Deceit and Other Possibilities

by Vanessa Hua

  She rubbed her hand over her belly. What would this possible clump of cells inside her grow to become, a baby who looked like her or would the Chinese roots disappear, transform into a child who looked somewhat Italian or Native American? One-half, one-fourth, one-eighth, one-sixteenth, one-thirty-second Chinese, erased in successive generations until only an echo remained: glossy black hair or tan skin. Aileen would be a distant exotic ancestor, claimed with excitement or else diluted and forgotten.

  While others took over making breakfast, she and Janey headed to the bathroom to brush their teeth. A stringy Chinese woman squatted by the faucet across the road, filling a Nalgene bottle. The one Aileen had helped with the tent. A F.O.B., she could tell, by the woman’s colorful plastic slippers worn with athletic socks and the baggy sweatshirt over bright leggings. The woman had pale skin, stippled with acne scars on her cheekbones. When she saw Chinese immigrants with bad haircuts swarming onto city buses, she stood back to avoid being associated with their shoving, alien desperation.

  The woman stood. Behind thick glasses, her small eyes were puffy and her black hair pulled into a messy ponytail. Apparently, she hadn’t slept well. Janey smiled, for she had a proper upbringing. “Good morning,” Janey said. “I hope we weren’t too noisy last night.” Asking for an apology was easier than asking for permission.

  “You ruined our trip.” The woman’s voice was thin and high with anger. Her lips were chapped and her teeth were crooked.

  “I…we didn’t know.” Janey readjusted the blue bandana that held her blonde curls. “We’re really sorry.” Janey seemed to believe the woman should have said “no problem.” They would laugh together, and Janey would invite them to stop by. She would have hosted the whole campground, if she could have. She was that charming.

  “Don’t you think about other people?”

  “I promise it won’t happen again.”

  “It shouldn’t have happened at all.”

  Please. Shut up. Aileen knew they had been obnoxious, maybe scary last night, but this woman made her feel ashamed for seeking the group’s approval. Should she try to appeal to her on another level? Mutter an apology in her broken Chinese? In theory, they had a bond because their ancestors originated from the same homeland. But Aileen said nothing. She could not speak from a place she had never been to and did not understand. Janey apologized one more time, and walked off without waiting for Aileen. She hurried to catch up. Bitch. The word exploded in her head. Aileen did not know who she meant: the F.O.B, Janey or herself.

  ~~~

  Her parents talked her out of leaving.

  When Lin woke from fitful sleep that morning, she was ready to throw everything into the trunk, unwashed and unpacked, and go home. She fumbled for her glasses and unzipped the flap to find Sang kindling the fire and her parents settled into the camp chairs. They were ignoring last night, she realized, to help her save face.

  “We don’t need to stay. I’m sorry I brought you here. We shouldn’t have come.” She slammed pans and tossed cans of food into a paper box. A can of beans bounced off the edge and landed on top of a carton of eggs with a sickening crunch. Yolks dripped and spread over the picnic table, and she felt as though she’d vomited the mess. No one moved. For weeks, she and Sang had been preparing. To pack now, to put away the uneaten food and yet-to-be-used gear, would end a trip just begun.

  Sang said they should finish breakfast, and then decide what to do. He was methodical like her, careful to complete every task he started. He unfurled the paper towels and wiped the spilled eggs. Her mom wanted to go hiking again, and her father said he liked sitting under the trees. Like the poet Lao Tze. They could take a nap in the afternoon, maybe using earplugs, he joked. Ma put her hand on his arm to still his reference to last night. Lin suspected that her parents wanted her to get the woods and California, out of her system, and to bank every last moment before she left for China. In the past, her parents had employed this strategy, working to convince her, and then pulling back at the last moment to allow her to choose their decision.

  After breakfast, she walked to the faucet at the edge of the campsite to rinse the dishes. Running her finger around the bottom of the bowls, scraping off stubborn particles, she noticed a pair of women, one foreigner and one Chinese, from the neighboring campsite. Even while living in America, she called white people foreigners out of habit. She dropped the metal plates with a clang.

  The white woman apologized with a smile; Americans smiled very easily. Lin recognized the other woman, the A.B.C. who helped her pitch the tent. Now the A.B.C. looked away, pretending as if they had never met. The foreigner said sorry again, but her mouth was set into a straight line as she departed, her apology as fake as her smile. The A.B.C. followed, dressed in a grey fleece and jeans, and her shoulder length hair was streaked with auburn highlights, all attempts to hide the peasant within.

  Traitor, Lin wanted to tell her. You will always be Chinese. You are not one of them.

  “There’s no use yelling at foreigners,” Ma said, after Lin returned to the campsite. “They won’t listen.”

  “Don’t provoke them. There are so many of them,” Ba said.

  “I’ll call the ranger,” Sang said. “He can take care of this.”

  Her parents were storing reasons for why she should leave, for they could see what a place like this could do to her, and the longer she stayed, the more she would forget who she was.

  ~~~

  The ranger wearing a Smokey Bear hat strode into the campsite. Sean muttered “busted” under his breath, which sent people snickering. He informed the group that people had complained about the noise, and warned that if he had to return tonight, the group would have to leave. Janey promised that everyone would be quiet. After the ranger was out of sight, she told them about the run-in with the neighbor, some Asian lady.

  “What’s their problem?” Roberto asked.

  “They could have told us to quiet down, instead of running to the ranger,” Gretchen said.

  “Damn furriners.” Sean affected a hick accent. “Why don’t they go back to their own…” He glanced at Aileen and trailed off. The others looked at their feet, at the trickle of a creek, at the brown needles, twigs, and cones scattered around the redwoods, at the campfire ring, everywhere but at her. She hated Sean for trying to be sensitive but instead singling her out. Why did he look at her and not Roberto? How alone the Chinese woman had seemed. Aileen wanted to apologize for failing to reach out a hand to someone else who did not belong.

  Janey dispersed the silence with a wave of her capable hands. “Who wants to go hiking?” Everyone drifted away to get their daypacks. Aileen kicked at the dirt beside their tent, which erupted into a quick puff, and then settled down as if nothing had happened.

  She and Reed had never talked about the slights, the little judgments, and assumptions people made. Your English is excellent. Your eyes look tired. Would he ever understand that the world saw her different? Maybe he thought they had moved beyond the need for discussion. What she feared was that he didn’t think about it at all.

  “Don’t let him get to you,” Reed said. “Sean likes to tease, but he’s harmless.”

  Harmless.

  He was sorry that she was upset, but he would never experience what she felt. That would always be the divide between them. She had to accept that to stay with him or else let him go. From the center of the campsite, Janey marshaled the hikers together. Aileen shouldered her backpack and handed the other to Reed. She was not ready to give him up, not before she knew what else she could abandon. “Let’s go.”

  ~~~

  Lin came prepared this time, bundled in a sweatshirt, windbreaker and hat, before taking watch in the dark at the picnic table. Sang and her parents were in the tent. All day, the three of them did their best to appease her. They deferred to her on where to go hiking, when they should stop for lunch, asking her opinion on the best spots to take photos and how to pose.

  They didn’t want more brok
en eggs. As a child, Lin had erupted into anger, squalled with her younger brother over the last dumpling and screamed at a classmate who stepped ahead of her. Her mother slapped her into obedience, and now Lin’s temper flared only a handful of times each year, when pressures built and deadlines converged at work. It still surprised her each time she flew out of control, when she shattered a glass in the sink of the office kitchen, when she kicked aside the row of shoes by the front door.

  Before long, Sang would come out and fetch her, when he judged she was satisfied with her duty, squeeze her shoulder and led her back to the tent. He was a good husband, tall for a Chinese man, with the wide cheekbones and pointed chin of a cat, who understood her without explanation. They had paired up in graduate school. She was a better programmer, Sang said, not jealous or competitive as other men had been. A smart wife meant smart kids, he often said. She knew that he wanted to return to China but toiled here for her, and many times she had reconsidered: was she making the right decision? Or was she a selfish wife, unworthy of a man like him? Listening to the laughter drifting from the neighboring camp, Lin rubbed her hand on the unlit lamp, wishing for a spirit to command.

  ~~~

  Late that afternoon, after the hike, Aileen and Reed made love in the tent, the space between them becoming small, smaller, smallest. The heat of their nakedness warmed the tent to body temperature, and the sunshine through the red walls bathed them in a rich glow. This was what she wanted: the world shrunk down to the two of them.

  On their last night in the woods, after their collective naps, the campers drank steadily and heavily. As the curfew approached, Janey reminded them to be quiet, but a large group can whisper only for so long. When she shushed them, a few glowered toward the neighboring campers. Sean toasted them, tipping his beer bottle in their direction. “Sweet dreams.”

  That drew a big laugh from the group. “Please Mr. Ranger, can you tuck us in?” he said in a nasal, simpering voice. His freckled face, open and friendly in daylight, was splotchy and sly in the campfire.

  “Yeah, we’re afraid of the dark,” Roberto chimed in.

  “Of monsters.” Sean drained his beer, flung the bottle toward the paper box filled with empties, and stumbled to the cooler for another drink.

  “Easy, turbo,” Reed said. “Slow down.”

  He squeezed Aileen’s hand. She squeezed back.

  The trouble began with the spongy Nerf football. A few men played catch, launching it high over the fire. Aileen craned her neck, trying to follow along. After Sean’s lob smacked Roberto on the shoulder, the men aimed at each other on purpose, each hit rewarded with rowdy laughter. She darted her eyes to the other campsite. What did they see? Her hand went sweaty in Reed’s and she let go. He bounced the Nerf off of Sean, who howled in protest, and a free-for-all with the marshmallows followed. Aileen waited—would she be included in the game? A dirty lump landed in her lap, a toss from Janey, and Aileen heaved it at Reed. He caught it with one hand and threw it into the fire, which flared from the sugary fuel. The flames enthralled her.

  Sean threw his bottle at the neighboring campsite. The bottle disappeared into the darkness and exploded on the road. Aileen jerked her gaze from the fire, jarred—and gratified—by the sound of tinkling glass. Others threw their beer cans, plastic cups, empty bottles of tequila and wine, kindling, rocks, whatever they could grab. Aileen jumped to her feet. United, they were unstoppable, the crashing skittering in the night.

  “Stop,” Janey shouted. “Stop!”

  Aileen wobbled and sank into her chair. She stared at her right hand, which a moment before had held her third bottle of beer. Throwing with all her might had been ecstasy, to let loose against what troubled her.

  ~~~

  A bottle whizzed into the campsite. Lin leaped to her feet. She and her family were under attack. Sang was struggling to get out of the tent. She would have to hurry. Grabbing the lantern, she ran to the middle of the road, smelling the sticky sweet of the alcohol as bottles and cans rained down. If she did nothing, they would never stop. They would swarm like locusts, consuming and destroying. She picked up a triangular shard of glass, rubbing her thumb in the hollow. One slip and she could slit open her hand. Backlit by the fire, the foreigners looked huge and spiteful, but she was invisible to them, another patch of darkness in the road.

  With steady hands, she lit the lantern and threw.

  ~~~

  Janey scolded the group. The tightness of her voice betrayed her fear. “You have to clean up and apologize to the people next door. The ranger is probably on his way. We’ll get kicked out.”

  Mike put his arm around her. “What the fuck?” he said. “Not cool, guys.”

  Everyone shouted, arguing who was to blame and what to do next, too ashamed to look at the other campsite. Aileen could imagine her own parents cowering with the Chinese family. She had switched allegiances in exchange for nothing lasting. Reed rubbed the small of her back, which ached from sleeping on the ground, from an oncoming period or from the creature within in her, dividing and dividing. He and a baby would always be a reminder of her complicity.

  Gretchen screamed first. A tent was ablaze, a shuddering mass of flames, and people tripped over themselves as they rushed to get up. The ground was covered with dry leaves and redwood cones, which fed the flames that licked at a SUV parked next to a tent. Reed grabbed a jug of water and poured it onto the fire. Others scrambled for their Nalgenes and bottles of Gatorade and cranberry juice, and with frenzied shakes, flung the liquid, arcing and glittering in the firelight like writhing water snakes.

  Reed shoved a bottle of water into her hand. Stunned to realize she had not moved, she poured the water. The flames grew higher. She backed away from the searing heat as others jostled past her. By the time the fire truck arrived, they had beaten down most of the flames that consumed three tents, singed a redwood, and melted the tires on the SUV. An acrid, chemical smell permeated their clothing, their hair, and their skin. The medics wrapped Gretchen’s ankle, which she sprained when she fell, trying to run for help. Officials questioned the rest of the group in an investigation that would later determine the fire was accidental, caused by a lamp tipping over.

  Afterward, people packed, dismantling their tents and tossing their sleeping bags and air mattresses into their trunks. The disembodied light of their headlamps bobbed as if will o’wisps had taken over the campsite. She and Reed hugged Janey good-bye, climbed into his car, and drove away on Highway 1. One false move and they would plummet from the cliffs and into the ocean. No one told the ranger about the run-in with the other campsite. No one but Aileen saw the lamp flying through the air, a beacon, a firebomb. No one but she could have imagined that look of defiant pleasure. For what they shared, the woman deserved her silence.

  ~~~

  At last, Lin could sleep. With Sang at the wheel and her parents nodding off in the back seat, they were safe together. She wondered if they had seen her throw the lantern, an act she watched outside of herself in disbelief and with a frightening glee. The bright lights of the fire investigators and squawking radios made sleep impossible at the campsite, and they packed while her parents waited in the car. As they pulled away, their headlights swept over the neighboring campsite. An arm, a leg, tents. And for an instant, she saw the A.B.C.—eyes downcast, shoulders slumped, body like a snapped rubber band—then trees and dark spaces. Did shame twist the other woman’s face? They were not so different after all.

  They drove a few miles on the winding roads before Sang pulled into a turnout at the edge of a cliff. Here was quiet and the stars that the redwood trees had hidden from view. In her seat, she snuggled under the sleeping bag, which she intended to return, along with the tent and everything else from R.E.I. Camping had fooled her into thinking that she belonged where she did not, as if the equipment alone could guarantee happiness and safe passage.

  THE RESPONSIBILITY OF DECEIT

  We arrived in Napa Valley at night, after battling Friday rush hour
traffic and dodging oncoming cars on the two-lane roads. Our headlights illuminated snatches of rolling hills, fences, and metal stakes of the dark vineyards.

  It was all last minute. A friend of Peter’s pre-paid for a stay months ago at a bed and breakfast, but broke up with her boyfriend last week. Planning in advance jinxed things. This trip was our first to wine country. We had stayed in Russian River and sunned poolside with the other men at Fife’s, but Calistoga offered gauzily romantic activities: hot-air balloon rides, couples massages, and bicycles built for two. We needed to get away. In the last month, after our fight in the car, we had avoided each other, spending time apart at lab, at work, or at the gym.

  The GPS told us to go left, right, right, until we were parked in front of Whitmore Manor where everyone else appeared to be tucked away for the evening. The owner left the keys to our room and to the house taped to the tall front doors, along with a note written in tight, small cursive script. Quiet hours begin after 10 pm. Extra pillows and blankets are in the armoire. Breakfast served from 8 to 9:30 am.

  She signed the note, “Mistress Goodnough,” which set us snickering.

  “She sounds like a discount dominatrix,” I said.

  “Or a pilgrim.”

  We crept into the house like bandits, our eyes adjusting to the glow from the moon and the nightlight in the front parlor. There was a plate of chocolate chip cookies on a side table. Reaching for one, I tripped over a cat, which yowled and darted under the table. Laughing, Peter stilled the quaking table and righted the chubby porcelain figurines toppled next to the cookies. I wasn’t used to house pets. My immigrant Chinese parents saw no use in feeding an animal that lived in the house, or for that matter, any creature not bound for the dinner table. Practical, they saw themselves undisputed at the top of the food chain.