World and Town

by Gish Jen

  “I’m talking about us, Hattie. You and me and what we were and weren’t. Mainly weren’t, I think you’ll agree.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Hattie.” He turns and throws his hands up. “You can’t back away from a real talk now.”

  “I’m too old for this, Carter.”

  “You’re not too old. Hattie. Look at me.” His silhouette on the window is large and dramatic now, like a shadow puppet’s. “You just haven’t forgiven me and never will. You and Meredith and Maisy. None of you.”

  “Bú duì.”

  “You think I put you on the altar of research.”

  “Bú duì.”

  “You think I was a mindless whore who saw nothing but his work. His immortal work.”

  “Bú duì.”

  “You think my lab was my world, in which you were never more than a guest. And now, on top of everything, I’ve come back. What is he doing here, you want to know. Just when you’ve gotten your own little world set up. Your dogs, your friends, your house.” His silhouette is scarily still. “Well, now you know how it feels.”

  “To be disturbed, you mean?”

  “To be torn, Hattie. Torn. As in torn asunder.”

  “I think I already knew that.”

  The windows are old; she can hear the wind outside them, blowing.

  “Did you,” he says. “Then tell me. Was it Joe who taught you to stonewall or has your old sweet reticence just hardened into something mean?”

  She stares at the boat a moment—that crosshatch of shadows.

  “If you want to know why Meredith left you, Carter, I can tell you,” she says, finally.

  He broods.

  “If you want to know why Maisy won’t speak to you, I can tell you that, too.” She loosens the laces of a walking shoe and pulls up its tongue. “Why no one forgives you. I can tell you.” She stretches down to the floor with her leg and seats her heel with a little wiggle.

  “Can you,” he says, glaring. “Can you. Well, I can tell you why, too. Because you don’t want to.” He steps toward her. “Because it’s useful and familiar and pays more than moving on. That’s why.”

  She is straightening up, half shod, her weight on her shoeless foot, when he grasps her, hard. How large men are—she had forgotten—the mass of them; his hands are iron hands, crushing her shoulders. She rocks back—throws the shoe but misses—her mouth grazing his warm shirt as he suddenly lets go, pulling the light cord so hard the pocket knife leaps. Then how loud her heart, and how loud his footsteps on the gravel—louder than the wind—everything pouring through the open door, everything blowing and rattling; everything louder in the dark. She breathes, circling a shoulder. The other one. Tests her bad ankle. She hears his heavy steps on his porch—those boots. Then her hand jumps—that light!—the Turners’ flood-lights—her hand instinctively shading her eyes thanks to her superior colliculus—the same quick-response center that enables frogs to catch flies, she used to tell her kids. The yard is lit up like a football stadium; her retinas need time. But there—now she can see again. How weird the light, though, and how cold the blowing air, almost as cold as the floor. Her walking shoe has gotten kicked under the stool. She bends down, shaking, and dumps the sawdust out.

  A call! Will everything involving her child remain an event forever? Josh does e-mail to say what country he’s in. What he’s working on for the radio—he tells her that, too. An autistic boy who managed to wander over the border from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, only to clean disappear, for example—that’s one story Hattie won’t forget. She almost wrote back then to say that she could imagine how the boy’s mother must feel—how nothing could be worse than realizing your child has vanished. But in the end she just said what a great story it was.

  “This is Josh.”

  As if she might not realize. But all right. He has a new girlfriend, he reports. Well, not so new, actually. Actually, he’s been seeing her for two months, but hadn’t wanted to say anything until he could tell how it was going. Now, though, he can divulge that she’s a journalist—a stringer right now, but with real prospects, he’s sure. A diplomat’s daughter, a third-culture kid. Went to school in the States, but her parents are Chinese-Brazilian. She has three passports.

  “Wonderful.” Hattie buries her fingers in Annie’s soft scruff. “What’s her name?”

  “In English?”

  “Sure.”

  Serena, age twenty-three.

  “A little young?”

  Silence. Maybe she shouldn’t have said that? Or is it just the connection?

  “I thought so, but she thinks my thinking about that is outmoded,” he says, finally. “Dinosaur that I am at thirty-two.” He is going to meet her parents in Delhi.

  “Are you nervous?” Annie gives a play bow, then runs off; Cato and Reveille lie at Hattie’s feet.

  “Serena says I should just try not to drool. Which you did teach me, I told her. Of course, it wasn’t easy,” he goes on. “But I did learn.”

  Hattie laughs. Though the banter—she sometimes wonders if Josh doesn’t hide behind his banter the way he hides behind his reporting. If it isn’t a species of talking without talking—of being tough. When he was little, he and Joe would retreat to the woods for weeks at a time—a wonderful thing, except that Joe would sometimes take a retreat from the retreat, leaving Josh alone for a day or two. Hardening him, Joe said. Insisting that Josh could handle it, even when he was just nine or ten. And Josh used to insist he could handle it, too, never mind that he could fit three pairs of socks in the hiking boots Joe got him; his backpack hung down to his knees. He insisted he liked being left alone like that. I did, Ma, except the time a snake came. I did.

  As for what Serena likes: “She’s crazy about Pushkin—she loves Pushkin. She says it was worth learning Russian just to read Pushkin.”

  “And where’s home for her?”

  “She doesn’t have one, really, but thinks my thinking about that is outmoded, too.”

  Hattie moves some copies of Nature off her reclin-o-matic. “Didn’t Pushkin have a home?”

  “That’s what I said. I told her I thought we were programmed to be faithful to a place. Like storks with their—what’s that German word?”

  “Ortstreue.” A Carter word.

  “Ortstreue. Thank you.” His on-the-air voice. “I told her you developed different relationships. But she says how do I even know, when my parents could never settle down, and now look at me.”

  “That was your father.”

  He pauses then, as he always does, at the mention of Joe. And for a moment, they share the short silence; it’s like a hallway they both use.

  “She says we have Listserv to keep in touch with people,” he goes on, “and that we journalists are like a floating village anyway. You ever see those? In Cambodia?”

  “I have new neighbors from Cambodia.”

  “No kidding. And here I just did the decimation of the catfish in the Tonle Sap.”

  Would he have said more about his new girlfriend if she hadn’t brought up her neighbors? Anyway, she explains about the trailer. The Chhungs.

  “But you like the girl—this So-PEE.”

  “I like them all. But the girl, especially. Yes.”

  “Let me guess. The daughter you always wanted.”

  Joe’s bluntness.

  “Though why would you want a daughter when your son is everything you’d ever dreamed of?” he goes on.

  “Oh, Josh,” she says. “You’re not so bad.”

  “As best you remember, you mean.”

  She tries to think what to say—still improvising with Josh, after all these years. Still feeling her way. “I do understand that coming home involves travel.”

  “Getting on an airplane, you mean.”

  Is that what she means?

  “I’ll come soon,” he continues. “I know it’s been over a year—”

  “You’re welcome anytime, Josh.” Hattie doesn’t mean to cut hi
m off, but maybe she has? And is that stonewalling? “Anyway, good luck with your dinner.”

  “It’s time for me to get married, you mean.”

  “I mean, don’t drool and enjoy your food. If you like her.”

  “I like her.”

  Ah.

  “Then, go. Live,” she says.

  “Don’t waste time, you mean.”

  She sighs. “I mean, live.” She stands back up and opens a window; outside, a half a dozen butterflies have crammed themselves into a nook between some rocks. “I mean, try and listen to your mother.”

  “You mean, the unlived life is not worth living.”

  She laughs. “Exactly! You remember! What Lee used to say.”

  “I thought it was what you used to say.”

  “No, no.” Misattribution—the most common error of the memory. “It was Lee. Lee used to say that.”

  “Lee was great.”

  “She was. Lee was great.”

  She reaches down to pet Cato and Reveille at the same time, one with each hand.

  Hattie does not visit the Chhungs for a week. Thinking to invite Sophy to the farmers’ market again, though, Hattie finally tromps down their way, through the ferns. Which are, of course, pushing up everywhere now; the hillside’s a veritable sea of curls, some of which will produce a trillion spores in their lifetime. As Hattie used to tell her kids in school, ferns are prolific. She’ll have to take the same route repeatedly if she wants to have a path—encourage Sophy to take it, too.

  That is, if there’s going to be visiting.

  The daughter you always wanted.

  Why would they have moved to Riverlake if they were thriving?

  Well, either way she’s going to pick some fiddleheads to steam up. In the meanwhile, there’s her tribute of cookies to present, and her compliments to pay on the pit. She produces, too, a new kind of insect repellent—a local product with a pen-and-ink mosquito on its label. Chhung nods in thanks, smiling and smoking.

  “You speak Chi-nee,” he says abruptly.

  “Yes,” she says. “I do.”

  “Grew up in Chi-nah.”

  “Yes. I grew up in China.”

  “Speak Chi-nee like English. Good.”

  She laughs. “Once upon a time I spoke better Chinese than English. But yes. Now I speak both equally poorly.” She waves at Gift and Sophy.

  “My grandparents Chi-nee. Come from Chi-nah. My father speak—Teochew dialect. But me, no …” He waves his free hand in front of his face.

  Hattie stops; but of course. The oval face, the pale skin. How could she not have seen this? “Your grandparents were from China?”

  “From Chi-nah.” He holds up four fingers, all with Band-Aids; one has enough curve to qualify as a bandy leg if it were a leg. “All from Chi-nah.”

  “All four of your grandparents were from China. That makes you Chinese Cambodian, right? Overseas Chinese?”

  He nods, smiling.

  “Like me, sort of.” She almost never thinks of herself as “overseas Chinese”—who knows what she is, or what she’s made of, either—but never mind. It’s a helpful enough category right now. “You don’t speak Chinese, though?” She tries to ask in such a way so as not to make him feel bad.

  “In city, children go to Chi-nee school. But where I grow up, no Chi-nee school.”

  “It’s hard to hang on to a language you don’t use.”

  He nods again, his cigarette ash growing into a fine little log; his hand is surprisingly steady. “ ‘Human strr-en cannot chain destiny,’ ” he says, enunciating carefully.

  “Human strength cannot change destiny?”

  He nods a third time. “Fate sent you for teach Sophy.”

  “Chinese? To teach her Chinese?”

  “Chi-nee.” A glowing hunk of ash falls from his cigarette onto a pile of leaves, but he does not seem unduly concerned.

  “Is Mandarin okay?” Hattie keeps an eye on the leaves.

  “Okay.”

  “I’d love to. But would she like to learn?”

  He waves his hand. “Sophy smart. Learn fast. You teach her no problem.”

  Not exactly what she asked, but all right. He offers to pay her; Hattie insists it would be her pleasure. And in truth, she’s been thinking of adding some calligraphy to her bamboo anyway—afraid as she is that she’s losing her Chinese. Her characters, especially, in which was found gúo cuì, her father used to say—the essence of China. Though what does that matter here?

  Who knows? Pretty soon she and Sophy have a routine. First they go to the farmers’ market. Then they have their Chinese lesson. Then they play with Annie and have cookies. Sugar cookies, snowdrops, snickerdoodles—always something different, which Sophy likes even though Hattie is using whole-wheat flour now, trying to stay in step with their health-crazy time. Over the cookies, Hattie tells Sophy all kinds of things: How Annie is doing with her house-training. How little color dogs see. How Hattie once had a half-wolf dog, and how he really did wolf down his food. And how she got here, starting with how she came from China—Hattie tells Sophy that, too. How it was like being carried out to sea by a riptide. How she’s been swimming for shore for fifty years.

  She does not explain how she found an island in Joe and Lee.

  Sophy nods thoughtfully in any case, and tells Hattie stuff in return, pulling at her hair. Her hair is straight like Chhung’s, but she likes to pull it even straighter, then twirl it around her finger, then straighten it out all over again as she describes how her dad flips out sometimes, and how her mom misses Cambodia.

  “My mom’s family had a mango farm when she was growing up,” she says. “They were, like, the mango family—people would come buy whole trees from them, because mango trees are easy to take care of and don’t take a lot of water. And they sold mangos at a stand outside their house, too, and my mom and her sister were in charge of the selling. So, like, one of them could lie in the hammock under the house but not both of them, or if both of them did, one of them was supposed to at least stay awake. So they had all these tricks to keep awake but fell asleep all the time anyway.”

  “What do you mean, under the house?” asks Hattie, sipping coffee.

  “I guess the whole house was, like, raised up on stilts. Because they had all this rain there, like in the monsoon season. So the fields were fields sometimes, but other times they were lakes. Like you couldn’t ever just say something was land, it was only, like, land sometimes. That’s why the house was on stilts. So it was always a place you could sleep, no matter what. But anyway, it got destroyed.”

  “It wasn’t permanent, either.”

  “No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t permanent.” Sophy leaves off playing with her hair in favor of playing with Annie. “I guess the whole village got, like, destroyed in the end, my mom says because of their karma.”

  Annie pulls so hard on her chew toy, Sophy lets go.

  “One thing I never understood,” she says, tugging again, “is who Pol Pot was anyway. Like everyone’s always saying during Pol Pot time whatever, and there’s that movie.”

  “The Killing Fields, you mean.”

  Sophy nods. “But was Pol Pot like a regular person, or was he, like, a k’maoch?”

  “Is a k’maoch a ghost?”

  Sophy nods again.

  Hattie explains as Sophy frowns, nods, wonders, then frowns some more. Her head is down, her brow flattened by the light of the open window. She plays with her hair, slips a sneaker half off, claps it against the callused heel of her foot.

  “Whoa,” she says at the end. Trying to take it in, but seeming to realize she can’t, really. “Nobody ever told me that. I mean, I guess I sort of knew. But it’s, like, so hard to believe.”

  “It is. It is hard to believe, you’re right. It’s so hard that some people have spent their whole lives trying to understand it. What humans are, and how it could happen.”

  Sophy picks up the chew toy, throwing it for Annie to fetch. Then she waggles her head thought
fully and goes on. “My mom’s family were farmers, but they were rich,” she says. “I mean, not as rich as my uncle, who she was married to before she hooked up with my dad, but they had, like, a tile roof on their hut and …”

  Hattie stops her. “Your mom was married to your uncle?”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of wack, but they were married until he died and then my dad’s first wife died, too. Then my mom and dad sort of got stuck together.”

  “I see.”

  “It was, like, fate. Like I guess in the beginning they were just happy to find someone they knew in the refugee camp. And then they found Sarun, too, and had to take care of him, because of, like, the Thai soldiers and the mines.” Sophy tries to make Annie walk on her hind legs.

  “I see.”

  “And because, like, nobody else could, because everyone else was dead. Like one of my mom’s brothers had a gold chain, and another had a gold ring, which was why they both died. Like they got killed right in front of my mom by some kid who’d always been jealous of them, and who took the chain and the ring, I guess he was Khmer Rouge. And then he got killed by somebody else jealous of him.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “And other people died other ways. Like, some starved. I don’t know. They died a lot of ways. And on top of everything, my mom says if her family still had their house and their land, it would be worth, like, a million cows now. But anyway, they don’t.”

  “Who does?” Hattie reseats her glasses on her head, one pair toward the back, one toward the front.

  “I don’t know. My dad thinks his family’s house is probably worth a lot now, too, because everyone in Cambodia is, like, buying everything. But there’s no way of even proving that it used to be his house because the Khmer Rouge took it over and everyone who knows whose it was before is dead now. And all the papers were destroyed, and anyway, my mom is sort of backward so it doesn’t matter.” Sophy dangles the chew toy so that Annie has to jump up for it.

  “What do you mean, backward?”

  Sophy shrugs, and though that makes her T-shirt bunch in her armpits and fold up above the shelf of her breasts, she does not tug at her shirt hem to pull it down, the way she usually does. “I mean, like, even if my mom got her family’s house back, she’d probably give all the money to the temple. Or else to, like, her brother. Because she thought her whole family was dead but then found out this one brother was still alive, and that his job was clearing mines. I guess because they still have these mines all over Cambodia that explode if you step on them. So now my mom wants to buy him a car so he can have his own driving business and not do that work anymore. Because I guess he already lost one hand and only has one left, and anyway he’s the only brother left of all her brothers and sisters so she doesn’t want him, like, blown up. But my dad says we have to think of our family here, too. Because we’ve been here my whole life and still don’t have anything because my dad can’t work and if my mom isn’t giving money to her brother, she’s giving it to the temple. Which my dad doesn’t believe will make a difference to our dead relatives or our next life or anything. He says it’s just throwing money away.”