A Free Life

by Ha Jin

  Now that ambition, inflated with a sense of national pride, was gone. He might never go back to his native land, and it would be unimaginable for him to write scholarly books in English if he was no longer in academia. Worse, he had little passion left for any field of study except for poetry. But that was impossible for now.

  7

  AT WORK the night watchmen were not supposed to leave the factory. Nan noticed, however, that Larry often went out to buy things. Larry said that as long as you made your hourly rounds on the dot, Don wouldn’t care. Sometimes Nan didn’t bring food with him and would steal out to get a hamburger or fried rice.

  One night, the moment he finished the ten o’clock round, he drove to Riche Brothers, a nearby supermarket open around the clock. He picked up a can of luncheon meat, a jar of gherkins, and a French bread. Hurriedly he checked out of the express lane and then headed for the front entrance. As he was striding out the automatic door, he almost bumped into a couple, both thirtyish, who had just come out of the adjacent liquor store. The man, his chestnut mane reaching his shoulders, was tall, with an athletic build, and carried three video tapes in one hand, while the woman, wearing a baseball cap, had a bony face and a slim body and held a half-filled paper bag in her arms. They were both in black leather jackets and jeans with frayed cuffs, but she wore blue high-tops whereas he had on heavy-duty boots. Nan stepped aside as she did the same to avoid a collision. “Sorry,” he said with a smile. She rolled her large watery eyes, then peered at him.

  Nan walked away toward his car. Strangely enough, the couple turned back and came toward him. The woman whispered to the man, who was nodding. When they caught up with Nan, the man said in a raspy voice, “Hey, buddy, wanna come with us?”

  “For what?” Nan was startled. A gust of wind swept up a few scraps of paper tumbling past a corral holding two rows of shopping carts.

  “For fun.” The man blinked his eyes, the left of which was black as if bruised, and he opened his mouth to laugh, but only a dry cough came out. There was enough alcohol on his breath to cover a few yards around him.

  The woman smiled suggestively, showing the gaps between her teeth. Nan shook his head and said, “I have work to do.”

  “Wanna have a drink?” the man asked.

  The woman took out a can of Coors, snapped it open, and took a swig. “Mmm…it’s nice and cold. Have this.” She handed the beer to Nan.

  “No, sanks. I reelly cannot.”

  “C’mon, don’t you want some fun?” The man grinned, the corners of his mouth going up.

  “What fun?”

  “With purty girls.”

  Nan was too shocked to answer, while the woman crooked her forefinger, wiggling it at him. He hated that gesture, which to him suggested he was an obedient dog.

  She coaxed, “Please come with us. We’ve never had an Oriental man there.”

  “No, I mahst go!”

  “Whoa!” the man shouted after him. “Don’t run, you gook. Don’t you want some young pussies?”

  They both laughed. Nan started his car and pulled out of the parking lot. To his horror, the couple hopped into their pickup, backed it out, and followed him. Nan’s heart was throbbing, but he drove unhurriedly as if he hadn’t noticed them. “Calm down, calm down,” he repeated to himself while observing them in the rearview mirror. Their truck didn’t accelerate and just followed behind at a distance of about two hundred feet. A white moth was trapped in Nan’s car, fluttering at the windshield. He brushed it away with one swipe.

  After four turns Nan swerved into the factory’s front yard. He sprang out of his car while the pickup was rolling into the parking lot too. He dashed away to the side entrance of the building. His flashlight fell on the ground with a clash, but he didn’t stop to retrieve it and kept running. He thrust the key into the lock and opened the door. Rushing in, he snagged his windbreaker’s pocket on the handle with a rasp. Without looking at the rip, he locked the door, switched off the lights, and turned left into the dark storage room with windows facing the yard. He saw the couple out there. They seemed puzzled. Their truck was idling, but its front lights were off. They each carried a baseball bat under an arm and eyed the side entrance as if on the defensive. They whispered to each other for a while; then the man crushed his beer can on the side window of Nan’s car. He picked up Nan’s long flashlight and waved it at the building.

  The woman cupped her mouth with both hands and shouted at the entrance, “Come out, you dumb prick!”

  “We’re gonna come in and bust ya!” the man cried, and he kicked the side door of Nan’s car. He spat and blew his nose on the windshield.

  Blood thudded in Nan’s ears as he kept his eyes glued to the couple. He withdrew his face from the dusty windowpanes so that they couldn’t see him. His mind was in a tumult of anger and fear, which made him queasy and out of breath. Stop kicking my car, you idiot! he shouted mentally. Heavens, what do they want of me? I’m not a sex maniac like they think. Go away! Go fuck yourselves!

  But they wouldn’t leave. They whispered to each other again and were evidently planning their next move. What should he do if they broke into the building? He wouldn’t let them. He’d do anything to stop them. He’d hide in the darkness and knock them down with a steel bar. Yes, he’d lick them if they came in. Go, go, go! But they wouldn’t move. Why were they so determined to hurt him? Just because they could? Just because his face was yellow, not as white as theirs? How come they thought he’d like to take part in their monkey business? Crazy! Stupid! They were barking up the wrong tree. Even if they paid him a thousand dollars, he wouldn’t join them. Neither would he let them set foot in here. They’d better not mess with him.

  They looked quite patient over there, waiting and gazing at the factory. How could he get rid of them? Were they planning to break in?

  Finally, Nan pushed open the one-paned transom and cried, “Eef you don’t leave, I shall call zer police.”

  “Oh yeah?” the man barked. “Bring all the cops over and line them up to suck my cock.”

  They both guffawed.

  Nan shouted again, “I have a gahn here. I’m shooting if you don’t leave right away.” With a steel bar he knocked a metal bench, which sent out a dull clang.

  That transfixed the couple for a few seconds. Then they scrambled back into the pickup and thunked the doors shut. The front lights came on; the man revved the engine, and after a long honk, the truck swerved onto the road and sped away. Its broad wheels squealed and crushed through dark puddles of rainwater.

  Nan heaved a sigh of relief, wondering if they were high on drugs besides alcohol. How frightened he was! Had they grabbed hold of him, they might have dragged him to a secret place and hurt him. He suspected they must have intended to take him either to an orgy or a studio to make a pornographic film. He regretted having gone out at night and having smiled at that crazy woman.

  The watchman’s clock was still in his car, but for a long while he dared not go fetch it. Not until almost eleven p.m. did he retrieve it. Luckily, the side door of his car wasn’t damaged much—just a few dings—but his flashlight was gone.

  His fellow worker, Larry, had a pistol like a toy derringer, and now Nan couldn’t help wondering if he should get a handgun or a knife. But he remembered his vow to Pingping that, besides shunning politics, he’d never resort to any kind of violence in his life, so he decided not to carry any weapon.

  When he told his wife about the incident the next day, she was terrified, though she tried to loosen him up a little, teasing him, “It serves you right. Don’t ever eye up a woman again.”

  “I didn’t flirt with her, I just smiled. They must have been stoned.”

  “They must have smelled something on you.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a born lech.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Of course you are.” She giggled and went on sewing up the tear in his windbreaker.

  From that day on Nan wouldn’t go o
ut on the night shift anymore. He’d bring along an electric pot so that he could cook instant noodles or soup in the lab, but most times Pingping prepared food for him. She’d pack a banana or apple or orange. She made him promise he’d never sneak out of the factory again.

  8

  THE MASEFIELDS had been back from Cape Cod for three weeks. Heidi’s children, Nathan and Livia, ages eleven and eight, had been pleased to see Taotao, especially Livia, who adopted a protective attitude toward the younger boy. The girl, who had a wide forehead and large deep-set eyes, was short and scrawny for her age. She had many friends in the neighborhood and often invited them over, but Taotao wouldn’t join them. Neither would he play with Nathan. Most of the time he stayed upstairs in the attic. Whenever Livia found him in the kitchen with his mother, she’d teach him a few English words. “Say ‘Thank you, please’ when you want something,” she told him; or “Say ‘Can I have this, please?’” And Taotao would repeat after her. Sometimes she’d hold out her hands with the short fingers raised and ask him, “How many is this?” The boy always answered correctly in English. In every way she treated him like a friend. She seemed eager to please Taotao, who was still timid and quiet. She often said to Pingping and Heidi, “He’s really smart. Why’s he so shy?”

  The Wus ate their own meals separately. They’d enter the large kitchen only after the Masefields were finished with dinner. This meant Pingping had to cook two meals in the afternoons. Unlike his parents, Taotao was fond of American food, which made his mother’s cooking easier. Following him, his parents had begun to eat what they wouldn’t touch before—pizza, cheese, spaghetti, macaroni, hot dogs. Cheese tasted like soap to Nan at first, but now he chewed it with relish and could tell if the flavor was sharp. Still, he found that milk would upset his stomach, so his wife gave him ice cream instead.

  In the evenings Pingping spent most of the time reading aloud to Taotao. She also taught him arithmetic, which was easier for him since she explained everything in Chinese. She had been a math teacher at a vocational school back in China, but she had hated teaching, a profession assigned to her by the state. Now she was happy to teach her son with the thick textbooks Nan had bought at a secondhand bookstore in Sudbury, a nearby town. She found that American math books were much better written than the Chinese textbooks, more detailed, more comprehensive, and more suitable for students to teach themselves math. Each book was chock-full of information, at least ten times more than a Chinese schoolbook contained.

  With his mother’s help at home, Taotao did decently at school, though he was still in the lowest reading group. Nan had gone to see his son at school a few times and noticed that a freckle-faced girl named Loreen often read to Taotao. He was moved by the sight in which the girl put her finger on a drawing, saying, “This is a jumbo jet heading for Miami,” while his son listened attentively. Nan knew that the girl’s father played basketball for the Celtics, and he had once seen him with Loreen sitting on his knee at a PTA meeting. The man was a giant, but somehow his daughter was weedy and frail. Taotao told his parents that Loreen was good to him and even gave him her milk at lunch. Yet not all the students were kind to him, and a few called him Conehead.

  One afternoon in mid-October, Nan and Pingping went to have a conference with Mrs. Gardener, Taotao’s homeroom teacher. The classroom was already empty of students, and the little chairs had all been pushed under the child-size tables. “Take a seat,” the teacher said in a tired voice to Nan and Pingping, smiling kindly. She was in her early forties and had round eyes and a pudgy face.

  They sat down in front of Mrs. Gardener, who began talking about Taotao’s progress. Meanwhile, the boy was sitting on his heels in the corridor, waiting for his parents.

  “I have just put him into another reading group, one level up,” the teacher said about Taotao.

  “Sank you for promoting him.” Nan’s eyes brightened.

  “We are very happy about that,” Pingping added.

  “Mrs. Wu, does Taotao have a bladder problem?”

  “Not really. He pee in bed a few times when he’s baby, but that’s okay.”

  “In class he goes to the bathroom every ten minutes. The other students are amused. He must feel embarrassed, I gather. I’m worried about that.”

  “He may be nervous,” Nan put in.

  “He could be. I’ve noticed that in the math class he doesn’t go to the bathroom as often.”

  “I work hard with his reading at home,” Pingping said.

  “I can tell. He has made a lot of progress. Still, it’s not easy for him to keep up with the rest of the class. That’s why I want to ask you this—would you like to have him placed in a bilingual class? The school is going to start one soon.”

  “No!” Nan objected. “We don’t want him to be in a class jahst for foreigners.”

  “Yes, he doesn’t need that,” Pingping chimed in.

  Mrs. Gardener looked perplexed. “Why? That’ll make him more comfortable.”

  “He comes here to stahdy, not to be comfortable,” replied Nan.

  “I don’t understand, Mr. Wu, although I appreciate your taking his education so seriously.”

  “He can catch up wiz zer class, believe me. Please give him a chance,” Nan said.

  “Please don’t get rid of him!” Pingping begged. “Taotao said a lotta good thing about you, Mrs. Gardener. He’s unhappy if you take him out.”

  The teacher looked at her in astonishment, then was all smiles. “I don’t mean to send him away. Don’t get me wrong. If you insist, we won’t put him in the bilingual class.”

  After that meeting, Pingping worked harder to help Taotao with his reading. Every week she borrowed a dozen or so children’s books from the town library and read them together with him. Even when the boy was too tired to continue, she’d go on reading aloud so he could listen while working a jigsaw puzzle or playing with Legos or the toy robots Nathan had lent him. She didn’t always understand what she read. Once, as mother and son were reading a story about King William and his knights who conquered a fortress, the boy asked, “Mama, what does ‘laid waste’ mean?”

  “Poop and pee everywhere.” She then continued loudly, “The king was pleased with the raid and awarded his men…”

  Another time they were reading an abridged biography of Queen Elizabeth. When they came to a scene in which Her Majesty was so furious with a courtier that she laid her hands on him, Taotao asked his mother, “What is ‘boxed his ears’?”

  “To cover up his earholes so he couldn’t hear anything.”

  “It doesn’t sound like that.”

  “All right, let’s mark this and ask Daddy when he’s back.”

  Among the titles Pingping had checked out of the library, she liked the simplified Black Beauty best. She’d sigh, saying, “I’m like that horse, always moving from place to place and serving others. As long as the harness is on me, I can’t take a run for joy or lie down for weariness. I have to work, work, work, until I die.” Her eyes would fill.

  Taotao didn’t fully understand what she meant, but her words upset Nan when he overheard her. He knew her life had been misspent. When Pingping was a child, her mother had prophesied her hard future, saying she had a princess’s body but a maid’s fate. Pingping resented that but never dared to talk back. She always dreamed of becoming a doctor like her parents and often went to her father’s clinic to do voluntary work, giving injections, decocting medicinal herbs, performing acupuncture and cupping, boiling syringes and needles. Everybody praised her, many patients wanted her to treat them, and people believed she had life-nurturing hands and would make an excellent doctor someday. But when she had grown up, she couldn’t even attend nursing school and was assigned to study applied mathematics in a technical school. How she envied those youths in her neighborhood who had gone to college or the army through their parents’ clout. In her mind she had blamed her father for not pulling strings for her, even though she knew that the old man, born into a rich peasant’s fa
mily and classified as a reactionary element, dared not, and could not, assert himself. Now she made Taotao study hard, hoping he could go to medical school someday. If that happened, she would spend her last penny helping him.

  9

  IN EARLY NOVEMBER, the Masefields left for Italy to visit Heidi’s sister, Rosalind, who lived in Rome most of the time. Seizing the opportunity, Nan invited Danning and three other friends over for dinner. But except for Danning they all declined, saying they were too busy. True enough, two of them had to work the graveyard shift at the Chinese Information Center in Newton that had been established recently by a group of dissidents to help the underground democracy movement in China. But it was also true that since Nan had quit graduate school, most of his friends had distanced themselves from him. They probably viewed him as a loser. Pingping urged him to break with them completely. “They’re just a bunch of fair-weather snobs, not your friends,” she told Nan. “Who needs them?”

  Danning, however, was always eager to visit the Wus. He was almost thirty-five and had a seven-year-old daughter back in China. His wife had joined him in the United States two years before but had left him last winter. They had often quarreled, and she’d yell at him, calling him names and saying that one of these days she would quit being his “pretty slave.” She liked bragging about her looks, which were by no means extraordinary; she merely sported a pair of sparkling eyes shaded by long lashes. Her nose was flat, her mouth wide, and one side of her face larger than the other. She told people that she had grown up always with a nanny for herself and had never cooked a single meal back home when she lived with her parents, but now she did all kinds of housework that made her feel humiliated. One night as she and Danning fought again, she grabbed a kitchen knife and swiped at him. “Ow!” he cried, feeling the pain in his back. At the sight of blood she dropped the knife and ran away. Their roommate, who shared the three-bedroom apartment with them, drove him to the hospital, where Danning received twelve stitches. His wife didn’t come back after a few days, so he reported it to the police—not his wound, but her disappearance. She was nowhere to be found, though some people said they had seen her shopping at Ming’s Supermarket in Chinatown. It was whispered that she was living with a wealthy businessman from Canton now. Although Pingping didn’t like Danning’s wife that much, she never blamed her. She’d say to Nan, “Why couldn’t Danning see that Anni meant to leave him? He always bragged about this and that but never saw the fire in his backyard.”