by Ha Jin
He attempted to lighten the topic. “Now you’re rich compared to the village folks back home.”
“Actually, my family and relatives in China are doing fine now. I’m not that eager to make money here. No matter how hard I work, I can’t possibly get rich. I used to deliver food to homes in Weston and Lincoln and saw how wealthy people lived in those towns. There’s no way I can ever get rich like them. But I like the simple and peaceful life here, and the freedom. Nobody can kick you around as long as you don’t break the law and pay taxes. But what I really want is to get married and raise kids. I often have dreams, and in them I have two babies, and my breasts always heavy with milk. Well, in a couple years, I guess I’ll be too old to have any of that.” There was some wistfulness in her voice.
For a moment Tian had no idea how to respond. Then he remembered Frank’s wife, Sami. “Can’t your cousin help you find someone?” he said. “I’m sure there’re more Chinese men than Chinese women here.”
“Sami once recommended a guy to me, but I didn’t know what to make of him. He was an odd bird from Shandong province and wanted me to leave with him for Alaska.”
“Interesting. Did he end up going there himself?”
“Probably. I stopped seeing him after the second date. There was something about him that made my flesh creep.”
“Why would he want to move to Alaska?”
“He said he wanted to eat king crabs and big cabbages there.”
Tian laughed, then said, “He was a character, wasn’t he?”
“I think he had something he couldn’t shake off. He had to go somewhere nobody could recognize him. Maybe he had trouble with officials, or maybe he was deep in debt.”
“Or he hadn’t paid taxes.”
“He was like a delinquent. He was crazy, like a tramp with rotten teeth and a beard and long hair.”
“We’re all vagrants of a sort. I often feel that way too—I mean longing to go somewhere nobody knows me. To be left alone—that’s the essence of freedom.”
“That’s a smart thing to say. You are an excellent teacher, you know.” She wiped her fingers with a napkin.
Funi’s account of the odd man made Tian pensive. He realized many immigrants were in varying degrees of the same situation: They were attempting to break loose from the grip of the past and to start over in a faraway place. But few of them could foresee the price for that new beginning, or the pain and the hardship that came after.
30
It was already late May, and there was still a lot of pollen in the air. Tian wasn’t bothered by it, but Funi had been miserable ever since mid-April. She sneezed continually, her nose red and swollen. Her face was puffy and made her appear older than she was. To give her more time to rest, Tian continued to drive both of them to work and back.
One evening, as he sat at the dining table talking with his wife on the phone, Funi was doing dishes at the sink. All of a sudden she sneezed loudly, then coughed twice.
Shuna heard the noise and paused on the other end. “Who’s that?” she asked him.
“My roommate, Funi.”
“You’ve never told me you have a woman roommate.”
Shuna sounded doubtful, her voice edgy, so he stood and went into his room to speak more privately. “Yes,” he resumed, “I’m Funi’s roommate. I moved in to share this apartment with her so that I can save some money.”
“But you’ve kept me in the dark about this. Why?”
“I told you I was moving to share an apartment with a coworker.”
“But you didn’t say your roommate was a woman.”
“You were so happy when you heard I could save money that you supported the move. Look, I’ve been working myself half to death every day, leaving for work at daybreak and coming back when the moon is already up.”
“Don’t use that as an excuse! You and a woman have been living together. This isn’t normal.”
“Things are different here. It’s common for people of the opposite sex to share an apartment, just as roommates.”
“What else do you share with her? A cooking pot and a bed too?”
“Don’t be absurd. We’re just coworkers. Of course, she’s been kind and drives me to work. You know I have no car.”
“All those can’t justify your living with a woman. A young woman, isn’t she?”
“She’s twenty-nine. There’s almost a generation between her and me. Rest assured, nothing will happen.”
The more he tried to convince Shuna that Funi and he were just coworkers and roommates, the more agitated his wife sounded, saying she felt betrayed because he’d kept her in the dark. She demanded that he move out of the apartment, or she would let Tingting know that her father was shacking up with a young woman in America. He was bewildered, unable to understand why Shuna, a professor, couldn’t see his reasons. Frustrated, he gave up and told her he would explain clearly via email.
The next evening he wrote her a long message, telling her the truths she couldn’t see from the other side of the world. He was nearly a generation older than Funi and there was no chemistry between them, so no intimacy would develop between them either. To convince Shuna, he attached a photo from Frank’s Spring Festival party. In it, Funi was smiling broadly, an unlit cigarillo in her left hand. Shuna could see how plain she was, and that by no means could such an unattractive woman pose any threat to her. By sharing an apartment with Funi, Tian was saving hundreds of dollars a month, which he could then send home—it was the only way he could have enough money for Shuna and Tingting. He made merely $9.50 an hour and had to pay many bills, among which the rent was the biggest, and he had to reduce it as much as possible. Above all, this was a way to survive in a strange land. Here immigrants often shared resources and lived together so that they could endure hardship and isolation and help each other.
By now Shuna had composed herself. She replied, “Be careful about Funi. She looks wild and she must smoke like a chimney.” In fact, the cigarillo in the photo had been given to Funi by one of the carpenters, and she rarely smoked nowadays. Tian didn’t like Shuna’s remarks but made no argument. He’d better keep the peace.
* * *
—
The massage parlor was nearly completed, but again Frank ran into trouble. Some residents of Waltham abhorred the idea of having such a shady business in the center of their town. In recent months there’d even been protests against the project. Then the matter was put to a vote, in which the anti-construction side won. The Cantonese businessman had no choice but to scrap the whole plan. For days the workers had been talking about the unexpected loss, against which they believed that the businessman must have some kind of insurance—otherwise he wouldn’t have given up the enterprise so easily. But they were certain that Frank didn’t have that kind of protection.
As they predicted, Frank had no cash flow now. He did his best to pay his workers, but all the money spent on the building materials was lost—the Cantonese businessman refused to pay back the costs. In fact, Frank lost all contact with the man, who vanished and let the home improvement company deal with the mess on their own. Frank and Sami were devastated and said they might have to put their home up for a bank loan if they were going to save their business. Yet the fiasco didn’t at all affect Yabin, who had just passed the real estate exam and was about to start as a broker, making good use of his multilingual skills. He could speak a smattering of Vietnamese now, having mixed with the local Vietnamese immigrants for the past two years. Tian wondered whether Yabin had foreseen their company’s disaster on the horizon—the man was a survivor and seemed to have a sixth sense for danger. These days he often advised Tian, “It’s time to change. You belong to the stage, not to home repairs.”
Frank also urged his employees to look for work elsewhere. He said he had no idea when he would get back on his feet again, but unlike the rest of them, he could a
lways find work for himself. Tian suspected Frank might just let the company go down and strike out on his own. Indeed, as a master handyman he was in great demand, and he collected decent rents from the two multiunit houses he owned. Still, he was apologetic to his workers, especially Tian. He said, “Mr. Yao, you speak English beautifully and should find a real job that pulls in a big salary or make a living by getting commissions. You don’t have to sell your brawn like me.”
Tian replied, “If I could choose, I would prefer to be a master craftsman like you.” That was the truth, but Frank shook his heavy-boned face, saying Tian wasn’t built for manual labor and mustn’t think that the food in someone else’s pot always tasted better than his own. They both laughed.
Funi began to look for work elsewhere too. She wanted to find something in the city of Boston—Quincy was becoming too small for her, she often claimed. Instead of searching the job listings, though, she just hopped on the Red Line to Chinatown. Once there, she went from door to door and asked whether they needed help. Tian joked with her, saying, “You must have a thick skin to do that, like a solicitor.”
She shook her roundish chin and said, “What else can I do? I need a job, it’s a matter of survival, and I can’t afford to do nothing.”
“Actually, I admire your guts,” he said sincerely.
“I would never have done such a thing in China. I’d rather stay home and raise kids. But that’s out of the question here.”
“I will follow your example and never give up.”
“Don’t make fun of me. Do I have a choice?”
The next week she landed a job in the warehouse of a supermarket in Chinatown. They hired her mainly because she could speak some English and could drive a truck. Also, she was strong enough to lift packages and vegetable crates. She would need to learn how to operate a forklift, which she said wasn’t hard to drive–she had given it a try on the spot. She was excited about this job and could make $11.25 an hour. Better still, it would pay overtime and also offered benefits, including health insurance and a retirement plan. In every way it looked like a real job.
Meanwhile Tian was at a loss about what to do. He had a driver’s license and could do deliveries, but that kind of work didn’t appeal to him. Nothing seemed as good as a job in home renovation, but he wasn’t skilled in any craft save for making screens, nor did he know where to look for such work. Then one evening Funi suggested, “Why not sing at the casino? I saw some entertainers when I was there last time. They hire a lot of Chinese. Many waitresses are Chinese and even some of the card dealers are Chinese too.” Funi sounded excited as she spoke.
“Which casino are you talking about?” he asked.
“Twin Waters in Connecticut. Lots of Chinese work there, commuting up from Queens. You should give it a try.”
He dismissed the suggestion, feeling uncomfortable about it, but the idea kept coming back to him. He began to grapple with it, weighing the pros and cons. He had been to that casino before and liked the place—it had a fabulous buffet. In the mornings, a bus stopped at President Plaza in Quincy and picked up people going to the casino and brought them back at night. Most of the passengers were senior citizens, who headed for the casino in droves. On behalf of Twin Waters, the bus conductor, a young Chinese woman, gave each of them sixty dollars’ worth of coupons to encourage them to gamble, but they could also use half the coupons to get dinner at the buffet for free. It was a good bargain for them, an easy way to spend a fun day with others. Most of the senior passengers were so appreciative that they added five dollars to the round-trip fare, which was ten dollars, as a tip for the conductor and the driver.
After thinking about it for a week, Tian decided to try his luck at the casino. He called Twin Waters, and the entertainment director, Jesse, spoke with him at length. He asked Tian to send him his résumé, which Tian did without delay. Three days later Jesse interviewed him on the phone, saying he had mentioned him to some Chinese employees there, who all said Tian was a top-notch singer in China. The interview went so well that Jesse invited him to visit Twin Waters for “a small audition.” Tian was delighted to accept the invitation. Before going, he brushed up on his standard folk songs and even learned a few popular new ones.
31
“We might have room for an experienced singer on our roster,” said Jesse. He was Native American, a burly man with melting brown eyes and high cheekbones, wearing a flat straw hat. Tian hadn’t expected to find him such a youthful man. At the phone interview the previous Friday, Jesse had sounded much older, with a slightly raspy voice.
“Is Yao or Tian your last name?” Jesse asked.
“Tian is my first name. The Chinese way is to put the last name first, so formerly I’m Yao Tian.”
“Can you show how well you can sing, Tian?”
“I can sing popular songs,” Tian said. As he spoke, he noticed two young Asian musicians seated nearby. One was holding a clarinet and the other an electric guitar. They were in the casino’s informal entertainment area, called the Atrium, which also had a bar lounge. Small armchairs and coffee tables were scattered throughout the spacious enclosure encircled by a balustrade.
“You can announce my name if you’d like,” he told Jesse. “The Chinese customers will recognize it.”
“All right, let’s do that. If they like your singing, we might take you on.”
While Jesse stepped away to make the announcement, Tian turned to chat with the musicians, who both spoke Chinese. One was from Fuzhou and the other was American-born, having grown up in Texas. They knew of him and seemed puzzled by his appearance here. He told them that he needed to make money for his daughter’s education. They nodded understandingly. He asked them what songs they could play, and they told him about their repertoire, which included many popular songs and movie songs, both Chinese and American. That would do—he felt relieved.
About thirty people, mostly Asians, had left the barstools and armchairs to gather below the small stage. Some raised their phones to snap photos. “Please don’t do that before I sing,” he begged.
One fiftysomething woman laughed and teased, “Aiyah, you can’t have stage fright, can you?”
Jesse came back and told Tian to run through a couple of songs. As the two of them headed backstage, Tian said he would prefer to sing in Chinese.
“That’s all right, as long as the audience can understand you,” Jesse said.
Tian walked onto the little stage, standing behind its short, curved apron, and announced to the audience, “I’m going to share a few songs with you. The first one is called ‘Facing the Ocean.’ ”
The crowd moved closer. The musicians started the music of the movie song and he began to sing:
I’m standing alone on the shore,
Gazing at the end of the waves where
You disappeared. I want to say
Something but have no idea
How to begin. All my words of love
Are gone with the wind….
When he finished, sparse applause went up from the crowd. He realized the song might have flopped. He told the audience, “Sorry about that sad song. Let me sing you a happy one. This song might be more interesting.” He turned to the musicians and asked, “Can you play ‘I Miss You Like Having Ants in My Heart’?” They both nodded, then launched into the lighthearted, frolicsome Taiwanese song.
He began to sing, rocking a little with the music:
I miss you like having ants in me,
Who creep and creep in my heart.
Especially on a lonesome night
They move around and around.
Ah, they make me miss you all the more….
He was surprised that many in the audience knew the song, clapping their hands to the rhythm. He had always viewed this song as decadent, but recently he’d begun to see something honest and sincere in
the lyrics and the music that showed a distinct sensibility, lively and earthy. Now it was a hit with this casino crowd. The instant he was done, applause broke out and voices shouted for more.
Inspired by the warm acceptance, he sang another song written in a similar style, “A Mouse Loves Rice.” Fortunately the musicians were able to play along, and Tian did his best to make the song intimate and amusing while imparting real feeling to the lyrics. The audience went wild. As he reached the last lines, some of them began humming along:
I love you, love you
Like a mouse loves rice.
No matter what hardship is ahead,
I will forever stay by your side.
No matter how hard life is,
As long as you’re happy,
I will do anything
To love you like this.
He was experiencing the kind of thrill he hadn’t felt for years. His eyes were moist and shivers were running down his neck and spine. The long hallway on his left turned hazy and the faces in the crowd, some moving and wavering, blurred for a moment while his soul seemed to be soaring.
He sang two more songs, one from Taiwan and the other from Hong Kong. The moment he got off the stage, three middle-aged Chinese women, clearly tourists, came up and asked him to sign the brochures in their hands. He did carefully. Then Jesse turned up, smiling, and said, “Well, Tian, can you sing songs in English too?”
“I know some, and I can learn more. I have ‘Country Road,’ ‘Pack Up Your Sorrows,’ and ‘My Heart Will Go On’ all in my repertoire.” To be honest, he didn’t like the last one much, but it was the best he could think of in the moment.
Jesse nodded and said, “Can you come to my office for a minute?”
He led Tian to a room with a glass wall down the hallway. The second they stepped into his office, he flipped on the lights. One after another the fluorescent rings flared on with a ping and began to glow. Jesse drew up a folding chair for him and said, “Welcome to Twin Waters, Tian.” Grinning, he held out his hand.
