Kartika_Issue15

never touched any of the girls inappropriately, but there was an
uncomfortable closeness when he spoke to them; then again, perhaps parents
are always protective of the bonds they share with their children, worried
about a potential displacement by another adult.
“Your daughter will do fine,” Mr. Peng said. “As we speak...” He nodded to
the door to the women’s locker room which was slapping open, Chenxi
marching with Lili on one side and Lao K on the other, all three of them
arms locked. The girls strode in unison as if their appearance was to be timed
with music and applause. Lao K, despite the fact she wasn’t diving, wore a
red bathing suit that clung snugly to her tall, shapely body. Atop her chest
swung Li-Ming’s camera enshrouded in some kind of plastic encasing. She
had the air of proud motherhood, an affect I assumed she inherited from Li-
Ming. Chenxi and Lili donned matching Beijing Youth Diving League suits
in navy blue with angled white stripes. Their bodies paled in comparison
with Lao K’s womanly frame. They were all bone, hips protruding, knees
knocking, reminding anyone who looked at them of the awkward, selfconscious
experience of adolescence. Chenxi didn’t seem to mind we were
here to watch her, that despite our smiles, our proud faces, we were worried.
What was it that worried us? We couldn’t explain to Chenxi that despite her
eagerness to climb to the board’s highest rung, we’d once believed we were
capable of equally impressive goals. How we’d once hoped for so much in
our bodies, our ability to overcome heights, water, platforms, but how we
could not overcome every difficulty. That this was what it meant to grow
up—zhang da, 长大—despite the obvious fact that at a certain point we have
grown as big, as tall, as we will ever be and yet we don’t really know any
more than we did before.
My bony, calloused toes still absently flexed and stretched. Li-Ming’s wide
feet stopped fanning the water and, for a moment, fear flooded my body
from my ankles to my throat—I worried I’d lost her altogether until I saw
her arm lift, watched her hand waving persistently at our daughters.
“Ba!...Ma!” Chenxi waved back as Lili scanned the stands for her own
parents. Upon finding their prideful faces—her father, a professor of
economics at Beijing Normal, with his signature eyeglasses and bowtie; her
mother, a tall, thin bookkeeper at my danwei with long, straight hair and
patient eyes—they smiled, nodded knowingly. Lili was the more stoic child.
I didn’t dare inform Chenxi she wasn’t anything like her fearlessly
independent friend. That we can never fully surpass the failures of our
forbearers.
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