by Vann Chow
I was not going to waste my hard-earned day off bending over backward to do all the chores that Paula was supposed to do. It sounded really wrong, but when I got lazy, I could be the biggest believer in the outdated Chinese proverb, Men manage matters outside, women manage inside. So I shook my head in reply to the boy's request, and at Paula's inability to manage the household on her own. "Let's go to the mall."
No, I was not really interested in shopping. 'Going to the mall' was the Chinese way to say we are going somewhere with air-conditioning for free without paying.
"Mom says you have to fix the air-con!"
"I'm a software engineer!" I repeated to Jessie for the fifteenth time. "I can write code to bring down the city's power network but sorry, I can't fix a broken piece of junk that calls itself an air-con."
"If you can break stuff, you can fix stuff!"
"No, I can't." I shook my head adamantly.
"Mom's gonna be mad when she comes back."
"If she keeps up with her schedule, I won't see her at all, so she can be mad all she wants." That was no joke. We rarely saw each other because of her owlish working hours. Jessie had become our WeChat. "Let's go before we are cooked." The temperature now had gotten to nearly thirty-eight degrees.
"I haven't done my homework yet!"
"When did you start listening to your mom?" I was saying it as a rhetorical question. I really meant it. But then I figured the three Happy Meal toys probably did some magic there.
"You're a bad influence."
I was.
I should never have been anybody's 'Daddy' if it weren't for the unusual circumstances that led me to kind of 'adopted' a wife and a kid so suddenly. Many men in China were not able to find a partner, partly because they were losers and partly because there simply weren't enough women to go around. I sort of belonged to the second group — at least that was what I preferred — and had come to terms after a series of unfortunate events last year that I would be single forever.
But then one day I found out that Jessie was actually going to the neighborhood 'black-school' organized by retired teachers who needed to make a living because he could not enroll into a proper school without any identification. I was shocked. They had to run and hide everytime the city patrols came by because the whole set up was illegal. And just to think that even a boy from a poor family living close to poverty line such as I could go to school but not Jessie. That was then I decided to do something about it.
A couple of months later, he became my son and Paula my wife, the later of the two was sort of a necessary evil, but okay, since she said I could live with her, which saved me a hell lot of money for rent in Shanghai. I did not hesitate, and that was what got me into the 'situation' I was in today, for better or worse.
Twenty minutes of walking later, instead of being inside the mall enjoying free cold breezes, we were right outside my office building.
Jessie had never been to this part of town before — or, to be honest, anywhere really — so he was not able to stop me from walking like a mindless zombie following the scents of human beings towards its preys. Of course, Jessie realized where we were soon enough, because only people dressed in business attires came out it. I squinted to look through the glass sliding doors.
"Who are we waiting for?" Jessie asked. A clever guy, he really was.
"No one..." I said and started to move, but taking care to walk extra slow in circles around the block, "the mall is just right around the corner."
Then I saw her.
I put Jessie on my shoulders and hastened towards her. "Hey! How are you?"
"Jessie!!!" Marvey immediately recognized the boy sitting on my shoulders. "So nice to see you again!" Then she looked into my eyes and said, "looks like you're having a family day!"
"No, not really. It's boys' day out. Football and beers, you know."
She smiled beautifully at my stupid joke.
"Auntie Marvey, is the mall here?"
"The mall? There is no mall here..."
I quickly interrupted before she realized I had been walking around the block stalking her by pretending to look for the mall.
"It's your lunch time, right? Wanna go have lunch together?"
"I'm with someone..." she said, "but come join us. I'm sure the other person wouldn't mind."
Overjoyed, I nodded so deep that Jessie slipped down my neck and strained my muscle, so I had to put him down.
As if in a dream, Marvey and I held hands — well, technically we didn't because Jessie was in the middle but it was as close to that as it could get — and the three of us skipped happily towards the lunch joint.
Chapter 10
I was standing in the line right behind Marvey and Jessie to get our food from the self-service counter in the pizza restaurant, when it occurred to me that I had no idea about what I was trying to achieve with all these.
This unwavering obsession with Marvey was leading me everywhere and nowhere.
The thought was just burgeoning when the most unexpected thing happened.
Kelvin walked up from behind us, embraced Marvey and gave her a kiss on the cheek, completely oblivious to my presence. That was when Marvey turned around awkwardly and gave me an apologetical look. "Jong and Jessie are joining us for lunch," her voice trailed off in embarrassment.
That took Kelvin by surprise. He turned around, saw me, and released his grip on Marvey's waist. His hands were trembling and his dry, cracked lips pale. "I didn't see you earlier," he mumbled. "Sorry."
Instinctively I took a step back, distancing myself away from him. "What was that?"
Kelvin looked nervously at Marvey, who made a pout, then looked back at me without saying a word.
"We're seeing each other," Marvey explained matter-of-factly. "Don't be so nervous. Jong is going to be happy for us, I am sure." That was meant for Kelvin.
"What happened to your hot girlfriend?" I asked, raising my voice in alarm. "What is her name again?"
Kelvin immediately gave the shrug of innocence, to both his best friend and his new girlfriend. "That was like ages ago, Jong. Things changed."
"Of course it changed." I took another step away from him.
He reached over to grab my shoulder in what would have been a friendly contact had he not betrayed me in such an utterly disgusting way. I Wing-Chun-blocked his hand and pushed him backward instead.
"Hey!" He rubbed his chest in pain. "There is no need to do that." The people behind us in the pizza line backed away in case a fight should break out.
"You know a long time ago what she means to me."
"My ex-girlfriend?" He asked, feigning dumb.
"Marv!" I said and looked at her.
Jessie looked up at her and started pouting as well. It was unnecessary for him to watch this, because it was going to confuse the hell out of his little seven-year-old brain, especially because he started really considering me as his father and Paula his mother. But I could not control myself from making a scene.
My head suddenly hurt — I needed a break. I rubbed my temples.
That was when Kelvin, no longer my best friend from this day onwards, said, "Wake the fuck up, man. Marv is free to be with whoever she likes, and if she picks me, then it's me. Besides, you're already married! You have a kid now. Move on with your life!"
There was a collective gasp in the fast-food restaurant. The atmosphere was so tense that nobody spoke and even the cashier stopped typing on the keyboard so as not to break the moment of silence as everybody waited for my next move.
And I just simply had to shake my head.
He knew precisely why I had to get into the marriage. He knew, and still he did it.
Despite what we said about gender imbalance in China, it was not like women had completely gone extinct. There were still eleven million women living in the city of Shanghai, and he had to take my girl.
I rolled up my sleeves in rage.
"Please don't fight," Marvey came up to me and said in all sourness. "
He knows Tae Kwan Do."
I knew he knew Tae Kwan Do, and he was a whatever-the-highest-belt-color-was belt, but to hear it from Marvey as if she expected that I would surely lose to him in a fight was horrible and uncalled for.
I might not be into combative, violent physical exercise, but I was physically fit — covering seven miles on average per soccer game and I played two, three times a week. It was not necessary that I should lose in a fight.
"Learn some proper Chinese Kung Fu!" I hissed at Kelvin. "Tae Kwan Do, my ass."
I felt humiliated, despite my sharp mouth. I turned around to walk away.
"You forgot your son, Hao Baba (Good father)!" The insolent dick called out after me. I knew I shouldn't but I ignored him and kept walking towards the exit, a vein on my forehead pulsing so hard I felt like it could explode any moment now.
To my relief, Jessie wriggled his hand out of Marvey's grip and chased after me so I didn't have to look back and admit that I actually forgot about him momentarily.
Outside, the hot air resulted from the sun, the exhaust gases of vehicles in gridlock again on the roads and all the amped up air-conditioners in the city blasted at me. My knees felt weak and I staggered. Standing in the middle of pedestrian traffic in this part of the city during lunch time was unwise. Jessie and I got pushed and shoved from every side and I lost sight of him in just a few seconds.
Worried, I edged towards the sidewalk so I could get out of the pushing crowd and see where Jessie was from the outside.
A man spat from inside his car as he drove by and the spit fell on my newly purchased Nike Air Max with walking sensors.
I cursed at him with all the Shanghainese curse words I knew and only when I reached the fifteenth word did I feel better about myself. I turned around and that was when I saw an older, swarthy-skin man with a baseball cap snatched Jessie from behind and started running away, ignoring my calls to stop.
"Stop that man! Stop that man for me!" I pointed at the man who was getting away as I tried to pry a gap in the stubborn lunch crowd. "He took my son! Stop him, please!" I begged as I rammed hard into the unyielding, oncoming wall of people. Many were oblivious, looking down at their cellphones, but many heard me and could have stopped him. Needless to say, they didn't, because Chinese people understood the cardinal rules of survival in big cities like Shanghai where scams were rampant — never get involved in other people's business. Normally I was pretty understanding. But now? I was just utterly disappointed in human nature. "Stop him, please, somebody!"
There was something on the ground. I tripped and fell. The crowd momentarily parted because of this anomaly, but quickly converged again and swarmed around me like bees hurrying to and from their hives.
When did Shanghai become so hostile?
Chapter 11
"It wasn't your fault." Marvey put her hand on my back as I sat on a bench in the waiting room of the local police station. "This could happen to anyone."
As ashamed as I was, I knew I needed help desperately. There were millions of possible places where the man who snatched Jessie could have gone to in just the Jing An district itself, it would be foolish for me to still care about how I looked when I went back into the pizza restaurant to ask Kelvin and Marvey for help after our brawl. They did not hesitate to pull out all stops for me. This I would never forget.
Despite our best efforts — Kelvin even asked his chauffeur to get us a couple of bikes and drove them over so we could bike around to search for Jessie instead of trying to beat the human traffic on foot — we could not find him after looking for hours, nor any suspicious man that fit my descriptions of the kidnapper. All that was left to do was to report it to the police, which we just did.
Kelvin who was standing in front of me looking out the window sighed deeply. "Did you tell Paula yet?"
I looked up and stared at him. He nodded knowingly and said, "let me call her for you."
Kelvin entered the phone number I gave him on his dial pad and called. It took a long time for Paula to pick up. When she did, I started my mental timer.
"Hi, Paula, this is Kelvin here, Jong's friend. We're umm...now, at the police station...Oh, yes...how should I explain this. Please be mentally prepared. No, Jong's okay. He's talking to the police right now. Yes, this is about Jessie. Oh, please calm down. No, no, no, he didn't. Let me pass the phone to Jong."
Thirty-five seconds. That was how long anyone could talk to Paula before they crumbled under her vicious verbal attacks. Kelvin shoved the phone to my face, he couldn't wait to be rid of it as if it was a hot potato.
"What in the world happened to Jessie?!" She blared at me. "I told you fucking dimwit to keep an eye on him."
"He was picked up by a child snatcher on the street. We've looked everywhere..."
"Didn't I tell you to bring him home as soon as possible? Did you hit your head somewhere? Couldn't you understand instructions? Where did you lose him?"
"Right outside the pizza store in front of my office. Two million people passed by there, there's bound to be somebody who saw where the swarthy-skin man went."
"Oh, heavens!!" She cried, "you cannot be serious. The one thing I told you to do, you couldn't even complete! Wonangfei (good-for-nothing). Useless and unreliable!"
"I'm useless?!" I defended myself. "Who was the one feeding your son and keeping him company all these months when you were fawning over strange men?!"
"I have a job to do!" She retorted. "I have no time to waste on this stupid argument. Oh, dear heavens, Jessie, please be okay. Mom's here to save you!" She mumbled to herself.
"Stop panicking. How are you going to save him alone?! The police will..."
Before I could finish my sentence, she had already hung up.
"This woman is talking as if she knows who has Jessie."
"That was probably just some nervous blabbering," Marvey said.
"Let's go!" Kelvin suggested. "We'll take you home."
He put out his arm, which Marvey held on to immediately as a lover would. It happened so naturally that they only realized it might provoke me after the fact. They retracted their hands sheepishly and turned around to help me to my feet instead.
"It's okay. You guys have done enough for me today," I said, feeling a bit sorry that I made such a scene earlier about them seeing each other. So I conceded, "You were right, Kev. I am a terrible father."
Chapter 12
How was my fatherhood so far?
One word: Terrible.
I could not even keep my son with me.
Maybe because I was still such a kid myself. I had a Michael Jackson moment while I was waiting for Paula to come home from work. I knew it was no time for jokes, but to be honest, with Paula's work schedule, she could probably go days without noticing that her son was missing had I not told her. If I put some pillows together and arranged them in the approximate dimensions and shape of Jessie, I could stuff the fake Jessie under his blanket and let Paula thinks that he is just very sound asleep everytime she gets home in the wee morning hours.
Of course, we were in the middle of the hottest summer ever, and that it would be quite unusual for the boy to be using his blanket, so I discarded that idea and tried to come up with a new one.
There were plenty of good ideas how to improve my current all-time-low fatherhood scores, like buying a kid from the black market or going to the adoption center and apply for one to pass off as Jessie. Just when I was weighing my options, I heard the lock to the house door rattled. Someone was trying to unlock the door to the apartment.
It was an old man in his fifties or sixties wearing a wifebeater and a pair of worn-out shorts and green plastic slippers. Someone I did not recognize yet seemed strangely familiar. On his shoulder was Jessie, sound asleep, looking all intact and calm. I had two questions in my head when he entered. Why did he have our house key? And what was he doing with Jessie?
I dashed across the hall to pry Jessie off of him. I didn't know what the man gave Jessie to eat, because he
felt heavy like a stone. I nearly twisted my wrists holding him. "Who are you?!" I took hold of Jessie and immediately backed away. I backed away because one should never underestimate a badly dressed man. A man who does not care about his appearance is someone who would do anything without thinking twice. "What did you do to Jessie?"
"I should be the one to ask you who you are?" The old man hissed back at me. His voice was terrible to hear. It was so hoarse as if he had smoked three packs of cigarette every day for all his life. "What are you doing in our house?"
"I'm his father!" I held up Jessie like a trophy.
"If you're his father than I am your father!" He said indignantly. That was supposed to be an insult but then the awkward moment arrived when we realized that his insolent remark was probably the truth.
"You're Paula's father?"
"Who else?"
"Oh," I wiped my sweaty palm on my dirty trousers, put up my best smile possible and extended my hand to the old man who I realized was probably my father-in-law. "Dad?"
He did not shake my hand.
"Grandpa..." Jessie mumbled in his half-sleep. Our conversation woke him up. "Are we home yet?"
Oh, boy.
Chapter 13
"I told you to bring him home immediately! I told you to do that! I told you to do that, didn't I?" Paula chased me around the dining table like a mad woman brandishing her arms, trying to hit me. But I was a soccer player. She did not stand a chance. "I told you to do the laundry and fix the air-con. You didn't do any of it. See what've you gotten yourself into now?"
"Well, nothing happened." I paused at the opposite end of the table and looked at Paula. "Your father just decided to kidnap your son in broad daylight. What was I supposed to do?"
"You're always making up excuses!" She threw a slipper at me. "If you didn't walk so far away from Jessie, my father wouldn't think that he was wandering alone on the streets!"
"Hey! Watch the food!" I bought us all a sumptuous breakfast to make up for the scare. It was not at all appreciated.