Winter River
by Tai Dong Huai

The surname of the Taizhou orphanage’s administrator was River, and we, the discarded, were also called River. Adopted on the same day as I was a set of twins, Peaceful River and Noble River. I was Winter River. My adoptive parents learned my name by asking the assistant administrator, who told the adoption agency translator, who passed it on to them; like a game of telephone, I later feared, where the phrase “I like pug puppies,” soon morphs into “Buy bike pump supplies.”

In my high school there were nine Chinese kids, seven of whom were adopted. We, along with the four black kids and the dozen-or-so Hispanics, comprised the school’s diversity. Photographs, intended to highlight just how racially balanced our tiny Connecticut school system was, always included at least one of us.

Ping Li was what we, the adopted ones, referred to as a “fig”: first generation Chinese, neither parent American. She was, all races considered, the most athletic girl in school. Tall, thin, and graceful, she was the star center for The Lady Falcons, the girls’ basketball team. She was popular and even dated blond-haired Kevin O’Dowd, president of the student council, until her parents caught wind. After a production of The World of Suzie Wong, in which she played the lead, she was introduced to the audience by Mr. Grenier, the director, as being “ China’s gift to Charles Ives High.”

What drove Ping Li crazy, though, was me. Never one to sit contentedly in second place, she despised the fact that I constantly tested better on every mastery test, every college preparatory, every examination. “You cheat!” she accused. “You know the answers beforehand!”

“Or,” I’d answer, “maybe I’m just a wee bit smarter.”

We rode the bus together—Ping Li, myself, and a Chinese adoptee named Jack Chong Fisher. It became evident sometime during 11th grade that Jack Chong Fisher liked me. He would make sure we sat close on the ride home, even though other boys in the back of the bus constantly harassed him. Ping Li, the ever-present eavesdropper, always made sure she got the seat just in front of us.

On a blustery, cold January afternoon—a Wednesday—Jack Chong Fisher told me two things: that he was born without a soft palate in his mouth, and that his Chinese orphanage name meant Level Thrust. He then asked about mine. “Translated,” I said, “it means Winter River.”

“Can you go to the movies with me on Friday, Winter River?” he asked.

This request caused Ping Li to spin around as if she were sitting on a revolving office chair. She’d been doing the old slow burn ever since we got our PSAT scores and I’d topped her 225 with my 231.

The following morning on the bus Jack Chong Fisher used his backpack to save the seat next to him. He is my boyfriend, I thought to myself as I sat. We will go to the movies, he will hold my hand, I will make him a construction paper chain to decorate his room.

“She’s a liar!” Ping Li bellowed, even before she cleared the bus’s top step.

“My mother speaks perfect Cantonese!” Her face hovered above mine, but her words were aimed at Jack Chong Fisher. “Her name doesn’t mean Winter River,” she said. “Her name means Big East! Like the basketball conference!” Ping Li laughed at this and then, pointing to me and addressing the rest of the bus said, “Hey, everybody! This is Big East!”

I seldom used the term—I considered it more the property of the white kids—but now it spilled from my lips with ease. “Fuck You, Ping-Pong,” I said.

“Take your seats and quiet down,” the driver called back.

The bus went momentarily silent. Jack Chong Fisher turned from me and looked out the window. Like a tiger crossing a pit covered with thin branches, I’d fallen into the trap. I’d been crude and insulting, and I’d done it among other Chinese people in the company of whites. I knew that Jack Chong Fisher would, starting that very afternoon, rejoin his friends at the back of the bus. What I didn’t know was that I was destined to be known by that name—Big East— until I graduated high school and left for college.

I didn’t shower with my cucumber body wash that Friday night, or lay out my most appropriate clothes, or beg my adoptive dad to let me stay out past eleven thirty. I didn’t sit in the padded leather rocker by the door waiting. I didn’t have to, because I knew Jack Chong Fisher wasn’t coming.

What I did do was sit at my desk in my room. I studied my organic chemistry, my Latin, my advanced trig. I read Shakespeare’s Richard III. I fell asleep sometime around midnight, sometime around the time I’d have been getting home, listening to Bedrich Smetana’s Vltava.

It was the music of a river, cold and slow-moving, deeper than anyone might ever guess.

Tai Dong Huai's fiction has appeared, or is scheduled to appear, in elimae, Hobart, Word Riot, Wigleaf, 971 Menu, Dark Sky, and other terrific places.

© 2008 prickofthespindle.com