Days of Distraction

by Alexandra Chang

  I spent the last two years of high school with the Milk Club, was allowed to partake in their many traditions: sleepovers, dress-up dinners at Denny’s, Secret Santa, extensive listicle- and chart-making. (But not the notebook—from the official written document, I was excluded.) At one of those sleepovers, the topic of my going to China for a couple of weeks came up. The host’s mom was in the room with us. Why are you going to China?, she asked. Her family is from there, the girl replied. They are?, the mother said. She appeared genuinely confused. Her brow furrowed; she stared at me, an examination. Then came the apology. I’m sorry, I never saw you as Asian until just now! We all had a good laugh about it. I felt a kind of relief. I had passed, been accepted, blended in—at least with this one woman. It took a few minutes for the initial shame to kick in. Then years for it to curdle inside me, mixed with other instances like this, to really make me sick.

  Andrea Freeman writes in her journal article “The Unbearable Whiteness of Milk: Food Oppression and the USDA”: “Early milk promoters associated the whiteness of milk with the putative purity of racial whiteness. . . . An agricultural history of New York from the 1930s asserted: ‘A casual look at the races of people seems to show that those using much milk are the strongest physically and mentally, and the most enduring of the people of the world. Of all races, the Aryans seem to have been the heaviest drinkers of milk and the greatest users of butter and cheese, a fact that may in part account for the quick and high development of this division of human beings.’”

  The people I used to work with have gifted us several audiobooks so we can better pass the time. J wants to listen to a zombie apocalypse novel. No matter how hard I try to pay attention, I become drowsy. The characters’ voices sound relaxed and bored, like they are giving a lecture on how to file taxes rather than recounting global horrors. Malnutrition, pollution, the rise of previously eradicated ailments . . . I fall asleep within minutes. I cannot stay awake for this end of the world.

  For the last several years I have said to him that I do not ever want to be pregnant. It’s not that I don’t like children. I love them. I want to adopt. There are so many babies who need homes that it doesn’t make sense to me to make another baby of our own. Truthfully, the impulse was selfish at first. I don’t want to carry anything in my uterus, and I don’t want my body to blow up and my bones to lose density, and I absolutely don’t want to deal with the pain of giving birth and the possibility of my vagina tearing into my asshole.

  After speaking to scientists working at a showerhead company, of all places, who said my generation’s children would likely be the generation to deal with the apocalypse, I felt more justified in my not wanting to bring any more babies into the world. I can’t tell others to do the same, and I am happy to raise some of their children to have the wherewithal to make it through a world on the brink of annihilation. Who knows how exactly yet, since I’m fairly certain I would be among the first to go in an apocalyptic situation. I don’t know how to do anything except think and talk. I am legally blind without my contacts or glasses. I can walk relatively fast for extended periods of time, but I can barely run. My only postapocalyptic survival skill is being with J. So when he looks a little teary, and very upset, at my no-baby ranting, I stop and say, Who knows. I could change my mind. It is changing all the time.

  Between our appetizers of wings and our entrees of tall burgers and onion rings, I notice that all the other couples in the four booths lining the wall of the diner are Asian/white—Asian woman, white man. My awareness of our likeness to the other couples shakes me out of whatever we had been discussing. I tell him to look. He laughs, ha ha, like it’s a happy coincidence. It seems to be more than that, and more sinister. It troubles me that others who look at us, for example, the waitstaff, might think so too.

  This isn’t the first time. The racial matchup was so common in San Francisco, it was easier to ignore, unless, that is, we had to walk directly by a pair where the man had the exact same coloring as J, the pale skin and the brownish hair, both with a tint of red. And this did happen more than once or twice. At least five times. I would grip his arm and glance at the man, then the woman—who sometimes, but not as often, in my opinion at least, would look very similar to me—then back at the man. I would push J along in order to pass faster, to distance ourselves faster. I didn’t like to think about how our relationship, which I felt was singular, could be lumped into a “type.” Then there was the eerie feeling that came with seeing a mirror couple, the questioning of how they came to be, if their lives were parallel to ours, if their experiences were similar, and whether one of us could be swapped with the other without anyone noticing a difference.

  I ask if he’s listening and he says yes, though he has not said anything in response. This is one of his worst qualities, the way he chooses silence in certain conversations, so not only do I feel idiotic and crazed, like I’m talking to myself, I also have to do the work of speculating what he’s thinking.

  “I don’t know,” he says.

  “What don’t you know?”

  Another annoying silence.

  “I guess I don’t get why it’s bothering you so much now,” he finally says.

  “I’m not bothered,” I say. “I’m just thinking about it right now and I’m explaining to you what I’m thinking and how I feel. There are so many Asian-woman-white-man couples, and it’s like, why? Are all of the white men fetishizing the Asian women? Or are Asian women more prone to dating white men, and why? Or something else? Why don’t we ever find ourselves in a place with all Asian-man-white-woman couples? Or Asian-woman-black-man couples? Or black-woman-white-man couples? Or Latina-woman-Asian-man couples? Or—”

  “Maybe you just notice them because you’re Asian and I’m white,” he says. “Maybe they just love each other and race doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

  I burst out with fake laughter. “Yeah, right. Sure.”

  “Okay,” he says.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t really want to talk about this anymore. I want to listen to this book.”

  “Fine then,” I say.

  J taps the phone screen for another chapter of the apocalypse—The human mouth is packed with bacteria, even more so than the most unhygienic dog—and I fall asleep, frustrated.

  I’ll take this out for you. That was our line as courtesy clerks. I’d gotten the job, at fourteen, thanks to a stubborn persistence. After packing the food into paper bags and placing them into the cart, no matter what: Here, I’ll take this out for you. It was to be presented as a statement, not a false offer but a genuine commitment, to lift the burden of having to answer a half-hearted question off of the guest. Still, there were certain conditions where we expected a No, it’s all right, or an I can handle it, or No need, or I’m okay. And this was one such condition: a husband and wife, of able body, shopping together. And yet they smiled with all of their teeth. They let me push the cart out for them. The husband chatted nonstop, about the dry heat and whatever else was on his mind. It was summer in the Central Valley and I was sweating in a dark purple polo and black slacks, grocery uniform. The wife walked several paces ahead down the parking lot.

  “Do you go to Davis High?” the man asked. “My son’s a sophomore there. His name is David ——. Do you know him?”

  “I’m a sophomore, too,” I said. “But I don’t think I know him.”

  “He’s a bit of a nerd, antisocial type,” he said. “Takes after his mother more than me.” He waved toward his wife’s back. “I tried to get him to play sports, but he wouldn’t have it. Sits in front of his computer all day, doing God knows what, boo bee bloo beep.” The man cracked himself up. I laughed a little, too, out of customer service duty. “You’re a nice girl,” he said. “I’d really like you to meet my son.”

  I thanked him and said I would ask my friends if they knew David. This was my job. Be courteous and kind to the guest.

  “Terrific,” he said as
I loaded the groceries into the trunk of his car. His wife sat in the passenger seat. The man stood watching me. It was my job, but there were also certain conditions where I anticipated help, and this was one of them. None was provided. I shut the trunk, and the man said, “Great talking. Keep my son in mind. I’d really like to find him a nice Oriental girlfriend, and you fit the bill.”

  He got into his car. I pushed the cart back to its bay next to the store, slamming its metal body against its identicals.

  Somebody once asked me to identify the emotions that most strongly affect my life and the actions I do or don’t take. I couldn’t name them at the time, but now I’ve thought more about the question. Here is the answer I’ve come up with: revenge and regret and fear and guilt.

  When I wake up, there is tea. We are at a Starbucks drive-through window.

  “All rested, sleepyhead?”

  He offers me the cup.

  “No being grumpy on our fun road trip, Jing Jing.”

  He smiles wide and squinty-eyed. He is smiling more often than not. But he really does have the sweetest smile, all big and genuine; it almost convinces me that he’s right. At the very least, I can forgive him his wrongs.

  The only way to remain awake is to listen to music or look at people driving around us. Since he is well into the book, I stare out the window. I look for couples. Are they having fun? Where are they going? Are they having their own little disputes? (No farting with the windows up! It is my strong belief that men should wear shorts only when working out, never else! You always forget to pack the important shit, like napkins!) Or how about that lone woman, in the lane over, with her window down, swaying her head and shaking her shoulders to the booming sounds of some song. I can’t hear the music exactly, since our windows are up. But the bass beats pulse toward us, heavy and fast. She looks around fifty—in a yellow tank top, tanned arms. She catches me looking at her and exaggerates her dance moves in my direction. I laugh. She waves her hand out the window. I wave back, then she speeds past. I wish I could know where she’s headed.

  Ithaca will be the farthest from California he’s ever lived. In fact, he’s never lived anywhere else. Same with me, except when my family moved from San Francisco to Shanghai for two years. That’s when my dad stayed behind. But that was different in many ways. It was China. I was a child. I didn’t understand anything and I was highly adaptable.

  The China I remember most is like this:

  The apartment in Pudong. The tadpoles had sprouted legs, which meant they needed to be tossed. My sister and I poured them into the alley gutter, crying for the lost swimmers. There were too many. They drained away with the waste.

  A woman held her baby, her arms outstretched, pleading and repeating to those who passed: Please take her. My mother watched from the window five stories up. She petted my brother’s head and said, Would you like a little sister today?

  In summer, the air was thick and heavy, the dragonflies flew low by our thighs. It was enough to smother the wails of our losses. The alley was empty of people at night.

  Back then, I didn’t understand the reasons for either—our departure or his staying put. For years, my mom said it was because she missed home and family. My dad said it was because he had to take care of things and to work. When we returned, he no longer had a car repair shop and we no longer had a house. They took us to an unknown town, Davis, and said here’s where we’ll live. We accepted because we had no choice. The explanations and stories shifted based on time and speaker. Money. Business mistakes. Greedy relatives. Lawsuits. Separation. Stress. Her mistakes. His mistakes. I still don’t know what truly happened, but at this point, does the truth really matter.

  As for Davis, the beginning was not great. The sixth grade teacher introduced me as an immigrant from China. Though it was not entirely true, neither was it entirely false. I didn’t correct her. My sister and brother were placed into ESL classes until they could distinguish between “a stove” and “an oven,” though our mom never used the latter. The teachers made them name never-eaten dishes on a cartoon Thanksgiving table. I seemed to escape the classes out of age and luck, but none of us could escape Davis. It reminded me of the movie Pleasantville, of that 1950s TV town Tobey Maguire’s character escapes to. A made-up place in a made-up movie, far removed from my experience. I cried often in the first weeks; I wanted to go back—to San Francisco, or even China seemed like a better option at times. I fell asleep fantasizing about what life would have been like somewhere else.

  One of my junior high teachers once said in class, Davis is full of the kind of liberals who claim they want to make the world a better place, but who will fight to the death to prevent a homeless shelter from being built in their neighborhood.

  Davis, too, was the place of my family’s tectonic shifts. Divorce. Poverty. Domestic disputes. Charged, simple terms I hated, still hate, to use to describe those days. But I’m getting used to them. Both their ability to quickly summarize and their inability to capture beyond a shallow essence.

  But Davis is where I met and found J, who is listening intently to this story of his. Fear is primal. Fear sells. That was my mantra. “Fear sells.”

  I hit pause on the phone. “What’s this guy talking about? What’s happening now in the book?”

  “He’s selling a vaccine,” he says.

  “For what?”

  “For—wait, do you really want to know? Should I explain everything you’ve missed? Are you going to listen now?”

  “Uh . . .” I think for a while. “No, I guess not. It only sounded interesting for a second.”

  “It is interesting! I wish you’d stay awake and listen to it with me.”

  “No, no, it’s okay. I don’t want to.” I press play again and go back to staring out the window or sleeping.

  In Montana there are big mountains and fast-driving semis. I remember something a friend who grew up in the countryside once told me: If you want to fit in with rural people, wear camo. So much of it in Montana. At a highway rest stop we see a family of close to a dozen, various ages, each wearing at least one piece of camo. A teenage girl with her ponytail looped out the back of a camo baseball cap. A little boy in camo shorts. One man in a camo T-shirt, another in a camo button-up. A woman in a camo zip-up jacket. An old man and woman—grandparents—in matching camo sweatpants, and so on.

  There are two opposing reasons animals in the wild have camouflaging abilities, a pop-science article tells me. One is to go unnoticed while hunting. The other is to hide in order to avoid being caught. When a tawny frogmouth senses danger, it fluffs out its feathers, freezes, and looks like a broken tree branch. Aristotle long ago noticed that the octopus “seeks its prey by changing its colour as to render it like the colour of the stones adjacent to it.”

  As we travel deeper into the country, how best to hide myself? Will J’s presence provide a sufficient cloak? Where and when and how will who or what come out to attack?

  He turns twenty-six. We celebrate at what looks like the fanciest restaurant in Butte. A group of men in suits sit at the table behind us, talking about regulations and meetings and numbers. There is thin green carpeting throughout. The candles on the table are fake.

  J says he has a fantasy about us one day retiring to the Montana mountains. He grew to love the area after his family’s vacations here during his childhood. All day they hiked, swam, and fished. All activities I am not wholly against. But I can’t imagine living in Montana, at all, ever. Or, rather, I strongly dislike my imagination of living in Montana.

  “I want to say nice things because it’s your birthday, but I’m never living in Montana.”

  “Why not?”

  “How many Asians do you think there are? Like none?”

  He looks it up on his phone. “Says here that Asians make up zero-point-six percent of the population. So no, I guess it wouldn’t be that fun for you.”

  “Zero. Point. Six.” I glance over at the men eating behind us.

  “And you don
’t like the outdoors much, either.”

  “It’s not the outdoors that are the main problem, although yes. I’m not in love with this whole camping, living-on-the-ground thing—but it’s cheaper for the trip, so whatever.”

  Another drawback: tent sex needs to be very quiet so as not to disturb neighboring tent sleepers. But all of these camping materials—what were they thinking?—with the smallest of movements, the stuff produces the loudest, scratchiest noises.

  I know this much about driving: It is not okay to close your eyes while on the highway, or under any circumstance, really, but I’m not behind the wheel, so the rule need not apply.

  We don’t only date white men and women. But we are only dating white men and women right now. My sister is with a tall man with fluffy brown hair and a significant nose. My brother is “talking to” a rock climber with cropped blond hair. They are both young, so I think maybe they might not actually end up with a white person. Me, on the other hand, I have been with J for my entire adult life, and here I am in this car, so it seems that I will end up with him, a white man. J does not like that, again, I’m pointing this out.

  “It’s as if being white is the one thing that defines me,” he says.

  “Well, it’s definitely a big part of what defines you,” I say.

  He used to wear a shirt that had a stylized logo of the words STOP RACISM! printed on the chest. I told him to stop wearing it. It made me very uncomfortable to be seen with him when he was wearing the shirt, and even if I was not with him, the thought of him being seen in that shirt at all made me uneasy. I couldn’t explain why and I still can’t quite explain it. Maybe I was worried that people would think he was with me because he was trying to stop racism? Maybe I was worried he was actually dating me to stop racism? Maybe it had to do with me knowing he would never stop racism by wearing a shirt that said STOP RACISM!? Anyway, he can’t wear the shirt anymore because I threw it out when we moved in together. The act was a relief at the time. Now I feel mildly guilty for tossing something he liked, and with not at all a bad message.