Days of Distraction

by Alexandra Chang

  He comes down many minutes later. “All done,” he says. “All better.”

  When I don’t respond, he says, “You’re welcome.”

  “I liked it the way it was,” I say.

  We are both quiet for a while. I look through Instagram on my phone. One of my former coworkers has posted a photo of a new meeting room furnished with dark pink lounge chairs and midcentury modern coffee tables, captioned: Working in style! #worklife #interiordesign #blessed. I groan. J asks what’s wrong.

  I show him the photo. “Is this supposed to be ironic or what?”

  “Maybe you should unfollow them,” he says.

  “No. They might notice. It just makes me feel like I’m wasting time here. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  He is silent.

  “Say something,” I say, annoyed.

  “I feel like you’re mad at me.” I look at him. He continues, “I wish I could be with you more, but it’s hard. I feel a lot of pressure to do well in lab. Everybody’s always working.”

  “Yeah,” I say. Now I am the one who feels bad. I have the thought that I am an unnecessary burden on him. That I am being selfish. If I were a cheerful and happy girlfriend, his time in graduate school would be seamless and productive. I do not want to be the suitcase that he must drag behind him. “I’m still getting used to this new life,” I say.

  I order a million home items online to ship to our new, permanent address. Afterward I feel, if not better, then at least subdued.

  No husband of mine will say, “I could have been a drummer, but I had to think about the wife and kids. You know how it is.” Nobody supports me at the expense of his own adventure. Then I get bitter: no one supports me; I am not loved enough to be supported. That I am not a burden has to compensate for the sad envy when I look at women loved enough to be supported. Even now China wraps double binds around my feet.

  —Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior

  Now I consult my sister. “Do you remember when we first moved to Davis and how sad we were?”

  “What I remember thinking was that every cat was a stray. I kept asking Mommy and Daddy, ‘Can we keep this one? What about this one? Can I take this one home?’”

  We laugh for so long, I start crying and can’t stop. I can hear her boyfriend in the background, “What’s so funny?”

  “And I thought people in Davis were way too friendly,” she continues. “The first day of school, these six white girls all sat around me and said they wanted to be my friend, and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is scary! Who are these people? What do they want from me?”

  I choke back my laughter and tears.

  “Have you made any friends?” she asks.

  “No,” I say.

  “Don’t sound so depressed. It’s still pretty early. Why don’t you try joining a sport or something? Physical activity could be good, too, you know.”

  “That’s what everyone keeps saying, but when have I ever been athletic?”

  “True, but you could change,” she says.

  “Well, I’m going to meet my dog soon.”

  “Wow, okay, maybe you’re sadder there than I thought.”

  “No, no. I’m trying to get a job at a museum, so hopefully I’ll meet people there. And here’s another positive: I went downtown the other day and had a full conversation with a stranger and she was really friendly.”

  “Who?”

  “Well, she was a barista—”

  “Oh my god. Baristas are paid to be nice to people!”

  TALKS WITH CHINESE WOMEN

  It seemed strange to hear this old Chinese woman speak of “America, New York, London, France,” for in general they know nothing of the outside world, and very little of their own country.

  She had been very happy with her kind missionary friends, and had been brought up as a good Methodist. At the age of fourteen, however, her mother claimed her in order to arrange a marriage for her. All this time her feet “had been neglected,” and allowed to grow to their natural size; but now she and her mother determined, even at that age, to begin bandaging them, for they knew no man in a respectable position would marry a large-footed woman.

  “Did you suffer, Amah?” I asked in horrified tones as I looked at her feet, now three inches long.

  “Oh, yes,” she answered quietly. “I thought the pain would kill me, and I could neither sleep at night nor enjoy anything during the day for months and months; but every day I asked my mother to pull the bandages tighter, and would sit in the doorway and watch the children playing and other persons coming and going, while I could only rock myself to and fro and moan.”

  — Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, January 1901

  I find myself at the running shoe store, asking for recommendations. The clerk tells me to take off my flats and walk from one end of the store to the other. She crouches, watching the movement of my feet. She asks me again to walk back and forth. I feel awkward and exposed. Afterward, she declares that my feet overpronate. This means they roll inward beyond the ideal and I need stability shoes to prevent ankle and shin pain on runs. She says it’s a good idea to go a half size up, given the width of my feet and swelling during runs. Why can’t my feet be normal? I ask. The clerk says this is perfectly normal, plenty of people overpronate, but she is a salesperson who wants to make me feel good, to convince me to purchase the shoes. And though I know this, it works and I do.

  The tag on the lavender stress-relief tea bag says: Let things come to you.

  At the interview for the museum position, the director, a white woman in her forties named Rebecca, worries that I’m both overqualified and underqualified—I have a college degree and years of work experience, but have never worked in a museum. The place collects and displays pieces of local history. I tell Rebecca I’m very interested.

  The temperature-controlled basement holds all the archives in cardboard boxes. The items too large for boxes, like a shovel from the nineteenth century or a little rocking horse with no eyes, sit on a row of shelves labeled LARGE ITEMS. There is a box full of old dolls in plastic bags, labeled DOLLS, EARLY 20TH CENTURY and a box of TOILETRIES, 1920S where I find a gigantic, pristine tampon in bright pink paper wrapping. Then there is an entire wall of stuff that has no home. My main job would be to enter new items into the archives spreadsheet—including an item title, estimated origin date, location of use (if relevant), and donor (if known); reorganize all the boxes in the basement—stuff has been misplaced or mistakenly lumped together over the years (I tell her about my time with the rich lady to prove I can sort objects); and help around with whatever else she may need, like writing thank-you cards to donors and making event flyers on the fifteen-year-old computer. She says I can come in whenever I have time, but not more than five hours a week, given the budget. The pay is eleven dollars an hour.

  “We’re not much of an operation. It would be just you and me,” she says. “And the volunteers, but they do their own thing. How does that sound?”

  I say I’ll take it.

  For days, I am anxious the dog will die during his flight to us. But there he is, alive in his crate, offering relief and entertainment. On the first night, he follows us from room to room, up the stairs and down, but when we try to touch him, he backs up and tucks his tail between his legs, staring so wide we can see the whites of his eyes. I read online that this means he is in the beginning stage of flight. He proves the internet correct when we walk toward him and he skitters out of the room. But a minute later, there he is again, standing there with his eyes on us, watching.

  “Come, puppy,” I say. “I get you.”

  Jing Zhang, Jing Zhang, the schoolkids in China used to tease. My name backward. Nervous, nervous.

  Dark outside. J still at work. The dog stares at the basement door, his tail tucked as he slowly backs away.

  “What is it now?” I ask.

  “Don’t scare me,” I say. “We’re all alone.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be
a form of protection?”

  I walk to the basement door, turn on the lights, open the door slowly, see only the stairs, hear nothing. I realize the dog is looking not at the basement, but at a backpack J has left on the ground. I pick it up and shake it. The dog stumbles back into a wall.

  “You’re worse than me,” I announce.

  The teachers found peace in their offices during recesses and lunch. They let me in because I was American. Chinese students were allowed only for punishment or chores. The math teacher didn’t like me. She spanked me in front of the other teachers. Out of jealousy, my mother corrected. It was a gentle smack. Qiào pìgu! They laughed and laughed. The first of many days that I was ashamed of myself in that new country.

  The drawing teacher, on the other hand, let me sit at her desk and read her books. The animals in them made unrecognizable sounds. The dogs went “wang” and the cats went “mao” and the ducks went “gua.”

  “What about the fish?” she asked.

  I thought for a while, searching for the answer.

  “I’m only kidding,” she said. “The fish don’t make noises anywhere.”

  In tech news, a blur, and I no longer care. I click and input the stories with no use of my mind. Perhaps this is the best job for me. I am, as that one editor once called me, a robot.

  There’s a dead tree on our street. I only know it is dead because I am stopped on the street, needing a break from running with this dog. All the other trees are heavy with dark leaves, and the dead one is totally leafless. I must have passed it before and not paid attention. What else am I now noticing? That I despise running. That the dog trots like a horse and likes to move in inconvenient zigzagging patterns, distracted by smells and things beyond my senses. That I have never before been this silent and alone.

  I go to the historical museum on slow news days and the weekends to scan photos and file them accordingly. An hour or so, here and there. But it, too, turns out to be a lonely job. Rebecca sits in her office with her door closed.

  But where does this photo go? It’s not in Tompkins County as far as I can tell, and there is no date stamp. Only Dr. Kin Yamei (May King) scratched into the corner.

  I knock on Rebecca’s office door, with the excuse of a legitimate question.

  She yells for me to come in.

  I show her the photo. “Where would something like this go? Do you know what the historical tie is to this place?”

  She glances at the photo but barely looks. “Oh, I don’t know why we have a lot of the stuff we have. All these directors coming through, in and out and in and out, taking all sorts of donations—and now look! It’s piling up, collecting in these boxes for years! Just start a box of miscellaneous stuff and we’ll figure out what to do with it later. Or we’ll let the next director figure it out—ha ha! Could you close the door on your way out?”

  I take the photo home with me and tape it on the wall in the office, above the no-longer-wobbly desk.

  I like her expression, serious and calm and dismissive, as though she has been interrupted in the middle of her work. As though she is saying, Can’t you see I’m doing something important? What are you doing? Hanging on the wall above her desk is a scroll of four large Chinese characters. A potted plant sits at the left corner of the desk. There is a flower. Chrysanthemum?

  I call my dad and attempt to describe the strokes of each character, but we get nowhere. He tells me to text him the photo, but I worry it will take too much off of his prepaid cell service.

  “It’s fine,” he says. “Call me back in five minutes.”

  When I do, he says, “It’s an old saying. Maybe from Laozi or Kongzi or Mengzi. It says you are humble to serve without expectation. You are to serve without any expectation of getting anything in return. Some people serve and expect something, but you shouldn’t if you are humble and have decided to serve.”

  “All that in four characters?”

  “Something like that. A saying like that. I could be totally off track. But I think I’m on track. Ask your mother and see what she says.”

  My mom and I text:

  It’s something about a hero, a female hero.

  I don’t know what the third character means.

  It’s ancient Chinese characters.

  So this person in the picture is a writer?

  no she was a doctor

  I’ll look it up.

  The name is Bian Que and living in Lu country, famous physician.

  no her name is Kin Yamei

  Her idol is Bian Que.

  The banner says, hero Bian from Lu country. Look it up.

  Bian Que is a woman?

  No, he’s a man. Not female hero, I was wrong about that.

  Where you find this?

  at work

  You like your work?

  The freelance job?

  no, the museum. they’re both fine, kinda boring

  See. I told you.

  Bian Que was the first known Chinese doctor, alive between 401 and 310 B.C. So Yamei Kin was a Chinese doctor who looked up to the original Chinese doctor. Makes sense.

  A quick search, trying to figure out Yamei’s ties to upstate New York—why her photo is in these files. She was an orphan by three in Ningbo, China, and was adopted by American missionaries, who brought her to the United States as a teenager. She was the first woman of Chinese descent educated at an American university, and that university was Cornell. But it was Cornell’s medical campus in New York City, before it was called Cornell—back then it was the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary. She graduated at the top of her class in 1885. She later had a brief stint in upstate New York, where she sent her son, Alexander Amador Eca da Silva, to middle and high school. Not a very Chinese name for the son of a Chinese woman.

  We decide to sign the dog up for a training course at a local pet store. He is seven months old and he knows one command: sit. And only after repetitions of the word, only very slowly, as though he does not trust that what comes out of our mouths has anything to do with him.

  “It’s clear he understands what you’re asking,” the trainer says. “He’s choosing not to listen. He needs more practice listening and responding.”

  “Ha ha. Like somebody else I know,” I say, elbowing J.

  “Huh? What?” he says. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I said—”

  “Just kidding, I heard you.” He laughs. “Did you see that, boy? It’s not that hard!”

  At the Fall Semester Welcome Barbecue, the most Asians and Asian Americans I’ve seen since arriving in Ithaca. But to each one I introduce myself as just the girlfriend, no relation to the cell biology or any other science or university department. Just the trailing girlfriend. I don’t intend or want to, but I can hear it, that grating self-pity. It’s either that or what I’ve said, but many afterward appear to avoid me.

  But there are other partners, too. We are introduced to one another, cordoned off at our own table as the scientists mingle. The ones who have been around a while dole out their woes and advice.

  “I almost never see him,” one woman says. “Sometimes he’ll come home for dinner with the kids. Then it’s back to lab until three or four in the morning, sleep for a few hours, and he’s gone again by seven or eight. Seven days a week.”

  “You have to get him to commit to one weekend, or at least one Sunday, a month together,” another says. “Take a trip somewhere.”

  “For me, I have to sit in the lab if I want to spend time with her,” a man says. “So I bring her dinner and watch stuff on my computer while she works.”

  “Do you think they really need to be there that much, though?” one asks. “Can’t they figure out a more efficient way to work?”

  “I just wish he would spend more time with his kids.”

  “No, that’s just how it is. That’s the culture. Look at them, they’re all like that.”

  “Or if they’re not, they’re not dedicated to the work. And you’ll be stuck her
e for years.”

  “Right, exactly. We need them to work hard so we can leave sooner.”

  There is sarcasm and resentment and bitterness in their voices. Many of them appear to be stay-at-home parents. They all sigh and roll their eyes and nod. They look at me and the new partners like, Don’t worry, you’ll be us soon enough. I get up and excuse myself.

  “I was hoping to make friends,” I say to J, back in the car.

  “You didn’t like them?” he asks.

  “It’s not that I don’t like them,” I reply. “I just don’t want to be like them.”

  Yamei Kin married Hippolytus Laesola Amador Eca da Silva, a man of Portuguese and Spanish descent (which explains her son’s name), in 1894, when she was thirty years old. By then she had already received her medical degree and practiced medicine in China and Japan for seven years. Was she the first Chinese American woman to marry a white man? However much I search, I can’t find confirmation.

  I go to J’s lab for the first time, on a Sunday, and sit with my phone as he works. (“It will only take fifteen minutes,” he said. It has, so far, been thirty-eight minutes. We are supposed to go on a hike. I feel bad for the dog waiting in the car.) One of his Chinese labmates, an older postdoc, comes to talk with me. He asks if I speak Mandarin, and I explain that no, unfortunately, I used to, but I’ve forgotten. He shakes his head and says he’s worried this will happen to his son, who was born here, and although he speaks both languages at three years old, he may give up on Chinese after he enters preschool. He wants to put his son in Chinese school, but it’s only for two hours each week. The labmate asks what my parents speak at home, and I say almost entirely English to my siblings and me, though there was more Shanghainese in the house when we were kids. Still, none of us felt comfortable speaking in Shanghainese after a certain age and we always spoke in English to each other. He looks more at ease upon hearing this. He explains that they speak only Mandarin at home. Also, the son has no siblings, will likely never have siblings, so this should help keep their family language to Mandarin. He is concerned for me; I have a very Chinese face, but now, as we speak, he says he realizes I’m not really Chinese at all. I should relearn Mandarin. It is inside, he says. You just have to find.