Parachutes Page 2

  Ming mouths to me You ready? from her seat as first-chair violin. I nod. She’s from China and here on a music scholarship, and she’s also my coworker, cleaning houses with me after school.

  “All right, let’s take it from the top,” Mr. Rufus says, looking to Ming. The trumpets get their sheet music back out. The French horns put down their phones. As Ming lifts her violin, the entire string section takes their cue from her. I smile. It’s nice to see her leading the other kids, even if we secretly scrub their toilets.

  After practice, Ming catches up to me. She’s carrying her black violin case, balancing it delicately on her slim shoulders. She hand-carried it from China, and even though the edges are frayed, she refuses to get a new one, kind of like me with my debate shoes. She told me once that when she was ten, she had a chance to be on China’s Got Talent but her parents couldn’t afford to fly her to Shanghai. So when Mrs. Mandalay, our headmistress, discovered her during one of her recruiting trips to China and offered her a full scholarship, Ming jumped at the chance to attend American Prep to pursue music.

  “We walking over to Rosa’s after school together?” she asks. Rosa’s our boss at Budget Maids. I talked her into letting Ming work there, even though it’s not exactly legal—Ming’s on a student visa. But her scholarship covers only tuition and a tiny stipend for housing, so she needs the money.

  “Can’t. I have debate training today,” I tell her. “I’ll come after!”

  Ming sticks out her lower lip. “When are they going to announce who they’re sending to compete in the Snider Cup?” she asks.

  At the mention of Snider, I suck in a breath. Mr. Connelly, my debate coach, has been training us for the tournament all year. My entire college admissions strategy next year is riding on Snider. All the top coaches are going to be there, including the coach of Yale, my dream school. Their team is undefeated this year.

  “Soon, I think,” I tell her.

  “You’ll definitely get picked,” she assures me as she starts heading out. “Mr. Connelly loves you.”

  I smile, grateful for the words. My coach has been encouraging, though right now my most immediate problem is coming up with the money to pay for Snider. Flights and hotels aren’t cheap, and my mom doesn’t exactly have air miles like all the other kids’ parents. She works for Budget Maids too, scrubbing toilets to try to put food on the table. That’s what my grandmother did and her mother before her. I am going to be the first girl in my family to break the cycle. But first I gotta get into college.

  I put my flute back in its case and wait around until all my classmates leave before returning the loaned flute back to its loaned-instruments cubby.

  After school, I push open the door to debate training. As usual, Mr. Connelly greets me with a smile.

  “Dani! How’s my Thunder Girl?” he asks.

  I roll my eyes at the term. Ever since one of the judges at a recent tournament called my speech “thundering,” Mr. Connelly has been calling me that.

  “You ready to go up against Heather today?”

  “Yeah, Thunder Girl, you ready?” Heather jokes. I laugh and tell her I was born ready. My teammates, for the most part, are friendly. There’s an unspoken understanding that my situation is different from theirs, and so sometimes they don’t invite me to things, like if they’re all going to an expensive restaurant after a tournament to celebrate.

  As he divides us into teams, Mr. Connelly reminds us that he’ll be looking closely at our performance in practice as well as in the next two tournaments to see who gets to go to Snider. As much as we’ve all been trying to avoid it, the simple math stares us in the face: there are ten of us, and only six get to go.

  “So today when you debate, don’t hold back!” Mr. Connelly urges. He tells us the motion—“This house would eliminate tracking in schools”—and asks me to begin the debate.

  I get up and walk to the front of the room, while my teammates pull out pieces of paper to scribble down responses to my opening statement.

  “Close your eyes and picture your ideal audience,” Mr. Connelly says.

  The ideal audience is a concept Mr. Connelly came up with. It basically means closing your eyes and picturing someone—could be a real person, could be fictional—who is patient, kind, thoughtful, smart, and who desperately wants to hear what you have to say. It’s kind of embarrassing, but my ideal person is Mr. Connelly. He’s been my ideal person ever since he pulled me aside freshman year and said to me, “You have a voice. Let me help you find it.”

  I think about that first year, how he spotted my mom $20 because she was so behind on bills she couldn’t pay for a pair of Payless black pumps for me to wear to the tournament. And at the tournament, when he asked me why my parents didn’t come and I told him I don’t have a dad and my mom’s busy cleaning houses, he gave me a hug and said, “Well, you have me.” Yup, he’s my ideal person. I don’t even have to close my eyes.

  I take a deep breath and smile at him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” I begin. “Tracking is a modern form of segregation. Kids are labeled from an early age based on how they do on a few tests and are then divided into separate tracks for the rest of their schooling. It’s based on the erroneous belief that we as human beings don’t change, that once ignorant, always ignorant. Once poor, always poor.”

  I set forth evidence and examples, talk about systemic bias and racial bias and how it oozes into our subconscious and convinces us that we’re not good enough. I think about how people like my mom’s boss, Rosa (though I don’t say it), looks at my mom and says she shouldn’t be sending a child to private school. You are a maid. What are you doing sending a kid to private school?

  “And so, I ask you to look in your hearts and ask yourself, what is the purpose of education? Is it to keep people in their place? Or is it to lift people up? I believe it’s the latter and so should you.”

  “Bravo,” Mr. Connelly says. He stands up and claps even though he’s not supposed to. The debate’s not over yet. He’s supposed to wait. The fact is not lost on my teammates, and I catch a few eye rolls as I sit down.

  Mr. Connelly leans over and whispers, “You’re going to be amazing at Snider, Thunder Girl.”

  Later after practice, I’m putting books away at my locker, bending down to tie my shoes, when I overhear some of my debate teammates talking as they walk past.

  “Did you hear him gush over how good her speech was?” Heather asks.

  I freeze, hiding my face behind my locker. Are they talking about me?

  “He’s just going easy on her because she’s a scholarship student,” Josh says.

  “It’s so unfair. It’s not like she paid to be here,” Audrey adds. “We all have to pay for her.”

  Wow. And here I thought we were all equals.

  I fume as I walk over to Rosa’s after training. I can’t believe what my teammates said; I thought we were a group of principled individuals. That’s what I loved about debating: we may come from different worlds, but we believe in the same things—justice, ethics, equality. Evidently they’re just a bunch of words to score points from judges. They don’t really mean it.

  The door to Budget Maids bangs against the wall as I push it open.

  “Dani, where have you been? You’re late!” Rosa scolds me as she snaps her fingers, chop chop. “Get your uniform on.”

  I glance at Ming, who already has hers on. Her cut-off denim shorts peek out from underneath it. Rosa makes us wear these ridiculous black-and-white maid uniforms that have Budget Maid on them, complete with hat and surgical mask, like some sort of half Pilgrim, half nurse. She says they make us look professional.

  “I don’t get it,” I say, reaching for mine in my locker and putting it on. “Why does the client care what we wear as long as we get the job done?”

  “How many times do I have to explain it to you?” Rosa asks, cutting the air with her hands. “It’s not just about getting the job done. It’s about brand building.”

  I
roll my eyes. Rosa’s been taking e-MBA classes. That’s where she gets terms like that from, which she likes to throw around to remind us she’s not just a boss, she’s a CEO.

  She hands me and Ming our next address, one I don’t recognize. My mom and I have this rule—if it’s a new address, I don’t go. Someone else can go and clean it for the first time, just in case there’s something dodgy with the client. But maybe it’s okay. I glance over at my mom’s sweater hanging by her locker. Ming will be there with me, and besides, I really need the money, especially if I’m going to Snider. Round-trip tickets to Boston cost $500, and that’s just for the flight, that’s not even including a hotel. Every dollar counts.

  Ming stuffs the address in her pocket. Her parents aren’t here to tell her where she can and cannot clean. I don’t even think they know about her part-time maid job. She nods to Rosa and says, “Okay.”

  I help Ming with the cleaning supplies, and we head to the truck. Rosa’s husband, Eduardo, drives us. As we shuttle over to the address in North Hills, where the houses are twice as expensive and the people twice as likely to accuse us of stealing, I fidget in my seat, looking over at Ming. I want to tell her what Heather and those jerks said at debate, but she has her eyes firmly glued to her window.

  We arrive in North Hills and make our way up the winding driveway to the impressive Mediterranean mansion perched above. With its lush lawn and wraparound balcony overlooking sprawling views of Los Angeles, it’s got to be worth at least two to three million dollars. Property prices have been going through the roof lately. Ming points to a jade statue of a dragon near the doorstep, muttering, “Crazy-rich Asians.”

  “Gotta love them!” Eduardo says, beaming. He and Rosa are big fans, both of the movie and of the people, who buy up houses in North Hills and hire Budget Maids to keep them clean. He teases Ming, “Those are your people!”

  Ming shakes her head as she lugs the cleaning supplies out of the car. “Not my people. We crazy poor Asians,” she says, pointing a thumb to her chest.

  I get out of the car and smooth out my maid’s outfit. Together we walk over to the house. Eduardo waits until we’ve found the key under the mat before backing out the car.

  “Call me when you’re nearly done,” he hollers as we open the front door.

  Once we’re inside, Ming and I drop our cleaning supplies on the floor. I take off my surgical mask. We look up at the forty-foot ceilings in the living room.

  “Holy shit, it’s like a museum,” I say.

  A single crystal chandelier hangs from the center of the ceiling, made even more dramatic by the gigantic mirrors along the walls and the white marble floors.

  “Or a concert hall,” Ming adds.

  She lifts her hands up and pretends to play the violin, humming the melody. I smile and go into the kitchen to get us some sodas. There are a couple of dirty dishes piled in a corner and some pizza boxes on the floor. That’s it. This will be a cinch to clean.

  Light floods in through the French doors. I stand for a while, taking a moment to look out at the pool as I sip my soda, trying to imagine what it would be like to live in a place like this.

  Ming’s testing the cleaning sprays against the mirrored coffee table when I get back to the living room. I notice she’s wearing a new thin leather hair band. I wonder if she made it herself. It looks good on her. I hand her a soda and kneel down beside her. I’m about to tell her what happened at training when she turns and drops her own news.

  “So yesterday my host dad was walking around the kitchen in his underwear, again. And he reaches in there and he readjusts.” Ming puts down her soda and gets up and demonstrates, reaching for her crotch.

  “Ew,” I say.

  “And then he takes the same hand and hands me my plate.”

  The look on Ming’s face is so priceless, I start laughing, even though it’s not funny. Ming’s host dad is a middle-aged out-of-work truck driver named Kevin Malone who has a drinking problem, two little kids he can barely support, and no business watching over teenage girls. But he somehow discovered that hosting foreign students was an easy way to make money, and, as luck would have it, Ming got assigned to him, mostly because he was cheap. The school only gives her $600 a month for her housing stipend.

  “Can you get another host family?” I ask her. “Or tell him to put some clothes on?”

  She takes a sip of her soda and shakes her head. “The other host families, they’re all too expensive,” she says. She’s afraid of upsetting the school if she asks for more money.

  I can relate. I’ve thought many times of asking Mrs. Mandalay, our headmistress, if the school will cover my debate travel, but I’ve never been able to do it. Every time I’ve opened my mouth, I’ve promptly closed it and ran over to Rosa instead to ask for more addresses.

  “It’s not like my parents can help.” Ming sighs. She doesn’t talk much about her parents. I know they’re not like the parents of the other Chinese kids at our school who drive around in Porsches and Teslas armed with their parents’ American Express black cards.

  “You want me to talk to your host dad?” I ask. I’d love to straighten him out!

  But Ming shakes her head. “It’s okay. It is his house, and I guess he has the right to wear—”

  A noise from upstairs cuts her off. What the . . . ? Is someone home? Ming and I walk quickly up the marble staircase to the bedrooms. We follow the sound to the master, where we push open the door and walk in on two people having sex. The guy, not much older than us, peers at me and Ming as a topless girl sits on top of him. An amused look crosses his face as he looks at us.

  “Wanna join in?” he asks.

  Three

  Claire

  My mother and I wait outside my Chinese teacher’s office. The Shanghai traffic hums from the window. My mother shakes her head as she stares at my pitiful Chinese essay exam in her hand. I can feel her disappointment—her anxiety—with every labored breath she takes.

  “I can’t believe you did this,” she says. She points to the big forty-two out of one hundred on the top of my paper. That’s what I got for writing my own words instead of memorizing my tutor’s. It probably didn’t help that I wrote on the importance of incorporating student voices in school decision-making. I should have just picked a safer topic, like the dangers of internet addiction.

  “You can’t believe I tried to write my own paper?” I ask sarcastically.

  “Don’t get sassy with me. This isn’t about you writing your own paper. This is about you never listening,” she says. “Always wanting to do things your way.” The paper shakes as she scolds me. A few teachers walk by and give us dirty looks. My mom hushes but struggles to maintain her composure.

  “This is China,” she hisses. “You go to a local school. You told me yourself your Chinese teacher encouraged you guys to work with your tutors.”

  “So?”

  “So why’d you think she said that?” my mom asks. “Why do you think she gave out the exam questions in advance?”

  I look away. Yeah, well, that may be the game, but I don’t like the rules. The door opens and my Chinese teacher, Zhou Lao Shi, walks out. She issues my mom a tight smile and gestures for us to come in.

  “Mrs. Wang, Claire,” Zhou Lao Shi says, running a hand through her thick streak of white roots, which run skunk-like through her dyed-black hair.

  My mom takes a seat and thanks her for seeing us. Gently she pulls out my exam. “I want to talk to you about Claire’s grade.”

  I glance over at Zhou Lao Shi, but she sits there, expressionless, as she does throughout most of class.

  “I know what she wrote wasn’t perfect, but a forty-two?”

  Zhou Lao Shi barely blinks. My mother’s words have no effect. I nudge my mom with my elbow—Maybe we should go. This is a woman who’s used to being bribed, questioned, tipped, and threatened by parents all day long. It’s going to take at least five thousand renminbi just to get her to move an eyebrow.

  “Clair
e received a forty-two out of one hundred. That is her grade,” Zhou Lao Shi says.

  My mom sets down her Birkin. She always dresses up when she comes to school; she says it’s so the teacher treats us better. I think it’s so she can impress the other moms. She crosses her wide-leg Balmain pants and tries again. “Perhaps because you’re comparing it to the other students. But are you aware that some of the other kids plagiarized for this exam—”

  “Mom!” I exclaim. Has she lost her mind? I get that she wants me to get a higher score, but to squeal on my classmates for cheating?

  “I’ll have to investigate that,” Zhou Lao Shi says tersely, and gets up. “I’m afraid our time is up.”

  We’ve offended her. My mother knows it too. She ditches her tough-lady approach and throws herself at my Chinese teacher’s feet. “Please, it’s my fault. I didn’t get Claire the right tutor. Punish me, not her.”

  Her wet, desperate eyes look into Zhou Lao Shi’s stern, ruthless ones.

  “I’m sure there will be another opportunity coming up soon,” Zhou Lao Shi says. “Hopefully, you will see to it next time that Claire’s prepared.”

  In the car on the way home, my mom curses Zhou Lao Shi. “What kind of turtle-egg Chinese teacher is that? She didn’t even care that her students are copying their tutors!”

  Yeah, well, neither did my mom until twenty minutes ago. Still, I appreciate her standing up for me. I rest my head against the massaging neck pillows my mom got for our Audi as Patrick, our driver, glances in the rearview mirror.

  “It’s everywhere! At my son’s school, a teacher got busted for selling seats in the front row of her classroom,” Patrick chimes in.

  “What if I went to international school?” I ask.