— At school, people say American children are very easy, she says. People say you ask them one question they will talk, talk, talk. You ask them three questions they will love you.
— Like you ask us questions! I say.
She smiles her funny smile.
LAN /
At school, people say that when you talk to American children you have to ask,
You want this one or that one? The blue one or the red one?
Then they will be happy. If you simply say
Here is red one, I know you like red,
the children will not be happy. They don’t want you to know what they like, they want to choose for themselves.
WENDY /
— That’s kind of true, says Lizzy. Like I wanted to have blond hair, I didn’t want my hair to be plain black until I died. Do you know what I mean?
Lanlan nods, but then she says: — Black hair very nice, nothing the matter with black hair. That is your natural hair.
She says she hopes we will not grow up
one hundred percent American.
First the children talk about themselves all day, she says, and then they think about themselves all day. All day long they think, What is my favorite this? What is my favorite that?
LAN /
Chinese people say Americans don’t care about other people, they only care about themselves. Americans do not take care of even their own mothers and fathers. When their parents get old, Americans just put them in a nursing home. Their parents die by themselves. Chinese people say Americans have no feelings.
WENDY /
She says that in America, if you borrow money from somebody and
have some trouble,
people expect you to pay it back no matter what.
— Of course, these days, even in China, some people are like that, she says. Especially those people born in Cultural Revolution. But they are not real Chinese.
When her grandfather died, she says, he had a whole trunk full of IOUs from people he knew would pay him if they could, except that they couldn’t, and it just went to show what a big heart he had, that he did not ask them. On his deathbed he just said that he wanted all the papers burned.
— That is how real Chinese think, she says.
— Wow, we say.
Lanlan is amazed that people in America drive and eat at the same time, eating in cars makes her shake her head. So dangerous, she says, really it should be illegal the way it is in China. Plus she thinks it must be bad for people’s digestion, digestion being another thing she talks about a lot, besides catching cold. What is good for the stomach, what is bad for the stomach, what has heat, what is cool. She likes teaching us stuff, and Lizzy can tell you a lot of it already—that garlic and bananas have heat, and that pears are cooling, also lotus root. Forget that she barely knows what a lotus root is, even, Lizzy’s like Elaine at school, she just says stuff if she feels like it. Lanlan thinks eating and driving must be bad for the stomach. She says she doesn’t know how Americans can eat without stopping to eat, although obviously they do because look how many fat people there are! Many more than in the movies. She says she heard that once Chinese people come to America, they get fat too. Of course there are fat people in China now, more and more of them because of McDonald’s, but still not as many as here, she cannot believe how people eat. How huge the sandwiches are, so big people can barely get their mouths open wide enough. And the drinks—so big people need two hands to lift them.
She does not want to eat at all, looking at them, she does not want to become fat like an American. Also the smell of people here makes her want to throw up. How people smell! That’s one thing you don’t realize from the movies.
LAN /
Chinese people do not smell.
WENDY /
She wants to know if people will smell less in the winter when they are wearing sweaters. She is surprised how hairy some of the people are too, she knew that from the movies, but still didn’t realize how hairy, even some of the women, she says, and there are men who look
one hundred percent like monkey.
LAN /
Even their backs are covered with hair.
WENDY /
And the way they sit, she says. The women not even covered with clothes some of them, and big as mountains and all over their chairs. She’s surprised American chairs are not bigger. And she stares at the black people with that hair braided all different ways, or else loose like a big ball of seaweed, she wants to know if it has any use, like if they can cut it off and sell it for something. Scrub brushes maybe, or pillow stuffing. She’s amazed at how different people look from each other, she knew it from the movies but still she’s shocked by that, and by how complete strangers say hello on the street, even if they never saw you before. She says the first time that happened she ran away.
LAN /
Sometimes I saw men let women walk in front of them. Even open doors for them, as if they were important! Just like in the movies. I was amazed to see that.
And nobody ate the squirrels, even in the countryside, that’s what the girls said. There was so much food. People let whole trees full of fruit just fall to the ground.
LIZZY /
It all made her want to throw up, which I understood. Because to be honest it all made me want to throw up too, sometimes.
WENDY /
She can be warm and bright, full of funny songs and funny voices, but she can sink away like the sun, and come back as the moon. She is suddenly here and suddenly there, she knows lots of games. Sometimes we don’t know what room she is even in. A lot of the time she is on the floor or on a stool, she likes stools. She does not need a chair to sit up straight, she sits up straight on a stool, in fact she doesn’t even need a stool. She sits up straight even when she’s squatting, and can squat a lot better than Lizzy. She rests her elbows on her knees like they are the most convenient thing, and she squats in this very light way, with her feet together, so that she looks like that kind of rice bowl that has a little built-in pedestal. Or like she could balance something on top of her head, and could stand up without knocking it over. She says she is comfortable anywhere. Americans need padding, she says, and we can see she is proud she does not. She likes to say what she does not need.
— I do not need more clothes, she says.
— I do not need more food.
— I do not need more room.
She says she can
chi ku
—eat bitter—and that makes her different than an American, she is just glad she is not staying here.
LAN /
Why was I brought here? Because Carnegie’s mother wanted me to come, they said. But I wondered, what was the real reason? What did they want from me?
WENDY /
She says she is not like young people in China these days either, all they know is how to
wanr
—fool around. And how to
hui jin ru tu
—spend money like dirt.
— What is eat bitter? we say.
But when we say that, she looks at her feet.
— I see you are one hundred percent American, she says.
LAN /
What real Chinese would ever ask that question?
WENDY /
She says eat bitter is bad in one way but not so bad in another way. She says if you can eat bitter it will make you strong.
LAN /
Chinese people have a saying.
Chi de ku zhong ku, fang wei ren shang ren
—Eat the bitterest of the bitter, rise above other men. My father said that all the time.
WENDY /
She says Americans are rich but soft.
— You know why Chinese people survive such long time? she says. Because we are not soft.
She says: — Chinese people today, especially in the coastal area, like to have comfortable life. But real Chinese people think live easy life is like drink poison.
LAN /
My father, being a scholar, used to quote Mencius on this subject. Anxiety and distress lead to life, he used to say. Ease and comfort end in death.
Of course, these are things Americans will never understand.
WENDY /
When she says these things it doesn’t really matter if you nod or not. Either way she looks at you then looks out the window like Lizzy, sometimes I wonder how old you have to be to look out the window like that. Her face is like the moon, there is nothing in it, she is done talking. When I look out the window I don’t see anything there, I don’t see what they see, and Lanlan looks at her feet too, that’s another thing. How old do you have to be to do that? Lanlan looks at her feet to see how the veins are popping out even through her stockings, she says she didn’t used to be able to see her veins at all. But luckily nobody knows except her. Even if they are in slippers and no one can see them, she says she always knows, and when she says that I can almost see them. I can almost see how she presses her toes together like she does with her fingers, her fingers keep to themselves.
— You can see everything in the feet, she says sometimes. You can see what that person’s life is.
That’s what she says, but when me and Lizzy look at our feet, we see nothing.
— Also you can hear everything, she says, if you listen.
But when we listen, all we hear is Tommy
naa
-ing downstairs.
— Do you hear it? Can you hear it? Of course you have to know how to listen, she says.
She mostly says these things to me and Lizzy. Mom only hears a little bit, but Mom loves it all, especially the part about needing nothing. It’s like Lanlan is the best newspaper article she ever read.
— She is rich in spirit, Mom says. We have too much stuff.
Since Lanlan came Mom has been throwing stuff out, giving stuff away.
— We are choking on possessions, she says one day. Every day I am going to get rid of three things.
And another day she says: — These things have a life of their own. They have more life than I do.
Yesterday she gave a whole bunch of appliances to Goodwill. Like I think a toaster oven, and a pressure cooker she was always afraid was going to blow up, and a cappuccino machine that didn’t foam that great. Today she is giving away a pair of ski boots, and an old watch, and a casserole, and a bunch of travel books. It’s hard to stick to three things, she says, there is so much she wants to get rid of.
— Do you know what we do? she says. We consume to avoid living.
— That is like so true, says Lizzy.
She comes into the kitchen all of a sudden, who even knew she was listening, and instead of eating by herself because we bug her, the way she sometimes does, she gets a normal plate like a normal person because actually she likes Dad’s French toast. Not that she would admit it. He makes the French toast with corn bread so he can say how corny it is, but nobody does think it’s corny, everybody loves it. Even if it does sort of crumble all over.
The morning light is yellow, just like the kitchen Mom painted yellow so it would be warm and kitcheny even in the rain. So that everything now is yellow yellow yellow, even the plates, which are white.
Says Mom: — It helps us avoid questions like, Are we alive? And, Can we call this a life?
Mom says this because she was up half the night. The end of the quarter and you know how Porter is, she says. But Dad says that’s not really the problem.
— Your problem, he says, is that you actually believe responsible investment will change the world.
— Absolutely it will, she says, cutting stuff up for Bailey. — Think of externalities such as the environment, and how much pressure . . .
— At the same time you wonder, Do you really believe it the way you used to?
Mom sips her coffee.
— Or does the spiel just come spieling out? says Dad.
Mom covers her nose with her mug. Then she uncovers it, which makes her nostrils flare just like this very little bit. Her nostrils are sort of oval, not round like Lizzy’s and Daddy’s and Lanlan’s and mine, and usually sort of pink, but not today. Today the bottom of her mug is yellow, and her nails are yellow, and of course her hair, which was already yellow. Everything except her eyes.
— On the other hand, it’s a job, says Dad. At least you’re not laying people off, like my own dear Document Management Systems.
— Is getting laid off the same as getting fired? I say.
— Not exactly, says Dad. But of course you worry.
— You worry because you have a family to support, says Mom.
— You have a family to support. But here’s the thing, says Dad. In one way you definitely, one hundred percent want to hang on to your job.
He turns around with a fresh delivery to dump on the plate in the middle of the table.
— But in another way you wonder if for all that work we’re really that much happier than Lan.
— Of course we’re happier than Lan, says Mom.
— We’re more comfortable than Lan.
Me and Lizzy start putting on syrup.
— Please! says Mom. You can’t seriously envy someone who’s lived through the Cultural Revolution! Do you realize what life is like there?
— I’m not saying I’d change places with her.
Mom cuts up her own French toast.
— And yet, she says finally.
— And yet the last time I used the words ‘endless possibility’ it had to do with the myriad uses of a griddle.
He flips stuff over.
— You guys sound like you’re sorry about your whole entire life, I say.
— A lot of things are written, and can’t be rewritten, says Mom.
— Like what? says Lizzy. Like what would you write over, anyway?
— Our family would be the same, of course, says Mom.
LIZZY /
She just said that because she had to.
— You can’t exactly say you wish you hadn’t adopted me, I said. Or Wendy. Not to our faces.
— I wouldn’t say it, period. Because it isn’t true.
— But you wish I was less dramatic and Wendy was less shy, and if we weren’t adopted, maybe we wouldn’t be like that. Maybe we’d be more like Bailey, and like you.