Em's Awful Good Fortune

by Marcie Maxfield

  My original signature was so full of promise, every letter neatly, legibly inked on the official document. Signed, sealed, delivered. Now I just blow through my signature; sometimes it starts out strong and ends with a random flourish, as if to say, Close enough, or I just write “Em,” big and bold, with a line after it, like I’m too busy to spell out the rest of my name, let alone my husband’s. But now I wonder: Does it mean anything that I’ve totally dropped Gee’s last name from my signature? Lately I’ve been thinking about taking back my maiden name. Just toying with the idea. Chinese bureaucrats can be nitpicky, but, to their point, my identity is a bit fuzzy on paper.

  AQI: 51–100

  Code: Moderate (Yellow)

  Air quality is acceptable; people who are unusually sensitive may experience respiratory symptoms.

  I’m invited to an orientation for newbies hosted by Kimberly, Jake’s boss, for a group of women whose husbands all work for Gee’s company. Which means it’s mandatory. Or, as my mother used to say, a command performance. So I brush my hair, although brushing curly hair in this humidity can backfire into a mess of frizz. And now I look more like my unkempt, rebellious teenage self than a professional tagalong. I consider pulling it back into a ponytail but decide to go with the antiestablishment vibe.

  Kimberly introduces us to the concept of Shang-high versus Shang-low days. Shang-low days are days when you can’t cope with any of it—the air, the food, the water, the language. But then there’s Shang-high! Fusion cuisine, fashion mecca, burgeoning art scene.

  “Don’t let the environment define your life here,” Kimberly says.

  Go!

  Do!

  Explore!

  There’s so much to see!

  I’m trying to listen, but I can’t help myself. I’m not thinking about ballet; I’m wondering about water. Which is worse? Plastic bottles, or those five-gallon dispensers? Pros and cons: Plastic is bad, obviously, but those jugs are breeding grounds for bacteria. I’m leaning toward bottled water, but which brand? Nestlé versus Nongfu. Locals swear by Nongfu; they say it’s natural spring water, straight from the mountains in Tibet or something.

  “It’s shocking!” the woman next to me says. She’s talking about how the Chinese girls dress on-site where our husbands work. Short skirts, no bras. Spandex. She’s borderline matronly, hair blown, nails tastefully manicured; she’s wearing a white blouse, slacks, and sensible shoes—the tagalong wardrobe. Her clothes tell nothing and everything about her. Tagalong apparel is the antistatement in fashion. It says, I’m here, but it’s not about me.

  You wanna know what I think is shocking? The water.

  Here’s my kitchen ritual: First, I rinse the veggies in tap water. Then I soak them in water that has been filtered through an eight-cylinder reverse osmosis system before it even comes out of the tap. For coffee, I use bottled water, which I filter through a Brita. For cooking, I double-wash, double-filter, and then boil.

  “They should have a dress code,” another tagalong says, agreeing with the woman sitting next to me.

  Cities have a lifeblood that tagalongs are encouraged to tap into. In Paris, the relo team gave out copies of a resource guide called Bloom Where You Are Planted; it was all about finding your inner self, like tagalongs were seeds about to blossom into painters, poets, lovers. The title of Kimberly’s PowerPoint presentation is “Beyond Surviving—Learning to Thrive.” It feels a bit like bullshit, but I don’t tell her that. I’m just getting my sea legs.

  So why’d I come if I was so conflicted? The easy answer is that I’d run out of good excuses for not moving to China. For one thing, my mom died. When she died, the whole “I can’t move to China with my husband because my mother needs me in Detroit” excuse fell apart. Overnight.

  I was on the phone with Andra, telling her about my plan to move back to Detroit and take care of my mother. “She’s been sounding frail the past few months, and I don’t want to move overseas and be so far away from her,” I was saying, when my brother beeped in. “I gotta take it, Andra. He’s like the Grim Reaper: He only calls me when someone’s in the hospital.” Just like that, I lost my mother, and with her went my connection to Detroit as my real home, my forever home, the fantasy that I could always go back to the D.

  Don’t even ask about work; my consulting business in LA was barely limping along. Sure, we had clients, but they were a quirky mix of outliers. Like the architect whose passion was to build sustainable homes that were earthquake-, fire-, and storm-resistant; it was a noble cause, but the houses looked a lot like something you’d see in an illustrated storybook about a family of moles. The architect may have been passionate about concrete dome homes, but I was having trouble mustering the same level of passion for this pet project of his in particular, and for being a marketing consultant in general. Somewhere along the line, moving in and out of jobs, my career had lost its luster. No, it was more than that. My career had also lost its trajectory. Maybe in China I’d write something other than a press release or a sponsorship proposal. Maybe I’d get back to writing my own stuff. Also, and this is personal, maybe moving to Shanghai would spark Gee’s and my love life.

  AQI: 101–150

  Code: Orange (Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups)

  Members of sensitive groups may experience health effects.

  We arrived just in time to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Not a milestone anniversary, but we’re still together, which in and of itself is a big deal. So I wanted to surprise Gee with something sexy and fun. I traipsed all over Shanghai, looking for lingerie. I mean all over—on foot, bike, metro. I went to boutiques on Nanchang Lu that sold intimates for Chinese boy-chicks, girls with no tits, no ass, no body mass. In the States, I’m a solid medium—in China, I’m a triple XL. Out of desperation, I even went to Marks & Spencer, but all they had were the Queen’s granny panties. Finally, I stumbled into Amy’s Closet on Xiangyang, where nothing fit but they did have accessories. I bought a pair of pink furry handcuffs and a matching pink vibrator that didn’t use batteries. Kawaii. That’s Japanese for “cute.” I didn’t know any Chinese. And the old lady behind the counter didn’t know any English, so she demonstrated how the vibrator plugged into a laptop. I was skeptical, which I demonstrated by scrunching up my face. She seemed to imply that I could return the lipstick-size sex toy if it didn’t take a charge. Which it didn’t. Well, it wasn’t that it didn’t take a charge, exactly; it just didn’t hold one, to be more precise. So I decided to return it.

  No oomph! The salesgirl laughs knowingly when I hand her the (slightly) used and repackaged vibrator. Her name is Ava. She’s a gamine, pixie Chinese dream girl—short dark hair, shaved at the neck, bleached blond on top—and she speaks beyond-perfect English. She speaks the kind of English you learn only in bed.

  “I told the old lady not to stock these,” Ava complains. “They don’t work for shit. Made-in-China crap! Nothing worse than a toy that loses its steam just when you’re getting started. It’s like making love to Chinese boys—they’re done in two minutes. And when they’re done, you’re done. You know what I mean? Over and out. And you have to charge it in advance. That’s stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Too much work.”

  “Only it doesn’t work,” I remind her, “and the manager said I could return it.”

  And yes, I get that it cost only a hundred quai, which is maybe fifteen US dollars, but it isn’t about the money; it’s about selling stuff that doesn’t work. I’m tired of things not working and no one taking responsibility. The whole buyer-beware thing is beginning to piss me off.

  “You can exchange it for sure,” Ava says. “We have better ones; they’re made in Korea!”

  Right away, she’s on the upsell. This is China, where nothing works, and don’t even bother trying to get your money back.

  On my way out, I give her my telephone number. “Let’s have lunch,” I say. It would be nice to have a Chinese girlfriend.

  I’m taking numbers and making friends. I join everything
: the American Club; the Shanghai Expat Association; and a funky neighborhood yoga studio with open windows and an antique tea samovar, surrounded by oversize Indian-print cushions that gap-year yogis lay all over. I go to welcome coffees and happy hours. No one looks particularly happy, but everyone speaks English and they welcome me to the tagalong table like family.

  My new friends have professional backgrounds in marketing or come from Detroit; they practice yoga or have children the same age as mine back in the States. We sign up for lectures on how to eat safe. Attend luncheons like the one at M on the Bund, very old-school British, high tea with a view, order the poached salmon. Over cake and coffee, we listen to the chef, an expat from London, talk about butterflies in gardens. Apparently, this is a good thing, an indicator of sorts.

  “Butterflies mean no pesticides,” the chef tells us. “You can get organic farm-to-table veggies online from Kate & Kimi.” His patter is very down-homey and believable, because he’s a dad and clean food matters to him too. We’re all in the same boat, trying to stay healthy. I’m soaking up survival skills like a sponge, like when the marketing director at the hospital in Pudong said it was safe to exercise if the AQI is under 100. I’m surprisingly easy to convince that living here will be okay, because Mina said Beijing has the bad air and Shanghai has the culture.

  Mina was right about Puxi and culture.

  I go to the Esprit Dior exhibit at MoCA Shanghai. It’s sublimely immersive: Rose-colored dresses float in floral-scented gardens, and there’s a pristinely white atelier, complete with a Dior seamstress on loan from Paris. And an interactive digital surface, like I imagine they have in the CIA situation room: One swipe of the fingertip triggers a constellation of stars; click on a star, and it transforms into a red-carpet celeb in Dior and then fades to black. I’ve never seen anything this cool in LA.

  My days are filled with outings and activities—adult daycare for tagalongs. The Chinese call us tai-tais, making us sound like we’re umbrella drinks, but the term is actually derisive, more sneer than cutesy. Tai-tais are ladies who lunch—mani-pedi’d, empty-headed, pampered shopaholics. Housewives. It’s amazing how easily I slip into this world. Not because I fancy myself a tai-tai, but because the alternative is to be alone all day, waiting for Gee to come home from work. I consider myself an expert at tagging along, having lived in Korea, Japan, and France. I now know, for example, that Gee and I need a social life as a couple. So I buy a pair of tickets to the pirate-themed cruise from a woman who is repatriating unexpectedly.

  “Watch your eyes,” she warns me, handing me her tickets. “My ophthalmologist in Texas said my eyes were getting wiggy from living here.”

  I nod, pretending to understand, while thinking, How does one protect one’s eyes, anyway? It’s not like there’s an antipollution sunscreen for eyeballs. The chatter in the trailing spouses’ Shanghai Facebook group this morning was all about dental concerns; at least with teeth, you can protect yourself by brushing with bottled water. I blew the eye warning off. There’s only so much a person can worry about.

  A week later, Gee and I are leaning against the rails of the boat, gazing out at the city, the Citco building, the Bottle Opener, the Pearl Tower. The cruise is a costume party, so we’re decked out in swashbuckler gear. I’m wearing a worn-thin white ruffled blouse from the white-shirt store in Paris with a cheap black bustier from the commodities market in Shanghai—the definition of high-low fashion. Gee’s wearing an eye patch, a bandanna around his head, and a skull-and-crossbones ring. We’re back on the expat trail. (I’m trailing.) He clinks his beer against my wine.

  “It’s kinda cool,” he says.

  “We’ll be okay,” I respond. Maybe if I say it out loud, the universe will hear me.

  All kinds of Australians and Americans and Brits are dancing to ’80s hits. Madonna. Bowie. Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

  “Let’s dance,” I say. I’m a sucker for “Relax.”

  “After you, China Girl,” Gee says, taking a pirate’s bow.

  Pretty soon we’re at home in Shanghai, enjoying the faded old-world, art-deco charm of our neighborhood, the bustle of cars and taxis, quirky retail mash-ups like the vegan restaurant–bike shop, a guy who sells Prada bags in the basement of a back-alley tenement off Fuxing Lu. Perfect croissants. A coffee shop that plays collectable Motown LPs. A smoky jazz club. I get squashed in the metro and slammed by a bicycle. It’s blissful. It’s filthy. There’s so much to do, so many things to worry about. Crazy cool. Insanely toxic. My head and my heart are on a collision course. At night, me and Gee cocoon on the couch with spicy peanuts and watch counterfeit DVDs that sometimes work and sometimes don’t, much like the internet here; we look out at the Bund, lit up and twinkling, as we climb the circular staircase to our bedroom suite, with windows that span both floors, and I pinch myself, the view is so amazing. In bed, the air purifier humming on high, washed-out mulberry jacquard drapes pulled shut to block out the city lights, I curl up, pressing my butt into Gee’s belly while he wraps his arm around my waist. He thanks me for being here; I tell him he’s lucky to have me. This is the honeymoon stage. Textbook phase one culture shock.

  AQI: 151–200

  Code: Red (Unhealthy)

  Members of sensitive groups may experience health effects.

  The air goes from not so bad to not so good. All of a sudden, the open windows at my funky yoga studio lose their appeal, so I switch to the health club Gee’s company pays for, where the windows are sealed shut and they have air purifiers. I’m riding the stationary bike when I overhear two international hotshots joking about air quality while lifting weights.

  “Two hundred is the new one hundred,” one says, and the other laughs.

  The air is all anyone talks about. It’s like talking about sex in college, complaining about your job in your twenties, bragging about your kids in your thirties, and after that, in your forties, whispering about all the sex you either aren’t having or shouldn’t be having. You talk about how the air looks like dirt, smells like a gas leak, and scratches the back of your throat like sandpaper. You don’t talk about what you can’t see, what it’s doing to your body, the health risk of living here that you agreed to just to make bank, or, if you’re a tagalong, so you could keep an eye on your mate or keep him company or avoid loneliness, or simply because it’s become a habit to put your husband’s career before your own needs. You for sure don’t talk about how you shit five times a day. And the ladies who lunch, my new friends, don’t know how much weight I’ve lost already, how my pelvic bones protrude like they did before I had kids, how my belly is a concave valley between my hip bones, which I kind of like but which worries me at the same time. Gee doesn’t notice any of it: the air, my belly, my hips.

  AQI: 201–300

  Code: Purple (Very Unhealthy)

  Everyone may begin to experience health effects.

  The AQI is almost 300, and no one is joking anymore. No amount of rationalization can sweep away the fear, so I stop going to the gym altogether. Instead of exercise, I have outings with the girls; I meet a pair of tagalongs at elEFANTE Happy Restaurant & Deli, thinking a pitcher of sangria will do me good. Big happy in a chunky wineglass.

  “The air is awful today,” Yvette says, so we pass on the charming, Spanish-tiled outdoor patio, with lush plants in colorful pots, and opt for a table inside instead, then compare face masks. Mine is a free one they were giving away at Bank of China.

  “Not good enough,” Yvette insists. She shows me hers. Yvette is a woman who knows things. We call her the General. She’s got an MBA and a no-nonsense haircut, and she’s been in Shanghai long enough to carry some serious opinion weight on basic survival dos and don’ts. Yvette’s mask has a carbon filter and a swooshy design pattern.

  “You can get them on Taobao,” she tells me.

  “I wear two at the same time,” Karen says, pulling them both out of her bag to demonstrate the layered look: a thin swath of polka-dot cotton, like the one I got for free from
the bank, to cover up the industrial-grade face mask underneath. Then she shows a bump on her arm to Yvette. “What do you think?” she asks.

  Yvette swats it away, saying, “It’s nothing. Just a bug bite.” Relief spreads across Karen’s face, and she takes a gulp of wine. Turning toward me, Yvette says, “The mosquitos are brutal here.”

  I decide retroactively that the Dior exhibit was a Shang-high day and that yesterday, when I didn’t leave the apartment because the air was iffy, was a Shang-low day. Today, my outing with the tagalongs is an information-gathering expedition.

  Yvette says she never opens the windows; Karen says she runs home and opens the windows whenever it rains; and, in a related but contradictory piece of advice, Ian, a guy I met at the bagel shop around the block from my apartment, who is not a tagalong but is a scientist, says, “Never let rain touch your head, or your hair will fall out.” Acid rain becomes something I have to think about more than I ever imagined.

  Andra texts to check in on me. Apparently, China’s smog crisis made the news back home.

  A: Can you breathe???

  Em: Just barely.

  A: Come home!

  E: Can’t. [Sad-face emoji.]

  A: I’m worried about you. [Heart.]

  E: Not to worry. I’m staying inside next to my air purifier. Writing.

  A: About what?

  E: Growing up girl.

  A: Write a play and make me a star. [Star emoji.]

  Then I switch to email:

  E: Here’s my short-term survival plan. NaNoWriMo. I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month—50,000 words in 30 days for the month of November. I’m working on a collection of essays and short stories. It gives me something to do, since I can’t go outside.