Fiona and Jane(9)

She hadn’t told Jasper or anyone else about the inheritance money. Only her mother knew. She could draw from the sudden windfall and pay back the church. Figure out a way to do it anonymously. What about New York? another voice inside her asked. Moving costs, a security deposit, and first month’s rent on a new apartment?

When Jasper asked last week if she would move with him, Fiona couldn’t help but be swept up by the romance of it: a new city, a new start. Her impractical sweetheart. She loved Jasper. And so she’d agreed to go with him. She said yes to New York, yes to living with him. Today, when the inheritance check arrived, Fiona felt like she’d been given a sign. She was suddenly one of those people for whom things magically fell into place. She’d yet to break the news about her decision to her mother, who, Fiona knew, expected her to return to LA after graduation. Nor to Jane, who Fiona assumed felt the same.

When her mother was twenty-two—the age she was now—Fiona was six years old. That was the year she took ballet lessons with Miss Fang. Her last year in Taipei, before she and her mother moved to California, sponsored by her mother’s older brother. She was still Ona then. She thought of what she’d learned as a child about the mystery of her father’s absence—how her grandfather had once promised to make the missing man appear at her dance recital, on Father’s Day, no less. Memories passed through her mind as she left the bank and strolled down Telegraph Avenue. What did she recall of that time? Her mother was her whole world. And Shulin, the downstairs neighbor, who died in the earthquake. Fiona shook her head, as if to clear it. It felt as though she were tunneling down into some secret theater, the air slightly damp there, pictures tinged in nostalgic sepia tones. She burrowed deeper—she let herself remember being a girl called Ona, inhabiting a time when she answered only to that name.



* * *



? ? ?

Ona’s mother used to watch her ballet class every week through a large window cut into the wall separating the studio from the front office. Chairs were lined up for this purpose, and other mothers sat there, too, observing the girls as they went through the exercises at the barre and took turns moving across the floor while Miss Fang counted the beats out loud. After class, Ona and her mother would stroll down the street for steaming bowls of soup noodles. Her mother liked the Cantonese-style with red roasted beef, and Ona always ordered the thin Taiwanese vermicelli in clear onion broth.

The dance studio and the noodle shop were located in a part of Taipei bustling with college students. They traveled in groups, with their backpacks full of books, eyes bright and darting behind glasses, their conversations filled with words like “project objectives” and “oral presentations.” Even then, Ona knew those students had something her mother wanted, from the way her mother’s eyes followed them down the street. Something else Ona knew: her mother was a “widow.” She’d heard one of the other mothers at after-school pickup whisper that unfamiliar word, then cast a pitying glance in Ona’s direction.

On Sundays, Ona and her mother visited her grandparents at their apartment on Kwang Shin East Road. They rode two buses then walked several blocks, cutting through a large green park with a long soccer field. They’d started this routine only recently, soon after Ona began her ballet lessons with Miss Fang. Before these audiences, her mother fussed over Ona’s hair, inspected her fingernails, made sure she wore clean white socks and underwear without any holes.

Her grandparents lived in a tall building with more buttons in the elevator than Ona could count. Nearby, there was a private elementary school, and more than once Ona’s grandmother had badgered her mother about transferring the child there. She was at it again this Sunday.

“I’m telling you, I know the woman who works in admissions,” Grandmother said. “There’s an impossible wait list, but she owes me a favor.”

“Ona’s happy at her school now,” her mother replied.

“The son of Chiang Kai-shek’s first cousin goes to that school. What does that tell you?”

“She adores her teacher.” Ona’s mother glanced down at her. “Don’t you, bao bei?” The girl nodded. Her mother smiled, and Ona smiled back.

Grandmother sucked her teeth. “How easy it would be for me to pick her up from school, and in the afternoons, we can keep her here while you’re at work.” She cast her gaze toward Ona, then back up at the girl’s mother. “Maybe you can go back to school, too. You’re always carrying on about how you want to finish your courses, get your degree.” Her expression softened, and she reached out and put a hand on her daughter’s arm. “There’s still time for that, Wen.”

Ona stared up at her grandmother, waiting for her mother’s reply. She studied her grandmother’s eyebrows with fascination, the two arched lines tattooed underneath the brow hairs, a few of which were gray at the outer corners. The ink was fading from black to dark blue. The same color rimmed Grandmother’s eyes, under her lashes.

“Where’s Ba?” Ona’s mother asked. “He’s out?”

“Why are you so stubborn? I’m trying to help you! The best thing for the little girl, and for you—”

“Ona,” her mother said. “Do you see him hiding somewhere?”

The glass door leading to the balcony slid open, and Ona’s grandfather poked his head into the living room, as if he heard himself summoned. He motioned with his hands for Ona to come outside.