Two
“That you, Mylia?” she heard the minute she opened the door.
“Yeah, it’s me, Mom.” Who else would it be? But her mom always asked that same question any time she came in the door. “What are you doing awake? I thought you’d be asleep long before now. Are you feelin’ okay?” Mylia strode over to her mom’s bed, and checked her head with her hand and felt her arm, pinching up her dark skin to make sure she was well hydrated.
“Where you go? You meet somebody? You have fun, no?” The woman lay on the bed, pale, with her thin arms lying on top of the ragged quilt that covered her.
“Oh yes, Mom, I did have fun,” she said excitedly, hugging her jacket to her chest. “I went downtown and found out all the kids cruise down the main street on Saturday night. I met some girls who will be in the same school I’ll be going to and of course they wanted to cruise in the big Mercury. I’m glad you made me go. I would have just sat around here all evening. I’m so thankful Uncle Warren is letting me use that car. It’s a beauty, all right. Drives like a dream.” She hung up her jacket and walked over and sat down on her mother’s bed, knowing her mom would want to hear everything.
“The girls yelled at me, Mom, called me ‘Blondie’, and I stopped the car. They actually came over and asked me if they could ride with me. I’d never even seen them before, but everybody is in town on Saturday night, and they didn’t have a car. Took me a while to get the hang of that Mercury. It’s so big! Every car is different, but you don’t drive, so you don’t know. And, Mom, you’re not going to believe this, but there was a boy who introduced himself to me.” She smiled that elfish little smile that her mother loved so well. She knew that her meeting a boy would please her mother, but she would keep to herself the fact that she had let him know there was no future in getting to know her. God, she’d hated to be impolite to him. He was a gorgeous hunk if she’d ever seen one, and she’d never had a guy come up and introduce himself like that. But circumstances prevented her from having close friends, and especially boyfriends. It broke her heart, but she’d die before she’d let her mom know it.
“He came to you? Good sign. He like what he see. You not hurt car? Your Uncle Warren say you can use car as long as you no hurt it. I want you be able to use car.”
“I know, Mom, and I didn’t do anything to the car. It’s fine.” The only reason her uncle had let her have the car was so the mighty Trenton’s wouldn’t have to come into contact with them. Probably thought they might have to take them somewhere. She wasn’t stupid. She knew which way the ball bounced. Raising herself up off the small bed, she cleaned the used glasses off her mom’s nightstand, wondering why her Uncle Warren called the Mercury an old car. It was only a couple of years old, but of course, with his new Jaguar, his wife’s Mercedes, and the Rolls Royce in the garage, it probably would be old to him.
“Do you need anything before I go to bed, Mom? Do you want some water? Tea? Did you take your pills?”
“I take them, my sweetheart. And drink lots of water.” She smiled at Mylia. “How you say? Float the battleship?” And Mylia reached over and kissed her cheek, giving a small chuckle. “Turn out light when you read enough. We can’t up power bill.”
“I will, Mom. Goodnight.” But her mother didn’t answer. She did that. Went to sleep at the drop of a hat. Ever since her mother had gotten that fever, she’d done that. Would go to sleep almost in the middle of a sentence. Mylia had learned to expect it and paid no attention to it now.
The bathroom for their use was a shower and commode only and they were so old and worn they could not be cleaned. Mylia resorted to pouring bleach in them hoping some of the germs would die, anyway, even though the stains clung to the worn off porcelain. If they wanted to wash their hands, it was done in the kitchen area of the combination living room and kitchen. After washing her face and hands, studying her face in the mirror over the sink, she wondered what the boy had seen that made him so interested in her that he would get out of his car and talk to her. Jenny was pretty, and so was Barb. Why hadn’t he gone to them? Well, Jenny did have that other guy after her.
Only reading for a few minutes, Mylia reached over and turned out the lamp. Her mom would sleep better without the light, but the bedroom was still lit to a certain degree from the many floodlights her uncle had strategically placed around his palatial home. Thank God they didn’t shine directly on their beds, but overhead, mostly. The rooms they lived in were on the second floor of the garage and although there were other rooms up there, this small two room apartment were all they were allowed. She considered them lucky to have that, especially from the Trenton’s.
Mylia’s father had been her Uncle Warren’s brother. Taylor Trenton had married her mother when he’d been a liaison officer stationed in Cambodia, and the family had never forgiven him for it, nor accepted May Li into the family. And although the only resemblance Mylia had to her mother was her slightly darker complexion, she was still a ‘Chink” as far as the Trenton family was concerned. No one would have ever taken her for a foreigner, and no one but the Trenton family would ever think of her as a ‘Chink’. The word was slang for Chinese, and May Li was neither Chinese nor Cambodian. She was born in a small country in Indochina that was not a part of Cambodia or Laos. A border country, but independent, Chalay was neither. But the Trenton bunch did and said what they wanted. She was from the Orient, so she was a ‘Chink’.
And Mylia would never forgive the Trenton’s for the way they had treated her wonderful father. Harold Trenton had written his son out of his will the minute he heard he’d married a Chalayan orphan. Being disinherited had forced him to try to make a living with his own father blocking job after job that paid anything, evidently hoping Taylor would send the girl home and come back to the family. Her father had told her all about it, many, many times while she was growing up. But he had held onto May Li and Mylia, doing the best he could for them. Mylia felt it had destroyed her father, being estranged from the wealthy family he was born into. He became a sad and bitter man, but not once did he take his indignation out on her or her mother.
Lia’s father had told her that when May Li had seen what was happening, that the Trenton’s were not going to accept her, she decided to return to Chalay so her husband could live the life he had been meant to live. She would not come between him and his family, and she felt if she and Mylia went back to Chalay, Taylor would be taken back into the bosom of his family. But her father would not hear of it, choosing to sell vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias, shoes, anything to feed May Li and Mylia. While Mylia was growing up, and after her grandfather died, her father’s brother and sister lived in the luxury that had been left to them, with her father’s share being divided between them. Evidently her father had loved them very much, Mylia thought, to allow them to keep him from his inheritance. He’d told them that he’d rather have his wife and child than to buckle under to his father’s demands. Mylia realized how badly it had hurt May Li to see that life was very difficult for her husband, both physically and mentally, especially since she felt she was at fault.
But everything changed drastically when Mylia’s father had been killed in an automobile accident one foggy night when Mylia had been thirteen years old. Besides being devastated, she and her mother found themselves in a position with no husband, no father, and no income. The only Trenton that had bothered to come to Taylor’s funeral had been his brother, Warren. He made the trip to attend the service, did not sit with May Li and Mylia, but did bend over them on the way out of the church and say he was sorry they’d lost Taylor. May Li stoically acknowledged his sympathy, telling him she was also sorry that he had lost a brother. He stood near them at the cemetery, said a few words to May Li that Lia did not hear, and left shortly after they laid his brother in the ground.
They lived frugally on her father’s insurance for a while, and when that money was almost gone, May Li attempted all types of employment. She understood English very well, having been brought up in an English orphanage. She’d been a waitress, did piece sewing in a dress factory, and worked in a meat processing plant, but after a while,