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Submitted by CandyLips on October 5, 2006
Category: Miscellaneous
Words: 5934 | Pages: 24
Views: 657
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Yao's Girl
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Li En minced no words: in Mandarin she told the truth: "I hope to become Yao Ming's wife"
The family watched basketball in order to enjoy the Rockets' new Chinese player. They took pride in him the way they would have taken pride in a Chinese astronaut or new high-tech millionaire. Li En, sitting between her parents, tried to pretend that she wasn't really paying attention to the TV. She mostly looked down at a needlepoint cat in its frame.
"This Mr. Moochie needs a haircut," her father said. "Look at him—he looks like he's been in a tornado."
"He's Moochie," Li En corrected, "not Mr. Moochie."
"What kind of name is that?" her father asked. "Is it American?"
"Yes," Li En said. Then she reminded him that most Americans thought Yao was a funny name.
Her father raised his eyebrows; he specialized in keeping his body still in the midst of movement. He went to the window where he could look out at her fourteen-year-old twin brothers, Tommy and Timmy, as they practiced on the trampoline in their driveway. Her father didn't have to call out any instructions. Li En and her brothers could read his mantra in his eyes: "Elbows against ribs, kneecaps at lips, chin on chest."
Until she grew too tall and too old, Li En had also practiced as many as three hours a day. At twelve, the high point of her life, she won the Texas girls' "Best Overall" trophy. On that day, at the Will Rogers Memorial Coliseum, in Fort Worth, while the judges observed, her father took the trophy from her dry hands and held it aloft. He closed his eyes as if in prayer. The judges lowered their heads to join him. He seemed to point the tip of the trophy toward downtown Fort Worth, but he actually aimed much further east. "We showed the f**king communists," he whispered to his daughter. When he placed the trophy back in her hands, it no longer felt like it belonged to her.
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