Em's Awful Good Fortune

  A: I’ve been taking acting classes, since my best skill is crying at the drop of a hat. Seriously, we should do something together, like old times, a last hurrah.

  E: Last hurrah seems ominous …

  A: Send me one of your stories.

  I send her “Poubelle,” which sounds pretty but really means “trash can” in French and is about being gaslit. I tell her it’s supposed to be funny, just in case she doesn’t get the humor.

  Here’s what I don’t tell her, because she’d be up all night worrying about me. Every morning I gargle with coconut oil. It’s called oil pulling; they say it draws toxins from the body. I brush my teeth with bottled water and drink the sludge Dr. Love mixes up special for me, an herbal powder that I boil in filtered water. It tastes like mud. I’ve got a sinus infection that turned into bronchitis that I can’t seem to shake, my head is stuffed, my eyes are wigging out, and I can’t breathe. Dr. Love says he can help me. He’s from Texas. We met at an “Eastern Medicine for Western Women” lecture at some tagalong’s apartment, and I’m not sure he’s even a real doctor. The host swore by Dr. Love, said he saved her life. A month later, she was gone. People disappear abruptly in Shanghai. In Paris and Tokyo, goodbyes were an end-of-the-year ritual, tied to kids and schools, but in Shanghai people just up and leave, fast. Take my tickets to the pirates cruise—I’m outta here.

  I sit at my desk next to an air purifier and write, comforted by the mechanical hum and the old-world smell of the desk drawers, which reminds me of my grandpa’s cigars. Sometimes I practice yoga in front of the air purifier in our bedroom while listening to Wyclef Jean. “Gunpowder.” In the afternoon, if the internet is working, I eat spicy Chinese peanuts alone on the couch and binge-watch television shows, even though I know in my heart that watching TV before dinner is no different than drinking before 6:00 pm.

  AQI: 300–500

  Code: Maroon (Hazardous)

  Emergency conditions, meaning the entire population is more likely to be affected by serious health effects.

  I woke coughing blood. I’ve been hacking like a local for a week. Next thing you know, I’ll be spitting in public. Yesterday the AQI broke 270; this morning it was over 300.

  “Welcome to Shanghai!” Dr. Wu jokes during my examination, adding anecdotally that he had diarrhea for six months when he first moved here.

  “So I shouldn’t worry?” I ask. About the cough. The itchy eyes. And digestive issues.

  This is nothing, his smile seems to imply.

  “Call me in a week if it doesn’t get better,” he says.

  Charmingly unconcerned—that’s the best way to describe Dr. Wu, who is Chinese-American. I sit in the chair next to his desk, fully dressed, like he’s a banker and I’m asking for a loan. In a way, I am. I’m asking for three years. Three years with no lasting impact on my health.

  The fact that he speaks English and was trained in the States makes me feel better. I suspect Dr. Wu’s chief function at the clinic is to put expats at ease. Keep it light. As if it were all nothing more than a humorous rite of passage—pollution repositioned as something akin to Chinese sorority hazing.

  “Shanghai is a fabulous city,” he insists. “Don’t worry about the air.” And then he takes a page straight out of Kimberly’s PowerPoint presentation:

  Go!

  Do!

  Explore!

  There’s so much to see.

  “Not today, though,” he adds. “Today, maybe you should just go home and stay inside.”

  When I leave the health clinic, armed with cough meds and throat lozenges, traffic has slowed to a crawl because of low visibility. No tourists or expats in sight, just locals wrapped up in scarves and face masks, eyes peeking through layers of protection, wind blowing air so gritty you can almost touch it. It’s like being in a desert storm, and in a way, this is war: a battle between life and unregulated, unparalleled industrial growth. Only instead of shooting guns they burn coal, lots of it, more coal than all countries in the world combined.

  When the AQI blows past 400, I email Mina to ask if the company has an evacuation plan. It’s more than I bargained for when I agreed to move to China. Shanghai was supposed to be the jewel of the Orient—that’s what Mina (now the global mobility expert) said. When I asked if she had ever been to China, she said no. It’s kind of strange, when you think about it, that she’s in charge of relocating hundreds of families to a country she’s never once stepped foot in. She’s spouting brochure information—plausible deniability.

  Me, I’m collateral damage. Which would be a great title for an essay on being a tagalong in China. Corporations are like the military: They calculate risk, run numbers, and assess whether the opportunity outweighs the threat. Back home in the States, people think China is all about cheap labor and production jobs leaving the Rust Belt, but for Gee’s company, it’s all about China’s growing middle class. One billion–plus people is a whole lotta consumer buying power. Here’s an interesting statistic: Air pollution in China causes nearly one in five deaths each year. That’s the same frequency as sexual assault in the United States, but nobody puts that in the American brochure. Not to mention, but I will, that fifty percent of survivers of sexual assault will exhibit signs of PTSD. Things like anxiety.

  Still, I don’t understand why I’m getting sicker than Gee, despite the fact that I did not go outside for the whole month of November. I sat at my desk, writing. Could the air inside our apartment be more toxic than the air outside? Which is worse: stale, recycled air or fresh and hazardous fumes? Later, I will realize I have been pondering the wrong question. I should have wondered, Is it possible that the air is cleaner where Gee works than where we live? But that understanding won’t come until after Andra sends me an article about how the Chinese government closed 150 factories to ensure that the air around Gee’s job site would have blue skies and appear photo op–ready.

  Not that Gee’s company isn’t concerned about the air. It is; that’s why they decided to provide free air masks for employees and their families. Not the cute, do-nothing fashion statements the Chinese girls wear, colorful patches of rainbow cloth with dancing koalas. No, his employer passes out regulation 3M N95 industrial respirators, the kind with nose clips and foam strips, masks that provide a professional seal against toxic dust and heavy metals.

  They also send someone to “handle” me. I have become a problem.

  Me.

  Not the air.

  AQI: Off the Charts

  Excuse me while I spit the sky.

  “Call me Kim,” she insists, like we’re just two girls sitting on the couch for a gab. Kim? It seems out of character, almost disingenuous, for such a sophisticated, flawlessly coiffed, multilingual, pump-wearing, designer-wrapped package. Kimberly looks Chinese, sounds British, and thinks money. Gee’s company is her cash cow, and now I am the squeaky wheel. Which is why Mina sent her to handle me. By the time she arrives, the AQI is over 500. Planes grounded, schools closed, factories shut, government cars pulled off the road, the entire megacity grinding to a halt.

  She sits on our couch, nonchalantly drinking tea, willfully ignoring the soul-crushing blanket of smog that obliterates our view of Shanghai’s iconic skyline. Instead, she compliments me on the decor: the fake pink Egg chair and the antique fireplace mantel propped against a blank wall.

  “You must be interested in design,” she remarks. This is the same woman who hosted the “Thrive vs. Survive” orientation I attended my first week in Shanghai, so I’m on to her playbook. Ignoring the obvious is her forte.

  “A little,” I say. But we both know she isn’t here to swap decorating tips.

  She zeroes in on me with laser focus, considering every possible flaw, from culture shock to underlying health conditions. “Have you made friends?” she wants to know. “What are your hobbies? Do you like the symphony? Have you joined the American Women’s Club?” As if the problem is that I need a more active social life. It feels somewhere between a home invasion an
d a psychiatric evaluation.

  “I’m not lonely,” I assure her. “My chest hurts, and I’m coughing blood.”

  “This is temporary,” Kimberly says, looking out the window at the white nothing.

  Last week, in perhaps the most surreal display of Chinese indifference to reality, the window cleaners came. Hanging precariously outside our fourteenth-floor apartment, dangling from pulleys and cables, they wiped the windows so we could have a clean and pristine view of the smog that surrounds us like a cloud.

  “It’s an unfortunate weather pattern,” Kimberly admits. “The winds will shift, and this will blow over. The government is committed to reducing pollution. And when the Chinese government puts its mind to something, it can move mountains. In a few years, air quality will not be an issue.”

  “That’s nice,” I tell her, but I don’t have a long-term commitment to Shanghai. I’m thinking about going home now. Remembering the Chinese phrase for “don’t want,” I whisper, “Bu yao” under my breath, so as not to offend.

  “Oh, good—you’re learning Chinese,” Kimberly says. And then, in a hushed, just-between-us-girls voice, she cautions, “The men do better when the wives are here with them.” The threat of Chinese mantraps and their seductive ways comes across, thinly veiled between the lines.

  I laugh out loud, thinking about how Gee rests his wire-rimmed glasses on his forehead when he reads.

  “Your body just needs time to adjust,” she says, switching tactics.

  “I’m not sure this is something I should adjust to.”

  I’ve read that they sell bottled air in Beijing. It must cost a fortune. Like Russian caviar and Cuban cigars, Trump Tower, something only high-ranking officials can afford. What must they think, these comrades—that their luxury apartments and dark sedans with the tinted windows will protect them; that their own children don’t breathe the same air on the playground as a street vendor selling pork dumplings?

  “Here’s my private number,” Kimberly says, pressing her business card into my palm as I show her the door. “Promise you’ll call me if you ever need anything. Anything. Call me first. I’m always available.”

  “There is something you can do,” I tell her. “I want an environmental check on the air quality inside our apartment.”

  “That was already done before you moved in,” Kimberly replies. “We would never let anyone move into an apartment without first checking for mold and other health issues.”

  “Can you do it again, please?” I insist.

  “Hi, doll,” Gee says when he arrives home from work. “How was your day?”

  “I had a visit from Kimberly this afternoon.”

  “And?”

  “And she said Shanghai has a world-class symphony and that we should trust the Chinese government to fix the air.”

  “This is temporary, Em. It’s a random weather pattern. The winds will shift, and this will blow over.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  Science is his coping mechanism. I want to tell him that he doesn’t need this job, but that isn’t exactly true—he’s contractually obligated. If he bails in the middle of a high-profile project, he won’t get another such opportunity. We’ve still got one kid in college and a mortgage that isn’t paid off. I may be following him, but he’s following the company. He’s a tagalong employee. I wrestle daily with what’s good for him, good for us, versus what’s good for me.

  This day will come to be known as Airmageddon, the Airpocalypse, the smoggiest day in China’s recorded history. Tomorrow the smog will start to lift and Kimberly will instruct Jake to schedule an environmental air-quality test for our apartment.

  They come wearing hazmat suits. No, just kidding—they come carrying science kits and something resembling a metal detector, like the ones people use at the beach to find sand-hidden scraps. They test every nook and cranny. The crew discovers one hot spot. My desk. My desk is a hot spot. Just the drawers—that cigar smell that reminds me of my grandfather when I open the drawer is toxic fumes. I would scream if it weren’t so ironic—I just spent the entire month of November sitting at that desk, writing, to avoid the air pollution outside and instead got off-gassed inside.

  When I try to return the desk, Chad tells me it’s not the desk, not my desk in particular, which is fake antique, painted turquoise, with a sheet of glass on top; it’s the desk in general. They’re all the same. All made in China. All toxic.

  Can I get a different style of desk?

  “No,” Chad says. It’s the only desk they sell. “But you can have a different color, if you like.” Instead, I empty the drawers and put them on our balcony to air out. Don’t say it: how it sounds crazy to air out toxic drawers on a polluted balcony. Just do it.

  WE CAME TO PLAY

  I joined everything, made friends, followed everyone’s advice—bought groceries online, drank bottled water, wore air masks, sat at my desk with an air purifier humming at my side, and still I got my ass kicked. Royally. Not just a little spanking, not a physical manifestation of my inner spirit dying, my arm going limp. This was no symbolic whooping.

  “I can’t breathe,” I tell Gee. “I want to go home.”

  “Wait until after the holidays,” he suggests. “The kids are coming. We’ll have a blowout family vacation in Shanghai, and then you can go back to LA.”

  Rio arrives first, so I give him the high-low treatment: a foot rub at a place so skeevy they use an X-Acto knife to trim his toenails, and then traditional Chinese tea at an elegant tearoom tucked away on a side street, the kind only locals know about, where they don’t speak a word of English. Tea lasts for hours and comes with seeds and nuts, fruits and wafers; it looks divine but tastes mamahuhu. That’s Mandarin for meh.

  “Must be an acquired taste,” I say, making a sour face.

  “Maybe it’s like medicine,” Rio responds thoughtfully, trying to tap into the mystery of Chinese customs. “Maybe it’s not supposed to taste good; it’s supposed to be good for you. Like a neti pot.”

  I’m still fighting this cough that turned into bronchitis and that Dr. Wu will treat only with lozenges, so I’m supplementing with an herbal concoction of mothball fruit and dried lemon. I’m totally into TCM, the whole traditional Chinese medicine thing. My favorite treatment is moxibustion: a lit, cigar-size stick of mugwort held so close to your skin it almost touches. They say the heat unblocks your qi, allowing bacteria and viruses to flee the body. I’ve had it done a few times, proving there is no homeopathic ray-of-hope wizardry I won’t try.

  At first Rio made fun of me, but a week into his visit, he’s not laughing anymore; he’s hacking like he lives here and asks me to make him some mothball tea.

  We’re a pair, I think, the two of us. I’m coughing blood, and his nose is bleeding.

  When Ruby arrives, the family goes to this bar in Pudong with an amazing view of the Huangpu River. It takes two different elevators to get up to the eighty-seventh floor, where we’re having cocktails. That’s where I float the idea that I want to go home, and Ruby says flat-out no way.

  The first thing that crossed my mind when she came through customs yesterday was that she looked so grown-up. It’s been only six months since I last saw her, but her hair is longer, layered, and beachy. Tonight she’s wearing a flowy top, skinny jeans, the boots I gave her for her birthday last year, and makeup. My daughter is dewy and sparkly. She’s also prickly.

  “You said I could have the house for three years,” she reminds me.

  “Yeah, but that was before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before I knew living in China might kill me.”

  “It’s not gonna kill you, Mom. You always exaggerate.”

  “I just want my room back for a couple weeks, honey, just to clear my lungs, that’s all.”

  “That wasn’t the deal,” she says firmly.

  “When we made the deal,” I say, “I didn’t know how bad the air in Shanghai would be.”

  “It’s not t
hat bad,” Ruby says, gazing out the wall of glass, at the Bund all lit up.

  This is the view everyone wants when they come to Shanghai: the screaming, flashing pop art–y skyline seen from up high in the Cloud 9 bar. This is the view of the Bund from Pudong, the other side of the river from El Willy, where Gee and I ate dinner on our look-see. That first time I saw it sparkling like neon candy buildings, it left me dumbstruck. It’s the view that made me say “maybe.” So I know how seductive it can be.

  “You promised,” she says. “And besides, where would you sleep?” she asks, sipping her frozen margarita.

  My daughter is quite strong. I admire this quality in her, but not when she uses it against me. Right now, I’m feeling thwarted.

  I should have been clearer. That’s what I’m thinking. When we set up the house-sitting arrangement, I should have been clearer. Rent-free in exchange for taking care of the dog, okay, but letting Ruby move into my bedroom and fill our house with her friends? Not smart. I have this crushing realization that I’m trapped. I can’t go home to LA, can’t go back to Detroit, can never go home to Mommy again. Nobody loves you like your mother. It used to be a whimsical observation, a joke between Andra and me. Now it feels much more piercing. Moms are the only people in the world who love you almost more than life itself. Except right now I want to strangle my own daughter. Only I don’t.

  Tomorrow I will take Ruby to Yuyuan Garden, visit the Buddhist temple, have dim sum in the shape of the queen’s pocketbook in honor of the fact that Queen Elizabeth once dined there. We’ll shop for hours in the streets surrounding the commodities market, my least favorite place in the city. Imagine a mall the size of a neighborhood; now imagine it’s filled with open stalls like a shopping bazaar, overflowing with stuff, a clearinghouse for all things made in China: brooms, bralettes, wigs, wastebaskets, hats, and toy helicopters. Lady, you wanna buy a watch? I’ll wait patiently while Ruby handpicks gifts for her roommates, comparing teapots and deliberating over pu’er versus oolong. Watch her pick out a Mao shirt for the boyfriend—the one I’ve never met but who I suspect is the real reason Ruby doesn’t want to give up my bedroom. Afterward, I will take her to Zen Massage, a bit pricey but clean and serene. It will be a full-on mother-daughter day. I’m hoping it will buy me some points when I revisit the whole conversation about wanting to go home.