Beautiful as Yesterday Read online

  Ingrid hands her a bottle of wine and gives her chubby cheek a peck. “Congratulations on the house. It’s nice to be back. It’s much warmer here.”

  “You bet. Didn’t you watch the news? There is a blizzard in New York. I watched TV last night—it showed people clearing piled-up snow outside their houses and scraping ice off their windshields. Everyone is wrapped up like a pregnant bear. Thousands of travelers are delayed at the airports due to flight cancellations. Well, you don’t need me to tell you that. You lived there. I don’t understand why a place with such a terrible climate can be so expensive.” Ingrid has noticed that whenever people in San Francisco discover she has lived in New York, they try to talk down the Big Apple. It seems these two cities are competing to see which is the better place to live.

  As Ingrid follows Violet into the house, she says, “I actually don’t mind snow. I like to have a white Christmas.” She feels like arguing for New York.

  Violet continues, ignoring Ingrid’s remark. “It’s not just the East Coast. The news said that Europe is also freezing. And there’s hurricane somewhere in Asia. And of course, there are always wars going on in Africa or the Middle East. Australia is having a drought right now. Do you know that people there aren’t allowed to wash their cars at home? How absurd! Even if it didn’t have the drought, it is just too far from everywhere. Who wants to live there?” A native San Franciscan, Violet has made it clear that no other place on the planet is better than her hometown. Though Ingrid used to be attracted to Violet’s bubbling personality, considering her outgoing and bold, she now thinks her shallow and annoying. And God, she’s gained weight!

  The room is packed, with both adults and small children. Sharing a long, cumbersome sofa, several women are talking about their children, while the children crawl on the carpet or play with toys. They wave at Ingrid and say their names, but Ingrid cannot remember any of them. One woman with permed hair winks at Ingrid and says loudly, “No children?” a question that makes the other women laugh heartily, as though it were a joke. Their husbands, presumably, are listening to Violet’s husband, a former engineer who has become a junior financial consultant, talk about investing for retirement and children’s educations. Her husband makes a small chart on a page he tears from a notebook he has been carrying, to show his attentive audience major index funds’ growth rates compared with that of the benchmark Dow. “Do you have a 401(k)?” Violet’s husband suddenly stops drawing his chart and asks Ingrid. She shakes her head. “You don’t? You really should.” Violet’s husband nods seriously while eyeing his audience, as if saying, “Believe me, you don’t want to be like her.”

  “Maybe soon,” Ingrid says politely.

  Violet’s husband extracts his business card from his pants pocket. “Call me when you’re ready. I’d love to help.”

  Other than Violet, three of Ingrid’s old classmates are at the party. She wasn’t friends with any of them at school and hasn’t seen them since graduation. Ted owns an accounting practice, and Alison works at the financial software company where Violet works. Violet leaves to greet the newcomers—all with children—so Ingrid tries to hang out with Ted and Alison, who were talking about new accounting rules when she showed up. Ted and Alison hug Ingrid with feigned enthusiasm—“Oh, my God, Ingrid! Long time no talk. How wonderful to see you! You look gorgeous,” Alison says. Since Violet mentioned that Ingrid has lived in New York for the past three years, Ted and Alison ask about her life there. But after learning that she didn’t work on Wall Street and isn’t even in the financial industry, their enthusiasm gives way to disappointment, then boredom: clearly, Ingrid is not someone they can add to their professional networks. Ingrid realizes that she has little to say to them. To keep the conversation going, they begin to talk about their professors and classmates. At this moment, another classmate, Joseph, shows up.

  “Remember Jerry Pike?” he asks, excited.

  “Sure. He was quiet, I think. Didn’t he try to kill himself because his parents were getting divorced?” Alison screws up her eyebrows. “What’s with him? Did he attempt another suicide? Did he finally succeed?”

  “I remember him,” Ted says. “Man, he wasn’t in a good shape. He had a crush on you, didn’t he?” He elbows Alison. “Didn’t you go out with him for a while?”

  “He wasn’t my type,” Alison answers and coughs out a dry laugh. “He couldn’t get a job here after graduation. I don’t know where he went.”

  Ingrid contributes her impression of Jerry: a guy who liked to read science fiction. She wants to say a little more: after all, they were classmates for four years. But she cannot think of anything to add. In those four years, she now regrets, she spent most of her time and energy confronting her sister like a belligerent child. Except for Violet and a few others, she rarely hung out with fellow students. She was a shadow in her classes, on the campus.

  “He is doing extremely well now,” Joseph says. “I just heard from Diana Gilbert that he retired. I mean retire retire.”

  “Really? How so?” both Ted and Alison ask.

  “The lucky bastard joined Amazon in 1996, before the company went public and got stock options. Then, right before the company’s stock tumbled, he sold all his shares. He must have made millions. Diana said he was planning to buy a private jet and invest in a baseball team.”

  “Jeez!” Alison says.

  “Maybe you should divorce your husband and marry him instead,” Ted teases Alison.

  “My goodness! Did you seriously mean that Jerry Pike? The guy with bow legs?” Alison still looks shocked.

  The discussion turns to organizing a class reunion and inviting Jerry to the Bay Area. Alison’s voice is affectionate, as if she had always liked Jerry. Bored, Ingrid excuses herself and goes to the kitchen to get a drink. While sipping wine, Ingrid watches the exuberant mothers in the living room still talking about baby food, diapers, toys, breast feeding, schooling. The more experienced mothers share their wisdom with the newer ones. Ingrid doesn’t dislike children, but she is none too fond of parents who cannot stop talking about their offspring. She decides that it was a mistake to come to this party, which is all about parenthood and professional networking. Honestly, though she likes San Francisco, she doesn’t have friends here. The good thing is that she’ll stay only a few months, like an expatriate, then go back to New York. This trip will be a proper good-bye to part of her life, to San Francisco—when she left this city she was in a rush.

  Ingrid remembers that Angelina once claimed she was no one’s woman and no one’s mother, which brings a smile of approval to Ingrid’s face. Maybe she’s like Angelina, she thinks. At this moment, Violet walks into the kitchen. “Want to take a look at Emily?”

  Before Violet reaches the crib in the baby’s room stuffed with Disney soft toys, Emily makes a whimpering sound. Violet bends to scoop up the ten-month-old baby, “Isn’t she the prettiest girl in the world?” Ingrid looks at the baby, her wrinkled forehead, swollen eyelids, beady eyes, and disproportionately big nose.

  “Oh, my God, she’s so adorable,” Ingrid remarks, despite her negative opinion.

  Violet covers the baby with loud, affectionate kisses, then looks at Ingrid. “Want to hold her?” Her voice suddenly trembles as if she were giving her child away to an enemy.

  Ingrid doesn’t want to but doesn’t have the heart to say no. She locks her arms over her chest to make the cradling position.

  “No, no, no. Not like that. Hold Emily in your left arm first, letting her head settle in the crook of your arm, then use your right arm for extra support.” Violet sounds as though she were reciting from a Parents magazine article.

  Ingrid follows the instructions, regretting again that she has come to the party. The baby is now against her chest: warm, smelling like butter.

  “You look so natural!” Violet exclaims, in a way that makes Ingrid feel she has said this many times to a childless woman who has been coaxed or forced to hold her daughter.

  Before Ingrid ca
n say “Don’t kid me,” the baby wakes up and begins to scream. Ingrid hastily hands her back to Violet, but she’s a little too late—the baby has already soiled her blue silk Miu Miu blouse with her milky saliva.

  “I’m sorry,” Violet says, though she doesn’t look sorry. She wipes Emily’s mouth with a small towel hanging on the crib’s frame. “You know, babies are like this. They don’t care if you’re Princess Diana or Bill Clinton. They do whatever they want. There’s Kleenex there.

  “Oh, she just pooped,” Violet says with a smile after checking the baby. “She poops a lot! Why don’t you help me change the diaper?” She yanks off the baby’s pants and asks Ingrid to fetch a new diaper from a big box of Pampers. “Thank God there’s Costco. Until you have a baby, you don’t know how many diapers they use a day!” After changing the baby’s diaper, Violet puts her back in the crib, making her stand, and holds her puffy arms. “Emily, you can walk, can’t you? Why don’t you show Ingrid that you can walk?” She talks to the baby with that unnatural whining voice parents generally use. The baby doesn’t walk but leans backward, her eyes bulging, looking angry. “Okay, okay, my princess doesn’t want to walk today. How about stamping your feet? You did that yesterday. You were like Shirley Temple.” Violet stamps her own feet to set an example, her eyes fixed eagerly on Emily. The baby makes a squeaking sound, a little bit like a rat, then whimpers.

  “Little Emily is sleepy, aren’t you?” Ingrid says to the poor baby, who is like a puppet in her mother’s grip. As soon as she says it, she hates her voice—affected by Violet, she has used baby talk as well.

  Violet lies the baby down in the crib and turns to Ingrid. “There are too many people here today. Usually, she smiles and moves a lot. You should see her when she smiles. Oh, did you see her teeth? She has two! Bottom fronts.” For the next half hour, Violet forces Ingrid to sit on the floor and browse through Emily’s five oversize albums, explaining each photograph and entry with awe and wonder. A few times, Ingrid looks at Violet’s beaming face, wondering at how motherhood has transformed such a rowdy girl into an enthusiastic baby lover.

  Ingrid plans to say good-bye with the excuse that she has an appointment with her hairstylist, but Alice Yao, another former classmate, arrives with her three-year-old daughter. Her daughter soon begins to play with the other children in the living room. Violet leaves Ingrid to videotape the children. A housewife, Alice isn’t interested in the financial discussions that Ted, Joseph, and Alison are having, so she stays with Ingrid.

  Alice tells Ingrid that she was divorced last year. Her former husband is a real-estate investor who has made a small fortune in Florida and Las Vegas, where he predicted rising markets caused by baby boomers’ retirements. Her husband recently moved to Palm Springs.

  “With his lover.” Alice’s voice is bitter. “I think he’s a guy, but I don’t know for sure.” Alice then tells Ingrid that she’s going to live for a few months in Shanghai, where her parents own two restaurants.

  “Both my daughter and I are learning Mandarin,” Alice says. “My parents have moved most of their assets to Shanghai and have even bought a house there, planning to live there permanently after they retire. They were born in Shanghai. In 1949, when the Community Party seized power, my grandparents took them to Taiwan. Later, my parents moved to the States. They spoke English at home and didn’t teach me Mandarin. It was a pity. I wish I’d learned some from you at college.”

  “I heard that a lot of Taiwanese live in Shanghai nowadays,” Ingrid says.

  “Indeed. I don’t know how many, but it’s a lot. Where my parents bought their house, more than one third of the residents are Taiwanese. I visited Shanghai for the first time two years ago, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was so modern! Skyscrapers, designer boutiques, bars and clubs, upscale shopping malls, you name it. Both my brother and sister moved to China recently, one to Shanghai, the other to Beijing. My sister is at a language school, and my brother works for a local computer company.” She pauses. “Ingrid, why don’t you go back to China? With your double background, you could surely find a highly paid job.”

  “I’ve yet to figure out what to do there.” Ingrid manages a smile.

  After Ingrid leaves Violet’s apartment, she is still thinking about Alice Yao.

  Back at San Jose State University, Alice had been hostile to Ingrid. Initially, Ingrid had felt a natural connection with Alice because there were few Asian faces in the class, and she’d wanted to make friends with her. But Alice had turned a cold shoulder to her. If they were assigned to the same study group, Alice would ask to join a different group; at dorm parties, if Ingrid was hanging out with a group of people, Alice would say hi to everyone except Ingrid. Behind Ingrid’s back, she called her FOB—Fresh off the Boat.

  Then, Ingrid hadn’t lived in the United States for long, and her English was limited. Often she had to use gestures to express herself. When she wasn’t sure how to say a word, she tapped her right forefinger on her left palm, as though looking for something there, and she blushed. She rarely made steady eye contact with her conversation partner, instead glancing sideways or looking at the ground. Later she adopted the American way of looking at the other person while conversing, a disrespectful and threatening gesture in Chinese culture. Wherever she went, she brought a pocket Webster’s dictionary in case she had to look up new words. She was reluctant to speak English, especially with a native English speaker, but gradually she began to speak more, to ask questions in class, and to attend school activities. Though she still made frequent mistakes, she no longer panicked but managed to finish her sentences calmly.

  The language was hard enough, but learning about American culture was harder. To improve her cultural knowledge, she took classes in the arts and humanities departments; one of the classes was about media’s influence on the popular culture. The professor mentioned dozens of celebrities in entertainment and sports. Ingrid recognized only three, all with names starting with M: Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Madonna—well-known in China. But she had no clue about the rest. After asking an American student, she realized that Tiger Woods is a golf star who is one quarter Chinese, one quarter Thai, one quarter African American, one eighth Native American, and one eighth Dutch, while Oprah Winfrey is an Emmy Award-winning black talk show host who is also a book critic, an actress, and a magazine publisher.

  Ingrid was self-conscious about her looks compared with the other girls in her class, who wore makeup, funky jewelry, low-cut, tight tops, and miniskirts that almost showed their buttocks. She didn’t know how to drive, had a low tolerance for alcohol. She had brought most of her clothes, shoes, and other belongings from China. Whenever she passed Ingrid, Alice would shrug and snort, as if to say, “We belong to different worlds, you know.” With her yellow skin, flat nose, and small, slanting eyes, Alice wore tight tops barely covering her navel and dyed her hair different shades of blond. Her cobalt blue eye shadow and shiny red lipstick made her resemble the Stars and Stripes.

  One day, in gym class, Ingrid noticed that Alice was sneering at her Reebok running shoes. Ingrid had bought them at the airport store in Guangzhou to replace the made-in-Shanghai shoes she was wearing. She had always wanted a pair of Reeboks, but they were beyond her means. Now, with the money her sister had sent to her from the United States, she felt that it was time for her to own something from America—she couldn’t even wait until she arrived at San Francisco. The Reeboks cost her six hundred yuan, three months of her mother’s salary at the time, but she liked them and thought them comfortable and trendy. Why did Alice stare at her shoes? she wondered. After returning to her dorm, she compared her shoes with her roommate’s Reeboks. To her embarrassment, she saw that the brand name on her shoes was spelled “Reabok,” though the logo was the same. And only later did she discover, whether Alice knew it or not, that Reebok was a British company, not from the United States.

  After a few quarters, Ingrid made some friends, Caucasians, blacks, and Hispanics, but she had f
ew Asian friends and had rarely spoken with Alice. By then she had changed her name from Guo-Ying to Ingrid. She had gotten tired of having to repeat her Chinese name when introducing herself, and she had also felt awkward trying to explain what Guo and Ying mean in Chinese. “Your name means ‘the country is splendid’?” the other person would always ask, with a cynical frown. Assuming a new name wasn’t as difficult as she had thought, and she quickly got used to being called by her English name. Even her sister, who had adopted an English name herself, began to call her Ingrid.

  It puzzled Ingrid that Alice and a few other Asian Americans in her class were so unfriendly to her. She concluded that they thought themselves superior to her, a fresh immigrant who had no money and spoke poor English. In other words, they were Americans while she was still a Chinese. But they seemed to be fairly friendly to non-Asian immigrant students, for example, those from Europe or Latin America. So she further surmised that they viewed her, someone with the same color eyes, skin, and hair as theirs, as a threat to their American identity; she was an unpleasant reminder of their unglamorous past or, more accurately, their parents or their ancestors’ unglamorous pasts, more often than not associated with poverty and ignorance.

  Another thing that puzzled Ingrid was that Alice and her American-born Asian friends usually hung out together instead of mingling with other ethnic groups. If any of the girls in the group dated a Caucasian, she would arouse gossip among her friends, being secretly accused of “selling out.” But this kind of gossip sometimes contained jealousy, as if this girl were with someone from a higher class. The reaction was the same when an American-born Asian boy was seeing a Caucasian girl. However, dating a black or a Hispanic was disapproved of. Once, Ingrid overheard an American-born Vietnamese girl say to Alice, “My mother said that she wouldn’t care who I’m with as long as I am not with a black or a Hispanic.”