Family Tree

For anyone who had seen Yun’s picture, they wouldn’t believe what could have happened to her, just like whatever she did since when she was little, her parents always acted surprised, like they couldn’t believe she was made by them.

It was the season again, yellow, red, brown and a few green leaves were flying all over the place with the help of even a little bit of wind. “Not everyone takes good care of their leaves.” Susan looked at the leaves sliding on the street in front of her house and complained to a lady standing on the sidewalk.

The lady just smiled, she passed Susan’s house a few minutes ago when she saw her outside during her daily walk in the neighborhood.

“But it’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” She kept her smile.

“Well, I can’t argue with that, if there is no fall season here, I wouldn’t stay in this area.” Susan answered.

“How come, you don’t like other seasons? I love it here just because it has all four seasons like the nature is supposed to be.”

“Not a big fan of winter,” Susan looked at the bare branches and said coldly, “not at all.”

Yun thought to herself, who doesn’t like a white Christmas?

She couldn’t stay too long so she kept walking after said bye to Susan.

“Have a nice walk, Song!” Susan finally smiled when they said goodbye.

Song Yun came from China originally, she and her husband moved to this neighborhood about five years ago, one year before they were married, since then some people called her first name and some called her last name, she didn’t mind at all, she even doubted sometime if they even knew which one was her first name and which one was her last. When she first came to the states, she had an American name, or an English name, more correctly to say. She called herself Angelica and she insisted people to call her Angelica even though her Chinese name was not difficult to pronounce at all. Now every time she thought about that name, she couldn’t believe how naïve she was and how stupid that name sounded to her.

Yun was born and raised up in a small town in the middle of China, there had been a debate for years in the town about if it belonged to the north or the south of China, she never understood why it mattered. It was not until a few days ago when she and her husband went to a neighbor’s party that made she realize the same debate didn’t only happen in her hometown.

That was an evening at a weekend a few weeks before Christmas, the day got dark so early that it made everyone sleepy even before dinner time. Yun and her husband Joseph were invited to a holiday party in a neighbor’s house. Their neighborhood was the typical middle-class neighborhood that every house was away from each other but not too far, there were trees planted on the sidewalk that made the street even more quiet during the summertime, you could barely see cars running on the street, not to mention people walking.

The neighbor who invited them lived a few houses down the street. They were a newly married couple, Jessica and Chris, with only a few years younger than Yun, they moved into this neighborhood not too long after Yun and Joseph moved in. That was a summer evening when Yun was walking around the neighborhood after dinner, she normally would take her dog Bell to walk with her together, but Bell was sick, so he stayed home with Joseph. Joseph was more a quite person compared to Yun, even though Yun was originally from another country, she always knew their neighbors before Joseph even saw them. Yun liked to look around and talk to neighbors during her walk, how amazing it was to see the different front yards their neighbors decorated, how come Joseph was not interested, she couldn’t understand. Back to where she was born, every house looked the same and even the color was dull and boring.

When she passed Jessica and Chris’ house, she saw the moving truck parked on the driveway and a few guys carrying a big couch to the house. She thought she should say hi to the new owners, so she stopped and waited for them to show up.

Jessica saw her first when she was telling the moving guys where they should put the couch. She was standing in the middle of the living room, and she noticed an Asian lady was looking around on the sidewalk in front of their house.

“Hey, are you guys just moving in?” As soon as Yun saw a lady walk out from the house, she asked with a big smile on her face.

“Hey, yeah, I am Jessica Johnson, my husband Chris is inside. Do you live here too?” Jessica asked.

“Oh yeah, we are a few houses down the road, it’s such a nice neighborhood, you are going to love it.” Yun looked at her and said, she looked young, her skin was so pale that it shone under the sunshine, her lips were so bright red and they looked perfect on her big smile.

“Oh yeah, when our real estate agent brought us to the neighborhood a couple of months ago, we both fell in love with it immediately, he told us the houses in this neighborhood were pretty hot in the market, so we placed the offer on the same day after we checked the house. How long have you been living here?”

“We moved here about five years ago, so not too long. It’s very close to my husband’s company so he was super excited when we bought the house, we used to live in a town about one hour from his company, Lexington, you know? Where are you guys moving from?”

“No kidding! We lived in Lexington too! Oh my, we might have met before!” Jessica’s eyes were wide open. “Hey Chris! Come out and meet our new neighbor!” She yelled at the house excitedly.

Soon a man ran out of the house, Yun thought he almost tripled himself. He was pretty tall and skinny, his skin was much darker compared to his wife’s, you could tell he did a lot of outdoor exercises. Maybe just running, definitely not weightlifting. Yun thought. He smiled at Yun and came to shake her hand,

“Hey, I am Chris, nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too, welcome to the neighborhood.” Yun thought he looked like a nice guy.

“Guess where they used to live? Chris.” Jessica asked, “They used to live in Lexington!” She continued without waiting for Chris to answer.

“That’s awesome, where did you stay? We lived in at townhouse neighborhood next to the big furniture store.”

“Oh wow, we know that neighborhood, we didn’t live far at all, we lived on the other side of the river though.” Yun answered with a big smile.

A mover came over to Chris and asked a question, Yun then said, “Well, I won’t bug you for any longer, come over and have dinner one day after you settle. Here, I can give you guys my phone number, in case you have some questions about this area, feel free to ask me.”

“Sounds great, that’s so nice of you!” Jessica seemed very excited and also gave her number to Yun. Yun then kept walking after saying goodbye to them.

On that day when Yun went back home, she told her husband Joseph about the new neighbors.

“I think I just invited our new neighbors to our house.” Yun said.

“What new neighbors?” Joseph asked.

“Johnsons, the wife is Jessica and her husband Chris. They just moved in today, they live on the same street, maybe ten houses down the road. Very nice couple, like our age.”

“Oh, nice. Do they have children?” Joseph asked. Yun was not sure why he asked it.

“Not as I know of, they didn’t mention, and I didn’t see any kids around.” Yun said, “And they are interracial couple too.”

“That’s nice. Asian?”

“No, the wife is white, I think the husband is black, or at least half black, I can’t tell.” Yun said.

“When are they coming?” Joseph asked.

“I just told them to contact me when they are settled, I got Jessica’s number and she has mine.”

Joseph didn’t ask more questions. Yun was still thinking about the question he asked about if they have kids. They had been married for over 4 years, Yun always wanted to have a child, but Joseph always said he was not ready yet, even though they had a healthy sex life. But Yun had a stronger and stronger feeling to have her own child every time when she saw other kids around, especially the little toddlers, she could feel there was an urge to have a kid like a river running through all her body from the top to the bottom.

Before Yun even remembered to invite Jessica over, one day she got a text from Jessica, she invited Yun and her husband to their house for the weekend party, Yun immediately felt embarrassed that it had been months since they talked to each other, but she totally forgot to invite them over. Before they went over to the party, she made sure she had the gift carefully selected ready.

On the day she and Joseph went shopping, she asked him what they should bring to Jonhsons’ house, “Up to you, I don’t know what they like.” Joseph said indifferently.

“Well, since you can’t make a decision, I will just bring a bottle of wine.” Yun was not very happy to hear that.

“Sure.” Joseph answered.

Yun knew they couldn’t just bring a bottle of wine to the party, she still needed to think about it thoroughly even though Joseph was not willing to help at all. It was not the first time Joseph didn’t care much about what they did, she remembered when they first dated, he was very thoughtful about everything she asked, she even thought he might put too much thought on it. Even though Joseph still took care of a lot of things at home, she could feel he didn’t listen to her as much as he used to, especially when they needed to go somewhere together, a lot of time she felt like he was forced to go with her.

They arrived at the Johnsons’ house late that night, there was already a house full of people there. Jessica opened the door with a big smile on her face, she wore a pink turtleneck sweater with blue jeans. Yun handed over their gift to her and gave her a big hug.

“Hey Jessica, this is my husband, Joseph.” Yun smiled, “and Merry Christmas.”

“Nice to meet you.” Joseph went up and shook Jessica’s hand.

“Oh, look at how cute you guys are. Come on in.” Jessica held the door with one hand and guided them in with the other hand. “Come on in, feel free to mingle, or grab anything to eat, no rules here.”

There were more people than Yun thought, she noticed a few neighbors they knew but she hadn’t met majority of the people here, she wondered if Johnsons just invited a few neighbors, or the neighbors just didn’t come. She also noticed Chris was talking to other people that she didn’t know, but he waved at her. She just walked to him with Joseph following behind her.

“Hey Chris,” Yun talked to Chris and introduced Joseph, “this is my husband, Joseph.” She then waved at everyone Chris was talking to. Joseph also waved at everybody. Chris then introduced everyone to them.

“This is Abo and Kelly; they are my old neighbors. This is Scott, he is my coworker, and that’s Kathy, Scott’s wife. Everyone, this is Yun and Joseph, they are the first neighbor we knew since we moved here, we actually met on the day we moved in.”

With a little chit chat, Yun and Joseph started to join the conversation with them. They were talking about where everyone was from. Abo and Kathy were both from this area, while Scott came from Maine and Kelly was from Florida.

“There is no way Charleston is in the north, it’s definitely the south.” Scott said.

“Ha, no one in Florida would think Maryland is the south,” Kelly said, “Maryland is even above N-O-R-T-H Carolina.”

“Doesn’t matter, it’s still used to be a confederate state. That’s it.” Scott sounded excited.

“Calm down, Scott.” His wife Kathy looked at him.

“I am ok, I mean, it’s not deep south, but still part of the south.” Scott continued.

“I thought only us who grew up in Maryland would argue about this.” Abo laughed at Kathy.

“Are you guys also from local?” Kelly looked at Yun and Joseph and asked.

“Well, I am from Mississippi, so I would definitely say Maryland is part of the North.” Joseph smiled at Kelly said.

“And I am from China, I am afraid I can’t help much on this topic.” Yun laughed.

“Which part of China are you from?” Chris asked.

This is a question Yun always felt awkward to answer, she knew there was no way they would know much about the geography of China. Most people she met here still asked her if there was snow in China or if it was hot in China. They didn’t realize China was as big as America.

“I am from the middle of China, it’s a province called Anhui.” Yun answered.

“So do you think it’s north or south of China?” Scott asked. He seemed to be very interested.

“Well, I don’t know. To be honest, people in my hometown also always argue about it. I thought it was only a thing in China, but I didn’t realize people also debate about it here.”

“After all, we are all the same, aren’t we?” Joseph standing behind Yun said. Yun nodded, she then turned around and smiled at her husband.

They stayed late that night, people who had kids to put to bed all went back earlier, there were only a few people there when Yun and Joseph left. Keith, Lily, and Christina were the ones from their neighborhood. Keith lived by the other street across the yard from Yun’s house. Whenever Yun had a walk in the neighborhood, somehow, she always ran into Keith. At first Yun thought he was very friendly since he always stopped whatever he was doing and talked to her. Then she realized she ran into him almost every day no matter what time she was walking, and Keith never ended conversation without her ending it first. He never crossed the line, except Yun noticed that one day someone looked like Keith was looking at her far away when she was doing some yard work. She talked about it with Joseph, Joseph just told her to not get close to him.

Lily and Christina were a couple that lived next door to Johnsons, they had been married about the same length with Yun and Joseph. Yun liked them a lot; she went to their house a few times for their parties, but Joseph hadn’t been there even once. He always had excuses for not going which made Yun not happy. Joseph was pretty open minded on a lot of things, that was the Number One reason he decided to move away from his hometown, that was also one of the attributes that Joseph had that attracted Yun. But Yun never understood why Joseph didn’t like going to Lily and Christian’s house, he would talk to them and talk nicely about them to Yun. One thing Yun was sure of was that Joseph was always honest to her, which was another reason Yun was attracted to him.

Yun noticed Keith was still at the party and there were not many people left, so she told Joseph she wanted to go home.

“Hey Yun!” It was Keith, right before she was ready to leave.

Yun took a deep breath and turned around with a smile she squeezed out, “Hey Keith”. Keith looked at her like he had just met an old friend that he hadn’t seen for years. “How are you doing? I haven’t seen you for a while.” He didn’t even notice Joseph standing behind her.

“I am doing good, just been busy at work. Hope you are doing well.” Yun kept her smile in a polite manner.

“Sorry Keith, we had to head out.” Joseph stepped up and held Yun’s shoulder.

“Oh, no problem, Joseph. It was good seeing you as well!” Keith kept smiling but oddly his eyes still fell on Yun.

Yun didn’t say anything but just turned around and left. She even hoped he could do something inappropriate that night so everyone could see how disgusting he was.

On their way back home, they talked about the people they met tonight, Yun didn’t mention anything about Keith, neither did Joseph. She was a little bit upset about that, so she just went to bed directly, Joseph seemed to know she was not in a good mood, so he stayed downstairs and poured a glass of whiskey for himself.