by Ha Jin
“Baloney!” The boy squished up his face.
“You mustn’t speak to your granddad like that,” his grandmother butted in.
Mandi and my son exchanged glances. I knew they saw this matter differently from us. Maybe they had been planning to change their children’s last name all along. Enraged, I dropped my bowl on the dining table and pointed my finger at Mandi. “You’ve tried your best to spoil them. Now you’re happy to let them break away from the family tree. What kind of daughter-in-law are you? I wish I hadn’t allowed you to join our family.”
“Please don’t blow up like this, Dad,” my son said.
Mandi didn’t talk back. Instead she began sobbing, wrinkling her gourd-shaped nose. The kids got angry and blamed me for hurting their mother’s feelings. The more they blabbered, the more furious I became. Finally unable to hold it back anymore, I shouted, “If you two change your last name, you leave, get out of here. You cannot remain in this household while using a different last name.”
“Who are you?” Matt said calmly. “This isn’t your home.”
“You’re just our guests,” added Flora.
That drove both my wife and me mad. She yelled at our granddaughter, “So we sold everything in China, our apartment and candy store, just to be your guests here, huh? Heartless. Who told you this isn’t our home?”
That shut the girl up, though she kept glaring at her grandma. Their father begged no one in particular, “Please, let us finish dinner peacefully.” He went on chewing a fried shrimp with his mouth closed.
I wanted to yell at him that he was just a rice barrel thinking of nothing but food, but I controlled my anger. How could we have raised such a spineless son?
To be fair, he’s quite accomplished in his profession, a bridge engineer pulling in almost six figures a year, but he’s henpecked and indulgent with the kids, and got worse and worse after he came to America, as if he had become a man without temper or opinions. How often I wanted to tell him point-blank that he must live like a man, at least more like his former self. Between his mother and myself, we often wondered if he was inadequate in bed; otherwise, how could he always listen to Mandi?
After that quarrel, we decided to move out. Gubin and Mandi helped us fill out an application for housing offered to the elderly by the city, which we’ll have to wait a long time to get. If we were not so old and in poor health, we’d live far away from them, completely on our own, but they are the only family we have in this country, so we could move only to a nearby place. For the time being we’ve settled down in a one-bedroom apartment on Fifty-fourth Avenue, rented for us by Gubin. Sometimes he comes over to see if we’re all right or need anything. We’ve never asked him what last name our grandkids use now. I guess they must have some American name. How sad it is when you see your grandchildren’s names on paper but can no longer recognize them, as though your family line has faded and disappeared among the multitudes. Whenever I think about this, it stings my heart. If only I’d had second thoughts about leaving China. It’s impossible to go back anymore, and we’ll have to spend our remaining years in this place where even your grandchildren can act like your enemies.
Matt and Flora usually shun us. If we ran into them on the street, they would warn us not to “torture” their mother again. They even threatened to call the police if we entered their home without permission. We don’t have to be warned. We’ve never set foot in their home since we moved out. I’ve told my son that we won’t accept the kids as part of the family as long as they use a different last name.
Gubin has never brought up that topic again, though I’m still waiting for an answer from him. That’s how the matter stands now. The other day, exasperated, my wife wanted to go to Mandi’s fortune cookie factory and raise a placard to announce: “My Daughter-in-Law Mandi Cheng Is the Most Unfilial Person on Earth!” But I dissuaded my old better half. What’s the good of that? For sure Mandi’s company won’t fire her just because she can’t make her parents-in-law happy. This is America, where we must learn self-reliance and mind our own business.
In the Crossfire
THE EMPLOYEES COULD TELL that the company was floundering and that some of them would lose their jobs soon. For a whole morning Tian Chu stayed in his cubicle, processing invoices without a break. Even at lunchtime he avoided chatting with others at length, because the topic of layoffs unnerved him. He had worked there for only two years and might be among the first to go. Fortunately, he was already a U.S. citizen and wouldn’t be ashamed of collecting unemployment benefits, which the INS regards as something of a black mark against one who applies for a green card or citizenship.
Around midafternoon, as he was typing, his cell phone chimed. Startled, he pulled it out of his pants pocket. “Hello,” he said in an undertone.
“Tian, how’s your day there?” came his mother’s scratchy voice.
“It’s all right. I told you not to call me at work. People can hear me on the phone.”
“I want to know what you’d like for dinner.”
“Don’t bother about that, Mom. You don’t know how to use the stove and oven and you might set off the alarm again. I’ll pick up something on my way home.”
“What happened to Connie? Why can’t she do the shopping and cooking? You shouldn’t spoil her like this.”
“She’s busy, all right? I can’t talk more now. See you soon.” He shut the phone and stood up to see if his colleagues in the neighboring cubicles had been listening in. Nobody seemed interested.
He sat down and yawned, massaging his eyebrows to relieve the fatigue from peering at the computer screen. He knew his mother must feel lonely at home. She often complained that she had no friends here and there wasn’t much to watch on TV. True, most of the shows were reruns and some were in Cantonese or Taiwanese, neither of which she could understand. The books Tian had checked out of the library for her were boring too. If only she could have someone to chitchat with. But their neighbors all went to work in the daytime, and she dared not venture out on her own because she was unable to read the street signs in English. This neighborhood was too quiet, she often grumbled. It looked as if there were more houses than people. Chimneys were here and there, but none of them puffed smoke. The whole place was deserted after nine a.m., and not until midafternoon would she see traces of others—and then only kids getting off the school buses and padding along the sidewalks. If only she could have had a grandchild to look after, to play with. But that was out of the question, since Connie Liu, her daughter-in-law, was still attending nursing school and wanted to wait until she had finished.
It was already dark when Tian left work. The wind was tossing pedestrians’ clothes and hair and stirring the surfaces of slush puddles that shimmered in the neon and the streetlights. The remaining snowbanks along the curbs were black from auto exhaust and were becoming encrusted again. Tian stopped at a supermarket in the basement of a mall and picked up a stout eggplant, a bag of spinach, and a flounder. He knew that his wife would avoid going home to cook dinner because she couldn’t make anything her mother-in-law would not grouch about, so these days he cooked. Sometimes his mother offered to help, but he wouldn’t let her, afraid she might make something that Connie couldn’t eat—she was allergic to most bean products, especially to soy sauce and tofu.
The moment he got home, he went into the kitchen. He was going to cook a spinach soup, steam the eggplant, and fry the flounder. As he was gouging out the gill of the fish, his mother stepped in. “Let me give you a hand,” she said.
“I can manage. This is easy.” He smiled, cutting the fish’s fins and tail with a large scissor.
“You never cooked back home.” She stared at him, her eyes glinting. Ever since her arrival a week earlier, she’d been nagging him about his being uxorious. “What’s the good of standing six feet tall if you can’t handle a small woman like Connie?” she often said. In fact, he was five foot ten.
He nudged the side of his bulky nose with his knuckle. “M
om, in America husband and wife both cook—whoever has the time. Connie is swamped with schoolwork these days, so I do more household chores. This is natural.”
“No, it’s not. You were never like this before. Why did you marry her in the first place if she wouldn’t take care of you?”
“You’re talking like a fuddy-duddy.” He patted the flatfish with a paper towel to make it sputter less in the hot corn oil.
She went on, “Both your dad and I told you not to rush to marry her, but you were too bewitched to listen. We thought you must’ve got her in trouble and had to give her a wedding band. Look, now you’re trapped and have to work both inside and outside the house.”
He didn’t reply, but his longish face stiffened. He disliked the way she spoke about his wife. In fact, before his mother’s arrival, Connie had always come home early to make dinner. She would also wrap lunch for him early in the morning. These days, however, she’d leave the moment she finished breakfast and wouldn’t return until evening. Both of them had agreed that she should avoid staying home alone with his mother, who lectured her at every possible opportunity.
Around six thirty his wife came home. She hung her parka in the closet and, stepping into the kitchen, said to Tian, “Can I help?”
“I’m almost done.”
She kissed his nape and whispered, “Thanks for doing this.” Then she took some plates and bowls out of the cupboard and carried them to the dining table. She glanced into the living room, where Meifen, her mother-in-law, lounged on a sofa, smoking a cigarette and watching the news aired by New Tang Dynasty TV, a remote control in her leathery hand. Connie and Tian had told her many times not to smoke in the house, but the old woman ignored them. They dared not confront her. This was just her second week here. Imagine, she was going to stay half a year!
“Mother, come and eat,” Connie said pleasantly when the table was set.
“Sure.” Meifen clicked off the TV, got to her feet, and scraped out her cigarette in a saucer serving as an ashtray.
The family sat down to dinner. The two women seldom spoke to each other at the table, so it was up to Tian to make conversation. He mentioned that people in his company had been talking about layoffs. That didn’t interest his mother and his wife; probably they both believed his job was secure because of his degree in accounting.
His mother grunted, “I don’t like this fish. Flavorless, like egg white.” She often complained that nothing here tasted right.
“It takes a while to get used to American food,” Tian told her. “When I came, I couldn’t eat vegetables in the first week, so I ate mainly bananas and oranges.” That was long ago, twelve years exactly.
“True,” Connie agreed. “I remember how rubbery bell peppers tasted to me in the beginning. I was amazed—”
“I mean this fish needs soy sauce, and so does the soup,” Meifen interrupted.
“Mom, Connie’s allergic to that. I told you.”
“Just spoiled,” Meifen muttered. “You have a bottle of Golden Orchid soy sauce in the cabinet. That’s a brand-name product, and I can’t see how on earth it can hurt anyone’s health.”
Connie’s egg-shaped face fell, her eyes glaring at the old woman and then at Tian. He said, “Mom, you don’t understand. Connie has a medical condition that—”
“Of course I know. I used to teach chemistry in a middle school. Don’t treat me like an ignorant crone. Ours is an intellectual family.”
“You’re talking like an old fogey again. In America people don’t think much of an intellectual family, and most kids here can go to college if they want to.”
“She’s hinting at my family,” Connie broke in, and turned to face her mother-in-law. “True enough, neither of my parents went to college, but they’re honest and hardworking. I’m proud of them.”
“That explains why you’re such an irresponsible wife,” Meifen said matter-of-factly.
“Do you imply I’m not good enough for your son?”
“Please, let’s have a peaceful dinner,” Tian pleaded.
Meifen went on speaking to Connie. “So far you’ve been awful. I don’t know how your parents raised you. Maybe they were too lazy or too ignorant to teach you anything.”
“Watch it—you mustn’t bad-mouth my parents!”
“I can say whatever I want to in my son’s home. You married Tian but refuse to give him children, won’t cook or do household work. What kind of wife are you? Worse yet, you even make him do your laundry.”
“Mom,” Tian said again, “I told you we’ll have kids after Connie gets her degree.”
“Believe me, she’ll never finish school. She just wants to use you, giving you one excuse after another.”
“I can’t take this anymore.” Connie stood and carried her bowl of soup upstairs to the master bedroom.
Tian sighed, again rattled by the exchange between the two women. If only he could make them shut up, but neither of them would give ground. His mother went on, “I told you not to break with Mansu, but you wouldn’t listen. Look what a millstone you’ve got on your back.” Mansu was Tian’s exgirlfriend. They’d broken up many years before, but somehow the woman had kept visiting his parents back in Harbin.
“Mom, don’t bring that up again,” he begged.
“You don’t have to listen to me if you don’t like it.”
“Do you mean to destroy my marriage?”
At last Meifen fell silent. Tian heard his wife sniffling upstairs. He wasn’t sure whether he should remain at the dining table or go join Connie. If he stayed with his mother, his wife would take him to task later on. But if he went to Connie, Meifen would berate him, saying he was spineless and daft. She used to teach him that a man could divorce his wife and marry another woman anytime, whereas he could never disown his mother. In Meifen’s words: “You can always trust me, because you’re part of my flesh and blood and I’ll never betray you.”
Tian took his plate, half loaded with rice and eggplant and a chunk of the fish, and went into the kitchen, where he perched on a stool and resumed eating. If only he’d thought twice before writing his mother the invitation letter needed for her visa. The old woman must still bear a grudge against him and Connie for not agreeing to sponsor his nephew, his sister’s son, who was eager to go to Toronto for college. Perhaps that was another reason Meifen wanted to wreak havoc here.
Since his mother’s arrival, Tian and his wife had slept in different rooms. That night he again stayed in the study, sleeping on a pullout couch. He didn’t go upstairs to say good night to Connie. He was afraid she would demand that he send the old woman back to China right away. Also, if he shared the bed with Connie, Meifen would lecture him the next day, saying he must be careful about his health and mustn’t indulge in sex. He’d heard her litany too often: some women were vampires determined to suck their men dry; this world had gone to seed—nowadays fewer and fewer young people were willing to become parents, and all avoided responsibilities; it was capitalism that corrupted people’s souls and made them greedier and more selfish. Oh, how long-winded she could become! Just the thought of her prattling would set Tian’s head reeling.
Before leaving for work the next morning, he drew a map of the nearby streets for his mother and urged her to go out some so that she might feel less lonesome—“stir-crazy” was actually the word that came to his mouth, but he didn’t let it out. She might like some of the shops downtown and could buy something with the eighty dollars he’d just given her. “Don’t be afraid of getting lost,” he assured her. She should be able to find her way back as long as she had the address he’d written down for her—someone could give her directions.
At work Tian drank a lot of coffee to keep himself awake. His scalp was numb and his eyes heavy and throbbing a little as he was crunching numbers. If only he could have slept two or three more hours a day. Ever since his mother had arrived, he’d suffered from sleep deficiency. He would wake up before daybreak, missing the warmth of Connie’s smooth skin and their
wide bed, but he dared not enter the master bedroom. He was certain she wouldn’t let him snuggle under the comforter or touch her. She always gave the excuse that her head would go numb and muddled in class if they had sex early in the morning. That day at work, despite the strong coffee he’d been drinking, Tian couldn’t help yawning and had to take care not to drop off.
Toward midmorning Bill Nangy, the manager of the company, stepped into the large, low-ceilinged room and went up to Tracy Malloy, whose cubicle was next to Tian’s. “Tracy,” Bill said, “can I speak to you in my office a minute?”
All the eyes turned to plump Tracy as she walked away with their boss, her head bowed a little. The second she disappeared past the door, half a dozen people stood up in their cubicles, some grinning while others shook their heads. Tracy, a good-natured thirtysomething, had started working there long before Tian. He liked her, though she talked too much. Others had warned her to keep her mouth shut at work, but she’d never mended her ways.
A few minutes later Tracy came out, scratching the back of her ear, and forced a smile. “Got the ax,” she told her colleagues, her eyes red and watery. She slouched into her cubicle to gather her belongings.
“It’s a shame,” Tian said to her, and rested his elbow on top of the chest-high wall, making one of his sloping shoulders higher than the other.
“I knew this was coming,” she muttered. “Bill said he would allow me to stay another week, but I won’t. Just sick of it.”
“Don’t be too upset. I’m sure more of us will go.”
“Probably. Bill said there’ll be more layoffs.”
“I’ll be the next, I guess.”
“Don’t jinx yourself, Tian.”
Tracy put her eyeglass case beside her coffee cup. She didn’t have much stuff—a few photos of her niece and nephews and of a Himalayan cat named Daffie, a half-used pack of chewing gum, a pocket hairbrush, a compact, a romance novel, a small Ziploc bag containing rubber bands, ballpoints, Post-its, dental floss, a ChapStick. Tian turned his eyes away as though the pile of her belongings, not enough to fill her tote bag, upset him more than her dismissal.
