Trade Me (Cyclone 1)

I let out a breath of relief, switch tabs, and click on Maria’s email. You left your phone at home, the body of the message reads, and your mom called seven times that I could see. Everything okay with them?

Oh, thank God. Just that.

No worries, I reply. That’s just Mom. I’ll talk to her. After a moment, I add: I had kind of a shitty day though. Someone got mud on my sweater.

Her response comes a few minutes later. Noooo!! Will it wash out?

Don’t think so. It’s okay, though. See you soon.

I pick up my phone. Sure enough, there are twenty-three missed calls and no messages. My mother is not the most patient person in the world. It’s a good thing she and Dad are happily married, because if she were in the dating pool, she’d be the sort of person who would call the guy she liked a dozen times in a half-hour.

But instead of calling her back immediately, or even starting on my second project like I should, I pull up a third browser tab. A multicolored search logo greets me.

I’m going to regret this, but…

Blake Reynolds, I type. The search result pulls up a brief entry to the right, which features a fairly recent shot of Blake, alongside several of his younger photos. This includes a baby picture that is unfairly cute. Blake is the Vice President of Interfaces at Cyclone Systems, currently on leave. His birthday is February 14th. Of course. Even the universe thinks everyone should love him.

Beneath that, there are links to a smattering of news articles, his official page at Cyclone, a book review, and a YouTube playlist titled “The Best of Blake,” maintained by BlakeFan1283. With some trepidation, I click on the last one.

It’s a collection of ads, product launch clips, and interviews.

The first item in the playlist, of course, is the famous and now well-aged Cyclone ad, the one that broke them out of the server business when they started in on consumer electronics. The computer depicted reflects its age—this is obviously a high-end machine for the time, with a bulky CD-ROM drive and dual floppy disks. The camera focuses not on the tower itself, but on the user: an adorable, pudgy, blond toddler.

On screen, baby Blake grasps the mouse and starts a program. As it opens, he claps his hands in clumsy baby glee, laughing out loud.

“Cyclone Systems,” the announcer intones. “Computers so easy, even a baby can use them.”

There are a slew of adorable commercials of Blake, all of which have been named and labeled by his fans. I click on “Sorry,” which has two million views.

Blake, maybe five years old and still sun-blond, stands in what looks like his room. He’s packing a backpack, filling it with a sweater, a candy bar, a roughed-up teddy bear. By his sniffles, and the note the camera pans over, he’s obviously running away from home. Child Blake squares his shoulders and hefts his bag.

The next shot is of him jogging down a residential sidewalk, swiping away a single tear. The camera comes close, focusing on his waist. There’s a beep, a green light.

Little Blake stops and takes out the very first ever Cyclone multi-use pager.

Sorry, Blake. The message reads. I love you.

Blake turns to look over his shoulder. His expression clears. There’s one last sniffle. Then he turns and runs home.

“Cyclone Systems,” the announcer intones as Blake runs up a tree-shaded lawn and launches himself into his father’s arms. “Still bringing families together.”

It has never occurred to me before, but using your adorable son to sell your company’s products is a special kind of fucked up. I almost feel sorry for Blake until I remember that in compensation, he now has more money than God.

The next clip starts automatically. This one is an interview between nine-year-old Blake and David Letterman. Blake is wearing a suit and a bow tie; he shifts from side to side in his seat, restless and yet smiling.

Before the interview progresses beyond introductions, though, my phone rings. I jump, like I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t, and pause the video.

“Tina!” My mother sounds happy when I answer. She doesn’t say anything about the twenty-three missed calls. “You’re so busy these days. Sorry to call and bother you.”

I shift my phone closer to my ear. “You’re not bothering me.”

I turn away from the grinning child Blake, frozen on YouTube, to contemplate my room.

Technically, it’s not just my room; there are two twin beds crammed in here. Also technically, it’s not a room. It’s a converted garage, for very relaxed definitions of the word converted. Large carpet remnants mostly cover the concrete floor; there’s a rough bathroom and shower in the back. It’s a lot cheaper than the dorms. It’s also a lot farther from campus.

“How is everything?” I say. “Did you get my check?” Thirty dollars. I know there are some students who can drop thirty dollars on a single night in a bar, but I find that kind of extravagance bewildering. Thirty dollars is more than I spend on food in a week. It hurts to write that check, but that thirty dollars means gas to the pharmacy and the Medicare copay for Mabel’s ADHD medication. My little sister just started high school, and now everything she does will be part of her record for college. She does well when she’s on her meds. But my mom doesn’t always believe what doctors tell her.

There’s a little bit of a pause. “Yes, yes,” my mother says. “We got it. This is why I had to call you.”

My heart sinks. “What happened?” I try to sound calm. “Is Dad okay? Did something happen to him?” I can remember the last time Dad’s leg acted up. It’s a painful, visceral memory—of Mom working two jobs while trying to keep her other projects afloat, of my father refusing to go to the doctor because he couldn’t afford the visit. Of the infection that followed and a late night trip to the emergency room when his fever wouldn’t break. They’re still paying down that debt.

“No, not your father,” my mother says. “It’s Jack Sheng. You know Jack, right?”

I smile involuntarily. “I don’t know Jack.”

The idiom sails over Mom’s head. “That’s right. You never practice anymore.”

I make a noise in the back of my throat.

“No, no,” my mother says, “this is not a guilt trip. I promised you, no more guilt trips.”

I pull back from my phone slightly and look at it askance. She did promise me there would be no more guilt trips, but let’s face it, if it were possible to make a living running a guilt travel agency, Mom would be rich. She can send me on a round-the-world guilt cruise on two minutes’ notice. If I complain, she’ll tell me that it isn’t a guilt trip; it’s a guilt journey. I should know the difference; I’m in college now.

“About Jack Sheng,” she says. “His petition was denied. The IJ said his testimony was not credible. Why is Jack Sheng not credible?”

Listening to my mother talk always used to confuse my childhood friends. She speaks English with a thick accent. After my parents’ petition for asylum was granted, allowing us to stay in the US, she devoted all her spare time to helping friends navigate the immigration system. And Mom has many, many friends. Those friends also have friends, and both Mom and her many friends are on the internet, which raises the enterprise to a whole new level of acquaintanceship.

After years of helping others, her vocabulary is larger than most people would expect. It’s also peculiarly specialized.

Long experience allows me to translate my mother’s immigration shorthand. One of my mother’s many, many friends/distant acquaintances/internet message board buddies from her Falun Gong practice also tried to get asylum in the United States. The immigration judge—that’s the IJ my mother refers to; she’s picked up all the immigration lingo—didn’t believe that her friend had actually been persecuted by the Chinese government for practicing Falun Gong, and so denied his request for asylum. So Jack Sheng is going back to China.

“I don’t know why Jack Sheng is not credible,” I say, which is the simple truth. I stand up, pushing away from the frozen video of smiling child Blake, and cross the room to lean against the wall.

“Of course you don’t know. I don’t know, either. There is no legitimate answer.” I can imagine my mother waving her arms, tucking the phone between her chin and face. “This is the question we must ask. Why is Jack Sheng not credible? We have to raise money for an appeal.”

I pull my arms around myself. “Mom…” It’s not so much a protest. I have forty-three dollars and twenty cents in my checking account right now, and that has to last until my next paycheck, nine days away.

“I know, I know,” Ma says. “You’re a student. You don’t have so much. I’m not asking for your help.”

I nod, even though she can’t hear that.

“But I gave your check to Jack Sheng. So don’t be surprised if you see his name on the back.”

I swallow hard, leaning against the wall. Even with that support, my legs have all the strength of a rapidly falling soufflé. I slowly sink to the floor. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. And—I remind myself—I can’t scream at my own mother.

“This month,” my mom says, “Mabel can just try harder.”

God, it hurt so much to send that thirty dollars. That thirty bucks I sent means I can never take the easy way out and order pizza when I’m too exhausted to cook. It means that on Saturday nights, when my friends are taking time off to recharge, I’m the one frantically trying to get a head start on my homework for the coming week, because God knows I won’t have the time on weekdays. That thirty bucks means I never, ever get to take a break.