Days of Distraction

by Alexandra Chang

For the first three weeks, thunderstorms that last a minute or longer, raging and gray, then sun and bright sky, like nothing happened. J comes home soaked and laughing, as though from another planet. There is rain up the hill on campus and sun in the flats is how. Microclimates like back home. I think of romance movies, where lovers drench themselves making out in the rain in T-shirts and dresses. I never understood why. It seemed impractical, cold, and uncomfortable. Turns out they were living somewhere I didn’t know about until now, where water comes down when it’s hot, a respite.

  “Your upper lip is the first place that gets sweaty,” says J. “It just pools there like little lakes. Like the Finger Lakes.”

  “Don’t look at me.” I lie in the couple’s bed in front of a small fan in nothing but my underwear and hope that this lack of movement means that I am conserving energy or power or hope, or something like that.

  Our routines have flipped. In the mornings, he gets up early and bikes up to campus before I am out of bed. I listen to him leave and feel a bit smaller. I have nowhere specific to go. No people expecting my presence. I don’t have to shower or change out of pajamas or put in my contacts or do my makeup. It is a little lonely. But in some ways it is also freeing.

  Like this. Alone, in bed with curtains shut, during the middle of the day. I have never had this much control over my time. I open an incognito window on my computer (somehow that little added privacy comforts me). I type in a porn site’s URL, one that J showed me back in college, and which I have remained loyal to because it is what I know and it fulfills its purpose. I am not sure what I’m looking for—my preferences aren’t consistent. Something has to fit the mysterious workings of my moods in that month or day or hour, approved by instinct. I start and stop several videos. Too close up. Too much noise. Too aggressive. Too fake. I land on an amateur video of a couple, about our age, an Asian woman and white man, both French. Normally I hate porn that involves Asian women, but this one feels different. The video starts like a vlog, with them walking around, going to cafes, shopping, doing couple activities. They talk, they laugh, they tease, they peck each other on the cheeks. They appear to be a real couple. And their being French seems to transport them into another realm, where—though I know it not to be true—they are unscathed and untouched by the same problems. Then it cuts to their bedroom. I watch the woman, keen to dissect whether she is enjoying herself. After five and a half minutes, I am convinced. I close the computer and take off my underwear.

  It is the Chinese way to sit still, enjoy each day and each period of life—serene in the knowledge that an all-wise Providence is working out a plan of which each of us is a part.

  We can’t hurry the slowly grinding mills of the gods; and we do not wish to. . . .

  I—that flustered, worried, defensive little Hollywood flapper—found happiness when I ceased to worry about time.

  No one can give me what belongs to some one else; and no one can take away that which is mine.

  —Anna May Wong, Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, 1934

  And yet, I sign into Parley. No matter my better impulse telling me not to. Old habit, routine, a desire for the near past.

  Jasmine pings me and a flashing tab appears: YOU’RE ALIVE.

  As I’m typing a response to her, Tim pings me: So . . .

  * * *

  Jasmine:

  YES! i am very much alive!

  how is it over there? is it terrible?

  it’s okay, the weather is fucking weird, but it’s really pretty

  ITHACA IS GORGES

  right. ha. ha. ha.

  don’t lie, you miss me

  sorta . . .

  but mostly because i have no friends here and have literally met nobody except old people showing us houses

  get their numbers!

  you can clean their dentures and eyeglasses

  they’d appreciate that

  ugh, let’s just chat on gchat, I don’t want to be on work chat anymore

  idk why I came on here anyway

  because you’re worried people are going to forget you

  * * *

  * * *

  Tim:

  what’s up?

  Back to work?

  not really . . .

  Why not? Why are you in the work chatroom then?

  it accidentally signed in

  Do you want to do some reviews? The new gadget guy’s looking for more freelancers. Or what are you up to right now? I have a couple newsy things you could whip up.

  ah, not right now, sorry

  What are you doing with yourself?

  just moving and stuff

  i’m doing some freelance work too

  That’s right. For who?

  just some stuff here and there. anyway, i have to go do something right now. ttyl!

  Alright. Happy to hear you’re keeping busy.

  * * *

  Instead of moving to another platform to chat, Jasmine calls. We talk about the office, by which I mean I listen to her talk about the drama of which I’m no longer a part. She updates me on the layoffs, new hires, restructures, resignations, redesigns. She says the other photographer (her ex) isn’t getting along with the art director, one of the EIC’s newest hires, that the two are clashing over aesthetics, that her ex is too precious about his creativity, and that he constantly pushes against what the art director wants. Jasmine says the art director has approached her, since she is still technically her ex’s direct superior, to ask her to handle him. I ask what that means. Will he be let go? She says she’s not sure, except that his fate is in her hands, then releases a movie villain’s cackle. I stretch out my legs on the couple’s couch and wait for Jasmine to stop laughing before I tell her that I think it would be best if we didn’t talk about the office anymore. It’s hard for me to listen to what’s going on there. I need some distance. I am still upset about how things went with the contractors, how we failed to present a united front, but I am careful not to say I am upset with her specifically. She is silent on the other end.

  “Are you there?” I ask.

  “Okay,” she says. “You want distance. Sure. Distance. Don’t worry about it. You’re over there. New life and all. I’m the one who has a lot of work to do.”

  She hangs up. I stare at my phone’s home screen, part of me waiting, wanting it to do or say something, but it does not.

  From the book Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present:

  A Letter Writing Campaign to Discourage Immigration (1876)

  The Chinese Six Companies is asking our fellow clansmen not to make the long sea voyage to the United States so as to avoid bringing trouble on the community. The reason we have been subjected to all kinds of harassment by the white people is that many of our Chinese newcomers are taking jobs away from them. And yet, if we take a look at the wages of the Chinese workers in the various trades, we can see that they are shrinking day by day. This is also due to the large number of our fellow clansmen coming here. If up to 10,000 people come here, even if they do not take away 10,000 white men’s jobs, they will still drive down the wages of 10,000 workers in various trades. It’s inevitable. If this trend is not stopped, not only will the white men’s harassment continue, causing a great deal of trouble for our community, but even skilled Chinese workers will have difficulty finding jobs and will lose their livelihood. If it is hard for the Chinese who are already here, imagine how much worse it will be for the newcomers.

  Therefore, in an effort to prevent disaster before it strikes, the members of the Six Companies believe that the best course of action is to have each person in California write a letter home exhorting his clansmen not to come to America. And who would doubt such advice when it originates from a kinsman? This is much better than our posting thousands and thousands of notices. If the trend should cease and fewer clansmen come here, first, further trouble from the white people would be avoided; second, wages will stop shrinking; third, there will be no worry about newcomers being deta
ined. Everyone will benefit. Just a single word from you will do a world of good. For this reason, we are urging every one to write home.

  The Chinese Six Companies

  15th day of the 3rd month, Guangxu 2nd year [April 9, 1876]

  I do the thing you’re not supposed to do. I cut off all my hair. Ten inches, and now the ends don’t even graze my chin. It’s not as dramatic or drastic as it might appear to others. The driving force: this heat. But still it feels like shedding something from myself, like all the old emotions lived in the ends of my hair and are now gone. When J comes home, he says he likes it. He is one of the only straight men I know who prefers short hair on women and doesn’t say something like, You look like a soccer mom.

  More additions for the That’s So Ithaca blog, accumulated on my own:

  A full-face-tattooed white man walking and peeing in daylight around the perimeter of the addiction services building. Buddha statues decorating front yards in, of course, Fall Creek. The nets beneath bridges above gorges, to prevent jumpers. Restaurants with names like Spicy Asian and Asia Cuisine. Granted, the food at both is quite good.

  What do you do all day? I ask him. Why are you always late? What’s it like in lab?

  He says he’s running experiments. He takes photos of the embryos’ intestines at various stages of development. They twist and turn in incomprehensible ways. He speaks words I don’t understand and can’t repeat because they have no meaning to me. He says there is also a lot of waiting in lab.

  “So while you’re waiting up there,” I say, “I’m waiting down here for you.”

  He looks at me apologetically.

  I ask if he likes the work. He says he does. He says it’s challenging, but also fun. He feels like he’s doing something important and meaningful with his time.

  “That must be nice,” I say.

  He is silent, not knowing how to respond.

  I read an interview in which an actress says she loves the fact that she has no boundaries. Her openness to life is worth the few bumps along the way. I’m the opposite. I, at all costs, avoid life bumps. When we’re together, I’m less afraid of the world and its dark corners. But now when I’m alone, which is the vast majority of my days, I find myself double-checking everything, wondering what I’ve missed.

  And yet, everything is coming together. We have found a place to live. In an effort to interact with locals, I have applied to, and gotten an interview for, a job at a museum. J’s mom sends us an email with a photo of a fluffy white poodle with the subject line: Puppy obsession. She explains that she and her husband want to buy us a dog and have found the perfect one back in California. We’ve come all the way across the country, so our dog will do so, too, despite my certainty of there being many available dogs in upstate New York. But they want to give this to us, J says. Let them, it’s easier.

  And I know it is a sort of blessing, that the hardest part about interacting with his parents is accepting all of their gifts.

  “Sorry I can’t give you more nice things and money,” says my mom each time I tell her J’s parents are giving us another this or that.

  “No, I don’t want you to,” I say. “I want to get you more.”

  She laughs. “Yes, you should. That’s what grown-up kids are for.”

  There was our first Christmas in Davis when I helped my mom pick out presents for my sister and brother. I was eleven; they were eight and five. My dad was away, in China again. My mom said we could spend eighty dollars on each of us, a lucky number. We hunted toy store sales, big-box stores, and drugstores. Puzzles, books, hair accessories, figurines, Pokémon cards, nail polish, etc. We did a good job; the gifts beneath the tree looked plentiful. For me, I waited until the post-Christmas sales. We went to the mall, and I spent hours rummaging clearance bins and racks until I finally picked out a brown wool sweater with suede elbow patches from Ann Taylor. It was thirty-five dollars and my most treasured piece of clothing for a decade. She asked, This is all you want? Nothing else? Nothing else, I said. She hugged me close and said that I was good, that she was sorry it was this way. By the following year, we stopped bothering to keep up appearances.

  The next house is run-down, but it is a house, a true stand-alone house with a bright blue metal roof and dirty white vinyl siding. It sits at the bottom of a steep hill, like a San Francisco hill, on the “wrong” side of downtown, in an old neighborhood gradually being overrun with college students. (“You’re how old again?” the owner asked us. “Oh, good. I want to avoid renting to kids.”) The wood floors are real and worn, with rectangular patches of cement and plywood randomly placed across the living and dining rooms. The kitchen has a big white ’50s electric stove, old beige tiles crookedly lined halfway up the wall behind a chipped enamel sink. There is a built-in breakfast nook with a stained glass light fixture hanging from the pitched ceiling. It is the oldest house we’ve seen, and very simple, but also very big and inexpensive.

  We move things from the couple’s apartment to the house at night, after J comes back from lab.

  “I’m going to start a business,” he announces. “It’s going to be called Crispy Chicken. I’m going to specialize in CRISPR techniques in chicken embryos, so labs like ours can order mutated embryos from my company.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it sounds super creepy.”

  “Crispy Chicken, though! Isn’t that the best name for a company?”

  “For a restaurant, sure.”

  “‘Crispy’ would be all caps, like CRISPR, but no R at the end and actually a small Y, so CRISPy Chicken.”

  “But then is that really clear? Is C-R-I-S-P the same as C-R-I-S-P-R? Doesn’t the acronym stand for something?”

  “You’re not being supportive of my business idea.”

  “No, no, you should totally go for it. I one thousand percent support this.”

  “Don’t start off our new home with lies!” he says, and pushes open the front door. “Look at all of this space!”

  When he’s gone, I set up the bedroom. We have upgraded to a king-size mattress, and there is space for more: a dog bed and crate (already ordered), two side tables (Craigslist?), and dressers (antiquing?). I draw up a layout of the downstairs and start arranging imaginary furniture: couch, coffee tables, TV, chairs, cat tree—

  “Wait, we’re getting a cat, too?” says J upon seeing the plan.

  “Aren’t we?”

  “Let’s wait and see how the dog goes first.”

  “So much waiting and seeing,” I say. “When we get the cat, the cat tree goes here.”

  In tech news: A bunch of the major companies announce quarterly earnings results. They’re all making billions in revenue. They’re also buying smaller companies so that they can make more. Hooray for them.

  Across the country, protests in response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal for murdering Trayvon Martin.

  The city of Detroit files for bankruptcy, estimated $18–20 billion in debt.

  Despite the Senate passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill, the House refuses, refuses, refuses to vote.

  Afong Moy is a native of Canton city, about seventeen years of age, and engaging in her manner; addresses the visitors in English and Chinese, and occasionally Walks before the Company, so as to afford an opportunity of observing her astonishing LITTLE FEET, for which these Chinese ladies are so remarkable. Afong’s feet are Four Inches and an eighth in length, being about the size of an infant’s of one year old. And to add to the interest of the exhibition, the shoe and covering of the foot will be taken off, thereby affording an opportunity of observing their curious method of folding the toes, &c., by actual observation prove the real size of the foot beyond a doubt. She will be richly Dressed in The Chinese Costume. And in order to give the audience an idea of the language and cadence of her country, will sing a Chinese Song. . . .

  . . . Various Chinese curiosities will be shown and explained to the company, and every pains taken to gratify the curious, as to t
he manners and customs of these singular people. . . .

  Admittance to the whole, 25 cents; Children under 10 years, half price.

  —New York Times, July 9, 1836

  The first Chinese woman to arrive in the United States. As spectacle.

  In China, we used to amble through the alleyways, from school to our apartment, beneath the fluttering laundry strung above our heads, the cyclists chiming their bells as they passed, the gray complexes barricading their paths, and one of the other children said, Your country is so beautiful that it’s the only country we’d name “beautiful country,” and we told him, Yes, it’s beautiful there, but it’s beautiful here, too, sweeping our arms at the place around us, when we passed a woman hunched over, draining the blood from a chicken’s neck into a pink plastic bucket, the creature’s limp head resting in her red-soaked hands, and we screamed and laughed and laughed and ran the rest of the way home, pointing out all the ugly-beautiful things we saw.

  I have the brilliant idea to build myself a desk. In the evening, J takes me to Home Depot so I can buy my materials. When he leaves the next day, I sand and stain the wood all on my own, then lug it inside and upstairs into the office. I screw in metal hairpin legs. The desk goes against the wall with the window. I put my laptop on top of it and bring up a dining chair from downstairs. I sit there for a while, aggregating. I am sweaty and I feel deeply accomplished; it’s beginning to feel like a real home office.

  When J gets back, he places his hand on my desk and shakes. “It’s wobbly.” He says it in a voice like he’s had a rough day and is taking it out on the desk.

  “It wasn’t when I used it today,” I say. “I’m only typing on it, so it’s fine.”

  “I really hate wobbly desks,” he says. He hands me my laptop and turns the desk over to examine my work.

  “Stop,” I say. “I said it’s fine. Just leave it alone.”

  “It’s not sturdy. Wow, you really didn’t attach these well,” he says, shaking the legs. “And the planks aren’t tight together, either.” I leave the room, insulted. From downstairs, I can still hear him drilling.