by Vann Chow
“You don't think they go to school in Harvard, do they?” Marvey frowned. “I mean, they are smart and all, but Harvard? No...they are attending, when they don't skip class, a private college in Cambridge. Since there aren't that many Chinese students over there, they join our student association and events. Why, what did she tell you?”
I let out a sigh and wiped the sweat off my forehead. “She told me a lot of things.” I stood up an paced in a circle around Marvey and Jessie who were sitting on the edge of the flower bed outside of the apartment building. The sky was getting dark. The endless, rich dark blue reflected my feelings at the moment perfectly.
“I am so screwed.” Thinking of about the argument between my generally peaceful mom and dad because of my stupidity. I could see in my head my mom crying excruciatingly hitting herself on the chest, choking on tears, and my dad frowning, face full of disappointment and remorse. The ancestral land was bestowed on us from his father, which was in turned inherited from his father's father and so on for hundreds of years. It was absolutely not for sale. God knows how many set of bones was buried in our back yard, where their owners had found a final resting places within the confines of their own land, passed down from one generation to the next and was supposed to be so until the end of time. I alone, was responsible for the interruption of the tradition, of the dead souls' eternal peace, of the possession of the only tangible assets our family had. Without that piece of land, we would be all shelterless souls, dead and alive, when we could no longer afford the high rent of the city. My parents' retirement dreams were now gone. The marriage they foresaw for me was now down the drain. We had to work for the real estate companies in order to pay the exorbitant rent of the city with the fruits of our labor and nothing to claim our own at the end of the month except the body which we were born with and mouths of our family members to feed. This was a punishment worse than hell. Worse than hell.
I checked my wallet for Jessie and my flight tickets. Luckily it bore no association to Shirley so unless she was extremely vile, as long as she did not cancel the flights, the tickets would still be valid for the return trip back to Shanghai a week away.
“Could I stay with you? I don't have anywhere else to go...” I asked Marvey apologetically. A hundred and eighty dollars, that was all I had in my possession until the end of the month. Despite the fresh incoming flow of cash, I could not buy a set of new plane tickets home for both of Jessie and I because in the next couple of hours of its arrival there would be all sorts of automatic transfer out of my pitiful bank account to repay my debt, for water, for electricity, for health insurance for my parents, for the monthly payment of the various electrical appliances we filled our homes with.
“You have had such a rough time in here...let's get away. Come with me to my parents.”
That was exactly what I wanted to hear. With my last hundred and eighty dollars, Marvey helped me book two budget flight tickets to Minneapolis and I left the whirlwind of human betrayal and disappointment behind me, at least that was the hope.
Chapter 32: Small town America
As soon as we arrived at Minneapolis airport, we were picked up by Marvey's dad who were supposed to drive us all to Alexandria, Marvey's hometown with his Dodge truck.
Her dad was a big guy, almost as if he was built to last the hostile winter days of Alexandria. Like the generic father characters I had seen in countless American TV series and movies, he wore a dusty green baseball cap over his head, a loose-fitting worn out T-shirt that said something smart, a pair of khakis Bermuda shorts and a pair of open toes shoes. Together with his short pepper color stubble, everything about him lent him a friendly, familiar look.
Marvey had told him about my somewhat accidental heroic act on the flight to Boston. Recognizing immediately that I was the Chinese guy that was for a brief moments on National news the following days after the alleged terrorist attack, he rushed towards me, shook my hand and gave me a heartfelt hug as soon as we cleared custom and stepped into the arrival hall.
“Hi, sir, my name is Zhong, but my English name is Jong with a J. Nice to meet you.” Remembering the proper etiquette, the little that I actually learnt from Shirley while she was my English replacement teacher when I came to think of it.
“Oh, com'on. We're in America now, don't call me sir. I feel like I am back in the military again when you do that. Call me John. And let's get you an Americanized English name as well. We're gonna call you John, just like me. It's a great name. I could recommend it.” He laughed at his own joke.
I did not want to be called “John”, but the pronunciation was closed enough to my Chinese name so I conceded. Marvey whispered in my ear that I needed to pardon her father for all his nonsense. I told her not to worry about it. All fathers were essentially full of nonsense to their kids regardless of ethnicity, if you know what I meant.
When we arrived at their house in Alexandria, we were immediately fed with what I believed was the “All-American Breakfast” by Marvey's really sweet mother who also told me to call her by her first name, Heather. On the massive wooden dinning table, there were pancakes, sunny-side up eggs, bacon, sausages, hash browns, blue berry muffins, banana bread, a deep-fried schnitzel for each of us and lots of lots of fresh-squeezed juices and soft drinks to choose from. I felt like I was in heaven. No more organic, bio, soya, vegetarian, low-calories, low-sugar, low-sodium stuff for the health conscious Boston city people. Here in Alexandria, they served the real breakfast what could give you the strength to last the day. Of course, Heather told me, that there would still be food of equally impressive variety and portions for lunch so I did not have to stuff myself thinking that this would be the first and last good meal of the day. More was to come.
Marvey smiled at me as I mumbled “thank you very much for cooking,” to her mother with a mouthful of food. I had almost forgotten. People do not speak with food in their mouths in America, unlike where I came from. “It was delicious.” I said again when I was done chewing. Jessie nodded in unison. His conditions back home was even worse than me. I doubted whether he had ever even had breakfast in his life when he had a mother who would be out almost every evening till late and never getting up until the middle of the day.
Heather had made our beds before we arrived on the second floor of their lovely wooden house. Shirley's apartment on the Bund was huge, but this place? This place was massive compared to it. John Senior explained that they had two acres of land behind the house and whenever we like we could take a dip in the new pool he built himself to test it out. I could believe it when he said it was amazing treat for the summer times in Alexandria.
“Marvey, I don't understand.” I said to her when we were alone with Jessie in our room, unpacking our clothes from the suitcases.
“What do you not understand?”
“Your parents had a car, a majestic home and land to their own. They consume sumptuous meals every day and could enjoy all kinds of luxury in life within their own home and yet, you are working as a maid for Shirley and Simon in Boston. Cleaning, cooking and doing all their dirty works they didn't want to do while you are busy studying as well. I find it really strange!”
“Ha.” Marvey laughed. “Do you know how much Harvard cost a semester?”
“I don't doubt it is a lot, but your parents surely could afford it, no?”
“I guess you don't know how America works yet. Everything you see here belongs to the bank. The car, the house, the furniture, the appliances. They are all under financing. Even my degree. I am on student loan for 90K. The rest was luckily paid off by my scholarships, or I would have to, I don't know, start dancing in a strip club.” She giggled at the joke that was not funny at all.
“That's amazing, what your parents could borrow. Surely they have very nice jobs and salaries to get these exorbitant loans?”
“My dad is a veteran. He gets VA-guaranteed loans for a much higher amounts than he would have otherwise. Together with my mom, we could afford a lot. We do live qui
te well over here, if you ask me, as long as we can pay our monthly payments, which is why I need to do my part.” She smiled, as she pulled out wrinkly pieces of Jessie's clothing packed in haste when we left Shirley's place so her mother could iron them later.
“And your neighbors?” I looked out the window of the second floor bedroom. There were identically beautiful homes on both side of the streets. Their front lawns green and their garages parked with shiny, big new cars. A man came out of his house to mow the lawn. “Do they all live like this? Do you think they are all in debt?”
“I don't know for sure, of course, but if it was so easy to borrow, most people would do it. So yes, I think most of the houses and cars you see here are probably financed.” Marvey waved to the man, who waved back with a kind smile. “A few houses in the neighborhood foreclosed in the last couple of years.”
“It is a lot harder to get loans in China than in America.”
“Well, that's why we have the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the housing market crash a few years ago. The house prices in this area are still recovering. Most people would not get back their investments when they sell their houses now.”
“Negative equity,” I said. It was a popularized term on the media. “I know the term but I did not know anyone who suffers from it personally, because most of the people in my social circle could not get a mortgage in the first place. We had no equity to begin with.
“I know, Zhi told me.” Marvey said, but she trailed off.
“Property prices in Shanghai is second highest in China. For a fifty square meters apartment like the one I live in now with my parents, will cost me at least three hundred thousand US dollars.”
“This place is three hundred thousand dollars.” Marvey said.
“Geezes. Look at the space you get.” I estimated it was at least two hundred square meters, just counting the house.
“It's normal in this part of the country. And of course, my parents bought this place a while back.”
“What's the down payment rate?”
“I don't know. It's like five or six percent?”
“I would have to pay twenty five!” I slumped on one of the soft twin beds by the window and let out a laugh. I did not doubt that Marvey and her family work just as hard as my family and I did in China, but the quality of life for the price they pay seemed to be much higher than what we got. “Well, I wasn't going to pay anything because I had the land. Guess I should start saving for a house from now on, instead of keep paying the rent for my apartment in Shanghai.” A headache struck like lightning on my temples. My eyes blurred out for a second as if lens out of focus.
“Don't think about it for now.” Marvey said. “Not all hopes are lost. We will find ways to get it back. Yi qie dou hui bian hao de. Everything will be all right.” She put her hand on my back.
Jessie let out of a yelp. A white bull terrier had ran upstairs to our room and climbed on top of Jessie. The boy had never played with dogs before. He was scared.
“Could we take the dog out?” I suggested, a solution to keep the dog safe from Jessie.
“Why? You don't like Rocky?” John Senior appeared at the threshold of our room. He whistled Rocky towards him, who quickly obliged.
“In most residential places in the Shanghai, one is not allowed to keep pets.” I explained. “Most kids in Jessie's generation have never seen or played with a real dogs before. Or cats for that matter.”
“What kind of life is that? Never touched a dog before?!” John Senior asked rhetorically. “I'll make sure he learns to live with them when he is here,” he said, and led us, together with Rocky downstairs to the massive backyard. Jessie clutched my hand tightly in fear.
Chapter 33: Drive to walk
John Senior owns a Dodge Ram with two rows of seats. The automobile was exactly what one would expect from a truck. It's wheel was half a meter tall. For me, it was a monster of a truck, but he said that his own was just a moderately sized truck. Next time when the show 'Monster Truck' came to town, I was invited to join him to the show, he said, to see real mammoth of a truck were like. I made a mental note to look up what kind of event 'Monster Truck' was.
After installing all six of us, his wife Heather and the Bull Terrier Rocky included, into the front seat, and Marvey and I on the back seat with Jessie safely tucked in between us, John Senior drove us to the lake side.
There were lots and lots of lake in Alexandria. Lake Carlos, lake Ida, lake Darling...Marvey said she do not know the exact number of lakes in the area. The city Alexandria had a rather small local population, but tourists that came here to visit the lake resorts abound. It was voted, according to my quick search on Wikipedia, one of the top ten best small towns in America by the website Livability dot com.
We started the trail at the giant Viking statue that had extremely pale skin. It donned the telltale Viking double horned hat and held a shield that said “Alexandria, the birthplace of America.” Strangely, I had never heard of this theory. John Senior explained that they have found a old stone dating back to 1362, the oldest ever found. Runestones were left behind by the Norse during the Viking expansion. And that by discovering America's oldest runestones, Alexandria had the claim of the first place which was settled by Scandinavians.
“What about the natives American?” I asked naively. America was long inhibited by native Americans, so how could Alexandria, by discovering some artifacts that belonged to another civilization claimed to be the birthplace of America? John Senior did not seem to like my question, and he pressed on, holding the leash of Rocky in one hand and his wife's on the other. The couple walked easy and relaxed, just like tens of others that passed us by on bikes or by foot walking along the Central Lake Trail towards Garfield. It was a Saturday afternoon. It felt like a Sunday afternoon.
“What's the difference between Saturday and Sunday?” Marvey asked me.
“You haven't been in China long enough to realize I guess. Most companies in Shanghai has a six days work week.”
“You were able to come out with us most of the time on Saturdays!” She said, recalling our past together.
“Well, that's because I worked an extra hours between Monday to Friday and took days off for you girls during the summer. I work for a Startup, it has perks.”
“You're using your own holidays. Those days off were not perks. That's what you were entitled to.”
Entitlement was a foreign concept to me. I knew exactly what the word meant and I could imagine how good it must felt to feel like I was entitled to having my Saturdays off if I spend my own holiday quota. But when everyone else was toiling in the office while you were taking days off, that never sat well with me. I felt almost guilty every time when I said 'Have a great weekend' to my fellow colleagues.
We stopped at a cafe in the Arrowwood Resort by lake Darling. I took the opportunity to pay for everyone else and to my surprise, John Senior did not fight for the bill with me. He even made what seemed to be a joke about how it made sense for me to pay given that I had chosen a seat at the end of the long table, and by convention I was supposed to be paying. I was baffled by what he said, but I would gladly pay the bill nonetheless. Just when I was about to pay, Marvey wanted to slip me two twenties under the table for the bill because she remembered better than me that I had no money left to my name after the purchase of the two flight tickets. I froze on the spot from embarrassment since I did not want to take a women's money, especially not to use her hard-earned money to invite her and her family back. My face reddened for a moment as I was trying to figure my way out of the situation.
“Let me do it.” John Senior waved the waiter over to his side. “John, I was just teasing you. You're my guest, plus you barely consumed anything by our standards. It's my treat.” He handed his credit card to the waiter who swiped it on the spot. Everything together was only fifteen US dollars. Not that I had the money to pay for it, but fifteen was relatively cheap for such a luxurious tea time by the beautiful lake at a resort. I w
as starting to really like America, for all its bourgeois comfort. If I were as heavily in debt as John Senior and his family, I would not be drinking tea or coffee anywhere. I would be sipping tap water out of a bottle and serving others tea or coffee somewhere in a cafe on a Saturday afternoon.
This relax attitude towards life was revealing. As we walked back along the same trail towards the parking lot in the late afternoon, I became quiet. What was I so worried about all these years? What were all these people around me worried about all these years? There were lots of other people out there in the same or worse financial situation. They were not all contemplating how to marry rich, they were not all wasting days and nights trying to please their bosses while secretly wishing to strangle them before their bosses strangled them with work. They were not all busy plotting their grand scheme of early-retirement by tricking their friends, their neighbors, the government for their own's financial gain. They were taking their lives one day at a time, appreciating life, appreciating family time, appreciating nature in their spare times they had when they were not working for money.