Every week I go to the temple and ask Nainai if she feels like coming home yet. Every week she looks up from counting her prayer beads with a face that’s like, Can’t you see I’m counting my prayer beads? I can tell from how her eyebrows raise then lower and her hands start thumbing the beads in reverse, as if she’s rewinding some cosmic tape recorder to the moment before I walked in.
Still, I get her. Yesterday at the swim meet, Tingting was supposed to help me count off 66 laps but she flipped the counter placard to the red END square somewhere around Lap 42, and when I strolled out of the pool with the fastest mile time California has ever seen, Coach’s face was so red from screaming, I had to offer him a puff of my inhaler. Behind him college recruiters sat in the bleachers, Divisions 1 and 2 and 3 shaking their heads. Like baby, baby, baby, you are never leaving the Bay.
Tingting said she couldn’t help it, she’d been too mesmerized by her boy of the week Brian walking by with his too tight speedo that always showed one inch of asscrack. She liked watching the rivulets of water slide past his hips and disappear down his wet suit.
Honestly Audrey, Tingting told me, I got bored of counting laps and started counting how many chopsticks might fit in the dark little line that pops over the water when Brian swims fly.
Sometimes Tingting is like a cat discovering tinsel.
So I wanted to tell my grandmother that I understood her pain intimately, and if I could, I would rewind to the moment Brian was picking out his little loincloth, so that maybe my best friend’s eyeballs wouldn’t fall out of their sockets three quarters into my race. But I know Nainai would just hand me a set of prayer beads and tell me to start counting. She’d look at me like, My baby, breathe in, breathe out. Let go of these attachments. You don’t want to bring them into the next life.
Instead, I reach into my bag and pull out this week’s offerings, peaches that Tingting left for me on her kitchen counter. I’m always over at her place to pick up Mom’s pay stubs so we can pretend our address is actually in the good school district, you know, the kind that bothers to invite recruiters to the pool. Tingting’s parents didn’t have a problem affording a house here once her dad’s startup (along with all the other startups) began making actual money and the mayor’s campaign to get us to stop calling San Jose Tan Jose, Fob City, San Francisco’s Ugly Stepsister and something more dignified like The Capital of Silicon Valley started making sense. I consider telling Nainai that Tingting’s Taiwanese grandmother took one look at my goggle tan splashed across my sunburnt face and started muttering that dirty Mainlanders were once again coming into her house to steal her shit. Old people are always occupied by the past.
But who cares, everyone here knows all about it, especially once the tech startups started giving out so many visas that the schools flooded with immigrant tryhards and the white kids had to run for the private school hills. Our principal even hired a former 49er to come tell us why we ought to give a shit about historical institutions like football tryouts and Homecoming royalty, but even then, we had other histories to worry about.
Like one time our best sprinter Jane refused to get into Tingting’s Toyota Camry because her grandparents never got any apologies from Japan, so we showed up to Sectionals without her and Coach asked us how we planned on swimming a relay with only three people. Like one time, Tingting and I got into it over what kind of Chinese is more superior: the kind that’s so fake and cheap that even the character for love is written without the symbol for heart or the kind that takes a hundred years and a hand cramp to write out “shut the fuck up”? Our team’s breastroker Annie yelled at us to stop hogging the wall and start swimming, and when we ignored her, she said us East Asians taking up so much space must be why all the pho on the westside was so watered down. She kicked at us with her fatass frog legs but got Kevin square in the stomach instead and he started spewing his lunch all over Lane 3. For a week after, all of us swore yam noodles were slithering up our butts every time we did a flipturn. Like one time, Daniel showed up to practice with an American flag screen-printed across his suit because he wasn’t like us uncivilized freaks, his whole family had properly converted as soon as they got here and he’d pray to Jesus for all our salvations. For that, we all held him down while our team captain pantsed him and slung his speedo in one smooth arc onto the backstroke flags. Now Daniel wears two suits on the pool deck.
Us kids couldn’t help it, you know? At the pool, the history the older generations stuffed us with slipped out, the way you just can’t stop farts from surfacing on water. At the pool, we paddled around like little English broadcasters for our shit talking elders. But only at the pool did we have the space to compare notes and figure out how much was actual history and how much was our grandparents refusing to take their meds. Only at the pool could counting laps, counting strokes, counting breaths seem to dissolve the urgency and pain of all our pasts. Cause like, at the end of the day, we were still trying to spend all our money on the latest chapters of Naruto and One Piece, you know?
I watch as Nainai places the peaches on the altar in front of the statue of GuanYinPusa and lights incense for Dad, gesturing at me to pray for his safe reincarnation into the next life. Neither of us bother acting like his soul’s gonna reach nirvana, no way. That’s if you’ve really left this Earth peacefully, with no unfinished business. But my aunt in China once told me, this guy really worked 80 hours a week for that startup, and did I really think a little heart attack was gonna stop him from collecting his check? She said Dad was the kind of guy who was so good at gambling, he plucked the gold capped molar out of her mouth while she was asleep and came back with enough cash to get her a whole mouth of metal. This life was just a bad bet, she said once over the phone. He’ll be back for sure.
And before Nainai left Mom and me to live at the temple, she said that any parent always comes back for their kid in one form or another, which is why she’s here day in, day out, praying for her son. But I don’t know, it’s been four years and I’m just wondering, do these karmic cycles really ever end? Instead, I pray for something real, like lightning, so practice gets canceled and I can sleep in.
* * *
Coach is busting our asses today. He’s like, Audrey, what happened last week is never happening again. So he put us on four miles on a diminishing interval: first mile on 45 minutes, next one on 40, then 35, you get it. I don’t know how to tell him we already lost count five minutes ago. See, Tingting had the idea to count off our laps with the clock, except the water polo players reset their shot clock, which somehow reset every clock on deck. And I knew we were never getting back on track when I saw her sitting on the wall blowing kisses at Brian, and Jane’s hot pink swim cap started leading the pack instead. Everyone knows sprinters can’t count higher than 8.
I can tell it’s gonna be one of those days, where time loses all form and you’re just out there floating on a six-beat flutter. You start thinking thoughts that lead nowhere, questions without any answers, like: In my last life, was I a tiger or a horse? And you start imagining yourself as the happiest horse galloping through the Mongolian plains, or at least, a powerful tiger springing over the peaks of HuangShan. And once you’re hitting that flow state and you’re lapping that one freshman with the long ass legs who really ought to be running track, you know damn well you must have been a motherfucking swordfish, that’s how smoothly you’re chopping up everyone’s waves. And sometimes even, when you can feel the collective consciousness of the universe on your fingertips, that’s when the real deep shit comes out like, What exactly did The Pharcyde mean by “can’t keep runnin’ away” in their hit 1995 single?
But in the middle of practice, Tingting pulls up beside me, and we push off the wall at the same time. We’re gliding so closely together I can see glimpses of her shoulder blades, spot my air bubbles gathering in her back dimples. I let her pass me by, but it’s too late, shit’s off tempo, Fatlip’s freshly split from Pharcyde, and now I’m breathing too much on my right, as if more air is going to save me from being pulled into Tingting’s current. I start wondering things like how’s it possible the rest of us have the kind of chlorine-bleached hair that looks hella fried, while Tingting’s got golden flecks in her blonded out hair, the kind that makes the ABGs put down their Henny flasks to ask for her stylist’s number? Or how is it possible the rest of us have cap tans that look like we just went to Korea to get our hairlines lowered, the kind that makes the ABGs put down their half-sweet, less-ice boba to show us stylists who can cut good bangs? And somehow, Tingting doesn’t even have a goggle tan. Or how come she gets to drive to school and I’ve gotta haul ass to Caltrain? Or how come some Nainais get to sit around all day and judge while other Nainais spend hours at the altar releasing any feeling at all? Or how come some dads drop a million on a house and other dads drop dead?
I push forward faster and faster because these questions are all converging into the one that always comes up when my breathing’s whack, my count’s wrong, my body’s lagging behind my brain, the one that’s like, how many rebirths, how many renewed lifetimes, do you think it would take to get to a life as good as Tingting’s?
You see? Losing count means I’m racing against a past that can’t be changed, and I know it’s a loser’s game, but I don’t stop swimming until Tingting grabs me by the ankle and is like, Practice is over Michael Phelps, and Coach is like, Audrey, these times could get us to State.
* * *
No matter what, Tingting takes care of me more than anyone and I’m grateful for that. She tells me the hard truths nobody else does. Like right now, she’s telling me I’m driving her car the same way I swim, as in, I’m always edging right up to other cars because I’m, and I quote, too chicken shit to pass anyone. We watch as the guy in front confirms this by flipping us off. Tingting returns the bird just as quick, and goes right back to patting gloss on her lips, all while saying, I could feel you on my ass that whole practice, like, if I started swimming any slower, I just know your head would’ve jammed right up my vag, goddamn. Why didn’t you just take the lead?
We’re stopped at the lights, waiting to turn left onto 280. I’d shown up late to morning practice and Coach was so pissed, he made the team run laps around the track for every minute late (bitches kept grumbling if they wanted to sign up for track, they would’ve signed up for track, and Tingting was like, But do bitches want stitches? And you know they don’t). Then he asked if he could count on me being on time for these last three weeks of the season. I can never tell what kind of fairytale Coach is living in. Everyone knows Caltrain only runs once an hour, and that’s without counting all the delays caused by rewiring the train to run electric. Progress never stops in this city, except when it comes to getting me to practice. But Tingting was like, I’m gonna help you get your license. And how could I say no to that?
Cause let’s face it, who else is gonna teach me? I asked Mom if she could, but she’s hardly ever home. She used to fly SF to LA and I’d see her every night, but now Mom does the transpacific routes: SFO to PEK and PVG. Two days in the air, one day in China. Two days in the air, one day in the Bay. If Mom’s not flying into the future, she’s hurtling half a day into the past. And if you’re so lost in time, how’re you gonna teach anyone to drive?
I ran this question by Nainai once during my weekly visits after asking her my usual one about coming home. You’re not really supposed to talk in the prayer hall, but you can barely hear anyone over the Buddha chants blasting over the speakers anyways. I actually run a ton of questions by her each week, and believe it or not, she has that same response for every one of them, the one that’s like: My baby, there’s no gaining or losing time, it just is. Come count with me, your time will come when it comes.
Secretly, I think Nainai’s only like this because she’s tapping out of this lifetime and she’s ready to go, the way old people are. I bet before, when Dad immigrated us out to the Bay, she put down her prayer beads for once and hollered something like, Hot dog! I wouldn’t know, I was a baby. But when she moved to the temple, instead of watching soap operas at home like anyone else, she said it was because she could feel decades of people’s unmet desires drifting up from the land, that it gave her stomach aches and made her sick. Mom told her it was just American dairy. I try not to want too much.
So Tingting is as good a teacher as anyone. I merge us onto the freeway and we head toward the heart of the city. She tells me to forget the rules, like putting your hands on the 10 and 2 or staying under the speed limit. Driving is about feeling the flow, she declares. She goes through her CDs and slots in Britney, while I work so hard at forgetting, we start drifting onto the shoulder. When Tingting feels me anxiously hitting the brakes, she tells me to stay on beat, but my driving ankle can barely hold it together and we drip right past the off ramp to the mall with its historic haunted house, past the giant yellow rubber duck sitting afloat the Children’s Discovery Museum, like some ten foot tall guide beckoning toward a future that could have been. Tingting keeps musing about whether or not she’ll miss these places once we graduate, but I’m too busy concentrating on pop princesses asking me, Baby, baby, how do you want it to be?
Tingting’s talking to herself louder now, saying something about how she’s only got one life, she’s gonna do as much as she can. We can always come back here, you know, she says, as she grabs the wheel to straighten me out, and tells me to start with the basics, which is to stay in the present or else we’d both get clocked. So I do. Tingting guides me past construction sites for incoming business complexes, past billboards advertising big potential. We ripple down exit ramps and she tells me when to swerve, if only to avoid potholes and pigeons and jaywalking pedestrians. We drive the wrong way down one-way streets (but we only make that mistake once).
Sometimes Tingting is so confident, I can tell she’s put some numbers on her soul. That she’s lived through a thousand human reincarnations and that’s why she’s so sure everything eventually works out. Flying through downtown with Tingting’s full attention on me, I find myself believing her.
* * *
At afternoon practice, I notice Tingting isn’t really talking to Brian much and I wonder if she’s moved onto someone new. When I ask her what’s up, she climbs on top of the diving blocks and loudly proclaims the tongue is a muscle that must be trained—that’s why kissing men who insist on pushing one language onto the world could never be satisfying. Then she swan-dives into the pool before Coach can yell at us to shut up and start swimming already. I follow after her, but not before catching the look on Brian’s face that’s like, is your best friend calling me a banana? I almost feel for him, because it’s not his fault his parents are second gen and the extent of his Chinese is pointing his finger at restaurant menus. Besides, the way Tingting is, she’ll probably have a new guy picked out by the end of the week. Although let’s be honest, it’s not like I can speak the language that much better than Brian. I only know enough to talk to Nainai.
I can feel my thoughts spinning out the way they do when I’m getting lost in the laps, and when I finally look up, I’m surprised to see it’s dark. Daylight Savings must have ended, otherwise how could practice last long enough for Coach to set down his stopwatch and start picking out the warmest parka from the bleachers? The perimeter of yellow orbs lighting up the pool walls are making the water all aquamarine and it’s taking me back to the night Nainai came to practice after Dad died. She took one look at us kids flinging our arms and legs around in the air and said she could see the afterlife following us, their shadowy imprints clear proof of souls swimming through space. The next day, she tried sewing her jade pendant into my suit.
My goggles keep fogging up, and I can’t make out much except shadows bobbing on the pool floor. Maybe Nainai’s right and Dad’s soul is doing the doggy paddle just ahead of me. Maybe, if he’s really there, he could answer all these questions I’ve got about life. Like, if anyone could add an hour anywhere, then does that mean time’s never been real? And if time’s never been real, then was it too late to ask if he’s okay with me leaving him behind? Some questions I wish he’d asked me first.
After practice, Tingting says she can see my tongue flapping up and down out of my mouth while I’m swimming, like it’s doing its own drills, like it’s trying to say something. She tells me she thinks it’s creating too much drag because my splits are getting slower.
On the pool deck above, Coach wants to know exactly what my future plans are. There’s only one more meet with the recruiters left, he says, all bundled up in Tingting’s maroon parka.
But I tell him I’m just trying to keep count. These are my times.
* * *
Tingting says the best place to practice parking is at the drive-in theater. First, she says, you buy a ticket and practice parking in front of the screen. Then you watch a movie. Then you move the two orange cones separating one screen’s parking area from another and practice again, until the guy running the theater comes over and tries to get a pic of your license plate to put on his Wall of Fame.
Tonight, they’re playing Kung Fu Hustle, which we’ve already seen, but we’ll watch it again because it’s such a classic. Besides, we’ve only ever seen pirated versions, the kind that everyone’s uncles smuggle over from China in thin plastic Styrofoam for disc protection, not that it helps because they’re always importing the Shanghai peanut nougat as well, the one that everyone’s mom loves but is so rock hard, eating it undoes anything our middle school braces ever hoped to achieve, and fully scratches out where Sing finally figures out what the Buddha’s been trying to tell him this whole time. But who cares, I’m pretty sure we could watch this shit forever, 1940s gangsters discovering the Power of Kung Fu.
Tingting’s right that I need parking practice though, because I get the angle all wrong. Sitting in my mom’s Honda Odyssey, we’re more or less at 45 degrees, taking up three spots, and facing Screen 4 instead of Screen 2. I look over at Tingting for help, but she’s distracted, texting something on her pink Motorola Razr. I peek over her shoulder and see her texting Brian that she’s signed to swim at Caltech.
I gape at her. But you suck at math, I tell her. Science, even more. Of course, people left all the time for school and work, but I’m having a hard time imagining Tingting swimming somewhere without me. The screen in front of us keeps showing the wrong images, not martial arts, but high schoolers at a summer camp. I turn on the radio to get the right audio, but we’re out of range and all the scanner picks up is the opening sequence of Kung Fu Hustle on Screen 2. The mismatched sounds fill the space between Tingting and me.
I can’t help it, Tingting tells me, burying her face in her hands. She also tells me she’s signing with Brian, that she’s never cared about someone else this much before, and that she doesn’t care what anyone thinks, she knows it’ll work out. She’s looking staunchly at the screen when she says, I’m going where he goes.
In front of us, the scene is showing two girls arguing at a bar. I recognize Natasha Lyonne, but not the other one. Even so, their fight is full Cantonese, both of them bragging about how fast their punches are, how powerful their next moves are going to be. Then, the two girls lean inward and kiss each other.
Pow! Pow! Pow!!
I’ve watched enough kungfu movies to easily follow the rhythms of every scripted blow, but as the girls tenderly cup each other’s faces instead, I’m too overwhelmed to say anything except, What is happening?
Tingting shrugs and gestures toward the big movie board where the sign says SCREEN#4: BUT I’M A CHEERLEADER. We sit in silence, even after the credits roll—Tingting texting on her phone every five minutes or so and me, with this recurring thought that this has gotta be my first human life because there’s no way I’ve experienced this kind of feeling again and again before, is there?
Sometimes I wish I’d been reborn into something easier to love, like the two little moles under Tingting’s right eye or the beads that Nainai’s always caressing.
* * *
The day of the season’s final meet, I skip school to visit Nainai at the temple. I can tell she hears me approaching because her fingers start slowing on the beads, like she’s getting ready for my usual interruption, but when I only sit quietly beside her, she eventually stops counting, then turns to me with this face full of concern, like what’s going on? Did something happen? She treads out of the prayer area, with her kneeling pillow tucked under her arm, before returning with a bottle of Kikkoman and dousing my tongue in soy sauce.
Dad once told me this is one of her methods to reduce inflammation. I know it works because he said Nainai caught Yeye with the auntie down the street, so she dumped a kettle of boiling water on him followed by an entire gallon of soy sauce, and nothing happened except all his wrinkles got smoothed out. So I don’t mind the salt flooding my mouth, but for the first time, I do notice the way her hands tremble, her body moving like an ancient being through time.
I try answering Nainai as honestly as I can, which is that I think everything is about to change. She looks at me with her usual expression, before handing me her prayer beads. Come count with me, she says. How do you think anyone ever got past anything in this life? So I sit there with her, my hands moving through the motions as my thoughts drift toward everyone I’ve ever known, and the distance their souls have traveled, through continents, through generations, through each other’s lives, all the karmic cycles it took for our paths to converge here, despite how heavy the past hangs in the city of the future.
I open my eyes, letting the light of my present life soften the edges of my vision. What can we do? What can any of us do? I plant both feet on the ground and slowly stand up. Then I grab my shit and head out to swim.\
* * *
Image by Felix Vallotton
