by Vann Chow
I hate getting involved in any kind of civic processes, but the one I was about to get very involved in, was a very important one: I had to give Jessie a proper identity, a proper standing in society, and restore his future. He, born without a father, by a single, immigrant mother who did not obtain a so-called "reproductive permit" to have him — yes, I know, some of you must be laughing right now but this is no joke — was not allowed to have a birth certificate and to be registered anywhere.
He could not go to school. Well, at least not the good quality, legal ones. He could not get any social benefit. He could not use public medical services even in emergencies, he would not be able to get a decent job nor get married when he gets older because he didn't have any personal documentation to show that he had ever existed.
He was invisible to the society, a "black child", as we called kids in circumstances like him.
And so, today we had an appointment early in the morning at the local municipality to register for a Shanghainese Hukou, or residence account for Jessie. On top of that, we had to switch Paula's Huji, residency, from Lizhou, a small district in Sichuan where she came from, to Shanghai.
"Sit down." A middle-aged female officer who looked like she had eaten a few too many Xiaolongbao told us as we were called to the window. "Where are your forms?"
Paula pulled out a folder with passport photos, copies of our marriage certificates and registration forms, meticulously completed by yours truly, and handed them to the woman.
I did not know whether it was me imagining it or it was real. I felt that the woman became a little bit suspicious when she got to our marriage certificates.
"Show me the originals," she demanded with a squint.
"I left mine at home," my beautiful wife Paula said to me in panic.
"No, don't worry. I have it here." I produced both of our marriage certificates, which were, in fact, more like two book of passports than certificates, to the officer with a knowing smile. "My wife is always so forgetful," I smiled again, wondering in the back of my mind whether I was acting too affectionate towards my new wife. After all, weren't all newlyweds crazily in love with each other?
My wife returned a satisfied smile to me that I had never seen before, to keep up with the appearance of a loving couple.
"You have married only six months ago?" She said. "And you have a seven-year-old child together?"
"Yes," I leaned forward with a stern expression and explained to her with all the earnestness that I could muster while telling a lie, "Xiao Dong is our son. We had him when we were young and foolish." I paused to look at my wife kindly. "I should have married my wife earlier. I'm to blame for the delay. I should have given them proper statuses earlier. Now that I am older, and wiser," I laughed for the effect, "I am ready to make her my legal wife and Xiao Dong my son."
The officer furrowed her brows. She obviously did not approve of my earlier behaviors towards my own blood.
"I am willing to accept any consequence caused by my coward hesitation," I added.
"You know you're looking at a big fine here, in the least, for having a child when you were still single and did not have a Reproduction Permit," she said to Paula.
I refrained myself from laughing when she said Reproduction Permit.
"I am willing to pay for her." I raised my palm. "For us. I was foolish not to have married her right away. I should be the one punished."
"Lao gong (husband)," Paula wrapped her arms around mine as sadly as she could to supplement our fake sob story. "Can you have mercy on us? We would really like to move on with our lives, and be one happy family."
The officer pursed her lips.
"Don't try to placate me with some sap stories." She cut us off. "How do I know the two of you are really telling the truth? There are immigrants coming here with their fake wives and husbands every day trying to trick us into giving them Shanghainese residencies. How do I know the two of you are not scamming me? Scamming the Government?"
"No, we are respectable citizens. We are not bad people. Please pardon our negligence," I implored.
"C'mon. Stop with the nonsense," she said suddenly. "I recognized you as soon as you walked in. You are the guy who dated Li Kun's daughter. If indeed this lady is your partner and this boy is your child, why did you mess around with another woman?" She blasted. "Do you think I am a fool? Do you think the Shanghai Government doesn't know anything? Is this a joke to you?"
Her accusations were voiced loud and clear. Everyone else looked up from what they were doing to stare at us.
I have to say, at that point, I was really scared. I felt my blood curdling.
"When I see your name in the papers, I was like, okay, that's the same guy on television. Let me see what kind of tales he is going to spin for me."
"No, this is not what it seems," I tried to explain myself but felt powerless. How could I have forgotten the fact that about half of Shanghai had probably heard of Shirley and I because of our little scuffle?
Suddenly, Paula got up and slammed her palm on the table. "I told you your affair would ruin our chances." And she pushed me to the floor with a forceful shove. I could not believe what was happening. I just sat on the ground and gawked at her. Now we really had everybody's attention, much to my embarrassment.
"Why did you play with rich girls behind my back?" And there she flung her handbag at me. Its zipper scrapped me on the corner of my eyes and cut it. I felt blood oozing out of the cut. "You are a disappointing, dirty man!"
Even when I was bleeding, Paula did not stop her torrent of abuses. She picked up the files with our papers and started to slap me with it. I raised my arms over my face in defense.
Jessie rushed over to try to get between us in distress.
"I'm going to slap you to death. You've ruined my life. And now you've also ruined our son's life with your own hands. Are you happy now?"
The situation had gotten totally out of hand, because Paula had become so angry at me, her supposedly cheating husband, that she didn't even notice she was also hurting Jessie, who had now wedge in between us to protect me.
"Stop it!" I said, I lowered my arm to shield Jessie from her frantic thrashing.
"Don't hit him!" Jessie cried. Tears rolled down his cheeks like waterfalls. "Don't hit dad!"
"Your dad deserves it!" Paula screamed. "He doesn't love us anymore."
"It's my fault. Don't you take it out on our son," I yelled back, pulling Jessie's head towards my chest so he would not be in the line of fire.
Paula threw the files on the floor at that point and said in anguish, "I should never have Xiao Dong for you. You're a lousy father. It's useless that you want to amend it now by pretending that everything will be all right," she said. "Everyone knows about your womanizing way. Even the officers in this office! How do we show our faces anywhere now? We will be looked down on forever because of you. Xiao Dong will be laughed at by his classmates for having such a loser for a dad."
Ouch. This hurt. Why did she have to say things like this?
Paula grabbed Jessie by the arm and pulled him away from me. "Let's go, son. It's no use to try to rectify your mistake when the wrong is done in this society. The society will never forgive you."
Jessie, still crying, didn't want to let go of me, so we were stuck in an awkward tug of war for what felt like forever before several officers and security guards rushed towards us to separate Paula and Jessie from me.
They put us in two separate ends of the waiting room and told us to calm down.
Only after about ten minutes did order get restored in the Civil Service Bureau.
While everyone was recovering from the intense fight, the female officer handling our case earlier came over to me. There was a pack of facial tissues in her hand.
"Use this." She pulled one wet tissue out of the pack and gave it over to me.
She took a deep breath as she watched me wipe the drying blood off my face and sighed.
"Is she always so explosive?"<
br />
It was my turn to sigh. "Sometimes," I replied. "I seem to get on her nerves a lot. Especially on anything related to Jessie."
At the end of the room, Jessie was still sobbing uncontrollably. A young couple tried to placate him by making weird faces at him to make him smile. Beside him was his mother, speaking feverishly, trying to explain her behaviors to the few security officers now surrounding her.
"Officer," I continued. "To be honest, my wife is right about me. I am a horrible person. I got her pregnant seven years ago and as soon as I knew that I ran away."
"And then you met Li Kun's daughter and became her boyfriend?"
"Well, I am a nobody. How could I have gotten a girl like her? She was my night school teacher and she approached me when she found out my father's land back in the village was part of the land her father wanted to acquire for his luxury housing project," my voice trailed off as I said that. After all, it was nothing to be proud of. "I'm a nobody," I repeated, "and when a girl like that approached me, even with ulterior motives, I fell for it knowing that the chance of it being true love to be zero because I wanted to feel important once in my life."
"I kind of read about your story on the news," the officer said.
"Then you must know. I got our ancestral home swindled out of me."
"Oh, dear. Why didn't you sue her? Sue her father?"
"I did, and we eventually settled the case outside of the court. During that difficult period, I thought of Paula a lot. I realized that what I needed the most was not to be important or to become some rich person's son-in-law. I want to rebuild the family I once had and lost. That was why I went back to her to apologize and asked her to marry me. She is still skeptical of me sometimes, but who could blame her? I left her alone to take care of our son for seven years on her own. Who could really blame her for being mad at me till the end of time?"
The officer rubbed her temples with her thumb and middle fingers in the face of such difficult case.
"Wait here," she said eventually. "Let me go talk to my supervisor." Then she walked to the back of the room into a private quarter hidden from my view.
I put down the hand that I was using to wipe the clotting blood from the wound on the corner of my eyes. The cut was nothing. I barely felt it.
I was more shocked by Paula's sudden change of plan. This was completely different from what we had agreed. We were supposed to just be a pair of unfortunate lovebirds separated by a young's man foolishness, not Mr. and Mrs. Smith who wished each other dead.
What was the officer going to do? Had she actually figured us all out and was now reporting our case to the supervisor so that he or she could in turn report it to his or her supervisor such that we would be slapped with a huge fine, or have our names listed on some internal blacklist, or worse yet, get us prosecuted for committing marital fraud?
Would we be locked up in jail?
China still has the death penalty. Would we be executed for lying to the Government?
Oh, my God, I thought. — No, that was not exactly what I thought. — I started rattling off the San Zi Jing, the Three Character Poem that we all had to learn in school when we were children.
Rén zhī chū, xìng běn shàn, xìng xiāng jìn, xí xiāng yuǎn....
People at birth are naturally good, their natures are similar but their habits make them different...
For whatever reason, I felt a lot calmer as I got through the first verse of the classical text. It might also have been because since I did not have a religion, there was no God to rely on for miracles at moment like this. Unlike Buddhists or Catholics, I did not have any nerve-calming verses I could recite off the top of my head. This kindergarten-level verse would have to do.
After about half an hour, the officer returned to her desk at the service window and beckoned both Paula and I towards her.
"Sit down, and stay civilized," she said to us as she pulled out the forms that we had given her earlier. "OK, He Yuan Zhong (that's my Chinese name in case you forgot), Zhu Mei Mei (Paula's name), I am granting both of your applications on behalf of the Shanghai City Government."
She then put two big red stamps at the bottom left corners of the forms ceremoniously and said to us, "don't mess up again. Act like a family from today on."
My jaw dropped. I absolutely did not expect this to work.
"Thank you! Thank you for much!" I shook the woman's hand a couple of times then turned around and embraced with Paula.
It just happened naturally.
We were overjoyed, because we had officially, successfully tricked the Shanghai Government.
"You're dead if they ever find out," Paula whispered into my ear.
"So would you," I replied her. "We'll die together."
"Mommy!" Jessie ran towards us and gave us a hug. "Daddy!"
I really have to say, the award for best acting performance should go to this little guy.
Chapter 8
"Where did you learn to lie like that?" I sat Jessie on the chair opposite to mine at McDonald's and asked him, when Paula went off to buy us our celebratory meals.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You called me 'Daddy'. I've never heard you call me 'Daddy' before."
"Mom told me to call you 'Daddy'."
"When?"
"For the entire week? She has been saying that I need to start calling you 'Daddy' from now on and stop calling you 'Uncle Jong'."
I was pleasantly surprised. Paula cared more about today's interview at the Civil Service Bureau than I thought.
Instead of a Happy Meal, two burgers and a large drink to share like we had planned — since McDonald's is not exactly your neighborhood noodle shop, and a kid's meal costs more than two times my lunch at the office canteen — I saw three Happy Meals and their complimentary toy action figures from an unknown American cartoon on the tray in Paula's hands.
"Lazy bastard, don't you see me with all the food?" She bitched. "Come stand up and help me carry them!"
I sometimes wonder if I had ever crossed her in my past life so badly that she had to be mean to me in this life as if it was her life's mission.
"Wow!" Jessie said, filled with unconcealed excitement. "Am I dreaming?" He rubbed his palms on his cheeks. "Are they all mine? All three action figures?! My classmates are going to be so jealous of me when I show them these on Monday! Thank you, mom! I love you!"
"Oh my Guan Yin Buddha!" Paula said, taken by surprise by the confession of love from the mouth of her obnoxious little boy. "I love you, too. So, so, soooo much." And she gave her son the most passionate hug I had ever seen someone give.
Of course, they released each other almost immediately, feeling uncomfortable about the hug that they just shared. It was as if they repelled each other. I knew what that was. The love between this pair of mother and son was beyond simple words and actions.
"Did I hurt you back there?" Paula finally remembered to ask me. "I was so into it I think I went mad."
"I felt it," I replied sarcastically. "Anyway, it's just a small cut. This little bit of physical pain got us a lot of compassion and two red stamps on our application forms."
"You've got to admit if it wasn't for my quick wit, we would never have turned it around. She was about to call us out as frauds. If I didn't make a hissy fit, I don't think the woman would have given you a chance."
I smiled without answering. To be honest, I was still a bit shaken from the whole experience. At this moment, all I wanted to was to stuff myself with warm, oily, French fries dipped in Ketchup.
We remained silent for a few minutes, each lost in reverie, or the food. I looked up at the wallpaper behind where Jessie and Paula were sitting and saw the image of a family eating their burgers and fries around a table. The scene hit me very hard. I felt like we could be that family.
"What are you daydreaming about?" Paula asked. It was not really a question, for she had no interest based on my experience conversing with her on what I was thinking most o
f the time. "Don't give me that dumb expression. Smile! We did good today."
"Don't forget the fifty thousand you promised me."
"What fifty thousand?!" My joke got her alarmed. "I never agreed to pay you for anything. I gave you a shelter when you didn't have one and you're eating and sleeping at my place. This is Shanghai. Everything costs money. Even the air you are breathing costs money. I am not paying you no fifty thousand for doing nothing!" She snatched my cup of Coca-Cola and drank from it without asking me.
"Okay, fine," I said. "That was a joke. Give me my Cola back."
"Don't you...don't you ever make jokes like that again in public!" She slapped my wrist as I tried to reach for my Cola. "We are not yet in the clear. God knows who's listening, you stupid fuck."
"Tone down your cursing. We're in a family restaurant," I teased her.
When our meal finished, Paula said she had to leave. I asked her what was the reason for the rush since she usually did not wake up and get dressed to go to work until slightly before dinner time.
"Today's special. I've promised somebody to pick something up for them."
"That's strange," I commented. "Someone can motivate you to go to work at this hour? Who are you picking stuff from? A drug cartel?"
"Who says I am working?" Paula asked. "Hey. It's your day off, right? You should fix the air conditioner then. And I think there is a full bag of laundry you need to wash. And make sure he finishes his homework before he goes to bed."
I grunted. "I'm pretty sure it says we are husband and wife, not servant and master on our wedding certificates."
"I have a thousand things to do every day. Just share some of the household responsibility with me already and act like a real man." Then she got up, grabbed her bag and walked away, leaving the dirty mess on the table, and of her life, to me.
Chapter 9
The heat back in the apartment was unbearable.
We flung our bags on the couch as soon as we got home, and just laid there like two pandas after meal time.
"Can you please fix the air-con?" Jessie said. "I'm dying from the heat!"