Here in the backyard of my house is where some of my most memorable childhood experiences took place.
On that corner, behind the oak tree, is where I and my neighbour tried to dig a hole underground that would link us to China. Mei was her name, a tall, nimb-footed assemblage who upon first impression reminded one of a ghost, or a lone slice of grass billowing feverishly against the wind. A misleading thought perhaps, for despite all apparitions of fragility present in her reedy frame and sad, glassy eyes, Mei could climb trees effortlessly, grab insects with her bare hands and cuss at the boys who bullied her for being Chinese and me, well, for being annoying.
As a matter of fact, I only saw her cry once. On that occasion, which has prompted this tale, I had breezed through my homework to go out and play with her, much to my mother’s disapproval. My mother, an accountant in a firm downtown, had broken the ceiling as the first black woman in her office. She was an achiever, a self-made woman, who was big on the idea of wanting the best for her children. Her concept of success in life rested heavily on my ability to utilize my time efficiently through reading, writing, winning spelling bee competitions and pretty much caring about all the things she cared about.
But I couldn’t care less. I was barely nine, and all I wanted to do was draw pretty stick figures and dissect caterpillars with Mei. Talk about infant family disappointment.
Upon reaching our “headquarters” my excitement mellowed into mild concern when I found Mei with her hands between her thighs, quivering with tears. It was a confusing sight, one that left me at a loss of what to say or do. In retrospect, I guess not much has changed in that regard. I still don’t know how to respond to excessive display of emotions. It’s not coded within my personality traits.
Impatience is, however. So after a few moments of hearing her sniff and exhale like a sad dog, only to break down in tears all over again, I jabbed her on the rib.
“Why are you leaking?” I deadpanned, hoping she could read past my surface annoyance to the worry brewing down there somewhere. Mei shot me a nasty look, but the intimidation failed to hit its mark and rather drew a mischievous smile to my face. I was born stubborn to the tips of my toes and she knew as much, because after a few minutes of jabbing and poking at her, she caved, sighing softly, and then her whole being seemed to disinflate, like a popped balloon.
“I miss Nana,” she finally said. “I want to see her so bad, so so bad.”
Mei lived with a single mother who worked three jobs to make ends meet, and was always too tired to listen to her talk about all the wonders in her nine year old head. She had an elder sister who was on most days bearable, but had been undergoing a phase for sometime in which she used bad language, banged doors and listened to music that could make babies cry.
It appeared that her grandmother was the only reliable figure in her life. Nana, as she fondly called her, was a small lady whose softness and stories and steamed dumplings had cemented her place as number one in Mei’s heart. She lived in Shanghai, and you should have seen Mei speak about her with much tenderness, as though she were the last good thing in the world, and she would do everything within her power to protect her. It was a bond I was quite envious of; my own grandmother only gave me chores to do. But seeing Mei cry her lungs out was too much for me to bear.
And so that afternoon, as the autumn leaves danced in the wind, we decided, Mei and I, to dig a hole in my backyard, linking her grandmother’s apartment in Shanghai, to my little suburban house in Texas. “Because it was the safest place.”
I wish I could say I didn’t know any better, but I did. I knew plastic shovels and sandcastle buckets were useless for the kind of work we had cut out for ourselves. But the happiness on Mei´s face was all the fuel I needed to keep pushing. I humoured her efforts for two weeks, more out of necessity than faith. Afterall, she was the only girl our age I could stand being with for more than an hour, and I wasn’t going to pilfer our precious friendship over meaningless things like geography.
At the close of the second week, she seemed to finally understand how futile our actions were, because one day she dumped the bucket and told me to stop digging.
“If we get to the Atlantic, what do you think would happen? We’d drown.” She said, like that was our only problem.
I didn’t think much about it then, as we crawled out from the ground like worms with tired, mud stained bodies. But looking back, a part of me is inclined to believe that she must have found what she had been looking for. Maybe all she needed was somebody who could look outside themselves and see her standing there, without looking away.
Maybe in a quest to find her grandmother, she had found me.
And so we moved on to greater things (much to my delight) chasing butterflies, stealing cookies and shooting pebbles at passersby from our tree. Until adolescence happened and then different schools, and neighbourhoods, and later college, and Newyork, marriage and kids.
The last time I heard from her she was learning fashion design somewhere in Argentina. Engaged to a man who smoked three cigars a day. Nana was still alive, still as delightful, though she sometimes struggled to see past the frame of her bed. Our correspondences grew less frequent as the years elapsed, and I never said this to anyone, but I guess those were the happiest days of my life.
