Fish Heads and Duck Skin

by Lindsey Salatka

  She turned to address me. “Your kids’ll be good, won’t they, love?”

  I wouldn’t bet on it, I thought as I nodded and said, “Definitely.” I didn’t want to go back down those damn stairs, not right away anyway. My lower back was throbbing.

  “Go on then, sit at the far table,” Barbara grumbled. “They need a fourth. Other three’re fairly new, too, but they can show you how the game works. Next time have your ayi watch the kids, alright?”

  Ellen started to stand up. “I can—”

  “Oh no, Ellen, you’re staying right here; there’s nothing I love more than beating an Aussie. Well, except maybe beating an American, but I’ll give this one a bye for now!” Barbara broke into hysterical laughter at her own joke.

  Ellen may have neglected to mention the dress-code and that kids weren’t allowed, but she had warned me at great length about the heckler, Barbara, who was also the President of the Ladies Mahjong Club of Shanghai. She’d been an expat for far too long, Ellen had said. She had seven ayis and treated them all like the dust bunnies she made them scour from the back corners of the linen closets on every floor of her giant art deco mansion down the road, which was often photographed for magazine covers featuring “the elegant side of Shanghai.” She was well-known for ridiculing new people who showed up at Mahjong Monday and struck up conversations about nouveau expat problems.

  “Don’t let her hear you say you still get lost. Or that you don’t speak Mandarin. One time I told her I’d never been to Beijing—big mistake,” Ellen said.

  “Please remind me—why’d you join this group?” I asked her.

  “It’s really fun once she ignores you, and that won’t take long. She’s not fond of Americans, to put it nicely, but you’re probably used to that.”

  “Uh—”

  “Anyway, she won’t want to play you while you’re learning so she’ll give you a spot at the new kid table, and then you’re home-free.” And just as she’d described, I found myself walking toward three women in the farthest booth. It had cracked red vinyl seats and was lit by a Tiffany-esque green glass orb hanging from the dusty wooden ceiling. Two of the women spoke quietly to each other in German, the other was a Chinese woman yet to look up from an intense examination of her tiles. This is what home-free looks like, I muttered to myself.

  “Hello, uh, ni hao,” I said slowly to the Chinese woman as she looked up at me. “My name is Tina, what is your name?” I enunciated carefully.

  “I’m Wendy, and I don’t speak Mandarin,” she said grumpily in an American accent and looked back down at her tiles.

  “Oh, I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t be, it happens all day long. The locals assume I speak Chinese and when they find out I don’t, they treat me like a leper. The expats think I’m a local so they don’t talk to me because they presume I won’t understand them. It’s just a giggle a minute being an American-born Chinese woman in Shanghai,” she said, sounding like Eeyore. This gal was clearly also in need of some rainbows.

  “I guess I could see how that would suck,” I said, sitting down heavily across from her. I reached down to grab a giant mound of snacks from the stroller basket and heaped them onto the tray in front of the girls. This should keep them quiet for a solid forty-five seconds, I thought.

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “I’m addressing it, though—I just hired a tutor. She’s coming to my apartment three times a week, so hopefully I can fulfill everyone’s expectations and communicate in Mandarin soon. Probably right about the time we get sent home.”

  “You have a tutor? I desperately need one,” I said.

  “I’ll give you her card,” Wendy said. “This your first time at Mahjong?”

  “Yeah, how about you?”

  “It’s my third,” Wendy said. “I’ve been here almost a year. I started coming because I really needed something to fire up my brain. I was a project manager back in Ohio; I worked sixty-plus hours a week. And now that I’m the trailing spouse and full-time parent, I feel my intellect softening into oatmeal—”

  “I have that problem too! Today I sat on my bed and put on one sock, and then looked up and thought, why did I sit here again? I still had the other sock in my hand.”

  Ellen walked up. “Hello,” she said slowly to Wendy.

  “I’m American,” Wendy said flatly.

  “Ah, okay, sorry. Hey Tina,” Ellen squatted at the end of the table and looked at me. “Here’s a rule sheet.” She passed me a laminated 8.5 x 11 card. “It describes all the plays and how many points they’re worth. Make sure to give it back to Barbara at the end or she’ll have your head. And hey, sorry I forgot to tell you to leave the kids with the ayi—”

  “I don’t have an ayi.”

  “WHAT?” Wendy and Ellen screeched at the same time.

  “You can’t survive,” Wendy said.

  “Martyrs never prosper,” Ellen said and then leaned over to whisper, “and Barbara does not suffer martyrs.”

  “I know, I know, I got the message,” I said.

  “No wonder you look so tired,” Wendy said.

  “How do you know I look tired? You just met me!”

  “She’s not saying that you look terrible necessarily, just tired,” Ellen agreed. “That settles it; you need two things: number 1, an ayi, and number 2, nursery school.”

  “Actually, four things,” said Wendy. “Number 3, a tutor, and number 4, brunch.”

  “Brunch? Why? What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Because I’m sure we could all use a nice outing, and a good brunch is the best Shanghai outing there is.” Wendy shrugged.

  “She’s right—the brunches here are outstanding,” Ellen said.

  “Where do you live?” Wendy asked.

  “Century Club,” I said.

  “The place with the playground that’s never open?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll bring my ayi’s sister to your place tomorrow. She’s supposed to come over to help me move a few things around the lane house, be an extra set of hands. But you need her more than me. That’ll take care of your first problem,” Wendy said. “And here’s the card for my tutor.”

  “Thank you. Wait, your ayi has a sister? I thought no one but the retirees had siblings here?”

  “Yeah, she’s probably a distant cousin. Or maybe just a good friend.”

  “I’ll book brunch and take you to see the school on Wednesday,” Ellen said. She stood and came around behind me to squeeze my shoulders. “We’ll get you all sorted, possum. No worries.”

  33.

  Dear Jennifer,

  As of ten days ago, dramatic life improvement has arrived! I met a couple of women who took one look at me and came to a monumental, albeit obvious, conclusion: my situation was not sustainable. I thought I could push through, but the thing is, you can’t pluck a ball-busting gal out of corporate America and plunk her in a sludgy metropolis with no toilet paper and an alphabet made of sticks and squiggles and expect success. Because, if it wasn’t already clear, my exotic new life here is the polar opposite of my last Presidents Club trip to Turks and Caicos. For a while there I was stuck in shock and spinning, getting cooked on all sides like a hog on a spit.

  Enter the magical new friends! They identified my issues and produced solutions! I now have half-day schooling for both kids, three days a week. It’s not Harvard-for-Babies, but it also doesn’t reek of pee, so both Daniel’s and my wishes were granted.

  I also now have an ayi, which is basically the combination of a maid and a personal assistant—someone who can do everything I can’t do, plus everything I can do, except better. If I had an inferiority complex, this arrangement would never work. But I don’t and thus, my life has been transformed—shot from the fecal quagmire like a seagull wedged in a whale’s blowhole until, at long last, he sneezed from his back. Kapow!

  I’m flying now, and finally I can breathe. And sleep. And eat! Because Ayi cooks, too—like a pro, in fact. Which means I have been relieve
d of all the jobs I suck at. And with Daniel gone so much, I finally have friends to help abate the loneliness. My glass is half-full, do you believe it?

  -Tina

  Dear Jennifer,

  CHINESE NEW YEAR IS A TWO-WEEK FESTIVAL WHERE EVERYTHING IS CLOSED INCLUDING ALL BANKS AND RESTAURANTS AND AYI TOOK A FORTY-EIGHT HOUR TRAIN RIDE TO HER HOMETOWN FOR THREE WEEKS AND THE WINDOWS OF OUR APARTMENT NEARLY SHATTER EVERY NIGHT FROM EXCESSIVE FIREWORK REVERBERATION. I HAD NO CLUE.

  I’m sure there’s a rainbow in there somewhere.

  Love,

  Me

  34.

  “The purpose of tai chi is to open the channels for your energy to flow freely,” Mr. Han said while standing next to Mt. Trashmore. He had allowed his cane to fall into the dirt and now his legs shook in his faded black sweatpants.

  Even though the outside temperature was getting more bearable, it was now March which meant the arrival of the windy season, which in Shanghai translated to dust in every orifice. A thin film of gray cement lined the inside of my nose and collected in the corners of my mouth, and my eyes watered incessantly. Sunglasses didn’t help. With all the gear the locals sported to avoid sun exposure, I was surprised that no one wore goggles. On top of this, the tai chi was not coming naturally.

  “I have no idea what that means,” I said, willing myself to stay patient.

  “You don’t know because you’re blocked. It is very evident. Your energy does not flow freely.”

  “What do you mean by ‘blocked,’” I curled my finger quotes at him like an angry cat. “Are you talking about my digestion? Because I don’t see—”

  “Perhaps I am talking about your digestion, how is your dàbiàn?”

  “My what?”

  “Your bowel movement.”

  I grimaced. “I honestly can’t see—”

  “I think I already know the answer. When your energy is stuck, everything is stuck.” He put his hands on his belly and nodded.

  I exhaled loudly and shook my head.

  “When you’re blocked you are also quick to anger. Because your mind,” he held up one hand and made a small circle in the air, “it swirls, with no focus, and no release.”

  “I’m quick to anger because I need a spacesuit.”

  “Eh?”

  “Isn’t there an inside studio where we can practice? This wind is ridiculous.”

  “The wind is very cleansing. It reorganizes and realigns,” he said.

  “I’m not buying it,” I mumbled.

  “Eh?”

  “Never mind. Let’s just do the moves.”

  “Hao de,” he said and stepped next to me.

  Thirty seconds later, I said, “I can’t see how these motions could unblock anyone. How holding a leg at an unnatural angle while pushing one hand this way and hooking the other hand that way could possibly make a person less angry.”

  “It takes time to understand—”

  “Time, which people may have had two thousand years ago, but no one has today.” I continued to mimic his movements though, on the off-chance I was wrong. I positioned my hands like I was balancing a sphere between them the size of a large grapefruit. Or maybe a small watermelon.

  “Try to empty your mind and breathe deeply,” he said while leaning left.

  I coughed.

  “Is this hard for you?”

  “If it weren’t for the dirt in the air, it wouldn’t be hard since this isn’t even exercise. Where I come from, unless you’re lunging or squatting, moving slowly like this does not burn calories. I’m going to have to go for a jog later.”

  “This is a different kind of exercise. It’s exercise for your energy. You’ll see.”

  I looked at my watch. “I still don’t understand, but I have seventeen more minutes to exercise my energy until school gets out.”

  “But who’s counting?” he smiled. “Collect a cloud now, Ting Ting. Focus on your breath. You’ll feel a difference in time. In seventeen minutes, maybe your children will feel it too.”

  35.

  It was tutor time. It had taken me a few weeks to call, but I’d finally talked myself into it. I still felt a little anxious as I sat down and stood up, sat down and stood up, waiting for the knock on my apartment door. I had brushed my hair more than once. Okay, more than twice. Fine, four times, but it was still windy outside, and my hair was a disaster.

  Ayi was playing quietly with the girls in their room. Why are the girls and Ayi so quiet? I wondered several times, but every time I checked on them, they ignored me. They were engrossed in some sort of Farbie doll Olympics. Ayi was crouched between them, calling out occasionally in Mandarin. Keeping score? Cheering? I couldn’t tell. This would be part of the reason I’ve hired a tutor, I thought. So I know what people are communicating to my children.

  Mostly I observed that Ayi was great at playing with little kids, true butt-on-the-floor playing. She’s better at this role than me, I admitted as my doorbell rang at precisely 4 p.m. I stood up straight and headed toward the front door while trying to finish this sentence: Well, at least I’m good at ______. I drew a blank. I wasn’t sure anymore.

  My new tutor was a full-sized Asian version of the Olympiads on Piper’s floor. Red, fitted suit, red lips, red nails. Shiny black stilettos, shiny black ponytail, shiny black briefcase. “Hello, I’m Katie Liu,” she said as she raised her arm straight forward from her side, hinging at her shoulder.

  I shook her hand. “I suck at French,” I blurted as my anxiety assumed control of my mouth. “Eight years of French labs and I couldn’t get myself off the airport curb in Paris.”

  “I speak fluent French,” Katie said. “But I thought you hired me to teach you Mandarin?”

  “I did! I definitely want to learn Mandarin. I was just giving you some background on my language acquisition. My track record is poor, but I’m determined to get it right this time, and the sooner the better.”

  “Well, there’s no better way to learn a language than immersion, and there’s no better tutor than me, so you’re in the right place with the right person. Well actually, Beijing would be the best place since everyone speaks Shanghainese here, but,” she shrugged, “at least you have me.”

  “Oh, should I learn Shanghainese instead?”

  “Ha! No, that’s only for kitchen talk. You must learn the national language.”

  “Do you speak Shanghainese?”

  “Of course I do! All day long, to every local. I couldn’t live here otherwise.”

  We paused to consider the implications of her statement.

  “But you wouldn’t learn Shanghainese in formal tutoring sessions, you’d learn it in a back alley, buying rice off a thug,” she scoffed.

  I shrugged. “Okay then, Mandarin it is. So how is your English so perfect?” I asked as she breezed past me. I turned to follow the sharp rhythm of her heels tapping on the linoleum.

  “My dad’s American, lives in LA,” she said as she stopped at the dining room table.

  “Oh—”

  “But mostly it’s the men,” she said as she placed her bag carefully on a chair and smoothed her pencil skirt.

  “The men?”

  “I only date American men. I’ll occasionally make an exception for the right Kiwi or South African,” she said, and winked, “but I’m on a streak of Americans right now, and they’re working quite well for me.” She inhaled and her expression turned dreamy. Upon exhalation she regained composure and templed her fingers. “Shall we begin?” she asked.

  “Ready when you are,” I said.

  36.

  Dear Jennifer,

  As you are well-aware, I’m no sun worshipper. You’ll never catch me in a tan bed or smearing myself with ill-scented creams. You’ll nod in agreement as I say to you, dark orange leather is for saddles and smart casual handbags, not skin.

  Sure, I may have occasionally swung by Tan Land before the odd high school dance. Perhaps in college I hit the university rec center pool sporting a jumbo bottle of baby oi
l a few times, a dozen tops. But that was last century! Now, with more birthdays under my belt, I know better (meanwhile you, my dear ginger, have always known better).

  It doesn’t matter how much I shun the sun, though, I’ll always look a little tan. I can’t help it that I’m olive! That if you say the word sun in the same room as me, I bronze!

  But last week, my tutor, Katie, broke some less fortunate news—in China I have the skin tone of a peasant. Not wrinkled, not cancerous, just working class. My natural pigment? Not an excuse for my obvious and unfortunate social status. Only people who work in the sun look like me. She even suggested I visit a whitening cream counter, which wouldn’t be hard because they’re every ten feet.

  “In China, you’d be considered attractive if you weren’t so tan,” Katie said while considering my arms. It was the first time she had seen them because the seasons just changed, and I no longer need layers between myself and the cold, rain, and/or dust.

  “You’re joking, right? I mean, this isn’t even tan for me, but I’m still too tan to be pretty?”

  “I think you’re pretty, but you’d be prettier if you were more white.”

  I paused, wondering if it was a good time to launch into the myriad reasons her statement was offensive. “You should know, the opposite is true in America and other countries. Skin much darker than mine is beautiful there.”

  She looked at me like I was trying to explain how cyanide would extend my life.

  “I think you’re saying that in China I’m almost pretty?” I asked her.

  She laughed and nodded. “You’re funny, Tina,” she said. “But I suppose you’re also correct. If you were Chinese, you’d be almost pretty.”

  The white skin thing is an obsession here. I mean, our society has freaky obsessions, too, so I try not to judge, but seriously, these people are crazy for looking pasty! A skin lotion without the added benefit of bleaching doesn’t exist here. What we want for teeth, they want for skin.