Rent a Boyfriend - Gloria Chao Page 0,73

how good of a grade I got. It was what every parent did so I didn’t question it, but I hated it. Of course you hated it too. We believe a stern hand is the way to produce moral, hardworking children, but . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Now I couldn’t keep the tears from falling, but for once I didn’t try to hide them. “Thank you for saying that. I know this hasn’t been easy for you. Any of it. As a child, I could tell you didn’t want me. And now you standing up for me . . . well, I feel like you want me.”

She looked up, her eyes transparent for the first time. “Of course I want you. Maybe I wasn’t . . . ready . . . when you were little. I’m sorry you could tell. You weren’t planned. Actually, I found out I was pregnant with you at my appointment to get my tubes tied. Counting doesn’t work, even if your period is regular.”

I wanted her to add, just kidding, but I knew she was telling the truth. It explained why Xing and I were nine years apart in age. Deep down I had known that I was an accident, but I could never admit it to myself. I couldn’t handle my parents not wanting me before and after my birth.

“I want you now.” She placed a hand on mine, but as soon as contact was made, she lifted and pulled back. “Xing was such a handful—he ran off at airports, colored the carpet with marker—and I had him before I was ready.”

She took a few moments to collect herself, then locked eyes with me. “Your yéye was dying when Bǎbá and I met. Emphysema. He only had a few months. Bǎbá was the only other Taiwanese student in Missouri, where we were in graduate school, and I was already twenty-seven. Past marrying age. My eggs were going to be dinosaurs soon!”

I groaned but let her continue.

“We married after three months. I didn’t love him. How could I when I barely knew him? I hoped the feelings would grow with time. But I didn’t know he couldn’t communicate. That he was so angry underneath.”

Her eyes left my face, as if she couldn’t look at my reaction as she told me the rest of her story. “As you already know, Bǎbá is the eldest and only son. He had to carry on the family name. The moment we married, Yéye demanded a grandson. If it was a girl, Yéye didn’t want her. Girls don’t matter. For Yéye’s generation, only the boys count. He used to say he has three siblings when he actually had eleven—three brothers and eight sisters.”

I knew the culture was largely to blame, but I couldn’t help loathing him a little. “Well, good job, you had a boy.”

“I ate nothing but tofu, lettuce, and oats for a month.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” I felt like we were speaking different languages.

“Those foods increase your body’s pH, which helps you have a boy.”  The usual lecture quality to her tone was missing. In its place, regret. “As soon as Xing was born, Nǎinai and Yilong took him from me to Taiwan. To Yéye.”

I thought of the pile of photographs in the back of the hall closet that I had stumbled upon when I was too young to understand. Hundreds of photos of Xing’s first year of life—all of him with Nǎinai, Yilong, and Yéye. The only photo of Xing with my mother from that year was in the hospital, right after he was born. I had never guessed the truth—it was too preposterous, too horrifying. But now, hearing it straight from my mother, it made complete sense, and I wondered why I had given my dad’s family so much credit that they had never earned.

Her voice became stripped, raw, breaking between sentences. “I didn’t see Xing for the first year of his life. I couldn’t afford to go with him. I was still in school. We were living in a trailer home. No health or auto insurance.”

Part of me wanted to say, How could you let them take him? But I knew there was no way I could understand what it had been like for her. And hadn’t I also felt trapped? Hadn’t I done things I normally wouldn’t have because I felt I had no choice?

She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. “When Yéye died, they sent Xing back.