China Mountain Zhang

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  A woman sits under one of the signs that tell you where to call for information about resettlement on Mars, she is reading a textbook on med tech. She’s very serious. She wears a waitress uniform, all day she flash heats cheap food. I imagine her on fire in her class, going into work the next day and watching the elaborate physics of the bodies around her, the balancing act of a woman leaning down to get something off a shelf, her whole body flexing and relaxing in symphony. The waitress amazed, her whole world expanding outward, suddenly complex and fascinating.

  I know she’s studying to be a med tech, a job not really different from flash heating food in terms of intellectual stimulation. She’s doing it so she can get her certificate and get out of her free market job, get real benefits. The train stops at De Kalb, she gets out and crosses the platform to wait for the M train. The Mystery train we used to call it when we were kids, because we didn’t know anything about the places it went.

  I get out too, and upstairs to cross to the Atlantic station, connected by tunnel to De Kalb. At Atlantic Avenue someone says, “Zhong Shan?”

  It’s a young woman I don’t recognize, an ABC, I think. Short hair in the style that all the girls in New York seem to be wearing, shaved high at the temples and glossily varnished everywhere else.

  “You don’t know me, do you,” she says. “It’s San-xiang. Qian San-xiang.”

  For a moment I can’t place her, the face doesn’t go with anyone and then I remember San-xiang. Ugly little San-xiang. She has had her face fixed. She looks normal.

  “San-xiang,” I say, “you’re very pretty! How are you?”

  “Okay,” she says. “How are you?”

  “All right. What are you doing, still working at Cuo?” I remember the place where she worked, that’s good.

  She nods, “For now. I’ll be leaving in March.”

  “Transferring?” I ask.

  “No,” she says, “I’m going to Mars. I’m going to join a commune called Jingshen.” She says it flatly, without excitement, watching my reaction.

  “Shentong de shen?” I ask. Which meaning of jingshen? It can mean ‘essence’ or ‘profound’ or a host of other things.

  “Vigor,” she says, which sounds like a Cleansing Winds name.

  “I remember you were always interested in communes,” I say lamely, wondering why anyone would go to Mars, wondering if she has any idea what it will be like. Of course, she has moved before, when she was a girl and her family came from China, but surely she doesn’t realize how wrenching it will be to exile herself from home.

  “You look like you are doing well,” she says.

  “I’ve been studying in China, I’ve only been back a week.”

  She asks the usual questions, where in China, what did I study. She’s changed, she seems older. She is older, it’s been four years since I saw San-xiang, she must be, what, twenty-six?

  “Let’s go get coffee,” I suggest.

  She hesitates a moment then shrugs. “All right.”

  We find a place to get coffee on the concourse between the Atlantic and Pacific stops. It’s a depressing little place that, like most places in the subway, never sees sunlight. We sit down at metal tables with pressed simulated wood grain. “How is your father?” I ask.

  She smiles. “About the same. Still believes he has the right to run everybody’s life.”

  We don’t talk about the last time we saw each other, when her father came to collect her at my apartment, but we do talk a little about kite racing. The conversation lags.

  “Why are you going to Mars?” I ask.

  “I’ve been corresponding with someone there for years,” she says. I admire the philosophy of the commune, it is a good compromise between the ideal and the practical. I think it would be a good thing to start over in a place where people pay attention to what is important.”

  It’s a set speech, she must say this a lot. “So you’ll go alone?”

  “Yes,” she says, a little defiantly, “they’ll be my community.”

  “What does your family think?” I am sure Foreman Qian has not taken this quietly.

  “They’re adjusting to the idea,” she says, evasively.

  The conversation sputters again, we both sip our drinks. We were strangers when we met, strangers when we parted, we are strangers now.

  “What are you doing,” she asks, “now that you are back from China?”

  “I don’t know. Waiting until I get my life in order. I have to go to the Office of Occupational Resources and see about getting a job.”

  “Here in New York?” she says.

  “Oh yeah.” I say. “I found out in China, I’m really a New Yorker.” I laugh, “Even if it is a dump.”

  She doesn’t say anything to that and I remember again that San-xiang is Chinese. I don’t think of her that way, she’s been here so long. If she could, would she go back to China? I wonder if she’d find it foreign, she’s been here for longer than she lived there.

  I try to think of something to say, the only thing I can think of is to tell her how nice she looks, and I’m not sure whether I should say that or not.

  “I’m sure you’re very busy,” San-xiang says.

  “Oh,” I say, “not so busy, but I know you’re working and you don’t have much free time.”

  Politely we dance through the formulas of ending, of parting. We walk back to the platform and say things like, “It was really good to see you again.”

  The trains, of course, don’t come and we are left hanging there gracelessly.

  “You know,” San-xiang says suddenly, “I’m sorry about the way it worked out, but I’m glad we went out together.”

  “I enjoyed your company,” I say.

  “Was it because of my face?” she asks.

  “Was what because of your face?” I say, knowing I don’t want to hear her question.

  “That you couldn’t really like me?”

  I could say that I did like her, but that isn’t what she means. I look up, the board says her train is coming in. I want to explain, but I don’t know how she will react, if she’ll be disgusted. It is hard to break silence, it’s a habit not to.

  “Was it because you’re only part Chinese?” she asks.

  Her train slams into the station, cushions to a stop. “Good luck on Mars,” I say, as people push around us. I am unable to think of how to answer her, of what to say. She has pretty eyes, now, turned up at me, asking, what is so wrong with her that I wouldn’t do the dance, the dance that men and women are supposed to do? She starts to duck her head, to get on the train.

  I touch her arm, “San-xiang,” I say, “it didn’t have anything to do with you.”

  Her face is closed. It sounds like everything else I have said to her, a polite lie to escape feelings. The doors will close any time now. “San-xiang, I’m gay,” I say, and gently push her on.

  She stops in the door and looks back at me, looking in my face, while her mouth shapes the word. She doesn’t understand right away. Then as the doors close I see a look of wonder as she begins to realize. The train starts up, accelerates away. I hope that in this moment she feels some sort of absolution, some understanding that it was not her lack.

  I am relieved that I didn’t have to see if that look of wonder was followed by disgust. And now, I tell myself, it doesn’t matter anyway.

  I get back to Peter’s flat and there’s a call. I barely catch it, slap the console. I am looking at the reason that I have to find another place to live.

  “Hello,” says the reason, “is Peter there?”

  I glance at the clock. “He’s running a little late, probably stopped for something,” I say.

  “Tell him Cinnabar called,” he says.

  “Sure,” I say and he cuts the connection. So now I know his name. Peter is involved, a fact he keeps secret from me. It is hard to come back and find that Peter is in love. I’ve been gone on and off for four years, and I had thought, maybe, when I came back, that Peter and I could tr
y again, that we’ve matured and now maybe it will work. But I never said anything to him, and he never said anything to me. It probably wouldn’t have worked for all of the same reasons it didn’t before. And now we’re good friends.

  This Cinnabar, he seems, well, short. I don’t know how to explain how someone looks short on a monitor, but he does. I think he’s a flyer. Peter always had a thing about fliers. He’s not very good looking, I’m a lot better looking than he is. He seems nice. If he seemed like a son of a bitch it would be different. (Different from what, Zhang?)

  I’ve hardly been home a week, and my life is so complicated already. Peter’s flat is so small; tiny kitchen, main room, bedroom. I’m sleeping on the couch, which isn’t very comfortable (I wake up some mornings without having the slightest idea where I am.) I should stay here, save my little bit of money left over from my Wuxi salary, wait until I get a job placement, but I don’t know how long I can stand living here. I have to get out. I can’t stand Peter pretending I don’t complicate his life, I can’t stand any of this.

  “Hey, Rafael,” Peter is at the door, balancing the canvas bag he uses for groceries. “Did you clean the flat?”

  “And painted.”

  He looks around, “And you matched the old color exactly, down to the smudges.”

  “Hey,” I call as he disappears into the kitchen, “I’m an engineer.”

  “Pijiu?” He tosses me a beer. “There, shook it for you.”

  “Cinnabar called,” I say.

  He comes back around the door again. “Oh yeah?” Not knowing what to say or how to act. Even though it’s July, he’s wearing the yellow jacket I sent him from China, shining with silk thread, embroidered with long-life medallions and stylized phoenix. Everybody wears jackets all the time. Fashion.

  “No message, just tell you he called.” I flick on the vid. “I went down the housing office today, the nearest available housing is upstate Pennsylvania. And it doesn’t have running water. I got a prospectus for you.” Now I have to think of an excuse for an errand so I can get out of here and Peter can call this flier person.

  I develop the habit of walking the boardwalk. The air smells salty these days. It doesn’t have that burnt smell anymore, the project to clean up the harbor must be working. Reassuring to know that something is working. But I miss the smell, for me it’s exciting. Sexual. Not that I’m cruising these days. Hell, even if I wanted to, where would I take them, back to Peter’s couch? And I’m too old to climb under the boardwalk and let some kid do me in the sand.

  I remember kneeling in the sand, shivering, with the light coming down between the cracks in the boardwalk. Going to school in the day, pretending to be like everybody else, feeling like I had some secret knowledge, some understanding of the real world that the people I went to school with didn’t have. Gooseflesh and the smell of ash. Some chickenhawk with his fingers locked in my hair.

  I walk every night from eight until almost nine, regular as clockwork. The first couple of nights it’s all right, but Friday night it’s altogether too hot, and the boardwalk is crowded with people. Couples, girls in cheap flashy clothes, bright flimsey things. The young girls are shaving high up the backs of their necks, up even with their earlobes, and just leaving a tail of braided hair hang down.

  “Ever had a hotdog?”

  I’m leaning up against the railing, watching the kids go by. He’s older than most of the kids, but only by a few years.

  “Si,” I say, “Yo habito aqui.” ‘I live here.’

  For a moment he looks confused. He looks hispanic, but that doesn’t mean he speaks spanish. That will teach me to try and be clever.

  Then he grins. “Donde?”

  “Coney Island,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “For a moment I didn’t realize what you were saying, you know, I just didn’t expect you to speak spanish. Chinese clothes and all.”

  “I grew up on Utica Avenue,” I say. He’s handsome. Dresses cheap, short matador jacket (no shirt) and tights. He has a tattoo of a tear at the corner of his left eye, it hangs on the edge of a sharp cheekbone. He’s darker than I am. “So you were going to poison a foreign guest with a local hotdog.”

  He shrugs, “I just thought, here’s this foreigner, all by himself on the boardwalk. Somebody ought to give him a taste of the ethnic cuisine.”

  We walk a bit. He struts, gestures as he talks. The boys seemed spaced along the walk at regular intervals. They lean against posts and watch us. Coneys. The couples become static, white noise. The salient features of the landscape are the boys, and this amazing young man walking with me who talks about growing up out here on the edge, in the part of Brooklyn some people call Bangladesh.

  “See,” he explains, “there’s always going to be a group of people who aren’t ideologically sound. There’s always going to be a bad element fringe. So the Party doesn’t mess with Bangladesh. We’re a safety valve surrounding Coney Island. So out here we can be free.”

  “What about all the communes being established?” I ask. The girls dress in bright colors, the coneys dress dark. A coney in dark pants, dark sleeveless shirt watches us from the corner of his eye. He rests one muscled arm on a post.

  “They won’t stay,” he says, airily. “Out here it never really changes. They pretend to clean it up, but they just pick up a few deviants and everybody else hides and two hours later the meat market is back in business.”

  Hot night for a meat market. I’ve seen it change. Used to be there wasn’t anything out here, no couples, no hotdogs, just boarded up stands, the coneys and the chickenhawks and the squatters. The squatters are mostly gone and the whole place is now free marketeers and the people who want housing in the city bad enough to stick it out. They clean up the two hundred year old buildings, then make the neighborhood domestic.

  He’s so fresh and young. Is he waiting for me to make a move? I would if I could. “I have to get back,” I say, regretfully.

  “Good talking to you,” he says.

  “I come out here and walk pretty often,” I say. “What’s your name?”

  “Invierno,” he says. In Spanish that means winter. What kind of name is Invierno? Obviously not his real name. Not giving one’s real name or number is a time-honored tradition out here on the boardwalk.

  “I’m Rafael,” I say. “Like the angel.”

  He grins and makes the sign of benediction, standing at the top of the steps.

  When I glance back a second time he has already turned and stalks back down the boardwalk, prowling.

  Back at Peter’s building two women are carting boxes out the front door and piling them on the sidewalk. They watch me, flat, hostile faces. Their belongings make the usual pitiful pile on the sidewalk. I step over bluegreen pillows like the kind Peter has tossed on the floor, palm the door.

  The hallway and the elevator are hot and airless, in China even the hallways were kept cool. I wonder how much money it would cost to keep the halls heated and cooled. There are old ducts, at one time the halls of this building were temperature controlled. In an old building like this it would help the tenants keep their own costs a little lower.

  “Hey,” I say, “someone is moving out of the building.”

  Peter is flicking through vid programs. “Who was it?”

  “Two girls. No one I know.” Peter must be as frustrated as I am. I leave coneys on the boardwalk, he talks to his flier. “Maybe I could rent their place.”

  “Don’t rent, save your money until you get a job,” Peter says.

  “You need your own place back,” I say.

  “You’re no problem, and you pay half the rent.”

  “How’s what’s his name, the flier.” I say pointedly. How’s your love life? I’ve got this roommate and he’s driving me crazy.

  Peter glances up at me, back at the vid. “Cinnabar’s just a friend. He’s not a flier, he’s retired.” He sits stiff and defensive. I shouldn’t have said it.

  “I need a place of my own,” I
say and sit down next to him.

  “You don’t get a job,” he says, “you’ll start borrowing money from me. Pretty soon they’ll kick both of us out.”

  “Hey,” I say, “I’ll rent for a few months and then we’ll move to Pennsylvania together.”

  Then I get him a beer and rub his shoulders.

  “A regular Florence Nightingale,” he says.

  The room has ghosts.

  So I become a tenant. I move to the fifth floor, griping about having to take the psychopathic elevator to the top of the building. Moving is not difficult; as Peter remarks, for a man with a truly astounding wardrobe, I seem painfully short of possessions. (Not that my wardrobe is really much, it’s just Chinese.) The flat is two rooms, not counting the tiny kitchen and bathroom, both about the same size.

  I live in a dump. “The floor has to go,” I say. Someone painted the walls aqua, the floor is bluegreen slip, it’s like living under water on a bad film set. Cheap. But this building was built before the second depression, when they built to last, and underneath that garbage is a solid floor, underneath the walls is good solid wood frame. I wonder what would happen if I knocked the wall out between the two big rooms. The little front room, which is supposed to be the main room, has no window. The back room is barely big enough for a bed. Together they would make one decent room.

  But it’s my own. Once moved in I decide I have to take my life in hand. I’ve been home for two weeks and haven’t done anything but sleep on Peter’s couch and walk the boardwalk.

  The morning after I move in I put on my black suit and go to the Office of Occupational Resources.

  The office has carpeting, something that marks it as a step up on the scale of bureaucracy, but why is it all so ugly? This office is dirty green; gray-green carpeting (the kind that doesn’t show dirt, wear or aesthetic value) pond-scum green halfway up the wall and scuffed white the rest of the way. I meet a middle-aged woman, dressed in a boxy beige suit with tails that come precisely to the backs of her knees.

  “Comrade Zhang?” she says, “I’m Cecily Hester. I’m the counselor who will be assigned to your placement.”