White Ivy(24)

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FOR THE REST of her life, Ivy would never forget that horrible spring of her sophomore year, when her parents grew gray and ragged, when Nan turned off the lights at eight, when Meifeng started filling empty soap bottles and shampoo bottles with water, when the dishes on the table were variations of fried rice, noodles, flour pancakes, the delectable fatty meats and fresh vegetables and occasional gallon of ice cream luxuries Ivy hadn’t known she liked until they were gone. She came home one afternoon and announced offhandedly she’d gotten hired to bag groceries at the Price Rite along Route 1. She’d expected warm praise—What a ting hua daughter we have—but Shen turned to Nan and shouted, “How can you make our kids go work? Have you become so—so”—he struggled to find the word—“so miserly?”

“I didn’t know about it!” Nan screamed, pinpoint tears quivering in their sockets. She whipped toward Ivy. “If you waste your time at such a filthy place instead of studying, I’ll break your legs!”

Meifeng, through her grapevine of Chinese grandmas who stretched together at the neighborhood park, found a job as an ayi to a Taiwanese family who’d recently moved to Clarksville. Meifeng was there before the family woke to make them a hot breakfast of congee, stew, steamed eggs. While the two boys, six and ten, were at school, she dusted, mopped, and vacuumed every corner of the four-bedroom house. At four, she began cooking dinner. When the family complained her food was too spicy, too greasy, Meifeng tried to adapt her cooking to their sweeter taste buds, and when that failed, she added brown sugar and ketchup to the dishes and that seemed to work. Shen picked her up at seven. Meifeng was usually so tired by then she had trouble climbing the four steps to the front door without assistance.

Though Ivy rarely spent time alone with Meifeng anymore, she still felt her grandmother’s absence keenly. She resented the two boys, whom she imagined as spitting images of Sunrin’s children, abusing poor Meifeng, who could do nothing but plead and bribe. Ivy took over the household chores. Nan cooked their meals. Her cooking was much worse than Meifeng’s but even Austin didn’t dare complain. After washing the dishes, Ivy would sit in her room with the windows flung open so the smell of chicken manure would conceal the fumes from her cigarettes. Through the thin bedroom walls, she heard her parents’ never-ending discussions filled with ominous banking terminologies she didn’t understand. Even Nan didn’t attempt to “teach” her daughter about such things; the pressure was too great. Ivy began to shoplift again but she derived no pleasure from it the way she had when she was young. Stealing, then, had felt like she was getting the better of the system; resourceful and self-reliant, as Meifeng had taught her. But she knew now that resourceful and self-reliant were traits born of need. Meifeng was resourceful and self-reliant. Now Meifeng was an ayi. Ivy was the granddaughter of an ayi.

Deprivation made Ivy dream of excess. She fantasized about closets as large as her bedroom, gold Amex credit cards, shoes piled ceiling-high, smoking cigarettes from long gold holders, wearing gems on every finger and pearls three loops deep on her neck, ordering a tableful of dishes and only taking one bite from each plate. She longed to become a lady with so much complacent wealth that others would look upon her and think, What a sheltered girl, that Ivy Lin. She’s probably never lifted a finger for anything in all her life. They say that self-control is a finite resource and it seemed to Ivy that after her sixteenth birthday, she’d already used up her lifetime’s worth of moderation and discipline and henceforth could never deny herself a single thing, not even a cup of coffee.



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THE HORRIBLE SPRING finally ended. Shen didn’t find a job. Instead, Nan discovered a new livelihood—going to flea markets to bring home cheap houseware items to sell on the Internet. One of her old colleagues at the dumpling factory had given her the idea when she’d called to see if Nan had found another job. The woman said her nephew mailed her knockoff designer bags from Hunan, which sold for 500 percent profit. She was branching out to other products now like jewelry and antiques. The woman said you could make money even on cheap items just from shipping charges. Nan made noncommittal comments—she was a proud woman—but in her desperate state, any new idea for making money felt like a golden lottery ticket. And 500 percent profit was a calculation even Nan could do without her little calculator. The irony of Nan now dragging the Lins to estate sales and garage sales and flea markets was not lost on Ivy. Within six months, the Lins were making Shen’s old salary. Meifeng quit her job, the limp in her leg now permanent. She massaged her knees every night with Chinese herbal oils, which made the whole house smell of turpentine.

That Christmas, Shen went to Best Buy and returned with a new Dell computer. Ivy and Austin fought over the honor of unboxing it. Meifeng cooked up a Chinese banquet: whole fish stewed in sour pickles, twice-cooked pork, plate after plate of sliced beef, cold noodles, steamed pork ribs with sweet potato, and Ivy’s favorite, delectable slices of pork belly braised to a sugary perfection and coated with red bean paste. After dinner, Nan sat on the sofa, head leaned back, both hands in her lap, her face gentle, her lips gathered in an indulgent smile, and the sight was enough to induce everyone in the house into a state of wild euphoria because none of them could remember the last time they saw Nan sitting idly. The Dell box had been filled with foam peanuts and while Shen, six beers in, attempted to install the computer, Ivy and Austin ran around the living room trying to stuff the foam into each other’s underwear.