Severance

by Ling Ma

  They had locked me in.

  Bob looked through the gate. It won’t be as bad as you think, Candace, he said. You’ll see.

  So passed my first night in the Facility.

  16

  In February 1846, the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints embarked on an exodus. They fled their hometown of Nauvoo, Illinois, where, in acts of religious persecution, their homes had been burned and their leader, Joseph Smith, had been killed by a mob of nonbelievers. There was nothing else to do but go. Led by a new leader, Brigham Young, sixteen hundred members loaded up their belongings in wagons and headed west. They trekked across the frozen Mississippi River, the ice cracking underneath, in search of a different future they could not yet envision.

  With an unknown destination, the exodus turned into a wandering. It would last for months. Like any venture into the unknown, such a mission required blind faith amongst its constituents, faith in a story line. They referred to themselves as the Camp of Israel, like the Jews wandering the desert after leaving Egypt; they referred to Brigham Young as the American Moses. Temporarily, they sought refuge in Sugar Creek, Iowa, from where Brigham Young sent envoys to scope out the territories ahead. Campfires burned day and night. The envoys returned and confirmed the openness of the westward path. They packed everything up and forded the Des Moines River. Spring brought thunderstorms and muddy embankments. They forged farther westward.

  It was summer when they arrived at Salt Lake Valley. The beauty of the land, surrounded by vast mountains and pines and lakes, entranced Brigham Young. The canyon rocks, large and cathedral-like, were patterned with streams of white where water once coursed. In early settler photographs of the West, all streams of water—rivers, brooks, waterfalls—looked like milk. Between the motion of the water and the long exposure times of early cameras, the land once looked as if it were lactating.

  Upon his first glimpse of the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young proclaimed: This is the place.

  When Zhigang Chen and his wife, Ruifang Yang, arrived in Salt Lake City, the mountains in the distance looked brown and ugly from the plane window. This was the winter of 1988. The sky was overcast. Patches of dirty snow melted on sidewalks and parking lots. It had been a long journey since they left Fuzhou, but now, nearing its end, they found themselves more excited than tired. They gazed out the window as the plane descended, as America crystalized from an abstraction (ice cream sundaes, Disney cartoons, blond hair) into a reality (snow-littered mountains, highways, municipal buildings).

  This must be the place, Zhigang said, before the plane dropped its wheels and skidded down on the cold asphalt.

  He had been granted the opportunity to study in America through a scholarship from the University of Utah, which had offered him full funding to pursue his PhD in Economics. He was the first graduate student from China to be admitted into the department. Due to the rarity of such an opportunity—the doors between China and the United States were tentatively opening through scholarly exchanges—the Chinese government picked up the cost of his airfare, and in the months leading up to the trip, the couple had scrimped to purchase a ticket for Ruifang too.

  A Russian exchange student had been delegated by the university to chauffeur the couple to their new home. He took them on a scenic route through Salt Lake, narrating the downtown sights in his thick Slavic accent. He slowed down at all the historic landmarks: the palace-like Temple, the Visitors Center, and the historic house of Brigham Young and his many wives. As the two men conversed in their clipped, accented English, Ruifang gazed outside at the dark, empty streets. Though Christmas had long passed, the streetlamps were still strewn with decorative wreaths and strings of lights.

  The Russian told them an anecdote about the film director Andrei Tarkovsky. Upon seeing Utah for the first time, Tarkovsky remarked that now he knew Americans were vulgar because they filmed westerns in a place that should only serve as backdrop to films about God.

  Their new home, a whiteboard house in a residential, middle-class neighborhood of tall, shady trees, initially appeared promising. They knocked on the front door, and the old man who owned the house, an absent-minded English professor, came out to lead them down the basement steps, where they would stay: the beige carpets stank of cigarette smoke and the sweet-sourness of mildew. The place came furnished with odd, heavy wooden furniture: a chair carved to look like a gnome, a sofa upholstered in marigold-printed velveteen, a pair of plastic Adirondack chairs masquerading as indoor furniture.

  That first night, in their efforts to find something to eat, they walked to the nearby grocery store, about a mile away. Their breath came out like fog in the cold, obscuring their vision, so that when the supermarket first appeared, it seemed like a mirage: enormous, lit up like a sports stadium, surrounded by a vast parking lot. If they needed confirmation they were in America, this was it. There were no grocery stores like this in Fuzhou. They walked toward the light. The glass doors automatically slid open, and in those initial, dizzying moments as they wandered the miles of fluorescent product aisles, their skin breaking out in gooseflesh in the frozen section, it did not occur to them that they were allowed to handle any of the goods. Observing the other customers, they realized that you weren’t supposed to wait at a counter while a clerk retrieved the products. You didn’t have to pay first, as was custom in Fuzhou.

  The supermarket was called Smith’s.

  They didn’t know what to buy, so they bought a gallon of whole milk, plucked randomly from a variety of brands and types. In Fuzhou, milk was rare, reserved for children, so an entire gallon seemed incredibly decadent, incredibly American. When they returned to the basement apartment, they each drank a glass and fell asleep.

  Thus passed their first night in America.

  *

  In the beginning, they socialized and circulated. They went to grad school parties. Ruifang tried to make new friends while her husband wallflowered, gingerly sipping at his Pepsi on some forlorn armchair. When she opened her mouth to speak her faulty, broken English, her throat constricted. She pressed her lips together, feeling the wax of her new lipstick, Revlon Cherries in the Snow. In their thirties, they were already older than most everyone there. Ruifang wore a navy shirt dress that had seemed chic in Fuzhou but now seemed completely conservative in the sea of denim miniskirts and spaghetti-strap dresses.

  If she were fluent, if she could’ve overcome her shyness, her hesitancy, she would have liked to convey how far she had come. How in Fuzhou, she had been a certified accountant, and she counted among her clients various city and regional government officials. That her job had been deemed important enough for her to remain in Fuzhou during the Cultural Revolution, while her sisters, along with other youths, had been banished to menial labor in the countryside for years.

  The Cultural Revolution had shut down all universities for several years. It was only when they reopened, accepting only a few students, that her husband gained admission. By then, he was already twenty-five and had worked as a foreman at an auto-parts factory. He had aspirations of becoming a literature professor, but he had the misfortune of scoring highest in math on the entrance exams—and was thus assigned Statistics as his major. In those years he had studied so hard that he had developed ulcers and lay in bed for days. After that period, he was plagued with afternoon migraines that, for the rest of his life, never completely abated.

  They were relative newlyweds, after an elopement so quick and discreet that relatives wondered whether it hadn’t been a shotgun marriage. And in fact, it had been—though she would never admit this detail to anyone. She was already pregnant by the time they eloped. In moving to the U.S., they had left a daughter in Fuzhou. She lived with her grandparents while they were here, saving money for airfare to bring her over.

  They left every party early, and soon, they stopped attending such gatherings at all.

  Instead of trying to find new friends, Ruifang ignored her loneliness. She focused her efforts on finding a jo
b. The options were limited given her lack of fluency with English and her lack of a work visa, but there were options.

  For the first year, Ruifang assembled wigs for a wig company. Every Monday, she went to the offices to pick up the artificial scalp and a bag of hair, ready to be made into glossy chestnut manes, dowdy pageboys, blond Farrah Fawcett–style poufs. She went home, where she sat on the marigold-printed sofa in front of the TV, playing One Life to Live, as she hooked each individual strand of hair into a synthetic scalp. It took thirty to forty hours to assemble an entire wig. Each wig paid eighty dollars in under-the-table cash.

  She began every morning with renewed vigor to hook hair, every strand bringing her closer to saving the airfare money to bring their child to America. But by the afternoon, her vision blurred and her fingers ached. The afternoons were when the depression would settle in, and with the depression, there was a sense of anger. If she wasn’t careful, she would begin tallying her grievances, and assigning blame: Her husband for bringing her here. Her sisters in Fuzhou for being secretly pleased at her misfortunes, despite the Clinique products she sent them. The dingy apartment that resisted her cleaning attempts; the strands of synthetic hair that embedded in the carpet fibers no matter how frequently she vacuumed.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. Probably Mormon missionaries. They came every month or so, Christ this, Christ that, zealously plying her with brochures. Sank you, she replied, by default. They didn’t understand her thick accent when she’d ask them to take their shoes off before stepping inside. She’d long stopped answering the door.

  She turned the TV volume down and pretended as if no one was home. The knocking grew more insistent, almost rude.

  Ruifang! someone yelled. It was just her husband.

  What happened to your keys? she asked upon opening the door.

  I forgot them in the car, he replied breathlessly. He looked excited, wild-eyed. But that’s not important. Did you hear the news?

  Before she could answer, he brushed past her inside. Take off your shoes! she exclaimed, but he didn’t seem to hear. He furiously clicked the remote, sailing through the TV channels until he settled on a news broadcast.

  They were playing grainy footage of what appeared to be a night protest. The shaky handheld camera documented a chaotic swarm of civilians, military tanks, smoke. Gunfire rang out. The crowds chanted, Fascists, fascists! She understood, suddenly, that the protest was taking place in China.

  Where is this? she asked.

  Tiananmen Square, he answered.

  The footage switched from the protest to chaotic scenes in a hospital. An old woman held a bloody towel to her head as onlookers rushed her through hospital corridors. She could understand the cries of the civilians, but not the voice-over narration. A concerned-looking news anchor came on, speaking in English.

  What’s he saying? What’s happening?

  They’re saying that there was a big protest last night in Tiananmen Square, Zhigang said. There were up to a million people there at one point, a lot of students and older citizens.

  What were they protesting for? she prompted.

  He looked at her. Democracy.

  She remembered the late nights at his university dorm, the salons that she and her husband would attend. Everyone would drink beer, shell peanuts and peel tangerines, hold forth on politics. Some were outspoken in criticizing the Communist regime, the same friends who later got jobs working for that same regime. Though her husband had kept his opinions to himself, one night he had spoken passionately about democracy. Every system has its problems, he argued. But any government that granted its people freedom of speech, freedom of protest, showed respect for its citizens. It was the most idealistic she had ever seen him.

  Zhigang remained silent, transfixed by the broadcast.

  What else is happening? she prompted him again.

  He didn’t take his eyes off the screen. They’re saying that the military are just shooting into the crowds. The protests are peaceful. He looked at her, stunned.

  Are you sure that’s right? We’re watching American news.

  His eyes flashed. Look! he said incredulously, pointing at the screen. It’s all students and older citizens. They’re shooting people randomly.

  All she could see on the screen was smoke and crowds; she could hear some occasional gunshots. A woman in the emergency room of a hospital, blood streaming from her head. The same footage played again, in an endless loop.

  Well, we don’t know all the facts, she maintained.

  The facts are on the screen, he scoffed. Looking back at the television, he muttered under his breath.

  At least speak up if you’re going to criticize your wife, she responded hotly.

  I wasn’t criticizing you, he said, his eyes averted.

  Then what did you just say?

  He muttered again, a little louder this time but still barely audible.

  What? She raised her voice.

  Finally he looked at her and repeated his words, loud enough that they echoed through the basement apartment, decorated by the owners with dusty bowls of cranberry-spice potpourri and Precious Moments figurines and paintings of autumnal New England landscapes and Utah Jazz sports memorabilia and Michael Crichton paperbacks and pastel seashell-shaped guest soaps and other tchotchkes that did not belong to them, that they did not know or understand within any cultural context and did not find beautiful.

  We are never going back, he said. And, in case she didn’t hear, he repeated it once more, louder this time: We are never going back.

  *

  You brought me here to trap me, Ruifang told her husband.

  Accordingly, for the next few months she fashioned her lifestyle in protest. As if to spite her husband, she made no efforts at learning English seriously, beyond conversational banter. She made no friends, not even with the other exchange students at the university. She lived an ascetic lifestyle, taking cold showers in the morning, eating only vegetables and rice at all meals.

  If she remained on this path, Zhigang feared, he would probably lose her. She could easily return to Fuzhou and resume her accountant’s job, which she had left in good standing. If she couldn’t adapt to this new place, then the solution, he decided, might be to highlight the advantages of living in America, to placate her with all of its convenience, amenities, comfort, and prosperity.

  So they did things they didn’t normally do, American things. They got driver’s licenses. They bought a car, a used beige Hyundai Excel. They pursued leisure activities like sightseeing. They drove to Zion National Park, and Mirror Lake, Yosemite. They toured the Visitors Center of the Salt Lake Temple, puzzling at the significance of the white Christ statue, his incandescent arms outstretched to receive them, his voice playing through the speakers on a loop. They ate lunch at Chuck-A-Rama, a pioneer-themed restaurant where they learned what a buffet was. They went to the ZCMI mall, where Ruifang had her ears pierced at one of the kiosks. All this she did as much for her relatives as for herself, snapping photos, at every instance, to mail back to Fuzhou. She bought a Clinique skin cream, which qualified her for a free gift of a makeup bag with several samples.

  Her homesickness eased in department stores, supermarkets, wholesale clubs, superstores, places of unparalleled abundance. The solution was shopping, Zhigang observed. He was not trying to be reductive.

  For a whole week, they took baths every day. It was almost enough to forget how, in Fuzhou, most everyone lived without bathrooms. At night, you just wet a hand towel with hot water from the kettle and washed your delicate parts as you watched the evening news.

  He also tried to find ways to bring the trappings of her previous life to her. Asking around the university about the Chinese community in Salt Lake, he learned of the Chinese Christian Community Church. Neither Ruifang nor Zhigang were religious, but if this was where the Chinese community congregated, then this was where they would go.

  That Sunday, Zhigang and Ruifang drove tw
enty minutes through the outskirts of Salt Lake to a beige brick steeple surrounded by a parking lot and a weedy lawn, and shyly took their seats in the back pews. Following the congregation’s lead, they opened the hymnals and stood up and mouthed the lyrics. The traditional hymns were sung in English. They sat down when the sermon began, delivered, to their immense relief, in Chinese. The pastor, a wild-haired middle-aged man in a formal Hong Kong–tailored suit, grabbed the microphone.

  Why do we deserve this? he bellowed in an impeccable Beijing accent. To what do we owe any of this?

  The theme of that Sunday’s sermon was second chances, the responsibility that comes with a second chance. After escaping Egypt, the children of Israel embarked on an exodus that, as the years passed, began to feel more like an aimless wandering. They lost faith, one by one, in their own ways. As Moses conferred with God on Mount Sinai, in his absence they melted down their earrings and created a golden calf to worship. Bonfires raged. They partied. In the desert, hundreds of miles away from civilization, it felt like the right thing. It felt like a relief. The golden calf gleamed, this tangible thing.

  Now, upon finding out this sin, this transgression of idolatry, God was infuriated. He said to Moses, Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them. But Moses pleaded, and only because of this did God exercise compassion in exacting a punishment.

  The God we know is the God of second chances, the pastor said. But it is also a responsibility to accept and shoulder the second chance that God gives you. A second chance doesn’t mean that you’re in the clear. In many ways, it is the more difficult thing. Because a second chance means that you have to try harder. You must rise to the challenge without the blind optimism of ignorance.

  He looked around at the congregation. Now we are all, in this congregation, first-and second-generation immigrants. Some of us have been in America longer than others, but we remember where we came from, and certainly we all miss the place where we came from. He paused. But you must understand in immigrating to a new country, this is a second chance. And it comes with difficulty. Being here is not always easy. Too often, it feels like we don’t belong. Too often, we may wonder whether we’re just wandering aimlessly by living here. But it is a second chance. You must have faith.