by Ha Jin
As Tracy was leaving, more people got up and some spoke to her. “Terribly sorry, Tracy.” “Take care.” “Good luck.” “Keep in touch, Tracy.” Some of the voices actually sounded relieved and even cheerful. Tracy shook hands with a few and waved at the rest while mouthing “Thank you.”
The second she went out the door, George, an orange-haired man who always wore a necktie at work, said, “This is it,” as if to assure everyone that they were all safe.
“I don’t think so. More of us will get canned,” Tian said gloomily.
Someone cackled as if Tian had cracked a joke. He didn’t laugh or say another word. He sat down and tapped the spacebar on the keyboard to bring the monitor back to life.
“Oh, I never thought Flushing was such a convenient place, like a big county seat back home,” his mother said to him that evening. She had gone downtown in the morning and had a wonderful time there. She tried some beef and lamb kebabs at a street corner and ate a tiny steamer of buns stuffed with chives, lean pork, and crabmeat at a Shanghai restaurant. She also bought a bag of mung bean noodles for only $1.20. “Really cheap,” she said. “Now I believe it’s true that all China’s best stuff is in the U.S.”
Tian smiled without speaking. He stowed her purchase in the cabinet under the sink because Connie couldn’t eat bean noodles. He put a pot of water on the stove and was going to make rice porridge for dinner.
From that day on, Meifen often went out during the day and reported to Tian on her adventures. Before he left for work in the morning, he’d make sure she had enough pocket money. Gradually Meifen got to know people. Some of them were also from the northeast of China and were happy to converse with her, especially those who frequented the eateries that specialized in Mandarin cuisine—pies, pancakes, sauerkraut, sausages, grilled meats, moo shu, noodles, and dumplings. In a small park she ran into some old women pushing their grandchildren in strollers. She chatted with them, and found out that one woman had lived here for more than a decade and wouldn’t go back to Wuhan City anymore because all her children and grandchildren were in North America now. How Meifen envied those old grandmas, she told Tian, especially the one who had twin grandkids. If only she could live a life such as theirs.
“You’ll need a green card to stay here long enough to see my babies,” Tian once told his mother jokingly.
“You’ll get me a green card, won’t you?” she asked.
Well, that was not easy, and he wouldn’t promise her. She hadn’t been here for three weeks yet, but already his family had become kind of dysfunctional. How simpleminded he and Connie had been when they encouraged Meifen to apply for a half-year visa. They should have limited her visit to two months or even less. That way, if she became too much of a pain in the ass, they could say it was impossible to get her visa extended, and she’d have no choice but to go back. Now, there’d be twenty-three more weeks for them to endure. How awful!
The other day Tian and Connie had talked between themselves about the situation. She said, “Well, I’ll take these months as a penal term. After half a year, when the old deity has left, I hope I’ll have survived the time undamaged and our union will remain unbroken.” She gave a hysterical laugh, which unsettled Tian, and he wouldn’t joke with her about their predicament anymore. All he could say was “I’m sorry, really sorry.” Yet he wouldn’t speak ill of his mother in front of his wife.
As Connie spent more time away from home, Tian often wondered what his wife was doing during the day. Judging from her appearance, she seemed at ease and just meant to avoid rubbing elbows with his mother. In a way, Tian appreciated that. Connie used to be a good helpmate by all accounts, but the old woman’s presence here had transformed her. Then, who wouldn’t have changed, given the circumstances? So he ought to feel for his wife.
One evening, as he was clearing the table while Connie was doing the dishes in the kitchen, his mother said, “I ran into a fellow townswoman today, and we had a wonderful chat. I invited her to dinner tomorrow.”
“Where are you going to take her?” Tian asked.
“Here. I told her you’d pick her up with your car.”
Connie, having overheard their conversation, came in, holding a dish towel and grinning at Tian. Her bell cheeks were pink, while her eyes twinkled naughtily. Again Tian was amazed by her youthful face. She was a looker, six years younger than he. He was unhappy about Meifen’s inviting a guest without telling him in advance, but before he could speak, Connie began, “Mother, there’ll be a snowstorm tomorrow—Tian can’t drive in the bad weather.”
“I saw it on TV,” Meifen said. “It will be just six or seven inches, no big deal. People even bike in snow back home.”
Tian told her, “It’s not whether I can pick up your friend or not, Mom. You should’ve spoken to me before you invited anyone. I’m busy all the time and must make sure my calendar allows it.”
“You don’t need to do anything,” Meifen said. “Leave it to me. I’ll do the shopping and cooking tomorrow.”
“Mom, you don’t get it. This is my home and you shouldn’t interfere with my schedule.”
“What did you say? Sure, this is your home, but who are you? You’re my son, aren’t you!”
Seeing a smirk cross his wife’s face, Tian asked his mother, “You mean you own me and my home?”
“How can I ever disown you? Your home should also be mine. No? Oh heavens, I never thought my son could be so selfish. Once he has his bride, he wants to disown his mother!”
“You’re unreasonable,” he said.
“And you’re heartless.”
“This is ridiculous!” He turned and strode out of the dining room.
Connie put in, “Mother, just think about it—what if Tian already has another engagement tomorrow?”
“Like I said, he won’t have to be around if he has something else to do. Besides, he doesn’t work on Saturdays.”
“Still, he’ll have to drive to pick up your friend.”
“How about you? Can’t you do that?”
“I don’t have a driver’s license yet.”
“Why not? You cannot let Tian do everything in this household. You must do your share.”
Seeing this was getting nowhere, Connie dropped the dish towel on the dining table and went to the living room to talk with Tian.
However, Tian wouldn’t discuss the invitation with Connie, knowing his mother was eavesdropping on them. Meifen, already sixty-four, still had sharp ears and eyesight. Tian grimaced at his wife and sighed. “I guess we’ll have to do the party tomorrow.”
She nodded. “I’ll stay home and give you a hand.”
It snowed on and off for a whole day. The roofs in the neighborhood blurred and lost their unkempt features, and the snow rendered all the trees and hedges fluffy. It looked clean everywhere, and even the air smelled fresher. Trucks passed by, giving out warning signals while plowing snow or spraying salt. A bunch of children were sledding on a slope, whooping lustily, and some lay supine on the sleds as they dashed down. Another pack of them were hurling snowballs at each other and shouting war cries. Tian, amused, watched them through a window. He had dissuaded his mother from giving a multiple-course dinner, saying that here food was plentiful and one could eat fish and meat quite often. Most times it was for conversation and a warm atmosphere that people went to dinner. His mother agreed to make dumplings in addition to a few cold dishes. Actually, they didn’t start wrapping dumplings when the stuffing and the dough were ready, because Meifen wanted to have her friend participate in some way in preparing the dinner, to make the occasion somewhat like a family gathering.
Toward evening it resumed snowing. Tian drove to Corona to fetch the guest, Shulan, and his mother went with him, sitting in the passenger seat. The heat was on full blast, and the wipers were busy sweeping the windshield; even so, the glass frosted in spots on the outside and fogged on the inside. Time and again Tian mopped the moisture off the glass with a pair of felt gloves, but the visibility didn’
t improve much. “See what I mean?” he said to his mother. “It’s dangerous to drive in such weather.”
She made no reply, staring ahead, her beaky face as rigid as if frozen and the skin under her chin hanging in wattles. Fortunately, Shulan’s place was easy to find. The woman lived in an ugly tenement about a dozen stories high and with narrow windows. She was waiting for them in the footworn lobby when they arrived. She looked familiar to Tian. Then he recognized her—this scrawny person in a dark blue overcoat was nobody but a saleswoman at the nameless snack joint on Main Street, near the subway station. He had encountered her numerous times when he went there to buy scallion pancakes or sautéed rice noodles or pork buns for lunch. He vividly remembered her red face bathed in perspiration during the dog days when she wore a white hat, busy selling food to passersby. That place was nothing but a flimsy lean-to, open to waves of heat and gusts of wind. In winter there was no need for a heater in the room because the stoves were hot and the pots sent up steam all the time, but in summer only a small fan whirred back and forth overhead. When customers were few, the salespeople would participate in making snacks, so everybody in there was a cook of sorts. Whenever Tian chanced on this middle-aged Shulan, he’d wonder what kind of tough life she must be living. What vitality, what endurance, and what sacrifice must have suffused her personal story? How often he’d been amazed by her rustic but energetic face, furrowed by lines that curved from the wings of her nose to the corners of her broad mouth. Now he was moved, eager to know more about this fellow townswoman. He was glad that his mother had invited her.
“Where’s your daughter, Shulan?” Meifen asked, still holding her friend’s chapped hand.
“She’s upstairs doing a school project.”
“Go get her. Let her come with us. Too much brainwork will spoil the girl’s looks.”
Tian said, “Please bring her along, Aunt.”
“All right, I’ll be back in a minute.” Shulan went over to the elevator. From the rear she looked smaller than when she stood behind the food stand.
Tian and Meifen sat down on the lone bench in the lobby. She explained that Shulan’s husband had come to the States seven years before, but had disappeared a year later. Nobody was sure of his whereabouts, though rumor had it that he was in Houston, manning a gift shop and living with a young woman. By now Shulan was no longer troubled by his absence from home. She felt he had merely used her as his cook and bed warmer, so she could manage without him.
“Mom, you were right to invite her,” Tian said sincerely.
Meifen smiled without comment.
A few minutes later Shulan came down with her daughter, a reedy, anemic fifteen-year-old wearing circular glasses and a checkered mackinaw that was too big on her. The girl looked unhappy and climbed into the car silently. As Tian drove away, he reminded the guests in the back to buckle up. Meanwhile, the snow abated some, but the flakes were still swirling around the streetlights and fluttering outside glowing windows. An ambulance howled, its strobe slashing the darkness. Tian pulled aside to let the white van pass, then resumed driving.
Tian and Connie’s home impressed Shulan as Meifen gave her a tour through the two floors and the finished basement. The woman kept saying in a singsong voice, “This is a real piece of property, so close to downtown.” Her daughter, Ching, didn’t follow the grown-ups but stayed in the living room fingering the piano, a Steinway, which Tian had bought for Connie at a clearance sale. The girl had learned how to play the instrument before coming to the United States, though she could tickle out only a few simple tunes, such as “Jingle Bells,” “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and “The Newspaper Boy Song.” Even those sounded hesitant and disjointed. She stopped when her mother came back and told her not to embarrass both of them with her “clumsy fingers” anymore. The girl then sat before the TV, watching a well-known historian speaking about the recent Orange Revolution in Ukraine and its impact on the last few communist countries. Soon the four grown-ups began wrapping dumplings. Tian used a beer bottle to press the dough, having no rolling pin in the house. He was skilled but couldn’t make wrappers fast enough for the three women, so Connie found a lean hot-sauce bottle and helped him with the dough from time to time. Meifen was unhappy about the lack of a real rolling pin and grumbled, “What kind of life you two have been living! You have no plan for a decent home.”
Connie wouldn’t talk back, just picked up a wrapper and filled it with a dollop of the stuffing, which was seasoned with sesame oil and five-spice powder. Shulan said, “If I lived so close to downtown, I wouldn’t cook at all and would have no need for a rolling pin either.” She kept smiling, her front teeth propping up her top lip a bit.
“Your place’s pot stickers are delicious,” Tian said to her to change the subject.
“I prepare the filling every day. Meifen, next time you stop by, you should try it. It tastes real good.”
“Sure thing,” Meifen said. “Did you already know how to make those snacks back home?”
“No way. I learned how to do that here. My boss used to be a hotel chef in Hangzhou.”
“You must’ve gone through lots of hardships.”
“I wouldn’t complain. Life here is no picnic and most people work very hard.”
Tian smiled quizzically, then said, “My dad retired at fifty-eight with a full pension. Every morning he carries a pair of goldfinches in a cage to the bank of the Songhua. Old people are having an easy time back home.”
“Not every one of them,” his mother corrected him. “Your father enjoys some leisure only because he joined the revolution early in his youth. He’s entitled to his pension and free medical care.”
“Matter of fact,” Shulan said, “most folks are as poor as before in my old neighborhood. I have to send my parents money every two months.”
“They don’t have a pension?” Meifen asked.
“They do, but my mother suffers from gout and high blood pressure. My father lost most of his teeth and needed new dentures. Nowadays folks can’t afford to be sick anymore.”
“That’s true,” Tian agreed. “Most people are the have-nots.”
The stout kettle whistled in the kitchen and it was time to boil the dumplings. Connie left to set the pot on, her waist-length hair swaying a little as she walked away. “You have a nice and pretty daughter-in-law,” Shulan said to Meifen. “You’re a lucky woman, elder sister.”
“You don’t know what a devil of a temper she has.”
“Mom, don’t start again,” Tian begged.
“See, Shulan,” Meifen whispered, “my son always sides with his bride. The little fox spirit really knows how to charm her man.”
“This is unfair, Mom,” her son objected.
Both women laughed and turned away to wash their hands.
Ten minutes later Tian went into the living room and called Ching to come over to the table, on which, besides the steaming dumplings, were plates of smoked mackerel, roast duck, cucumber and tomato salad, and spiced bamboo shoots. When they were all seated, with Meifen at the head of the rectangular table, Tian poured plum wine for Shulan and his mother. He and Connie and Ching would drink beer.
The two older women continued reminiscing about the people they both knew. To Tian’s amazement, the girl swigged her glass of beer as if it were a soft drink. Then he remembered she had spent her childhood in Harbin, where even children were beer drinkers. He spoke English with her and asked her what classes she’d been taking at school. The girl seemed too introverted to volunteer any information and just answered each question with two or three words. She confessed that she hated the Sunday class, in which she had to copy the Chinese characters and memorize them.
Shulan mentioned a man nicknamed Turtle Baron, the owner of a fishery outside Harbin. “Oh, I knew of him,” Meifen said. “He used to drive a fancy car to the shopping district every day, but he lost his fortune.”
“What happened?” Shulan asked.
“He fed drugs to crayfish so they grew big a
nd fierce, but some Hong Kong tourists got food-poisoned and took him to court.”
“He was a wild man, but a filial son, blowing big money on his mother’s birthdays. Where’s he now?”
“In jail,” Meifen said.
“Obviously that was where he was headed. The other day I met a fellow who had just come out of the mainland. He said he wouldn’t eat street food back home anymore, because he couldn’t tell what he was actually eating. Some people even make fake eggs and fake salt. It’s mind-boggling. How can anyone turn a profit by doing that, considering the labor?”
They all cracked up except for the girl. Sprinkling a spoonful of vinegar on the three dumplings on her plate, Shulan continued, “People ought to believe in Jesus Christ. That’ll make them behave better, less like animals.”
“Do you often go to church?” Meifen asked, chewing the tip of a duck wing.
“Yes, every Sunday. It makes me feel calm and hopeful. I used to hate my husband’s bone marrow, but now I don’t hate him anymore. God will deal with him on my behalf.”
Ching listened to her mother without showing any emotion, as if Shulan were speaking about a stranger. Meifen said, “Maybe I should visit your church one of these days.”
“Please do. Let me know when you want to come. I’ll introduce you to Brother Zhou, our pastor. He’s a true gentleman. I’ve never met a man so kind. He used to be a doctor in Chengdu and still gives medical advice. He cured my stomach ulcer.”
Connie, eating focaccia bread instead of the dumplings that contained soy sauce, said under her breath, “Ching, do you have a boyfriend?”
Before the girl could answer, her mother cut in, pointing her chopsticks at her daughter. “I won’t let her. It’s just a waste of time to have a boyfriend so early. She’d better concentrate on her schoolwork.”
Ching said to Connie in English, “See what a bitch my mom is? She’s afraid I’ll go boy-crazy like her when she was young.” The girl’s eyes flashed behind the lenses of her black-framed glasses.
