Typical American

by Gish Jen

  "With his mouth?" Ralph couldn't believe it.

  But it was true. Helen had read it in the American newspaper, which was honest enough to admit, one day, that they were right. Americans had degenerated since the War. As for why, that was complicated. Sitting in the green room that was the living room and Theresa's bedroom both, she read the whole article aloud. Ralph and Theresa listened carefully.

  "That's what we were saying/' Ralph commented finally. He looked to Theresa, who nodded.

  "Americans want to loosen up now, have a good time," she said. "They're sick of rationing,"

  "Would you read it again?"

  Helen would — glad, she supposed, to have in the family at least this one rickety seat. And sure enough, there it was once more, evidence of how smart they were. Imagine that — that they could see, in a foreign country, what was what! Above them, the ceiling light dropped haloes in their hair as they listened on. Everything, they heard, was going to be okay.

  The only question was why Ralph lay awake whole nights, listening to Helen asleep in the next bed. It wasn't just the strangeness of rooming with a woman which kept him up with the streedights. Not anymore; he was already used to the company, or almost used to it — to the way she dressed in the morning, under the covers, reaching to the bureau with a lithe, bare arm; to the way she and his sister sometimes talked to each other through the door. He was more or less used to saying wife, to being called husband, whatever that meant. He was even used to sex, which he no longer wanted twice a day. Once was enough; already the fumbling had become memory. An ease had set in. He'd cross to her bed; a touch, and she'd turn over. A few touches more; buttons; then quiet, quiet, listening to be sure they weren't waking his sister. It was easy. Quiet. Quiet.

  But Helen never said anything, or even seemed about to make a noise. She was so quiet he worried, not just in bed together, but all night, in their own beds, like this. Was there something the matter with her? She hid things, he'd discovered — keys, batteries, letters. She kept magazines under her mattress. What else might she be keeping from him? Maybe an illness, he thought, listening hard. For she didn't just breathe; she inhaled, then stopped, then expelled the air in a little burst. Squinting up at the ring-stained ceiling, he tried to make the sound she was

  making. A slight popping, as if she had been holding her breath. Or as if there were some obstruction ... where? In her chest? No, in her throat. Right at the base of his own throat he thought he could feel a little door that might stick. He envisioned visits to the doctor. Cancer. An operation. Where would she want to be buried? He didn't even know. Or worse, he pictured a wife with no throat. How would she breathe? How would she eat? He swallowed. Would he have married her if he had known this would happen? And should he have married her if he wouldn't have?

  He wished there were someone to ask, someone who could tell him how much love was the proper amount for a pair of newlyweds, how enthusiastic they should feel about their new duties and responsibilities, where they fell in the spectrum of human attachments. Did they talk to each other more than average? Less? Did they kiss enough? Fight too much? What mattered? He wished he were in China, where if there turned out to be something wrong with the marriage he could always take a concubine. That was a better system, he thought, more sure. Although now that he was thinking about it, he wondered if he would even know if something were wrong. For this was the odd thing — all his life, he'd known he would get married, and yet he'd never stopped to consider what it would be like once he was. Marriage, as he'd thought of it, was the end of a story, much like a Ph.D., except that the marriage story was shorter, and less work. Not that life wouldn't take up again, but it'd be in other realms. At home, the husband would command, the wife obey. They would find harmony under their pillows the way that children, New Year's morning, found chestnuts.

  So he'd thought. But instead here he was, listening. Now she half turned, so that she faced away from him. He couldn't hear her at all. Had she stopped breathing? He sat up a little. A truck hitting a pothole, rumbling on. A distant radio, a soprano, very faint. He worked his pajama top out from under his back.

  Nothing. He stilled himself, lay himself out, patient as land;

  until finally, like a wandering rain, it came to him, not the sound he awaited, but something else, a recognition — that what he wanted more than anything was to secure her. He did not want her to float away into history, into the times, an upswelling of the masses. He wanted her to be permanent, an edifice whose piles touched the heart of the earth.

  Still nothing. He got out of bed and crossed the cold aisle to hers, shivering. How attached he was already — it was frightening how attached — just to her sound and presence, to her simple animal company. To her ways of doing things — the way she rolled up the washcloths, the way she dusted with a feather duster. What a privilege it was to know another person's habits! To know when she set her hair. To know that she hid things. He wished she wouldn't hide things. But even so; yes, already he was attached. He could not imagine how he was going to feel in twenty years. And how about fifty? How was he going to let her walk around on the street then? He was going to want to keep her in a satin-lined box.

  He fingered the hem of her pillowcase. The light in the room arced up to the ceiling, a half vault of stripes, below which he could almost make out the rise and fall of her body. Still he warmed his hands in his armpits; then gently picked up her head. It was heavy in his hands, and harder to grip than he'd expected — her hair. One of his thumbs slipped into the hol-iow of her ear. Yet he managed to turn her face back toward him. Ahh; her breathing again; better. She yawned, seemed to stir.

  Had he awakened her? He froze, hunched over, listening.

  Was she settling down?

  He would count to ten, then move, he decided. One, he started, two.

  But when eleven came he was still poised, waiting — holding his breath when she did, letting it go as she let hers.

  With morning, though, once more came day. Ralph asked if Helen had something to tell him; and when it turned out that

  there was nothing wrong (or nothing, at least, that she would admit), childish love turned into adolescent embarrassment turned into manly tyranny.

  "This way," Ralph demonstrated, inhaling, exhaling. "Even. Do you see? You should breathe this way"

  Helen mimicked him, timidly. "That one right?"

  "Right" pronounced Ralph. "Again"

  Helen did it again.

  "Again," he commanded. "Again."

  Helen thought a moment, then experimentally let her breath catch.

  "No," said Ralph. "That wasn't right."

  "Show me once more?" She tilted her head, and was pleased to see the pleasure with which Ralph authoritatively obliged.

  So it went, back and forth, Ralph playing at husband, Helen at wife.

  Later, the game over, Ralph approached Helen as she chopped vegetables. He had in the meantime gone to school to meet with his new advisor, who was not Pinkus — he missed Pinkus, who was consulting full-time now — but Pierce, a Professor Rodney S. Pierce, who with his greased goatee looked more like an artisan than an engineer. A bird-boned, finicky man. Anyway, Ralph had gone to meet with him, as he was supposed to, and had walked back, and now was supposed to be studying. And he would be, if Pierce's voice were not roaring in his ears. The ocean in a seashell. "Detail, Mr. Chang." So now what was he going to do? "It's a matter, shall we say, of inclination." Inclination. "There are engineers and there are engineers. I wouldn't presume to predict. But I should tell you. A favor, believe me. Nothing you don't realize yourself."

  Nothing he didn't realize himself. This was, consequently, his fourth trip to the kitchen in an hour. The first trip he had tasted the soup; the second, he had asked Helen to make him a cup of tea; the last, he had had more soup. "Needs salt," he had said then. To this she'd answered affectionately, as she tasted it herself, "What do you know?" She'd called him a fan tong, just

  what his father used
to say. Of course, she was teasing. She wasn't a big teaser, but sometimes she did tease, and then she called it "ribbing." An odd word; sometimes he wondered whether she kept words like that among the other secrets of her drawers. Anyway, this time she had her chin stuck out over the sink in case she dripped as she ribbed, and when he'd tickled her Adam's apple, she'd laughed, which gladdened him.

  But now, as he stood in the doorway again, homing to her presence, he thought he saw her shoulders rise with apprehension, her elbows draw in. "No more, no more," she said without turning around, or at least that's what he thought she said; and when he came in anyway, she said, "More soup?"

  He shook his head and simply stood, wanting to tickle her Adam's apple again but not knowing how to get to that. There was a way, he knew, but he knew it the way he knew that boat captains could navigate by the stars. He gazed up at the fluorescent circle blinking overhead. Unfathomable. "Sure," he said, after a moment. "Soup."

  She ladled him some.

  "Needs salt." He smiled.

  But this time she didn't call him a fan tong. Instead she said okay, in English, patiently, and reached for the salt shaker. She was going to add salt. What wasn't proper? Still, as he watched her salt with one hand, scratch the side of her nose with the other, he felt himself to be, not the head of the family, a scholar, but a child on a high wooden stool, helpless, bright air all around him. He heard a patient voice. Your father will beat me too.

  The room resounded with patience.

  "Not right."

  "Not right?"

  He heard himself talking. "Your breathing."

  Their marriage so young, yet already it was easier to say what they'd said before. "Show me again" she said. No tilt of her head. He demonstrated. She imitated him perfectly, chopping carrots.

  "What's so interesting about those carrots?"

  "Not right?" Still chopping.

  "You didn't even look."

  She watched.

  "Good" he said then. "I want you to breathe that way all the time"

  She agreed. But ten minutes later, he caught her holding her breath again.

  "You were listening?" asked Helen. "From around the corner?"

  He nodded, barely.

  '7s there something wrong?"

  "You hide things" he said.

  "Hide what?"

  "Everything. There are things you don't tell me."

  She scraped a ragged peel off a turnip.

  "Say something. I want you to say something."

  She thought. "Would you like some soup?"

  "No."

  "Would you like some tea?"

  "No."

  "Would you like some — "

  "No!" he yelled, and left.

  What kind of love was theirs, that it brought strife instead of peace? They fought again a few days later, and then again the next week, and then again and again, until they were practiced at it — until it had become the kernel of their married life, the form of intimacy they knew best. Sad refinements: Ralph knocked at Helen's skull. "Nothing to say? Anybody there? Come on, open up." Knocking made Ralph feel fierce, but it made Helen go blank — which made him knock more, and command her to breathe, and accuse her of holding her breath on purpose (which she wasn't, really, she wasn't, she wasn't) until she ran away into another room. Sometimes she would blockade

  the door; he would bang and bang, unable to stop himself. He had never dreamed a person could be so powerless in his power. But there he'd be, yelling, "I'm the father of this family! Do you hear me? The father, not the son!" She would start crying. Then usually he would back off, apologetic and tender. These were some of the most passionate moments of their lives together, the most searingly entwined. How central Helen felt then, how naturally indispensable!

  As opposed to the hours and hours she seemed to stand outside of something deeper than mere marriage. Was it natural or unnatural? Helen didn't know, and tried not to be jealous, but she couldn't help but notice how Ralph hung on to Theresa's every word these days, even if what she had to say didn't particularly interest him. "We're wrong to say typical American," for example. That was a new theme with Theresa. Over and over she explained that Pete was just a person, like them, that Boyboy was just a dog. "Really?" Ralph had no idea what she meant, but he listened as though trying to discover his essential human worth. He cocked his head. He beetled his brow. Once he even cleaned out his ears with his pinkies, as if what stood between him and some more vital, degree-holding self was wax.

  What could Helen do but place her hopes in time?

  "You went up the trap door*" Ralph said.

  "It was nothing, really. You should try it" she said, nonchalant, though in one way, she was taken aback too. How much, how fast she was changing! There was at least that much to be happy about, she supposed. The same girl who had never so much as drawn her own bath was now sprouting mung beans in jars with holes punched in their screw lids. It was as if, once she'd resigned herself to her new world, something had taken her over — a drive to make it hers. She made her own Chinese pancakes now. She made her own red bean paste, boiling and mashing and frying the beans, then using them to fill buns, which she made also. She made curtains; she made bedspreads; she rewired Ralph's old lamp. She couldn't help but feel proud. Too proud, really — she tried to bind that feeling up — recognizing still, though, that in her own way she was becoming private strength itself. She was the hidden double stitching that kept armholes from tearing out. And all because she'd discovered, by herself, a secret — that working was enjoyable. Effort, result. Twist, the cap comes off. Water, the plant grows. Having never done things before, she was entranced by these small satisfactions; she was astounded when, pausing at the sink, a door of sun opening and shutting on her wrist, she realized — yes. Just now, waiting for her bucket to fill, she felt strong. Just this moment, plotting how not to leave footprints on her clean floor, she was at peace.

  Of course, it was still important that her hands be too delicate to wield the mop, or the rust-spotted butcher's cleaver. Once, in an effusion of sympathy, a strange American woman had squeezed Helen's hand (typical American no-manners); the American had wondered then at how soft and smooth Helen's skin was. "Really?" said Helen. But actually, she knew it. She knew how tiny she was too, how unmuscled in the arms; she appreciated, as if in a mirror, that she was amazing. And that mattered, the way it mattered that she be busy but not busy at the same time — that, while competent, she be a Chinese

  girl. Theresa's work might be her life. One part of Helen, though, still lounged in her pink-piped pajamas, under a shimmering silk comforter, clapping while her brother performed magic tricks. Scarves out of his shoe! And how did he know she was holding the ace? Later he had showed her how it all worked, the secret marks and folds, the way he distracted her eye. Standard stuff, he shrugged, in his brotherly way. He flared his nostrils at her, a sign of affection. Anybody could do it.

  Now there was no one to show her anything anymore; the tricks, in her dimming memory, glowed with magic again, like an old mirror resilvered by candlelight. After work, though, still came what she thought of as "doing nothing," a proper Shanghainese-girl activity. Without Theresa and Ralph knowing, she spent large parts of her afternoons listening to the radio, or reading the magazines she kept under her mattress. She loved the advertisements especially, so gorgeously puzzling. Which part of the picture was the "velvet"? Which the "portrait neckline"? Also she liked the insights into American home life — the revelation that most Americans showered every day, first thing in the morning, for example. (This amazed Helen, who took occasional baths, in the evening.) Sometimes she talked on the phone to friends from the English language school. Juliet Shon and Pauline Hu, every now and then. More often, Janis Chao. These were the hours in which she sang a litde; breathed however she wanted; and simply kept quiet — more important now than ever, as she had a hunch she might be pregnant. It was only a tingling in her breasts so far, an odd pressure that might almost be a mood
; still, if her mother were here, Helen knew, she'd be telling her at every minute to man man zou — go slow, take care. A calm mother, she'd be saying, makes for a calm and happy child.

  Who could take it easy with Ralph home, though? He was elated when she told him the news, but for the most part slept on the couch like an oversized roll pillow. Everything he took badly.

  One day Theresa heard that the super's dog had been sent to the veterinarian, something serious. Then, the next day, more — Pete had had Boyboy put to sleep. "Cancer," Theresa said.

  "Asleep?" Ralph said. So much fun he'd made of the dog; still, now he turned mournful. "Boyboy? A dog can get cancer?"

  There was nothing anyone could do, explained Theresa.

  Ting bu jian — Ralph did not hear her. "You're glad," he accused, as though, bearing the news, Theresa had something to do with it.

  "I am not glad" she said.

  Not too long after that, she came upstairs waving a letter. It was only a state school, but she'd gotten money too, a scholarship.