Beautiful Country Read Online Free Page A

hand to take the water bottles from her. She shook her head and lifted her chin for me to follow Mrs. Zhang down what appearedto be a narrow, dark hallway. The maid followed behind us carrying the water. It looked as though the hallway was used for storage. Tall, thin picture frames were stacked in layers against the wall. I paused to take a closer look. The maid didn’t see me stop and knocked into me, spilling the water bottles. Mrs. Zhang spun around. Her smile disappeared and she chastised the maid in a fast staccato outburst.
    The maid hid her face and began picking up the water. I bent over to help, but Mrs. Zhang snapped, “No, no. She do it. We go now.”
    We ascended a narrow staircase at the end of the hall to a small, dark annex that consisted of one bedroom with a small bathroom. The walls were painted white and were entirely bare. Across from the doorway was a narrow window with opaque glass. The room was not as small as the one occupied by the four maids, but still, the full-size bed took up most of the room, with a cupboard, one bedside table, and a desk taking up the rest. There wasn’t enough room between the bed and desk for a chair. The bed occupied far too much space, and the position of the desk made it impossible to open the cupboard door all the way. I was about to ask where my bags were when I saw them tucked in the space between the far side of the bed and the wall.
    Mrs. Zhang raised her arm. “Okay, yes? You will stay here. It’s okay?”
    I wondered if two of the four bunks I had seen before had been in this room. “I hope I’m not taking anyone’s room,” I said.
    â€œNo, no,” she assured me, “this room was empty. Empty room.”
    I wasn’t certain I believed her, but there was nothing I coulddo about it. Mrs. Zhang told me there would be breakfast on the table in the morning. Satisfied that I was settled in, she departed.
    Finally alone, I collapsed on the bed and closed my eyes and listened to the lawless percussion of fireworks exploding in the night air. Everyone back home would be waking up soon. I thought about the friends that I had left behind who would be getting ready for another day at school. I thought about the school dances and the parties that I would never attend, and the jokes and stories that I would never be a part of. Here I was, seven thousand miles away from home—¹⁄ 32 nd the distance to the moon—in a small white box of a room on the sixteenth floor in a country in which I was a stranger. I could disappear and no one would know.

四
    It was dark when I awoke. My mouth was dry and my legs ached, and I had no idea where I was. I reached down to rub my legs and noticed I was wearing jeans. I sat up and looked around. I had fallen asleep on top of the bed, but someone had placed a blanket over me. On the bedside table were a dozen bottles of water and a digital clock that had not been there the night before. The clock read 5:27 a.m. I stood up and reached my arms out to find the light switch. The light stuttered and then filled the room with the fluorescence of a hospital. I turned it off.
    After I showered, I pulled my duffel onto the bed and dug through piles of neatly pressed tennis clothes and looked for my lucky yellow Nike shirt. The clock now read 5:55. I was awake but not alert. Everything was slightly off, as if it were raining in my head. I remembered what Mrs. Zhang had said about breakfast. I was starving but I didn’t go down to the kitchen. It was too early, and I didn’t want to wake anyone. But I also dreaded having to cobble together bits of my meager Chinese to communicate with one of the maids.
    I cleared a space among the clothes strewn about my bed and pulled out my laptop and watched a film I had started on theplane. I tried not to think about the tryout, but the more I attempted to keep my mind off it, the larger it loomed. I wished Mr. Zhang hadn’t scheduled my