What We Were Promised

by Lucy Tan

  “Is that all you could find?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I’ll just wait until Mom comes home.”

  “Okay.” Best to be agreeable. “Okay, that’s fine. How do you feel?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to watch a movie?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do you want some painkillers?”

  “No.”

  Wei went to her. To his surprise, she returned his hug, and he placed his hand on her back, feeling her ribs rise and fall with the delicacy of an underwater creature. How simple she felt as a physical being in his arms and how complicated she had become. Wei rubbed her shoulders, the way he had when she was young, until her breathing evened out. They stayed in that position—she sitting, he crouched with his arms around her—until he felt his knees would pop, and even then he didn’t let go. If this was the only comfort he could offer, then this was what he would offer.

  “You know, I miss you when you’re away,” he said into her hair. “I barely get to see you, and you want to leave so soon.”

  “Then move back,” she replied.

  Back. Wei realized now that Karen still thought of the U.S. as home, whereas he had shed that idea long ago. How had he never noticed that? Was that what accounted for the distance between them? Her tone of voice was a mix of longing and defensiveness and pretending like it didn’t matter to her as much as it must. He wanted so much for her right then, not least of which was to live by her side. Had he gone about it all wrong? Did he spend too much time thinking about the best thing for her future and not enough time thinking about what was best for her now? In the years she had been away at Black Tree, she had grown abstract to him. I have a daughter, he said to colleagues when they asked if he had kids. He kept her pictures on his desk at his office. On business trips, he picked up knickknacks that he left on her bedroom bureau to collect dust until her next visit home. Had he ever seen her open the little painted box from St. Petersburg, or wear the hair bows from Paris, or use the package of stickers from Japan? He couldn’t remember—he couldn’t be sure. It occurred to him then that he had no idea what she wanted or why she wanted what she did. He had never sat looking out a window with her, sussing out her dreams, as his own father had with him. Nor had he ever lain awake listening for her to come home, as his ba had for Qiang. If he, too, were to die suddenly, how well would he survive in her memory?

  “Okay,” Karen said, pulling back from him. “I guess I’ll try the tampon.”

  “Great,” Wei said, breathing heavily now from the effort of his crouch. “Who needs Mom?”

  Karen opened the box of Playtex, glanced briefly at the instructions that came with it, and then flung it aside and announced that she was just going to figure out how to do it herself.

  Several minutes later, when she still hadn’t come out of the bathroom, Wei called to her from the hallway. “Everything okay?”

  “Go away.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to look at the instructions?” He had spent the last few minutes trying to read them himself, although the paper was about five shades too pink for his aging eyes.

  “No, the diagrams are scary.”

  The diagrams were scary. Wei did not like the names used to describe the parts of the tampon. He didn’t think words like barrel and plunger were very friendly-sounding to young women doing this for the first time. There was also something seedy about contoured tip and finger grip. Furthermore, with the string hanging out from the end, the device in the diagram looked like a very large, very aggressive sperm.

  “I can explain it to you if you want. I’ll read the instructions aloud, you don’t have to—”

  “Please don’t do that.”

  “But if you don’t know how, I don’t think it’s a good idea to—”

  “Dad!” Silence, and then a sigh. “I’ll read the instructions. Just—shove it under the door. And then go away.”

  Wei refolded the glossy paper and got on one knee. Carefully, he fed it through the crack under the door.

  On the other side, he heard paper rustling, a few seconds of silence, then the sink going on and off again. He rose to his feet and waited, supporting himself with one fist against the bathroom door. Suddenly, he was reminded of the way he’d felt the night Lina gave birth to Karen. It had taken so many years for them to conceive that when it finally happened, it was almost as though they were living another couple’s lives. When Lina got pregnant, he’d felt tender toward her in a very new way, but the biggest change was how she was toward him. He couldn’t explain it except to say that she had opened up. She began to need him in a way that made him feel irreplaceable and singly responsible for her every moment of every day. At night, instead of rolling apart from him midsleep, she’d held his arms around her in a tight embrace. Her body had gotten big. Her waistline expanded, and the smell of her changed. She’d felt more solid to the touch, and it wasn’t because of the baby alone. Holding his hands there in position around her felt so inclusionary. It was like she was inviting him to experience whatever was happening between her and the baby, things that he never could have imagined he’d be able to feel.

  Then came the day of the birth. In the span of time between her water breaking and beginning to have contractions, Lina had stopped talking to him. While he called the doctor, gathered essentials, and repacked her prepacked bag, she’d sat against the cold concrete of their bedroom wall with her eyes closed, as if awaiting some kind of judgment. Her silence during that time had seemed like punishment to him, like an exclusion, though he knew she couldn’t have meant it that way.

  That kind of silence still made him nervous. There was the thought that he was somehow messing up without doing anything. He walked up the hall and back down it. Finally, the door opened and Karen stood there looking—he thought—very normal. She avoided his eyes, busied herself with folding the sheet of instructions in her hand, then handed it back to him. How absurd he felt accepting it, as though he were some authority on menstruation. And yet, how happy.

  “How’d it go?”

  She shifted her weight from one leg to the other. “Fine.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “I feel okay.”

  “Good!” As he gestured with his hands, the instructional insert flew from his fingers and landed on the floor between them. He bent to retrieve it, and when he straightened up, he caught the end of a smirk on his daughter’s face.

  “Can we still watch a movie?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you not work while we watch the movie?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Then you get to pick what we watch.”

  He would have been tickled by this display of generosity had she not sounded sincerely grateful. Karen was clearly aware that what had occurred to her body that night fell outside the scope of her father’s abilities and understanding. Through her own discomfort, she had been able to recognize his and take care of him in her own way.

  On the couch that night, Wei spent a good portion of the movie looking not at the screen, but into the mirrored walls of the display cases next to it. The TV cast a pallid glow on Karen’s face and Wei realized then how her features had changed over the past couple of years. The slope of her nose had risen and sharpened, and her eyes had acquired the kind of magnetism he recognized in Lina. With their glances alone, both women had the ability to pull a person close or keep him at a distance according to their will. There was less of Wei in Karen now and more of his wife. From here on out, Wei would have to work to understand his daughter, whereas she would instinctively know what to do with him.

  20

  Strobe lights. Fish tanks. Leather banquettes lining outdoor bars on the Bund. Women high-heeled so they stood taller than the men. The too-beautiful ones are hired to be here, Little Cao whispered to Sunny as they stood in line. They’re part of the decor. When it was their turn at the front, Little Cao leaned in to
the host and gave the name of Boss Zhen’s company in surprisingly unaccented English. Medora Group—they were the only two English words that Sunny had ever heard Little Cao say, but she thought he’d said them well.

  The first club was a dark, austere lounge with very few Chinese clients. Overhead, paper fans dropped from the ceiling on fishing lines. On the full-length glass-topped bar, a trio of bare-legged women in short qipaos moved from side to side in a languid choreographed dance, their expressions bored and implacable. The crowd was outfitted demurely, the women in boatneck dresses and the men in suits. They paid little attention to the bar-top show, but Sunny couldn’t stop watching. After a few minutes, Little Cao handed her a bright blue drink. It tasted like its color more than it did like any flavor Sunny could discern. She followed Little Cao to the club’s exterior deck, where a knot of guests were drinking champagne. The city behind them was decadently dressed, its lights like diamonds stitched down the front of a black silk suit.

  “This is where Boss takes his fanciest business associates. They come here when they’re celebrating a deal. What do you think? I bet you never thought you’d end up someplace like this!” Little Cao opened his arms and took a step back as if to make room for the splendor of the occasion.

  “It’s beautiful,” Sunny said.

  “It’s hard to believe none of that was there ten years ago. I’ve got nephews older than those buildings over in Pudong. My sister’s husband’s family had an apartment right where the Expo site is now. Government had to move them out. Their new place is nice.”

  He set his drink on the railing, took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and ran his finger over the filter tips as if struggling to choose one. “What’s sad is that her kid doesn’t have a childhood. I mean, a place to come back to. A place where he grew up as a child. It will all have to be up here for him,” he said, tapping his head.

  That’s where I keep my childhood, Sunny was tempted to say, but she knew things were different for her.

  As she watched him smoke, something clicked in her head. “You’re college-educated.”

  A smile tugged up around his cigarette. “True. I went to college a long time ago.”

  Earlier, at the Expo, when Little Cao had spoken with the overnight guards, his language had suddenly become formal and erudite. Do you know who I am? That was the question Little Cao had asked without forming the words. He was playing Boss Zhen, and it had worked well enough. He had convinced the guards to call the Expo officials as well as the police commissioner, and when none of them picked up their phones, he’d instructed the guards to keep calling every half hour. He had left his own phone number with the weary and resigned look of a business traveler who had missed his connecting flight. Give me a call when you finally get through, he’d said before walking away. Seeing Little Cao manipulate the guards like this made Sunny wonder about the ways he was manipulating the Zhens. Around Boss Zhen and Taitai, there was no hint of the shrewdness he’d shown tonight. In fact, he was the opposite—cheerful to a fault and oblivious to their criticisms of him. Was he playing a dumbed-down caricature of himself whenever they were around? Was it possible that, like Sunny, he approached his job with the same instinct to hide who he was?

  “How did you end up a driver?” she asked him now.

  “I went to college for only two years. My parents got sick. I’d just gotten married. The only thing to do was to start working, and driving was the best option at the time.”

  “That’s too bad,” Sunny said.

  “Mei you, it’s fine. Turned out for the best. I’m not cut out for an office job anyway—or any kind of nine-to-five job, really. I’m not a worker like Boss Zhen. To be honest, I’m a bit like Taitai. A dreamer. Driving around lets me think my thoughts. It’s really an okay outcome. What about you? What did you do before you cleaned homes?”

  “I helped out around the house, tended the family business.”

  “Why’d you come out here?”

  She’d been asked this question countless times by now. Why didn’t answering it ever feel any easier?

  “There wasn’t space for me at home anymore. I was married and my husband passed, but I wasn’t close to his family. I didn’t belong there or at home anymore, so now I’m here.”

  Little Cao frowned. “You ever think about marrying again?”

  “Sure,” Sunny said. “I don’t know.”

  “A single woman living in qunzu and sending money home—”

  Sunny hiked her voice up so it was high and cackling. “A single woman working in the city, it doesn’t seem right. What are you going to do when you get old? Who’s going to take care of you?”

  Little Cao grinned at the impersonation. “Who’s that? Your mother?”

  Sunny nodded. “My question is, why does everyone think getting married will solve everything?”

  “I don’t think that. I just think, you know, things are harder to bear alone.”

  Next to them, a woman squealed and sent a martini glass tumbling off the side of the balcony. It was followed by a delicate shatter down below and the echoing laughter of men. The city still seemed like a movie set to Sunny, even after all this time. She and Little Cao had driven here by way of the overpass. From there, they’d had a full view of the Expo’s electric landscape of pavilions, closed for the night, but still filled with colored lights. She thought of Taitai again, trapped in one of those buildings. Did she ever get tired of the brightness and excess? Or did years of playing a leading lady make a person stop noticing how artificial the world around her was?

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” Sunny finally said. “Today Boss Zhen offered to help me find a permanent ayi position and I couldn’t be happy about it. I kept thinking about what it would mean to stay here forever and I couldn’t stand the thought of working for a family with no end date in sight.”

  “Why?” Little Cao asked. “Because you don’t want to be an ayi or because you don’t want to live here?”

  “I don’t know. I miss home, but I don’t think I could live there for good.”

  Everything Sunny wanted seemed impossible for her to have: the comfort of a family without losing herself to their needs, a feeling of stability without the requirement of marriage, and love—if she was lucky enough—in whatever form it came.

  “Of course you couldn’t! You make five grand a month and you’re living in group housing. You don’t like making friends. You’re set on working here without living here—” Little Cao shook his head. “Not everybody who moves here from the countryside can figure out a way to stay. Sometimes not even people who grew up here can. But you have. You have an opportunity to build a life for yourself here if you want. But you can’t do it when your heart is half there and half here. You’ve lived here five years and you’ve never been out to a proper bar before.”

  He was right. Rose had worked for half her adult life only to be shunted aside. Sunny, however, had been handed the ayi opportunity after just a few years of being in Shanghai. She knew she should be more grateful.

  “You should give Shanghai a real try. Take whatever Boss Zhen can get you. It doesn’t have to be forever. You save the money, maybe later take a secretarial class or something. You’re still young. Who knows? You could end up working in an office.”

  At Medora earlier that day, Sunny had studied the rows of desks filled with young men and women typing on computers. Could it really be possible to have a job like that, one where—as Rose had put it—it would be someone else’s responsibility to take her leftovers out in the trash? Was it work she would even enjoy? Little Cao was staring at her, waiting for some kind of acknowledgment of what he had said, some indication that she would take his advice.

  “Don’t drink that too fast,” he said, motioning to her half-empty glass. “The night’s just started.”

  The second club they went to was located on the fifth floor of a shopping mall. Its interior resembled a large amphitheater, complete with a high dome and U-shaped seating.
Suspended from the ceiling of the uppermost level were large, glittering balls that reflected colored light. The dancers here were dressed in blue satin and performed on a stage that stretched from one end of the venue out into the center of the dance floors. Middle-aged men sat on couches, absorbed by the glow of their cell phones.

  It was much louder here than it had been in the first club, and Little Cao had to shout to be heard. “Boss Zhen rarely comes here himself. Sometimes he sends me to take his younger associates here with clients who like a wilder lifestyle. Usually before the deals are made. Alcohol helps, zhi dao ba. Girls help.” An attendant led them to a booth with a low table and handed them a menu and a flashlight. Little Cao ordered drinks and snacks, which arrived on the shoulders of waiters or held high over their heads above the crowd—trays of fruit and popcorn and bottles of baijiu. Soon after, three or four businessmen came to their booth and greeted Little Cao. It wasn’t until they sat down that Sunny recognized their faces from Lanson Suites. But she hadn’t glimpsed these men behind newspapers in the breakfast room or down in the gym. She’d seen them smoking in the parking lot, bending to inspect the wheels of one another’s cars, and, on cold days, sipping hot tea from their canteens as they stood talking in a circle. They were drivers. Drivers in suits.

  Her first instinct was to leave. She didn’t want to be seen here with Little Cao by others who worked at the hotel. She didn’t want to risk all the other maids finding out and thinking that her new job had changed her, that she had been taken in by this lavish lifestyle. She especially didn’t want to risk the Zhens finding out. But the other drivers drew her into their circle so quickly and earnestly that it was impossible not to give in to their warmth. Bottles of Chivas were brought out with a stack of glasses and chilled cartons of oolong tea. The man closest to her poured the whiskey and Little Cao mixed in the tea. As Sunny sipped her drink, she started really listening to the music. American songs—that was expected. What surprised her was how the others in the club, even the Chinese nationals, all seemed to know the words.