Then he rushed off into the kitchen, picked up the cordless phone, and came back. "All right, stop crying," he said, panting, and gave Taotao the phone. "Call the police and tell them I beat you up."
"No, I won't call." The boy put both hands behind him, his mouth twisting.
"Call them!" Nan thrust the phone to him. "Let them come arrest me. Tell them I'm a violent man and should be sentenced to life." "No, I won't."
"Damn it, call them! Help me-I have had enough of this miserable life. Let them come and take me away. That will spare me all the worries and hopelessness. Let the police slam me into jail so that you can play with your computer day and night and have as many girlfriends as you want. Here, dial the number." He pointed at one of the emergency numbers on the sticker stuck to the handset.
"I won't call."
"Why? I just beat you up. Why not have me arrested? I'm an abusive parent and should be sentenced to prison. Now call!" "No, I won't."
Nan began punching the police's number madly. Taotao lunged forward and snatched the phone from his father's hands. Nan wrapped one arm around the boy as his other hand tried to loosen Taotao's grip on the phone. Father and son scuffled, and then both fell on the bed, but the boy still held the phone with both hands. Hard as Nan tried, he couldn't pry it free.
"Let go!" Nan huffed.
"No!"
Gradually Nan eased off some, then stopped to sit up. He peered at his son, who got up and moved away. The boy, still snuffling and panting, thrust both hands behind him so that his father couldn't see the phone. He stood in the corner with his back firmly against the walls. Seeing Taotao's tears and terror-stricken face, Nan froze, at a loss. In a flash he realized that his son desperately wanted to keep him home. Look at his face, so scared. Wouldn't surrender the phone even if you smashed his hands. Awash in contrition, Nan stood up and went out of the house without another word. He headed back to the Gold Wok, continually wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, weeping all the way.
5
WHEN Nan told Pingping of what he had discovered at home and what he'd done, her first response was a punch on his shoulder. Then she warned him, "Don't ever whale Taotao again, or I'll give you endless trouble."
Nan promised he would never hit the boy again.
Though Pingping smacked their son once or twice a year, she wouldn't allow anyone else to touch him. Yet in her heart of hearts she believed Taotao deserved his beating, so she couldn't help but grumble about him and even said she too would whack him. Niyan overheard her and protested, "Please go easy on him. He should have some fun."
"Fun?" Pingping retorted. "He was flirting with a girl while we work ourselves half to death here."
"He's almost eleven and should be interested in girls."
"I don't want him to have a girlfriend until he graduates from college. It's a waste of time."
"Heavens, you're such a fuddy-duddy. We're not living in China anymore. Here kids reach puberty earlier. By any standard Taotao is a fine boy. You should feel lucky to have a son like him. I have a friend whose teenage boy often visited porn sites on the Internet. He even called some women. At the end of a month his father received a phone bill for more than nine hundred dollars."
" My goodness, when did this happen?"
"Two years ago when that boy had just turned thirteen."
"What did his parents do about him?"
" His father strapped him, but the boy kept visiting porn sites, addicted to cybersex. He even threatened to sue his parents for child abuse. "
"There's no way to straighten him out?"
"His parents sent him back to Beijing the summer before last, but last year they took him back because he couldn't survive middle school there. He didn't know enough Chinese to understand his lessons. If you had a son like that, how would you feel?"
Pingping said no more, though deep down she was still fuming at Taotao for carrying on with Livia. The greatest regret in her life was that before she met Nan she'd had a boyfriend who had wasted five years of her life. She had gone to the young man's home on weekends, hand-laundering and cooking for his family. Because of serving them, she couldn't concentrate on her schoolwork, though she always got good grades. Without the boyfriend she could have gone to graduate school and achieved much more in her life. Those years spent with the man who later jilted her were the most miserable and empty period of her life. At any cost she wouldn't let her son repeat the same mistake.
After returning home from work that night, she said to Taotao, "You must stop writing to Livia."
Nan added, "She must have a dozen boyfriends, and you're just one of them, like a toy."
" How do you know?" asked Taotao.
His mother put in, "I took care of her for several years, and I know what she's like. She's not a serious girl. She's boy crazy and just playing games with you."
"She's my friend."
"You must never take a girlfriend like her."
"Why?"
"Why? Our family is not their kind and we're poor. We don't have eight fireplaces in our house, do we?" "No. But that doesn't mean she's bad."
"Stop arguing. I served the Masefields long enough. Do you want me to be a servant of my daughter-in-law?" " What are you talking about, Mom?"
Nan also felt that Pingping had stretched this too far, but he didn't say another word. He didn't want Taotao and Livia to be close friends either. He'd feel uncomfortable to see the Masefields again and was afraid they might not treat Taotao well.
" Do you want to be a servant boy all your life? " Pingping asked their son.
"No."
"Then drop Livia. You're a poor boy, and a rich girl like her will treat you like a piece of trash. Do you remember Phil?" Phil was Heidi's brother-in-law, a Spaniard without a penny of his own, and the Masefields would frown at him even in the presence of Heidi's sister, Rosalind, the one Phil had married.
"Yes, he's a good guy," Taotao said.
"Do the Masefields respect him?" asked his mother.
"Not really."
"Do you want to be like him?"
"Damn it, Mom! I'm not going to marry Livia, okay? You're crazy and imagined the whole thing."
"Then why do you carry on with her?" "We just have a good time."
"Stop this American 'fun' crap! I don't want you to learn how to toy with girls. You must be a serious and responsible man."
Taotao turned pensive, but looked unconvinced. His mother went on, "It just wastes your life to have a girlfriend so early. I want you to concentrate on your schoolwork. As for a girlfriend, you can wait until you graduate from college."
The boy made no reply and turned to his father, gazing at him beseechingly. Nan sympathized with his son, yet he felt the boy shouldn't be so close to that girl or he might get hurt. On the other hand, it would be better for Taotao to know some girls before he grew up and entered into any serious relationship. If Nan could have restarted his life, he'd have dated many girls casually before losing his heart to a woman. "All right," he said to both his wife and son, "time for bed."
" I want him to promise us to break with Livia," insisted Pingping.
"I'll take her just as a regular friend, okay?"
Pingping said no more, knowing Taotao was too stubborn to make a full promise right now. She went into her room and picked up a towel for a shower, still grumbling about what a weakling her son had become.
The next day Mrs. Spiller, the geography teacher, asked Taotao in class, "What happened to your face? Somebody hit you?"
"No, I bumped into a wall when I was going to the bathroom last night." Though a little flustered, the boy forced a smile.
"You look awful."
"It hurt like hell, but I'm all right now." "Uh-uh, language."
"Sorry." He lowered his head and resumed working on his map. The teacher had assigned the class to create a country of one's own, and each student was to draw a map of an imagined territory containing different time zones, several cities, forests, plains, highways, harbors, sea routes. Taotao loved the project.