Beautiful Country Read Online Free Page B

tryout with the team for the day after I arrived in China.
    The film finished, and I still had two hours before Victoria would arrive. I called my father, but it went straight to voicemail both times. I checked and rechecked my tennis equipment, regripped my rackets, and stenciled a red “Wilson” logo on the strings. Satisfied that I had done all I could do to prepare, I called my father a third time. He picked up but told me that he couldn’t talk. He was at a business dinner and would call me tomorrow to find out how the trial with the tennis team went. He hung up. I sat there for fifteen minutes and then I called him once more, hoping that there was a chance he had finished dinner. But he hadn’t, and so I told him that I’d been trying to call Victoria and must have accidentally hit redial. It was still nice just to hear his voice again.
    When I came down for breakfast, Mrs. Zhang had just left with David and Lily. The housekeepers were clearing away the children’s breakfast bowls of clear broths and noodles and plates of thinly sliced meats. I startled them, and they disappeared into the kitchen before I had a chance to greet them. On the dining room table, someone had left an unopened box of cornflakes. I walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. One of the younger maids appeared. I asked her for milk. She shook her head. “You know, milk. Um . . . cow?” I said and followed with my best imitation of a cow’s moo. She gave me a bewildered look and started laughing. I looked in the refrigerator and saw nothing that resembled a carton of milk. Hoping to avoid dry cornflakes, I drew a picture of a cow that looked more like a goat. The maidsmiled and opened a cupboard and pulled out a cardboard box from which she took a plastic bag. I shook my head and pointed to my poorly drawn picture again and raised an imaginary glass to my mouth. Undeterred, she pulled a pair of scissors from a drawer, cut off the corner of the bag, and poured the contents into a bowl. It was milk.
    She followed me to the dining room and watched me pour the milk on the cereal. The milk was warm and had a metallic aftertaste, and I tried not to think about what chemicals negated the need for refrigeration. I smiled at her and gave her a thumbs-up. She nodded her head and disappeared. I walked back to the kitchen to look for some sugar. As I was opening cupboards, she appeared again. I tried to mimic sprinkling sugar onto my bowl of cereal. She nodded and disappeared and reappeared with another box of unopened cornflakes. I was about to head to my room and get my Chinese-English dictionary to find the word for sugar when Victoria called to say the traffic was very bad, and she would be late. As I put the phone down I kicked myself for not having asked her how to say sugar in Chinese.
    I abandoned hope of improving breakfast and instead had a closer look around the Zhangs’ living room. Next to the huge television was a small room that contained the Zhangs’ massive DVD collection. On all four walls the room had shelves from floor to ceiling. Every shelf was filled. The titles ranged from Disney classics such as Aladdin and The Lion King to Chinese films I had never heard of to the films that were still in theaters in the United States.
    The tables were covered with framed photographs. Some appeared to be from holiday trips—the Zhang family together on a tropical beach, in front of the White House, with Western friendson the Great Wall, David and Lily holding a tiger cub. Then there were endless photos of Mr. Zhang with all sorts of famous and important-looking people. There was a picture of Mr. Zhang with President George H. W. Bush, one of the whole family with the former Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, one of Mr. Zhang and his wife with Bill and Hillary Clinton, and one of them with a very young boy dressed in Buddhist robes who I learned later was the eleventh Panchen Lama, the