Real Americans, page 34
“Leave with me,” Wen whispered. “I have a plan.”
“Leave the village?”
“Leave China.”
I shook my head. “It’s impossible.”
Here was another naïve man. He hadn’t been through what I had, and it was easy to dismiss him. The skin of my hands cracked and stitched itself together only temporarily, before tearing again, bleeding at the seams. His hands were pale and free of calluses. He had always been a scholar, a rich boy. I wanted to laugh. What could he know?
“It’s possible,” Wen said.
He had a plan. In one week, if I met him at the abandoned mill, a truck he’d hired would be waiting for us. I held back another laugh. It was the same day Ping and I had agreed to meet. The journey would be long—twelve hours south.
“And what then?” I said, challenging him. “We swim?” I made no effort to disguise my skepticism.
I thought of Ping, treading water amid the lotuses in the lake, so at home. His face in a blossom, inhaling. His lips against my neck. Thinking of his body pained me physically. I remembered that I had once felt pleasure but couldn’t remember the contours of it. My heart was so broken, I felt that at any moment it might stop pumping. And yet it continued, unfairly, a blithe biological function. Of all people, I understood this.
I hated that I had ever been so close to Ping, to now be without him. To have watched him breathing, asleep, overwhelmed with fear that one day his breathing might stop. If I had never touched his body I wouldn’t miss it like I missed it now.
“We’ll take a boat,” Wen said. “It’s already paid for.”
He promised no harm would come to me. He would see to it. His face was pleading and open. Wen was a brave man, but he was brave in proportion to what he had experienced. He had suffered—all of us had—but he hadn’t suffered the way Ping and I had.
“Thank you for the bracelet,” I managed to say. He had, after all, come all this way to give it to me.
* * *
—
The days, fully accounted for by our work, passed too quickly. At the week’s end, I still didn’t know if I would walk to the river, where Ping would be waiting, or meet Wen at the abandoned mill. Ping and I had imagined our futures so vividly. What would a life with Wen be like? When I tried to imagine it there was only blankness. I hardly knew him.
I had the suspicion that each person was allowed only a bit of ease. There was a limit to fulfilled desire in a life. Of course I hadn’t been to America. I wasn’t aware that certain people lived extravagant lives—with no end to their wanting, never punished for it. But I didn’t know that yet.
As I worked, slicing wheat stalks, I fretted. Time was passing too quickly, and I didn’t know whom I would choose. The sun progressed across the sky in its impartial arc. It dipped below the horizon and painted the bottoms of clouds in lavender.
I’d been so careful not to wish anything, not to even entertain a wish. But my wish surfaced, then, overwhelming: I wished time would stop. I needed more time to make my decision. It was an inelegant wish, formed from desperation.
In that moment, something strange happened. Time expanded, dry rice that swelled with water. Was I imagining it? The world stopped but my mind persisted, recalling memory upon memory. My childhood: A dog’s pink tongue on my hand. A classmate playing a lively song on a homemade flute. Climbing the dove tree, with its profusion of birdlike blooms. Then, Beijing: The fragrance of gardenias; the clear, catching sound of Ping’s laugh; the flutter of his lashes against my skin. I thought of Wen, our last conversation before we’d been taken to the countryside.
“Where are your parents from?” he’d asked, and I told him. “Do you have brothers or sisters?”
“What is this? An interview?” I teased, and bumped his elbow with mine.
“I’m curious. You seem…” Wen thought for a moment. “You’re a mystery. It’s like you came out of thin air.”
I remember how pleased I was to hear this. I would have liked to have come from thin air. It was the future that compelled me, not the past.
I tried to picture Ping and me, swimming in the cold, dark water. Overwhelmingly, the odds were that we would die. It was as foolish as putting four bullets in the chambers of a gun, pressing it to Ping’s head, and pulling the trigger. And then holding it to my own head. It was only with Ping I entertained dreams. Alone I was completely practical. It made no sense, to kill the both of us. If I chose Wen we all might live. It would hurt Ping, but at least he would be alive.
Dinner that night was flavorless radishes and cabbage, damp and bitter. I ate as much as I could, knowing I needed the strength for the journey ahead. I stole bruised fruit from the pigs.
He was there as promised—a truck beside him, headlights off. When he saw me crying, he took my hand. I felt how soft it was against mine. We took our place beneath rough burlap that smelled like dirt and manure. Beside me, Wen snored. I tried to will time to pass, but it wouldn’t.
It was morning when we were dropped at the bay. Wen had made an arrangement with a skilled sailor. I didn’t understand how he had so much money, where he had hidden it, how he still had it.
The sailor reminded me of my own brothers. A sour odor emanated from him, as though, instead of blood, it were vinegar that ran through his veins. He wasn’t a decent man who wanted to help. He was only interested in the money that was promised him.
Wen admitted he didn’t know how to swim. We wore dirty life vests. Patrol boats surrounded us, dotting the ocean, shining beams of light that crisscrossed around us. Again, a part of me hoped we would be caught. I would deserve that punishment. I closed my eyes, breathing in the fishy smell of the life vests and the sailor’s fermented stench. Land seemed impossibly far away.
CHAPTER 10
Slowly, one by one, my senses returned to me. First, the colors: the blues, like robins’ eggs. When night fell, signs announcing dance clubs and diamonds blinked with frantic lights. Until now our lives had been brown and gray, army green and China red. Hubei had been the yellow of wheat stalks, the blue black of dark nights. But Hong Kong was a place run on money. Colors and lights competed for your attention, for the contents of your pocketbook.
After the sights came the sounds: the honking of cars, the laughter of children, the clanging of pots and pans as the food vendors washed their dishes in tubs on the street.
And finally, the scents: the snack vendors’ bubbling oils; the ocean odor of the fishmongers, who unzipped mackerel and croaker down the length of their bellies, releasing organs that stank in the heat. It would have been foul to anyone else, but because it wasn’t China, it was as pleasing as perfume.
We rented a small room, lying to the landlord that we were a married couple. In those first days and weeks, I was wary as a cat and Wen was cautious with me—gentle.
I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. I saw judgment on everyone’s faces: They were ready to denounce me. But of course no one ever was. Men and women walked around with their minds awash in their own private universes of concern, unaware of what we had recently survived.
Wen took to Hong Kong immediately. I soon realized that the Wen I had known in China was a different man entirely, one who had diminished himself to elude suspicion. Here he was boisterous—even flirtatious. He picked up Cantonese with ease. He stayed out late with new friends to drink and play mahjong. His eyes followed the women walking in the street, who wore tight dresses that displayed the curves of their hips—beautiful dresses that made me wonder about Lanlan.
I should have basked in the freedom, too, drunk it up in the way Wen did. But the freedom disoriented me, made me dizzy. Where was the brave girl I’d been? Many days, I stayed inside, unable to merge with the thrum of people outside. These were Chinese people, too, but we had nothing in common. They were unafraid—wide open.
Cantonese gave me trouble. Its similarities to Hakka should have made it simple for me to learn, but I kept mixing up words. I’d thought of myself as adaptable—I’d spoken Mandarin in Beijing—but learning Cantonese was, for some reason, a different story, as though I were being asked to evolve from sea creature to land animal.
I found work in a plastic flower factory, where my Cantonese didn’t have to be perfect and where I could keep my mouth—with my broken teeth—closed. The colored plastic made flowers that would be fashioned into jewelry or décor. I brought a bouquet home to brighten our small apartment, and the vibrancy of its colors—yellow and orange and pink—existed at odds with how I felt.
Alone, I watched our television, which Wen had won gambling. I remember, one evening, watching the news of Apollo 11, Americans landing on the moon.
I was amazed to hear a mention of Chang’e, the Chinese goddess. As a child, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, my mother had told me her story. “It seems she was banished to the moon because she stole the pill of immortality from her husband,” mission control told the astronauts. Chang’e was banished, but her husband missed her: He left out fruits and cakes, and it was why we did the same every autumn. I always wondered if it was meant to be a cautionary tale. I would have happily stolen immortality, too.
“You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit,” NASA added. “He is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree.” “Okay,” one of the astronauts said, either Buzz Aldrin or Michael Collins. “We’ll keep a close eye out for the bunny girl.” Mission control chuckled in response. For them, it was a punch line. The men were exactly who I pictured when I imagined Americans, white men who looked like they ate meat at every meal. They wore small flags—red, white, and blue—on the sleeves of their space suits.
Nights, Wen climbed into bed, reeking of smoke and alcohol, making the mattress creak. He would speak Cantonese to me, forgetting I was struggling to learn, while I feigned sleep, unresponsive.
On one of these nights he reached for me, stroking my side. I stiffened. I wasn’t ready, I told him. I could feel an anger emanating from him, thorny in its silence, that he had waited long enough. It had been a year in Hong Kong, chastely sleeping side by side. He had been patient, hadn’t he? But he was begrudgingly respectful. He turned over in bed and fell asleep—snoring loudly, it seemed, to spite me.
I was grateful—I was. Wen had risked his own life to bring me here. But silently, I grieved, mourning not only Ping but our dreams of the future. Had he tried to swim? I wondered if he’d made it. I hoped I would see him on the street, at the same time I didn’t: What would I say? How could I beg forgiveness? It was not only grief but shame, knotted together, like a mass of mucus I couldn’t cough up.
When Wen reached for me the next night, I didn’t refuse. I put a hand on his back, felt the sweat collected beneath it. He pressed his mouth to mine. He tasted of beer and smoke and sharp onion. While he touched me, I thought of the men on the moon, who had walked its gray surface. They had even given it a name: Tranquility Base. I imagined myself there, in the silence and expanse. After Wen orgasmed he collapsed onto me, and the weight of his body, his lungs against mine, almost stopped my breathing. He smelled so different from Ping. Every part of him was different.
* * *
—
At the factory we made false roses, daisies, and chrysanthemums, which people bought to put on top of gravestones: flowers that would never brown, or droop, or need replacement. But how could false flowers be a worthy gift for the dead? When they were neither living nor dead, but manufactured.
We made lotus blossoms that women wore on brooches. I knew exactly the flowers that came from our factory and noticed them pinned proudly on lapels all over the city. The plastic felt so different from the flower’s real silkiness. After Ping and I had considered the plant so closely, these were a far cry.
* * *
—
My coworkers readied themselves to go on strike. Their wages had been reduced, and they were unhappy with the British government. They picketed for communism. “Why don’t you join us?” asked Ngah Oi, who worked beside me in the assembly line, making sure the petals weren’t bent. I shook my head; I couldn’t. I had once been so brave, but fear was part of me now—a grafted branch. It felt like a trap: If I did anything wrong, I would be punished. While my fellow workers picketed, I counted petals, I removed excess plastic with my fingernails. I didn’t believe in communism, anyway. I couldn’t understand their dissatisfaction. My coworkers didn’t realize how good they had it. It was greedy of them, to want more.
From time to time bodies washed onto the shore: men and women who had tried to swim from China, who hadn’t made it, the skin on their chests torn from the oyster beds. I was always afraid to walk along the water, afraid I might see Ping’s face on one of the corpses.
* * *
—
My coworkers picketed, and soon, the riot police arrived. Protestors were arrested, far more were injured. Angry men and women flooded the streets of Hong Kong, impassioned by injustice. Signs were hung, and I shuddered to see them—familiar red-character signs that said “Stew the White-Skinned Pig” and “Down with British Imperialism.” I would have liked never to see a sign again. The protests came to a boil and then, as quickly as they had come, they died down. It was the same story as always: The powerless were no match for the powerful.
* * *
—
I braved the meat market to buy pork for a dish that Wen liked. I stood in the crowd of women, assessing the meat, trying to choose the right shoulder—streaked with the perfect amount of fat, not too little, not too much. I felt a strange sensation in my skin—foreign, yet familiar, somehow. My vision grew hazy, and I blinked in an attempt to clear it. It stayed foggy at the sides. When I pointed to the piece I wanted, the butcher seemed to freeze, his mouth open, the spittle arrested in an arc. Gold capped his back teeth, slick with saliva and light. His cleaver was aloft at the moment time halted. Standing before him, I wondered if my grief had driven me to insanity. Had I died, was this what death was? Standing immobile in front of a butcher’s stall, for the rest of eternity?
After a long, unmoving moment, time resumed its regular pace. The butcher handed me the bagged hunk of flesh and my change—bright red blood across Queen Elizabeth’s profile.
“What are you standing there for?” he asked, impatient. “Stupid woman,” he muttered, shaking his head, returning to his carcasses.
Trembling, I stepped aside. This had happened before. It had been this way on the night I’d decided on Wen—as though time had paused. But how could that be?
* * *
—
The years passed like hours. At least, it seems that way, looking back. Wen got a teaching job at the university; I finished my degree. Wen asked me to marry him—officially. All this time, we had been presenting ourselves as a husband and wife.
The year was 1974. Wen received word that the son of his parents’ friends had immigrated to the United States. He worked at a research laboratory in New York where jobs awaited us, if we wanted them. It was the right dream, with the wrong man.
We were married on a day in October—a small, rushed ceremony. Wen’s parents attended, but mine couldn’t leave China. I didn’t have friends, so it was Wen’s gambling buddies who celebrated with us afterward, with cold beers and, later, baiju. He was too drunk to make love that night and I was grateful for it.
In the morning, we flew to America.
CHAPTER 11
The light was different in America. That was the first impression. It was a saturated hue, golden as the yolk of a good egg.
At the airport, to the man holding the stamp, considering my passport, I made a face to match my photo: the same polite, closed-mouthed grimace.
I could not have imagined a place like this: from the height of the ceilings to the variety of people, light and dark skinned, holding multicolored leather luggage sets, as though there were red, yellow, and blue cows here.
“Follow me,” Wen said.
He affected confidence, but it was obvious he was as intimidated as I was. He tilted his head back to consider the signs, which were large and numerous, pointing in every direction. It was plain on his face—how lost he felt. We followed a sign with a picture of a suitcase.
“Stay here,” he commanded.
“Don’t leave me!”
He shook my hand from his arm, exasperated. He walked—the only Chinese man—toward an information kiosk, holding a note that bore the address of our new apartment.
Men, women, and children looked searchingly for their loved ones. They beamed with broad smiles when they caught sight of the person they were awaiting. American faces seemed to me so different from Chinese ones. Americans wore uncomplicated expressions.
Before me, a woman paused. Tall, decorated in pearls, her blond hair neatly cut. She wore a bright skirt suit set—a flight attendant. Her face resembled a fine porcelain plate, like her skin could shatter.
“Are you lost?” she asked kindly.
My English was nonexistent. I smiled with pursed lips and nodded, not knowing what to say. I gestured toward Wen, who stood at a kiosk, shaking his own head at the man he struggled to speak to.
“Your husband?”
I nodded, knowing that word, at least.
Her eyes fell near my feet.
“Is this your bracelet?”
She held out my mother’s jade bracelet, which must have slid off. It looked greener here.
* * *
—
We arrived past midnight. The address matched a box-shaped building of discolored brick. On the corner a convenience store’s shingle winked anxious yellow light. A twenty-four-hour laundromat loudly tossed clothing. I had never seen a dryer.
