Motherland

It was going fine for a second date. Her name was Brittany and we’d met at a friend’s party up in Chelsea a month ago. She was pretty. She had wispy strawberry blonde hair and calm blue eyes. We went to an unsurprisingly mediocre vegan place last week and we had gotten along surprisingly well sober. She even texted me back somewhat regularly. This time she insisted I had to take her to get bubble tea, since she had “never tried the tea with those bubble things before.” Next thing you know, we’re walking through a park in the Lower East Side, one in the morning, out of bubbles in our tea and almost out of things to talk about.

“You know, I think it’s so cool that you know another language! I wish I could speak another language. I took two years of Spanish in high school and I can barely ask where the bathroom is,” she said. She chuckled and clung onto my arm.

“Yeah, I sort of just picked it up growing up around my grandparents. They only speak Cantonese so it was the only way I could talk to them.”

“Oh my god, that’s so cute!” She tugged at my coat sleeve. I chuckled and we walked in silence for a few moments. “Wait so what’s Cantonese? Is it the same as Chinese and Mandarin?” She was like an inquisitive little puppy. She had a white beanie with one of those little puffs on the top and every time she asked me a question it would flail around chaotically. It was cute.

“Uh, ok, so, people usually mean Mandarin when they say Chinese. And Cantonese is a dialect that only people from the South really use,” I explained.

“Wow, that’s so interesting, I had no idea. Well you seem to know it pretty well,” she said encouragingly.

“Eh, I know enough to get around, but not enough to make my parents proud,” I quipped.

“Oh my god, stop.” We laughed and she slapped my arm playfully. “Come on, Simon, teach me a few words!” She pulled me by my arm toward a nearby bench.

“Fine, fine.” I gave in.

She danced her way over to a bench and sat down, back straight, legs together, like a schoolgirl on picture day. “Ok, ok, how do you say pretty?” she piped from the bench.

“Well, it depends. If you were going to call a girl pretty, you’d say leng lui. If it were a guy, you’d say leng zai,” I explained while pacing back and forth like a professor.

“I bet you get leng zai a lot then,” she teased. The Cantonese words tripped and stumbled out of her mouth as she giggled. I gave her a dry laugh in response and joined her on the bench.

“Alright, what else?” I asked as we huddled closer together for warmth. I watched our little clouds of breath swim through the milky midnight air as she pondered her next question.

“How do you say my place or yours?” She smiled and pulled me in by my coat lapel for a tender kiss. Her perfume mixed pleasantly with the smell of rose milk tea. I kissed her back, my hands finding their way to her waist as she wrapped her arms around me.

“Gun ngo fan ook kei la,” I said, pulling away coyly. I stood up and looked around for the nearest street sign to call an Uber from.

“Wait, so, like, your place or mine?” she asked from behind me.

“Oh, mine, mine,” I laughed. I glanced between my phone and the mesh of trees behind the bench, when Brittany gasped and started slapping my leg. I turned around to find a man dressed in a large black hoodie and a pair of raggedy, stained blue jeans. He had his hood on over his head tightly and a bandana around his face. His hand poked through the pocket of his jacket and the other was stretched out toward me.

“Hey man! Wallet and phone!” His English followed cadences I had heard from the lips of the men I had grown up around; not of my teachers, or actors we’d watch, or even musicians we’d listen to, but a familiar song sung by my uncles at every family gathering, the waiters of the restaurants my family and I frequented, the guy who did my dry cleaning, and the occasional taxi driver. It took me by surprise at that moment. The man jabbed his pocketed hand toward me, accentuating the outline of a vague threat still in his pocket. The soft moonlight illuminated the slit of face left between his bandana and hood. I could tell he was the same age as me, but he stood several inches taller and had a skinny frame. I didn’t need to see the rest of his face to know he and I were the same. I slowly put my hands up in the air.

“Hey, hey, chill man.” I locked eyes with him and met the withered eyes of a man not evil, but desperate and brave.

“Wallet and phone! Right now!” His words were shriller this time and I noticed a slight shake in his voice. I switched tongues almost by instinct.

“Do you need money? Let’s calm down for a second.” His eyes widened and he stepped back momentarily.

“Simon what are you doing, just give him your shit!” Brittany whispered frantically.

“I got this, I promise,” I lied. The limits of my own bravado never ceased to amaze me. Brittany moved slowly behind me, one arm clutched onto her handbag and the other onto me.

“Are you Chinese?” There was a new-found warmth in his voice, but the question was a loaded one. I didn’t know how to answer it.

“Yes. I’m from Guangzhou,” I lied, citing the hometown of my grandparents, hoping he would name a different region. Maybe some place up a little further up north.

“Really? Guangzhou where?” His stance relaxed and he took his hands out of his pockets as he asked me another question.

“Panyu, near Tian He.” I lied again. I recalled my Grandma’s stories of my mother’s upbringing and the few times I had looked up the places on Google Maps as a child. I had never been to China, I was from fucking Boston. The closest thing I had to roaming the streets of China was roaming the streets of Chinatown.

“I’m originally from Kecun! We’re neighbors it seems!” He put his hand over his chest and extended his hand to me once more, this time seemingly in peace. “So, you’re quite well off then, obviously.” His tone shifted once more. I laughed nervously, slowly putting down my hands and gripping his briefly.

“Simon what the fuck is going on?” Brittany whispered to me again.

“Just shut up for a second.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked him slowly.

“My friend, come on.” He chuckled and put his hands on his hips. He jabbed at me once more. Brittany flinched and let out a whimper. “You’re from Tian He aren’t you?”

“Oh, right. Well, I guess that’s true,” I replied carefully.

“She your girlfriend? She’s hot bro.” He laughed. “These white girls. They’re like that.” I laughed nervously with him and glanced at Brittany. She was still behind me, wildly confused and totally alienated by our unorthodox exchange. “Well, neighbor, you got any cash on you?” He scratched his head and extended his hands once more. I smiled and obliged, pulling out my wallet. I looked up and caught him staring at it.

“Wow, you have an American driver’s license? When did you move here? Did you move here for school?” His questions took me off guard. I stuttered momentarily.

“Uh, yes, I moved for college a few years ago.”

“Did you really? Wow. My cousin tried to do that last year. Which high school did you go to back home?” I racked my brain for answers. Where does my little cousin go to school? Where did my dad go to school again? I was coming up empty. I had no answer to his question. I froze and looked at him. I hesitated for a second too long. We locked eyes once more and at that moment we both knew what had happened. “Fuck your mother, you fucking American.” He snatched my wallet from my hands and brandished a bright yellow box cutter from his hoodie pocket.

“Just give him the fucking money, Simon!” Brittany screamed from behind me.

“Give me your shit, bitch!” The man switched to his broken English and waved the box cutter towards us as I stumbled backward.

“Ok! Ok!” She screamed and threw her handbag in his direction, cowering behind me as I fumbled for my phone.

“Here, here, I’ll give it to you! Just don’t hurt her!” I yelled at him as I threw my phone onto the ground with her bag. Blade still extended, he lunged at me and I felt his knife deep in my stomach.

“Don’t fucking speak to me.” He pulled out the knife, bent down, and scooped everything into Brittany’s handbag. I heard Brittany shrieking as I fell backwards, clumsily propping myself onto the bench.

“Oh my god, oh shit,” Brittany stammered. She took off her beanie and pressed it against my stomach. My stomach sputtered with every breath I took, coloring her beanie red like a clumsy preschooler’s painting. As he slung her bag across his shoulder, he looked back at me, sprawled on the pavement.

“Watch your tongue, fucking American,” he spat.