Fish Heads and Duck Skin

by Lindsey Salatka

  The kids were asleep, and I was sitting at the dining room table staring at my blank laptop screen, about to compose a “Holy Shit” letter to Jennifer when he stumbled in, light socket hair, shirt untucked, streaks of dirt on his forehead.

  I was determined to remain calm, to not be angered by his reaction. I thought of Mr. Han and breathed into my belly, attempting to feel rooted. I reminded myself that we were both caught off-guard, stunned by this news instead of ecstatic. We needed time to digest. He would come around and, like me, start to feel a small but recognizable spark of excitement growing alongside our newest family member-to-be.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked.

  “Not so much.” He shrugged.

  “That’s good because I ate enough for both of us and the remnants in the take-away box look like the nuclear test site in the Nevada desert. Ground zero. Utter devastation,” I said and then with a small smile added, “I’m due in December.”

  He sat down and, with a let’s-get-real expression on his face, said, “Do you really want another baby?”

  I laughed with a bitter undertone. “I think you know this isn’t a matter of wanting. It just happened. Unplanned. Unexpected.”

  “So if you don’t want it, why are you having it?” he asked, tilting his head.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It means that we live in China; it’s common to terminate a pregnancy here. It’s fast, it’s cheap, and it can happen tomorrow,” he said, putting his hands on mine on top of the table. They were heavy, sweaty.

  “I said it was unplanned, not unwanted!” I pulled my hands away and pushed my chair back.

  “You don’t have to tell yourself you want this. You’re pro-choice, remember?” he said.

  “Of course I remember I’m pro-choice! Pro-choice for other people, Danny! I don’t need to make a choice about a baby I want to have with my husband!”

  Daniel was quiet. “Yeah, okay then.”

  “Okay then what?”

  “Okay then, if you want it, you should have it.”

  “I should have it, or we should have it?” I asked, the pitch of my voice was near-hysterical.

  “We! You know what I meant. But I think you should still think about—”

  “I should still think about the choice that’s not an option?” I shrieked, then stood up and crossed my arms.

  “Just think about it, okay? Don’t be so close-minded.” He stood up and walked into our room, slamming the door behind him.

  45.

  “I can’t believe they opened an outdoor patio at Starbucks,” I said the next day as I plopped myself onto a wrought-iron chair. My eyes were still puffy and stinging from crying myself to sleep the night before. Even though Daniel and I were barely speaking, we had agreed to push our issues to the back burner and not cancel our outing of the day—a coffee date with Kristy, Andrew, and Jeremy. Daniel was leaving later that day for a week of meetings and shipment inspections near Beijing. We both wanted to be distracted and end our time together on something positive.

  “I would label this area less ‘patio’ and more ‘cement-slab-surrounded-by-chain-link-fence,’” said Kristy.

  “On the ‘patio’ spectrum, it’s more ‘prison yard’ than ‘comfortable area intended for fraternizing with peers’,” added Andrew. “And they’ve only erected it temporarily, until they bulldoze this whole building for the new train station.”

  “I don’t care why it’s here or what its intended purpose is. I’m sitting here and the kids are over there playing happily which, for me, designates this spot as a ‘heavenly patio.’ I give it five out of five stars,” I said.

  “They should lose at least half a star for the occasional whiff of rancid meat drifting over from there,” Daniel said nodding at the entrance to the wet market across the alley.

  “The smell isn’t bothering me; I’ve learned to breathe through my mouth,” I said.

  “It’s not bothering you that we’re 100 feet from the square block housing more flies than Shanghai has people?” Andrew laughed.

  “It’s not. I’m content right here, right now, in this chair on this patio with this warm beverage. And I don’t want to talk about the flies,” I said.

  “Wow, Tina’s changing,” Kristy sang.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” I said.

  “I see a glimmer of it, too,” said Andrew. “You’re accepting some unpleasant truths about this place.”

  “Accepting or disregarding?” I asked.

  “Either way, you’re evolving,” he said.

  I paused, then slowly nodded. “You’re right,” I finally said. “I may be coming to terms with some of the less savory elements of this place.”

  “You are! You said it!” Kristy said.

  I shrugged. “One does what one must to survive.”

  “First survive, then thrive, I say.” Andrew nodded and bit into a chicken foot.

  “Did you just pull that claw out of your pocket?” Daniel laughed.

  “Mm. Yeah, I got a whole bag of them in my jacket.”

  “Seriously?” Daniel asked.

  “Yeah, we walked through the wet market to get here.”

  I coughed. “I’m pretty sure I’ll never thrive at your level.”

  Andrew sighed and looked over at the throngs of locals pushing their way into the wet market to buy their daily vegetables. “How about you Daniel, are you thriving?”

  Daniel hesitated and looked at me, then looked down and said, “Eh. Mostly I’m thriving.”

  “How long have you been here now?” Andrew asked.

  “Eighteen months,” Daniel said.

  “Ah, okay, you’re right at that spot. From here it gets harder, but then it gets easier. Before you know it, you’ll barely notice all the things that shock and horrify you now.”

  “I can’t even imagine not noticing some of this,” Daniel said.

  “Oh, you will. Trust me.”

  “You’ve been here over a year? It seems like nine months, tops, since I found you, quivering in Starbucks, unable to order yourselves a coffee,” Kristy said.

  “I remember well,” I said.

  “Now Tina’ll push herself to the counter and holler out an order in two seconds flat,” Daniel said, almost sounding proud. “She’s really sharpened her elbows.”

  “Let’s just say I’m learning how to get the job done,” I admitted.

  “How’s your Mandarin then, Daniel? Tell us,” Andrew said.

  “My Mandarin? It’s non-existent. Tina’s the one hitting the flash cards in our house. And she’s got nothing on Piper.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “You can speak a little.”

  “You’re right,” Daniel said without looking at me. “I speak taxi.”

  “And restaurant,” I reminded him.

  “Yes, that’s true. I speak taxi, restaurant, and bar. That’s pretty much all I need.”

  I looked at Kristy. “He’s either at work all day in an office full of English-speaking locals or traveling to visit factories who employ English translators. He occasionally goes out to dinner with me so Ayi can work late to make a little extra money,” I said.

  “You pay her to stay late?” Kristy asked.

  “Yep,” I said.

  Kristy and Andrew looked at each other.

  “I don’t care if it’s not customary here to pay overtime; she’s happy, and we’re happy.”

  “You’re the reason the locals love working for new expats—better pay for fewer hours. Do you offer benefits?” Andrew asked.

  I shrugged. “I paid for her tooth to get pulled last week. From a guy with a chair on the street corner.”

  “You didn’t,” Daniel said.

  “I did.”

  “You do offer benefits!” Kristy cackled. “How much did that set you back?”

  “50 kuai.”

  “Six dollars?”

  “Yep.”

  “Hey, is this the wet market that’s connected to the fake market?” Dan
iel craned his head to see beyond the front stalls.

  “The very one,” Andrew said.

  “Great—I’m thriving so much that I need a new belt.”

  “Too much puffer fish and bai jiu on your factory visits?” Andrew laughed.

  “Mm hmm.” Daniel leaned back and patted his belly like Santa.

  “And pizza. We still eat a lot of bar pizza,” I confessed.

  Daniel stood up. “I’m going to duck over there for a couple minutes.”

  “Do you know where to go?” Kristy asked.

  “Not really, but I’ll find my way.”

  “I know exactly where the belt stalls are. I’ll take you there and then let you find your way back here on your own if that’s okay—I need to hit the sock aisle for Jeremy.” Kristy stood up.

  “You two hit the shops,” I said. “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the smalls. Andrew, you can go too if you want. I hear the wet market just got a fresh delivery of pig faces and goat hearts.” I smiled.

  “I’ll stay back with you, thanks,” he said.

  “All right.” I shrugged.

  As Daniel and Kristy Frogger-jumped across the alley, Andrew leaned toward me. “Truth is I’ve already got my snack for the day and I’m not crazy for the non-food side of the market—too many pick-pockets for my liking.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said.

  It got quiet for a couple minutes. I wasn’t sure if it was awkwardly quiet, but I figured it was probably less uncomfortable than a forced conversation.

  “So tell me, is Daniel enjoying his job?” Andrew finally asked.

  I snorted. “Of course! It’s his dream job.”

  Andrew laughed.

  “What’s funny about that?” I asked.

  “Dream job. In China. It’s oxymoronic, that’s what’s funny.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Working in China as an expat is no one’s dream. It’s infinitely challenging! No matter what your job is, you spend more time managing the unanticipated than anything you’re meant to be doing. The unpredictability is hard to plan around. That’s why the expat community is so fluid, so transitory. People can’t hack it for too long. The pressure, the cultural misunderstandings, the people constantly ripping you off … then there are the hours it takes to complete simple tasks and then redo them when circumstances change—and they always change—it wears people down. I see it all the time with the families of the kids I teach. The corporate burnout rate is extremely high, no matter how much the execs get paid. Most people can’t handle more than two to three years, I’d say.”

  “How’ve you been able to stay here so long?”

  He tapped his fingers on the arm rests of his chair. “Not sure, really. The opportunities kept growing, so we hunkered down to witness this incredible transformation. Then at some point it felt better to stay than to leave.”

  “Wow. That’s something.”

  “Something you think you and Daniel are up for?”

  “It’s not completely up to us. Daniel has to renegotiate his contract soon; we haven’t really talked about it for a while—”

  “Have you asked him if he likes the job?”

  I shrugged. “Not recently.”

  “You should ask him again,” Andrew said while stretching his arms over his head. “Now that he’s no longer new, I’d be surprised if he loves it as much as you think he does.”

  “I think he would tell me if he was unhappy,” I said. “I don’t always have to dig for information.”

  “True, and I meant no offense; he just doesn’t seem the type to complain without prompting.”

  I thought about this without answering.

  He smiled at me. “So how about you? You’re enjoying your life here, I presume?”

  “Some aspects of our life here are great,” I said. “But there are days when I think I need to get out of here before I lose my mind. But when I consider the bigger picture,” I paused and looked down at my belly, “I think maybe it would be better to stay for a while, postpone the real world a little longer, watch the kids grow up …”

  Andrew sat up straight and looked at me with wide eyes.

  I thought he’d guessed I was pregnant, so I smiled, feeling excited to share the news for the first time.

  Then he said, “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  He stood up. “Your name, I thought I heard someone yelling your name.” He looked toward the market holding his hands over his eyes like a visor. I glanced at the kids happily playing on the corner of the slab.

  “I don’t think …” and then I heard it—someone screaming my name—a distant, extended holler coming from the center of the market.

  “TEEEEEEEEEEEENAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

  “Oh my God. It’s Daniel! What do I—”

  Andrew was already scaling the fence. “Stay here with the kids. I’ll find him,” he yelled as he launched himself into the center of the alley, stumbled once, and then took off running toward the entrance to the market.

  46.

  “You’re not in trouble,” Andrew said to Daniel twenty minutes later as I sat furiously chewing my nails. “Just describe what happened and I’ll translate it to the jingcha.”

  “Who’s the jingcha?” Daniel sniffed.

  “That guy,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the policeman.

  We sat in a small, square, gray room lit by one long, bare, fluorescent bulb. Andrew, Daniel, and I sat on one side of a rusty folding table in the middle of the interrogation room of the underground police station next to the fake market. Daniel held sheets of toilet paper to the gouges down the center of both cheeks. Thankfully, the bleeding from his face had slowed. His t-shirt was ripped and bloodied around the neck.

  The policeman sat on the other side of the table smoking a cigarette, a pen and paper in front of him. A skinny, swarthy man sat moaning on a chair in the corner, his head resting against the wall, blood trickling from his nose. Every few minutes the policeman would turn and holler at him, then turn back to face us and suck his cigarette. Kristy, thankfully, had wrangled the kids into a taxi to her apartment.

  “Kristy had just left, and I was standing in front of stall 453, reaching in my jacket for my wallet to pay for the belt I’d just tried on, when I felt someone kick my right shoe. I pulled my hand out and saw a boy run away from me into the crowd. Meanwhile, this clown,” Daniel jerked his thumb toward the man in the corner, “was reaching inside my jacket from the left. I grabbed his hand. He tried to jerk it away, so I held him and punched him—I wanted to stop him, but I’m pretty sure I broke his nose. Then he went crazy! He reached up with both hands and scratched my face, so I pushed him as hard as I could. He fell and then scrambled into the neighboring stall where he grabbed a fire extinguisher and started swinging it at me.”

  “What did you do?” Andrew asked.

  “I covered my head and kicked him when he got close to me. I was trying to get him off balance so I could grab him from behind to take the fire extinguisher.”

  “Wait—you broke his nose?” I said looking at the man. He moaned on cue.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Then the crowd separated us; a group of people pushed him to the ground and fell on him and a giant mob picked me up and brought me here. They were holding me by my arms and legs; I had no idea where they were taking me. Kristy was gone; I was terrified. Then Andrew found me in the lobby, thank God.”

  The police officer hollered at the man and spit on him.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Andrew.

  “I don’t know, but I can guess. This guy is from Xinjiang, one of the autonomous regions in Western China.”

  “He’s Chinese?” I asked. “He doesn’t look it.”

  “He’s not ethnically Han Chinese, he’s more Middle-Eastern, but now his homeland is part of the People’s Republic of China and, suffice it to say, his people aren’t well-liked around here. His guilt is already presumed. This whole proc
edure is just a formality.” He looked at Daniel. “They’ll take your statement and let you go.”

  Daniel nodded and gingerly extricated his tissue from one wound, transferring it to a different oozing area on his chin.

  I folded my hands on the table. “What will happen to him?” I nodded at the man in the corner.

  Andrew exhaled. “I don’t know.”

  “Yes you do,” I said.

  He drummed his fingers on the table several times, then tapped just his index finger, then stopped and lay his hand flat. “The punishments are quite harsh here, Tina.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  He nodded. “There’s no ‘trial by a jury of your peers.’ There’s only a local judge, and he won’t be lenient. His guilt will be presumed, and stealing from a foreigner is, to understate, frowned upon. Plus, he’s not from Shanghai so he already has that going against him. His punishment is out of our hands. Remember, this is his fault. We didn’t ask him to steal.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to breathe, to beckon my roots again.

  “He’s made a fateful error; I don’t know what else to tell you,” Andrew said.

  “But what if he’s desperate? What if he has a family?” I asked, my voice quivering. No one answered. I grabbed Daniel’s arm. He winced. “I know you’re hurt, but this, it’s too harsh a punishment, right? You have to agree with me.”

  He pulled his arm away. “He was trying to rob me, to harm me,” Daniel said.

  “But he failed!” I said. “And how much would it have stung, really, if he’d grabbed your wallet?”

  He snorted. “The fire extinguisher would have stung a lot.”

  I looked at Andrew. “Would it be possible to drop the charges?”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  Daniel dropped his elbows on the table and rubbed above his eye with one hand, then winced again.

  I looked back at Andrew. “What if we said it was my fault?”

  Andrew looked confused. “But you weren’t even there.”

  “No one knows that but us.”

  Andrew blinked a few times, then nodded at me with sad eyes. “I see what you’re trying to do, and I commend you for it, but it’s not worth—”