Disclaimer: Same as always. GW is not mine. Wumei and her story, however, are. No pinching!
Part Ten
Sally coaxed Wumei from the room with promises of breakfast, and a grudging agreement from Wufei that they would go shopping for 'real' clothes soon. The teenager refused to look at or speak to him, but Wufei, angry and irritable himself, found that he preferred it that way.
By the time they reached Ourbucks, Sally was on the verge of screaming. She was caught between two titans of stubbornness and neither would speak to the other. In a desperate play for a catalyst, she leapt to join the back of the queue. "I'll wait in line! Wufei, I know what you like. More tea, Wumei? And a pastry?"
Wufei opened his mouth to protest at the same moment that Wumei tried to place her order. They both slammed silent simultaneously, and stiffly went to find a table.
Sally sighed, feeling an enormous headache emerge.
I eyed him warily, crossing my arms over my chest. The sweater was old and scratchy, made of thick yarn that was covered in pilling fluff balls. I had begun picking them off one by one in the car, but resisted the urge to continue right in front of him. He might interpret it as childishness. Instead, he sized me up, and I glared back, trying to guess what he was thinking.
"We have a dilemma today," he said at last. "I can't afford to take more time off work. But I also can't leave you alone all day."
"So let me go," I quipped. "I can take care of myself."
"Yes, I heard about the tea," he said in a tone I interpreted as being snide. It stung- I had been proud of that tea, even if it was a mess. "Obviously you're going to be here for a while, so we'll need to enroll you in school-"
"I quit school!"
"I know," he said sternly, fixing me in place with an obsidian eye that spoke of legendary doom. "And you promised me when I got you out of Beijing that you would go back."
My mouth opened and closed again, stupidly, like a fish on the deck of a boat that doesn't quite realize it's already dead. I had. The exact words came back to haunt me: Work toward a better future… go back to school… you will not make me regret my decision. I was pushing my luck and I knew it.
"Alright. I'll go," I said at last. 'But I don't have to like it… and you can tell them I don't speak English…'
He nodded, satisfied that the hierarchy had been reaffirmed. "I'll be late for work, but getting you there and enrolled is more important. Your records say that you're intelligent, so catching up shouldn't be too difficult. After school, Sally's agreed to pick you up and bring you back to the office. You and I both need blood drawn-"
"Blood?" Suspicion flared in me once again. I was all too familiar with having blood drawn. "What for? I'm not sick."
Wufei leveled the same warning stare at me again. "You know why."
Dad? …if you are my Dad… and I know that's not really likely, but-"I wasn't being serious!" I almost shouted, rising from my chair. Around us, dopey business people looked over their shoulders to see what was going on. Who was yelling in that funny language? "That- You were just a name!"
He met my gaze, and a shiver ran down my spine. "Wumei, sit down. Sally's here with our coffee."
She was indeed, looking worried. "What's going on?" she hissed, sinking into the chair beside mine.
"He wants to sample my DNA!" I said accusingly, still refusing to sit.
"What? Why?"
"I told you I would explain it later, Sally."
"Now is later than then. Tell me now."
I swung my head from side to side, trying to keep up- then they stopped speaking and started talking with their eyes. I guess it's the sort of thing that comes with knowing someone for a long time. Maybe it only happens between adults over the heads of children. All Sally needed to know was conveyed, however, and she handed me a pastry horn glazed with honey and almonds.
"Eat up. I hear you have school today."
They dropped Sally off at HQ, with instructions to make excuses until midmorning, when Wufei hoped to finally get back. He was itching to take a swing at the work that had piled up in his absence. He needed to catch up on the Hammerstein case- and find out who had taken over his duties.
Wumei sulked the entire way, crossing her legs and sitting as far away from him on the edge of her seat as possible. Sardonically, he supposed that if she moved any further away, she would be riding beside the car instead of in it.
Her apprehension grew as they pulled into a narrow space in front of a large, low building surrounded by well-manicured green lawns. A class was playing soccer in color-coded shirts, and she eyed them disdainfully. No uniforms? Not that she'd liked her uniform…
Wufei was waiting for her to get out so he could lock the car, and she scrambled onto the pavement. Together, they walked to the front entrance, passing the soccer game on their left. Co-ed, and they definitely did not have uniforms. Unless this school put in orders for shorts that said "KISS ME" across the bottom. Wumei's lip curled back in a sneer that was equal parts revulsion and fear, and hurried inside after her reluctant benefactor.
The hallway stretched back for what seemed like an eternity. Absolute silence reigned. Wumei strained to hear the normal noise of teacher's droning, but the doors were too thick. She didn't like that. Her old school had been noisy no matter where or what time of day it was. She followed Wufei into an office, which was also comfortably quiet.
A dark-skinned woman spoke calmly into the telephone tucked under her chin. "Yes, just have him bring a doctor's note to the nurse when he next comes in. Yes, it'll need to be signed and dated. Alright? Thank you, buh-bye." She turned to them with a banal smile. "Can I help you?"
"Yes," said Wufei, stepping up to her desk quickly. "We're here to enroll a new student."
The woman rolled in her wheeled chair to a filing cabinet. "Did you notify the school in advance?"
"I called last night."
"Name?"
"Wumei Chang."
The student in question looked up at him sharply. Was he mad? "Chang is my family name," she corrected, in Chinese.
Wufei ignored her. He accepted the clipboard handed him and nodded robotically as the secretary reeled off a list of instructions. Sign here, date that, we'll need copies of her records, a doctor's evaluation can be sent later, but it must be before the end of the month. Wufei nodded once more, and took a seat in the office's cheap, forgettable lounge chairs. He pointed imperially at the seat beside him. "Sit."
She flounced over and stuffed her bag beneath the chair. "My family name is Chang," she said again. "You told her it was Wumei."
"In the English-speaking world," he said, taking out a pen, "they say the family name last. Don't look at me that way- I don't make the rules."
Wumei's jaw worked slowly. "You mean I'm going to be called Wumei Chang?" she demanded in disbelief. It sounded utterly foreign and wrong to her. Chang Wumei. The Dragon's Beautiful Army. What did it mean the other way around? The Beautiful Army of the Dragon? That was hardly as dramatic.
"Birthdate?" said Wufei impatiently. She glared and told him- July, AC195. "Location?" Beijing. "Identity number?" She had to think, then rattled it off by rote. "Parents?" he leveled a leery eye at her.
She puffed up like a small, defensive bird. "Mao Genji. Or is that Genji Mao?" she asked snidely. To her chagrin, he wrote it the second way.
"And your father?"
"…I don't have a father," she said sullenly after a pause. He stared and she squirmed. "I don't, ok? It was always just Genji Ma." 'And a bunch of scientists…' Her words from their first phone call echoed in the space between them, and she glared at the floor. "I told you before, I wasn't thinking that day. I was upset. You were just a name."
Wufei watched her for a moment, and then sighed. With a remarkably steady hand, he wrote: Unknown, and moved on to the next box. "Any allergies?"
"Smartass Preventors who think they know everything."
"ANY ALLERGIES?"
"Penicillin! Ok! Gawd, some people just can't take a joke!"
Seated at her desk, the secretary watched them nervously. It was always easy to tell who would be the problem students. She sighed, envisioning the mounds of paperwork to come, and looked up the file containing the indemnity release forms.
Half an hour later, I was put into the care of my new 'guidance counselor,' Mrs. Finnegan.
She didn't speak Chinese.
"I'm sorry," she said slowly and deliberately. "Our resident speaker is on vacation this week. She'll be back on Monday. I'm sure the two of us can cobble something together, though," she smiled kindly. Everything about her looked kind, and somewhat softened.
I was determined to hate her.
I watched her shuffle papers and bring up a scheduling program on her desktop computer. It was an old model, taking up twice as much space as the one I had seen in Wufei's office. Genji Ma has never bothered with a personal computer. She said they were worse than television. I had to use the neighbor's.
"I have here your last transcript… There's a… decline over the last year." Mrs. Finnegan looked up with an assessing gaze. She could read delinquency all over me, and I squirmed in my chair. Seemingly satisfied, she turned over the page. "However, your strengths appear to lie with science…" I could see her stumbling over the translated material.
"History," I supplied grudgingly.
She nodded gratefully and took a highlighter and pen to the transcript, going through course by course with me. Had we covered any trigonometry in my geometry class? Were my English classes focused on translation or speaking? How did I fare writing essays in Chinese? What had my history classes covered? Had I passed biology? I quickly caught on that the more I had accomplished, the harder they would push me here. No, I decided, I had not passed biology. This was probably true. It had the class I cut the most, knowing that I could catch up in time for tests the most easily. She placed me in the same level course and handed me a large booklet.
"You have space for one elective. I suggest you take this home and ask your father to help you select something. I've given you an extra study hall for today. This schedule is temporary until we finalize it." The printer behind me began to whir and I jumped, startled. "How are we doing so far? Any questions?"
I bristled, "He not my father."
Mrs. Finnegan hesitated, then folded her hands on the desk. "Wumei, I'm not going to pretend that I know everything about you. I don't. And without a translator, I don't think we'll have much luck communicating. But I do want to try to help you. Is there something you want to talk about? Your family, perhaps?"
The temerity! Asking about my family- implying that we had problems-! We did… I didn't really have a family anymore, actually… But it was none of her business! I grabbed my schedule from the printer and said coldly, "Where room 215?"
ANs:
So, some real progress is starting to be made. Don't expect this to turn into a typical high school drama, though. Wumei has already been going to school for years, so not much will be shocking to her.
Thanks to everyone who's been reading- DO feel free to nag me! Nagging Lady Lye is a very good idea...