by Fan Wu
She stands and paces. She dreamed of Han Dong last night. They made love on a huge bed that allowed them to roll around freely. They changed positions often, and she was just as aggressive as he was. He licked all over her body, including her breasts and vagina. He sucked her hardened nipples. She moaned and laughed, just as she imagined a real slut would. She was happy, and momentarily she even thought that it wasn’t bad to be a whore. Suddenly, in her dream, Han Dong disappeared and so did the bed. She found herself walking alone in a thick fog that had come out of nowhere, in a white nightgown as big as a tent. She looked around, seeing that the sky, moon, sun, stars, and oceans were all mingled together as in a mirage. Where was she? she wondered. Then she felt that her gown was melting. She looked down and realized to her horror that she had turned into a shapeless shadow. She must have shouted in her fright, which must have awakened Bob—he gave her a little shove on the shoulder, murmuring something before falling asleep again. His shove woke her up, and for the rest of the night she lay on her bed, her head aching, staring at the crucifix on the wall facing her bed.
Her computer monitor now changes to the screen saver: a family portrait in front of the entrance to Disneyland taken two years ago. Alex is sitting on Bob’s shoulders, lifting a Mickey Mouse in his left hand and a Donald Duck in his right. Mary is holding Bob’s arm, her head against his shoulder, smiling sweetly. She extends her hand to touch Alex and Bob, there on the screen, wishing that she could time-travel back to that moment, when she had no secret to hide, no shame to fill her heart, no sin to regret.
Besides Han Dong, her mother’s confession about Ingrid’s conception has shaken her: she can’t believe her parents had hid such a big secret for so long. It disturbs her that she once disdained her father, who had saved the family. Since that evening, she and her mother have never mentioned their conversation, and though her mother had avoided her the first few days after they talked, as if she felt ashamed for telling Mary the truth, she soon warmed up to the new bond with her older daughter. As Mary talks with her mother, rather than the usual, strained politeness in her manner, she now has affection in her voice and attitude, and she has begun to go walking with her mother after dinner, holding her arm.
Many times, Mary has visualized how her mother lingered on strange streets, carrying a little baby in a basket. And Ingrid’s innocent face. Just now, she recalls her mother’s dreamlike voice; she can see her and her half sister, can hear her mother’s heavy steps and her sister’s giggling, can feel how her mother must have felt when she put down the basket outside a stranger’s house.
Mary goes to the kitchenette to fix herself a cup of coffee. She usually drinks tea, but she feels like something stronger now. The coffee helps. She walks back to her cubicle and resumes work on her presentation.
After seven thirty, her colleagues start to arrive, saying hi to Mary as they pass her cubicle.
“Mary, did the janitor empty your garbage bin?” William Walker asks over the wall from his cubicle, which is right next to hers.
“I guess not, but I didn’t have much in it,” she replies.
Katherine Berry, the girl across from William, cries, “Didn’t you see the e-mail from HR yesterday? Those Mexicans wanted a raise and started to strike the day before yesterday.”
William chuckles. “We can’t live without those Mexicans. Come and smell my cubicle, it’s like a rat died in here. I shouldn’t have dumped my leftovers into the bin yesterday. I don’t think I can work unless I can find something to close my nostrils.”
David Smith, another colleague, walks out of his cubicle opposite Mary’s, a coffee mug in hand. “What’s wrong with these Mexicans? They have no education and speak no English. They’re lucky to have a job. If they don’t like living in the U.S, why don’t they go back to Mexico? No one forces them to stay.”
Mary frowns at David’s remark. Since the day he started working here she has disliked him. He’s short and stout, has a fat nose, and tries his best to flatter the management team. Last week, he heard that a vice president in their department was helping his granddaughter sell Girl Scout cookies. He bought twenty boxes immediately and then bragged to Mary and his other colleagues about how he had talked with the vice president in his spacious office for more than ten minutes. His generosity with the cookies was ironic, considering that he would always refuse to pitch in for a colleague’s birthday or baby shower gift, and when he went out with the team for lunch, he would calculate his share of the bill down to the cents.
No one on the statisticians’ team likes him except Claudia Dawn. Recently, she promoted him to a managerial position, despite his inexperience: he graduated from an MBA program in New York last year and had never managed people before. The first day Claudia came to the team, he began to flatter her. He visited her cubicle often to update her on his projects and would say things like “You look fabulous today,” “You’re full of insights and vision,” and “I can’t agree with you more.”
Since his promotion, he has tried even harder to please Claudia. During meetings, if he has to say something, he speaks with his eyes on her. If she nods, he raises his voice; if she frowns, he pauses and coughs or even excuses himself to go to the restroom. Claudia thinks highly of him, bringing him to meetings, trainings, and presentations, and even on business trips. They are often seen walking on campus together, on their way to meetings or lunch, Claudia tall and skinny, David short and tubby, holding his laptop, like Claudia’s distorted shadow. Claudia often praises him in front of her other employees.
David knows what brands of clothes Claudia likes, what restaurants she frequents, what sports she plays; his opinions, hobbies, and even personal styles have become more and more similar to hers. She is a baseball fan, so he is too—he reads about baseball every day and can discuss her favorite players’ performances expertly, as if they were his next-door neighbors. She walks fast, her arms swinging vigorously, her strides long, so he walks fast too, his body bouncing like a ball on his short legs. She wears Ralph Lauren shirts almost exclusively, so that brand has become his favorite. Just last week, he went to the Gilroy outlet mall and bought half a dozen RL shirts. Once she commented that Indians smelled of curry and Mexicans only knew how to produce babies. Since then, he has begun to make fun of Indians and Mexicans.
Sometimes Mary feels that she cannot tolerate David for another minute, but aren’t people like him common in the workplace? And they always climb the ladder faster than their colleagues.
Whenever Mary’s friends in China e-mailed her, complaining about nepotism and corruption at work, she told them that it wasn’t much better in the United States, where adept use of connections and nepotism were often seen. If America could be said to be slightly better than China, she said, it was because there was no such a thing here as the personal dossier, which records an individual’s history from high school to the day he or she dies and is managed by a bureau called the Personal Dossier Management Bureau. Who didn’t have a personal dossier in China? Without it, it was impossible to get a job in the government, at a school, or in a big company. And, in China, you couldn’t access that file, which was transferred from job to job. If the dossier said that you weren’t suitable for an important position, it was highly unlikely you would be hired.
But, of course, personal dossiers exist in the United States too, though the name is different, Mary thinks as her colleagues chat about the janitors. Isn’t the performance review she receives from her company year after year a kind of personal file? If Claudia wrote negative comments about her in her review, those remarks could jeopardize her career—at least they would make it harder for her to switch to a different department. The good thing is that she can read her performance assessment and is even asked to sign it after reviewing it. But even if she didn’t agree with Claudia’s comments, it wouldn’t make any difference. The Human Resources Department always listens to the managers. That’s just an inescapable fact.
David pokes his head into Mary’s c
ubicle, interrupting her thoughts. “Mary, how are those PowerPoint slides coming? The slides that Claudia asked you to put together for marketing.”
“Almost done.” She doesn’t turn around to look at him. Despite her low opinion of him, she usually treats David politely. But today she is irritated: her slides are none of his business!
“That’s good to know.” David clears his throat, then raises his voice. “Could you e-mail them to me as soon as you’re done?”
Mary senses the silence in the other cubicles: obviously their colleagues are listening to her conversation with David.
“Is that necessary?” She uses her toes on the chair legs to rotate her chair away from her computer, to face David.
David smiles, his tone softening. “You know, Mary, Claudia called me last night, saying that you and I should go through the slides together before I present them to the marketing department.”
“I think I should present them myself. You don’t know much about this project.”
“Oh…well…Claudia said today’s meeting is very important and all the participants are managers.”
“I know them well and have presented to them many times,” Mary replies. She can barely hide her irritation.
“Claudia wants me to do this presentation. If the marketing folks have questions, I could call on you to answer them, all right? Claudia will be in soon. If you have a problem, you can talk with her directly.” He glances at his watch. “You know what? I’m having a meeting with some engineers in a few minutes. I’d better run. I’ll let you go back to work. Let’s catch up later.”
After David leaves, Katherine, newly arrived from the United Kingdom, walks into Mary’s cubicle on tiptoe and pats her shoulder, beckoning to her to follow. She takes Mary to a conference room, and after closing the door, she says, “Mary, don’t be pissed off by this kind of rubbish. Last week Claudia asked David to do my presentation to the sales department. They didn’t even let me attend the meeting. I heard later from a sales guy that David said he had done the slides himself. What a bloody liar! You’ve been with the company for a long time, and they’re at least polite to you. But I’ve only been here two weeks and am applying for a green card through the company. They know they can order me around and give me bullshit.”
Katherine paces the room. “You know why Claudia didn’t want me to do the presentation? William told me that she said she couldn’t understand my British accent. ‘It’s better to let someone who can speak proper English to do presentations,’ she said. Brilliant! Doesn’t Tony Blair speak English millions of times more proper and refined than that of the president-to-be, George Bush? In the U.K., you can stop any little kid on the street and bet he speaks better English than ninety percent of Americans. Today, you know, what David did to you—”
“I know. It’s not just my accent. Claudia may also think that I smell too much of soy sauce and MSG.”
“If I didn’t need this job right now, I’d have given bloody hell to Claudia and David.” Katherine waves her fist in the air. “By the way, do you know David’s grandparents are from Mexico? William told me. He knows a guy who used to be David’s parents’ neighbor.”
“Really? He told everyone that his grandparents were from Spain. He didn’t have to lie about that.”
“Well, he was probably afraid Claudia wouldn’t like him being a Mexican.”
They walk back to their cubicles. They can hear Claudia’s loud voice on the phone: her office is only down the hallway. Mary gulps her coffee as if to suppress her disgust toward Claudia. For a moment, she considers deleting the slides from her hard drive and telling Claudia that it’s impossible to put together a presentation with so little time. But didn’t she already tell David that she was almost done? Of course she can blame the computer, explaining that it crashed suddenly and wiped out all the data before she could save it. But that doesn’t sound convincing, and what a pathetic excuse! Would she have to apologize to Claudia for her mistake with feigned grief on her face? No, she wouldn’t do that. Maybe she should tell Claudia outright that she’s being unreasonable to give her such short notice for a big presentation. If she gets angry, they can go to Human Resources. Mary likes her last idea but knows that she won’t carry it out—unless she’s ready to leave the company, it’s not worthwhile to make such a fuss.
Claudia has brought her thoroughbred Doberman pinscher to the office and is demonstrating to Mary’s colleagues, including William and Katherine, how well-trained he is. David is in her office too.
“Sweetie, sit down!” Claudia’s voice.
“Sweetie, turn right!”
“Sweetie, roll over!”
“Sweetie, shake hands with David!”
Each of Claudia’s orders to the dog is greeted by applause and laughter—surely, that dog named Sweetie has fulfilled his mistress’s orders perfectly. David, instead of being in his vaunted meeting with the engineers, is cheering for the dog; he couldn’t have been more excited if he were watching the Super Bowl or the finals for the soccer World Cup.
Mary completes the last PowerPoint slide and e-mails it to David. She also e-mails Claudia separately to say that she is taking the rest of the day off because of family matters. She turns off her computer and exits the building via the stairs, where Claudia and her colleagues cannot see her.
Outside the parking garage, a crowd of janitors, more than thirty of them, are shouting slogans for a higher hourly wage in English and Spanish, holding flags and cardboard and printed signs; their slogans and signs tell Mary that they’re not protesting against her company in particular but responding to the nationwide strike organized by the Service Employees International Union. They are asking for one dollar an hour more in their pay. She recognizes a few janitors who clean her building daily, such as the young girl in a red sweater and long floral skirt. Her name is Olga—she told Mary in one of the English classes that Mary had volunteered to give her. Standing in the front of the crowd, Olga holds up a yellow cardboard sign printed in red: “Sí se puede!” Compared with the other janitors, who are older and more determined, their heads high, chests sticking out, bellowing slogans rhythmically under a leader’s instruction, Olga looks less sure, less bold, but the expression on her face says that she knows why she is here.
She is only nineteen, Mary remembers now. In one of their classes, Olga had said that she grew up near Mexico City and had been living in the United States for three years with her older brother, a self-employed porter, and four other Mexicans, in a two-bedroom apartment in Milpitas. The apartment had only one bathroom. Before she took a shower, she had to clean the tub. “Men are dirty and messy,” she said, smiling innocently, showing her crooked but cute teeth. In the mornings she sometimes couldn’t wait for her turn to use the bathroom and had to run to the Jack in the Box nearby. The bathroom there was much cleaner, she told Mary. She carried a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe wherever she went, saying that it was a gift from her mother. She told Mary many things, including how her brother had injured himself while moving kitchen appliances for a couple who had found him outside Home Depot, as well as how she had hid inside a truck transporting tomatoes to enter San Diego from Tijuana.
At least Olga has the courage to face the world, to ask for fairness, Mary thinks, feeling more hopeless about herself giving in to David and Claudia. She runs to her car and starts the engine.
Mary arrives at her church. She parks next to Mingyi’s green Beetle, remembering that today is the day to serve lunch to homeless people, a monthly event Mingyi organizes. She walks into the church through the side door that leads to the kitchen. The hallway is narrow and dark, shaded by several enormous oak trees outside. On both walls are excerpts from the Bible, events schedules, announcements, and other church-related brochures. Hearing the cheerful talking from the kitchen, she quickens her steps.
“Look who’s here!” Mingyi sees her first. Wearing a blue print apron, Mingyi is washing vegetables at the sink. Since it’s very warm in the kitchen,
she wears only a short-sleeved blouse, and she has put up her short hair with a black barrette behind each ear. She looks young and energetic.
Apart from Mingyi, six brothers and sisters are there. Everyone greets Mary with great enthusiasm.
The pregnant woman cutting carrots is Wang Fang, who was baptized last week. She came to the United States two years ago, to be with her husband, who was doing his postdoctoral degree at Stanford’s engineering school—he is now an assistant professor there. Though she’s six months pregnant, she doesn’t look like it. She’s tall and thin, and her loose clothes hide her belly. She speaks Mandarin with a thick Beijing accent, her tongue rolling often to make the throaty sound of er, something Mary cannot do.
JG, a Singaporean, is cleaning the counter. He owns an import-export business and travels often to Southeast Asia and China. When he first visited the church, he claimed to be an atheist and liked to debate with Pastor Zhang and other church people. He was full of questions, from a word’s origin in the Bible to comparisons between different religions and how God exercises control of the world. Speaking Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Shanghainese, English, French, Thai, and Malay, he was ready to attack anyone who believed in God. One of his questions to Pastor Zhang was how God knew in which language he was thinking and praying. JG was so well known for his tough questions that Mary and many brothers and sisters tried to avoid him. Only Pastor Zhang would talk with him for hours, not minding his hostility. Three years ago, to everyone’s surprise, JG asked to be baptized and has since been passionate about advocating Christianity.
Of the other four, two are from mainland China, one is from Taiwan, and the last is from Hong Kong. Mary feels that only in the church can mainland people, Hongkongese, and Taiwanese abandon their political conflicts and live in harmony.
Mary helps Mingyi wash the vegetables.
“I thought you wouldn’t be able to come. Don’t you have a big presentation today?” Mingyi asks.
