By lunchtime, the kitchen was almost unbearably hot and humid. The ventilation system was on, but her father was cooking on four woks at once, as well as deep-frying two orders of shrimp, and the air, recycled or not, was sweltering.
Sue took the plastic bowl of chopped onions from the back counter and handed it to her father.
"More chicken," he said in English.
She hurried across the palleted floor and opened the oversize freezer, taking out the bag filled with sliced breasts that he had prepared that morning. She passed by John, who leaned against the counter and stared up at the TV. "Why don't you help out?" she asked.... He grinned at her, raised his eyebrows "Father!" "John, help your " sister"
"Why do I always have to do all the work? It's not fair. She gets to spend all day at that dumb newspaper, and I have to stay here and do everything."
"You do nothing around here," Sue said. "I could have five other jobs and still help out more than you do."
"Stop arguing," their father said in Cantonese. "Susan, you help me.
John, you help your mother out front."
"John!" ..... "Have fun," Sue said in English
"Susan!"
John stormed out of the kitchen, and Sue turned back toward her father.
He was scowling at her, but she could tell from his eyes that it was an act, and as he flipped the shrimp onto two plates, he was smiling.
John returned a few moments later, polite, humbled, and obsequious. He lightly tapped her shoulder. "Sue, greatest sister ever to walk the face of the earth--"
She smiled. "What do you want?"
"Trade with me. Let me work in the kitchen. There's a guy from my science class out front, and I don't want him to see me."
"Why?"
"Because."
"Because why?"
"Mother's trying to talk to his parents." :'
The past came rushing back in a wave of emotional recognition, and Sue nodded, understanding what her brother meant without him having to spell it out. She too had been embarrassed by her mother, by her father, by everything her parents did or said, a magnification of the mortification all teenagers felt in regard to their parents' behavior. She had spent most of her grammar school years trying to deny any association with her family.
She recalled even being embarrassed by their yard, wondering why her father had chosen to draw attention to himself by imposing his own artificial conception of nature on the desert instead of adapting to the local terrain like everyone else. All of the other houses on their street had had sand or gravel with rearrangements of existing vegetation: cactus, sagebrush, succulents. Her father had planted a yard--grass, flowers, and two ludicrous willow trees which flanked the sides of the driveway.
Even now, she still wasn't quite sure how she felt about her family.
For years she had not wanted to be seen in public with her parents, avoiding shopping trips, dreading open houses and back-to-school nights. She'd seen the smirks on the faces of her classmates, heard the snickers, when her mother had come to pick her up from school and called out to her in Cantonese. For a whole year, third grade, the year that the schoolyard rhyme "Chinese .. .
Japanese .. . Dirty knees .. . Look at these[" had made the rounds, and Cal Notting had teased her unmercifully by pulling taut the corners of his eyes and sticking out his front teeth in imitation of a stereotypical "Chinaman," she'd prayed each night before going to bed that her parents would wake up in the morning and speak perfect English. She had never been to church in her life and did not really understand the concept of God, but she'd heard enough about praying from her friends and from television to have gotten a general idea of what she was sup posed to do. So she'd folded her hands, closed her eyes, started off with "Dear God," followed that with her wish list, and signed off with "Amen." It hadn't worked, though, and she'd given up the prayers when she'd graduated to fourth grade.
That embarrassment had ended somewhere along the line, but those years had taken their toll.
John was still stuck at that hypersensitive stage, and she was a little worded about him. By the time she was his age, she had already started growing out of it and coming to terms with her family and her background.
She wondered if that was something John would ever be able to reconcile within himself.
It was hell living in two cultures. "Okay," she said. "I'll trade."
"If mother says anything, tell her it was your idea." She was about to argue with him, then changed her mind. "All right," she agreed. She caught her father's eye, and he gave her an approving nod .... He understood.
Her mother wouldn't understand, and Sue was glad that she had not been in the kitchen with them. It would only have resulted in an argument.
Her parents were so dissimilar in so many ways that Sue often wondered whether their marriage had been arranged-although she'd never been brave enough to ask. She realized as she picked up a completed order from the low shelf next to her father that she did not really know how her parents met. All she knew was that they had been living in Hong Kong and had married there. That was it. Her friends all seemed to know the intimate details of their parents' courtships and were able to recite specifics the way they would the plot of a movie. She and John knew no such stories of their parents' past.
Her mother came in through the door to the dining room. "Hurry up, John. Customers are waiting." "That's okay, John," Sue said. "I'll get it."
He looked at her gratefully as she handed her mother the plates and followed her out to the front.
"You owe me," Sue said over her shoulder as she walked into the dining room.
John nodded. "Deal."
Corrie watched through the window as Pastor Wheeler got into his car, backed up, and pulled onto the street.
She put down the pen she'd been writing with and flexed her fingers.
Being a church secretary was different than she'd envisioned. She'd thought it would be a leisurely, slow-paced job: writing Thank-you notes to little old ladies, scheduling appointments with parishioners, calling people during the holidays and asking them to donate food for the poor. But she seemed to spend most of her time filling out permit applications, making out invoices, and filing requisition forms.
/
Not that she minded.
Just as the subdued pastel light of the chUrch office in which she worked stood in sharp contrast to the harsh fluorescents of the paper office, the simple unstructured demands of her new position were a welcome change from the rigid deadlines of the Gazette. She might have a lot of work to do right now, but the labor was not mentally taxing, and she felt as though she finally had time to think, to sort things through in her mind.
She had also grown to like Pastor Wheeler, although she knew that the mere thought of that drove Rich crazy
The pastor could be a little aloof, a little preoccupied, but he was a good man, with good ideas, and he really was dedicated to serving God.
I have seen Jesus Christ.
She pushed the thought from her mind and looked down at the paper on which she'd been writing. There was going to be a big church fund-raiser a few weeks from now, a picnic, and it was her responsibility to make sure that the event was publicized in the Gazette. Rich would cynically suggest that that was the reason she'd been hired, her close ties to the paper and the publicity which that relationship could provide. But he knew as well as she did that, in Rio Verde, anyone who wanted publicity got it. There simply wasn't enough real news to take up the slack. "