by Gish Jen
“But she thinks it will?”
Sophy nods, though Annie is attacking her hand.
“And is she still doing that?” asks Hattie. “Giving away money?”
“I guess, because he’s always asking her how much lui she made cleaning and she’s always hiding it.” Sophy eases Annie off her lap.
“Lui is money?”
Sophy nods again.
“Don’t you need the money to live on?”
“Sarun has money.”
“Sarun?”
Annie puts her front paws up on Sophy’s knees. “He’s not supposed to be in business anymore, but he has money anyway.”
“In business? What do you mean? What kind of business?”
Sophy shrugs and looks off.
“And who’s he in business with?”
“I don’t know. With his old gang.” Sophy wipes some crud from the inside corners of Annie’s eyes.
Hattie thinks. “Is that where the TV came from?”
Sophy cleans her fingernail on a napkin. “Me and Sarun are, like, she makes the money, she can give it away if she wants. But you can’t say that to my dad because he would be, like, so ashamed that she makes money and he doesn’t. Because he was too tired to work when we came here, and now he’s the age to retire already, so all he can do is tell everyone his wisdom. Like how we should be saving for a car or a house. Or, like, college. My dad is crazy about college. Like all day long it’s college, college, college. Like it’s his mantra.”
Hattie nods encouragingly. “That’s great.”
Sophy flaps Annie’s ears up and down.
“I don’t know. My mom says college doesn’t make people happy. Like she thinks it’s more important to be good than smart, and anyway, that it’s no use to push children. She says our fate is our fate—like college is our fate or it’s not. I don’t know. My dad says it’s because of her background that she thinks that, I guess it goes with carrying stuff on her head the way she used to. And, like, how even though she’s been here forever she still eats with her hands if she’s in a hurry, my dad has to tell her she should eat with a spoon and fork every time. Or else with a fork and knife like an American, or chopsticks, like a Chinese. Anything. Unless it’s, like, a sandwich. And otherwise off a plate, or from a bowl, you know how the Chinese hold the bowl right up to their mouths? Do you do that?”
“Sometimes.” Hattie nods.
“And do you, like, make noise?” Annie nips Sophy’s finger.
“Slurp? Probably.” Hattie smiles.
Sophy makes a face and bops Annie gently on the nose. “He does that, too, the Chinese way. But I guess my mom forgets because she grew up eating from a bowl in the middle of the table, everyone just helping themselves. Or off banana leaves. And my dad says that isn’t even the worst thing about farmers. He says the worst thing about them is the way they never think about the future. They’re, like, the opposite of the Chinese. Like even his brother who died was the opposite of the Chinese, and he was Chinese.
“But anyway, she is trying harder, you should see, and my dad is, too. Like my dad used to say that if his real wife were alive, everything would be different. Like if his real wife were alive, we would respect our elders. If his real wife were alive, we would not be wild. But he’s trying not to say it anymore.”
“Isn’t your mom his real wife now?”
Sophy shakes her head, letting Annie play with a sneaker; she has new, flowered sneakers. “They’re only, what do you call it, common-law married. He calls my mom his camp wife.”
“From the refugee camp.”
“Yeah. And now she’s his American wife. His first wife’s his real wife—his Cambodian wife.”
Hattie takes this in. “And is that true, do you think? That if your dad’s first wife were still around, everything would be different?”
“Probably,” says Sophy, reclaiming her sneaker before it gets destroyed. “But anyway, he’s stopped saying it now that we’re here, because we’re trying to be different than we were. Like my mom is trying to learn English now, she really is, she watches this program on TV every day.”
“That’s great,” says Hattie.
Sophy rubs Annie’s tummy thoughtfully.
“You know, you should really be in school,” Hattie says. “Your dad might be a little off, but he’s right about college.”
Sophy throws Annie’s chew toy for Annie to fetch again.
“Aren’t you bored hanging around? Don’t you want to see other people?”
“I do see other people,” says Sophy. “Like I take the car to the center and see people there.”
“Ah.” Hattie stops. “The blue car?”
“I felt sorry for the driver,” Sophy explains. “Driving all the way out here, and then my mom won’t even get in. I mean, she will go to the grocery store, but that’s it.”
“Because?”
Sophy shrugs. “It’s just, like, one more backward thing. So sometimes I go. Me and Gift.”
“To the center, you mean?”
She nods, kneading Annie’s tummy with her bare feet now; she has long, smooth feet.
“Is that a church center?”
“It’s Bible study.”
Bible study—what Hattie’s mother’s mission school taught, long ago. “It’s not school.”
“No,” says Sophy. “But I’m going to school in the fall, I think.”
“That’s great. Though—what do you mean, you think?”
“You’ve got to ask my dad.” Hearing something they don’t, Annie suddenly pricks up her ears and runs off. “I mean, he’s been talking about home schooling, but I don’t know.”
“For Sarun, too?”
“Sarun?” Sophy looks surprised. “No, Sarun just wants to make money.”
“Is his gang”—Hattie thinks how to put this—“is his gang—what they’re doing—their business—is it legal?”
“Probably not. But anyway, he said he would quit that gang when we came here. He said it was no good and dangerous and that he was going to quit before he got shot by a goya.” Sophy plays with her hair.
“A ‘goya’?”
“You know, a Latino. We call them that because everything they eat has, like, ‘Goya’ on the can.”
“Ah. And did he quit?”
“He must have, right? Because they’re there and we’re here. And because we’re trying to be different than we were.” Annie returns. “Because that’s why we came.”
“To start over, you mean?”
Sophy shrieks.
“Good girl!” cries Hattie—Annie has a mouse in her mouth. “Good girl! Good girl!”
Encouraging her because, though there aren’t many mice in the house now, come winter there will be; it would be great to have a mouser. But Annie just drops the mouse and lifts her head to be petted. The mouse escapes. Hattie sighs.
“As you were saying,” she says.
But Sophy just wants to know, was that a mouse?
All week long, people have been asking, How do you know him? and, Isn’t he great? Professor Yoga, they call him. Are you going to class with Professor Yoga? And so it is that Hattie finds herself saluting the sun once again. Carter runs a good class with a focus on the spine and nice, clear instructions for both level one and level two—aware as he is, now, that there are different levels in this group. If he were anyone but Carter, Hattie would be singing the “Hallelujah” chorus like everyone else. And if Riverlake were not such a small town, she would simply ignore the fact that he does not look at her, much less touch her or address her. Instead, she approaches him at the end of class.
“This is ridiculous,” she says. “We are not children.”
“Indeed, we are too old to pretend we are not angry when we are. What was that you had written in your family mansion in Qufu? Wasn’t there a little door you could literally open? Revealing a rock?”
“Kāi mén jiàn shān—open the door and see the mountain.”
“Ah, yes. What ha
ppened to ‘Open the door and see the mountain’? I know you weren’t as Confucian as we made you out to be. Still, wasn’t that one of your Confucian quotes?” Carter’s mouth is grimly horizontal, though when some people in the class wave good-bye to him, he perks up and waves back.
“I’m just trying to act my age,” says Hattie.
But Mr. Combustible betakes himself away.
In an ideal world, they wouldn’t put it so high, now, would they.” Hattie hears Everett’s voice behind her in Millie’s. “In an ideal world, they’d know you’re the one who buys it.”
Everett doesn’t talk as fast as some of the locals do, but he does draw out the orr in you’re, and he oys his i’s, too, as he takes some taco shells and puts them back up where the hoisin sauce was. The hoisin sauce comes down.
“I guess this isn’t an ideal world, is it,” she says.
“Guess it ain’t.”
“I’m not the only one who buys it, either, you know.”
“But you’re the main one, wouldn’t you say? The most important one.” His look is all baby-faced innocence, as if he’s genuinely expecting her to say yes.
She laughs. “I don’t think so but thanks for the intervention.”
He nods and gallantly tips his hat at her, then winks. He has pale blue eyes and a pencil in his shirt pocket, pointy end up. What with the T-shirt barely fitting his huge chest, the pocket’s stretched tight; wrinkles radiate in spokes from his armpits.
“I heard your news, by the way,” she goes on. “I’m so sorry.”
“My news.” He thinks. “You mean ‘Soul Saved—Husband Ditched’? You mean, ‘Thirty-seven Years Wasted, You Could Say My Whole Life’?”
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “Thirty-seven years. That’s a long time.” She’s at a bit of a loss as to what to say next. “My husband and I were married for thirty-one before he died.”
“Is that right. Thirty-one years.” Everett shakes his head.
“Lung cancer,” she volunteers then. It’s not like her to bring it up, but somehow she wants to tell him—guesses he’d want to know, too. And that she won’t be sorry she told him—she guesses that as well.
And sure enough he takes up the news with a certain enthusiastic sympathy. “Wish that hadn’t happened to you, now. Wish it hadn’t.”
“It was a while ago,” she says. And, surprising herself, “I think I’m starting to get over it. Or not over it. Accustomed to it. Like it’s a past life, if you know what I mean.”
Still, Everett shakes his head again. “Cancer. Where’d that even come from, cancer? Did cavemen have cancer?”
“That’s a good question.”
“A plague. It’s a kind of plague, now, ain’t it. Instead of locusts, we have cancer.” He knits his brow hard, but just when he’s starting to look like a spelling bee contestant in trouble, winks again.
Hattie laughs after a moment, and nods. “What do you think, Everett? Think we’re being punished for something?”
“Maybe.” He’s serious once more. “Maybe. ’Cause in an ideal world, we wouldn’t have cancer, now, would we.” He puts his hand up on one of the gray support columns that stand smack in the middle of the aisle, and immediately takes on a structural look himself. “Cancer, heart trouble. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have none of it.”
“You having heart trouble?”
He shakes his head no. “Ginny’s pa had it, though.”
“Rex, you mean.”
“Know him?”
“Heard of him.” Hattie hears herself picking up Everett’s clip. “Rex the Farmer King.”
“Old Rex,” he confirms. “He was something, in his time, now. The real thing, folks said. He was the real thing. The kind of farmer you don’t see much of anymore. In an ideal world, he’d have lived forever. In an ideal world he’d have lived and lived, with his cows—he’d have lived with his cows. But he died, Old Rex—heart gave out on him, see. Then we lost the farm and Ginny found Jesus—put Jesus up on the throne of her life. Put him right up where the farm used to be.” He pauses. “The highlights, now. I’m just giving you the highlights.”
“You’re telling me what happened to your marriage.”
He nods, thoughtful.
“You’re telling how you attained the happy state you’re in now.”
“She put my stuff out in the rain, last week. Put my stuff out, but I moved it all back. Dripping wet as it was. I moved it all back and hung it to dry in the living room.” He spreads his huge hands out, as if to help Hattie visualize the array.
She can’t help but laugh.
“Let it drip dry, so as to make these little puddles on the floor,” he elaborates. “Had to put in some nails to do it.”
“Guess you were mad,” she says. “Guess I was.”
“Guess you didn’t stonewall.”
“Stonewall?”
“Guess you got yourself across loud and clear.”
“Guess I did.”
Hattie smiles. “Your clothes still up?”
“Yes, ma’am, they are. They’re still up. She would’ve taken ’em all down except that her hip was bothering her. Couldn’t get herself up on a chair, now, see. And I hung ’em a little high. Just a little high.” He gestures.
“Guess you were aiming to tantalize.”
“Guess I was, Hattie. Guess I was.” He looks embarrassed but proud. “ ’Cause you can’t just chuck a person out the way she wants, now. It ain’t right.” He shakes his head. “It ain’t right.”
“No,” she says. “It’s not.”
“To be frank, Christians don’t even act the way she’s acting. So she’s no kind of Christian anyway.”
“No,” agrees Hattie. “She doesn’t sound it.”
“Know what kind of Christian she is? The kind who sees the damned and the saved but can’t see what’s right in front of their nose. That’s what kind. The kind that sees the sheep and the goats. Who’s going to heaven, and who’s going to roast. But suffering, now. They don’t see suffering. People.” His voice is quiet, his bearing light.
“It’s a blinding kind of vision,” agrees Hattie.
He looks at her blankly.
“It’s what my mother used to say. They have a blinding way of seeing.”
“Your ma said that?”
Hattie nods. “She was a missionary.”
“You don’t say.”
“She was a missionary but didn’t stay one.”
Everett nods, then suddenly pushes up his visor and trains his pale eyes on her. “I want you to tell Ginny.”
“Tell her—?”
“You see Ginny in that group, right?”
“I do.”
“I want you to tell her she’s no kind of Christian. I want you to tell her she’s got a blinding kind of vision—a blinding kind of vision, just like you said. A blinding way of seeing.”
We must see what we don’t see, Hattie’s mother used to say. Starting with, that we don’t see. We must see that we don’t see. How humble her mother was, in her definite way, and how scientifically correct, as it turns out. And yet Hattie hesitates.
“You know, I’m in a walking group with Ginny, you’re right,” she begins. “But—”
Everett’s jaw tightens ominously; his eyes flash. “Hedging,” he says immediately. “You’re hedging.”
And before she can finish, Everett’s disappeared around the corner, disgusted. The aisle seems to widen; the fluorescent lights buzz. Hattie looks for him, but can’t find him.
• • •
Dear Aunt Hattie,
Andrea is not the big one, she is our baby. Do you remember how early she began to read? Such a little girl with such big books, we were always so proud of her. She count very well too. But now we are sick with worry. I don’t know if you have ever heard of this sick called anorexia. A kind of mental trouble. What happens is that a girl stops eating food. If she eats something, she makes herself throw it up. She takes a pill too, that pill is to help get
rid of her food. So she becomes very very thin, but in her mind she thinks she is fat and wants to lose more weight.
The poor girl!
We don’t know what to do.
The poor parents.
We tell her we can feed her some nutritious soup. George offer her $10,000 U.S. for every pound she gain.…
Hattie sighs. What is it about the Chinese and money, indeed.
But she says no. We beg her please, come back to Singapore. Please come home.
Suffering. Who don’t see suffering.
Breakfast for the dogs, and then for herself. Coffee. Muesli for the fiber—roughage, they used to call it. She adds a little sugar, why not. Then there’re the dishes to do, and the clean clothes to sort. Why does she fold her underwear? Never mind. Today, when the moment comes, she throws her panties in the drawer unfolded. Freedom! She puts off getting dressed, too—stays right in her nightgown and bathrobe. And who knows? Maybe she’ll just stay in them all day.
The unlived life isn’t worth living.
Is that a mouse?
She is busy adding leaves to her bamboo stalks—the leaves blowing pell-mell, flecked and pelted with rain—when Sophy bangs at the slider. “Hattie! Hattie! My dad is hurt!”
“Sophy?”
Hattie hurries over. The dogs are already there; Sophy’s nose and chin are pushed up to the screen door.
