by Weike Wang
He finds me reading not a science journal but a book I borrowed from the library and gives me a thumbs-up. He used to read. He read up until he started grad school and then stopped. Where is the time? he says.
Books that he likes: Heart of Darkness, The Stranger, The Trial. Books that I like: none of the ones that he likes.
Is he cute? asks the best friend right away.
He’s okay. Then I send her his lab picture and she replies, Oh my gosh, he is cute. Look at those eyes—light blue—and she calls them intense.
Soon we are working in adjacent fume hoods. This is the name for our chemical work space that vents toxic fumes into the atmosphere.
Can I borrow your sep funnel? Your hot plate? Your oil bath? Can I borrow your small magnetic stirrer, if not your big magnetic stirrer, if not your paper clip, if not your…?
When he runs out of things to borrow, he asks me out to lunch.
···
In 1986, my father moves to Shanghai. There are still thousands of bikes and thousands of bike bells. It is incredibly noisy, he finds. A year later, he meets my mother. Two years later, I am born. My mother, sick of changing and washing cloth diapers, teaches me how to use the bathroom at nine months. That’s impossible, I am assured by everyone. How did you even get to the bathroom? My mother says I raised my hand and then she carried me.
But my father has no time for us. He has dreams of going abroad. To get into an engineering PhD program, he writes to every American university he can find. He writes to every professor in the field. He writes for three years.
His English is terrible. Please and sank you. And for what he cannot express in words, he uses equations.
Finally, a professor says, Come study under me.
I am five when we leave China and move to America.
·
In the beginning, my mother pays for everything. She does not like Detroit. It is a dirty, run-down motor city. Quarter mile to the nearest grocery store and you have to drive? She finds that inconceivable. She also doesn’t know how to drive. She learns. But still it is nothing compared to Shanghai. In China, she makes more than my father, still a research assistant. She is a pharmacist, her mother an architect, her father a physicist. She uses savings and her share of the family’s money to pay for his tuition, our airfare, and the first year of food and rent.
This is what my mother is referring to when she says to him, You could not have gotten to this point without me. Look at all that I have sacrificed. I have given up proximity to friends and family. I have given up my career. And for what?
For this: my father finishes his doctorate in record time, three years, and then he gets a well-paying job.
His advisor tells him: You work the same amount as twelve full-time graduate students. If only I had twelve more like you.
But for this reason I do not see my father much. I see my mother more. She is often in the bedroom, hand wrapped around the phone cord, calling China.
China is twelve hours ahead, she tells me. It is always in the future.
When my father comes home, they fight in the kitchen.
Enough, he says whenever she brings up the past. Before overturning a table, he says that he too feels underappreciated for all that he does.
He had done the work, hadn’t he? He had gotten a job. So he reminds her, What gives you the right to judge me when you could not have done this and when you do not even have a job?
The table goes over. A crash. A lull.
To be a pharmacist in America, my mother has to go back to school and retake all the tests.
She has a hard time passing those tests. For one, everything is written in English.
It is easier to do nothing about the table. Just stand up and wipe the debris off your legs. Then act as if you are about to leave the room, as she does, but before leaving the room completely, snap around to say one last thing. The more indifferent sounding, the better.
Break everything in this house, she says. See if I care.
···
At home, I do more mundane tasks like talk to the dog. I say, Heel, with the authority of a doctor. He heels and asks for nothing in return.
Why do you want nothing? I ask. You must want something.
A treat, a ball, I offer them to him, and he just wants to nuzzle.
We nuzzle, his wet nose on my dry one, and I forget, for a moment, the sound of five beakers hitting the ground.
Seven times a day, I walk him. It comes to a point that when we get to the park he just goes into the shade of a tree and lies down. He won’t come when he is called. A flyer I see in this park offers free counseling to new parents. It is meant for parents of human children. It quotes a woman named Peggy: The way you talk to your human children becomes their inner voice.
Who is Peggy? I ask the other dog owners. And does she have a PhD to back up such claims?
There are other flyers posted, one that is seeking tutors in math or science. EXCELLENT PAY, it says, DOUGH, DOUGH, AND MORE DOUGH.
I take this flyer with me. I could use dough.
To buy the things that I want.
Like pizza.
···
Some people suffer externally. The dog, for instance, yelps in pain whenever we leave him alone in the house, even for one minute. His suffering takes him to the closet, where he hides and cowers until we come back, one minute later.
What must this feel like? The closet. So I go in there and wrap my arms around my knees. It feels as you would expect—epiphany-less and full of clothes.
During my first year in lab, someone who is graduating says, There comes a point in the doctorate where you just have to finish no matter what. If you don’t, everyone will look at you differently.
I wait for that to happen.
But the bus driver who never looks at me—when I get on, get off; when I wave and say, Yoo-hoo, hello—is still the same.
I had imagined a sinkhole opening up beneath me or at least a moderately sized fissure, but the ground is still the ground.
When I run out of things to do, I put in the same load of laundry I just washed.
···
A week later, I call the number on the flyer.
How does this sound for a starting rate? says the woman, but I don’t hear the actual number.
Was it three pizzas an hour?
I meet these students at the public library. I am allotted one hour per student to teach them whatever it is they have come to learn. Beforehand they fill out a request form.
First-year gen chem.
Second-year orgo.
Electricity…and magnetism…and circuits.
Usually I look at the form and say, I don’t think I can do this in an hour. But maybe if you come back next week and the week after that and the week after that.
They are mostly college kids. But to me, they still seem very young. Wow, I say aloud when one of them has never heard of a floppy disk.
What was so floppy about it? she asks, and I say, You had to be there to know.
In general, I tell them to ask me anything. Ask me things you have always wanted to know.
How hard is invisibility to achieve?
Seriously?
Seriously.
Very hard. First, you must have transparent organs. Second, you must have the same index of refraction as air, that is, light must not know that you exist and go through you as it does through air, straight, unbending. Glass, for instance, is transparent, but light still bends when it goes through it, so glass is not invisible, unless you happen not to notice it there and hit it on your way out.
Regardless of what they have requested to learn, I ask each student to jot this down anyway: Light has five properties in total. It is not just one thing; it is a spectrum.
When I add that light, for being so multifaceted, is also really, really cool, they jot this down too.
Refraction is why I am not invisible. It is also why things in water, like fish, appear farther and bigger than you thi
nk, and once that fish gets pulled out of the water, you are vastly disappointed.
Lots of fish proverbs:
Big fish, small pond.
Small fish, big pond.
Looking for fish? Don’t climb a tree.
Looking for fish? Go home and weave a net.
Gone fishing (with a net). Catch you later.
···
When we arrive in America, my mother starts teaching me about China. She thinks I will forget. She teaches me the four great beauties, the four great inventions, the four great novels.
She will ask me who was the first emperor of China and for how long did he reign?
The dynasties, list them.
Qin, Han, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing.
Your memory is somewhat astounding, Eric says, but why can’t you remember to shut the cabinets or turn off lights? Why do you so often put the bowl in the microwave and forget to hit start?
To the question that he is now posing from the kitchen—Who forgot to feed the dog?—I say, The dog.
During the early months of our dating, neither of us gets any work done in lab. We are perpetually flirting. Wear your nicest things, says the best friend, wear makeup, and I ignore her, because what is the point of nice things and makeup when you are in a lab coat and safety goggles all day? Though once, I try on a pair of stilettos. I can stand at my hood and run reactions. But I can’t walk. I can’t get back to my chair and sit down. Eventually I call him over for help. Maybe it was just an excuse to hold hands.
When he isn’t looking, I leave small gifts on his desk. I do this stealthily or what I think is stealthily. I ask him what his favorite thing to eat is—a spicy burrito—what his favorite thing to drink is—bourbon—and then leave those things. I open his lab notebook and draw something on a distant page. He likes Pac-Man so I draw a lot of Pac-Mans. He likes Mario but I can’t draw Mario very well—the mustache, difficult—so I draw another Pac-Man.
Soon he catches on. He comes to find me, a stern expression yet playful. Here is how you draw Mario, he says. But he too finds the mustache difficult and tries many times.
···
The lab mate is not there when I break the beakers, but she must have heard or noticed my empty desk. She calls a month later.
When I don’t pick up, she leaves a message: Would I be interested in skydiving? Because if so, she could take me. She knows a place. She goes semiregularly.
Nothing will make you forget your troubles more, she says, than jumping out of a plane.
The message goes on.
If not skydiving, then bungee jumping.
If not bungee jumping, then zip-lining.
Do you like metal? she asks. What about moshing?
Finally, I pick the phone up. This is very nice of you but I don’t think I can do any of those things.
Are you coming back? she asks.
I have to go.
What’s wrong?
You won’t believe this but there is a bear in my backyard.
Then I hang up.
Obviously, there is no bear. It is the dog, whom we have not groomed in months.
The lab mate is a good person but sometimes I think, had I never met her, I would have asked less often, Why would a field need me when it has someone like her?
A proverb my father made up: To progress in life, you must always compare yourself with someone better and never with someone worse.
These things happen, Eric says about my one-month absence from lab. The one month is a grace period. Then, swiftly, I am put on medical leave and in contact with a shrink.
···
I have procured a bottle of gin from the liquor store and placed it on the table. Now I am watching the liquid inside disappear.
Did you do this? Eric asks when he comes home and finds an empty bottle in the trash.
I’m sorry, I reply. I should have put it in the recycling. I know glass belongs in the recycling.
One thing that I am grateful for is the enzyme that breaks down ethanol. Without it my face would turn alarmingly red and no one would trust me with alcohol again.
Did you eat anything? he then asks, shedding both coat and bag at the same time and gliding into the kitchen as if on Rollerblades. I think he is on Rollerblades and ask him to go back to the door and do that again.
When I am like this, I am highly susceptible to food commercials. Tyson’s 100 percent all-natural ingredients fully cooked chicken nuggets. My face inches closer and closer to the screen and Eric must pull me away before I hit it.
Together we make another trip to the supermarket.
Not a trip, I correct myself, an expedition.
See me skip sidewalks altogether and dodge in and out of ferns.
···
I lose track of the days.
Is it the weekend? Or is it microwavable spring rolls day? Every meal, we eat off paper plates on our lap. No more dishes, I decide. Too much work.
End of fall weather:
There is an advisory out for hailstorms. I am out when it starts and little flecks of white stab my eyes. The hail comes down hard and fast and pelts everything. Then what follows is a freakish rainstorm where standing outside for a millisecond feels like being hit with a high-powered hose.
There is an advisory out for high winds. Gusts of more than forty miles an hour are expected. We close all of our windows and climb into bed. But we can still hear the sound of branches breaking and falling and trash cans lifting off.
This stupid city, I say the next morning, when I am walking through the street, looking for our trash can.
···
Eric has something to tell me. He brings me to the couch to do it.
Are you listening? he says.
Listening.
Perhaps you should go see this shrink.
What shrink? I had tossed out the contact information immediately. I had not even entertained the thought of going.
Do you think something is wrong? I ask. Because nothing is wrong. I’m entirely happy.
My laugh that follows. It is very manic sounding.
···
With my father, I do not like asking questions. He is not tall, but at ten, I must crane my neck to see him. For every question I ask—Why does ice float on water? Why are negative numbers not prime?—he says, You have a brain and two hands. You can look up the answers yourself. Then a question he poses to me: Did anyone teach him advanced math or did he learn it himself? Yet, ironically, he teaches me. But the kind of teacher he is: once he says something the first time he will not say it again. You have a brain and two hands, look up the answers yourself. You want to know how to get through life? Pay attention.
A habit that forms from this is that I can ask Eric questions only when he is asleep.
Once I hear the first snore, I say, Why is your trajectory so straight? Why is your family so nice? It seems unfair how easy everything comes to you. In your last life you must have been a dung beetle. Or someone who gave up his life for someone else. Perhaps a pregnant woman crossing the street.
Do you remember?
Then I part his autumn hair and bring my voice down to a whisper. Please stop, just for a little while, and let me catch up. How do you expect me to marry you if you never let me catch up?
·
I am braver now. I can say these things when he is awake.
Go talk to her, he says. This time very firm, very serious.
I mean it, he says, this time very quiet.
···
In those initial sessions, I arrive at her office in big sunglasses and a long puffy coat. Halfway through the hour, she says, Feel free to take off those sunglasses any time, and I make up some excuse of why I can’t, my pupils were recently dilated. These are the only prescription glasses I have.
I sit as close to the door as possible.
I never take off that coat.
Also, it is the start of winter and I am perpetually cold.
Once home, I tell Eric tha
t I had seen her, was he happy?
To the woman in charge of my health insurance, I ask, And you’re sure that my parents will not find out about the shrink?
Not unless you decide to do something drastic, she says.
Like this? A dream I recently had where I was swimming in an Olympic-sized pool of dichloromethane, a solvent that burns when rubbed on skin. I swam and swam and drowned.
The woman says, Yes, like that.
I find it funny, just the thought of what my mother would say if she knew I was going to see a shrink. Talk to a stranger about your problems? Pay a stranger to listen?
···
The first time Eric says I love you, it is in lab, before a meeting. He thinks he will wait until after my meeting, but he has been anxious all day. He hasn’t slept. He catches me before I walk into the conference room and just says it. I freeze. I feel my skin burn to a crisp. Do I go to this meeting? I do but remember nothing.
What the shrink says from day one: The chasm you need to cross is not a physical one.
Then what is it? I ask.
I much prefer the physical one. Tell me to walk across the Grand Canyon on a tightrope, balancing an apple on my head, and I’ll do it.
A year into our dating, Eric says he wants to understand me and not just from a distance or through what he calls my ten-inch-thick bulletproof glass.
Behind this glass, he says, he has found more glass.
An involuntary tic I have is that I cannot hold hands for a long period of time. My thumb eventually digs into the center of his palm and makes him let go.
Hold my hand like a normal person, he yells.
I’m sorry, I yell back.
He is baffled we are still having this problem. We are out with the dog. We are out getting takeout. I meander back and forth. He then grabs my hand again and I focus with all my might to not move the thumb.
···
Here is a joke a classmate tells me in middle school: When an Asian baby is born her parents hold up two signs, DOCTOR or DOCTOR, and the baby must choose.
By now, I have heard many versions of this joke. Times change, so no longer DOCTOR or DOCTOR, but DOCTOR or SCIENTIST. DOCTOR or ENGINEER. DOCTOR or INVESTMENT BANKER.
It isn’t so much of a joke as a statement.
Where did you hear that? I ask her, and she says her parents, who are white. Then I watch her bend over with laughter. When she bends back, I want to kick her. She asks if my parents ever held up signs. I say no. She says they must have. I say no. Then she goes up to the teacher and calls me a liar.