Page 42 of He Is My Bride

“Hmm, is it? There are a lot of men who do that, I think.”

“I guess.”

“Can you show me? You don’t have to, but there’s nothing wrong with it, you know.”

Li Ying tentatively sat next to her on the bed and took out his phone. He let Amy see the picture again.

“You’re very good at doing makeup! Did you teach yourself?”

“Anne helped.”

“What did the boys think, the cousins?”

“Uh, they were cool about it? After all, they didn’t know me, I was just some weird American, right?”

“Did Wu Hanjun know you were doing this?”

Li Ying’s heart was pounding. “Yeah, he knows I’m weird.”

“Stop saying that it’s weird,” Amy rebuked gently and handed Li Ying his phone back. “Do you do it often?”

“Just in Shanghai. That’s why there aren’t many pictures of me, you know, I was taking the opportunity to dress up where no one knew me, no chance of running into people from uni or such.” All the lies Li Ying had to tell twisted his stomach.

“I understand,” Amy said. “Is that why you’re going back? You shouldn’t have to fly across the Pacific just to express yourself, you know this is New York, right? Who cares?”

“I know. That’s not all there is to it. I just really want to go again.”

Li Ying and Amy sat together in silence for a while. Finally Li Ying looked at her with pleading eyes.

“Amy, please don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t. I think Kai recognized you from the picture, but I’ll make him swear not to say anything.”

“Thanks, Amy.” Li Ying took his sister into a hug.

She hugged him back, petting his hair. “If you want to, we could do it together sometimes? I would lend you my clothes, but you’re too tall for them, I’m afraid.”

Li Ying chuckled. “Yeah, but could I borrow your jewelry, maybe?”

“Of course! And we could go shopping for clothes together. But I guess you’re going with Anne?

” Amy had thought she might have wanted a sister she could have done such things with, but why not with a brother?

She was excited about the possibility and hoped Li Ying would let her be part of this aspect of his life.

“Yeah, but I’d love for you to join us!” Li Ying held her hands. “It would be fun, to go with my bestie and my sister!”

Amy smiled, joining Li Ying as he began bouncing on the bed, still holding hands.

They fell back to lie on the bed and talk some more, about makeup and the perils of heeled shoes. Li Ying let Amy browse through the rest of the pictures on his phone and made sure she stopped to admire his French manicure properly.

“Li Ying,” Amy asked as there was a lull in the conversation, “do you have someone you like?”

“…Yeah.”

“Who’s the lucky person?”

“I… Really can’t tell you. I’m sorry.” Li Ying felt crushed thinking that Amy would take it as him not trusting her enough. Li Ying would have trusted his sister with his life—but he couldn’t trust her with his and Hanjun’s future.

Amy turned to him. “Is it a man?”

Li Ying felt his cheeks burn up. He had to cover his face with his hands and roll to his side to hide. He was feeling butterflies all over his insides. “Yes!”

“But you can’t tell me who he is?”

“No, but yes, it’s a man. Very handsome, and…” Li Ying kicked his feet and squealed.

Amy smiled. “I’m happy for you, I hope… I mean, it looks like this man makes you very happy. Li Ying, you know we are your family and we love you no matter what, right?”

I’m sorry, Amy, but there are some things I cannot tell you. Still, even with some things having to remain secret, Li Ying’s heart felt lighter after telling Amy he was in love with a man.

“How did you meet?” Amy started asking questions Li Ying was too afraid to answer, so he said:

“Amy, I won’t be able to say more, please respect that.”

Amy seemed like she wanted to press the matter, but nodded, “Okay, but is there anything else you can tell me? What is he like?”

“Hmm.” Li Ying rubbed his hot cheeks, thinking. “Well, he’s a very passionate lover.”

Amy covered her mouth and giggled, “Okay, you can keep those details to yourself!”

Li Ying laughed with her .

They hung around for a while longer. As the hour grew late, Li Ying thought he really didn’t want to go back to his lonely apartment by himself.

“I’ll ask Uncle Qian if I can stay in my old room, I don’t feel like going home,” he said.

Uncle Qian told Li Yin he could of course stay over, he just needed to make the bed for himself.

“You’re not letting him slip back to live with us now that his benefactor has left, are you?” Mrs. Qian asked her husband while Li Ying was still well within earshot.

“What’s the harm in staying over for one night?” Uncle Qian said. “Kai stays over sometimes too.”

“Well, he’s your own son.”

“And Li Ying is my foster son,” Qian Hong said, now with more firmness.

At this point Li Ying had left the room, but stopped in the stairway where he could still hear them.

“You’re not doing that boy any favors by letting him parasitize, it’s time he finally came to his own.”

“How can you say that?” Uncle Qian lowered his voice, but Li Ying could still hear him, “We didn’t buy him a house like we bought Kai, and isn’t Amy still living at home and you’re not saying anything about that?”

“Oh, I see! You’re suggesting driving your own daughter out now, to make it fair for everyone?”

“That’s not what I said, Jenn.”

“Again, Kai is your own son. We had no obligation to even pay for Li Ying’s education, but we did. He’s already way better off than most boys with his background. He can’t expect to come and go from our house as he wants, on top of everything else we have done for him.”

“He’s just staying for one night.”

“We’ll see if it ends there. You’re too soft, Qian Hong.”

Li Ying tiptoed on the balls of his feet up the stairs, trying to make away quietly before Mrs. Qian came out, but he heard her stepping on the stairway just as he got up to the landing.

Li Ying looked back and saw Mrs. Qian’s cold eyes meet his.

She said nothing, neither did he, and he turned away to go to his old room.

Li Ying’s room had been very different from Amy’s back in the day, but now much of the stuff that used to make the space Li Ying’s had been taken out.

His things had been sorted into boxes that were yet to be taken away, for now collecting dust: horror and slasher movie posters, classics, and some Korean and Japanese horror films that used to run at small indie theaters in town.

There were also some of Li Ying’s masterpieces that used to sit on his desk: modified old dolls he’d thrifted and mutilated while playing nightmare surgeon from Hell.

There were also some odd books and all his comics, bound for the antiquarian.

Maybe it should all have been discarded, but looking at his old stuff, Li Ying was feeling nostalgic, what with listening to his foster parents argue and Mrs. Qian making him feel like crap, then retreating to his old space where he could still view all this cathartically dark imagery that had once brought him strange comfort.

I should sort through these things so they can take out what I don’t intend to keep, Li Ying thought while looking at one of the dolls, a piece of its plastic belly cut out, and inside Li Ying had made organs from polymer clay and painted them with acrylic paints.

He had gone to one of those tabletop wargame stores to buy a figure painting set, which was also still here among the other stuff, but the paints were probably all dried up now.

They were gruesome things, and Li Ying couldn’t imagine Hanjun wanting to display them at their future home, but Li Ying thought he might want to keep them anyway, as well as his old drawings.

They were something he had made himself and might want to look at sometimes, to reminisce.

Even if his memories from those years were often filled with teenage angst. In hindsight, it hadn’t been so bad, Li Ying thought.

He had had a roof over his head, hadn’t he?

The drawings were all neatly put away in folders. Li Ying wondered who had done that. Amy, Uncle Qian, Grandma? He smiled as he realized someone had thought them worth saving. Li Ying looked at these things until he felt like he had reminisced enough, then made his bed and prepared to sleep.

—

Mr. and Mrs. Qian hadn’t slept in a shared bed since Kai moved out and they had remade his room into ‘guest bedroom’—Qian Hong’s bedroom.

This had been Mrs. Qian’s wish. But now all three kids were staying the night, so she had to tolerate her husband sleeping next to her.

She watched him take off his robe, her soft reading light bringing out the contours of his muscular body well.

The man still worked out. He was still very handsome.

Mrs. Qian still desired him, she discovered to her own disappointment, and turned her eyes back on her book before the man turned around.

She felt his weight on the bed and was both repulsed and attracted.

She wouldn’t allow herself such weakness.

“Your foster son is gay,” Mrs. Qian said bluntly.

“What makes you say that?” Qian Hong asked neutrally, sliding under his blanket and looking at his wife’s majestic, cruel profile. His heart was forlorn, but he still loved her. He just didn’t know how to fix things. They had been broken for too long.

“It’s obvious, and we should have figured it out sooner. He might be dating that Wu Hanjun.”

Qian Hong stared at his lap in silence. It hadn’t been obvious to him at all but now that Mrs. Qian had said it, it made all the sense. “Well, wouldn’t we be happy for them?”

“Do you realize what a scandal it would be if that Wu Hanjun was dating a man? And an orphaned nobody at that! His family won’t allow it, and it won’t reflect favorably on us when they learn who raised Li Ying.”

“Are we not people who live and let live? If they both liked each other, and I still believe you might be mistaken, who is anybody else to have a say in it?”

“Tch! Don’t try to make me look like the bad person here, you know I have gay friends.

But what you seem to forget is that your opinion is not the only one that matters.

I don’t care if Li Ying has a boyfriend or even many boyfriends, but because you chose to raise him and are treating him like your own, would have adopted him if you cared any less for my dignity, if he’s linked to us in relation to such a scandal our reputation will take a hit.

You seem to have forgotten how important it is to keep your face within the community.

You only think about yourself, you’re so well integrated! ”

Qian Hong closed his eyes and drew a deep breath before answering calmly, “What does it matter what they think of us back in the mainland? ”

“You’re so na?ve. How do you think we can show our faces among relatives if it becomes public your foster son is buggering with Wu Hanjun!”

“If people talk, I can do nothing about it. But I wouldn’t always assume the worst of people. Like you do.”

“Hmph! You will see, Qian Hong.”

“I will. I would be interested in hearing what you suggest though.”

“Talk to the boy, ask him if he’s dating Wu Hanjun and if that man is who we think he is, and if that were the case, tell him to date his own class.”

Qian Hong answered immediately and firmly, “I won’t tell Li Ying, or anyone, who to date, who to love… or who to marry.”

“Get out,” Mrs. Qian hissed between her teeth.

Qian Hong got up and donned his robe again, not rushing, respecting his wife’s wishes but refusing to be ordered around like a dog in his own house, and left to sleep on the couch.