“Take them to the Wild Animal Park,” Ellen said. “They have pandas there and all kinds of other authentic Chinese animals.”
“There’s a Wild Animal Park here?” asked Wendy.
“Yeah, I haven’t been, but I’ve heard about it. There’s a bus tour that takes you through an ‘open wilderness area’ where animals roam freely; it’s supposed to be pretty neat.” Ellen shrugged.
“Free-roaming pandas? I’m all over it,” I said.
“Mahjong!” Ellen called.
“Look, Mom!” Zack, the eight-year old, hollered. He was chubby and red-haired with a smattering of freckles across his nose. He held a chocolate covered pretzel stick through the bars at the llama enclosure in the Shanghai Wild Animal Park. A dirty, matted llama gobbled it and trotted off. There was no sign prohibiting it, and no security guard in view.
It was touring day, and I wasn’t feeling well, a little pukey, like I had eaten something rotten or unclean the night before. I was determined to shake it off. I had decided to leave Lila at home with Ayi so I could focus my flickering light on our guests and hopefully show Piper a good time, too. But for the life of me, I couldn’t stop sweating. And not just because it was July. I felt like the heat was also coming from the center of my body, like I was also sweating on the inside.
“I’m not sure you should be—” I started.
“Zacky, do that again so I can get a picture!” his mom, Darla, said. Darla was small in stature but big in personality. And hair. And voice.
“The chocolate might be bad for the animals,” I gulped.
“Oh, don’t be silly, only dogs have that problem.” She chuckled.
I cocked my head. “Are you sure?” I asked.
She shrugged.
There was a small enclosure of underfed orangutans, and just past it stood a baby bear and a baby tiger, each in the center of a circle of concrete, under a faded blue pop-up tent. They were chained to the ground by the neck. The chain was short enough to keep them from moving, turning their heads, or standing up straight.
“Hurry boys! This could be our Christmas card!” Darla hollered and then turned to me. “Do you have a brush? I left mine at the hotel.”
“No, sorry,” I said.
“Never mind,” she said and patted her hair, pushing it back an inch on the left side, pulling it forward an inch on the right. “I’ll take your family shot if you take mine.” She reached into her bag and handed me her camera.
“This bear’s fur isn’t even soft, Mom!” Zacky shouted. “It’s kinda sticky!”
“Maybe that’s because you just ate a bag of caramel corn, honey.” She winked at me. “I don’t think he made that connection. Not the brightest bulb in the drawer, that one,” she said under her breath, then yelled, “Get with the tiger, boys! Grandma’s gonna love this shot.”
“Can I pet the tiger, Mommy?” Piper asked.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.
“Well of course it’s a good idea! That’s what the chains are for!” Darla said.
I took a few pictures of their family with the tiger.
“Why isn’t our zoo at home like this?” Zacky stomped his foot.
“I’m hungry.” Hunter, the dark haired, chubbier ten-year old pulled on his mom’s tank top and whined.
“Should we go to lunch? I saw a Chinese restaurant on the park map,” I said, hopeful that a bowl of white rice would settle my stomach.
“Oh no, we don’t do Chinese food. We tried some last night and it was all wrong. Not even slightly like Panda Inn back home. There were bones in the meat, and they forgot to take the head off the fish.”
“It was disgusting!” yelled Hunter.
“But the fish heads are yummy! Even the big ones, mmm!” Piper said, rubbing a big circle on her tummy.
“Well, aren’t you a funny one.” Darla chuckled and gave me a look that said, you may want to have a word with your offspring. “Is there a McDonald’s here?”
“Not here, but there’s one near your hotel,” I said.
“Yeah! Mommy, Mommy, I want a Big Mac, Mommy!” said Zack.
“Alright, eat this candy bar to tide you over. We’ll hit McDonald’s when we get back to town,” she said, tossing them each a Snickers from the bottom of her purse. “You want one?” she asked me.
“No thank you,” I said.
“This is boring,” Hunter said, working his jaw on the caramel.
My head snapped to attention. Boring? We could not have boring. “One sec,” I said. I walked up to a man with a broom. “Panda zai na li?”
He looked confused.
“Panda, panda,” I repeated, slowly, loudly, to no avail.
“Mommy! Is that the bus you were looking for?” Piper pulled on my hand and pointed. “For the foaming animals?”
“Free-roaming animals.” I looked up and smiled. “It is indeed, buddy,” I said and felt a little better. This would set our day back on the unforgettable track.
Piper and I sat in a row toward the back of the yellow school bus. The boys sat in the aisle across from us and alternated punching each other in the shoulder. Darla settled in the seat in front of them and started an intricate routine of lip gloss application. As soon as everyone was seated, the driver started the engine.
We followed a dirt path running along the perimeter of the park. At the first corner, we turned left and stopped at a gate in a twenty-foot chain link fence with electric wires trimming the top of it.
A dozen park workers who sat on the ground under a tree stood slowly and dusted off their pants. They meandered to the gate and pulled it open. Our bus entered and immediately stopped. Directly in front of us sat another electrified twenty-foot fence which was closed. The workers pulled the gate behind us shut, then ran to open the gate in front.
“Look Mommy, giraffes!” Piper called out, bouncing on her seat and pointing as we pulled into a large grassy enclosure where about twenty spotty necks bobbed around in a cluster. They were only a few yards from the bus and looked unperturbed. A sign nailed to a stake next to the road indicated in both Mandarin and English that this was the “herbivore area.”
We pulled slowly past the camels, zebras, and elephants, all in large numbers, all unfazed by our bus. The boys had stopped fighting and were furiously snapping photos with their mom’s camera.
I was happy with my tour guide skills. This felt like a National Geographic moment that would be hard to recreate in the US. I hugged Piper to me. “Isn’t this great?” I asked as we pulled up to another set of twenty-foot gates and stopped. “Carnivore area,” the sign read.
We followed the gate drill again but this time, when the workers closed the first gate behind us, the driver cut the engine. The fence in front of us remained closed.
After a few minutes with no foreseeable change, I stood up, pushing myself taller on the back of the bus seat in front of me for a view out the windshield into the next enclosure.
“What’s taking so long?” I said.
I jumped as the bus driver barked something into the microphone.
“What’s he saying?” Darla turned to me.
I squinted. “Something about something costing 50 kuai, but I don’t know what. Maybe snacks? A photo? I can’t understand that part.”
The bus door opened. Five Chinese men scurried down the stairs, led by a man in a tan polyester safari suit to a large wooden box with slatted sides. The leader reached into the box and pulled out a live chicken.
Zack and Hunter looked at me. “Is this the chicken exhibit?” Hunter asked. “’Cause I already know what a chicken looks like.”
I shrugged and looked at Darla, who was filing her nails.
The man in the safari suit held the chicken with one hand and grabbed a skinny brown rope about fifteen feet long. He looped the rope around the top of one wing and handed it to the closest man from our bus, who grabbed it, awkwardly juggling the flapping, squawking chicken-on-a-rope back toward our bus.
�
��Hold it! What’s happening?” I said. “Is he? He can’t be. Oh my gosh, he is. He’s getting on our bus with that chicken.”
I thought of the article I had just read in the Herald Tribune detailing the potential global pandemic predicted to start in Asia, probably with chickens. Bird flu. But what could I do? I didn’t want to get off the bus for fear I’d be trapped there, stuck between two enclosures, surrounded by poultry. So instead, I sat on the bus in stunned silence and looked at Piper, contemplating our inevitable feathery death.
The four other men collected their tethered chickens and brought them onto the bus. They returned to their seats as the chickens squawked and flapped next to them, filling the air with floating fluff.
The driver started the engine and spoke into his microphone as the men stood and opened their windows. They pushed their chickens out the windows and held onto the ends of their ropes. The chickens dangled outside, flapping and screeching.
The gate in front of us opened. Our bus inched forward.
Piper looked at me curiously. “Do you think that hurts the chickens, Mommy?” she asked.
“Well,” I started to answer.
And then I saw the lions.
“HOLY SHIT!” I yelled.
There were dozens of them, trotting toward our bus from every direction. The first one to catch the scent began running at full speed. His front legs left the ground about ten feet out. SLAM! He hit the bus on Darla’s side. We rocked. He trotted away carrying a chicken, rope dragging behind him. The man who’d been holding that chicken laughed gleefully.
Piper and I looked at each other. I realized my mouth was open and a scream was coming out of it. I needed to make an immediate decision. What does one do when faced with imminent mortality alongside their child? Would I have fallen to the ground in a blubbering mess as the Titanic sank? Or would I have picked up a cow bell and joined the band as the water level inched higher?
I reconfigured my scream into a strange throaty laugh. “Oh my goodness, Piper! Look at these hungry lions!” I hugged her so she wouldn’t see my face. “Hold on tight ’cause here comes another one!” Chicken number two dangled high on our side of the bus. The corresponding lion slammed into the window, catching the body of the chicken between his giant teeth. He tossed his head to the side, ripping the rope from the man’s hand, who shook off his rope burn, laughing.
“Wow,” I said, feeling strangely detached from my body. “That lion has some serious vertical leap. He must be the Michael Jordan of his pride!”
“They’re coming so fast, I can’t get a picture!” Darla said. “Boys! Stand closer to the man with the rope!”
They scrambled down the aisle toward the final chicken as Darla hopped after them. “Take hold of the rope, boys!” she hollered as the lion slammed into the bus. It rocked so hard that Zack fell over.
“Zack! Are you okay?” I shrieked.
Darla looked at me and cocked her head. “Zack’s fine, but I’m not sure the same goes for you. Why were you screaming?”
I looked at Piper—she was pressed against the window, so I leaned toward Darla, deciding to share my greatest fear. “This is a school bus, Darla. These windows pop out easily so kids can evacuate. If one leaping lion gets one powerful claw on the top edge of one open window, they could open this bus like a can of sardines! And, in case it’s not clear, we’d be the sardines!”
She smiled and smoothed her hair. “You’re right,” she said. “That could happen, and we could all sit here and expect it. Or we could not worry about things that might or might not happen and have a good ole time watching lions eat chickens.” She shrugged and turned back to her camera. “I’m going with option two.”
I dropped onto my seat and squeegeed sweat from my brow with my pinky. I exhaled loudly and said, “I respect that, I do. But I don’t have access to option two, Darla.”
We pulled into another chicken enclosure. As the bus doors opened, Darla and the boys careened off the bus. They returned a few minutes later, each with an angry chicken.
We entered the tiger area like a rolling yellowed Christmas tree festooned with living ornaments. “What song should we sing?” I asked Piper as the tigers slammed into our quivering bus, chicken blood spraying in an arc on the windows.
“Now this is Christmas card material!” Darla whooped.
As the last gate closed behind us, I mopped the sweat off my face with a baby wipe I’d discovered in the bottom of my purse. I couldn’t believe we’d survived.
“Mom, can we go again, please? Mom, please?” The boys begged as we stepped off the bus.
Darla looked at her watch. “I have a better idea—let’s make like a McLion and go eat us some McNuggets!” she winked at me and laughed.
“Yeah! Yeah!” the boys yelled.
She walked over and squeezed my shoulder. “Thank you for bringing us here, sweetheart. This was a highlight, for sure.” She paused. “Are you sure you’re not car sick? You’re looking greeeen.”
“No, I’m okay. Thanks, Darla,” I said, but my limbs hung heavy and my tongue felt dry.
“Mommy!” Piper pulled on my shirt as Darla walked away. “We need to take them for fish heads and duck skin! Please? They’ll love it!” She jumped up and down.
“Oh, Piper, it’s a great idea, but I think they’re set on McDonald’s.”
She was quiet for a minute, watching the boys run off. “But they can get McDonald’s anywhere.”
I patted her shoulder. “You’re right. But sometimes it’s hard for people to try new things. It’s easier to eat things they already know.”
“But I try new things, and they’re good.”
I crouched down so we were face to face. “And that’s part of what I love about you, Pipes. You’re my fearless explorer.” I hugged her.
She pulled away. “Why are you proud of me for eating fish heads?”
“I just am, okay?”
“Okay, Mommy. Then can we go get fish heads today? After we drop them off at McDonald’s?”
“Not today, buddy. I’m feeling a little yucky,” I said as my butt dropped to the ground. My vision was suddenly smeared. I wiped my face with the other side of the wet wipe, but my pores would not let up. Maybe my bird flu is already symptomatic, I thought. I’d forgotten all about it during the large cat feeding. Then I scrambled to my feet, ran to the nearest trash can, and retched.
44.
“Daniel? Daniel! Are you awake?” It was early the following morning. I dug my elbow into the flesh of his forearm at an ungodly hour to ensure that my question was rhetorical.
“Ow, Tina. What?”
“I think my period is late,” I whispered. I couldn’t say such a thing in a larger voice for fear it would make it more true. But the mere possibility had woken me up like an air horn blasting in my ear.
“Mm. Okay,” he mumbled and rolled over.
“Daniel, I mean, it’s really late. Maybe two weeks. Or more! I think I might be pregnant.” I sat up, fully alert.
“Not a chance,” he said into his pillow.
“Yes a chance! My cycle’s been more regular here. This is—”
“I don’t believe it,” he mumbled.
“I know, it’s crazy. I think I have an extra pee stick under the sink. I’m going to look for it.”
“I don’t know why you would. You’re just going to drive yourself nuts.”
I scrambled out of bed, scurried into the bathroom, and yanked open the cupboard under the sink. I flipped on the light and began rummaging through the-box-of-stuff-I-kept-for-no-reason.
“Found it,” I called out. “I’m going to pee on it now!”
Three minutes later I walked into the room in complete shock. “It’s positive.”
“It’s also wrong.”
“Daniel, the stick doesn’t lie. You know that. These things are never wrong.”
“Tina, it’s a Chinese pregnancy test, of course it lies. It’s probably defective, or expired, or a poor excuse for a knock-off
. It’s definitely wrong. Of all people, you don’t just get pregnant without trying.”
“I know! But I think I am this time.”
“Well, you should go see a doctor because that stick’s wrong.” He pulled the sheet over his head. Conversation, over.
I knew why he didn’t want to talk about it. Getting pregnant with Piper and Lila had been monumentally difficult, a feat we hadn’t wanted to relive. We’d agreed after Lila was born—never again would we embark on the endless tests, scads of shots, rivers of tears, and lifetimes of waiting that are the same-old-same-old of the fertility challenged. I had spent six of my thirty-five years clocking my cycle like an OCD referee with a Timex clutched in each hand. I knew when my period was one second late and exactly how long to wait before ripping open the top box in our mountain of early pregnancy tests, extracting the shiny white stick, and then showering it, along with my hand, with highly concentrated first morning pee. Six years bug-eyed and desperate for any indication that a baby was growing inside of me instead of some flukey blip in my cycle.
There were a lot of flukey blips. Numerous retests. An overabundance of time questioning the validity of the almighty stick.
The dream of having three children had been revised to two once Lila was born. And on many, if not most, days, two had been more than enough. We had mutually decided to matriculate to the stage in life where we would focus our energies on nurturing what we had instead of wishing for what we didn’t.
“I’m pregnant,” I told him on the phone later that afternoon, in a taxi on the way home from the doctor’s office. I couldn’t believe it was my voice saying the words. “I took a blood test. You have to believe it now.”
He paused. “Tina, I can’t talk about this right now. Let’s discuss this when I get home.”
When he walked in that night, I would have known he’d stopped at a bar even if my nose hadn’t been working. However, since I was pregnant, my nose was bionic. He reeked.
Fish Heads and Duck Skin Page 20