Fiona and Jane(10)

Still a little shy around him, Ona shrank against her mother’s leg. “Go on,” her mother said. She gave Ona’s shoulders a gentle push.

Grandfather beckoned with his hands again. “Hurry—I want to show you something exciting—you really have to see this,” he said, making his eyes wide.

She left her mother’s side slowly.

Her grandmother kept on about Ona’s schooling, asking where the teacher earned her credentials. Ona heard her mother sigh as her grandfather pulled the glass door shut after them. Then she couldn’t hear her grandmother’s voice anymore.

“Look down there.”

Ona peered over the gray concrete ledge of the balcony. A large unmarked truck was being unloaded in the gated park in front of her grandparents’ apartment building. The trailer had windows on its sides with vertical bars running across them, the bed much longer than the squat delivery trucks that skirted the streets and alleys of the night markets Ona was used to seeing. Three men stood at the truck’s rear. A wide mechanical ramp slowly unfolded before them.

Her grandfather lit up a cigarette and asked Ona what she thought the men might retrieve from the truck.

“Carnival games,” she said. “Basketball hoops and pachinko, things like that.” The girl answered with confidence. She was one of the top students in her class, bringing home penmanship worksheets with “100” written across the top, math quizzes with all check marks. She thrived under the attention of adults who wanted to probe the contents of her mind, those who didn’t condescend to children.

Grandfather smiled. “You think so, eh? What makes you so sure?”

He was retired now, but Ona’s mother had told her that he’d been a professor in Beijing, a highly respected scholar of classical Chinese literature. This was before the Maoists won control of the mainland, before the family escaped to Taiwan during the civil war. There was still an air of the stern professor about Ona’s grandfather, that wild head of hair still entirely black despite his age. After more than three decades in exile, Ona’s grandparents had long ago let go of believing in Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s promise to reclaim the mainland from the Communists. Though the Beijing they knew no longer existed, they still hoped to return one day, if political relations between the two regimes improved. In the meantime, they’d managed to send all their children abroad for Western educations, to get their college or graduate degrees in the US or Canada. All except Ona’s mother.

“Mama and me, we passed by a carnival before,” Ona said. “Next to the train station and the Family Mart where a fat orange cat lives in the alley.” She remembered the row of trucks, like the one below, parked behind the grounds. She recalled the children clutching cones of bright pink cotton candy, others with clear plastic bags filled with water, minnows darting inside like pieces of glinting silver. “We didn’t go in, though.”

“Why not?”

Ona looked down over the balcony’s ledge. She remembered the laughing man wearing a floppy hat, the long strips of red paper tickets coiled around his neck. How her mother had held Ona’s hand tight and said they couldn’t afford to throw away money on silly games that were rigged anyway.

“We had to catch the train,” Ona said finally.

At the top of the ramp now, one of the men held a length of rope looped around the neck of a massive black stallion. The animal towered powerfully over the man, who was trying, unsuccessfully it seemed, to lead it down.

“It’s not a carnival,” Ona said. “It must be . . .” She searched her mind for another possibility. “A pony ride,” she decided.

“If you’re right, we’ll go down there and you can ride one.”

Ona wasn’t sure if she wanted a pony ride, but she nodded anyway. Below them, the man in the park coaxed the horse step by step down the incline, at turns pulling gently on the rope, then halting to stroke its mane, whispering into its ears. Ona had never seen a real horse before, only pictures of them in books. Even from her perch on the balcony ten stories up she saw clearly the wet smoothness of the eyes each time the animal blinked, the musculature in its flanks rippling under the glossy black hide. Something inside her trembled, watching the scene below.

Her grandfather asked about her ballet lessons, and Ona told him she was going to have a recital soon.

“When is it?” He spoke with a proper Beijing accent, a curl to his pronunciation, which only added to his serious demeanor in Ona’s eyes.

“The eighth of August,” she answered.

“Father’s Day?”

“There’s going to be a special routine for the finale.” Ona showed him her pirouette, followed by a deep bow with her arms held in third position. “And after that, all the fathers are invited onstage.”

Her grandfather drew on his cigarette.

“Mama said she would go up there for me. But that’s not right, is it?” Ona’s chin dropped to her chest, and she stared at her feet. “All the other girls—”

“Look at me,” Grandfather said. She lifted her gaze up to meet his and saw kindness there. “This is what we’re going to do, my dear. I’ll go up there with you.”

“Did you know my father when he was alive?” Ona asked.

Her grandfather was silent for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “I knew him.”