A Free Life Page 27

  “How are you doing today?” Dick grinned, then pointed at Eleanor while saying in his toneless Mandarin, “She’s my girlfriend.”

  “Do you want to order now?” Tammie asked without raising her eyes.

  Though discomfited by the waitress’s sudden temper, Dick turned to Eleanor. “What would you like?”

  “How about moo shu?”

  “It’s great, but it’ll take a long time to make.”

  “Shoot, I have to be at the Manleys’ at eight.”

  “Then let’s have something else.”

  “You said they served shark here. Why isn’t it on the menu?”

  “Nan cooks it only for friends.”

  “Can we have that? I’ve eaten shark only once in my entire life.”

  “Tammie, do you know if Nan can make that for us?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Then I’ll go ask him.” Dick also ordered fried wontons for an appetizer, watercress soup, and Five-Spice Beef. In addition, they each wanted a beer, he a Tsingtao and Eleanor a Miller Lite.

  Nan had learned how to stir-fry and steam shark from Mr. Wang, though he hadn’t printed this dish on the menu for fear that some children, if they knew the restaurant offered shark, might dissuade their parents from dining there. In fact, Mr. Wang had once included this specialty on his menu, but several kids talked to him about all the virtues of the fish, and still the old man wouldn’t give up serving the dish. As a consequence, the kids made some people boycott the shark-serving Gold Wok. Soon Mr. Wang stopped offering this dish and mailed his new sharkless menu to hundreds of households in the area.

  Dick went into the kitchen and asked Nan, “Can you cook shark for us today?”

  “Sure, we have some fresh steaks. Boy, you’re quick—you got a girlfriend the moment you started teaching here.”

  “I should learn more about southern women, shouldn’t I? Actually, Eleanor is a Ph.D. student in my department.”

  “Well, zat’s not very professional. You’re not supposed to date your student.” Nan winked at him while tossing bok choy and shrimp in a wok.

  “That’s why I should make her happy. Cook a big shark for us, will you?”

  “Stir-fry or steam?”

  “Stir-fry.”

  “I’ll get it ready in fifteen minutes.”

  As soon as Dick went out of the kitchen, Pingping came in and talked with Nan about the way Tammie was treating the couple. They guessed the waitress might be jealous; still, she shouldn’t have been rude to the customers. To forestall trouble, Nan suggested that Pingping take over that table. If Dick had been here alone, he could have smoothed things over by chatting with him himself every now and again, but today Dick had a lady friend with him. Eleanor seemed at ease and even swigged beer directly from Dick’s bottle. They must already have shared a lot together, so Nan wouldn’t go over and interrupt them.

  He felt relieved that Tammie was pleased with Pingping’s help; she already had her hands full, waiting on the other tables and booths. Yet the waitress couldn’t stop throwing glances in the direction of Dick and Eleanor. Her eyes were shining and her face flushed.

  Done with dinner, Dick left a five for tip, which Pingping let Tammie take. When they were cleaning up before they closed, Nan said to the waitress, “Tammie, why do you look so unhappy today?” He spoke just as a way to start conversation, as he assumed he knew the reason for her sullenness.

  “I dunno,” she said.

  “You should have tritted Dick and his girlfriend better.”

  She glared at him and asked, “Why did you say he was gay?”

  Nan was taken aback as he remembered their conversation from long ago. He still believed Dick might be a homosexual, but was unsure how to explain, so he said, “I had no idea he had a girlfriend. I asked him just now, and he said he wanted to know more about souzzern women.”

  “Then how could he be gay?”

  “Zis is beyond me too.”

  “I know you think I’m cheap and silly. You too, Pingping, always take me to be a fool.”

  “Not true, we never think that way,” Pingping protested.

  “Don’t deny it! If not, why did Nan lie to me?”

  “I didn’t lie to you,” said Nan.

  “You told me Dick was gay.”

  “I saw him wiz some men in New York. I still sink he might be a homosexual.”

  “Then why was he with that snake-hipped woman?”

  “Maybe he likes women too. How can I tell? I didn’t know him zat well before he came to Atlanta.”

  “You lied to me, because you thought I lost my head about him. Let me tell you, I don’t care a damn about what he is. I just have enough of your tricks.”

  “Please, Tammie, don’t explode like zis. You reelly misunderstood my intention.”

  “Good night.” She plopped the mop behind the kitchen door and picked up her shoulder bag. Without turning her fluffy head she tore out toward her car.

  The next day Tammie didn’t show up. Nan and Pingping were worried and called her, but nobody picked up the phone. She didn’t have an answering machine. The Wus were at a loss. There wasn’t a lot of business at the moment, and even without Tammie they could manage. But the understaffed situation mustn’t continue, because Pingping couldn’t possibly work as both the cashier and waitress for long. A few days in a row Nan called Tammie, to no avail. If he had known where she lived, he would have gone to her apartment and begged her to return, but there was simply no way to get hold of her. Once her roommate answered the phone and promised to pass Nan’s message on to her, but Tammie never called back.

  13

  TAMMIE’S walkout upset Nan and Pingping. A week later they heard that she had started waitressing at Grand Buddha in Decatur; obviously she was making more money there. That Chinese restaurant was owned by a Korean family and had a full bar and more than forty tables. Now that Tammie was gone for good, Nan began looking for a new waitress. A few women showed interest, but he didn’t hire any of them because they were all college students and might not stay long. He couldn’t afford to have a disruption again and preferred to use someone who depended more on such a job.

  Then the idea came to him that he could call Ding’s Dumplings in New York and see whether somebody there might be willing to come to Atlanta and work for him. He knew that many Chinese had left the Northeast for the South because life here was comfortable and more affordable. Also, the staff at Ding’s Dumplings viewed that restaurant as a transit place and would move elsewhere once they had enough work experience. Nan called New York one afternoon, and Yafang Gao happened to answer the phone. “How have you been?” he asked her. “I thought you had left Ding’s Dumplings.”

  “I’m fine. I’m the hostess now.”

  “Congratulations! You’re in charge there?”

  “Basically.”

  Nan went on to describe his need for a waitress and the kind of money that person could make at the Gold Wok, at least two hundred dollars a week, cash, if the business was good. He told her that rent here was very low compared with New York.

  “Maybe I should come,” Yafang said in a joking voice, which surprised Nan.

  “No, I can’t pay the kind of wages you’re pulling in.” He knew that as the hostess she was paid by the hour. Besides, her work at Ding’s Dumplings was less demanding.

  “Here’s the deal—I’ll come if you divorce your wife.” She giggled.

  She sounded like a different person now, flirtatious and carefree, no longer the timid young woman tricked into an adult movie theater and then into bed by Heng Chen, that desperate man. She must be a capable hostess at Ding’s Dumplings.

  It happened that Yafang had a distant cousin studying somewhere in Georgia (she wasn’t sure at which school), whose wife had just come to America from Jiangsu Province. Yafang wondered if his wife might be interested in the job, and gave Nan the phone number.

  Then Nan inquired about his former fellow workers and acquaintances in New Y
ork. Yafang told him that David Kellman and Maiyu had married last spring, that Chinchin had gone to nursing school at the University of Connecticut, and that Aimin had started a snack shop with her cousin in Flushing.

  “How about Heng Chen?” Nan paused. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought up his name.”

  “That wretch has returned to China.” She sounded flat and unemotional.

  “Really? What happened to him?”

  “He couldn’t make it here. Such a loser.”

  “He got into trouble?”

  “No, he had to go back. Maiyu said he was sick of America and he had come just to make money.”

  “He must’ve taken back a fortune with him.”

  “Not at all. He didn’t even have enough money to buy gifts for his parents and relatives, so he sold a kidney.”

  “What? Is that true?”

  “Why should I lie to you?” She sounded a little cheerful now.

  “How much did he get for his kidney?”

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “I knew his parents often demanded he send them remittances, but I couldn’t imagine he’d sell his own organ.”

  “He’s a typical ‘small man’ and couldn’t survive in America. A born coward.”

  “Still, it must’ve taken a lot of guts to sell a kidney.”

  Yafang cackled. “Nan, you haven’t lost your sense of deadpan humor.”

  Her remark puzzled Nan, who hadn’t meant to be funny at all. In fact, the conversation saddened him. However, the relative she had mentioned turned out to be helpful. Yafang’s cousin, Shubo Gao, happened to be a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Georgia and lived near Lawrenceville. He answered Nan’s call and let his wife, Niyan, speak with Nan. She was very eager to take the job and said she was tired of living idly at home. The next day she came to the Gold Wok, accompanied by her husband. Pingping liked Niyan, who was in her late twenties and quite good-looking, with a button nose, long-lashed eyes, and an oval face. So the Wus hired her and she started to work two days later. Niyan knew English, though she sounded as if she were giving a spiel when she spoke to customers, making little distinction between the long and the short vowels. But the Wus were pleased to have her, and things were normal again at the Gold Wok.

  For days Nan thought about the phrase Yafang had used on the phone—“small man”—which was a faddish term that appeared in the Chinese-language newspapers and magazines published in the diaspora. It had been coined a few months earlier by a woman in a scathing article entitled “Let Us Condemn Small Men.” She criticized some male Chinese immigrants who, having encased themselves in the past, made no effort to blend into American society. According to her, these “spineless men,” unable to adapt to the life here, would vent their spleen on their wives and girlfriends and blame America for their own failure. Under the pretext of patriotism and preserving Chinese culture, they’d refuse to learn anything from other cultures. To them, even American salt was not as salty as Chinese salt. All they knew about America was strip bars, casinos, prostitutes, MBAs, CEOs; they had no friends of other races and refused to learn English. They were like crabs trapped in a vat, striving against one another, but none could get out of it. Some of them, who had lived in this country for more than a decade, still couldn’t understand movies like Rain Man, Dances with Wolves, and Peter Pan. They had never visited a museum, and neither would they travel to see Europe or Latin America. They didn’t know how many innings a baseball game had. They had no idea who Elvis Presley was, not to mention an appreciation of his music; they couldn’t tell jazz from rock, or country from gospel; whenever they got homesick, they’d sing revolutionary songs, and their number one choice was “The Internationale.” Still, they believed they were geniuses hamstrung by misfortunes and stunted by the emigration, as if there were no other people in the world who suffered more than they. By nature most Chinese women in America didn’t aspire to be strong women, but their small men forced them to be more responsible and play the role of both wife and husband. It was common sense that when yang was weak, yin would have to grow stronger and prevail. “These small men can be a scourge of your bodies and minds,” the author concluded. “Sisters, let us shun them if we cannot change or get rid of them.”

  Since the publication of that vociferous article in the Global Weekly, there had been heated discussion of the topic. A lot of men were outraged, saying the author, as a compatriot of theirs, should at least have some sympathy for them. They had already been mentally dwarfed and socially handicapped by living in America and by the tremendous struggle they had to wage for survival, so they didn’t need her sort of twaddle, which just gave them more stress. Several meetings were held in American and Australian cities to debate the author’s views. Many men wrote articles condemning her as a traitor, “a mere banana”—yellow on the outside and white on the inside.

  Nan had seen that some of the men had indeed grown feeble and trivial, yet they were all the more megalomaniac. As for himself, he felt he was a better man than before. On the other hand, he knew that most of the labeled men were lonely souls who suffered intensely here. It was said that if a foreigner or immigrant lived in America for five years without family or close friends, the person would develop emotional problems. If one lived here for ten years isolated like that, one would have a mental disorder.

  Nowadays it was commonplace for a woman to insult a Chinese man by calling him a “small man.” That meant the fellow was a hopeless loser all women should hold in contempt.

  14

  JANET came and told Pingping that Dave and she had decided to adopt a baby, but that they’d have to wait three or four months before they could get a definite answer from the orphanage in Nanjing. The waiting list was long because lately a lot of American couples had begun to adopt Chinese babies and thus overwhelmed the adoption system there. In the Mitchells’ case, Janet and Dave weren’t sure whether they should continue to work with their agent or find another way to get a baby sooner. Janet asked Pingping, “Do you have a friend or relative who lives in Nanjing or nearby?”

  “I have a cousin in Nantong, in same province. But we are never close because he betray my father in Cultural Revolution to protect himself. He just want to join Communist Party. Why you ask?”

  “Dave and I wonder if we can find someone in China who can help us adopt a baby quickly. The regular process will take forever.”

  “I can ask my cousin, but I don’t trust him. Let Nan and I think about this, okay?”

  “Sure. If you can help us find some inside connections, that’ll make the whole thing easier.”

  Nan put in, “How much does an agent cawst?”

  “Ten thousand at most. We paid three thousand up front.”

  “If I were you, I’d use zee agent instead of depending on personal pull, as long as your agent has a good reputation.”

  “Why? Don’t most people use personal connections to get things done in China?”

  “Yes, but you may end up paying more zan you pay zee agent, and there will be endless anxiety. Any petty awfficial can interfere and create trahble for you. Zee awfficial world in China is like a black hole, and few people can keep their bearings once they’re sucked into it. Besides, your connections in China will have to bribe awfficials at every turn. You will pay for zer horrendous bribes, right?”

  “I guess so. But we’ve been thinking of doing this both ways, using our agent and the inside connections at the same time.”

  “No, you should rely on your agent only.”

  “Nan has point,” Pingping said. “There’s a lotta trouble if you involve officials.”

  So the Mitchells continued working with a Chinese American woman based in San Francisco, who had successfully helped dozens of families adopt babies. Janet showed the agency’s literature to Pingping and Nan, who both felt the woman was trustworthy. Pingping even talked to her on behalf of the Mitchells, saying they had been her friends for a long time and were a reliable, loving couple, who
had just built their dream home, a big Victorian house in an affluent neighborhood. She also mentioned they would become Taotao’s guardians should she and her husband die by accident. The agent, named Ruhua, was impressed and said in her Mandarin roughened by Cantonese, “Thank you for the information. That’s very helpful. I’m going to schedule a home study of the Mitchells.”

  “You mean you’ll come here?”

  “Oh no, I’ll contact a local person, a certified social worker, who will go interview Dave and Janet and make sure they’re a responsible couple and financially capable of supporting a child. Also, they must have no history of child abuse and substance abuse. Both the INS and the Chinese side demand the information.”

  “I see.”

  Ruhua promised to try her best to help the Mitchells. At the request of Janet, Pingping wrote a reference letter for her and Dave, stating that they were virtuous, dependable, and compassionate. Nan put it into English because Ruhua wanted the translation attached to the original. Even though she could speak Mandarin fluently, the agent couldn’t read the written characters. The Mitchells needed two more letters, and Janet asked another friend of hers and Susie, the salesgirl working at her jewelry store, to provide the other references.

  15

  THE SURFACE of the lake was glittering in the morning sunshine. In spite of the wintry weather, a flock of mallards was paddling in the water, which had grown drab due to the absence of green foliage. Nan had once liked observing the Canada geese, but he couldn’t tolerate them anymore. To him they were robbers and gluttons. Whenever they came into the yard, they’d graze on the grass, each guarding an area for itself. If one of them wandered into another’s territory, the other goose or gander would lunge at the trespasser with flapping wings, a stretched neck, and an open beak emitting ugly hisses. The lakeside was already naked, the grass eaten up by the waterfowl. Since the fall, the Wus’ back lawn had been dwindling. The geese would browse closer and closer to the house. Sometimes they would even come below the deck, pulling and jabbing at the grass without pause. Pingping would chase them away whenever she saw them coming too close, but they’d soon return and resume grazing on the sward, always tearing the tender shoots first.