by Gish Jen
LAN / Why make believe I belonged in the dining room? What use was it? Anyone could see it was bu heshi—inappropriate.
WENDY / She says she’s the servant, really, and that’s why it isn’t fitting, since when does a servant belong at the table? I tell her that she isn’t a servant, I don’t think we even have servants in America.
LIZZY / In America, we have cleaning women, which is different.
LAN / And who is given the leftovers to eat? Is that not the servant?
Wendy / Lanlan says if she were a real family member she would live inside the house. We try to tell her that we’ll help her if she wants and that she can definitely live in the house if she wants and that Mom just has the idea Lanlan wants to clean and stuff and can’t really be stopped.
Still she insists she is the servant to the rich Americans, meaning us.
LAN / For did not Blondie decide I should live in the barn with the goat instead of in the guest room? Could anyone deny this?
BLONDIE / We served her as if we were at a banquet. We heaped her plate with food while she protested. We treated her as if she were an honored guest, with that exaggerated politeness the Chinese love.
She seemed to view all this as so much insincerity.
LAN / Was it not completely fake? I never saw them treat anybody else that way.
Of course, Blondie talked so nice. But I felt xiao li cang dao—that her smile hid a knife.
Sometimes I sat in my room and thought about my great-aunt’s house. Who was living in it now? And what was I going to do when I went back? Carnegie had relatives in Beijing. I wondered if they could help me.
America did not want me. But could I say that the new China wanted me either?
The only people who really wanted me were little Wendy and Lizzy—girls with no mothers, like me. Sometimes Bailey too. I was getting used to Bailey, strange as he was.
BLONDIE / Outside, the days grew shorter. Colder. I knew this mostly by continuing to drive to work with my windows down long after others had stopped. I did this so that I could feel how the summer sun, which had shone on my elbow on the way home, did so no longer. How I began to need a sweater, and then to bundle up. How I began to become aware of my legs—that they were cold though my torso was warm. The day came when I welcomed the soft blow of heat on my toes, when the ssssshh of the heat fan simply belonged to my day.
By that time the trees were well into dropping their leaves. I tracked certain trees on my route—for example, a stand of birches like the ones we had at home, only so much more massive, so much more extensive, that I could not behold it without making that comparison—without thinking of our stand. And vice versa. The difference in scale so bordered on a difference in kind as to fascinate me. Of course, the stand by the parkway went by so quickly; that explained some of my seeing it in the way that I did. But I was generally less occupied when I beheld the birch stand at home; and yet I could not see that stand in relation to other stands either, only in relation to the stand by the parkway. I could not see it in a way that was not already my habit.
That was all right with me sometimes.
But there were other times when I felt I would like to know whether I was capable of disengaging the two stands from each other.
I tried to tell Carnegie about this once. He listened politely enough, head bent—a sign he was trying to focus. He cracked his knuckles.
I rubbed his back to reward him.
Yet he didn’t understand, in the end.
There was also an old maple on a knoll by my office that I watched. That tree had had an enormous hole hacked into its branches by the telephone company—because it was obstructing the wires, they said. Yet still it put on a show with what it had left. For was that not the nature of nature, to carry on? I always slowed as I passed that tree. Once I expected that, with its leaves down, its mutilation would be less glaring.
But no, it was not.
Or so I remembered from last year. Now here it was again—more glaring, as I recalled.
My sunflowers, of course, were long cut down by now.
The maple, bare. Then, many trees. Then, all the trees. The giant street cleaners with their huge round brushes and second-story drivers actually seemed to be doing something for a change. People raked and raked their yards. Only a few people hired those backpack blowers, thank goodness—most being more considerate of the neighborhood peace. Stuffed leaf bags lined the streets on Mondays.
I was sorry to see the leaves go. Yet I loved watching the structure of the trees emerge too. Those branches—so brave and forthright. Straightforward. Comprehensible. I loved being able to see, now, where the birdsnests were.
We were ready for Lan to help herself. To make herself at home.
She appeared to be losing weight.
E-mailed Gabriela: did you try chinese food?
But of course we had. Maybe it wasn’t the right kind of Chinese, though; we only had two Chinese restaurants in town, one Cantonese, one nouvelle. And to be honest, we did not try the restaurants in other towns. Honestly, we were preoccupied, when we walked in the door, with connecting with the children. What with only two hours before their bedtime, we did not want to lose a minute.
I thought we should bring Lan to a therapist. I thought she had an eating disorder. But Carnegie didn’t want her to think we thought her crazy.
CARNEGIE / She had an antipathy for outdoor labor; no doubt associating yard work and suchlike with peasants. But indoors, what a dynamo! She not only watched the children and handled the laundry, she also did a good bit of cleaning. Nothing heavy-duty; that remained our housecleaner Damiana’s job. But Lan kept after the kitchen, and the playroom, and the kids’ bedrooms. She organized the sports rack, the gift wrap, the front hall closet, and the linen closet—all without being asked. She seemed to anticipate things we might ask and do them before we could—a preemptive strategy—thereby avoiding the indignity of being ordered about. She was not, she said several times, like Damiana. She did not need things pointed out. We tried to stop her, but it was like trying to get her to eat, more challenging than it would seem. And so we settled for fulsome expressions of appreciation and awe.
The only subject we ever had to raise with Lan was goat care. Blondie brought this up. Sounding Lan out, she said later. Proposing nothing.
Should Blondie have realized that Lan would feel forced to say yes?
WENDY / Lanlan says Tommy doesn’t listen to anybody. She says the goat is above her in the household, she thinks the goat is like a feudal boss, and we are its oppressed workers. What are oppressed workers? I ask, and she says it is like what I would be if I had a job and my boss was Elaine.
— You mean like a slave, I say.
And she says: — Right! Like a slave. We are all slave to the goat. How should a goat be so precious?
— Taking care of a goat doesn’t make you a slave, I tell her. It doesn’t make you anything. It’s just something you have to do, like math.
Still she hates it that she has to feed Tommy. She says that in Shandong she was always being butted by her neighbor’s goat, especially when she went to pee in the fields, once she was knocked right over.
BLONDIE / We had to spell out every single thing. It was not enough to tell Lan the goat needed water every day. You had to tell her that the water should be in a bucket. You had to tell her that a large puddle after a rainstorm was not enough. You had to tell her to refill the bucket if Tommy drank it all. You had to tell her to change the water every day even if Tommy didn’t drink it all. You had to tell her to tell us if the bucket was leaking.
It was the same with the feed bucket. You had to tell her to change the food every day. You had to tell her to tell us when the food was running low.
LAN / Everything I did, Blondie criticized.
Blondie / Then there was cleaning out the stall.
Honestly, we would’ve taken this job back, if we knew how. We told the girls to go help. But the more they tried to help, the more Lan
insisted on doing it herself.
WENDY / She can’t understand what the goat is for.
— For fun? How is a goat fun? she says.
CARNEGIE / The goat would levitate, plant its hooves on the barn wall such that it was well nigh horizontal, then push off. Landing neatly on the driveway a moment later, free! Its furry wattles swinging.
Said Lan, the first time she saw this: — Your goat can fly.
The next time: — Maybe it will run away.
But goats generally stayed close to home.
— No, no, the goat is ours until our friend returns from sunny Italy, I explained. Or until one of our neighbors reports us to Animal Control. Whichever comes first.
— What is Animal Control? she asked.
— Don’t give her ideas, said Blondie.
WENDY / She doesn’t think it fair that a goat should have such an easy life. Every day Chinese people eat bitter, she says, every day real people suffer.
BLONDIE / Sometimes I wanted to say, You see, I have my goat, and Carnegie, well, has his.
— You can cut him, said Lan, indicating an ankle tendon. —Then he will not fly anymore.
— We don’t do that here, I said.
CARNEGIE / We explained that Americans in general adored things farmy. That it wasn’t just Blondie. That it had to do with our agrarian past.
Of course I regretted the word ‘agrarian’ even as it emanated pretentiously from my lips. But naturally, she knew full well what it meant.
— I understand, she said. Before capitalism you were feudal landlords.
WENDY / One day when Tommy butts her, she throws a pail at his head.
— In this country, we do not throw pails at animals, says Mom. And when was the last time this stall was cleaned out?
BLONDIE / When would she start eating? E-mailed Gabriela:
healing. lan needs healing. what about a sweat lodge?
This, it seemed, was a kind of retreat where the participants huddled in a sauna for days, then burst out naked into the cold outdoors, reborn. I e-mailed back:
I don’t think so. To begin with, Lan is horrified by sweat.
Gabriela:
didn’t she sweat in the countryside? or did she carry her umbrella around with her then too?
I tried to explain, ending with:
Honestly, we are just too busy for this nonsense. It is too much to spend the day running from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting—for half of which I am underprepared—only to have to psychoanalyze our nanny when I come home. Does not our attention at the end of the day rightly belong to our children?
To which Gabriela replied:
of course it does. take back your life!
I handed over the place-setting to Carnegie that night, saying I had other things to think about—for example, the workplace-diversity initiative.
— If we’re going to include that among our investment criteria, we are going to have to make our case, I said.
CARNEGIE / That was the same evening she took the lid off our largest casserole and announced: — My life is too short for this nonsense. I value my moments and choose to spend them otherwise.
Gabriela-speak, this was.
BLONDIE / Still—I meant it.
CARNEGIE / I took over general Lan management. Beginning with the next day, Saturday morning, which found Lan on the kitchen floor, diligently and of her own accord ruining with Ajax our authentic Mexican tile.
I watched her from the doorway. With what grace she moved! She might have been playing a servant in a ballet—Cinderella, about to look up and behold her fairy godmother. Partly this was the way she held herself, but partly too it was the way she used her arms; not working her forearm back and forth like a windshield wiper, but rather engaging her whole arm, sometimes her whole upper body, in a kind of sweeping motion that began and ended with her sitting neatly on her heels. How sweetly she tucked stray hairs behind her pale ears. She even wrung her sponge with unwarranted delicacy—holding her rubber-gloved pinkies aloft, as if handling an antique sugar bowl. Around her, the wet floor shone so brightly in the morning sun that it lit her face when she leaned over, bathed it in an evanescence I would not have thought possible in our mall-rat world. How beautiful she was! I had not realized; maybe it was just the lighting. Though I had noticed, recently, how others noticed her. How she had become attractive to crossing guards, repairmen, delivery boys, as she began to dress a little better. Wear a little makeup. It seemed she had done something fetching with her hair. But I was fetched by something else—some promise of simplicity. Clarity. The purity of her skin, the naturalness of her movements. I wanted to touch her. To take the sponge from her hand; to raise her to her rubber-booted feet. This was not an impulse I generally experienced with adults. Lan, though, seemed singularly registered in my amygdala. Was it because she lived in my house? Did feeling her day-in, day-out intimacy with the children—with my children—make me feel a proxy intimacy?
First, in any case, to stop her. For what was Blondie going to say? To Lan, and to me too. For was I not the person who had bought the Ajax? Was I not the caveman who had summarily dismissed our sweet-smelling collection of lovely organic cleaners? Who had argued, all too successfully, that households all over America had found ways to keep harsh chemical abrasives away from unscrupulous scrubbers of vulnerable porcelain sinks?
But now, two hours before Wendy’s soccer match (we were pushing soccer, an anti-shyness strategy): Voilà! Our floor, diligently de-finished.
Lan looked up expectantly, her face aglow with modest pride.
— How clean the floor looks, I said.
— Not done yet, she said, renewing her attack.
— Stop, I said weakly. Please. I think you are done.
— Of course, she said then.
She sat back on her heels, bright light all around her. Brushed her loose hair back over her ear with her shoulder. Did not squint. She was wearing a blue sweatshirt and yellow rubber gloves. And on her feet, yellow galoshes, apparently Lizzy’s. These were not an ordinary yellow, like her gloves, but a safety yellow such as was used for rescue operations at sea. In our earthtone kitchen, they pulsed technology; yet her natural dignity was undiminished by the aesthetic clash. With aristocratic simplicity she lay her hands, palms up, on her knees.
I had not thought myself unhappily married. But as she knelt there, awaiting direction, I knew Blondie too had awaited something. That the husband Blondie had hoped for did such crazy things. That the husband she had hoped for surged with a life force that put her wacky siblings to shame. How interesting the husband she had hoped for. The last time I saw Doc Bailey, he asked if I planned on staying in my job forever. How to tell him that I might indeed be moving on soon?
What they want from you?
I worked too hard for the Baileys.
What they want from you?
I bored them.
In truth we bored ourselves, hauling out our calendars night after night, comparing schedules. What do we want? Blondie asked sometimes. Do we even know what we want?
I gazed now upon Lan’s bent head. At the smooth nape of her naked neck.
Wendy bounced in, announcing that she was going to be the Great Wall for Halloween. This was a change of plan; originally she had planned to be a teenager.
— Just part of it, I mean, she said. A tower.
— Great idea! said Lan.
Her rubber-covered hands flew up. From her attitude of quiet suspension, she seemed to spring full blown into the very picture of Halloween costume support.
— Very original, I agreed. Not to forget the barbarian invaders.
Wendy rolled her eyes and, in concert with them, her besocked feet, such that her soles faced each other and her ankles grazed the floor.
— Is there a contest at school? Lan asked.
Wendy nodded.
— You will win! Lan predicted.
Wendy beamed, straightening her feet up.
I beamed too
. Though I knew Blondie, had she been there, would have said, Life is not about winning and losing—and of course I agreed—still I was happy to see Wendy so ebullient. To see how Lan was bringing her out.
— Of course people will probably think I’m a rook, said Wendy.
— No one will think you’re a rook, I said.
— But how will they know? That I’m a Chinese wall, and not just any wall?
— You’ll have to tell them.
— Elaine is going to say you can’t tell.
— Who is this Elaine anyway, who gives you so much grief?
I said. Tell her to go to hell.
Wendy hung her head.
— I can’t, she said plaintively, her spunk gone. — You don’t understand.
Her nose quivered as though she was about to start sobbing.
— I’m sorry, I said then. Your father just doesn’t know what to say, does he? He doesn’t know how to act. He’s not like Lan. He doesn’t understand anything.
— That’s right! You don’t!
— Of course he knows how to act, said Lan soothingly.
— He doesn’t! said Wendy. He acts however he wants!
And with that she departed, leaving tracks on the wet floor. Lan watched her. Still kneeling—beautifully—she eyed the tracks, the first indication I had ever seen that she registered her work as work, and minded having to do it over. Up to now she had seemed an inexhaustible source of energy that would do things two, three times if necessary, so long as they did not involve goat care.
— You know how to act, I said quietly.
— No no no no, said Lan, pressing her fingers together.
I wanted to kneel beside her, and might have done so if I could have with poise. If I would not have appeared some patron saint of tile men, tardily come to bless the grout.
I sat down instead.
— Lan, I said.
I placed my elbows on my knees and clasped my hands together. I lowered my head so that it was on the same level as hers. I feared that even on a chair I seemed a parody of sincerity.
