by Spencer Wise
Still facing the window, she said softly, “We used to go bird hunting.”
Then she lay back down facing me. Her hand under her cheek, flat on the pillow.
“My father,” she clarified.
I don’t think I’d ever heard her say anything about him before then.
“Partridges. He carry a big shotgun. And he always wants to bring me. So I go and try to be a dutiful daughter. I am a good daughter, I believe. I watch for birds. Partridge is quiet bird. You hear more than see. Hard to find. We walk low. ‘Look and listen, only,’ he says. Hours like this. This is my torture. I want to talk. Joke. Anything. But always, ‘Shush.’”
Ivy was quiet for a moment.
“He learned as a boy. Mao said kill all sparrows. So he listens. He rush out and shoot anything in the sky. This is how he learned. This is how my father thinks. You listen. All trouble starts in your big mouth. Noticed is a bad thing. This makes me angry. I do not agree. He does. We fight.
“Sometimes we find the partridge, and we squat and crawl closer. You must sneak forward and surprise them. But right before Father is ready, I make a noise—I cough, step on branch, ask a loud question—and the birds fly off. And he yells at me, ‘Stupid girl. Why can’t you listen? Just like your sister. You deserve a thousand slaps.’ I say it was an accident, but I think he knew.
“Then he shouts how he misses Mao, how he wishes for order and structure, a country with values and morals. This is what he misses. My generation is too wild. No honor. Selfish and greed. Not true Chinese.
“It make me so angry. So this one time, the last time, we go into the woods, I try and tell him my opinion. Big fight. He will not listen. Everything I say, he answers, ‘I don’t accept.’”
She stopped talking for a moment. She swallowed. I didn’t speak. I didn’t move a muscle.
“I think he wished he had a son. I know he did.
“So we go home. That same day. With just one bird. I hold by its little feet. Father walks into house very tall. Proud. I hand it to Mother. She cuts off its head. Hangs the bird. Cooks. We sit at the table, she brings the food and I say I won’t eat. My father sits across the table. He stares at me. Hating me. Eat, he says. And I shake my head. Mother looks down at her bowl. My father says, Eat. Again I shake my head, no.
“He stares at me and maybe he remembers sparrows. Duty. Honor. He is back in the Cultural Revolution. You never allowed to say those words in my house. His face doesn’t move. Shooting this stare at me, like ‘You say no to me?’ Big man with big gun? Former Red Army officer. Eat now.”
“So he forced you?” I asked.
“No. I cross my arms. I refuse.”
Ivy smiled, remembering it.
“Did he lose his mind?”
“No one speaks. He didn’t speak. Not for a long time. We never go into woods again. Never the same. No one said ‘the end’ but this is the end. We go different ways.”
“But you came back,” I said. “Here. To his land.”
“He abandoned it. When the black cars came, we left for the city. In China, always best to disappear. This is how he thinks. Now he works as government librarian in a basement.”
“I see,” I said.
She furrowed her brow. I knew she wanted to say more.
I started thinking about my own father. I needed to get back to the factory. I felt him glaring at me from across the desk. That was the worst. Worse than yelling. The glare. It made my skin go cold. But when he had to, he could listen. He really could, I think. Because I was more than my father’s spotter. We had a closeness. But Dad was the last person I wanted to be thinking about after sex. Or her father. Any fathers. Still, I was honored that she’d talk to me about it, about him.
“Kind of sucks you don’t get along,” I said. “I mean, what does he want from you?”
“I think he fantasize about me marrying local boy and pregnant and baking. Two or three grandchildren. This is optimal, he said. Like I am one of his chickens.”
I laughed. “I’m sorry for laughing. It’s just funny how you said it.”
“No, Alex. It’s good. This is why I tell you. It’s how I got here. Today. Away from my father, from the ghost of Mao, from the Red Army. From everything. I think I am trying to say I was like this when I was young.”
“Like what?”
“This way.” She laughed at herself. Her voice had strained, gone up a few octaves. “I’m trying but can’t say it.”
“I think you say it perfect. It makes sense. Every word.”
Her eyes dipped.
“Ivy?” I said.
She nodded. And then she looked up at me, smiling.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I try another time.”
She got up and went to wash herself in the pond and I stood too and watched her cup the water in her hand and lap it up onto her arms and between her legs. I was standing on the grass in just my boxer shorts. I was barefoot, Mother, fuck Thoreau. I stretched my arms over my head and my back crackled.
* * *
We rode peacefully down the mountain into the village where Ivy leaned the bikes against an old banyan tree, the sunlight streaming down through the broad leaves and sparkling off the chrome frames. Jianguo was beside the van eating an ear of steamed yellow corn. I felt bad that we’d kept him waiting all this time.
He smiled as we approached, enough distance between us not to be obvious, but it seemed like he knew. Why else would he smile like that? Maybe my hair gave us away. I reached up and smoothed it out. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ivy doing the same. She talked to Jianguo in Cantonese and he said, “Ah, ah, ah,” then climbed in and started the van.
Ivy got in back with me. I saw Jianguo’s eyes on me in the rearview mirror. A hard late-afternoon rain came down, chattering against the van. Outside, pigs huddled under banana trees, and I moved my hand quietly to the space on the seat between us, but I stopped there, afraid to touch her. Felt like Jianguo was watching. What if he reported back to Dad? It made me feel like I was in grade school again, but I couldn’t take the chance. We could talk. Since Jianguo didn’t speak English, that would have to be enough.
“You are my first,” she said, but then her lips pursed like she was fighting off a grin.
“Not the way you’re doing it,” I said.
She let herself laugh. “I lied. I thought this is something men like to hear. Are you upset that you are not first?”
“Not at all. First times are pretty awful. I was way too young. I thought you were supposed to test the condoms—Dad said watch out for bad quality—so right before sex I filled the condom up like a water balloon. No holes. Perfect. Ran back to bed and tried to tug it on unrolled. Impossible. Like putting a wet suit on a baby.”
She laughed. “I cannot picture this.”
“Then why are you laughing?”
“The way you speak it,” she said.
“Anyway, I tested all three condoms. A nightmare by the time we finally did it.”
“True,” she said. “That was also my case. A French boy at my university. During sex he looked like he was posing for movie. In bed with him I spoke French. With the British boy, English. All these languages. I never know what will come out. What language—with you—did I use?”
“Chinese,” I said, my hand starting to sweat on the vinyl seat, close to her.
“That is very good. I am glad it was not English,” she said. “With you I felt different. They were only stones in a river of men.”
“A whole river?” I asked.
“Wait, no. I did not fuck the whole river. Our proverbs do not make sense in English.”
Outside, the karst mountains sloped into loose red clay and the light grew weaker.
“In America,” I said, “we have Born Again virgins. Have you heard of this? It’s a religion. All you do is join and everythin
g bad is in the past. A clean start.”
“Like the reincarnated. They are Buddhist?”
“No, almost the opposite.”
“I don’t think Borning Again should be so easy. Also, all those bad times trained me for now. How do I know this if I forget the others? Even the ones who made me ashamed of myself. I do not want to get rid of.”
The road curved like a bow and we sank into a tunnel boring through a limestone mountain and the sound of the rain flattened with a pop. In the darkness, she snaked her fingers through mine.
6
I GOT TO work late in the morning right as Gang was coming out of Dad’s office. He was wearing an olive two-button wool-and-cashmere suit with a silk tie and leather shoes. I stopped right in front of him.
“Alex,” he said, shaking my hand. “Good to see you. Your father said you had important morning business meeting.”
I swallowed hard. He’d covered for me.
“Yes,” I said. “At the hotel. It was just a few people. Some friends. I don’t know.”
“You must know who your friends are.”
“I do. I mean, yes, of course I know who they are. I didn’t think you wanted names—but it was a very successful meeting.”
“Excellent,” he said. His feet were wide apart, and I found myself imitating his stance. “Low export volume at the other plants. But Fedor says no problem for you here.”
I nodded. Another lie.
“Good. Work, work. Always. To get rich is glorious.”
“Deng Xiaoping,” I said.
He clapped. “See. You are almost Chinese now. I can trust you. You know how much the commissars in Beijing view us as the model city. Our numbers lead the country. We have responsibility.”
He looked at his watch. “I must go. I need to be downtown. Officer at the housing management bureau had an accident. She fell and died.”
“That’s terrible,” I said.
“Very sad. Best and most promising internal compliance officer. Young. Only starting her career.”
A hard shiver ferreted its way down my back.
“Very sad, these accidents,” he continued, shaking his head. “So I go there right now but later I go to lunch at my favorite seafood restaurant in Long Yuan Xi. Pick my own fish out of tank. This is my advice,” he said, leaning forward. “You look at the eyes. Should be clear. Foggy eyes, no good. Old fish. Sick fish. Something wrong. Need bright clear eyes.”
Right then I heard Dad bark my name.
Gang stepped aside.
I gave him a quick bow before stepping into Dad’s office. I sank into the chair opposite him and let out a deep breath.
Dad closed the finance report on his desk. “You don’t need to talk to him.”
“He talked to me. What was I going to do? Ignore him? Be rude?”
“That’s never stopped you before. Now listen. Hold on.” He reached into his top drawer and spritzed Afrin up his nose. Two good pumps. So my sinuses can finally find peace. “You look well rested,” he said. “Is it the shirt? Something’s different.”
Okay, I’d let him change the subject. Dad was only trying to protect me from Gang, after all. Fine. But he was right before. We were all serving him. Everyone in the city.
The shirt I was wearing was old, I told him. A black cowboy style collared shirt with metal snaps. Came from the Salvation Army.
He rolled his eyes. “My son shops with the homeless.”
There was a sharp knock on the door, and Yong poked in his head to tell Dad that a January ex-factory date was too late for resort season. He’d have to airfreight. Dad nodded at him. Yong said, “Alex, I love that shirt,” as he slipped out the door.
Dad flung his reading glasses down on his desk. “What’s wrong with people? I wouldn’t dry dishes with that schmatte.”
“It’s hip,” I said.
“Oh, so you’re hip and cool now. I guess I missed that.”
For a few minutes he seemed discombobulated by all the papers on his desk, as if they’d just suddenly materialized. He was muttering to himself, moving stacks around, and I made it worse by softly tapping my knuckles against the chair arm.
“Knock that off,” he said, and he dropped all the papers and looked up at me. “You look too happy.”
“I’ll try to be more miserable,” I said.
“It’s Ivy, isn’t it? Did you schtup her?”
I kept still. Didn’t even blink. Dad had no evidence, nothing, he just jumped to that assumption.
He said, “Jianguo told me you took her along as your translator. I asked you to bring Taishu.”
“He was busy,” I said, “and you rushed me.”
“This is the wrong country to be such a terrible liar. Float down from that mushroom cloud and listen to me. You’re going to lose your focus if you go down this road, trust me. She’s not worth it.”
There he went. Off and running with that premise. How the hell did he know everything? He didn’t know. I didn’t have to cop to anything. “We took care of business,” I said. Probably the wrong choice of words.
“Harmless fun, is that what you think?” Dad said. “Wrong. There is no fun here. You need to struggle. You need to eat bitterness like the Chinese always say. Is your snot black? When your snot’s black, you’ve worked hard.”
“You’re overreacting,” I said. I found myself slouching in the chair like I was a teenager again getting scolded. “I know where my focus is.”
“You’re getting too close to her. For what? I hope you realize you aren’t Chinese. They already have a God of Pigsties so you’re disqualified.”
“I’m not pretending to be Chinese.”
“Have you ever seen one of the Chinese Jews from Kaifeng? Wearing a Mao suit and a kippah. They don’t know their asses from their emperors. All mixed up.”
I straightened up in my chair and said, “I’m sorry I came back late yesterday. We delivered the bags and then we went kayaking out on the river.” It was the first innocuous-sounding lie that came to mind, but I realized immediately it made me sound like a fuckup.
“On the disgusting Pearl river? Why aren’t you at work? A man lives with his work, remember that. P.S., this is a good way to get yourself really sick. Do you think this is Venice? Let me tell you the difference between the Pearl and the Po—from someone who has seen both. Minus the gondoliers, violins, vineyards, all that shit—let me tell you the difference—polio. Polio’s back. You’d know this if you’d bookmarked the CDC webpage like I asked. Measles is up. Dengue’s hot. Avian flu. H1N1. They’re all back. You’re crazy to go anywhere.”
He was just ranting now. I tried to change the subject. “Peng appreciated the gifts and says we’ll be fine on the next audit. Leather prices are steady. He hopes you’ll visit him soon.”
“Impossible,” Dad said, waving his hands. “I can’t use the bathrooms there. I should squat? In a tannery. At my age. In filth and germs and disease? Alongside those, those butchers?”
“If they’re butchers what does that make you?” I asked.
“Vey iz mir! We’re shoe men, Alex, artists! Have I slaughtered a bull lately? Have you? Get out,” he said, flicking his wrist. “I have work to do.”
I walked down to my own office and closed the door and sat behind my desk. My window looked out to the top floor of Plant B, maybe twenty yards away, a bank of windows with dirty gauzy curtains through which I saw the shaggy outline of workers, the whirl of hands over machines as the shoes assumed their shape, flowing down the line to the girls who nestled them delicately in tissue paper like two ducks with folded necks into the Abelson’s boxes. Above the windows: just the stubble of PVC ventilation pipes, a swath of gray sky and a silhouette moving along the roof. I leaned forward.
It was a woman. She stepped closer. To the parapet. She was wearing a loose white dress, a paisley d
esign, bow on the waist of the dress, her hair was long and held back with a headband. Beautiful. Very pale and white. And I rubbed my eyes because this couldn’t be true. It must be a ghost. No reason for anyone to be up there. My chest seized. I lurched out of my seat, straining to see, sure that I’d gone mad, because it looked like Ruxi. Before I could even bang on the window, she glided to the ledge. Never looking down. She took a step that wasn’t there. It was her.
Her face pitched forward, arms spread out as if they were wings, she dove out into the air, and for a split second she lifted her chin, her eyes raised to my window, where my nose was pressed against glass, and she saw me, she must have, her face utterly placid, no sense of fear or panic. Then her body crimped and knifed down, her legs pale and straight, and she hit the pavement with a heavy thump. I’d never heard that sound before. I’d never seen anyone die.
I looked to the roof where she’d been a moment ago, but I didn’t look down yet. I was hoping that when I did she wouldn’t be there. She would have just kept sailing, through pavement, through dirt, past the water table and molten lava, landing on a rattan mat back home in her village. She just fell home. I looked. She was on the pavement, facedown, her cheek smashed against the cement, a ring of blood edging around her head.
For a moment it was perfectly silent. No one outside to witness, and the thought raced through my mind that I must get down there first and move her body before anyone sees. And I was telling my legs to move, but the ground felt liquid, like I’d fall over if I budged from the spot, but I knew I must go.
I went running through the hall, down the stairwell and out into the muggy stubborn heat. I approached her body. Still no one around. I crept up slowly, half-afraid that she would sit up. I knelt down. It was as if she were sleeping with her legs twisted. A thin pool of blood by her ear.
My hands on my knees. I could smell the boiling roots and herbs from the Chinese pharmacist’s little shop. I felt nauseous. Her death was my fault. Forgive me. I was the one who had delayed the meeting, skipped it altogether. If I’d skipped the village with Ivy and come straight back, this never would have happened. Everything my father predicted had come true. I’d lost focus. He’d warned me.
