by Susan Conley
On Monday morning Rose and I take our class to the giant IKEA home goods store just off the Fourth Ring Road North. I need to find a mattress pad. The hard Chinese bed we sleep in has begun to bruise my back. Rose would like to buy a coffeepot. She’s never been to IKEA before. She meets me at the front door of Tower Five with a big smile. She says her boyfriend wants to know what she’s buying before she pays for it.
We get in the van with Lao Wu and I ask her, “Do you think the Chinese army is being too forceful in Tibet?” I’ve been waiting to pose this question all weekend.
“Susan, the Chinese army is just doing its job.” I look out the window and wonder how much Rose really knows. Then she says, “Tibet has always been part of China.” She views the protests in terms of how much danger they pose to the Chinese people. “The army has to keep the peace in Tibet, Susan. Tibetans are killing Han.” Then she says she’s more worried about the Olympics. “I saw a fortune-teller last week who told me that during the games there will blood in the Beijing streets.”
Lao Wu lets us off inside the parking garage, and we take the escalator to the third floor, which is stocked with aisles of sleek Swedish furniture: maple platform beds and stainless-steel desks. I’m surprised again at how many people are in China—how many men and women wheel shopping carts in and out of the Marimekko bedroom displays. It’s the same IKEA stuff, but tweaked for the China market: smaller beds, and chopsticks in the kitchenware aisle.
Rose holds up a red French coffee press and calls out, “What is this?”
I leave my cart and circle back to her. “It’s for coffee,” I explain and take it from her. “You put the coffee in and then you press down like this.”
“My boyfriend enjoys coffee now.” Rose smiles. “More Chinese like coffee. But I do not think he would like this item.”
There are maybe fifty different kitchen contraptions displayed on a grid of white shelves along the wall. Next Rose picks up a metal whisk. “And this?”
“For cooking,” I say. “For beating eggs.” Rose looks confused. “It’s called a whisk,” I say. “To stir things quickly.”
She gazes at the gadgetry. “There is so much here,” she says. “So much I don’t see the use of.”
She puts the whisk in her shopping cart and holds up a bright green garlic press. “Garlic press,” I say. “You don’t need it.”
Next is an orange plastic spatula. “Do you like pancakes?” I ask her. She stares at me for a second too long, and I realize she doesn’t know this word pancakes. Sometimes I forget that Rose has never left China. Or maybe never seen pancakes. I can’t decide what she makes of this place and the well-heeled Chinese milling in the designer lighting aisle.
“Who are you buying this stuff for?” I ask her. “Yourself or your boyfriend?”
She smiles. “I’m not sure yet.” When we get to the tall pyramid of Chinese woks, Rose is unimpressed. “Those woks are cheaply made,” she says. “The iron is too thin.”
“Shall we go to bedding?” I say quickly. Then I catch myself. “Shall we go find where they keep the mattress pads?” She nods and we wheel our carts away from the buzz of so many people shopping. The hallway is wide and relatively empty. I know Rose isn’t interested in talking any more about Tibet. She wants to find the shower curtains. And I wonder if most people in this store are as apolitical as Rose seems.
We Chinese believe in ourselves. We believe in our things. Rose’s boyfriend calls her on her cell for the second time since we’ve gotten to IKEA. She talks to him for two minutes, then hangs up. “He is jealous that we are here,” she says. “He does not want me seeing these things for the first time without him.”
I Love You.
End of Discussion.
On Sunday I take a yoga class. It’s part of my self-enhancement plan: more women friends. More stretching my calves and quieting my mind. It’s me and a teacher named Mimi. Her dark hair hangs down to the waist of her wide-legged pink pants. We sit on the floor of a white room in her apartment. It took me forty minutes to walk here, and I already feel better for having come. Mimi thinks we should start slowly. I haven’t done the postures for years and my back feels stiff and unyielding.
She has me stand in front of the wall and press against it with both arms. I hold the pose while she instructs me on how I might begin to breathe differently—slower, filling up my rib cage with air. Then she asks me to bend toward the floor. She has a relaxing voice and an easy, comfortable way. She reminds me how to lower myself gently into a pose called Cobra and then says I’m stronger than I think I am. She tells me she was born in the States but her parents are Chinese. Now almost her whole family is living in China again.
By the end of our hour I can tell that Mimi is one of those gifted teachers you’re lucky to meet in any lifetime. I stand to leave and my body feels looser. My mind has less chatter. I can also touch my toes again. I sign up for a series of Wednesdays and walk home feeling lighter.
The streets around Mimi’s house are a rare grid of roads still drawn to pedestrian scale: food kiosks and fruit carts line the sidewalks. The city feels alive. I can smell the garlic and hear the bike vendor calling out about his meat for sale.
At home I make a dinner date with a woman named Molly. She and her husband, Dan, and their two-year-old, Ann, moved here from California six months before we landed. They live one apartment complex down from us, in Palm Springs. Dan is in charge of an online photo Web site. He lived in Hong Kong for five years and speaks mean Chinese. Molly is a fearless traveler and businesswoman—busy now taking care of Ann. She and I met for coffee last week, at which point she was patient enough to draw me a detailed map of our neighborhood, highlighted with the places I might be able to buy an iron.
On Friday our families walk to the Lotus Blossom—a Buddhist restaurant that sits at the end of a garbage-filled alley twenty minutes from our apartment. Buddha statues appear along the alley to mark the way. Some of us are hungry when we make it to the Lotus Blossom. Some of us under the age of seven are cranky. There’s another Buddha statue standing by the restaurant door, this one life-sized. Inside, the waiters are bald monks who wear gray cotton tunics and pantaloons and hover around our table handing out warm washcloths on bamboo trays.
Our place mats are gigantic palm fronds. We’re hoping to order quickly—maybe noodles and dumplings. Molly says, “We need to get these kids fed.” I nod to her as a waiter hands me the menu. It’s a bound book the size of Aidan. I reach out and hold it with two hands and try not to giggle.
I rest the menu partly in my lap and open it to the first page. Every dish has been given a “Buddhist poem name” to help inspire our order. There are no simple noodle dishes. No dumplings. This is going to be a more complicated meal than we planned. We try to study the menu—the kids are hungry and fidgeting and the book is so big. I finally tell Tony, “I’m ordering a dish called ‘I love you. End of discussion.’ ” And then I do giggle. The names are too good.
Dan says, “I’m getting ‘Contemplating the Inner Self Spinach.’ ” His laugh is this great, unexpected, raucous thing.
Then Molly announces, “For me ‘Chinese Kale: A Little More Love, a Little Less Misfortune’ and ‘The Heart Has No Hang-Ups Palmelo Salad.’ ”
Tony and Dan together pick “No Birth No Death Tofu” and “In Praise of Going in Happiness Wild Yams.” They also order Buddhist virility drinks made with smashed yams that are supposed to invigorate their sperm.
The food takes a long time to prepare. Aidan stands up on his chair and asks for more orange juice. At one point Ann is singing. I reach for Tony’s virility drink. It tastes like sweet potatoes. Thorne keeps shredding his palm frond place mat. I’m able to distract him by taking him to the bathroom, where flute music is piped in on speakers and the sink is filled with stones.
When we get back to the table, Tony takes Aidan outside to stand on the porch the monks have built in the alley. “There are stars out there!” Aidan says when he returns. “St
ars and candles!” The food arrives and somehow we’ve managed to order well: tofu and fake duck and fake chicken. We scoop glass noodles from one of the soup broths and sell them to the children. Everything is delicious. We eat quickly, and when the bill comes, we hand over wads of cash from our wallets, then walk back to the alleyway.
“Stars!” everyone says almost in unison. Aidan was right. The sky is clear and the night is dark.
“Mom!” Thorne yells. He is standing next to one of the Buddha statues, and he and the Buddha are the same height. “Mom! We are in outer space!” Then he begins laughing. “Right this very second the Earth is spinning in outer space!” Somehow standing in this dark alley in downtown Beijing on a Sunday night in February has unlocked a secret of the universe for my seven-year-old. Maybe China has allowed him to see the sky more clearly. I think all four of us have better vision here.
“Pretty cool, huh?” I squeeze Thorne’s hand, and we begin to walk toward the end of the alley and the taxicabs. “Outer space. Pretty cool.”
When we get home, Thorne lies down in his bed, and I pull the sheets up around his chin and rest next to him. This is when he asks me if I’m going to die soon. What he says exactly is, “Are you going to die in China?”
“No,” I say, and press my face into his neck. “Not planning on it.” I think the ties that bind us feel tighter here. Or maybe it’s that we need to articulate them more in China. And what a nice surprise—that the world has slowed down enough for us to name our affections. But hard questions come more often from the boys in Beijing. They seem to lie at the surface.
“What if you die in a taxicab?” Thorne asks me next. “What if you die while I am at school?” I hug him and tell him I won’t die for almost a hundred years. Almost forever. It’s my standard answer. I’ve been told there are kids who don’t explore the depths of their existential dread but my kids always have. I think China has given them a bigger frame for the story. A clarity of vision they didn’t always have in the States.
“Almost to infinity is when I’ll die,” I whisper to Thorne. I unwrap his arms from my neck and say I’ll be right back with Daddy. Then Tony lies down with Thorne, and in minutes I hear them both laughing about the ace Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon, and what his earned run average was last September. Thorne talks to me about death and laughs about baseball stats with Tony? What is it with mother love? Why does it get so heavy?
Aidan is still awake. He keeps calling for me from the bottom bunk. “Which god do you believe in?” he asks when I get there. Couldn’t we just go to sleep? Aidan’s been asking me this question every day this week.
“Which one do you believe in?” I volley. I don’t want to have to find another way to explain that I’m not sure what I believe. That I’m still figuring it out like he is. I explain that the Native Americans believed in animal gods and that Buddhists believe in the Buddha and that people called Christians believe one god did all the work.
Aidan announces, “I believe in the one god. And I believe in Jesus Christ, too. Jesus was a good man.” I stare down at my child. “They nailed Jesus to the wall,” he says then. “They nailed him and he died.”
I had not planned on talking about Christ’s sacrifice tonight. What I want to do is lie down in my bed and read. But I need to set the record straight. “Aidan,” I say, and smile nervously. “Aidan, I believe Jesus was a nice man, too. That he was a very good man. But where, by the way, do you talk about Jesus?” I try to sound casual. “At school?”
I hope his answer will be no. Because we will have a problem if the secular international school in Beijing is dipping into religion. “Not at school. Just talking,” Aidan says. “Just talking with friends. Which god do you believe in, Mommy?” He won’t let it go. Then he makes an abrupt shift of course and says, “Mommy, who will be the next wife when you die?”
I’ve been working on trying to be patient in China. On trying not to be a helicopter mom. There’s a small boy in bed with big, brown eyes and he’s lying on his stomach with his bottom up in the air. He used to sleep like that when he was a baby. I’d come into the room to check on him in his crib, and his little tush would hang suspended above his legs. I put my hand out now and gently flatten his body on the sheet. I can’t help that I find his question unfeeling.
I know he doesn’t mean it, but is this really my son? Daydreaming about an imaginary new mother while I have spent afternoons worrying over the state of his psyche and whether or not his Spider-Man costume was clean? I’m thinking of a way to change the subject. And once we’re done here, I’ll have to dig out the Brazelton parenting book and see how long the fascination-with-death stage is supposed to last. Because Aidan has to know a second mommy requires something to happen to the first. Or maybe he hasn’t thought it through that far? “I have some good ideas for the next mommy,” Aidan says and closes his eyes.
III
Hall of
Martial
Valor
Tell Me in Centimeters
By the time we’re crowded into the ultrasound room together, spring has come to Beijing. It’s April now, and the Chinese surgeon is here, and the Chinese radiologist, and Tony and me. Everyone is speaking loud Mandarin, which forces Tony to concentrate on what they’re saying. I found the lumps myself the week before. It was a Sunday morning, and I was talking with the boys in bed about whether or not we’d go swimming. I leaned up against the pillows and made small circles with my index finger under my collarbone. I often do this. I wasn’t checking for anything, just listening to the boys tell me how much they wanted to practice the backstroke and could we go now please?
The lumps felt like marbles. Two of them. I showed them to Tony after the boys left to get their swimsuits on. “Feel this,” I said. “Does this seem weird to you?” And he said the perfect thing, which was that he was sure the lumps would go away on their own, but maybe I should make an appointment anyway.
A week later, the lumps still felt like marbles. That’s what the Canadian internist told me when she felt my chest at the Beijing international hospital—that we were looking for marbles. Marbles or peas. I thought I’d hit the jackpot. But none of these people watching the ultrasound takes me seriously. The Chinese radiologist works quickly and takes the requisite pictures. “There’s one,” I say into the TV screen while everyone looks. “And there’s the other.” We all agree that there are lumps on the screen—that’s no longer in dispute. But what’s inside the lumps? One by one, the doctors in the room say the lumps are nothing to worry about. Leave them alone and check again in three months. I think it’s a Chinese nervous thing—these patronizing smiles. Because I don’t understand what it is we’re smiling about.
The radiologist speaks English that’s blunt and formal. I suspect he has a narrow bandwidth of English vocabulary in which to discuss breasts. And I don’t blame him for that, but the effect is stern and dismissive. “These are tiny masses,” he reminds me. “These are nothing.” This country doesn’t seem big on patient advocacy. This is the top-down model—doctor knows best.
I stare again at the little smudges on the screen that he’s located with his probe. They are small; he’s right. “But how do we know they’re nothing?” I ask. I’m not really worried yet. I’m just aiming for due diligence. As a rule, I do not fret about my health. Up on the TV my entire left breast looks suspect—grainy and textured and alien. But everything appears foreign with ultrasound. My own babies’ heads looked like exaggerated Martian skulls when I first saw them on the sixteen-week ultrasound.
“How do we know they’re harmless?” I repeat. Because the lumps are small, but they’re also in the middle of my breast, and what are they doing there? The radiologist doesn’t answer. It’s as if he hasn’t heard me. Then I realize he may not have understood my question. I have a bad habit in China of speaking English too fast. “So we’re not worried?” I say again, more slowly this time, and sit up on the examining table. “We’re not doing anything about these right now?”
“These cysts are tiny,” the radiologist repeats and hands me a tissue to mop up the goop he’s spread on my chest with the probe. “The cysts are fluid. There’s nothing that’s worrying me about the cysts.”
I reach for my shirt, and the surgeon, Dr. Lan, smiles knowingly at me again. “Tiny,” he says, echoing the radiologist. “They are tiny cysts. Too small to take out.” Then he does something I’ll never forgive him for. He hands me a small wooden ruler. “Tell me how big you think your lumps are,” he demands, and grins. “On the ruler. Tell me in centimeters.”
I look at him and then over at Tony, and I’m confused. My eyes fill with tears. I haven’t come to the ultrasound room to argue about how big the lumps in my breast are. I want to make a run for it. I want to leave this zooey hospital with its condescending smiles and rulers.
The problem is, Dr. Lan seems to be the only breast expert in town. The other problem is the ruler he gives me is in centimeters. I’ve never learned the goddamn metric system, so I can only think of my lumps in terms of inches. “I don’t know,” I say and stare at Tony while the tears fall. I have a funny feeling in my stomach—like something is not right. Something is not adding up in this examining room. If I keep my eyes locked on Tony, it makes it easier to speak. “I have no idea how big the lumps are in centimeters.”
“Well,” Dr. Lan says in his labored English, “the lumps on the ultrasound are much smaller than the way you described them at first.” Then he adds, “I see these all the time on young women like you and they’re nothing. Besides”—he pauses now and begins harping on the scar issue again, something he’d brought up in his examining room before he’d walked me over to radiology—“there will be a scar. And if you’re like most Chinese women I know, you do not want a scar, do you?”
I look at him and wonder if he’s been listening to me at all this afternoon. I do not care about scars. I’m not a single Chinese woman trying to find a mate. I’ve been married fifteen years and have two small boys. I do not give one flying fuck about scars. “You should wait,” the surgeon repeats, and for some reason he keeps smiling. “Even if you are a worrier, you should wait. Are you a worrier? You should wait and check back with me in three months.”
