The Leavers Read online

  “We’ll take it day by day.”

  “And not that I think that success in parenting is biological, but it’s hard. It doesn’t come naturally, though I hate to use such an essentialist term.”

  “It takes time. It’ll be better once he goes to school. He’ll make friends. You’ll see.”

  “I want him to open up to me. Tell me about his mother or the city or anything.”

  “He’s been through a lot. Don’t push it.”

  There was another silence, and Deming was backing away from the wall when he heard Peter say, “Maybe it’s cultural, why he’s more reserved?”

  “Maybe. Maybe. Oh, are we crazy? Having him live in a town with no other Asian kids? I wouldn’t blame him if he hated us.”

  “I’m not going to say it’ll be easy,” said Peter. “But white, black, purple, green, kids of all races have struggles with belonging. They’re fat, or their parents don’t have a lot of money.”

  “That’s true,” Kay said. “I was a bookworm with glasses. I never belonged in my hometown.”

  “Issues are colorblind.”

  “If things work out, we’ll have to make sure we connect him with his culture. I’ll talk to Elaine about that summer camp.”

  “We’ll take care of him. That’s all that matters, and he knows that.”

  Deming pressed his ear against the wall, but Peter’s words faded into mush.

  He slipped into bed. His mother was short and round and nothing like Kay. Don’t think about her. His mother talked with her hands and let him watch as much TV as he wanted. Don’t think about that. Kay and Peter only allowed three hours of TV per week. They preferred PBS.

  THE KITCHEN SMELLED LIKE milk farts and meat. Kay heaped Deming’s plate with meatloaf, gravy, and brussels sprouts and filled his glass with cold skim milk. Milk gave Deming stomachaches but Peter said it was good for him, so he drank a glass at every meal.

  He made sure to set the dinner table the way Kay taught him, forks and knives in the right order, no spoons, napkins and placemats centered, glasses in their proper corners. The other night, he saw Kay move the glass he’d placed in front of her placemat from the left corner to the right. Right, not left! Don’t screw up again.

  “One more day of summer and it’s back to school for all of us,” Peter said. Classes started tomorrow at Ridgeborough Middle and Carlough College, where Peter taught economics and Kay taught political science.

  Deming wedged meatloaf against the side of his cheek. If he gave in to the Wilkinsons he would be stuck here with them, his real family forever lost.

  Kay turned to him. “Daniel?”

  Peter’s gaze joined hers. “Are you looking forward to school tomorrow?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Daniel, please look at us when we’re talking to you,” Peter said.

  Kay’s lips pressed and creased. “We love you, Daniel.”

  He forked another chunk of meatloaf. His mother said she had wanted big things for herself, but then she had him. If he could love Peter and Kay, they could leave, too. They had been waiting for a younger child who would have been easier, whom they had wanted more.

  Late at night, Deming crept downstairs to the kitchen telephone. He remembered his mother’s cell phone number, though he’d never memorized Leon’s or Vivian’s, and there was no landline in the Bronx apartment. He lifted the receiver, pressed the numbers, and heard an automated message tell him he needed to dial a one. He tried again with a one. There was a pause, another announcement. This call cannot be completed at this time. He called again, switching the order of the last two numbers, and the phone rang but went to a strange man’s voice mail. The first number was the right one; he hadn’t forgotten, but his mother wasn’t there.

  Upstairs, the toys in the corner of his room formed a shadow. Deming made out the shapes of a fire truck, a police car, and put one vehicle in front of the other and pushed them across the rug. He rammed the fire truck into the police car and whispered the sound of sirens.

  ON THE FIRST DAY of school, Kay made a special breakfast, blueberry pancakes with maple syrup. She dropped Deming off on her way to Carlough, and he summoned his best don’t-mess-with-me face, walked into Mrs. Lumpkin’s homeroom class and found a seat. The classroom was bigger than the ones in P.S. 33, and instead of sitting at tables in groups of four, kids in Ridgeborough sat at individual chairs attached to desks.

  Mrs. Lumpkin called roll and Daniel Wilkinson was the last name called. “Here,” he said. Twenty-four pairs of eyes looked over. Mrs. Lumpkin, who was skinny despite her name, double-checked the roster.

  At P.S. 33 there’d been thirty-two kids in his homeroom, but at Ridgeborough Middle, there were only fifty kids in the whole sixth grade. Deming sat through History and Science and Language Arts. Alone at a cafeteria table, he ate the turkey sandwich, celery sticks, and hard, crisp apple Kay had packed. Everyone he saw was the same color except for him, and their silence seeped into the air like a threat.

  At home after school, Deming stared at the noiseless street, heard the same blank buzz, and felt a sickening loss. He punched the wall as hard as he could—You call that a punch? That’s a handshake!—until his knuckles were screaming and he was screaming, too. The house was empty; Peter and Kay were at work. When they were home, he was forced to keep a straight face, but it felt like he was being skinned alive.

  On the second day of school, Deming decided he had been imported from another planet to come to Planet Ridgeborough. He was not aware of the length of his assignment, only that one day, he would be sent home. This was how he got himself through the hours. He studied Amber Bitburger, who sat in front of him in Homeroom and whose long blonde hair had white strands interspersed throughout, a yellow-brown closer to the scalp that lightened progressively toward the ends, her skin visible beneath, pink and soft, like a baby animal before the fur comes in. Her eyes were a gray-green, her face a range of hills—nose, chin, cheekbones.

  They were big. Deming was big, too, he’d been one of the biggest Asian kids at P.S. 33, but they were different, had never noticed the way they looked to other people, because there were no other people present. Here, they paid too much attention to him (at first) and later, they would pay no attention to him. It was that kind of mindfuck: to be too visible and invisible at the same time, in the ways it mattered the most. Too obvious to the boys who wanted to mock him, yet girls would only notice him when he was walking around with his fly down.

  He studied their noses. Some were pointy, others drooping like overripe fruit. Some nostrils flared up and out, while others were pinched and narrow. The boys and girls separated into distinct clusters at recess, with the crumbs, the leftover kids who didn’t belong to any group, scattered along the margins of the playground. Deming could see he was a crumb. Crumbs didn’t want to be noticed but were as noticeable as an open sore, tucking themselves away to avoid the places of highest concentration: the jungle gym, the corners of the blacktop where girls congregated, the basketball court and soccer field that were home to boys who were good at sports.

  If the crumbs were successful at hiding from others they weren’t fooling each other. They lashed out at the nearest targets, happy to train that spotlight two feet over to the left. But Deming did not want to hide. Three Alley and the Bronx had prepped him, and Planet Ridgeborough was the ultimate test. He had been specifically placed on this mission by his superiors to test his strength and patience. When he fulfilled his mission he would be reunited with his real family. Who were his supervisors? He had that figured out, too. They communicated, telepathically, in Fuzhounese, the language he didn’t have to try to hear. This mission made him brave. So he got out on the blacktop at recess, out there in the open, daring anyone to mess with him.

  On the third day, a girl stopped at Deming’s table in the cafeteria, clutching a box of apple juice with a scrawny straw, teeth marks flattening the tip. Her dark hair was pulled into a stubby ponytail. Her glasses had bright red frames.


  “Where are you from?”

  Deming cleared his throat. “The Bronx. Where are you from?”

  “I’m from here,” she said, and walked away.

  On the fourth day, there was gym. In Ridgeborough, kids played sports. Football, soccer, basketball, swimming, baseball, tennis, volleyball, hockey. Ridgeborough boys were supposed to charge and ram. Deming observed the youth of Planet Ridgeborough in the boys’ locker room as they changed into gym clothes, from the unformed baby limbs of short kids like Shawn Wecker, the crumbiest of crumbs, to the meaty paws and Frankenhead of Cody Campbell. He studied Cody’s plump hands, thighs like pork roasts, the waggle and sweat of Cody’s chins.

  He took off his shoes, took off the athletic shorts Kay had bought. The crumbs stayed on the edges of rows, scuttling to change without being noticed, but the other boys joked and yelled out to their friends.

  Shawn Wecker, his foot tangled in the fabric of his shorts, stumbled into a locker. He was a small boy with a shriveled face, so pale he’d been nicknamed Ghost. “Fag,” one of the other boys said. “Ghost is a fag.”

  “Fuck you!” Shawn yelled back. “Fuck! You!” The locker room’s collective response was laughter, so much worse than anger, and Shawn slunk away. Then Deming felt the shove, a blow between his shoulder blades. He tipped forward.

  It was Cody. “What are you looking at? Chinese retard.” On the side of his face was a flying saucer–shaped mole. He pushed Deming again, but this time Deming charged Cody and knocked him backwards. Cody stumbled, making a sound like oofaa. He was less graceful than even Travis Bhopa; he was big but lacked balance. This struck Deming as both comic and predictable.

  There was a weight on him, a jab in his side. One elbow, then another. Deming cried out and the weight rolled off. Cody collected himself. Deming stood up. “What the hell?”

  The weight was Shawn Wecker, his face snarled.

  Deming walked away. “Retard,” Cody repeated. “Chinese retard.” It sounded like a bawl, fleshy and raw, an animal turned inside out.

  In gym they played kickball, a sport Deming had never played before. When it was his turn to kick, he heard a snicker and a voice go, “Nice shoes.” He looked down at his new Nikes and the ball socked him in the gut. When he whirled around he saw a row of boys trying not to laugh.

  After school, he walked home by himself. It wasn’t that far, only a half hour, but the view was relentlessly unchanging, house after house, tree after tree. The tight streets unrolled into mini-fields, so vast that looking at them made him dizzy, frightened at the unendingness. As he got farther from school, the spaces between houses were bigger than the biggest houses themselves. He had grown so unaccustomed to hearing cars that when one drove past, he jumped.

  Passing the railroad tracks, he heard footsteps behind him and tightened his stance, anticipating Cody and his friends.

  A boy’s voice said, “Hey.” Deming lunged. But it wasn’t Cody, it was a kid whom Deming had observed with curiosity, Roland Fuentes. He looked different than the other kids; he, too, wasn’t one of them. Deming had heard people say Roland’s last name with an exaggerated accent, drawing out the syllables like a mockery, though Roland never reacted. “Hey,” he said now to Deming, “I’m Roland. You’re Daniel, right?”

  Roland Fuentes was in the smart math class with the girl from the cafeteria, Emily Needles. He would’ve fit in fine in the city, but in Ridgeborough his speed and determination made him suspect. He jutted his chin forward as he moved, eyeballs darting like a nervous bird. His skin was browner than the bond-paper-white of Amber Bitburger and Shawn Wecker, and his dark hair was baby fine and thinning, or perhaps it had never filled in, if a boy could be balding before junior high.

  Together they crossed the tracks, kicking up gravel. No trains, to Deming’s knowledge, ever went through here.

  “You in Dumpkin’s homeroom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m in Moore’s.”

  Deming knew that but wasn’t admitting it.

  “Where do you live? I live over on Sycamore.”

  “Near there,” Deming said. “On Oak.”

  “Where are you from?”

  It didn’t seem as annoying when it came from Roland. “The city. The Bronx.”

  “Cool.”

  “Where are you from?” he asked.

  “Mars!” Roland was small but his voice was the lowest out of all the boys’, a scratchy, gravely baritone. “No. I’m from here. Ridge Burrow.”

  Roland said he and his mom lived on the corner of Sycamore and his dad was dead. “But I don’t remember him. He died when I was three and a half. In a car accident.”

  “My dad died, too,” Deming said. He suddenly wanted to be friends with Roland, to be friends with anyone. “In China.”

  “Did your mom die, too? Your real mom.”

  The word came out before he could stop it. “Yeah.”

  At dinner Peter asked if Deming had a good day at school and Deming said yes, he made a friend. Kay asked if he liked his teachers and he said they were okay, a little boring. She laughed and said, “Lump-Kin.”

  “What a name,” said Peter. “The kids must go to town on that one.”

  After dinner, Peter and Kay taught Deming gin rummy, and they sat together at the kitchen table and played cards until it got dark outside.

  Upstairs, in the silence of his room, Deming spoke Fuzhounese to his mother and told her he was sorry for saying she was dead.

  ROLAND AND DEMING HAD no classes together except for gym, but at recess they wolfed down their sandwiches and forsook the playground for the computer room, where crumbs and nerds of all grades played video games. Sometimes they’d see people in there they wouldn’t have expected, like Emily Needles, or even once, Cody Campbell.

  For two weeks they dominated the top scores for all the games, beating their own records. No matter what game you played, you’d only see two names, DWLK and RFUE. At first, Deming had typed DGUO, but Roland had asked, “What’s Dee Goo Oh?” and it was too complicated to explain. (He’d written “Deming Guo” on his worksheet the first day of school and Mrs. Lumpkin had called him up to her desk after class: “Is there a problem? Is this a joke?”) Whenever Deming won another game, Roland held a hand out and said, “Who’s awesome? D-W-L-K is awesome!” Deming returned the high-five and glanced around the room, wishing Roland would keep it down. It wasn’t safe to be bragging like that in Ridgeborough, and he didn’t like how Roland jumped up and down when he typed in RFUE, pumping his fist in the air. But between games Deming returned to the top score boards to look at the repetitions of a name that was supposed to be his.

  In math, Mr. Moore drew obtuse angles and Amber Bitburger chewed on the ends of her white-yellow hair. Stay awake, Deming told himself. Stay alert. The easiest way to make sure he wouldn’t get comfortable was to remember he was on a mission, that gin rummy and meatloaf and flannel blankets were a part of his investigation. If he held everyone at arm’s length, it wouldn’t hurt as much when they disappeared.

  After a few weeks, the wooden floors of the Wilkinsons’ house no longer felt so slippery, and when people said “Daniel” he answered, didn’t think they were talking to someone else. No longer did Peter and Kay look as unusual to him, the shade of their skin and the shape of their noses as normal as the low buzz of the empty streets, and he didn’t always remember to dial his mother’s phone number at night. When he did he always got the same message: This call cannot be completed at this time. Now it was his face that seemed strange when he saw it in the mirror.

  He told himself his mission supervisors could come for him at anytime, yank him out of class, drag him from the kickball game, approach him in the cafeteria as he ate PBJ on wheat, seemingly unaware. For he could never be unaware. There was always the possibility that one afternoon there would be his mother or Leon or even Vivian in the cafeteria, ready to pick him up and bring him home, or a rap on the door at Homeroom, Daniel Wilkinson excused as the rest of the cl
ass murmured “Oooo” like he was in trouble, and in the principal’s chair would be Mama, her face a warm light, apologizing for taking so long, rolling her eyes behind Principal Chester’s back. They would jump on the next bus to the city, and Deming could clear the lint from his throat, loosen his milk-coated tongue.

  It wasn’t his mother or Vivian who came to the Wilkinsons’ house one Friday, but a freckled white woman with a button nose and a small cup of a chin, hair springing from her face in toast-colored coils. “I’m Ms. Berry,” she said, “but you can call me Jamie.”

  “Jamie is our caseworker from the foster care agency,” Peter said.

  The woman turned to Deming. “Do you want to show me your room?”

  “Go ahead, Daniel,” Kay said.

  Jamie followed Deming upstairs and sat on the floor, against his bed. She looked at the plastic trucks. “Are these your toys?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you want to show me how they work?”

  “Not really.”

  “Okay, that’s fine.” Jamie smiled. “How’s school going? Have you made any friends?”

  “Yeah. Roland.”

  “Do you want to tell me about him?”

  “He’s—a boy.”

  “I know you’ve been through a lot of big changes recently. But whatever you want to tell me, it’s between me and you. And you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s your favorite subject at school?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about your least favorite subject?”

  All of them? “Math, I guess.”

  IN THE EMPTY PLAYGROUND, the weary swing had creaked as Deming’s mother swayed. This was last November, three months before she left. Eek-eek-eek, it went, eek-eek-eek. Deming leaned, palms on her back, but he couldn’t get her that high. Up, down, curving behind him and sweeping forward, her jacket a silver dollar against the gray sky, she had yelped into the clouds. Ha! Ha. He pushed her until she said, “Enough. Your turn.” She lifted one leg, then the other, patting the saggy U of the rubber seat.