But Sue refused our offer, just as she refused, later, a job in the kitchen.
—Don’t be ridiculous,
she said.
How can I hold a job?
She was waiting, she said, for her daughter to come back.
Then the warm weather came, and with it, no daughter, but many friends.
Not only did people use the beach around the bend, they used the beach right in front of the house. And they stared at us, brazenly. Me especially, because I was a woman. Every time I stepped outside the house people stared and stared. As if I was on their property. Sometimes I hid behind the big pine tree that grew right beside the house. Of course, that just made people laugh. I was glad there were so many bugs; for a while, when the sun went down, the bugs drove the people away.
But when it got hotter, the people ignored the bugs.
By July there were more and more people. They began to make campfires in the evening, so they could have dinner on the beach. They liked to
barbecue
things. We could smell the
barbecue
from the house. Also the smoke, people said, drove the bugs away. Sometimes it seemed they were never going to leave at all. Jiabao and I could come home from the store at eleven at night and still find people sitting around their beach fires.
— That’s dangerous,
I told them.
You are too close to those willow trees. Those pine needles too are very dry.
But they just laughed.
It seemed that there were more fires all the time, and closer to the house too. Sometimes we would look out and feel as if we were
si mian chu ge
—hearing Chu songs on four sides. It was as if we were being held captive in the camp of a barbarian army.
We felt we could not leave our house. How endless, already, the summer seemed!
BLONDIE /
I wished they had called us.
LAN /
We did not think
Carnegie
and
Blondie
could help us anymore. Too busy with the baby, we thought. So we called the police. And when the police didn’t come we went to the mayor, who shook his head but then explained he was only the mayor. He said we should call the police.
CARNEGIE /
If only the police did not themselves use the beach for their annual All You Can Eat pancake fund-raiser.
BLONDIE /
The locals called it Sue’s Beach. They called the island Buck’s Island, and the beach, Sue’s Beach.
LAN /
Sometimes Jiabao would yell at the intruders from the screened porch overlooking the best strip of beach. Sometimes he yelled:
— Get off this property! Go away!
Sometimes he yelled:
— This is not your beach!
One day he stormed out of the porch and down the front steps. I begged him to please stop, to please come back in.
—
Ignore them, I said, in Shandongnese. Better to do nothing than to overdo.
But he didn’t listen.
Of course, the people answered:
— Fuck you. This ain’t your beach either.
One of them was particularly loud, a big man with tattoos all over his body. Big ears too, like the Buddha. He walked over with a towel around his neck.
BLONDIE /
Billy.
LAN /
I begged Jiabao once more to come inside.
— Please, I said. I’ll rip up my
green card.
Please.
I said that because sometimes he believed I had married him to get a
green card.
Sometimes he believed I was going to divorce him as soon as I could say we had been married for two years, and have the conditions on my
green card
removed. It made him crazy, made him do crazy things.
— Come back in, I said.
— This beach is the town beach,
said the tattoo man.
It belonged to Sue’s family originally, and now she’s taken it back and given it to the town.
— This beach,
said Jiabao,
belongs to the Bailey family. According to the law. And America is a land ruled by law.
— Oh yeah? And what does that have to do with you?
— They gave it to us to live here.
— Oh yeah?
— Of course, we plan to one day buy it from them.
— Fucking foreigners,
said somebody.
Fucking foreigners are going to own our beach.
— Can you fucking believe it?
said some other people.
Fucking foreigners.
Most people went back to sunbathing then. They rolled over on their towels and went back to sleeping or smoking or talking or drinking. Some people went in the water, or played with their kids. There were a lot of rafts in the water. People liked those rafts you could lie on, especially the ones with cup holders for their beer. Only a few people sat up. Still the tattoo man stood there.
— This is not your beach,
said Jiabao.
This is the Bailey family’s beach.
— This beach belongs to the earth, and the earth belongs to no man,
said the tattoo man.
— You heard him,
said some of the people watching. The tattoo man put up his hand, meaning ‘quiet.’ Then he went on:
— Now, reasonably speaking, you must admit there is something wrong with the one beach on the whole lake, the one beach in the whole town, belonging to a family who doesn’t even come for the weekend. Who has their house all opened up but then decides they’re not sure if it’s worth the drive to come lie on their beach. You must admit there’s something wrong with their giving it to foreigners to use when the people who live here have no beach whatsoever. And you must admit there’s something wrong with its being offered to foreigners to buy without one person in town even knowing it’s for sale. Do you follow my drift?
— No,
said Jiabao.
— It is plain unnatural,
said the tattoo man.
Because like I said, the earth belongs to no man.
— I thought you said it belongs to Sue.
— Sue’s family gave it to the children of the town. They never meant for it to belong to foreigners,
said somebody else.
— Nobody, nobody ever intended it to belong to fucking foreigners,
said a third person.
That’s clear. The earth or the Bucks either.
— It was perhaps rude and unnatural of the Baileys not to think more of their neighbors from the beginning,
said Jiabao.
Perhaps there were laws beyond the law they might have considered. As for the earth, however, I must tell you: I do not believe the earth has an opinion.
At this, a boy on the beach laughed:
— How could the earth have an opinion?
Others shushed him.
— Further,
said Jiabao,
if the earth does have an opinion, then no one can say, This piece of land is mine. No one at all. Neither the Baileys, nor anyone else. Does anyone here own land?
No answer.
—
Perhaps we may agree that the earth agrees to the principle of private ownership in capitalist countries,
said Jiabao.
Or at least has no way to object. Do you agree?
No answer.
—
And one more thing,
said Jiabao.
— Aw, shut up already,
said someone.
Will you just shut up!
Some people turned their radios up.
— I am not a foreigner,
said Jiabao.
— How now?
said the tattoo man.
— I am a U.S. citizen.
— You’re a citizen? How could you be a citizen?
said somebody.
— Idiot,
said somebody else.
He’s whaddyacallit. Neutralized. Naturalized.
— I passed the test,
said Jiabao.
— You passed the test,
said the tattoo man.
— The citizenship test.
— The citizenship test!
People laughed.
— My uncle took that test,
said someone.
But still people laughed
and laughed.
— Let me ask you,
said Jiabao.
How about if you tell me how many branches of government there are.
No one said anything.
— Three,
said Jiabao.
The executive, the judicial, and the legislative.
— Yeah, and how about you tell us how many ways you can be fucked,
said somebody.
Everyone laughed.
—
In any case, the fact that you’re a citizen doesn’t make you an American,
said the tattoo man.
— Oh, really,
said Jiabao.
And how is that?
— A citizen thinks this country is about law. But an American knows it is about who is really American.
— Please leave this beach,
said Jiabao.
— This land does not belong to you and, trust me, never will.
— You’re right, said Jiabao. It belongs to the Baileys. Please leave.
— Please leave,
people echoed.
Please leave.
— Why should we listen to you?
said the tattoo man.
You piece of shit.
— Because in China I was a professor,
said Jiabao.
— A professor! Professor of what? Professor of Shit? With a B.S. degree?
I went out onto the steps.
— Come in,
I told Jiabao, in English.
Time to eat. Come in. Food is getting cold.
He looked up. People were still laughing.
— Please come. Please.
He hesitated but did come in, finally, shouting:
— You people are crazy!
—
You are crazy too, to talk to those people, I said. Those people will kill you.
—
Let them kill me, said Jiabao. You know, I look at the beach and I see it is beautiful. And the pond, look how beautiful it is. Like something in a painting, a place for scholars to go fishing. And this house is beautiful too, and my wife—look—you are the most beautiful of all. If I had not left China, I would never know how much happiness could never be mine.
—
It will, it will be yours, I said. Our shop is doing very well. Probably we will start making money again soon.
But he kept saying:
—
I wish I did not know. I wish I did not know. We can buy the Baileys’ house, but we cannot own it.
He laughed and laughed.
— Sue’s beach can never become Mr. Su’s beach, he said. You cannot add one word, no matter how much money you have. A joke! It is truly a joke!
And later:
—
Someday I will go back to China and help our country rise again. You watch. I will help the Chinese people stand up to these ignorant American bullies.
—
Maybe I’ll come with you, I said.
—
You! he said. Who can depend on a woman like you? I know your type all too well. In the morning you say three, in the afternoon you say four.
— I would definitely come with you, I said. If you invited me.
— You mean, so long as Mr. Shang did not invite you to be his
cofounder,
right? No more dumplings for you then.
Mrs. Cofounder!
I tried to tell him that I had always wanted to go back to China, that Shang would have helped me go back to China. But he would not hear me.
He loved me but did not hear me.
Later he was more himself.
—
Nao xiu cheng nu,
he said—constant shame becomes rage.
He said:
—
I understand the townspeople. What their life is.
He said:
—
Maybe I should not have become a
U.S. citizen
. I should have just taken a
green card
like you. Forget about citizenship. Then I could go back and forth freely. Make a living in America, retire in Shandong. Though of course, you would never come with me to Shandong.
I could not say that I would. I could say it with my mouth but not with my heart. And so I said nothing. Which he understood.
— Anyway, he said, it is too cold here.
He went to sleep early, with a headache. I stayed up much later. Yet, having a doctor’s appointment, I got up earlier than he all the same.
Of course, even then it was quite windy. It had been a calm evening, but the morning was windy.
Why did I not wake Jiabao?
I let him sleep. It was so early. I had to start out early because I did not know how to drive the car, and was planning to walk. Not that it was so far, a couple of miles.
Jiabao needed sleep.
How windy it was! Like Shandong in the spring.
BLONDIE /
I knew that wind—how it roused the water, making the whitecaps rise. We used to shut the windows when the wind came up like that. My mother would tell us kids to quick go make sure the boats were tied up. If the boats weren’t tied up, we would be sure to hear about it from my father.
CARNEGIE /
I remembered that wind too. How could I forget? How suddenly it came up. How it turned the pond against me.
LAN /
Some people said the fire was malicious, an answer to Jiabao’s insults. Others said the fire was the result of carelessness—a smoldering beach fire that would have normally gone out. Yet others said
Sue
set the fire. They said
Sue
thought that it was winter and that she was shut out of the house again, her house. They said she made the fire to keep her child warm.
We had never shut
Sue
out, but that’s what people said. Perhaps she had come other winters, and found herself locked out. That was possible.
In any case, a tree caught fire, and then others. The willows. Then the big pine nearest the main house fell over as if someone had pushed it. It fell over, burning, onto the roof. Which needed work badly—Jiabao had noticed that when we put in the
insulation.