A Free Life

by Ha Jin

  Livia reveled in the free food at the restaurant. She told the Wus that both her brother, Nathan, and she had missed Pingping’s cooking. Now there were more choices here and everything was better made, no longer the homey fare Pingping used to cook. Livia kept asking Nan and Pingping, “Can I work here for the rest of the summer? I hate the fishy smell of the Cape.”

  “In fact, we can’t hire you for long,” said Nan. “You’re underage, and I may get into trahble for exploiting children.”

  “Nobody will know, please!”

  Pingping said, “We have to ask your mother.”

  As if she were a full-time employee here, Livia would mimic Niyan’s manner and even asked the waitress how much she made. Niyan wouldn’t tell her and just smiled, amused by the carefree girl. The truth was that there wasn’t enough work for the youngsters to do. When idle, the two of them would settle in a booth, cracking spiced pumpkin seeds and roasted peanuts and talking about their schools and the kids they both knew. Now and again they would laugh, which drew attention to them.

  Livia leaned forward in her seat and whispered to Taotao, “Do your parents get along?”

  “Sure. They’ve worked very hard. My dad is a real chef now. You see, people like what he cooks.”

  “I mean, your parents don’t fight anymore?”

  “Very rarely.”

  “So Nan won’t walk out on Pingping?”

  “What makes you still think of that?” The boy stared at her and puckered his brows.

  “Never mind.”

  “C’mon, tell me why you said that.”

  “Are you sure your dad isn’t seeing another woman?”

  “You have a sick mind. He’ll never abandon us.”

  “Then how come your dad and mom sleep in different rooms?”

  “They always do.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “My dad reads and writes late at night. He doesn’t want to disturb my mom.”

  “That’s odd. So they don’t go to bed together anymore?”

  “That’s just your stupid way of thinking. Husband and wife must sleep in the same bed or the marriage is in trouble.”

  “My aunt stopped sharing her bed with Phil before they were divorced.”

  “But that doesn’t apply to my parents!” the boy flared at her, his eyes sparking.

  “There, there, don’t be an asshole.”

  Indeed, Nan and Pingping hadn’t slept in the same room since they moved to Marsh Drive. But contrary to Livia’s assumption, they did make love from time to time, mostly when Nan sneaked into Pingping’s bed early in the mornings, and the marital crisis Livia had intuited long ago had been eased considerably. The couple lived a stable life now, totally preoccupied with their business and their child. When Livia arrived, they had moved Taotao out of his room and let the girl use his bed. The boy stayed with his dad, sleeping on a futon next to the south-facing window. He didn’t complain and had surrendered his room willingly, whereas Livia felt it bizarre that Nan would sleep in the same room with his son instead of staying with his wife. In fact, Pingping had asked Taotao to sleep in her master bedroom, but the boy wouldn’t do that. Thanks to the girl’s presence in the house, he adamantly insisted on staying with his father. Nan was pleased to have him in his room.

  But at night Taotao and Livia would watch TV together in the living room and wouldn’t go to bed until after midnight, whereas Nan and Pingping would turn in as soon as they got home. One night Nan saw the two children lounging on the sofa and watching a John Wayne movie. Livia kept yawning, while Taotao looked dreamy, his eyes glassy, somewhat clouded over. He didn’t respond to his father’s sudden appearance, as if he were dozing. His delicate fingers were holding something like a tiny cigarette. Nan looked closely—it wasn’t a cigarette but a joint. He shouted, “Damn it, you’re smoking marijuana!”

  “Just a little bit.”

  “It’s drugs!”

  “Not that much different from tobacco.”

  The boy gave him a silly smile, his nose quivered a little, and he seemed too dazed to speak more. Nan snatched the joint from him and snuffed it out with his thumb and forefinger. He turned to Livia. “You gave him this, right? Damn you!”

  “He—he asked for it. I told him he shouldn’t smoke in the house, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “Still, you’re a drug dealer. I’m going to call zer police.”

  “Please don’t, Nan! I just happened to have a little bit of the weed on me.”

  “Give it to me.” He stretched out his hand.

  She pulled out of her pocket a white envelope, six inches by four in size and about a third full, and handed it to him. At this moment Pingping stepped in, wrapped in a nightgown, and said loudly to nobody in particular, “You can’t smoke in here.” She peered at Taotao, who looked dumb. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Nan explained and showed her the stump of the joint. She burst out at Livia, “How dare you teach him to eat drug! I’m going to call your mother now.”

  “Please, Pingping, don’t be mad! My mom knows.”

  “What, she know you are drugger?”

  “I’m not a druggie! I just got a bit of the weed from Neil, who’s my boyfriend. My mom chased him out of our house when she discovered it.”

  Nan broke in, “Are you telling us zer truth?”

  “Swear to God, I am.”

  Pingping switched off the TV. “Taotao, how many times do you smoke that stuff?”

  “Only once.”

  “This is his first time,” put in Livia.

  “Clearly you’re a bad influence,” Nan said.

  The girl hung her head without another word. After making her and Taotao promise never to do drugs again and sending them to bed, the parents sat down and talked between themselves. Nan wondered if they should inform Heidi of Livia’s drug problem, but Pingping believed Heidi already knew. For better or worse, the girl wouldn’t lie. Probably she had fled home because she and her mother had fought over this matter. Nan and Pingping decided to keep a closer eye on the two children until Heidi arrived.

  15

  HEIDI arrived two days later. She looked much older than she had three years before, with more wrinkles on her neck, and her grizzled bangs were almost white now. She had lost weight, though she was still broad in the beam. She hugged and kissed both Pingping and Nan and thanked them for accommodating Livia, who seemed happy to see her mother.

  Nan had to cook in the kitchen while Heidi and Pingping were sitting at a table and conversing. Taotao was at the counter, working as the cashier, and Livia helped Niyan as the busgirl.

  Heidi had checked in at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Atlanta, where she also had a bed for Livia, but she hadn’t mentioned this to the girl, unsure if she’d be willing to stay with her. Heidi, having eaten brunch, took only a beef ravioli from the appetizer platter Nan had placed on the table. Now and then she’d steal a glance at her daughter, who paid no heed to her and was ogling a young man in a maroon silk shirt seated near the window with an Indian woman, whose face was so heavily made up that Pingping couldn’t tell her age—probably under thirty.

  “Livia’s hopeless,” Heidi whispered to Pingping. “She started to have trouble with boys last winter and didn’t do well in school.”

  “She is good girl in heart,” consoled Pingping.

  “If only I could talk some sense into her.”

  Afraid their conversation might annoy Livia, who seemed to be eavesdropping, Pingping offered to give Heidi a tour of their house. Together they went out to the Wus’ passenger van. Usually Nan kept the car’s backseats down, using it as a freight vehicle as well, but after Livia arrived, Pingping vacuumed it and put all the seats up.

  Heidi was amazed by the Wus’ home, not only by the brick ranch but especially by the lake and the immense trees in the backyard. She turned to Pingping. “Now, tell me again, how many years have you been in the United States?”

  “Nan is here nine year, me seven and half y
ears.”

  “Wow, in less than a decade you already have your own business, a house, and two cars. I’m so happy for you, to see you doing so well.”

  “We just try to manage. Still have mortgage to pay.”

  “Is it a big one?”

  “Not really, about forty thousand dollars left.”

  “Amazing. This can happen only in America. I’m very moved by the fact that you and Nan have actualized your American dream so quickly. I’m proud of this country.”

  Pingping smiled, a bit embarrassed by her effusion. Heidi waved at the old Romanian man sitting on the opposite shore and holding a fishing rod. That florid-faced man spoke no English and often went angling there alone, a small metal bucket sitting next to him. Once Pingping saw that he had caught six large fish, two bass and four bullheads. That had made her feel as if she’d been robbed, as if the lake weren’t public property but her family’s. The feeling probably arose because every morning when she looked out the window, she’d see fish skip out of the surface of the shimmering water.

  When they turned to observe a gray egret that stood on one leg in the shallows, Pingping said to Heidi, “Livia said you have a boyfriend now.”

  Heidi nodded. “His name is Joe, a good guy, but Livia and Nathan are not pleased.”

  “They will grow up and leave home. You can’t be old lady live in that big house by yourself.”

  “You’re right. I have my life too.”

  They also talked about the public schools in Gwinnett County. Pingping said that in general, the language instruction here was quite good, with students reading and writing a great deal, but the science part was rather weak. She had heard several neighbors complain that the high school didn’t offer science projects and had invested too much in sports because its football team had won the state championship several times. Last winter Taotao’s English teacher had assigned each student to write a novel as homework, and Taotao had started the project but wouldn’t show his parents what he had been writing. At first Pingping was amused by the assignment, but soon she suspected that the teacher might have cut corners in her job, knowing few of her students would finish the homework and hand it in for grading.

  Their conversation turned to Nan. Pingping told Heidi that he was more like a family man now and worked hard to keep the Gold Wok afloat. “Are you happy here?” Heidi asked, and her clear hazel eyes looked straight at Pingping’s smooth face.

  “Yes, I’m happy as long as our family are together,” she answered, scratching the welt of a mosquito bite on her forearm.

  The egret took off from the lakeside, sailing away like a kite. Heidi had stepped on some geese droppings and kept scuffing her pumps on the grass. While shuffling, she gazed at Gerald’s yard, in which things were more disordered than before. The trampoline was standing on its side like a makeshift wall, and the doghouse had collapsed, hardly recognizable. Against one of the junk cars was a pile of split firewood, having waited to be stacked since the past winter. Worst of all, the porch behind the house was half installed with gleaming glass, while a part of it remained a gaping hole, as if the house had been disemboweled. Gerald had been working at the thing on and off for more than a year, and it seemed he could never finish it.

  “Who’s living next door?” Heidi asked Pingping, pointing at the decaying house.

  “Gerald Brown. He’s electrician, a good guy. His wife left him.”

  “What a shame he doesn’t take care of his property. The neighborhood should do something about it. If he doesn’t put his home in order, he should be thrown out of the community. What an eyesore this mess is in the middle of such a nice area.”

  Pingping said nothing. A bad taste was seeping into her mouth, and she sighed, shaking her head to indicate that it was impossible to make Gerald mend his ways.

  16

  WITHOUT much persuasion Livia left with her mother, and Pingping and Nan felt relieved. For days the Wus had been talking about their neighbor Gerald, who lately wouldn’t come out of his house. He had been ill and unemployed since June, and his front yard was messier than before. Sometimes at night pickups would even park on his lawn for trysts and leave behind beer bottles, paper bags, Styrofoam boxes, and even used condoms on the grass, which hadn’t been cut for three months. Whenever Nan or Pingping mowed their lawn, they would cut the part of Gerald’s front yard adjacent to theirs, but that had made Gerald’s lawn appear even more neglected.

  Then one morning as the Wus were about to leave for work, three police cruisers pulled into Gerald’s driveway and lawn. In his front yard gathered dozens of people from the neighborhood, to watch him being evicted. Mrs. Lodge, shaped like a potato, was among them and kept shaking her white head and saying, “Poor guy. What a shame.”

  Alan was also standing nearby. He sidled up to Nan and Pingping. With a grin that made his eyes crinkle, he said, “It’s high time for him to go. Finally they’re doing something.”

  Still bewildered, Nan asked, “Where’s Gerald?”

  “I’ve no idea. They couldn’t find him.”

  “Why they’re doing this?” Pingping said.

  “Gerald hasn’t paid his bills for a long time, so the bank was sick of him. Now they’ve come to repossess his property.”

  Dumbstruck, the Wus stared at the commotion, never having seen somebody being thrown out of his own home. From inside the house and its basement, a team of Mexican workers was dragging out Gerald’s possessions and dropping them on the grass. There was all kinds of stuff, most of which he had taken from construction sites: scraps and rolls of rugs, broken chairs and tables, battered floor lamps, utensils coated with grease, stacks of plastic pails, two wheelless barrows, hundreds of old magazines, boxes of electric wires, assorted pieces of lumber, several rusty jigsaws, a brand-new toilet with an oak lid, two used air conditioners. A beefy policeman with a pair of handcuffs on his hip kicked a floppy baby carriage and told the spectators, “Gerald Brown has twenty-four hours to remove his stuff. After that, you can pick up whatever you want.”

  From the backyard came the moaning of a tow truck. One of Gerald’s junk cars emerged from the corner of the house and was hauled away. Nan noticed many eyes eagerly searching through Gerald’s belongings scattered on the grass, and he was sure that before dark some people would come and scavenge through this mess. He was afraid they might damage his lawn, since some of Gerald’s possessions had already overflowed onto the Wus’ front yard. Unable to delay any longer, Nan and Pingping set off for work, talking about the eviction all the way.

  Both of them were shaken by the scene, which reminded them that they hadn’t paid off their mortgage yet. They still owed Mr. Wolf $38,000. If their business folded or if they fell ill, their home might be repossessed as well. By all means they must get rid of the mortgage as soon as possible.

  Shubo stopped by at noon to get from Niyan the key to their safe-deposit box in the bank. Nowadays he worked at Grand Buddha as its barkeep and made decent wages. He and Nan got along well, so he often came in to chat or to give Nan a magazine or newspaper that carried something interesting. Nan was amazed by Shubo’s manner, which bore no trace of his academic background. Who could imagine this fellow had earned a Ph.D. in sociology? In every way he looked like a menial worker, with a weather-beaten face and shadowy eyes. When the Wus told him about their neighbor’s eviction, Shubo said, “Americans are tough. They live more naturally, close to animals.”

  Nan laughed and asked, “What do you mean by ‘close to animals’? Animals don’t have to work to make money and pay mortgages and car loans.”

  “I mean, if you’re strong you survive here, if you’re weak you die.”

  “It’s the same everywhere.”

  “But lots of Americans won’t grumble if bad luck strikes. They take it just as something that happens.”

  Nan wasn’t certain if Shubo’s observation was accurate, though he had noticed that in general Americans didn’t complain much and seemed more able to endure frustrations and
misfortunes.

  Early that afternoon, when the busy hours were over, Nan went back to see the eviction again and also to check on his own property. He feared that the movers might have damaged the steel fence dividing his backyard from Gerald’s. As he was approaching his home, suddenly hundreds of blackbirds took off from Gerald’s front lawn, veering away, their wings whirring, and casting a drifting shadow on the ground. Nobody was at Gerald’s, and his possessions were strewn around the house, which was sealed, a lockbox hanging on the door handle. Other than the two wheelless barrows, everything was still there. Nan walked around a little and saw that his backyard fence was intact. He entered Gerald’s front porch. On a windowsill was propped open a magazine displaying a young couple copulating in doggie fashion. Nan swiped it to the ground; it was an old copy of Hustler. Most of its pages had been crinkled by rainwater. Gerald must have picked it up somewhere, maybe from a trash can. Nan thought about keeping it for a day or two, then changed his mind and kicked it to a pile of newspapers and posters.

  As he stepped from the porch, to his surprise, he saw Gerald standing at the edge of his yard, holding a blue bicycle and gazing at the piles of his belongings with large, dazed eyes. The man looked as if he were afraid to step on the lawn, his feet on the pavement, his right hand holding the handlebar of the bike. He raised his head and caught sight of Nan. Nan had never seen Gerald so small and so frail, his eyes lackluster and his chin covered with grizzling bristles. Nan waved and walked toward him, wondering what consoling words he should say. But Gerald spun around, leaped on the bicycle, and trundled away, the chain clinking its guard and the rear-wheel fender. A gust of wind lifted his hair into a tuft and swelled the back of his gray shirt, making him resemble a large bird. Nan exhaled a long sigh.