The Wondrous Woo Page 5

  After that, Sophia had spent weeks refusing to eat the meat on her plate even when Ba said, “Not us, Chinese,” pointing to himself. “Those Chinese,” he waved somewhere in the distance which we knew meant China. “Here, we eat Hamburger Helper!”

  Silly moments like that, when they crept in for no real reason, would drill a dull ache into my chest, reminding me that the pain was still there. By being away from my family, I could almost believe that Ba wasn’t dead, just somewhere else, but then something would snag the fabric of my day and everything would tumble back into clarity.

  Sophia, Darwin, and Ma called occasionally, sounding happy. Even Ma who never wanted to go anywhere, seemed thrilled to be in Europe. She had taken a church friend, someone who spoke fluent English and had enough guts for adventure for the both of them. “Oh, Mir. Ho laing! So beautiful! Like postcards. The same!” she exclaimed across the wires.

  Meanwhile Darwin told me, “Mir! Space Invaders here is just like at home!”

  Sophia was actually now living with Professor Gorky and his wife. Math prodigy or not, she was still young and they didn’t like the idea of her having to live on her own, so they took her in. Since their kids were all grown, Sophia finally got her wish of being an only child. They lived in a massive brownstone in old Montreal where she got her own room with a giant bay window. They even had a cat named Big Joe who slept in bed with her.

  “It’s not easy being gifted, you know. There’s homework — a crazy amount of it — and lectures and stuff. Plus, I’m not allowed to go the pubs because I’m underaged.” She drawled out this last word as if that were the biggest injustice in the world.

  These calls eased my mind and freed me to get on with my own life. For the first time, making friends was not the same angst-filled exchange at Halloway High where everyone checked each other’s social status before embarking on a conversation. At university, we, the frosh, were little guppies sent to sea. Swimming against the current together, who was beautiful, who was smart, who was athletic, mattered less, or rather, it would take some time to sort out since there were just so many of us.

  Liquor, I discovered, was also a great equalizer. After a few Long Island Iced Teas, I was elbow to elbow with geeks and supermodels alike. And damn it, I felt interesting when I was drunk. I liked the hazy glow that everything and everyone took on. I whipped my hair on the dance floor, smiled at everyone, and cracked jokes that made people laugh. That was a kind of power I had never experienced before. And I liked it.

  Chapter 9 ~

  On his approach, his horse kicked up so much dust, she had to veil her eyes. When the dirt settled, Xue looked at him and saw a placid lake reflecting the moon.

  THE FIRST SNOW came to Ottawa in late October, startling everybody into pulling out their mitts and scarves. It was around this time that I met Jerry. My housemate, Dave, often brought his friends home to watch hockey games. They were a lumber-jacket wearing, steel-toe boots kind of crowd, friends who all hailed from North Bay. I felt like I’d just stepped off the boat when I had to ask Dave where it was, since it was actually only four hours north of Scarborough. This place sounded like quintessential Canada, full of forests, lakes, rivers, canoes, and beavers. I suspected if Ba had known about it, we would have moved straight there.

  Dave had one friend named Jerry whose soft brown eyes ringed with long dark lashes made him look like he was a sensitive sort of person. He wasn’t the cutest of his friends, but there was a steady sweetness about him, like a boat you would trust to get you through a storm. Also, Jerry wasn’t as loud as the other guys. He sipped his cans of beer like he was having tea with the Queen, and when he saw me, he always gave me a loopy smile. The first time we were alone, we shared a cigarette on the porch. I didn’t smoke, but I was finding smokers cool, so I just held one and pretended, never inhaling.

  It was a chilly night, and icicles hung thick to the edge of the house like a row of mismatched soldiers. The whole street was visible from our high perch at the front of the house on the hill. Smoke curled up from chimneys, and the smell of woodsmoke gave me the sensation that I was in some kind of Canadiana scene I had only known about from Christmas cards and Hudson Bay ads. All the elements were there: the cute boy in a striped toque, clear skies full of stars, our breath making clouds and mingling in the crisp air, the twinkling snow.

  “So, like, what are you into? Music, I mean.” Jerry squinted to keep the smoke from going into his eyes.

  “I don’t know. I like all kinds of things.” I sensed that I shouldn’t mention Duran Duran or Madonna. “What do you like?”

  “I’m into the classics. Zeppelin, Rush, Crosby, Stills and Nash. That kind of thing. I play the guitar so, ya know, I’m into it,” he said and took a long haul from his cigarette.

  How to proceed?

  “Um, so what courses are you taking?” I asked.

  “Bunch of useless shit. Poli Sci, Economics, Law…all intro stuff. You?”

  “Yeah, intro stuff….” Oh, God, I begged my courage, please do not fail me now with your lame shyness.

  And then. Good lord in heaven, Jerry made it even better.

  “Hey, wouldja look at the moon.” He pointed his finger at the tall pine in front of the house. “See? It’s so bright it’s even casting shadows. Cool, eh?”

  “Wow,” I half-whispered in awe. There were long silver shadows laid across the sparkling white expanse of snow. This sent shivers down my back.

  Jerry looked at me like he wanted to make sure I wasn’t joking. When he realized I was sincere, a broad grin broke across his face. “Yah, nature’s the best shit, eh?”

  “Definitely,” I answered.

  Right then and there, I decided I was in love. And I decided I was going to try to get Jerry to love me back. In this new life, I was trying to believe anything was possible. I thought about it this way: if Darwin could be a musician, and Sophia could do math, hell, I could get a man.

  In the days that followed, Kathleen was tipped off right away by the sight of my heavily painted lips. “Hey there, kitten. What’s with all the ‘Spring Blush’? You crushing on someone?”

  I confessed, thinking Kathleen would be a worthy mentor in my project to get Jerry.

  “Play it cool, kitten. Guys love that. Don’t just give it away,” Kathleen said sagely.

  Dave had no clue. He just thought I was taking a sudden interest in hockey, and really, from his perspective, why not? I learned quickly about hat tricks, icing, and power plays. I learned to recognize when a penalty was the right call, or if the ref was just being an asshole. These things mattered, I began to realize, and made a mental note to add them to the list of things gweilos liked. But aside from the occasional cigarette between periods, I rarely got time alone with Jerry.

  One morning over toast, Kathleen decided we should have a party. “Here’s your chance, kitten,” she winked.

  Kathleen and I were going to prepare all the food. We would have a proper sit-down dinner for twenty with candles, a nice table cloth, everything. Afterwards, we would play music, dance, drink, and stay up until dawn.

  “It’s going to be bloody perfect,” Kathleen pronounced.

  We made a lasagna the size of a small car and a three-tiered chocolate cake. Others brought salad, chips, beer, vodka, and drugs. Apparently, there was a dry spell on weed, but hash was plentiful.

  That night, everyone was in a great mood. The North Bay boys inhaled the food like they hadn’t eaten in a year. The laughter washed over me like a warm bath. This is what it was like, I thought, “it” being the catchphrase of my new life. “It” meant being an adult, having friends, putting on a dinner party. “It” meant this delicious heat that was warming me from the inside out. I looked around and everybody seemed so beautiful in the flickering candlelight. I was smiling so hard that my face hurt from pure happiness, until Jerry, who had been strategically positioned next to me, nudged m
e and told me I was cute.

  “You’re cute too,” I murmured back. We stared at each other. It was all coming together.

  After dinner, everyone fanned out to all parts of the house. Some people started dancing to Van Halen in the living room, others sat on the floor in little groups. Some were in the kitchen heating knives over the stove and dropping hash on them and then inhaling the smoke. Jerry and I continued to sit at the dining-room table and talked about how cool the band The Tragically Hip was. Suddenly, he kissed me. I was startled by the softness of his lips; it was like kissing a marshmallow. I pulled back and looked at those lips, now covered in the “Spring Blush” I’d been assiduously reapplying throughout the night, and began to laugh.

  Jerry said, “You’re a really goofy girl.” I didn’t know what to say, only that my face felt completely contorted from smiling so wide.

  “Yah, definitely goofy.”

  We kissed again which lead to a full on make-out session until someone yelled, “Get a room.” We stayed where we were, our mouths mushed against each other. My back started to cramp from being swiveled in my chair, but I didn’t care.

  Later, we resurfaced and found most of the others had slipped away. Emboldened by vodka tonics, I grabbed Jerry by the hand and took him to my room where we fell on the bed and rolled around with our clothes on for what seemed like hours, or at least until my lips were chapped and my buzz had worn off.

  Finally, Jerry said, “Hey, I’ve never been with a Chinese girl before. Have youse ever been with a white guy?”

  Hell, I thought, I’ve never been with anybody — white, Chinese, human. I had only ever practiced kissing my stuffed bear, Momo. I wished he had never said it. I was temporarily knocked off my nice ride. “Um, no,” I told him.

  He seemed satisfied with that and started to kiss my neck. Okay, now I was back on track. I was feeling a lovely ache between my legs.

  “I’ve got something, if youse want to do it,” Jerry murmured from my neck. Got something? Do it? Like, really do it? I thought about it for less than a second. I had wanted to lose my virginity since I was fourteen. I may have appeared as mild-mannered Miramar Woo, slightly overweight, silent girl in the halls of Halloway High, but at night, in the privacy of my bed, with Sophia snoring and Momo by my side, my fingers between my legs, I was a fervid vixen of the nth degree. Do it? Hell, yes!

  Two things I had not expected: how mechanical the motions of sex were, like a water pump, and how prickly sweaty skin on sweaty skin felt. Then there were more things I didn’t expect. Like, why did sex not feel as good with someone I liked as it did by myself? That was the biggest mystery. There was no pain, no blood, none of the fanfare that I had read about in True Confessions or seen in movies. I wasn’t swept into a tidal wave of love and dreamy surrender. Just a blunt soreness. While his fingers travelling my body like a car without a road map were delicious, on the whole, the event was, unfortunately, anticlimactic.

  “Was it good for youse?” Jerry asked after rolling off me and peeling off the condom. I looked at his back, freckled like cinnamon had been spilled on him.

  “It was good,” I replied.

  “Cool,” he smiled, relieved, before searching for his jeans on the floor, and plucking his smokes from the front pocket.

  It seemed all right that I lied. It even seemed all right that the much-anticipated fireworks didn’t explode in my body in my first ever attempt at sex. It was more than enough that once it was over, I had this man lying next to me, his leg looped over mine as we passed a cigarette back and forth.

  Chapter 10 ~

  When love finally arrived, Lu could not stop touching herself. Brushing her fingers across her cheek, she would smile at the memory of her lover’s embrace. She could summon a summer storm across her body just by thinking of his arms.

  AFTER I SLEPT with Jerry, I was wracked with anxiety as to how to keep him and make him mine. I started to spend more time assembling my wardrobe than hitting the books. This made no sense since Jerry always looked the same. He had two pairs of identical Levis and two shirts: one red plaid and one brown plaid. Sometimes he wore a blue sweater that he pulled over whatever plaid shirt he was wearing and always the same baseball cap that said “Furrow Flames,” his high-school team. By team, I assumed he meant hockey because that was all the North Bay boys ever seemed to talk about.

  I didn’t care what clothes Jerry wore. To me, he was perfection. I found myself staring at him when we were together. His long, tapered fingers. The web of lines at the corner of his eyes. His pink lips.

  “What are you doing? Youse making me nervous, girl,” he would blush. I got embarrassed when he caught me, but I couldn’t help it. He looked so god-awful beautiful to me that I felt my heart cracking when I took him all in. I started imagining what our children would look like.

  When we weren’t together, I felt jittery, like a junkie without a fix. Or, at least, that was what Kathleen said. I couldn’t study, I couldn’t sit still, I couldn’t think. I was only truly alive when he and I were together.

  “Be careful, Mir,” Kathleen warned. “He’s only one guy in a sea of many. Don’t get too wrapped up.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m in love,” I argued. Wasn’t this the way people in love behaved? She was usually so carefree; why was she being such an asshole? She was the one who had helped me get Jerry in the first place.

  “Okay, do it your way,” she sighed as if I were a delinquent teenager. I fumed. Who was she to tell me how to do anything? For all her expertise in trapping men like butterflies in her careful net, Kathleen didn’t even have a steady boyfriend, just a stream of lovers that flitted in and out of her life.

  Kathleen wasn’t the only asshole. I told Nida everything about Jerry, but she didn’t have much to say, and what she did say was all wrong. “Where the hell is North Bay anyway?” she asked.

  “Why do you say it like that? North Bay’s a place. In Ontario. Hello? Do you have to be such a Toronto snob? Besides, we’re from Scarborough, hardly an exotic place on the map.”

  “Okay, okay, whatever. I was just asking…” she trailed off. “So, anyway, how are your classes? Didn’t you just have mid-terms? How’d you do?”

  Truth was, I didn’t want to talk about school because I was royally messing up. My grades were dropping at an alarming speed. “It’s fine,” I lied to Nida who was trying to keep her own GPA high enough for an MBA program.

  “Okay, well, have fun with Jerry. I have to go. Got a study group in ten minutes. Talk to you soon.”

  I could not figure out why everybody was being so stupid, especially when I was finally happy. Like, really, really happy. They were jealous, I reasoned. There was no other explanation. I decided to take the high road and forgive them since they obviously didn’t have anything close to what I was experiencing.

  Still, there was the matter of my grades, which I was actually getting a bit worried about. Jerry was certainly no scholar. He had failed three out of five classes in the first term. The second term was barely underway and it didn’t look promising. Jerry was not stupid; he just wasn’t particularly interested in school.

  “I’m just not a bookworm like youse, Mir,” he complained. There was something about the way he said this that made me feel as small as I had felt back in high school.

  “No, it’s just that you’re not trying. Let’s go to the library and look up some of these books,” I urged. I had always been my most comfortable between the stacks. For a while, I was determined to make him love the feeling of cracking the spine of a book as much as I did. I started doing all his essays along with my own. I kept asking him to try harder. He would just pop open another can of beer and smirk. So I did the barest minimum of work, cramming all my studying and essay writing into all-nighters before assignments were due so I could spend time with Jerry instead. Still, Jerry thought I was an overachiever.

  I was n
oticing that Jerry didn’t just dislike his classes; he was pretty well indifferent to everything about university or Ottawa as well, preferring to hang out with his friends from “back home.” Most of Jerry’s stories began with the words, “Back home.” If North Bay seemed like a foreign country to me, then Scarborough would have been another continent to Jerry.

  One night, we went skating along the canal that snaked its way all through the city. The lights cast warm yellow pools on the ice, and the air crackled from the cold. Fog rolled along the surface, making everything appear fairy-like. I held onto Jerry’s mitted hand as we glided towards the twinkling lights of downtown.

  “Ya know what I really miss?” Jerry asked before answering his own question. “The bush. I seriously miss the bush.”

  I thought about this for a few seconds. “Which bush?”

  “North Bay,” he replied.

  “Yeah, but which bush in North Bay?”

  Jerry stopped skating and looked at me like I was high.

  “North Bay’s bush,” he said.

  “But isn’t there more than one bush? Wouldn’t a place like that have lots of bushes?” I was beginning to wonder what the hell we were talking about. Then Jerry started laughing. He laughed so long and hard that his skates gave out from under him and he went tumbling down, dragging me with him.

  “Geez, girl. The bush means the woods. Ya know? Where we hang out, go camping. The bush.” Jerry was still laughing.