Yogaman says, “When you talk about your kids, you’re just avoiding your own shit.” I would kill to go there right now. I miss my yoga practice in LA so much I can almost smell it: the studio hot and cramped, a sweat swamp, body to body, not like in China, where they arrange the mats neatly in rows; God forbid someone gets too close or takes up too much space. Practicing yoga in Shanghai, a multinational community, can be challenging because poses are called out in Sanskrit through any number of foreign accents, all of which makes it difficult to follow. Half the time I’m looking around to see what the rest of the class is doing.
Once, in a twist, I turned my head to look at the guy next to me, and snap! An electric jolt ran from my neck down my arm and across my chest. Shit, shit, shit! I chastised myself, collapsing into a child’s pose, cursing myself for such a rookie move. After a few minutes, I got back up, all my body parts still attached, nothing hanging limp. It seemed like I had dodged a bullet. Now my left arm is losing strength, and it hurts, but only in down dog, which is like saying “only when I laugh.” I hope someday Ruby and I will laugh about this stalemate: my wanting to go home and her not letting me back into my own house.
We’re still in the bar, having cocktails that last forever, stretching it out because they cost a small fortune. The mood shifts. Everyone is laughing; all talk about home leave is tabled for the time being. Gee takes out his wallet. Ruby reapplies lipstick a shade too red. I suggest hot pot at the Healthy Elixir; then everyone piles into a taxi. After dinner, the kids go bar hopping. I resist the urge to warn them off cheap liquor, to tell them it’s safer to drink bottled beer at dive bars in China. On the walk home, Gee circles back to my idea of going to LA for a few weeks, saying it’s too soon for me to crush Ruby’s independence.
“This is an opportunity for Ruby to prove that she can be responsible, Em. Plus,” he reminds me, “technically we’re not entitled to home leave until we’ve lived here for at least a year.”
That last part, the technicality, that’s Gee putting his company face on. Maybe he doesn’t want Mina to know I’m already considering bailing on the post. I could buy my own airline ticket—Mina would never have to know—but I don’t argue the point because he’s right about Ruby. I don’t want to push her around. Not again. Not this time. Not after dragging her to Japan.
“The air will get better,” Gee promises. “It’s winter. They burn coal for heat in China. When spring comes, the sky will clear. You’ll see.”
I hear what he’s saying. It even sounds rational. In a few months’ time, the smog will lift and my chest won’t feel like it’s stuffed with cement. After I’ve been here for a year, the company will pay for my trip home and Ruby will move out of our bedroom for a few weeks. I decide not to count on that last part, on her graciously giving up my bed. Instead, I make other plans for home leave.
IN THE MITTEN
When summer comes, I go home. Heart home. Traverse City. If you’re looking at the back of your hand, it’s in the crease between your pinky and your ring finger. Close enough for friends and family to visit. We rent a vacation house for the whole month of August. We can walk into town, buy fudge, take yoga classes, ride bikes along the lake, canoe on the Manistee, shop at farmers’ markets. Fresh corn. Cherries! And the air—the air is to breathe here! We’re talking blue skies, baby—amazing azure with puffy white clouds. Pristine.
At night, the sky is pitch black, not like in China, where midnight is milky white, an unnatural sheen of streetlights reflected off the veil of pollution. Here, when I lie back on the ground, there are whole galaxies floating above me. That I can actually see! Shooting stars too. Sometimes I sit on the porch swing and do a breath meditation, inhaling and exhaling, savoring the clean, crisp air. And the water! The water is so clear, I can see my toes through it. Pebbles glisten in shades of sand and aquamarine.
Andra comes, and the two of us have a competition to see who takes the best picture. I shoot one of her on the pier near the lighthouse in Charlevoix, laughing. She takes one of me wading in water up to my shins, wearing a black-and-white-striped, wide-brimmed straw hat, smiling. We snap pictures of the pebbles through the water, close up, and post them as our cover photos on Facebook. There’s even a local film festival. Which is why Rio decides to tag along. Ruby shows up too.
“Who’s watching the pooch?” I ask her.
“My roommates,” she says.
Her roommates! The girls who are living in our house, sleeping in our beds, and who Ruby said were the reason I couldn’t go home to Los Angeles. I admit that I sulked about that for a few months. And then I booked this badass beach house in northern Michigan and everyone came to me. Even Ruby. Which surprised me.
“Of course I came,” she says defensively. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because you were so bitchy in Shanghai.”
“You know, Mom, you shouldn’t call me a bitch.”
“I didn’t call you a bitch. I said you were acting like one.”
“It’s the same thing.”
She’s sitting next to me on the swing, the one where I do breath meditation and stare at the sky, so close I can feel her hurt. It shatters my defenses. How right she is that I shouldn’t call my daughter a bitch (or bitchy). Ever. Even if she is holding me hostage over my own house. I squeeze her hand, crafting a sweeping response in my head about how much I love her, but before I have time to apologize, she does.
“I’m sorry for being bitchy, Mom. I was mad. Rio’s in college, and you and Dad moved to China, and all I got was the dog.”
“And the house.”
“And then right away you wanted to come home and ruin it.”
Wow. I didn’t see it from her perspective. I’ve been so wrapped up in being a tagalong that I didn’t notice how she got left behind. Every time Gee gets a new post, I try to make it work, and it never does, not really. Someone always loses something. Tagalong math. Gee plus his job means me minus my career or me minus the kids. Or Ruby plus the house but minus her parents. Or Gee minus … Well, Gee never loses. That’s the foundational core of tagalong math.
But right now, he’s missing the Mitten. Here we are in Northern Michigan, my happy place, everything is turning out better than I could possibly imagine, and Gee is back East, visiting his parents.
“My folks were disappointed you didn’t come,” Gee says when he calls.
“That’s because they’re so old, they’ve forgotten how much they don’t like me,” I joke.
I haven’t forgotten, though. Je me souviens. I remember it all, but I’ve let it go. Letting go is one thing—it’s big of me; it’s world-weary wise and grown-up mature—but it doesn’t mean spending my home leave at Gee’s parents’ summer house. Even though it’s lovely, rustic, an East Coast fishing village with fresh lobsters and stunning ocean views, I didn’t want to go there. Not because the water is cold and you can’t swim in the Atlantic, or because the mattress in the shed where we bunk is bumpy and uncomfortable, or because Milly drives me crazy and after Paris I agreed to stay with Gee on one condition: that I got to divorce his family. None of that is an issue (anymore), except the water. It’s freezing. And it just isn’t my home. I didn’t want to fly from Shanghai to Port Clyde, from a view of the Bund to a view of the Atlantic; tag along on Gee’s family vacation; be a guest in someone else’s home; hide in the shed, my nose in a paperback, walking on eggshells. I wanted to connect to the stomping grounds of my own childhood. Plug in and recharge. I needed to be with my people. I needed to take care of myself.
After the kids leave, Andra and I sit on the beach and talk about this idea of hers to stage a theatrical reading of my stories.
“I’ll do all the work,” she says, “pull together the actors, manage rehearsals, and direct; all you have to do is edit the pieces and send them to me from China.”
She’s got a rock-solid vision for the show. She can already see how it flows and fits together, although I’m a little worried she might not get the tone right; she’s
a bit of a drama queen, always going for a hug or a cry.
“Don’t make it weepy, Andra. Promise me.”
“People will laugh, Em.”
I start to get excited. Really excited. More excited than I’ve been in years. I can do this, I think. Go back to China. Teach yoga and edit my pieces. Shanghai is survivable as long as I have a plan. Now that I have this project with Andra, I will have something concrete to work on if the air gets too bad to go outside.
Before I return to Shanghai, though, I swing through LA for doctors’ appointments and fortification. Ruby graciously vacates my bedroom. My doctor in LA assures me my lungs are perfectly healthy. “Don’t worry about the AQI,” he says. “It’s the delta you need to be concerned with. The real question is, how much worse is the air in Shanghai than the air in LA?”
This is meant to comfort me in a shockingly cynical way. Because he’s right: The air in LA is beginning to look a lot like the air in China. I order face masks online, stock up on red underwear to ward off the bad luck that is otherwise destined to befall me in the Year of the Sheep—an ancient Chinese superstition, but I’m not taking any chances. And, just to be on the safe side, I go to see this new-agey doctor in Santa Monica who talks me into an oxygen drip with a vitamin C boost. Not that I’m hard to convince, because I’m searching for Band-Aids. Doctor, please make me invincible. My health insurance won’t cover this, I think, sitting there with the tube in my arm, mainlining oxygen.
TIC — THIS IS CHINA
Me and Ian complain a lot. It’s the basis of our friendship. I always feel like I have to fake it with the tagalong crowd.
I love my life!
Gee and I are going to Bangkok!
We’re so lucky!
That’s the tagalong game: always be positive. Even though more than a few of my yoga students have shown up for class in the morning sad-eyed, reeking of last night’s “happy” hour. They don’t look joyful, but they put on a good show running frantically from a walking tour to a wine tasting. Ian and I don’t play that game with each other, though. We have unofficially declared our relationship a safe space for outrage. Sometimes we share basic survival tips, like who has the best local produce (the avocado lady on Wulumuqi Lu) and where to get a great haircut.
“Em!” Ian yelled at me in a downpour when I was haphazardly slow to open my umbrella. “Your hair!”
Ian has a head of professionally streaked, fabulously tousled, dirty blondish hair. Hair is the only thing he’s vain about; otherwise, his fashion sense is strictly zoo T-shirt and jeans. It may seem weird to have a best friend who’s young enough to be my son, but in the expat world, sharing a common language is more important than age, and Ian speaks English, albeit with a British accent. We bonded over great apes; he studies them, and I handled marketing for the zoo in between Korea and Paris. This is how I chart my career, in stints sandwiched between Gee’s overseas posts.
We meet on the corner of Yueyang and Yongjia Lu and walk to dinner at a charming bistro tucked into a hidden courtyard garden. Most of the time, Ian goes on about problems he’s having at work or with his partner, which seem pretty messed up and dead end–ish, but I don’t tell him that. I hope that back home someone is listening to my kids sort through their lives and not making them feel worse than they already do. I’ve learned not to talk about my marriage. Gee and I have weathered our relationship drama. The longer we stay together, the better it feels from the inside looking out, but still I suspect that it might look totally different from the outside looking in. It might look one-sided: too much compromise and not enough caring. It might look less like dust settled and more like I settled for dust.
And speaking of dust, today I’m in a tizzy about my neighbors who are in the midst of a huge renovation project. Dust everywhere. Construction banging in my face. Just mine, not Gee’s, because when the workers are pounding away, he’s in a hermetically sealed, air-purified, US-regulated, corporate environment. At first it was just irritatingly noisy, but when the apartment started to smell like a vat of nail polish remover, I called Gee.
“Acetone,” he said. “It’s used in paint thinners. It’s regulated in the States but not in China.”
They’d put it in soup if it was cheaper than water. “Do I need to be worried?” I asked.
“It won’t kill you, Em. Just open the windows.”
Snap back to the window dilemma. To open or not to open. Never, only at night, or always when it rains? The air quality is good when it rains, but if the rain is acid rain, how can it be safe to breathe? Acetone. Acid rain. Pesticide. Living in China is like being a contestant on a reality-TV show about your worst fears. Coping can sometimes look a lot like sleeping. A week ago, Gee came home from work early during the neighbor’s construction craze and found me napping in a noxious stupor.
“Wake up! Jesus fuck, Em, can’t you smell the chemicals in here?”
Gee got Jake on the phone; Jake got in touch with the building manager, who called the neighbors. They showed up with their whole family—kids, grandkids, plus an interpreter. Gee was in problem-solving mode; this is where he shines. The solution is simple, he told them: Just seal the door to the common hallway and open your own windows. The next day, the biggest basket of imported fruit arrived. Mangoes, pineapple, kiwi, and passion fruit. It must have cost a boatload of RMB. It was from the neighbors. “Sorry for the bad smell,” the note said. The Chinese are big gift givers. I just wish they were better environmentalists.
A few days later, as if no one would notice, the jackhammering resumed and, once again, a toxic breeze began blowing our way. Gee says he doesn’t detect the smell anymore, and most likely he doesn’t. For one thing, by the time he gets home, it’s dissipated somewhat. But mostly, I suspect, he sees that the hall is sealed; the problem is therefore solved. That’s how his mind works. There’s an underlying hint that I am being neurotic.
After dinner, I invite Ian up for a glass of wine. Secretly, I want his opinion on the smell. Odor is not like smog—you can’t see it. I can’t tell anymore: Does it smell in here, or is fear triggering an olfactory memory?
Ian walks in and immediately states the obvious: “It smells like a chem spill in here! This is not okay.”
“‘This’ being all of it, right? The air, the food, the water.”
“Especially split pants and kids squatting and doing their business like dogs on the street.”
“Yeah.” I laugh. Then we go get a drink at the bar across the street, where you have to slip your hand into a slot on the wall to open the door. Because if we have to live here, if we have to eat, breathe, and drink factory fumes, we might as well do it in a secret-handshake bar with fancy olives.
I start attending events hosted by an NGO whose mission is to minimize or reverse the environmental degradation in China brought about by economic growth. I go to a lecture with a panel of speakers, representatives from companies that sell water filtration systems, air purifiers, and face masks, and one woman who is designing a practical app for air quality, one that can compare the air quality inside a home to the air quality outside, once and for all settling the burning question of whether or not to open the windows.
At the end of the presentation, there’s a Q and A.
How many air purifiers do you need?
Do you need a water filter on your showerhead if you have a reverse osmosis water system?
Where can I get one of those cool skater air masks?
Where is the resistance, the indignation, the outrage? That’s what I want to know. These products are necessary tools, and I for sure couldn’t live here without them, but the salesperson in me understands that this panel of experts is made up of pollution profiteers, and the rebel in me is looking for change. On the spot, I devise a resistance campaign that is so hot it could go global. I stand up and pitch my idea of a consumer boycott triggered by the AQI smog index to this room full of expats and English-speaking locals. “Let’s start a social media campaign on WeChat,” I sugges
t.
The room goes pin-drop, you-crazy-lady quiet. Afterward, during wine and cheese, a few guests come up to me and discreetly offer opinions.
I could lose my job!
I could get arrested!
I could get deported!
I realize two things: The people in this room are more afraid to speak out than breathe in. And I have tagalong privilege. I don’t share their concerns about being arrested or losing a job, and I wouldn’t mind being deported.
On the way home, I plug in my earbuds, cranking up Imagine Dragons: “Radioactive.” And swing by happy hour to meet up with Yvette and the tagalongs. Shanghai is a cocktail party in hell. I feel it in my belly; I have weird bumps and rashes, itchy parts, hair falling out, and sties. I have this cut on my finger that won’t heal. I snap a pic of it.
Meanwhile, my arm and neck are both hurting, my left arm having weakened steadily ever since that rookie move in yoga. One morning, while blow-drying my hair, I feel a thud in my chest right where my heart is.
Dr. Wu assures me it isn’t a heart attack and refers me to Dr. Chong, a physical therapist at the expat health clinic. She’s sort of a drill sergeant. She forces me to do sit-ups. Push, squeeze, squeeze harder, she insists. I’m crunching, I’m working up a sweat, I’m breathing deeply.
“I can taste construction dust from downstairs,” I tell her.
They’re renovating the lobby using no plastic protective sheets, allowing particulate debris to fly everywhere—including straight into my lungs. It was so bad when I was coming up here, I kept my mask on in the elevator.
Em's Awful Good Fortune Page 20