of the animals and told himself Vivian would have the address of wherever he was going, that she and Michael would come get him in a few days. Maybe he’d get to go somewhere exciting, with video games.

When the juice and chips were long gone, the woman came back, holding the plastic bag Vivian had been carrying. “You’re going to come with me now. We have a place for you to stay tonight, in Brooklyn.”

He rode with the woman in a van, sitting up front, the bag on his lap. Inside were his clothes and toothbrush. They drove on a highway and across a bridge, and the woman asked him about school and his friends. She gave him another juice box and asked about his mother. He said he hadn’t seen her since February.

They drove to a neighborhood where the people were Chinese, and there were Chinese stores and restaurants, but it wasn’t Manhattan Chinatown. There were more trees here, houses with aluminum siding, children riding bikes on the sidewalks.

The woman parked the van on a side street. They got out, walked to a three-story house, and rang a bell. A man and a woman answered the door, both Chinese and with graying hair. The four of them walked upstairs to an apartment, and the Black woman spoke to the Chinese woman in the kitchen but Deming couldn’t hear their words, while the man sat with him on a couch in the cool front room, saying “Relax, be good” until Deming fell asleep on the cushions, drained from the heat and the car ride. When he woke up, the Black woman was gone.

“How long will I stay here?” he asked the man.

“A while,” the man said.

They fed him vegetables and beef stew, big bowlfuls of it. He asked if he could call Michael, and they said not now, later. They turned up the air conditioner and let him sleep and watch TV.

Days passed. Deming lost track of time. He slept on the couch and watched TV. Afternoons, alone in the apartment, he roamed the small rooms, opening empty drawers and cabinets, eating Chef Boyardee that he heated in the microwave. The couple’s bedroom remained locked. There was no telephone. He wanted to go outside, but the front door was locked, too.

One morning, when the doorbell rang, it wasn’t Vivian and Michael but a white man and woman, who spoke to the Chinese woman in English. The white woman said Deming’s name first. “Dee-ming, Dee-ming.” She drew the vowels out so the word was unrecognizable. The Chinese woman said “Deming” and he sat up, still sleepy. The white woman tried again, closer this time.

They approached on tiptoe. “Hello, Deming.” The man’s voice was reedy, gently nasal. His hair was floppy with light yellow strands, and his eyes were a diluted blue, surrounded by lines. The white woman’s hair was short, blonde with chunks of brown. Her cheeks were a pale pink.

“Hello, Deming,” she said. They sat on either side of him. The woman’s arms touched his. The man’s legs pressed against his. He had only been so close to white people on the subway before.