The Bathing Women

by Tie Ning

  Fan’s crying made everyone sad. When she stopped, Yixun asked, “How are things going?” Fan then started to talk about her life in America, about things they had learned from her phone calls and letters. They all knew that “David and I love each other deeply,” but had no idea that Fan had worked in a restaurant. Smiling, she told them that she had decided to get her master’s degree several years ago, but that David didn’t like the idea. Out of pique, she refused his money and worked in an insurance company while she studied. A French classmate, Virginia, encouraged her to work in a restaurant to earn her tuition. Fan said she had never expected to wait on tables, or maybe wash dishes, in America, things only someone with neither English skills nor a green card would do. She had American citizenship and a home, so why would she work in a restaurant? Virginia told her that the cash came fast. When you counted out handfuls of tips from your apron pocket after work, you’d feel differently. A person became addicted. Virginia already was. She arranged for Fan to come to the restaurant in the wealthy neighbourhood where she worked, and the boss asked Fan what she was good at, whether she had any special talents. Fan said, “Hmm, I do have a special talent—I can speed up a song.”

  The boss asked, “What do you mean, ‘speed up’?” Tiao said she could change the speed of a 33 rpm record into a 78. She then opened her mouth and sang a song. The boss laughed. How could he let a clever girl like Fan wash dishes? Her quick wit and fluent English impressed him, so Fan became the hostess for the restaurant. Fan said she did become addicted and almost quit her job at the insurance company. How could you not get addicted when you watched those actual dollars become your own? There were unpleasant moments, of course. The restaurant was located in a wealthy neighbourhood and the clientele were all dressed to the nines. One day David’s parents, her in-laws, came to the restaurant. Desperate not to have them find out she was doing restaurant work, she panicked and hid in the back. Taking advantage of her absence, a fancy couple left without paying their bill. Fan discovered this and ran after them, determined to collect no matter what. If she couldn’t get the money back, the boss would dock her pay. She said it was apparently no oversight, judging by how fast they were walking. She hurried in pursuit and, reluctant to shout on the street, ran tenaciously until she caught up, finally, two blocks later. On the inside, she had been shouting to encourage herself, saying, Stinky dog shit. Stinky American dog shit! Coming up to them, she tried her best to keep calm. “Sir, you forgot to pay the bill.” That tall blond man and woman put on a surprised look, both almost at the same time, which Fan only saw as revolting evidence of nervousness and hypocrisy. The phony looks of surprise were meant to persuade Fan that she’d made a mistake, but Fan repeated, calmly and politely, “I’m sorry, sir, you forgot to pay. This is your bill.” Compared to them, Fan seemed small, but her stern face and formal English forced them to take her seriously. When the man tried to protest, Fan added, “If you don’t pay the bill, I can call the police.” Without further argument, they paid up, and even gave Fan a tip.

  “What happened with the job later on?” Tiao asked, tears starting to well up in her eyes. Fan told her that later David discovered that she was working in a restaurant and went to find her. He took her home and told her that she shouldn’t be doing that sort of work. He agreed to her continuing to study for her master’s degree and said he would pay for her, for his “little sweet pea.”

  Though Fan was a little tired, neither of the sisters felt sleepy, and they didn’t go to bed until the next morning. Tiao had a bad dream then. She dreamed that she was passing above a dirt embankment and heard a tiny voice from below calling her: “Older sister, save me! Older sister, save me …” Tiao squatted down and saw Fan trying to climb up from the bottom of the embankment. She looked the way she had in elementary school, hair cropped, wearing a pink corduroy jacket with small black polka dots, her chubby face smeared with dirt. Tiao hurried to pull Fan to her bosom. There was no river down the slope, yet Fan was thoroughly soaked. With wide-open eyes and mouth, she kept panting, her mouth reeking of fish, and slowly disgorged seaweed. Tiao was very sad; the seaweed in Fan’s mouth meant that she had been living underwater for a long time. Tiao didn’t want to see the seaweed in Fan’s mouth, so she reached her hand in to scoop it out while holding Fan tightly with her other hand. Or this might be described as pulling weeds, the weeds growing in Fan’s mouth. The strands seemed endlessly long, and she had to reach her finger down into Fan’s mouth to scoop and probe … until Fan was probed to the point of vomiting, and Tiao woke up.

  She woke up to find herself still sobbing, and Fan on the bed across from hers was sleeping soundly. Fan slept for a whole day, turning to one side and another, flat under the quilt like a frog, as if she were making up for all the sleep she had missed in America, the way Wu had slept after she came back from the Reed River Farm. It also seemed that the five years of sleep in America were not real sleep. Only sleeping in China is a real sleep, and a Chinese person has to have Chinese sleep—the carefree, relaxed sleep where your family waits beside your bed when you wake from a nightmare.

  When Fan finally yawned and stretched, she saw Tiao gazing at her with red, swollen eyes. She blinked and said, “What’s wrong?” Tiao told her the dream she’d had. A little superstitiously, she believed the power of a bad dream would be dispelled once she told it. Fan seemed unmoved. She rested her head on her hands and stared at the ceiling, saying, “Actually, none of you need to worry about me. I’m not as miserable as you have me in your dream. I’m fine.”

  Tiao explained, “I’m not trying to say you’re miserable. It’s just concern, and I can’t help the concern in the dream. After all, you’re out there by yourself.”

  “How am I by myself? Isn’t my husband, David, family? Speaking of being by yourself, you’re the one. You’re by yourself but you’re always ready to pity me.”

  Tiao started to feel once again that she didn’t know Fan. Her moodiness suggested that her life in America was probably not as good as she portrayed it, but Tiao could say nothing.

  3

  There were some happy moments during Fan’s visit. One day, Tiao’s high school classmate Youyou, the friend of her teenage years, treated Fan to dinner.

  Youyou had eventually fulfilled her dream of becoming a chef. She opened a small restaurant in downtown Fuan called Youyou’s Small Stir-Fry across from Big Dishes from South and North, the Freshest Seafood. Youyou’s stomach turned every time she saw the other restaurant’s sign, thinking that the words amounted to crude bragging. So, you claim to be big? I want simply to be small, small stir-fry, small but not insignificant, with the sort of intimate, trustworthy family atmosphere that never goes out of style. The name was not her idea. On Yabao Road in Beijing’s Ambassador District, there was a restaurant called Auntie Feng’s Small Stir-Fry, which had overflow business. Tiao had been to that restaurant and had told Youyou about it. Youyou said, “I can open a restaurant called Auntie Meng’s Small Stir-Fry.”

  Tiao said, “Stir-Fry sounds fine, but the Auntie Meng part isn’t a good idea. For some reason, whenever I see the word ‘auntie,’ I think about that spooky aunt in that old movie Secret Mission to the City of the Ram. Why don’t you call it Youyou’s Small Stir-Fry? Yeah, you should call it Youyou’s Small Stir-Fry.” With specialties like Shanghai eel, honey-plum spare ribs, beer corn chicken, tilapia with preserved vegetables, and crispy turnip pancake, Youyou’s Small Stir-Fry did excellent business. The cuisine, which no one could classify precisely and Youyou didn’t care to, included a little bit of everything, from Cantonese to Shandongnese. Youyou was very open-minded and would cook whatever was delicious. For instance, tilapia with preserved vegetables was merely a local Fuan dish, but it was delicious and Youyou prepared it with great care.

  Tiao asked Fan, “You still remember Youyou, right?”

  “Of course I remember her, and also that great beauty, Fei,” Fan said. She remembered how she had offered to contribute her milk and followed Ti
ao to Youyou’s home when she was little, waiting eagerly for them to make the mysterious grilled miniature snowballs.

  They were eating and drinking at the cosy, elegant private room at Youyou’s Small Stir-Fry. Fei soon joined them, bringing Fan a red-lacquered antique bracelet as a gift. Not until that moment did it occur to Fan that she never thought about bringing gifts for her sister’s friends. Americans aren’t as much concerned with etiquette as Chinese are, and don’t give gifts as often. But was Fan really an American? Deep down, she had never thought of herself as one, but unfortunately she was no longer Chinese, either. Chinese affection and friendship, feigned or sincere, all felt foreign to her.

  While she was thankful to Fei, she was also upset by the idea she didn’t belong anywhere. She offered Fei a cigarette, More 100 Slims. They looked each other over as they smoked. Fei had on a black leather coat and a matching miniskirt, soft and smooth as silk. The leather would be considered of the highest quality in America. Her dress and her wavy, waist-length hair made Fan think about some of Fei’s life experiences, which she had heard about from Tiao. She didn’t feel comfortable asking about Fei’s current job; someone like Fei would probably always be involved in something suspect. Again, she had to admit that life in China now was much better than when she lived here. From what her sister and her friends wore, it seemed like the clothes made in China compared well with those made in America. She listened to their conversation and gathered that Tiao and Fei regularly brought customers to Youyou’s Small Stir-Fry, particularly guests of the Publishing House. Tiao told them about a Canadian couple, special guests invited by the Publishing House to write and edit a series of Fun with English books for children. Youyou’s crispy turnip puffs were their favourites. When they were about to leave Fuan, they came to Youyou’s Small Stir-Fry three days in a row, ordering nothing but a pot of chrysanthemum tea and a dozen delicious and inexpensive turnip puffs. Youyou said, “Tiao, guess what I do to the customers Fei brings here?”

  “What customers can Fei bring in?” Tiao asked. “The people she knows are all super-rich, and why would they come to your place?”

  Fei chuckled and said, “I’ve brought quite a few sets of customers here. I would call Youyou before I came and have her show them the second menu, the one with the prices changed, where thirty becomes three hundred. Those new-rich types never ask, What’s good here? Instead it’s, What’s the most expensive dish here? They like to order expensive dishes, so even carp with preserved vegetables gets to be a hundred and eighty.”

  Tiao laughed and said, “They deserve it. If I were you, I would have added another zero and made it eighteen hundred.” Their conversation left Fan cold; the minor Chinese trickery annoyed and offended her, not because she was above it, but because she couldn’t be a part of it. She envied the ordinary chatter her sister could have with her two girlfriends, which no longer seemed possible for her.

  When the dinner ended, Tiao called Chen Zai and then told Fan that Chen Zai would drive here to pick them up. He was going to take them to see the villa on Mei Mountain that he designed.

  Chen Zai had returned from England to become a noted architect in Fuan. He had successfully designed Fuan City Museum, the Publishing Hall, and the Mei Mountain Villa, commissioned by a Singapore businessman. This year he was building his own studio. He was married, but even marriage didn’t prevent him from thinking of Tiao. He couldn’t do enough for her; anything she wanted. They saw each other often, and their meetings were innocent and furtive at the same time. They talked about everything. He wasn’t family, but why would he be the first person Tiao thought of when she was in trouble? This man and woman, maybe they didn’t want to think about the possibilities. He only knew she lived in the city where he lived, and she knew he lived in the city where she lived; they lived in the same place, and that seemed enough.

  Chen Zai drove them to Mei Mountain Villa, which was truly a beautiful place in the suburbs of Fuan, very close to the city. The sudden change of coming upon a quiet, spotless village from a noisy city was captivating. After passing a scattering of houses on the hillside, they came to Villa Number One. Everything inside was new, as yet unused. As the designer, Chen Zai had the privilege of enjoying everything in the villa. Fan admired the design of Villa Number One very much—Spanish style, simple, rough-hewn, and practical. They took a sauna, and then had a candlelit dinner. The sweltering sauna made their faces shine. Fan suddenly asked for a drink, so they drank Five Grain Liquor. Tiao drank very fast, and Chen Zai asked her to slow down, with sincere concern. He said the words simply enough, but Fan could discern the tenderness that came out of their long regard for each another. In fact, Chen Zai had been talking to Fan most of the time. When they spoke in English, he complimented her excellent pronunciation. Tiao looked at them with a smile; she liked to see Chen Zai treat Fan so well and for Fan to be so pleased about it. Even so, Fan still had a deep sense of loss. The hospitality and care that they showered on her didn’t cheer her up; on the contrary, it served to emphasize Tiao and Chen Zai’s deep attachment to each other. Under the guise of playing a prank, Fan urged Tiao to empty each of her glasses, with the hope that Tiao would make a fool out of herself by getting drunk, and Tiao really did start to drink recklessly.

  Chen Zai had to take her glass from her, saying to Fan, “I’ll empty this glass for your sister. She … she can’t do it.” Fan’s eyes misted over. Everything she didn’t have was here, and the greatest luxury was the mysterious unspoken understanding between this Asian man and woman. She envied this and felt a longing to be with an Asian man. She remembered a college classmate of hers when she was studying in Beijing. They had a crush on each other. A native of the Shandong countryside, he once told Fan about his childhood; his family was poor and he was adopted by his uncle after his parents died. He always remembered how, at his father’s funeral, a family elder patted his head and sighed: “Poor child, you won’t have a good life from now on.” He kept the words in his heart and used them as motivation to study hard and to fight for a good life. Other children often bullied him, and he would be sure to get back at them. His mode of vengeance was unique; he would take a small knife and bring along some Sichuan hot peppercorns to the courtyard of his enemy’s house. If there was no one around, he would use the knife to cut into a poplar tree and bury the hot peppercorns. The next day the poplar tree would begin to die. Those who had bullied him all paid by having their poplar trees killed in this way. Too young to take revenge on people, he got back at their trees instead. Fan thought him unusual but wasn’t altogether sure if embedded Sichuan peppercorns would really kill trees. She asked him where he got the idea, and he said it was from a beggar passing through from the neighbouring town. Fan stared at the poplar trees on campus, sorely tempted to bury some Sichuan peppercorns in one. In the end, she didn’t, hoping to let the story stay a story. The truth of a story is more fascinating than reality, and lends charm to the teller. Fan simply believed that a man should be like her classmate, who had great ideas, ideas out of the ordinary. Only after she met David did the poplar killer fade from her memory. Now she thought about him again. On this quiet night, a night drinking Five Grain Liquor and with Chen Zai and Tiao’s hearts resonating with each other, the man she was thinking about was not David, but her college classmate, maybe because he was Chinese. Fan had never dated a Chinese man.

  The three of them spent the night in Villa Number One, with Tiao and Fan sharing a bedroom. Both a little bit drunk, they lay, each in her own bed, carrying on an intermittent conversation. Fan said, “Are you attracted to Chen Zai?”

  Tiao said, “Chen Zai is married.”

  Fan said, “His being married and your being attracted or not are two completely different matters. Why don’t you answer my question directly?”

  “I’m not attracted to him. I’m not attracted to any man right now.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Fan asked, “What if I were attracted to
Chen Zai?” Tiao said nothing. Fan continued, “Look how scared you are, so scared that you can’t say a word.”

  “That’s enough. Stop being foolish.”

  Fan sighed. “You’re right not to let yourself be attracted to him. Don’t expect a married man to have any true feelings for you.” Her feelings of superiority surfaced as she said this, and she was about to use herself and David as an example. David had been unattached when they got together. But Tiao didn’t reply. She fell asleep, or pretended to.

  They ate, drank, and slept late, and didn’t go back to Fuan until the next afternoon. As soon as they arrived, Wu announced cheerfully that the whole family was going to eat Japanese food that night. Wasn’t Japanese food very expensive in America? She had already called the restaurant and made the reservation. Fan knitted her eyebrows slightly and said, “Does Fuan have a Japanese restaurant?”

  Wu said, “Yes, it just opened.” Yixun said its raw ingredients, steak, and fish were all shipped from Kobe to Tianjing first, and then came from Tianjing to Fuan by air. Still feeling troubled, Fan said she had to wait for a while to decide about going out because she thought her stomach hurt a little, after which she went back to her own room and lay in bed. She seemed unhappy, and the fact that Fuan had a Japanese restaurant seemed to make her unhappy.

  Wu and Yixun both felt a little disappointed, but still went to her and asked her patiently, “Why would you have an upset stomach? Did you eat anything spoiled at Mei Mountain Villa?”

  Fan said, “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Tiao immediately said, “It can’t be. Why is my stomach fine?”

  Fan said, “I’m different from you. Don’t you know that I’m not used to the environment here? I had diarrhoea the second day after I came back. “

  “If you’d been having stomach problems, then you shouldn’t blame the food in the villa.”