“I need to sit down,” I heard myself say in slow motion.
He paused to look at me, his face full of annoyance, and then, concern. “Are you okay? You don’t look well.”
I took a deep breath, and another, and another. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, twice. I attempted to swallow the dryness, the stinging, the tears, and the vomit, all of which were poised and ready to make an appearance.
“I’m not sure,” I started to say, and then I saw black.
11.
When I woke, supine on a large, perfectly manicured patch of grass under a tree, I thought for a moment it had all been a dream. A crazy, first-world nightmare, actually, where I’d given up:
my identity
my home
my car
my cat
my best friend
my hair stylist/colorist
my dry cleaner
my life goals, and
my robust and rewarding albeit challenging career
for a noisy chunk of the planet that smelled like a gargantuan toilet and operated under a whole new set of rules that I couldn’t, for the life of me, comprehend. Until a man in a camel-colored romper, matching hat, and white gloves leaned over me and blew his whistle.
I startled, and Daniel leaned over me from the other side.
“Apparently we’re not allowed on the grass,” Daniel said. “I saw a sign, but I couldn’t read it. Here, let me help you get to this bench.”
My neck felt glued to the grass, but I said, “I can get there by myself, I’m fine.”
He looked at me, eyebrows raised. I lifted my arms, and he pulled me up like a rag doll, propping me on a cement rectangle on the sidewalk.
My feet felt like they’d been wedged into Barbie shoes and my skin was so itchy, I yearned to molt. I looked around. The foot of the sky was beginning to lighten. A few people were starting to mill around, all of them on the sidewalks and large concrete areas, no one on the illicit grass.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Almost 5 a.m.”
“Oh.” I suddenly stood up, frantic. “Where’re the kids?”
“Don’t worry, they’re fine. When you fainted, the cashier called his grandma, or possibly his great-grandma, who speaks a speck of English. She hustled over and led me to this park. She even pushed the stroller so I could support you because you were like a drunk sailor. By the way, she asked me if you’d been drinking bai jiu and I just shrugged because I didn’t feel like explaining the convergence of jet lag, panic, dehydration, and cockroach guts that had sidelined you. So, if she treats you like a booze-head, just go with it.”
I moaned and put my head in my hands.
“At least I think that’s what got to you, is that what you think it was?”
“That sounds about right,” I said, squinting at the playground on the other side of the grassy area. “Is that her?”
“Yep.”
Grandma was galloping like a horse and bouncing Lila on her hip as Piper slid down the world’s most treacherous-looking slide. “Oh jeez.”
“I’m not sure she’s ever seen blonde hair; she can’t stop touching their heads.”
“You’re kidding me!” I started to laugh and winced.
“No, and I think she’s taken about a hundred pictures of each of them. Piper finally growled at her, so she put the camera away.”
I shook my head. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Here, drink this,” he said, handing me a plastic bottle with neon yellow liquid inside.
“What is it?”
“Some type of Chinese Gatorade. Pretty good actually. I already had two.”
I opened it and guzzled half immediately. “Did the kids get anything to eat?”
“Grandma picked out some snacks at the shop. I have no clue what they were, but they gobbled them down. Piper said they were ‘the best snacks she’d ever had’.”
“I bet.” I laughed. It felt better this time.
I stretched my arms overhead and looked around. “What’s going on over there?” I pointed to a group of older men and women assembling under a large, dead-looking tree. There were about thirty of them. A woman with dyed black cotton-candy hair held a boom box and a microphone. She set the boom box down and stood next to it. She called out instructions into her mic, waving her arms like a conductor as the group arranged themselves into some semblance of order. When she pushed play, they began ballroom dancing on cue around the tree, circling and swaying, up and back, round and round.
“How great is that?” Daniel laughed.
“Seriously.”
From our vantage point, a slight incline by the playground, we could see a few other groups of seniors assembling. Behind us, next to a low wall of rocks, a group of seven men stood, each holding a bird cage. They hung their cages on the lowest branches of a nearby tree and then commenced a variety of calisthenics.
“They walk their birds to their exercise session?” I asked.
“Apparently,” Daniel said.
Another group stood on the large central square near the dancers; they were the oldest group by far. They were small in stature and moved slowly, many of them hunched over. The men wore sensible pants and button-down shirts tucked in, the women wore equally sensible pants and colorful sweaters, the kind you might see at an ugly sweater contest. Most of them had let their hair go gray.
“What do you think they’re up to?” I asked. They set down their bags and pulled small metal pails out of them, followed by large paint brushes. They situated themselves in a row at the farthest corner of the concrete, almost to the main sidewalk, then squatted and went to work. “It almost looks like they’re painting the sidewalk with water, but that doesn’t make sense.”
“I need to get a closer look,” Daniel said. “You feeling okay enough to come with me?”
“I think so,” I said and stood up slowly.
Keeping the kids in our sights, we walked closer. Close enough to see each person in the group dip their brushes into their pail of water and then draw on the concrete patch in front of them, slowly painting from bottom to top, right to left. Their brush strokes were smooth, measured, and precise. They focused on their work, not taking breaks to look up or around. They seemed like the only people at the park who didn’t notice we were there.
“It looks like they’re painting Chinese characters,” Daniel said.
“How can you tell?”
“I took a Chinese Civ class sophomore year. It was supposed to be an easy A but after the first week we got a new teacher and it became a tough C. Anyway, I remember what the characters look like. The stroke order is apparently crucial.”
I smiled and rested my head on Daniel’s shoulder. “I wonder what it says.”
Just then Grandma walked up holding Lila. Piper ran in front of her. “Mommy, Lila needs a new diaper.”
Lila looked at me and wailed.
“Wet!” Grandma hollered, pointing at Lila’s bottom.
“I see that, thank you,” I said. I reached my arms out to take Lila but Grandma stepped back.
“No. I help you. I ayi,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“I work for family, help you, I ayi.” She pointed at herself. “Baby cold. Wet. I help. For whistle training.”
“Whistle training?” I shook my head. “That’s very nice but I don’t need help.”
“What’s your phone number?” Daniel asked her, holding up his phone. He looked at me and shrugged. “Just in case.”
“Ah,” she said, taking a scrap of paper from her own sensible pants as Daniel handed her a pen. She scribbled down her number and handed it to me, frowning. “Baby cold. Wet.”
I looked at Lila. Her cheeks were bright red and the fuzz on her head was plastered down with sweat. “She’s not—”
Right then, a man wheeled between us on his bike and stopped. A large antennae-like structure swung from the back of his seat. Dangling from the antennae were hundreds of ti
ny, round, hand-woven baskets. A loud screeching sound emanated from his rolling basket collection. He stepped off his bike and held the handlebars with one hand. He stretched his other palm toward Daniel and me.
“Wǔ kuài!” he said.
“What?” I looked at Daniel. He shrugged.
“Wǔ kuài!” he repeated.
“What’s he saying?” I said, this time looking at Grandma, who had walked around and stood frowning with her hands on her hips next to me.
She hollered and then stepped right up to the man’s face and initiated a heated exchange, which is a nice way to say screaming match. They ranted at each other for a while, gesturing, finger-pointing, snorting, stomping.
Finally, the man waved his arms in dismissal and muttered something. He untied one of the baskets and handed it to Grandma. She opened the basket and pulled out a large cricket, holding it up to Daniel in her fist so he could see its face.
“This one have nice song,” she said. “I tell him four kuai, local price. He say okay.”
“They’re seriously trying to sell us a fifty-cent cricket?” I looked at Daniel.
“Oh Daddy, please! Please can you buy me the cricket? I’ll take good care of it, Daddy. I’ll even name it Mr. Tinsey!” Piper said.
Daniel laughed. “Mr. Tinsey, who is Mr. Tinsey?”
“My new cricket is Mr. Tinsey!” she said, jumping up and down.
“Piper,” I said. “Please be reasonable. We don’t have a home yet, and we haven’t even had breakfast. Let’s look at the crickets later, when things are more settled, okay?”
“I’m not asking you, I’m asking DADDY!” she bellowed.
I looked at Daniel. “Can you please tell her what I just told her?”
“I say we get the cricket.” He shrugged. “We’re in China, might as well.”
“Mommy, please, it will be so fun!” Piper said.
I looked at her and back at Daniel. Their expressions communicated a shared sentiment—I was the biggest wet blanket on planet Earth. The spoiler. The one who turned fun into work, who lacked spontaneity, who could never seize the moment, even when it shook me by the shoulders. I felt sick and tired of being that person—Mrs. No, the snuffer of fun. I thought, here we are, in a new setting, I can start now and be the new Tina—Fun Tina. So I stuck a smile on and said, “Sure, let’s get the cricket,” because new, Fun Tina thought, what could possibly be the downside of insect ownership?
12.
“I’m sorry about the cricket. I don’t know where else to put him; I don’t want him to get smushed,” I explained to Richard, the local “realtor for expats” who sat across his desk from us, blinking behind black Buddy Holly glasses, blinking so much that I thought he might have sand in his eyes. Daniel and I were wedged together on a miniature wooden bench facing Richard’s cubicle. Daniel’s knees scraped the underside of Richard’s desk, and when he sat straight, his head grazed the wall behind us.
I held Lila, passed out in my arms, while Piper snoozed in the stroller by the door. The cricket chirped loudly in his tiny basket in the center of Richard’s desk.
Richard was maybe 5’5” with a twenty-four-inch waist on a fat day. He had spiky black hair and wore a red long-sleeved button up, jeans, and loafers. He could have been eighteen, but then again, he might have been fifty. Neither age would have surprised me.
Richard patted the top of Mr. Tinsey’s basket with several blinks and a small smile. “It’s okay, he has a nice song.”
“I don’t know how he can chirp nonstop at the top of his lungs like that.” I wrung my hands and shook my head. “I mean, don’t crickets need to breathe?” I looked at Daniel. He shrugged while casually sucking on his fourth Chinese Gatorade.
“His song comes from his legs, not his lungs.” Richard looked at me, confused.
“Oh, that’s right. I can’t even think with all this chirping. Don’t his legs get tired then?”
“Perhaps not,” Richard said and then turned and fluttered his eyelashes at Daniel. “What’s your housing budget?”
“I read that we could find a decent place in Puxi for about $2,000USD per month, so I’ve created my budget off that number,” Daniel said.
“I don’t recommend Puxi. It’s no good for Americans. Too difficult. Too old. Only Chinese people live there, people like me.”
“But—” Daniel started.
“You won’t like it.” Richard shook his head. “I suggest a foreigner enclave in Pudong. It’s more like America there. Much better for Americans to live in those communities.”
“I like the sound of the enclave.” I looked at Daniel with hope in my eyes.
“We need to live in Puxi; it’s closer to my office,” Daniel said, ignoring me.
“You can commute. Get car, driver, ayi for kids—all Americans do it like this.”
Daniel paused. He looked at me and then back at Richard. “How much is the enclave?”
“Starting price, $5,000 per month.”
Daniel laughed and shook his head. “That’s a non-starter. What do you have in Puxi?”
Richard sighed and started typing furiously on his keyboard.
“This might be a long shot, but is there an apartment complex with, you know, some sort of play area?” I called to Richard who sat shotgun in the cab. The sun had begun to set, and I was sweaty and exhausted after three petrifying taxi rides to view three dirty, dark, and depressing apartments. Lila whimpered as she watched Piper roll Mr. Tinsey’s basket up and down the length of her arm while he continued rubbing his godforsaken legs together.
“Yes, the next place has a playground and a pool,” Richard said over his shoulder.
“Oh thank God,” I said, dropping my face onto Daniel’s shoulder.
He pulled away. “And this place with the pool is in our budget?”
“Little bit higher, not much,” said Richard, turning to look ahead.
“We need to stay in the budget, Richard.” Daniel looked at me. “You know what happens when you test drive a nicer car than you can afford.”
“Oh, let’s just look at it!” I begged. “I mean, we haven’t seen anything remotely habitable yet. And there’s a playground.” My voice cracked. “Please?”
Daniel paused. “It’s a slippery slope, Tina; that’s all I’m saying.”
“And in a Chinese taxi, so is life,” I said, closing my eyes and hugging Lila to me as we blew through yet another red light.
The driver pulled into a circular, polished travertine driveway lined with tightly clipped azalea hedges. Over-sized, wrought-iron lanterns sat on travertine pillars surrounding a fountain that sparkled and splashed, beckoning all tired apartment-hunters. Straight ahead, we saw it—a mirage-like playground, shiny and pulsating with primary colors. Beyond it lay a gated, resort-like pool, complete with a huge water slide and cascading rock fountain, surrounded by lounge chairs in neutral tones and wide red umbrellas. Three gleaming high rises fringed the complex. I spotted two people sitting on the perfect grass area between the buildings. “There is a spa downstairs and a bar on the third floor,” Richard said.
I nearly wept with joy. “Now we’re talking!” I whooped.
Richard smiled. “There is an apartment available on the sixth floor. Won’t last long.”
Daniel looked ahead in silence.
The inside didn’t match the outside. For starters, the entire apartment could have fit in our kitchen in the US, or possibly our pantry. There were two doll-sized bedrooms. Only one person could fit in the kitchen at a time. No dishwasher. The mini-cube of a washing machine sat in an itty-bitty closet by the front door. No clothes dryer. A square dining room table was wedged into a space that almost blocked the entrance to the kitchen. On the other side of the table was the living room which contained a love seat, two stools, and a low coffee table the size of a Monopoly board. A newish flat screen TV was attached to the dingy gray wall above a skinny credenza. The furniture was baroque-style and had apparently just been polished—the whole pl
ace smelled like varnish. A bare, dusty patio sat beyond a glass sliding door on the far wall.
“This is perfect!” I said, spinning around like Maria in The Sound of Music.
“Are we looking at the same place?” Daniel snorted.
“Yes, and I love it. The playground is fantastic.”
“We can’t move into the playground.”
“No, but we’ll go there a lot, Daniel. And since I’ll be with the kids all day, their entertainment is my priority. This place is a thousand times better than anything else we’ve seen,” I said.
“But there are more places on his list!”
“I don’t need to see anyplace else, and I can’t bring myself to get back in a cab. We’ve already skirted death a dozen times today. At some point, our luck is bound to run out.”
Daniel exhaled loudly. “Tina, you’re going to feel cramped here, I guarantee you.”
“So what if I’m a little cramped? We’ve never needed all the space we’ve had, I know that now. I can live with less, Daniel. That’s part of why I wanted to come here—to learn to live with less. Less is more, I say!” I picked up Lila and flew her in a circle. She squealed.
“My turn, Mommy!” Piper said.
Daniel sighed and turned to Richard. “Looks like we’ll take it.”
“This will be mine and Mr. Tinsey’s room!” Piper yelled, scampering down the mini-hall.
“And Lila’s room, too!” I called after her.
13.
“Don’t look now, but at nine o’clock, there’s a little boy pooping on the sidewalk,” I said to Daniel out of the side of my mouth. We’d been in China for ten days and were walking near our hotel. Two men in pajamas had stopped whatever they were doing to stare at us as we walked by. Being the object of stares from men cruising town in pajamas already felt semi-normal. The sidewalk pooping did not.
“What? Where?”
“I just told you, nine o’clock. Don’t look. His grandma’s next to the fence and she’s holding him in a squat on her thighs. His pants are split open at the seam in the back, and, oh man, I just got the chills.”
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