by YZ Chin
I suspected Katie liked me as a friend for a particular reason. She was proud of her parents and often made them out as examples of immigrants getting the job done, giving her all the opportunities they’d denied themselves to result in an impeccably groomed, Princeton-educated, six-figure-earning American daughter. But she was at the same time embarrassed by their knockoff clothes, which they insisted on wearing (“No one can tell it’s fake anyway”), and by their preference for speaking Taishanese no matter where they were, even in the middle of a Fifth Avenue store.
Perhaps in me she saw a chance to live out her fantasy of remolding her beloved parents. Like I said, I’d first met her in college, when she approached me in the cafeteria. I was still pliable then, just finishing my lessons on all the stereotypes and insults I could expect to be thrown my way as a minority in America.
Maybe I won her over with this confession: that I admired what her parents had done for her, but I couldn’t be that selfless. I wanted Katie’s success for myself, not for my children. It wasn’t for me, the role of self-erasing immigrant parent. No way was I working my butt off just so some American kid could one day say in her junior high school valedictorian speech: “I couldn’t have done this without my parents.”
This made her laugh, and we became best friends.
I RUSHED TO GET READY, BUT KATIE STILL BEAT ME TO THE RESTAURANT. She’d brought her husband and baby along, which I somehow hadn’t counted on.
“Sorry I’m late,” I huffed.
“Oh, that’s okay, Co-Star told me today would try my patience, but I should keep an open mind.”
I remembered with a start that Katie believed in astrology. Or maybe believed was too strong a word. It was more that she had hitched on to a trend. It had become cool and hip to care about astrology. People tossed star signs about, using them as shorthand for things that were supposed to be complex, like their seeming incapability to let grudges go. If they stood you up on plans finalized weeks ago, they’d remove their sunglasses and say “I’m an Aries. What can you do?” (I see you listed your sign on the app too—no offense. I hope Virgos are the forgiving type.)
When I first told Katie about the strange things Marlin had started saying, she’d said, “Maybe it’s a good thing? I always thought he was too focused on facts and being correct. A little rigid.”
“But he’s saying things that he used to think were beneath him! Like the other day, he told me the previous tenant of our apartment died full of regrets. He said he could pick it up from the atmosphere or something.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. Lots of people believe in ghosts.”
A waitress came by, voice pitched high: “And do we need a high chair here, baby?”
The baby stared at a fascinating spot on the ceiling, oblivious.
“We’re okay,” Katie’s husband said. He took over the fidgety baby as Katie maneuvered the restaurant’s huge menu, trying to decide. Unlike Katie, Bradley had a correctly formal American name, Bradley V. Chan. I liked it, especially the middle initial that made it seem like he was perpetually at war with himself, Bradley versus Chan. This internal strife further manifested in his rhotacism, a difficulty pronouncing r’s that made him sound like he was accidentally stuck in baby-talk mode sometimes.
“My mom wants me to remove my mole,” I said, because I couldn’t just start with news about Marlin.
“You cannot get rid of your mole!” Katie said.
“Why not? It’s safe. Lots of people do it.”
“Because you’d look different on your official documents.” The area surrounding her eyebrows flushed angrily. She’d probably gotten a wax while waiting for me. “Like do you want some immigration asshole holding your visa photo up to your face and asking ‘Ma’am, where’s your mole?’”
“I could dab it on with eyebrow pencil,” I said.
“Edwina.”
I was touched. With her true-blue passport, Katie had no reason to think about the complications of border crossing. That border checkpoints were at all on her mind meant my worries, conveyed to her over years, had occupied a corner of her mind, and were now part of the way she thought.
This broke the levees, and I rushed headlong into an account of Marlin’s departure and his refusal to acknowledge my presence at Eamon’s, the words pulled out of me as if magnetized by Katie’s attention. I tried to remember to look at Bradley from time to time so he would feel included, but mostly I spoke at Katie.
It surprised and defeated me, how quickly the story could be told. Just a few sentences that barely took up a minute—that was supposed to convey all the agony that jostled within me like microwaved food atoms?
Katie made the appropriate exclamations of shock, but I could see she was not really surprised. I was irrationally irked about this. If she’d seen it coming based on what I’d previously shared with her, then what did it say about me, so caught off guard by his desertion?
The waitress came to take our order. Immediately the table switched from long faces and somber, knitted brows to high-pitched coos and wide smiles as all attention turned to the baby, who was handed to Katie so the waitress could get a closer look. While everyone talked about her, the baby stared in bug-eyed wonder at a spoon in her chubby fist.
“Oh, just look at her! How precious!” the waitress exclaimed.
When our orders finally arrived, I caught Katie glancing at my left ring finger. Registering disappointment on her face, I nervously adjusted the statement piece I wore as my wedding ring.
“Maybe you should see someone,” Bradley said. “We’re worried about you.”
“I can’t see a professional,” I said.
“Can’t, or won’t?” Katie arched an eyebrow. In her arms, little Su-Ann writhed so much that Bradley couldn’t take a good photo of his waffles held up against her face.
I took my first ever bite of bacon. It possessed the unnatural crunch of plastic, and a tang that was mechanical, like engine oil. Then the fat melted, and I experienced a fullness on my tongue of something like contentment. I glanced at my friends, wide-eyed.
“Seriously, though, why can’t you see someone?” Bradley persisted, warping the r in “seriously.”
I explained how it was with the green card application. I’d read the form dozens of times by now. It started off predictably, asking for birth name, country of origin, dates, etc., moving on after that to marriages, children. Nothing alarming, mostly information that would come up at a standard if slightly bureaucratic cocktail party. The odd part began with the two separate sections for “Race” and “Ethnicity.” Before I could dredge up the scholarly definitions of those terms I’d studied in class, my brain was further tripped up when I read that under “Race,” all they cared about was whether you were Hispanic or Latino. Literally:
Hispanic or Latino
Not Hispanic or Latino
Those categories were then entirely missing from “Ethnicity,” which was its own confusing section:
White
Asian
Black or African American
American Indian or Alaska Native
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
I had so many questions on my first read-through. The function of the word or was inconsistent in the “Ethnicity” section, for one. Furthermore, why would African Americans, American Indians, or Native Hawaiians file green card applications? That confused me, and of course there was the puzzling organization of the whole thing, how Hispanic or Latino were options excluded from “Ethnicity.” I found myself unable to think too hard about it. Because if this piece of paper that was supposed to dictate my future didn’t make much sense, then why was I pouring so much hope into it?
By this point in my explanation, Katie and Bradley were exchanging looks while pretending to feed their baby, who simply swatted away anything that came near her face. I put a palm up, letting them know I had more to say.
The application form, I-485, then went on to list questions designed to disqual
ify someone from getting a green card. These sections should have been no-brainers. One simply checked “no” for every insinuation and chuckled at the questions, like the ones asking whether you had ever been a Nazi or participated in genocide or held any intention of performing terrorism while in the United States. The correct answers were so eye-rollingly obvious, and the idea of potential terrorists earnestly checking “yes” so ludicrous, I thought I could just breeze through while shaking my head at this form of vetting. But a surprise was in store for me. Near the end of form I-485, there was mention of a different, separate form, I-693. No problem, I thought at first. Just more paperwork.
Form I-693 also had an English name, Report of Medical Examination and Vaccination Record. Turns out this one wasn’t a mere checkbox affair. I was required to undergo actual visits to what the form officiously called “civil surgeons.” These were doctors responsible for examining immigrants such as me for the existence of “Class A” or “Class B” physical and mental illnesses. What sicknesses fell under A, and what under B? It was hard to find definitive answers, because this categorization was really meant as communication between the civil surgeon and the government, to which I was not so much a party as a specimen.
No matter how much I prepared, the outcome of the application was mostly not in my hands. Yes, these hands, which looked healthy and would undoubtedly pass as so to the civil surgeon who would examine me, and yet these were the same hands that once carved faint lines into my upper arms, horizontal ones and diagonal ones and ones that looked like attempts to form words, chicken scratch. A small nick was visible still, and if the civil surgeon were to point it out, I would say: “A cooking accident.”
My limbs could deceive, but if I were to sit in a psychiatrist’s office like Katie and Bradley were suggesting, put down my legal name (not Edwina, which was adopted in America for convenience), my birth date, and my social security number, hand over my insurance card for copying (both sides), sit in a carpeted room and listen to Muzak, absentmindedly pick at various loose skin folds or abrasions, shuffle my feet when my name was called (incorrectly), sit down in front of the psychiatrist and withhold withhold withhold dam burst of emotions, agree to see this as need for future ongoing sessions, shuffle back the way I came and, utterly humiliated, schedule weekly appointments while sniffling, wordlessly accept the tissue handed over by the receptionist, be pressured into starting prescription antianxiety medication by the fourth visit, slouch into CVS shamefaced and wary of the checkout person’s judgment—then there would be a record of some sort, some official professional file that could presumably be accessed by a civil surgeon or immigration officer, who would then check a box for either Class A or Class B, maybe even heavily underline the phrase “may pose, or has posed, a threat to the property, safety, or welfare of the alien or others” on Form I-693.
I already had a record, so to speak, thanks to the German girl in college. Those therapy sessions had been shared with school administrators, so who was to say immigration officials wouldn’t access information from any therapist I saw now? They didn’t even need access to notes; couldn’t the mere fact that I was in therapy at all be excuse enough to mark me as Class A or B? It didn’t hurt to be careful. For example, I wasn’t on any social media. The US government monitored immigrants online, and anything I typed might be used against me—that was what internet advice hinted at. Resources for immigrants cautioned that we should “avoid profanity and the use of aggressive or threatening language” while posting online, which really voided the whole purpose of being on Twitter.
When I finished, I sat back in my chair and tried to meet Katie and Bradley’s astonished eyes.
“You’re doing it again,” Katie declared. “What you always do.”
“Doing what?”
“You make jokes about serious stuff you actually care about. You try to turn it into a funny, hyperbolic, preposterous story.”
“Do I?”
“Yeah, you’re smiling,” Bradley said.
I actually put a hand up to feel my face. He was right; my facial muscles were stretched, my cracked lips taut. I tried to explain, even though I wasn’t convinced myself. “Well, this is really selfish of me, isn’t it? It’s so privileged of me to be worrying about paperwork when other immigrants are being separated from their children at the border and deported while going to church, and there are even these kids lost by the government. Lost! Like loose change! How can I not make fun of myself? Other people have it so much more worse. I’m really lucky to be sitting here.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t mean your suffering doesn’t matter,” Katie said callously.
A swell of love for her surged in me. I couldn’t help it. I’d always been that way, secretly pleased and flattered by others who behaved low-key horribly when they thought it was for my benefit. It wasn’t what I wanted to feel, but the feelings came anyway.
“Don’t you think it’s wrong to cage children?”
“Yes, of course.” She nodded for emphasis. “But we’re talking about you right now.”
I simmered, both charmed and annoyed.
“Maybe you should meditate,” Katie said. “You went to Buddhist camp, right?”
“They never taught us to meditate there.”
“Oh, ask her the Mars question,” Bradley chimed in.
“What about Mars?” I asked.
“This one’s a mindfuck.” Katie’s eyes lit up. “You ready?”
It went like this: Humans have figured out a way to go to Mars. A device has been invented, a teleportation portal in essence. You step in through the door and step out onto Mars. The catch is, the portal deconstructs your body, decimating it. You are reconstituted on Mars. Or, more precisely, a copy of you is assembled based on the knowledge gained by the portal when it broke your body down. The question is, would you do it? Would You on Mars be You on Earth, or did You on Earth die so that a clone could be possible on Mars? Was it really death if You on Mars retained all your memories? What if, in rewiring your brain, which is of course part of your physical body, the portal could only guarantee a 99.99 percent accuracy, and You on Mars was almost identical, but with just the slightest change in personality? Say, a change from someone who loved cats to someone who loved all cats except tortoiseshells? Would you do it? Would it be suicide? Or could it be said that you, the real you, actually traveled to Mars?
“What does this have to do with meditation?” I asked, bewildered.
“Bradley got it from a book about meditating.”
“But what’s the connection?”
“Never mind the connection,” he said. “What do you think?”
“I wouldn’t do it. Unless Marlin were stranded on Mars, and it was the only way to reach him.”
Katie exchanged looks with Bradley. “Why are you still talking about him?” she asked. “He left you.”
“I have to convince him to come back,” I said. “Nothing makes sense otherwise.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to make sense,” she said. “For a while?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I have to get him back.”
“You’re in denial,” Bradley said.
“Which is understandable,” Katie rushed to say. “Divorce is a big deal.”
“We’re not getting a divorce.”
Katie reached awkwardly around the baby in her lap to clasp my hand. “You’re the victim here, Edwina, not him.”
“I don’t feel like the victim.”
“And you call yourself a feminist?” Katie leaned back, squeaking her chair against the floor. She’d moved on to tough love mode. The thing was—I wanted to tell her—I believed absolutely in equality for women, and I wanted bad things to stop happening to women in general, but that didn’t mean I knew how to want those things for myself, because was I really even a woman, or just some floundering being? I didn’t feel like a woman, partly because I didn’t know how that was supposed to feel.
“Maybe you shouldn’t meditate after al
l,” she went on. “You seem a little too calm about this whole thing.”
I stared at her. I was eating meat in front of her for the first time since we’d met. Was that calm? Suddenly I was annoyed with her, miffed that she hadn’t picked up on my ordering bacon. I raised my hand and asked for the check.
Outside, I watched them, a trio, a nice word, shuffling together down the sidewalk. Bradley had the baby in a sling against his chest, and I couldn’t see her, but I knew where she was because Katie was wiggling her fingers at the baby, Hi, hello, hey there.
A hot rush of dread slicked me when they disappeared from view. I scratched my left forearm, peeling at it, and something flaked off, but when I examined the pavement, lifting one shoe, then the other, I saw nothing but layers of NYC dirt.
They’d told me to see a psychiatrist or meditate. Do something was what they meant. I pulled out my phone and donated $50 to an organization that was working to reunite immigrant children separated from their parents.
After
Day Four (Saturday)
The rest of the weekend stretched ahead. I should have been plotting some creative scheme to win Marlin back, but I also couldn’t bear to think about him just then. Each attempt looped me back to Eamon’s house, reminding me of how Marlin had arced his whole body away from me.
In the evening, I went to a Lanzhou restaurant and asked for a braised lamb platter, thinking stew, thinking geometric cubes that appealed to the human preference for symmetry. When the dish came out it was instead a spicy sea dotted with islets of irregularly shaped lamb. I fished a piece out. It took me several seconds to identify the edible parts. Essentially there was a slim strip of meat almost obscured by surrounding fat, which was itself topped off by a skim of skin. I tried to remove the skin but found it a tough task. It was firmly welded to the gelatinous layers underneath. This whole thing of meat-fat-gel-skin was skewered by two bars of bone running parallel to each other. Eventually, I figured out that I could slide the edible parts right off the bone bars. It was addictive—I de-sleeved meat and de-sleeved meat, each bite all the more delicious because it felt hard-earned somehow.
