The Book of Beings: Beginnings (Episode One) Page 3

  *

  If I had thought about it, I don’t know what I would’ve done, but I didn’t think. It was like when I was 15, and my dog, Lacey, who I’d had since I was little, fell into the river after a storm. I just dove right in to the current after her.

  In that moment in the garden, it was like brother Phap Hoa was my dog and Lilli was the river.

  I stood up out of the bushes.

  7

  “Oh, um, hi…” I stammered. I tried to look like I was surprised to find them there. “I…uh…Coco sent me out to pick some greens.” I looked at the weeds at my feet. I had no idea if Lilli knew what greens looked like. It didn’t help that my hands were empty. Obviously, I wasn’t great lying off the top of my head. I wondered if she knew that I wasn’t even in the right hamlet.

  Lilli stepped back from Phap Hoa. He collapsed, turned away, and put his head in his arms, leaning against the fence. He was breathing like he’d just run very fast. It was hard to tell, but he might’ve even been sobbing. Lilli shot daggers at me with her eyes.

  “You were hiding back there!” She was angry. She’d been thwarted.

  “I, uh…no.” I wasn’t doing a very good job of pretending to be innocent, even if the only thing I was guilty of was trying to hide some stupid plastic sculpture. Lilli looked back and forth between Phap Hoa and me, her eyes narrowed.

  “You were waiting for him!”

  “No, really, I have to get back to…” I made a move like I was going to leave, but she was right in the middle of the path, and she wasn’t going anywhere. Since I wasn’t about to push past her, I was trapped.

  I couldn’t imagine how things could be headed in a worse direction. I started cursing myself for not having stayed where I was.

  Lilli looked at Phap Hoa in disgust. “This is what you were saving yourself for?” She gestured at me. “You prefer this to me?” She shifted into a fake sugary voice. “I suppose you two are in luv.” She tossed her head at me. “Well, you can have him,” she threw out as she spun on her heel and flounced towards the parking lot.

  Once she was gone, Phap Hoa started making this sound. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a film where someone dies in a Third World country and all the women start making this wailing noise? I think it’s called keening. Anyway, that’s the noise he was making. It’s not the kind of thing you’d want to stick around and listen to, so I got out as fast as I could.

  I was guessing he wanted to be alone.

  8

  I know I wanted to be alone. I stumbled as best as I could to the kitchen in the women’s hamlet, and I was glad that no one else was in there. I suspected it was Coco’s nap time. I sat down on a stool in front of a counter and put my head in my hands, shaking. Then I collapsed and started to sob.

  I didn’t even know what I was crying about, but it seemed I had a lot to choose from. My mind jumped from one horrendous thing to the next. The very smallest, stupidest part of me cried because I knew Lilli was right, and that no one would ever want someone like me when girls like her were around. But the other parts of my brain had plenty to occupy themselves with. I just cried and cried.

  *

  I must’ve fallen asleep, because the thing that woke me up was this funny little old lady voice saying, “Guess world is over. No need vegetables today.”

  This was exactly the sort of thing you would expect Coco to say. If someone tried to hurt me, I knew Coco would cut out their guts with a kitchen knife. But she wasn’t exactly warm or cuddly. Coco was very into sarcasm.

  I opened my eyes and there she was, trying to look tough as she took in my tear-stained face. Most of the nuns wore hats or kerchiefs, but not Coco. She was always perfectly bald and her ears stuck way out. She was super short like the other older nuns who’d lived through the Vietnam War and she spoke English in this baby talk with her crazy accent. I thought she must’ve been the inspiration for Yoda.

  Technically, Coco was the head cook, although my mom said she was more in charge of the place than the abbess.

  Her name wasn’t really Coco. I couldn’t pronounce her real name. And she thought Manon was a weird name, so she called me Mei Mei.

  I sat up and wiped off my face.

  Coco narrowed her eyes. “Phap Hoa cry like baby in his room. Maybe you catch crying disease from him?” I should’ve known. There were no secrets in that place. Fortunately, I had learned not to be afraid of Coco.

  “Gimme a break,” I said, getting up off the stool.

  “Oh, world not over,” she said. “We need veggies after all.”

  *

  I was the one who chopped the vegetables. They claimed they didn’t believe in using food processors, so it took several hours every day. Once you get good at chopping, though, you can do it without thinking about it at all. It’s like walking or riding a bike. Then you can spend the rest of the time thinking about other things. That’s one of the things I liked about the job.

  Also, it was one of the few times I got to see my mom. She was the assistant cook. She usually came in an hour after I got started at the cutting board, which was after the afternoon meditation was over.

  When I began working for the nuns when I was fourteen or so, they all got together and decided that I was going to go to Occidental College in Los Angeles. One of Coco’s nephews went there. It was a really good school, but also really expensive.

  So they calculated how much it would cost for me to go there, and then they calculated how many hours I was going to spend in the next four years chopping vegetables, and based on that, they calculated how much to pay me per hour so that I could afford school. Needless to say, I was the best paid vegetable chopper in the world.

  I tried to explain to the abbess that it was crazy to pay me so much. There was a whole bunch of stuff they could barely afford as it was. But the abbess told me not to worry. She said they had a private donor. Yeah, right.

  I figured those impoverished women were saving their pennies and nickels behind my back. They wouldn’t actually give me the money I earned, so I couldn’t give it back to them by stuffing it in the donation box, but I did have a plan for what I was going to do with it when I got my hands on it. So on top of me already being a dork, this had given me a huge incentive to study and get a scholarship.

  In fact, I had memorized all one thousand vocabulary words on the SAT study list. I could even use them in their proper contexts. I sometimes accidentally used them in actual sentences. Dorkification complete.

  *

  When my mom came in that day, she gave me a kiss, like usual, but she kind of looked at me for a moment, which she didn’t typically do. My mom wasn’t real tuned into the things or people around her. She said, “How you doing today, honey?” she said, trying to sound casual, like she wasn’t worried, even though I could tell she maybe was. My mom almost never had to worry about me.

  “Fine, Mom,” I said. I was a good way through the cucumber, slicing them extra thin for the salad and feeling relaxed. I had been reliving my interaction with Elias on the way to the Nurse. I had been going over his various expressions in my mind and relishing the fact that he seemed to care what had happened to me. Even if he was horrified, at least he seemed to care.

  I was fantasizing about what I would say to him the next day regarding his catching me when I had fainted. In my pretend conversation with him, I was able to be genuinely grateful, witty, and yet off-handed somehow about the whole incident. I visualized his eyes dancing with mirth as we talked. It was definitely making me feel better. I was imagining that he and I would end up bonding over the mishap.

  Maybe I’m not that good at having conversations with actual people, but I’m really, really good at making up imaginary dialogue.

  My mom smiled at my response and fastened her apron. Coco wasn’t convinced, though. I could hear her grumbling.

  I just kept slicing cucumber and moved on to another of my favorite fantasies. I liked to imagine that someday when I was older and not such a dork, Elias
and I would meet again. Like we’d both be living in San Francisco or someplace like that, and I’d be able to speak to people like a normal person and also have my own business, and we’d run into each other getting coffee, and we’d recognize each other, and we’d laugh about what things were like for us in high school. Our relationship would progress from there. Or something like that.

  It was always a little different every time I imagined it.

  9

  I left the monastery after dinner, the way I did every night. I had finally braced myself and was ready to text Amanda so I could get the scoop about what had actually happened after Bio. I slipped my cell phone out of my pocket as soon as I got to the gate. I flipped my phone open (this was back when they still had phones that you had to flip open) and went to push the call button when something caught my eye.

  There was a big stone Buddha statue that sat outside the gate. One of its hands rested on its knee facing down and the other hand rested on its other knee, facing up. There was something in the open hand. I noticed it even in the dusk because the thing was brightly colored. Red and blue and orange-ish yellow. I stepped closer.

  On the Buddha’s outstretched palm stood my Virgin.

  10

  “OMG,” Amanda texted back after I’d texted her first. “I’m gunA B an auntie!” I was walking along carrying my Virgin.

  “w@?” I texted back. I didn’t even have a keyboard on my phone. This was in the dark ages.

  “u n Tony, u finly got 2gtha last summer.”

  “w@?” I texted again. Tony, Amanda’s brother, had been home from college for a couple of weeks in August. We had not gotten together.

  *

  But the year before when Tony was a senior, he came up to me in the cafeteria and said, “Have you noticed that you intimidate most guys?”

  Even if you were a good conversationalist, what are you supposed to say to that?

  Mind you, although Amanda and I had been best friends since like third grade, Tony had gone through a very long girls-are-beneath-my-notice phase, so this was the first time he’d spoken to me in years.

  I tried to figure out what was intimidating about me. The way I was always stammering? Or ducking into the girls’ bathroom? Then I realized. When he said intimidating, he meant tall.

  I fell back on my usual response, “Uh…”

  “But look, I think you’d be a great prom date. What d’you say?” Tony, who, by some freak of nature, did happen to be taller than me, and who had one of those who-me?-I’m-not-half-Asian haircuts, was looking off over the heads of the kids seated in the farthest row and absentmindedly fingering the cellphone clipped to his belt.

  Now, fortunately, I already knew from Amanda that Tony had just gotten accepted at Cal Tech, where there was approximately one girl for every four or five guys. He wasn’t all that hot on prom, but he needed to get laid before graduation because he had absolutely no chance in college.

  I also knew that Tony’s familiarity with sex was limited to playing certain video games, a fact that was, disturbingly enough, later confirmed by Rachel Binder, who did agree to go to prom with him. I guess he actually recited lines from Mass Effect before lunging at her. Luckily, she’d watched her brother play, or she would’ve thought Tony’d gone psychotic.

  “I don’t really…” I managed.

  And he was gone.

  *

  Amanda’s next text snapped me back to the issue at hand. “Rachel’s bn callN evrybdy. She sed u wr prego.”

  We’d always suspected that, even though Mrs. Costello was supposed to keep confidentiality and all, she still told Rachel stuff. Rachel always seemed to know a lot about other people’s medically related business. Which was totally illegal, of course. But what were we going to do about it? We were just a bunch of kids.

  Amanda continued, “It’s gotta B Tony, I mean, who else would you…?” Even my best friend couldn’t picture me with anyone.

  But I was not above having a little fun with her. “well, there was that one time…”

  “I KNEW IT!” Amanda texted back.

  “Tony was in the bathroom and I had to pee. So I said, hey Tony, I need to pee.’”

  “+?”

  “So then he came out and I went in and peed.”

  “w@?”

  “I must’ve gotten prego off the toilet seat.”

  “shut up!”

  “no, u shut ^!”

  “no, u shut ^!” We went on like that for a while. Amanda and I could be very juvenile, I admit. It felt good to laugh after the day I’d had.

  11

  So instead of going home, I went over to Amanda’s house so she could take charge of the situation. Also because she had my homework.

  I hadn’t been to Amanda’s for a while. I’d been feeling exhausted after work and falling asleep when I got home, which made me nervous. I’d spent six months being exhausted and taking naps after school when I was 13, and it had turned out to be a growth spurt. I didn’t feel like I could afford another one. It was hard enough not to draw attention with my height as it was.

  Anyway, since I’d had that nap in the kitchen, I felt like I might actually be able to stay awake.

  *

  Every single object in Amanda’s room was Hello Kitty. Well, it had been Hello Kitty. Then they came out with this Goth version of Hello Kitty, so she got all the items from that collection too. Amanda said the new version—I don’t remember what it was called—was perfect because she was thinking she needed an edgier image.

  That gives you an idea of Amanda. She was a wonderful person. But there were certain things she just didn’t understand. Like there’s no such thing as edgy Hello Kitty. Like whatever kind of Hello Kitty it is, it’s still embarrassing if you’re almost 17, which Amanda was at the time.

  *

  As far as Amanda could tell, everyone at school already believed I was pregnant. It seemed to have gotten around extremely fast.

  “Look, Man,” she said, lying on her bed, gazing thoughtfully up at the ceiling, with two ginormous sets of printed Hello Kitty whiskers sticking out on the bedspread on either side of her, “there may be other reasons that people faint, but those reasons are boring. People don’t want to believe something boring, even if it’s true.”

  She had a point. Our school was deadly dull, but students there loved to gossip. “Besides,” she continued, “you have to admit that you being pregnant is especially fascinating. I mean, if you had a boyfriend, it would seem normal. But the way things are, everyone is going to be trying to figure out who schtupped you at least until winter break.”

  This was not what I wanted to hear, but you’ve got to love the word schtupp. Amanda’s dad was Korean, but her mom was Jewish, so Amanda was very into Yiddish. Not that her mom spoke Yiddish. Amanda had taught it to herself online. Which also tells you something about Amanda. Unlike me, she didn’t mind being weird. She actually seemed enthusiastic about it.

  Amanda was convinced that the whole incident was going to be good for my social life. According to her, I should invent some guy from out of town, who I’d quietly been dating, and tell everyone that was how I’d gotten pregnant. Suddenly, I’d be a woman of experience and mystery.

  Her theory was that maybe grown-up guys are obsessed with popping girls’ cherries, but younger guys were intimidated by it, particularly if they were virgins themselves. She thought I had a much better chance of getting asked out if everyone assumed I’d already done it.

  “So I would go out with someone, and get him to do it with me based on him thinking that I had already done it with someone else?” That didn’t sound all that appealing.

  I was sitting on her floor, copying her drawing of the cow fetus into my lab notebook. It had these little yellow hooves, strangely long legs, and a nub-shaped head. Something told me it wasn’t actually as cute as she had made it look, but then, I didn’t have anything else to go by.

  “Sometimes, love needs to be helped along by a little deception,�
� Amanda replied. I should mention that, although she had no firsthand experience, Amanda considered herself the world’s biggest expert on love. She was planning on becoming a romance novelist.

  “I dunno, Man,” I said, “that doesn’t really sound like love to me.”

  Amanda rolled her eyes and started humming “I Wanna Be With You” in a super schmaltzy way.

  I grabbed something and threw it at her. Lucky for her, Hello Kitty doesn’t make anything hard or pointed.

  *

  I knew that maybe she was right. Maybe the rumor could’ve been the next step to a more normal life for me, if I were capable of such a thing.

  But I was thinking about Elias. As far-fetched as it was, I wasn’t ready to give up this fantasy that I’d been having for a while that he was going to be The One. You know, the one I’d lose my virginity to.

  And if I did manage to lose it to him, I didn’t want it to be based on some lie. I wanted it to mean something. Elias seemed like the kind of guy it could mean something with. But how could it be my special first time for both of us if he thought I’d already done it with someone else?

  *

  Amanda guessed what was going on in my head. “You’re worried about Elias!”

  “Am not!”

  “Well, he’s too short for you anyway,” she said dismissively after a few seconds.

  “He is not too short,” I replied huffily. “He’s quite a bit taller than I am.”

  “He is so short!” Amanda seemed sure of herself. Turns out she’d had to dance with him in PE a couple of weeks before that, and she had the impression Elias was an inch taller than she was, if that.

  But Amanda wasn’t even five feet tall, so if that were true, then he’d grown almost a foot in less than a month. Kids do grow fast in high school, but even that rate of growth seemed improbable. I figured Amanda hadn’t really been paying attention.

  “If he were that short, he wouldn’t have been able to catch me when I fainted,” I pointed out. I would’ve toppled him over. Amanda had to agree with that, even though she hadn’t seen much of what was going on when I’d passed out.