by May-lee Chai
Praise for Useful Phrases for Immigrants
May-lee Chai presents us with a splendid gem of a story collection. With each well-honed story, we are brought into a world that first seems undeniably familiar—parents and their young children trying to forge their own way, lovers with matters unresolved, parents and their grown children saddled with decades of baggage (“Shouting,” one story is titled, “Means I Love You”), but each story evolves into a place not known and the reader comes away with admired wonder. In “Fish Boy,” Xiao Yu, a naïve but determined country boy, becomes in a fairly short period a sophisticated city youth. And in “The Body”—which is, as they say, worth the price of admission—Chai offers five wonderful portraits centered around one horrific discovery; those portraits are so detailed and thorough that the story has the feel of a novella. And complementing the vivid characters, the reader has the gift of language—“a wind so treacherous it had its own name,” “summer days stretched taffy slow.” Chai’s work is a grand event.
—Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, and Lost in the City.
The eight stories in this collection contain multitudes. May-lee Chai interrogates heavy subjects with a light touch. She grants each character with the gift of a gleaming voice, rendering them to be shaped by circumstances while also transcending them. Useful Phrases for Immigrants is more than merely “useful,” this is essential reading, and I’m honored to choose this book for the Bakwin Award.
—Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage and Silver Sparrow
With insight, compassion, and clarity, May-lee Chai vividly illustrates the reverberations of migration—both physical and psychological; between countries, cities, and generations; and within families and individuals. You won’t forget these characters.
—Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers, finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction
May-lee Chai’s Useful Phrases for Immigrants holds multitudes, taking us into a dazzling range of lives. With exquisite prose and unforgettable characters, the collection is a must-read.
—Vanessa Hua, author of A River of Stars
The characters in May-lee Chai’s riveting Useful Phrases for Immigrants ask searching questions—of themselves, of their families, and of their culture. The answers, they often find, are within themselves, rooted in love and hope. This clear-eyed story collection features characters so well drawn that I won’t ever forget them.
—Chantel Acevedo, author of A Falling Star, The Distant Marvels, and The Living Infinite
There’s plenty of heartbreak in Useful Phrases for Immigrants, but Chai’s writing brings a ray of sunshine. Devastating and graceful in equal turns, this collection confirms Chai’s place among the best Asian American writers of today.
—Foreword Reviews
Chai’s confident writing and insights into characters wanting, but unable, to fit in—whether because of class, sexuality, ethnicity, or the everyday complications of human connection—make her a writer to remember.
—Kirkus
USEFUL
PHRASES
FOR
IMMIGRANTS
USEFUL
PHRASES
FOR
IMMIGRANTS
STORIES
May-lee Chai
BLAIR
Copyright © 2018 by May-lee Chai
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design by Laura Williams
Interior Design by April Leidig
Typeset in Whitman by Copperline Book Services, Inc.
Blair is an imprint of Carolina Wren Press.
The mission of Carolina Wren Press is to seek out, nurture, and promote literary work by new and underrepresented writers.
This publication was made possible by Michael Bakwin’s generous establishment of the Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman and the continued support of Carolina Wren Press by the extended Bakwin family. We gratefully acknowledge the ongoing support of general operations by the Durham Arts Council’s United Arts Fund and a special grant from the North Carolina Arts Council.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright owner. This novel is a work of fiction. As in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience; however, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Chai, May-Lee, author.
Title: Useful phrases for immigrants : stories / by may-lee chai.
Description: Durham, NC : Blair, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018035244 (print) | LCCN 2018035306 (ebook) | ISBN 9781949467093 (ebook) | ISBN 9780932112767 (alk. paper)
Classification: LCC PS3553.H2423 (ebook) | LCC PS3553.H2423 A6 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018035244
For my father, Winberg Chai 翟文伯
CONTENTS
Useful Phrases for Immigrants
Fish Boy
Ghost Festivals
The Body
Canada
The Lucky Day
First Carvel in Beijing
Shouting Means I Love You
Acknowledgments
USEFUL
PHRASES
FOR
IMMIGRANTS
USEFUL PHRASES FOR IMMIGRANTS
GUILI TRIED TO glance at her watch, as she sensed time was running out, but her arms were laden with the clear, plastic containers and turning her wrist was impossible. Normally the bins were ridiculously overpriced, $24.99 each, while Guili knew they could be manufactured in Shenzhen for less than a dollar, but they were good quality, the kind with handles, and the lids stayed on. They would protect her clothes in the coming move.
Then the girl at the register barely glanced at Guili’s coupon before announcing, “The promotion is over.”
It was particularly infuriating because the promotion was most definitely not over. Guili had been careful to keep track of each day. Saturday she’d seen the coupon but had no time for errands. She’d had the tedious dinner with Mrs. Ma but she’d needed to curry favor with her. Mrs. Ma had been in America forever, even if she’d never bothered to properly learn English or even Mandarin; she still spoke the Cantonese dialect of her maiden village before she’d been shipped over to marry some Overseas Chinese. But Mrs. Ma’s husband was an important member of the Ma Family Association. Guili had gritted her teeth and smiled and nodded and listened to the old woman’s endlessly repetitive stories of her grandchildren’s antics because it was important Guili’s husband had good relations with the Family Associations.
Then Sunday had been cleaning and groceries and packing boxes.
Monday was the doctor appointment and afterward Guili had driven to three storage facilities. She’d had high hopes for the first—and cheapest—because her American neighbor had recommended it, but the larger units were all rented and renting two small units was no longer cheap. She’d signed the papers at the third storage place, which was far from the cheapest, but it was convenient and cleanish and the man had been kind enough to take her to look at the 10 × 18 unit that would hold all the furniture and the boxes without having to resort to piling boxes on the easy chair, which over time would ruin the cushions.
Now looking back, Guili thought she’d been foolish. There was poi
son for rodents in the corners of each unit, the building was old. If she put the expensive armchair there, it could become infested. She’d be better off selling it. Or just throwing it away. Take the loss.
Truth was, she was tired. Her neck ached. Her cough was no better. At some point didn’t the toll that work took on the body need to be taken into account?
And today, Guili had specifically planned so well. Bringing the bags and bags of receipts to be shredded, $0.99 per pound, confidentiality guaranteed, 100% SECURE the sign said in large, friendly letters. The cheerfulness of American business advertisements had been charming when she’d first arrived. None of the threats and bullying or outlandish claims she was used to. And the guilelessness of the clerks.
She hadn’t been able to read between the lines then. The clerks did not try to sell her anything because their wages never went up, they were bored and demoralized, there was no point trying to bully the customer.
Guili had not expected it to be so difficult to run a business in an American recession. Movies and television shows had never shown this side. Everyone was always well-dressed and cheerful and well-fed and successful in American films, except for the villains, who were also well-dressed and well-fed and successful but so comically violent and obvious, it seemed no one had anything to fear, ever.
Why didn’t people in movies complain about taxes and insurance and the cost of rent? Who needed a superhero in skin-tight circus costumes to fight aliens? The real villains were attorney’s fees and lawsuits and competitors spreading bad “word of mouth.”
Now the clerk was speaking again, something complicated, so Guili had to listen carefully. “The computer isn’t recognizing the coupon. There’s nothing I can do. It’s not in the system.”
“No, no, no,” Guili insisted, knowing her rights. She remembered the proper phrase, took a breath, and enunciated clearly, “I would like to speak to your manager.”
“The manager’s out to lunch,” the girl said, brazen.
“I will wait then,” Guili said.
For the first time, the girl looked at her. Really looked. She was a sullen-faced young woman, with too much makeup, trying to cover her acne-ridden skin. She had on thick layers of clumpy, black mascara and her nails were elaborately colored, a different design on each finger. Guili knew this kind of girl. In China or America, they were always the same.
The girl said, “Is that coat Prada?”
Guili inhaled sharply.
In fact, it was.
“It’s nice,” the girl said. “I remember seeing it on the cover of Vogue. Anastasia Perez is my favorite actress.”
“I am waiting over here,” Guili said, and dragged her pile of plastic bins over to the vacant customer service counter.
GUILI, TOO, had seen this coat on the cover of Vogue magazine. Some thin American actress was wearing it. She hadn’t cared about the actress; it was the colors of the coat that caught her eye. Plaid, green and dark blue with a fleck of red and yellow with large, old-fashioned lapels. It looked almost exactly like a coat her mother had made for Guili when she was fourteen. Her mother had given it to Guili before sending her to live with a great-aunt in Tianjin while her mother and father were being struggled against in a tedious political campaign.
Her mother had bartered for the fabric from a neighbor who had relatives overseas. That woman always had nicer things. She owed Guili’s mother some kind of favor, but that wasn’t why she’d given up the cloth. It was because Guili’s mother had traded her grandmother’s jade earrings for it.
Guili’s mother was artistic and kindhearted and not good with money. These were the kinds of things that got her in trouble. But her mother knew she couldn’t wear those earrings again, not ever, and if they were going to be investigated, people might come to the apartment and search through all their things and find the earrings and take them anyway. So Guili’s mother had bartered them for the cloth, and then she’d stayed up all night and made the coat for Guili’s trip.
No one else had cloth like that. The ration coupons that other mothers hoarded for their purchases of cloth would do no good. This fabric was special.
Under other circumstances it might have caused trouble for Guili, but in Tianjin, a city with foreign roots, her new classmates were both envious and impressed, and that had actually helped her. She seemed like the kind of girl with important parents, and people had been intimidated enough not to bully her.
Guili did not think that had been her mother’s intentions actually, just good luck.
Truth be told, Guili wished her mother had kept the earrings, found a way to hide them. They could have been traded for something far more than cloth, but what could she do? Her mother was her mother.
When she saw the Vogue magazine with the coat just like the one her mother had made her so long ago, Guili had taken it as a sign. She’d called stores up and down the state until she’d found one that had it.
That was more than three years ago, when the business was doing well, when Guili and her husband had very high hopes for success.
AT HOME, the television was blaring in the living room. The Chinese news at 7. In China he couldn’t have been bothered to watch it, but here her father-in-law couldn’t bear to miss it even a single evening.
As Guili set the table, her mother-in-law was complaining. “And to think that woman was bragging about her new Lexus! I told her, you know that’s a Japanese car. I wouldn’t want anything those Japanese dwarves made.”
Anping was passive-aggressive as ever. She knew Xiaobing would be going to Japan soon. But when Guili looked at her husband, he didn’t respond. He wasn’t going to speak. He wouldn’t contradict his mother.
“Why do you call the Japanese ‘dwarves,’ Nai-nai?” Little Tiger asked.
“Because when those dwarves invaded our country—” Anping began.
“Little Tiger isn’t allowed to use that kind of language,” Guili said. She couldn’t stand it.
“Don’t call me Little Tiger anymore,” Little Tiger said. “It’s a baby name. I want to be Ted now,” he said in English.
“Ted?”
“No, Ma. Ted.”
“That’s what I said. Ted.”
“No, it’s not like that. Ted. Ted. Ted!” he said over and over.
Anping snorted loudly.
Guili took a deep breath. When Guili first joined this family, her in-laws still spat inside the house. After Guili had given birth, her mother-in-law could barely write the characters for the formal name Guili had chosen for him, Wei. Anping had written the character that meant strong instead of the wei that meant a precious kind of jade. Guili was the one who’d written the name for his birth certificate to make certain it would be correct.
She wondered sometimes how her husband could have come from this woman. Xiaobing was everything his mother was not: forward-thinking, intelligent, kind. Guili did not yet want to admit that these were not qualities businessmen in America needed so much as his mother’s stubborn, ruthless pragmatism.
Anping pursed her lips as though she were sucking on a sour plum pit, weighing a new complaint. Every night it was something else. The Ranch 99 no longer carried her favorite brand of dried cuttlefish, the price of eggs was too high, the kumon in the strip mall had a waiting list.
“There’s too much competition here,” her mother-in-law said finally. “We’re not like these rich Overseas Chinese. You should send Little Tiger to live with Xiaobing’s former classmate’s sister. That’ll be better for him.”
Little Tiger was staring at his phone. He wasn’t listening, or he was pretending not to listen, or he’d lost the capacity to listen long ago and was living in blissful deafness and Guili had somehow not noticed.
The classmate’s sister lived in Utah. Her husband was a short order cook. She worked as a waitress. They already owned their own house and were saving up to buy an apartment house. “Real estate, that’s where the real money is,” this sister said, a font of wisdom.
“
Little Tiger can live with them. It’ll be good for him. Xiaobing didn’t live with us, and he turned out fine.”
Guili hated the woman.
She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples.
Recently she had read in a magazine while waiting in the grocery store that disarming the enemy with a compliment could be a good way of getting what one wanted. What Guili wanted was quiet, one evening without her mother-in-law’s voice, louder than the television, complaining about something new.
“I don’t mean to criticize, Nai-nai,” Guili said. “I know how you suffered in the war.”
“Oh, you know, do you?” Anping shook her head. “I watched my cousin starve to death. I watched her lie down to sleep and never wake up.”
Little Tiger’s eyes widened.
“Ma,” Xiaobing said miserably.
“What? That wasn’t even suffering. That was just life. And what could I do? I was just a girl. You could lie down and die or you could stand up and try to fight.”
“My wife joined the Party when she was a teenager,” Guili’s father-in-law piped up from his armchair. “In those days, the government could put you to death for that. But your grandmother chose to fight with Chairman Mao.”
“I was a revolutionary from the beginning,” Anping nodded. “We peasants had to fight every day or the landlords and the capitalists would have feasted on our bones.”
“Ma,” Xiaobing said. “We’re all capitalists now.” He winked at Little Tiger and Little Tiger smiled.
Surprised that her son had spoken up, Anping was silent for a minute. A full minute. Guili counted the seconds.
THAT NIGHT as she lay in bed, Guili listened to the wind howling outside, shaking the glass. The Santa Ana, the neighbors called it. A wind so treacherous it had its own name.
Her husband snored beside her, oblivious to the weather.
Before the manager at Staples had returned from his endless “lunch,” Guili had had to leave to pick up Little Tiger from his after-school classes.