The Leavers Read online

  Deming leaned against Kay and she stroked his hair. “There,” she said, victorious, and she laughed, a peal of delight, a flag unfurled in the sun. “It’ll be okay.”

  He followed the Wilkinsons out of the house. On the drive upstate he fell asleep and missed his last glimpse of the city, woke up in a car parked in front of a large white house with a wraparound porch, tall trees looming. In the city it had been one of those steam-chamber August afternoons that felt like dying, but here, in the shade, it was cold.

  Peter turned off the engine. “Welcome home.”

  Four

  One week later, tucked into a double bed sheathed with red flannel, Deming Guo awoke with the crumbs of dialect on his tongue, smudges and smears of dissolving syllables, nouns and verbs washed out to sea. One language had outseeped another; New York City had provided him with an arsenal of new words. He’d bled English vowels and watched his mother’s face fall.

  He wrapped the blankets tighter around him, cold even in late August. The white clapboard house in Ridgeborough, New York, population 6,525, five hours northwest of the city, was nearly two hundred years old, Peter said, an antique. Five times the size of the Bronx apartment, seven times the size of the house on 3 Alley. Three big bedrooms: one for Kay and Peter, one for Deming, and the third for guests, a bed chubby with quilts and pillows in which nobody ever slept. Two bathrooms and two floors and a whole room for eating, another for studying and working on the computer.

  A breeze snaked in through the oversized windows. The beanbags that lay across the bottoms of doors could not ward off this draft.

  I am Daniel Wilkinson.

  He shivered. He had never slept alone before, never had a room to himself, all this vast, empty space.

  Deming heard a toot-toot of a whistle. Peter was in the doorframe, hands on hips. He liked to whistle tunelessly.

  “Good morning, Daniel.”

  It always took a second to realize they were talking to him. When school started, they said, it would be easier with an American name. Though it wasn’t official. His birth certificate, Kay explained, still said Deming Guo.

  “Time to get up now. We’ll be leaving for church in an hour and a half.”

  From downstairs wafted breakfasty odors, eggs and sausage in salty grease. Deming’s stomach rumbled.

  In those early days he called them nothing, spoke to them without saying either Kay and Peter or Mom and Dad. When Kay leaned in for hugs Deming wiggled away, her hold too tight, the Wilkinsons smelling like cheese and flowers, bitter and sugary sweet. But other times he lingered. “We’re glad you’re here, Daniel,” she would say in English, then perform shapeless approximations of Mandarin words. She had learned some Chinese phrases, taken Mandarin classes and bought a Chinese–English dictionary, but her tones were so off-kilter that Deming couldn’t understand what she was saying.

  “I don’t know who you are,” he’d respond in Fuzhounese.

  When he spoke Chinese, Peter’s leg would bounce and Kay’s lips would press even thinner, as if they were being sucked into her body, her mouth consuming itself. “English,” Peter would warn, concerned that Deming wouldn’t be fluent enough for school, as if the English he spoke was tainted. His mother used to swat at his shoulders in a way that looked playful but felt serious when he spoke too much English and not enough Chinese; his weapon of choice had been the language that made her dependent on him. Whoever she was with now would have to translate.

  The giant windows. The yard outside with its large, gnarled trees. No sidewalks on Oak Street. Hours could pass without a car going by, the absence of overt sound a trickle of gauzy peach. Deming would stand at the window and listen to the languid chirp of birds, the dim roar of a distant lawnmower. The air maintained a steady, nearly indiscernible buzz. Peach-brown gauze swept over his eyelashes.

  In a corner of his new room was a pile-up of plastic games, action figures of muscular men with swords, sturdy fire trucks and police cars with miniature sirens, toys Peter and Kay said were his. (Playing cops didn’t interest him. There was nothing fun about screeching sirens.) On a shelf by his bed was a row of books, Condensed Classics for Children, paperback versions of The Count of Monte Cristo, The Last of the Mohicans, and Oliver Twist. The word condensed reminded him of the cans of milk his mother had bought as a treat, a drizzle of sugared glue atop his breakfast oatmeal. Like him, she had a sweet tooth, but didn’t give in to it often. Eduardo would offer her damp muffins encased in plastic wrap, the blueberries reminiscent of pigeon poop, but she would buy bananas instead. Occasionally there had been condensed milk, Tootsie Rolls, a package of Twizzlers.

  Full of omelet, Deming fidgeted in the pews of St. Ann’s. The collared striped shirt, a hand-me-down from a nephew of Kay’s, made his neck itch. Stand, sit, pray. The priest droned on and Deming gripped the blue button from his mother’s box. He had found it inside a pair of shorts Vivian had packed. Now he slept with it under his pillow.

  He rubbed the button’s hard upper lip, the rounded center, and remembered the subway as it shot out of the underground at 125th Street and his mother with her arms around him, saying “Look!” He dreamt of dashing up University with Michael, where the street curved and the buildings slapped hands with the sky, legs swinging, backpacks bouncing, sharing a bag of Funyuns with Elroy and Hung, shoving Sopheap around in the park. The pizzeria, the donut spot, the Chinese takeout, the shop selling rows of stiff blue jeans and dresses for $4.99. In the city, far, far away from St. Ann’s Church and the town so small you could spit on a map and rub it away, there had always been the warm press of bodies, Vivian ladling bowls of soup, the chatter of the television, chugging soda, burping contests with Michael, his mother talking on her cell phone. Sharing a bed, it had been warm enough to not need flannel blankets or wool socks.

  He tried to tuck away the Bronx in scraps and shards. Once he had read in a book, an ancient science textbook still being passed off as useable at P.S. 33—one day, man will walk on the moon, it said, more than a quarter century after the fact—that people could have tumors inside them for years, harmless cysts, and these cysts could grow teeth and hair, even fingernails. A person could carry this alien being and never know. A monster twin. A hairball double. So many things could be growing inside him, inside every person. He carried Mama and Leon, Michael and Vivian, the city. Reduced to a series of hairs, a ball of fingernail clippings and one stray tooth. A collection of secret tumors.

  Deming kicked the pew. A little girl in the next row turned around and looked at his face until her mother elbowed her.

  The minister mumbled a prayer. Deming had never been to church before, so he did what everyone else was doing. He stood. He sat. He recited lines from the heavy book and stifled a yawn. Thank you God, amen. He tried to ignore the people around him as he walked with the Wilkinsons to their car.

  RIDGEBOROUGH MIDDLE SCHOOL WAS two blocks from downtown Ridgeborough, which consisted of one main street and a park with a big American flag. Deming sat in the front seat of Kay’s silver Prius on the drive down Oak Street, then Hillside Road, across the railroad tracks and into the west side of town, where the houses were closer together and the yards were smaller.

  “Daniel might be better served if he does the fifth grade over again instead of going into the sixth. Across the board, his grades were very poor.” Principal Chester, a man with tufts of white nose hairs that protruded from his nostrils like grassy tusks, pointed to papers on his desk. “It seems that this school, this Bronx school, also recommended him for special study.”

  “I did summer school,” Deming said.

  “We’ll need the records for that, then.” Principal Chester looked through the papers. “They didn’t have the same classes we do here. What kind of math and science did you take at your old school, young man?”

  He wondered how Principal Chester could breathe through the nose hairs, and wished Michael and his friends were here so they could joke about them. “Just math.”

  “Geo
metry? And what about language arts, what did you study at your old school?” He looked at Kay. “Where is he from? Originally?”

  “I already told you,” Kay said. “New York City.”

  “But originally?”

  “His mother, I guess, was Chinese.”

  “China. Interesting. And you and your husband are his adoptive parents?”

  “Foster,” Kay said.

  Principal Chester shuffled papers. “His English may need a little brushing up on, but I’m afraid we don’t have enough foreign students in this school district to warrant an English as a Second Language class.”

  “His English is perfectly fine. He was born here.”

  “It would be beneficial to let him be with the fifth graders. Kids can get discouraged easily. We don’t want to get him started off in his new country on the wrong foot.”

  “As I mentioned, he was born in the United States,” Kay said. “And you can hear him talk, he’s fluent. I don’t agree with holding him back. It will only impart low expectations. Kids are adaptable, they learn fast. He belongs with the other kids his age, in the sixth grade.”

  “And your husband? Does he agree with all this?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Certainly your husband has an opinion as well,” Principal Chester said.

  “Developmentally, Daniel is academically above grade level. If you can recall Vygotsky, as an educator like yourself surely can, then you are aware that social interaction is fundamentally tied to a child’s cognitive development processes. Even if your school employs a transmissionist model, we can take into account that scaffolding teaching strategies among Daniel’s peer group will ensure that he can, and will, thrive in the appropriate sociocultural context. In other words, in the sixth grade.”

  Principal Chester looked at the papers again. “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” He chuckled. “All that talk about models. I’m not sure I’m as well-versed in models as you are, Mrs. Wilkinson.”

  “Dr. Wilkinson. I teach at Carlough.”

  In the end, Principal Chester put Deming in sixth grade.

  “That man’s a complete idiot,” Kay said, as they left the school.

  DEMING’S FIRST WEEKS IN Ridgeborough were like sleepwalking, murky and addled, as if he’d wake up and be back in the Bronx with a finger snap. The bag of clothing Vivian had packed was the only thing he had left from the city, clothes Kay had washed and folded and placed in the dresser in his room. She took him to the mall to buy what she called a proper back-to-school wardrobe, the parking lot a wide expanse of blacktop bigger than any lot he had ever seen, its size more apparent because of its emptiness, only a few cars parked in the myriad spaces. They walked past stores as soprano saxophone trilled over the loudspeakers, and like at church, like the few people he’d seen on Oak Street, everyone else was white.

  They passed stands selling jewelry, watches, baseball caps. “Let’s see,” Kay said. “What would an eleven-year-old boy wear?” She stopped in front of Hollister, Abercrombie & Fitch. “Do you like these stores?”

  “I don’t know,” Deming said. Inside Abercrombie & Fitch were life-sized cardboard teenagers romping on a beach, girls with sun-streaked hair laughing in bikinis and boys holding surfboards against their muscled torsos. His mother had bought his clothes on Fordham Road, he and Michael getting two of the same shirt in different sizes and colors.

  “Look.” Kay pointed to the cardboard cutouts. “It must hurt to smile like that.” She bared her teeth and struck the same pose as one of the bikinied girls, thighs lunging, arms raised. Deming watched her, not sure if he was supposed to laugh.

  Cargo Pants. Boys’ Shorts. Classic Tees. Chinos, Polos, Hoodies. Kay held up clothing and Deming said, “Okay.” In the dressing room he removed his green shorts and gray T-shirt, took off the Yankees cap Leon had given him. Michael had the same pair of shorts in blue and a striped version of the gray shirt. Did Michael miss him, or was he was glad to have the bed to himself? Leon might have called from China. If Vivian moved, his mother would have no way of getting in touch with her, to let him know where she was.

  Heart pounding, he zipped on Cargo Pants. He looked in the mirror and felt weird, misshaped.

  “Can you come out here and show me?”

  Kay gave him a brief once-over. “Do you like them? Do they fit?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, do you want them? And these shirts here, I guess, too?”

  “Okay.”

  Kay handed the cashier a piece of paper and said she had a clothing voucher for foster children.

  “We don’t take these,” the woman said. “Try Walmart or Target.”

  “Oh.” Kay laughed. “It’s okay.” She put the paper back in her purse and took out her credit card. After signing the receipt, the shirts and pants folded inside a bag, she asked Deming, “Do you need anything else?”

  Deming was puzzled at the enormity of the question. “What about sneakers?” he finally said.

  Kay’s hand flew to her forehead. “Come on, Kay, get it together. Shoes, how could I forget about shoes? Can’t go to school barefoot, Principal Chester would not approve.”

  At the Athlete’s Foot, Deming picked the most expensive pair of Nikes on the shelf, with puffy tongues and red and black stripes. Kay handed over her credit card and signed. What else could she buy him—a motorcycle, a computer? They wandered upstairs to the food court. Kay held the clothing bags, Deming the box with his new sneakers, and they shared a plate of cheese fries. He licked the hot yellow sauce from between the ridges of each fry. Crinkle-cut, they were called.

  “Did you go to malls in New York City?” Kay’s skin had become pinker, perhaps from the heat of the fries. Deming looked at families eating at other tables, old couples walking arm-in-arm, teenagers counting change and pouring sodas.

  “Why am I here?”

  Kay picked up a fry. “Because—we have room for a child in our family. And you needed a family to stay with.” She grew even pinker. “Are you nervous about school?”

  “Not really.”

  At a nearby table sat a mother with two boys around his age, all of them soft and oversized—even their teeth were big—doing diligent damage to a pizza. He accidentally made eye contact with one of the boys, who glanced at his brother and snickered. Their mother stared at Kay and Deming as if they were standing on the street with their butts exposed.

  He grabbed more fries and tried to ignore the family at the other table. He wanted to like Kay’s laughter, its bursting crescendo, and the easy way she bought him things.

  She kept talking. “I know it’s scary, being the new kid. My family moved once when I was in the seventh grade, just two towns over, but it was a new school and I thought it was the end of the world, literally, that my world was going to end. It wasn’t that I liked my old school so much, not at all, but I was scared it would be worse. But you know what, I ended up making friends. Which was a miracle in itself. I mean, I was such a nerdy kid, a bespectacled bookworm. I loved reading so much I’d stay up all night with books and fall asleep in class the next day. I’d even stay inside during recess to read. As you can imagine, that didn’t win me any popularity awards. But you’re going to be okay, Daniel. You’re going to be fine.”

  On the first day of fifth grade at P.S. 33, Mama and Vivian had walked Deming and Michael out the door of their building. All along the block were kids streaming out of their own buildings, big kids, little kids, sisters and brothers, and at the light was a crossing guard, a Puerto Rican lady who always said, “Good morning, sweethearts” in a sugary alto. Ridgeborough Middle School seemed miles away from Kay and Peter’s house.

  HE HEARD THEM TALKING on the other side of his bedroom wall.

  “It sounds horrible, but maybe a younger child would’ve been easier,” Kay said. “More of a blank slate.”

  “We waited years for a younger child,” Peter said. “Even when we were still thinking about China.”

  “I know. But
I can’t figure out how to act around him sometimes.”

  “Be yourself. Aren’t children supposed to know if you’re not being natural?”

  “You’re at school all day. Are you sure you can’t work here at least part of the time? We have a study, you can write there.”

  “Let’s not go through all this again,” Peter said. “You know this is an important semester for me.”

  “It’s not like they’re going to decide to not make you department chair because you come home early once in a while. Work-life balance. You’ve been there forever, they know you and your work. That’s not about to change.”

  “Not with Valerie in the running. She has no kids to worry about and one more book than I do. I have to work more right now, not less.”

  “Honey. Really.”

  “There’s no work-life balance when it comes to academia. You of all people should know that. But it could be different for women. There aren’t the same expectations, the same drive.”

  “Right.” Kay laughed. “We don’t have drive! We’re expected to do all of the childcare and all of the cooking and go to work and teach and do research and write our own books. We’re expected to support our husbands, make sure they’re taken care of so they can do their very important work. And lucky me, I get to be an adjunct forever.”

  “Well, you wanted this. And now you have it.”

  “Oh, that is not fair. You wanted it, too.”

  It was quiet. If Kay left Peter for another man, would Deming have to go back to the city?

  “You did want it,” Kay said. “Right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you think we’re going to be okay at this?”

  “Of course,” Peter said. “That’s the advantage of fostering. We can try it on for size, see what happens.”

  “I’m afraid to get too attached. The aunt or the mother, they could come back for him anytime.”