Heiress Apparently by Diana Ma

Author:Diana Ma
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2020-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The elevator door slides shut, and I breathe a sigh of relief to have escaped.

“How are you doing?” Eric asks.

“I’m fine.” I’m not about to tell him that something his sister had said to Alyssa seemed to have struck fear in Alyssa’s heart. Shaking off the unsettling image, I ask, “How was Alyssa able to get Gen XX to play at her private club?”

“Money. How else?” Eric says sardonically. “Alyssa, or her family, has more money than they know how to spend. The huge amount of money it must’ve taken to get a wildly popular band like Gen XX is nothing to Alyssa.”

“Do their fans know that Gen XX is made up of all girls?” It’s hard to reconcile everything I’ve heard about a conservative China with the popularity of a gender-nonconforming band of girls.

“Of course,” Eric replies. “Girls talk openly about their crushes on the group members. Gen XX is as popular and gets as much fan mail as any other boy band.” As I take that in, he adds, “You have to understand that there’s the Chinese government’s stance and policy, and then there are the actual Chinese people’s views and practices—it would be a mistake to think the two are the same.”

The elevator slides noiselessly down the many floors, and I look out the glass walls of the elevator at the space-age Beijing skyline, all spires and lights. “My parents are from China, but I don’t know a thing about this country. Not what you call ‘actual Chinese people’s views and practices.’ What your sister said about me—it’s what I feel I am sometimes. Wai guo ren. Foreigner. Because I’m not just Chinese. I’m Chinese American.” I laugh hollowly. “I sometimes feel like a foreigner in the U.S. too. But there I’m Chinese American.” No matter where I am, one part of who I am marks me as different.

“Hey, don’t listen to my sister,” Eric says, taking one of my hands in his own. “You’re not a foreigner. It doesn’t matter that you haven’t been to China before now. Or that you were born in America. None of that matters. You are Zhong Guo Ren. Chinese.”

Something squeezes at my heart. When I first came to Beijing, I wasn’t thinking about what I wanted or what I was looking for, other than my success as an actress. But now I know. I want to belong. And Eric is speaking as if that’s already true—that I already belong. “But if your grandmother and Alyssa are right, then my mother gave up her family and homeland because she’s a criminal.” The elevator stops smoothly on the ground floor, and we step out into the marble hallway.

I shoot Eric a covert glance, but he doesn’t reply until we’re back out into the still-warm night full of people. “After the Summer Palace,” he says at last, “I called my father and asked about the painting. I asked if your mother had stolen it like my nai nai said.”

“What did he say?” My hands grow damp with anxiety.

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