Days of Distraction

by Alexandra Chang

  He moves on.

  What you meant was: You don’t have a Chinese name for him to say or know. You are protecting a piece of yourself from people like him. At home, you tell your mother about what Mr. Hannah said. She is furious and yells that she will call the school to complain. Bring her the phone. She’s getting the man fired. You protest. You don’t want her to make it worse by drawing it out, by bringing more attention to it; it’s already so embarrassing. You want to forget. She listens because you are adamant.

  Why, again, hadn’t you listened to her?

  Then there was the time in high school when a boy asked if all Asian women had black nipples. He said he’d seen it in a porno. That one you didn’t tell your mom.

  Looking back, I don’t know why that guy couldn’t have just watched more porn videos featuring Asian women—there are so, so, so many, after all—to locate the answer to his question, instead of asking me. This, I tell J.

  “Well, I mean, your nipples aren’t black, but they aren’t pink,” he says.

  “That’s not the point! And whatever, your nipples are so pink and pale they’re practically invisible; you look like one of those nipple-less Barbie dolls,” I say.

  He sidles up next to me in the tent and says, “Why, thank you.”

  “I meant it as an insult,” I say. But now he’s latched onto me, smiling goofily, again.

  Maybe there’s a sculpture of a wild animal out front—a bear, a moose, a hawk—or maybe there’s an American flag, or there could be a parking lot of pickup trucks with bumper stickers with seemingly innocuous statements like CHANGE . . . and WORK HARDER, then upon closer inspection, beneath, YOU MAY LIVE TO REGRET: VOTE NOBAMA and MILLIONS ON WELFARE DEPEND ON YOU, or maybe there’s a look on the hostess’s face, or the way she says, Over here, or possibly there’s a room packed full of older white customers eating slabs of meat, or maybe there’s a waiter who doesn’t come to the table for twenty minutes and the white people seated afterward have already gotten their appetizers, or there’s all of this mashed into one place and this makes you feel both incredibly visible and sickeningly invisible at once, both so inside your own body and so outside of it, or maybe it’s all nothing, it’s all a coincidence, a slip of the mind, a confluence of small signs that don’t intentionally mean to add up to anything, certainly not this. Maybe it’s all in your own head. Nothing exactly terrible happens, and you’re back on the road.

  Also from Pew:

  Looking at all married couples in 2010, regardless of when they married, the share of intermarriages reached an all-time high of 8.4%. In 1980, that share was just 3.2%.

  About 36% of Asian female newlyweds married outside their race in 2010, compared with just 17% of Asian male newlyweds.

  White/Asian newlyweds of 2008 through 2010 have significantly higher median combined annual earnings ($70,952) than do any other pairing, including both white/white ($60,000) and Asian/Asian ($62,000).

  Mixed marriages involving Asians and whites were even more stable than same-race white marriages.

  More than four in ten Americans (43%) say that more people of different races marrying each other has been a change for the better in our society, while 11% say it has been a change for the worse and 44% say it has made no difference.

  Which is to say, the data bodes well for us. But from where does the data originate? Who agreed to answer the survey? And who are these people who think it’s been better for our society? Like, how? I, for one, would firmly be in the “has made no difference” category.

  The zombie story is long over. Now we listen to country music because it’s the clearest station on the radio and is fitting for the drive down the empty I-90.

  “What are you thinking about?” I ask J.

  “School,” he says. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing really,” I say. “What about school?”

  “I’m nervous that everybody is gonna be way smarter than me, and that I’m gonna fall behind,” he says. “Then everybody will find out I’m dumber than them.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I say. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. You’re smart and you work hard.”

  “I hope so.”

  When I told people back home that he was going to start his Ph.D. in biochemistry at Cornell, they said, Wow, he must be a genius. To avoid appearing cruel, I learned to nod, rather than laugh maniacally like they’d told a very funny joke.

  The laughing was not nice of me.

  No, it was not, he agrees.

  Real beds make you feel like a real person. I am not built for sleeping in a tent, on the ground, for this many days.

  “Please let’s get a hotel,” I say in South Bend, Indiana.

  Atop the scratchy floral bedspread and happy, I turn on the TV, flip through the channels until landing on a familiar episode of Law & Order. A woman has been stabbed and murdered. The detectives hunt for a man. J asks if I want to explore. I decline. He goes out into the night. If we were in San Francisco, I’d have to go to sleep by now, and then I’d have to get up early to go to the office. I’d have to write two to four stories about new gadgets. I’d have to avoid thinking about whether the work mattered. I’d have to listen to Jasmine or whoever complain about work. I would have to listen to myself complain about work. Other reporters would cover the important stuff: the Google bus protests, the privacy breaches, the tech tax breaks ruining the city.

  It was good we left.

  On the TV, the Chinese American psychiatrist says, “You know, most animal species aren’t monogamous.”

  J returns with food from Steak ’n Shake. “These are the blandest fries I’ve ever eaten,” he says. “But oh my god, this burger. And they were the friendliest counter staff ever.”

  “Can I try some?”

  “You said you didn’t want anything.”

  “I just want a small bite, just a taste.”

  “I knew you’d say that, which is why I got you this.”

  He pulls a second burger out of the bag.

  “I don’t need a whole one!” But I do. We eat our burgers in bed watching another episode or three of the Law & Order marathon, then fall asleep with grease on our breath.

  A tech journalist acquaintance texts saying he’s heard I’ve gone freelance. I reply asking where he’d heard.

  Is it not true?

  well it’s not official. who told you?

  The rumor mill ;)

  It doesn’t matter. The point is, am I interested in talking to somebody about a gig for a major social media company that shall not be named? First, I must sign an NDA.

  Ok, I text back, curious.

  The role is to aggregate and curate stories for a newspaper app they’ll soon launch. There are many categories, including ambiguously named ones like Cute, Exposure, Well Lived, and Score. They’re hiring a curator for each category and they want to know if I’d be interested in leading Tech.

  J and I stop at a coffee shop in a town outside of South Bend so I can do a trial under the instruction of the editorial lead from the media consulting company contracted to manage the app’s freelancers. The trial involves me sending him a batch of what I consider the top dozen or so technology stories posted from various sources across the site. It takes half an hour.

  The editorial lead emails back: I’m really liking your selections. Are you able to dive in and start doing this on a daily basis, ASAP? And, I guess a less practical but nonetheless relevant question, did you enjoy doing it?

  “You’re funny,” says J, who has been waiting patiently. “We’re not even done with our road trip and you’re getting a job. But how exactly is this better?”

  First, the pay—it is more than what I was earning per hour in San Francisco. The work will take, according to the editorial lead, four to five hours a day, though slightly less on Saturdays, which I will also need to work. But I know I can do it faster and bill for the allotted time. No writing involved. Each day, I must keep an eye on tech news and upload stories i
nto the app. What they want is my ability to distinguish important from fluff, necessary from superfluous, good from mediocre.

  Do I enjoy it? It is easy and mindless work. I’ll have a source of income as soon as we get to Ithaca. All of this gives me a sense of peace and direction. So sure! I really enjoy it. Sign me up.

  Can we go any faster? Can we totally skip Ohio? (I think of Becca’s cousins.) Let’s arrive a day early to upstate New York. We drive nine hours that day. And by “we,” I mean “he.” I’m tired of the road. I want the destination. I want to start this new life. None of this journey stuff, the experience, the unknown. I stare out the window, fall asleep, dream of nothing.

  “Wake up,” he says. “Look.” I do. “It’s like Gotham or something,” he says. “It’s so dark and industrial and sad.”

  The skyline is tall, bleak buildings lit yellow from within. I almost expect gray smoke to rise from their tips and plume into the gray sky, for the clouds to smother the city with rain and lightning. But it is quiet, we watch it pass. It occurs to me, not sadly, that Cleveland is likely a place I will only ever pass and never go.

  Durhamville, a tiny Erie Canal town with a population of less than six hundred. It has a post office, a fire department, two churches, an elementary school, and a bar.

  “How do people live here?” I ask.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” he says.

  The house is big and old, full of J’s relatives, Irish Catholic stock, who are all there for Uncle Bill’s ninetieth birthday. Uncle Bill sits in a big brown leather chair, smiling at everyone and giving two thumbs up to all questions. He rarely speaks. A woman goes up to kiss him on the cheek. He smiles, asks, Who are you? Everyone chuckles. With me, he takes my hand in both of his and shakes it gently. In this grasp I feel safe and innocent.

  The others I don’t know about. Some avoid speaking to or looking at me, but that’s okay, because I don’t want anybody here to pay much attention, to pick away at the pieces of me that are different. J’s parents had warned: Somebody might say something.

  I stick to his grandparents, who are visiting from California. While J catches up with long-lost aunts and uncles and cousins, his grandmother takes my arm and leads me away on a tour. The hallways and staircases and rooms seem out of my dreams. One leads to another through narrow halls, small doorways lead to tiny, hidden rooms. Decades-old wallpaper peels at the edges. J’s grandmother takes me to Uncle Bill’s old bedroom and tells me it is the same as he had left it in his youth. His books and baseball cards and trinkets are on a small desk, looking well kept, with the exception of the dust. Against the wall, a twin bed covered in an old patchwork quilt. I take it in. It is a room that feels mystifyingly familiar. It is a room of the American imagination.

  J’s grandmother says Uncle Bill has lived here his entire life, only away for a few years at war. “And the last fifteen years he’s had to live downstairs due to his mobility,” she says.

  She takes my hand again, her skin soft and cold. She says, “You can write about this one day.”

  I clasp her hand back and nod.

  J’s blood is from this place so inherent, yet so strange, to me.

  I have a recurring dream that takes place in my first home in San Francisco. In the dream, my family has moved back into the house without the permission of the new owners. I am whatever age I am in the time of the dreaming. My brother and sister are small children. My parents are still together. I am anxious that we will get caught in the house that is no longer ours, but my dad says that if we stay put, they cannot kick us out. The house is filled with our old furniture, but it has strange hallways and doors I’ve never seen. I sit in my parents’ closet beneath my mother’s hanging clothes, like I used to as a kid. Then I remember that we have cats and that nobody has fed them. When I go into the garage, where we keep their food bowls, they come scurrying out from the dark. They are frail gray shadows of their former selves. I curse myself for forgetting them. I pour the kibble into their bowls until it spills over and they eat, ravenous.

  What if his grandmother never left Durhamville? What if my parents never left Shanghai? What if his grandfather never left Ireland? What if his mother never left Philadelphia? What if my dad never left New York? What if my mom never left Nashville? What if they hadn’t chosen Davis? How many improbable moves did it take for us to reach each other? How many miles? How many decisions made by those before us, to carry themselves from one place to another, from the familiar to the new?

  III.

  Ithaca

  In order to confirm our own existence, we need to take hold of something real, of something most fundamental, and to that end we seek the help of an ancient memory, the memory of a humanity that has lived through every era, a memory clearer and closer to our hearts than anything we might see gazing far into the future. And this gives rise to a strange apprehension about the reality surrounding us. We begin to suspect that this is an absurd and antiquated world, dark and bright at the same time.

  —Eileen Chang, “Writing of One’s Own”

  At first, everything has a hint of the ancient and crumbling. On the way in, we pass an incredible number of cemeteries, littered haphazardly and crowded with old tombstones. Reminders of how long people have lived here, have walked these parts and died in these parts. It is quiet; the living people appear to move slower. The humidity has followed us here and been amplified. It weighs everything down. Through the car window, J points out the sidewalks curbed with long granite slabs instead of the usual cement, an unusual feature I should appreciate. But all of this eventually leads to open-air shopping plazas of big American business: Walmart, Home Depot, PetSmart, Lowe’s, McDonald’s, etc. The transition from old to new is seamless. Those recognizable corporate names give Ithaca a grander status, as though it’s not a college town but a small city. Somebody explained to J, who now explains to me, that people from surrounding areas come to Ithaca to do their shopping. It is the destination for those within an hour’s drive, and the people who come down from the hills aren’t as “nice” or “cultured” as Ithacans. But to me, upon first glance, it looks very much like the places we passed in the middles of nowheres.

  “I’m not going to say you deceived me,” I say, half joking.

  “No, you’ll see. It’s going to be great!”

  The couple’s apartment is modern, clean, and well furnished. The air is thickly sweet. We wander from room to room, turn on all the lights, hold up the framed photos of them—two attractive blonds, always smiling, arms wrapped around waists—in front of trees and mountains and old buildings. We peruse the bookshelves full of self-help and business books, smell the candles left in each room, and test out their mattress. (Just the right amount of give.) On their fridge, in script font against bright colored backgrounds, quote magnets: Home is where the heart is. (joseph c. neal) and Be the change you wish to see in the world . . . (gandhi) and What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? (unknown). I read them to J and we laugh at their cheesiness. A bottle of wine left on the dining room table is accompanied by a note on a piece of monogrammed paper. Welcome to Ithaca! Local beer also in the fridge ☺

  “The bathroom is tiny,” he reports.

  “How bad?” I find him sitting on the toilet in a closet-like room. “At least close the door.”

  “I’m suffocating now,” he cries.

  I stand in the living room and examine the put-togetherness of the place. The house oozes its positivity and there is no escaping its reach. “If two grad students can afford to live like this, then yeah, I could definitely get used to it.”

  “We’ll need a bigger bathroom, though,” he says from the other side.

  “Maybe even two. We can dream big here.”

  The next-door neighbors appear to be having a party, with porch drinking and pop music. We sit out on our—or rather, the couple’s—respective porch, drinking our welcome wine. One of the neighbors waves at us. We wave back. The guy starts walking in our d
irection, and I wonder if he will invite us over, if it will be that easy in this new place to meet new people, make new friends, settle down. If this is the nature, the advantage, of living in a small town.

  The waving guy stops a few paces away. “Oh, sorry. You’re not who I thought,” he says, then turns around and walks back to his party.

  “I was worried for a second,” says J.

  “You wouldn’t want to go?”

  “Not really, no. I just want to hang out with you.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  We go back inside and into the couple’s bed. The strangeness of the space is exhilarating. Afterward, I wonder if it is rude or inappropriate to be using their bed, but then it seems ruder and dirtier to use their couch or floor.

  J goes out to run errands and explore while I begin aggregating. I want to explore, too, but I am trapped on my computer. The social media giant wants three batches of articles per day—morning, midday, evening. In between, I am to keep my eyes on the feeds and input “high-impact breaking stories.” Today, the biggest tech-related news: Edward Snowden comes forward as the NSA leaker; Apple unveils a slew of new products at WWDC; tech companies deny involvement in NSA’s PRISM surveillance system.

  In other news: jury selection begins for George Zimmerman’s trial; six now dead in gunman’s rampage in Santa Monica; a new report (yet another) states record-high carbon levels could result in a disastrous rise in global temperatures. Those I don’t input into the channel. They go into the “Fear” part of my brain.

  Not Corey on the phone, but Tim, who has now been promoted to deputy editor of both web and print, proving the system does not stop its forward trajectory. I tell him I’m quitting. Or, I mean, I’m going freelance. I have stuff lined up. (The vaguer, the better.) The important part is, I will no longer write for the publication.

  “Are you sure?” he says. “I want to do right by you. You know that, right? But the way things are . . .” He doesn’t end the sentence. There is no justifiable end and he knows it. We hold a moment of silence for its death. Then I say yes, I am sure. I understand.