Fish Heads and Duck Skin

by Lindsey Salatka

  I took breaks from watching the cashier to close my eyes and count to ten over and over. It didn’t help. As I counted, I noticed that Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was playing over the loud speaker, more agitator than lullaby.

  Finally, a yard-long triplicate receipt burst forth from the bubble jet. The cashier ripped it at the perforation with a flourish, circled the total on the bottom with the pen she wore on a piece of brown yarn around her neck, and handed it to me.

  I squinted at it and then at her. “I see this is the total for the new washer, but I’m also returning a washer that doesn’t work.” I repeated the frown and the head shake. “How do I get my money back for that one?”

  She looked confused as a yellow jersey translated. My entourage erupted into a shouting match. Everyone seemed to have a strong opinion, but I had no clue what those opinions were. Who had my back? Who thought I was an imbecile? Was anyone shouting about the fact that I desperately needed a haircut? Maybe I wasn’t even the topic of their debate. Maybe they were bashing the world’s slowest cashier, who also needed a haircut.

  After several minutes, the manager interrupted. A hush fell over the crowd. “You get money back for that washer when we collect it. We can’t give you money for that washer until we get it back.”

  “Oh, okay, I can see how that makes sense, but then who will give me my money?” I asked.

  The soundtrack piping overhead switched to Oh Susannah! as another community debate launched. Finally, the manager said, “Delivery man will give you the money.”

  “Delivery man?”

  “Delivery man.” He nodded. “When he brings you the new washer, he will pick up the old washer and give you the money.”

  I paused and scratched my head. I was done playing the fool. “Can you put that in writing?”

  “What?”

  “I need you to write down how much the delivery man will pay me, and, what is your name?”

  He smiled nervously. “I am Mr. Li.”

  “Mr. Li, please also write your name and phone number on the pink paper so I can call you if I have a problem.” I held out the receipt.

  He took it and walked three steps to the cashier station where he turned it over, scribbled on it, and handed it back to me.

  “Oh, darn it.” I held it up toward him. “What does this say? I can’t read characters.”

  “It says, ‘Drop off new washer, pick up old washer, pay total of 700rmb.’”

  “Great, Mr. Li. Now please write your name and phone number and also, please clarify that the delivery man needs to pay me at the time he picks up the old washer.”

  “Yes, okay.” He took the receipt and scribbled on it again.

  I had thought of everything. At least I thought I had.

  28.

  The raised road was closed on the way home from Carrefour so the taxi wound toward our apartment through double lane, gray on gray back streets surrounded by every type of automobile—large, small, new, old—all of us barely moving in any direction. An inch felt like progress. I wondered if I would make it home by the following morning. I also wondered if any car in China could pass a California smog test. Both seemed unlikely.

  The taxi driver declined my request, communicated via irate charades, to stop chain-smoking. The drizzle had turned to deluge so the windows were up. Even though my eyes stung and I could feel my lungs turning black, I couldn’t disembark—I knew there was no way I’d be able to catch a different cab if I ran sputtering and coughing from this one. The surrounding car horns bleated in commiseration. The rain pelted my soul. I was sure it would have been both faster and less terrible to walk home wet. But I didn’t know which direction home was. I’m not going home, I corrected myself, I’m going to the place where I live with my family. These felt like two vastly different concepts.

  Back in the apartment, I felt exhausted, wrung out, and twitchy. Daniel had left a note on the dining room table saying he’d taken the girls to dinner. I thought briefly about going for a massage but decided a nap might be better.

  Ding dong. A man stood on my doorstep with an appliance-sized box on a dolly—the delivery man. The nap would have to wait. I waved him inside. As he walked by me, dolly squeaking, he banged into the door and both walls, slowing down only to deposit his shoes near the wall, as was customary. I forced my shoulders to drop as I inhaled, closed my eyes, and rubbed the back of my neck. This day is almost over, this day is almost over, this day is almost over …

  Except it wasn’t.

  Because once he’d deposited the box in the center of the living room, he stared at the note on the pink receipt I handed him, turning it this way and that as though he couldn’t read characters either. Then he shoved it back toward me in a huff, shook the crumpled blue delivery receipt he’d brought, and yelled something while rattling a pen in my face. I grabbed my phone and speed-dialed Richard.

  “Richard, hello! I need your help. You know how you suggested we buy a washing machine at Carrefour?”

  “Yes—”

  “Well the delivery man is here to deliver our second washer. He’s picking up the first one I bought the other day, since it doesn’t work, and is supposed to refund my money for it. Can you translate for us? We’re having trouble communicating.”

  “Uh—”

  “He’s standing in my living room, Richard. Please?” I didn’t wait for his response. I held my phone out to the delivery man.

  He listened to Richard, hollered into the phone, and handed it back to me.

  “He says no, he cannot give you any money,” Richard said. “He’s only authorized to pick up the old washer and deliver the new washer. You must go back to Carrefour for the money.”

  I threw up my hand and walked to the window. “But that’s wrong! Mr. Li wrote it specifically on the receipt that the delivery man will give me the money. Tell him to read the note again. He can call Mr. Li and ask him; his name and number are on the bottom of the receipt.”

  “Okay, one moment,” said Richard. I handed the phone back to the delivery guy with a pronounced frown and zero eye contact.

  He listened, hollered, waved his arm around, and hung up the phone, dropping it on the table. He wrenched the handle of his dolly and swung it around until the wheels came to an abrupt halt in front of the seam of his thread-bare socks. He pushed the dolly toward the bad washer, muttering something. He shoved the flat base under the washer and tipped it back. I watched, frozen, as he rolled that ridiculous excuse for a washing machine toward my front door.

  It’s silly; I know this now. But at the time, it felt as though everything I valued in my life, including my self-worth and dignity, was balanced on that dolly as it rolled quickly toward the elevator. The fundamental truths of my being, in the form of a crappy washer, were escaping. Everything I’d worked so hard to be, to have, and to love was exiting in haste with my sanity at the helm yelling, “All clear!”

  Fury entered my body, heating my head and then my chest and then my belly and then my fists, which curled, and my toes, which planted, and I shouted in an unfamiliar voice that could reasonably be described as a satanic baritone, “Like hell you’re leaving with that washer!”

  I ran around him and stood in front of the door, arms out and open, as though I were going to stop, wrestle, and pin the appliance on wheels barreling toward me, picking up speed. Am I ready to die for $90? I thought with my last ounce of reason. Not yet, I admitted, so I backed against the wall, leaving one foot out.

  He slowed.

  What else will prevent this man from leaving with this washer? I thought while frantically scanning his approaching person. I could snatch the truck keys sticking out of his pocket as he draws closer, or unclasp the fanny pack from his waist just after he passes … then I looked at his feet, padding toward me, his toes nearly pushing through the ends of his socks, and it struck me. I searched the ground and spotted them—a pair of beat up brown loafers on the opposite wall near the door. The perfect pair of hostages had been laid, quite
literally, at my feet.

  “Big mistake!” I screeched, emitting a witch-like cackle. I scooped up his shoes and sprinted toward the bathroom. With a loud thump I hurled the shoes into the bathtub, reached inside the door and turned the lock, then slammed the door shut. Then I planted myself in front of that door like it was the last hill left bearing my own personal tattered flag, because I knew without a shred of doubt that this man would not leave here without his shoes in a rainstorm. He would give me my money or one of us would suffer the consequences. I made animal noises through baring, clenched teeth. The moment I had never anticipated had come anyway—Tina’s Last Stand.

  He stopped and untilted his dolly, silent. He released the handle and walked back toward the table, toward my phone, which he picked up and hit redial.

  He squeaked what must have been his interpretation of events to Richard, then listened, then walked over to hand me the phone.

  My mouth felt as though it had been swabbed with cotton, but my purpose, my intention felt clear. I spoke to Richard without listening first. “Tell him I’ll give him back his shoes when he gives me my money. If he, for some reason, did not bring my money, tell him to call Mr. Li, who can hop in a taxi to my house with my money. I’m not going back to Carrefour. We can wait for Mr. Li here, all night if we have to. If this has become a war of attrition, I’m afraid he’s chosen the wrong adversary. Go ahead and tell him that now.” I handed my phone back to the delivery man and licked my teeth to stop them from sticking to my lips.

  He listened to my message as retold by Richard and then yelled back into the phone. He stopped to listen, then he shouted. I softly banged the back of my head against the bathroom door as he alternated between listening and hollering. The head-knocking felt soothing somehow, the rhythmic rocking of my brain as it smacked between the anterior and posterior of my skull. At some point, when I thought he was still listening, he must have hung up because my phone rang, interrupting my trance. I strode toward him with my hand out and my jaw set.

  “Tina, are you okay? What’s going on?” Daniel asked.

  “I’m rectifying a nonsensical situation by taking my power back, that’s what’s going on.” My breath came in puffs.

  “Uh, Richard just told me you stole the delivery man’s shoes.”

  I inhaled sharply. “And I did, because there was no other way to keep him here, and he’s got my money. If I let him leave, I’ll never be able to collect that money at Carrefour, I just know it. I have no documentation.”

  “Tina, honey, I get why you’re frustrated, but you need to give the man his shoes.”

  “Oh, I’ll give him his shoes alright, as soon as he hands over my money.”

  “How much is it, ninety bucks? I’ll give you ninety bucks. You don’t have to do this.”

  I looked at the delivery man; his eyes ticked around the room in every direction but mine. He shoved his hands in his pants pockets as he waited for his shoes to be emancipated. I turned away from him. My eyes narrowed as I growled, “You don’t get it, do you? I don’t have to do any of this. I don’t even have to be in this god forsaken place dealing with these people! But, like an idiot, I chose to come to a place I don’t belong to find and become someone I’m not, and now look at me!” A sob escaped, just one. No you don’t, I chastened myself. I grimaced and took as deep a breath as my clenched body could accept. “This is not about the money anymore, Daniel. We could be talking about ninety cents, and I’d still be standing here, guarding this bathroom door. I’m here solely on principle. And on this principle, I refuse to back down.”

  Daniel paused. I could hear his fingers tapping on the table. “You do realize he’s operating under a different set of principles, and he probably doesn’t understand why you’re doing this,” Daniel said.

  “He doesn’t have to understand. I’m doing this for me.”

  “You’re doing this for you,” Daniel echoed.

  “Yes.”

  His fingers stopped tapping. “The waitress is here to take our order. I guess I’ll call you after dinner to see if you’re still in a stand-off.”

  “Fine.”

  I hung up and re-commenced the soft head-banging. My phone rang again.

  “I just spoke to Carrefour,” Richard said. “Put the driver on the phone, please.”

  I held my hand out.

  “Wei?” the driver said and then listened without hollering. He hung up the phone and placed it noiselessly on the table. He reached into his pocket and pulled out 700rmb, the equivalent of ninety bucks. He did not have to count it; it was folded in the exact amount owed to me with a yellow receipt wrapped around it. He handed it to me and stood there, staring at me with a blank expression.

  I took a deep breath. And another. I said nothing.

  I turned and reached above the door jamb for the pin to unlock the door. The unlocking process took a couple minutes because I couldn’t convince my hands to stop shaking. I fished his shoes from the tub and walked past him to my front door. I pulled the door open and threw the shoes overhand as hard as I could. They bounced off the elevator door and dropped onto the worn-down carpet with a thud. He leaned the dolly back and pushed the bad washer out the apartment door. I closed and locked the door after him.

  I turned around and leaned against the door. My butt slid slowly down, finally resting on the still-damp carpet. The sob that had tried to escape earlier came back again, this time with many friends. I rolled onto my side and let them have their way with me.

  29.

  “Pardon me,” the chocolate-skinned woman called to me in an Australian accent, louder than necessary. She was sitting right next to me, wearing earmuffs over her dreadlocks; this must have prevented her from gauging her volume. It was two weeks after my washing machine meltdown. We were in the basement of an apartment building identical to mine except two blocks away, and it was cold, the type of cold that feels like a stingray just swiped its tail at your nose, ears, and chin. Not her ears though. I had earmuff envy.

  The two of us shared a plastic bench in a cement hallway, peering through a wall of scratched plexiglass into a cell-like room where our older kids were taking a ballet class. There were actually three of us on that bench. She was breast-feeding a child under her coat—a walking, talking, non-baby child. Lila sat on the ground with a cup of Cheerios.

  From what I could ascertain, we were the only four English speakers in the hallway, and the two of us were the only parents. The Chinese nannies were clustered in a doorway down the hall gossiping. The Aussie and I had sat next to each other for the last twenty-five minutes without addressing each other. It felt too cold to kick start small talk with a stranger. Plus, the earmuffs. Plus, the lactation. I was just going to leave it.

  “Do you have the time?” she bellowed.

  “Yes,” I said, looking at my wrist. “It’s five ‘til five.”

  “Perfect! She always ends class right on time. Daniela!” She tapped the head of the child on her boob through her parka. “Snack time is over, go put your shoes on.”

  I heard a muffled, “No!” through the coat.

  “Yes!” her mom said. “Don’t make me come in there and get you!” She looked at me and winked. “Name’s Ellen,” she said and stuck her hand out.

  “I’m Tina.” I smiled at her and then looked at Lila. “Where are your shoes, Lila?” She responded by grinning at me with a mouth brimming with mush.

  The plastic door screeched open and Ellen’s daughter, Rachel, ran out first. “I’m stah-ving,” she proclaimed after leaping and landing on both feet in front of her mom, then sticking one hip out and jamming her fist onto it and glaring at her. She was about the same size as Piper, with two fuzzy, black pigtails posted on the top of her head like woolly antennae. Her crisp fuchsia tutu jutted out assertively from her tiny hips. Her pink turtleneck, however, looked like it had been dragged through a mud bog by a team of Clydesdales. Piper twirled up behind her. Her sweater looked like it had spent time in the same bog behind the sa
me horses. As did her sweatpants. Besides the tutu, they were sisters of the bog.

  “Do you mind if I ask you, do you live here? In this building I mean?” I asked Ellen.

  “In this building, no, but in this complex, yes. This building is where we come for activities though, since our building has no basement.” She shivered. “Been coming to this ballet class about four months now.”

  “Oh.” I nodded. “I just found out about this class this morning—someone posted it on the notice board at the grocery store below the Ritz.”

  “Oh, you mean the outrageously-expensive-store-where-most-items-are-expired-but-we-shop-there-anyway-since-it’s-the-only-place-that-sells-cheese?”

  “Yes!” I laughed and nodded. “That’s the place.” I liked this woman, a fellow cheese eater and mother of two girls, the oldest of whom looked to be spirited, which is a nice way to say exhausting. “So, besides this class, are there any other fun activities for kids around here?”

  “Well, there are a few things, but Rachel goes to school three days a week.”

  “School? A local school or an international school?”

  “Neither, it’s an adorable little Singaporean number down the way called Mother Goose. Haven’t you seen it?”

  I shook my head.

  “I can show you some time. It’s about as good as you can get around here, and perfect for this age. The children are very happy there,” she said.

  “Really? And are you very happy?” I blurted. “Here in Shanghai, I mean?”

  Her eyes widened. “Uh, well—”

  “I’m sorry to ask such a personal question, but I’m new, and I’m finding it really hard to adjust. As in, monumentally hard.”

  “Oh, right.” She sighed and pushed her earmuffs back until they rested like a collar on her sweater. “I remember being new, all too well. How long have you been here then?” Her volume level, I noticed, remained above average.