Rent a Boyfriend - Gloria Chao Page 0,74
Suddenly I had to figure out how to become a mother on my own. Bǎbá didn’t help at all. I became bitter at everyone. I couldn’t take it out on Nǎinai or Bǎbá, so I took it out on Xing. Then, when you came along, I took it out on you. I’m so sorry.”
I felt like I had been dragged under by a wave, overwhelming me in the moment but washing me clean in the process. For the first time, she had been honest. And for the first time, I saw her. “I’m sorry it was so terrible for you.”
She planted her palms on the table and closed her eyes in shame. “I want to redo it. I want to shove you back in”—she pointed to her womb—“and start over. When I think about all the things I did to you that I hated when I was in your xiézi, I feel so sorry. I regret it. Please forgive me.”
She reached for my wrist but stopped before contact, her hand hovering. I grabbed it and squeezed.
“I’m trying to make Bǎbá come around,” she said. “He’s just so difficult. But he needs me. He can’t cook or clean or do laundry. I have some leverage. One time he brushed his teeth with Preparation H, then blamed me! Can you believe it? He said I shouldn’t have left it so close to his toothbrush.”
“Yeah, Mǎmá, how could you do that to him?” I let out a laugh, mostly from picturing my father brushing with hemorrhoid cream.
She joined in, and we laughed together for a few minutes. A first.
She stared at our hands, still adjoined. “I’m sorry it took me so long to see, especially when I suffered in similar ways. I do want you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. But now I see—your idea of happiness doesn’t match mine. Mei, I want more for you than me. I always have.”
“Are you not happy?” I leaned forward, trying to read her eyes.
She ignored my question. “I had a cousin whose parents wanted him to be a doctor. He went to medical school, of course—no one would even think about disobeying their parents back then—but he hated it. On his medical school graduation day, he handed his parents his diploma, then drowned himself in the river.”
I gasped and pulled my hand from hers. How could she have pushed me so much after witnessing that?
“He’d always been in the back of my mind. Haunting me. I was hoping maybe when you tried medicine, you would fall in love with it. . . .” She grabbed my hand again. “But I don’t want to risk your happiness. If you say you won’t like it, I trust you.”
My response was a breath of a whisper, quieted by my welling emotions. “Thank you, Mǎmá.”
“I trust you to decide your own major and your own track”—she paused—“as long as you don’t become an artist or musician.” Her curved lip implied she was joking.
My mother! Cracking a joke! I grinned, a welcome reaction instead of the usual frustration.
She slid a red envelope across the table, shielding it with her hand as if it were contraband. “Take it. It’s all I could scrape away for now, but I’ll try to get you more. I’ll do what I can. I don’t want you to worry.”
I accepted the tiny red packet of love with a shaky hand. “So you want to see me again?”
“Of course.” No hesitation.
Outside the restaurant, I wrapped my arms around her. Beneath her winter layers, she relaxed, and then finally, what I had been waiting for, for far too long, she reciprocated. Two petite arms wrapped around my back. Squeezing. Because she wanted me.
Voicemail from my mother
I watched some of the videos you sent of Ying-Na. I didn’t laugh, but at least she’s not taking off her clothes. The audience seems to like her. Hunh. Who would’ve guessed?
CHAPTER 27
HACKING
“ARE WE DOING THIS OR what?” Nic jumped up and down and threw a few jabs. “Get pumped, Mei!”
“I am, I am,” I said in my best tough-chick voice. I wasn’t used to being up in the middle of the night, and Nic was right—I needed to circulate some adrenaline. Rocking back and forth on the balls of my feet, I returned a few punches.
“More! Not because we’re going to have fun, but because it’ll be really fucking cold and we need to get our blood pumping.”
I burst into laughter.
“That’ll work too, I guess.” She grabbed