Half and Half Read Free Page A

usual. Even worse, I heard him calling her Ma. He sounded like a doll I used to have that said “Ma” when you pressed its stomach.
    Later that evening, he brought Nainai all his newest drawings and sketches. That surprised me, because he never showed his sketches to us. I don't think even Mom saw them. Dad stood there patiently waiting while Nainai slowly looked over his work.
    Nainai frowned at one of the drawings. She pointed to a corner and said, “Bu dui.”
    Although I know very little Chinese, I did understand this phrase, which means “Not right.”
    Dad just bowed his head meekly and accepted her comment. It reminded me of the times when Ron and I brought home our report cards and stood nervously waiting while our parents looked them over and made comments. It's okay for Ron and me, but it was different when I saw my dad, a grown man, doing it.
    Mom noticed me looking on. I must have made a face, because she called me over and took me to her bedroom. “Why does it bother you, Fiona, when your father is soanxious to please Nainai?” she asked. “What's wrong with a child wanting his parent to be proud of him?”
    “But that's just the point!” I said. “He's a grown-up! He looks so silly, behaving like a child again!”
    Mom sighed and patted the space next to her on the bed. When I sat down, she looked at me for a moment with her hazel eyes, then turned away and played with a curl of her hair. She always does that when she's not quite sure what to say. I love the way her red hair curls naturally.
    Finally Mom broke her silence. “Ever since your father and I met, we kept discovering unexpected things about each other. Most of these had to do with differences between Chinese and Western customs.”
    “Why did you decide to marry a Chinese anyway?” I asked. “You must have had a lot of white boyfriends.”
    Then I was worried that Mom would be offended by my question. Maybe it was one that Grandpa and Grandma MacMurray had asked, too. Had they been shocked and unhappy when Mom told them she was planning to marry a Chinese man?
    Mom didn't look offended. “By the time we decided to get married, I no longer thought of your father as Chinese,particularly. After you get to know people, you don't think about their race anymore. You'll find this out for yourself someday.”
    I'd already found this out. Most of the time I don't think of Amanda as Japanese American. She's just my friend. But making friends with a person isn't the same thing as actually marrying him.
    “How did you and Dad meet?” I asked Mom. “How long did it take you to get to know each other and fall in love?” I had heard this story many times, but I loved hearing it over and over again.
    “Your father and I first met in college, when a bunch of us went to a city hall meeting. We were protesting because the city wanted to close a park near the campus.”
    “So then what happened?”
    “The speeches got boring after a while, and I started looking around,” Mom continued. “I saw that the student next to me was busily scribbling in his notebook. I thought at first that he was taking notes. Then I saw that he was drawing funny sketches of the speakers. He was making them all into animals—cats, dogs, pigs, goats … I burstout laughing. He laughed, too, and we made so much noise that an usher escorted us out. That was how your dad and I got acquainted.”
    “So you decided to start dating?”
    “Not right away, even though we liked each other. It was two years before we finally decided to get married. By then I thought I really knew your father pretty well, and that there'd be no surprises left.”
    I saw her lips give a little twist. When she does that, I never know whether she's amused or mad. “So what were some of the surprises?” I asked.
    This time I saw a real smile. “One of them was seeing your father behaving like a child with his parents,” she said. “At the wedding reception, he kept running up to them and asking