Tomorrow in Shanghai by May-lee Chai

Author:May-lee Chai
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blair

Jia

.….

* * *

Mom grabbed her jewelry box, and her suitcase, and her purse, and then took Lu-lu by the wrist, announcing, “I’ve had it. We’re leaving. We’re going back to California. I want to see my family!” Mom ordered Lu-lu to get in the car and then backed down the driveway fastfastfast, their tires even squealed a bit, and then they were driving away.

“But I didn’t pack any clothes.”

“We’ll buy you new things.”

We don’t have any money, Lu-lu thought, but she did not speak up for fear her mother might change her mind. It was exciting to be in the car, driving, the idea of leaving, leaving Dad and the house and the fighting, the shouting, Lu-lu’s school with the girls who stared and wouldn’t let her sit at their tables in the lunchroom.

Lu-lu didn’t remember California. She’d been born there, and then her parents had moved to the East Coast when she was still a toddler, and then again to this small town in Indiana, but she was ready to go.

Mom never drank when she drove. When Mom drank, she just stayed in bed, complaining that her nerves were shooting sparks through her body.

Lu-lu pressed her feet against the floor mat as though she had secret pedals on the passenger side that could make the car move faster.

“I miss California,” Mom said. “I never wanted to leave. Your father put up such a fuss. He said, ‘You are holding me back! You are ruining my career!’ ” Mom cried, tears dripping off the tip of her nose. She wiped them on the back of her hand, pulled a crumpled tissue from the pocket of her coat. Dab dab dab. “But what about my life?” She said this louder than Lu-lu expected, a wail.

…

They used to travel every summer up and down the coast when Lu-lu was very small. They’d gone to Washington, D.C., to see the museums on the Mall and the Lincoln Memorial, all the way to Monticello in Virginia, another time to Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York in time for the Bicentennial. Mom was afraid of flying, plus it was too expensive. They stayed in all the travel lodges, the HoJos and Super 8s and Motor Inns and motel chains so small no one else had ever heard of them.

Dad snored, and the noise amplified by the smallness of the motel rooms used to drive Lu-lu crazy. She couldn’t sleep, listening to the deep inhale, the pause, and the teakettle whistles as he exhaled loudly through his nose, before the final gentle poo sound he spat from his mouth. “How can you stand it?” she asked her mother once.

“Oh, I got used to it.” Mom had shrugged.

In those days, it was her parents’ restlessness that drove the family. Lu-lu sat in the back seat of the car with her books and her dolls, ignoring their fights as they drove in circles, lost on the interstate, trying to find some new famous place they needed to see as a family.

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