Shanghai Nobody_A Novel

by Vann Chow

  I picked up a grovel the height of about a meter and with it I crawled my way forward. After a minute or so, I finally felt acquainted to walking under such tearing winds and could walk without it.

  As I said, we had 2 acres of land in the back of the house. It was lined with trees grew in natural distribution on both sides of the pool. On the right, the land sloped downwards and at the end of it where it reached a plateau, there was a small lake and beyond it, the small wooden shed stood.

  I scanned the land left and right, and the three of them, John, Jessie and Rocky were nowhere to be seen. How was that possible?

  My immediate reaction was to look inside the shed. It would make the most sense. As soon as I lifted my right leg to make a step forward, I was torn completely off ground for a second or so and I stumbled backwards on to the wet ground. My body completely smeared with layer of wet dirt. I deemed that was a suitable time to use some of the curse words I picked up from John Senior when he was watching the Wolves playing basketball the other day.

  Then I heard barks.

  “Rocky!” I yelled instinctively, even though I doubt Rocky would response to my call of his name. I laid low to follow the sound of his barks and it seemed to be coming not from the side of the shed, but the other side where there were thick growth of trees, some of them swaying, their leaves flapped erratically in the wind.

  Finally I caught glimpse of Rocky, barking feverishly at a broken off tree trunk.

  I launched myself towards the nearest tree and hugged it. Then I used it as my support to stand up. And I saw a dark object lying under the tree trunk. It was waving Rocky away.

  “Go! Go now Rocky! I will be right in!” It was John Senior's voice, and in his arms Jessie, who was crying senseless, but one could only see his facial expression of torment, and not the sound in the roaring wind. The man on the ground was dragging his injured leg with his elbows out under the trunk to no avail.

  “Raerrrrr!” He pulled again, and ended up screaming in pain.

  “John!” I screamed across the field.

  He spotted me and shouted immediately, “get over here! I'm stuck! You've got to pick up Jessie and bring him inside. Rocky as well! He wouldn't go!”

  A strong gust of wind blew through the clearing and I was shoved forward. I lost my grip on the tree and fell a second time, and this time I cared only a little. “I'm coming overrr!”

  The wind was getting stronger and it was not helping me getting to them. I picked up a fat broken twig and poked it in the direction of Jessie. “Jessie! Grab it! Grab the twig with your hand and don't let go!” I shouted.

  He wouldn't listen. Jessie kept shaking his heads and his tears were streaming down his face. There was a cut on his forehead and blood was streaming down from it.

  John Senior momentarily forgot about the pain in his leg and he sat up with all the power he has in him. With a swift motion, he wiped the blood off from the boy's forehead and stretched out his arms to hand him to me. I dropped the twig and lunged myself forward to catch him, watching out not to fall on the trunk on the ground between us.

  As soon as I grabbed Jessie, I did not care. I tucked Jessie in one arm and scooped the stubborn dog up, whose limbs were fraying in the air still, reluctant to leave his owner behind, and I ran for it. It was slightly easier than expected now that I was heavier, with the weights of the boy and the dog with me. I stumbled my way back to the house and delivered them immediately into the arms of Heather who got out out the shelter to watch us from behind the back door.

  “Get them down.” I said. Marvey had poked her head out from behind the staircase as well. She rushed forward to capture Rocky by the leash on his neck before he could run outside. Dragging and pulling, she managed to bring him down to the basement. Jessie wrapped himself around her legs all the way down.

  “Where is my husband?” Heather asked in alarm. “Is he coming after you?”

  “His leg,” I said in a haste and turned around to go back out. I fumbled with the door which was slammed tight by the opposing wind. “He is stuck behind there by a fallen trunk. I need to get him out,” I said to her, struggling with the unyielding door.

  “He's my husband, not yours. Let me do it!” She took my place in front of the door and peeled it open.

  “It's really windy outside...”

  “I am not a hundred and sixty pounds for nothing!” And out she went. As soon as she slipped out the door slammed against my face by the wind.

  I peered haplessly outside and stood there motionless for a second, wondering what to do.

  “Come here!” Marvey yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “Let's not lose everybody!”

  She was right. I bolted downstairs and shut the door of the shelter, knowing that if I stayed out, she would not bare locking it, and we would all be in trouble when the tornado hit us.

  Chapter 39: Make you feel my love

  “When the rain is blowing in your face, and the whole world is on your case, I could offer you a warm embrace, To make you feel my love.” Adele sang from the mp3 player lying on the ground. “I'd go hungry; I'd go black and blue, and I'd go crawling down the avenue. No, there's nothing that I wouldn't do, to make you feel my love.”

  Tears rolled down the face of Marvey as she huddled herself closed to me, her head on my shoulder and her chin resting softly on Jessie, who had fallen asleep bracing her. Next to us Rocky lied whimpering softly in front of John Senior, his wife tending to his wounds on the leg.

  I sat there, looking at the family, and thought to myself, “this is what I want.”

  Once in a while in your generally uninteresting life that you feel like life had led you to an unfamiliar territory so full of wonder, so mesmerizing and so completely different from what you were used to that you felt that you did not deserve it, and that if you were to close your eyes to rest just for a second, everything would disappear. This was one of those moments. From weariness, both for the storm outside and the flitting serenity around me with the family, I kept myself awake even when everyone eventually drifted off to sleep, absorbing through my five senses every little detail of my surroundings, entering them into my memory, so I could review this moment in pleasure when it passed.

  For a second time in this trip, Marvey had fallen asleep next to me, her moist breath I could feel on my damp skin in every inhalation. I dared not to move, for fear of waking her.

  We waited the storm out till the morning. I felt a sharp neck pain when I was waken by a stream of bright day light filtering in through the door of the shelter, which John Senior had opened. Hopping back on one leg to wake up his wife who had fallen asleep on the cushion pad lying on the ground, he caught my eyes and realized that I was also awake. He winked at me and said, “Good morning”.

  Gently, I straightened my back, and the movement woke Marvey. She opened her eyes partly and looked in my direction.

  “Did I fall asleep on your shoulder?” She asked softly, Jessie, asleep, still cradled in her arms.

  I nodded, smiling, and gave the aching muscle on the back of my neck a good hard squeeze.

  “Everything's clear upstairs.” John Senior poked his head down from the top of the staircase. Despite the injury on his leg, he still managed to hop around the house and took a good look at the damage that was done by the storm the night before. “We've been lucky, only one or two window panes were cracked. Looks like the tornado didn't do much damage.”

  “It went the other way.” Heather's voice was heard from the living room. She had gone up to turn on the radio first thing after she got up.

  The vegetation in the backyard were not so lucky. Any flowers that we could still discern were left petaless, the land which used to be covered in neat short grasses was now a mishmash of ugly brown spots with wilted blades. Weeds near the pond were tangled in impossibles knots as if they fought with each other during the storms. The trees suffered the most. Many trees toppled, one over the other in some areas, broken in the most agonizing fashion near t
heir bases. Sharp-edged wooden shrapnel raised from these tears in to the sky threatening to scrap anyone that come near.

  The next couple of days, I volunteered myself to help John Senior clear the mess around the house, pulling down trees that were half way down, salvaging what's left of the garden furniture and cleaning the debris-filled pool.

  Jessie was initially afraid to leave the house, but after a few days he could finally put the traumatic experience behind him. Along with Rocky, the loyal dog which Jessie realized was not so scary after all, he would come to bring us refreshment from inside the house that Heather gave him and played catch, or whatever games they could invent together in the yard afterwards.

  I had never done so much menial work in my life. I might have helped my parents put together a piece of furniture together or carry some stuff here and there, but all these unfamiliar landscaping, gardening work outdoor was back-breaking. They tired me out completely such that I could fall asleep almost as soon as I lied down on the bed without impelling self-effacing thoughts on myself that usually occupied the period of sleeplessness. My insomnia was cured.

  Chapter 40: Father and Son

  One night after dinner, John Senior invited me to come with him to the shed, which turned out to be a rather impressive private refuge.

  Surrounded by tools neatly lining the all four walls except for the doors, we sat on the two sides of a long work bench, a part of it temporarily cleared out for our beers, stashes of home brew taken from a fridge in the shed.

  “I made them with chocolate. Try one.” He said, popping the lids off of both of our beers.

  “Chocolate?” I asked. We clinked our beers together and each took a sip. “This is the first time I have ever heard that one can make beers out of chocolate.”

  “You can make beers out of everything, as long as the yeast eats it.” He sat contently and burped.

  “It tastes good. Really good.” This was a totally new sensation to me.

  “You're leaving on Saturday, isn't it?”

  “Yes, sir. Back to China. To Shanghai where my parents live.”

  “Would you like to come back? Would you like to meet us and be our guest again? Because you're always welcome.”

  “This week has been an amazing experience.”

  “I don't doubt that.” We chuckled. “You've probably never seen a tornado quite like this before.”

  “No.” I said. “And I would love to come back again to visit your family if I am still welcome.”

  “So you're gonna just say goodbye to Marvey, go back to your life in Shanghai and get on with your life?”

  “That has to be, back to the grind in Shanghai. Sort out the mess with my parent's land. I assumed Marvey told you about the land...” I swallowed hard at the mention of this weak spot. “I am very fortunate to be able to come to America and not only to see it but to experience living in an American home. It's very different from where I came from. People here are a lot friendlier and kinder. Our popular media has a different portrayal of Americans.” I skipped the part where they portrayed the stereotypical American as someone who was lazy, obese, lack self-control, mannerless and stupid enough to elected George Bush as their national disgrace.

  “I'm sure America is happy to hear,” he said, “what do you think of Marvey?”

  I was not prepared by this question, and I almost choked on the beer. Whizzing, I answered, “Your daughter is a wonderful person. She is kind, and sweet, and very beautiful...” I trailed off.

  “I have always wanted to meet her Chinese boyfriend from school...”

  “I'm not her Chinese boyfriend,” I interrupted, “from school.”

  “I know.” He gave me a look for interrupting him with unnecessary information. “You're not the same guy in the photographs she framed two years ago and not the same guy whose photo frames she broken into pieces either. What I wanted to say is...look, I don't want her to get hurt. Not again.”

  My eyes were glued to his. He had obviously thought about this. This was not an impromptu conversation.

  “You're from China and Marvey is from small town America. The two of you have huge cultural differences and different family backgrounds. She's now studying in Harvard and you are working in Shanghai. When she graduates, she will have a different life from the one you see her in now and you would have met a lot of other people.”

  I nodded, my head remained in a lowered position as he continued, already could guess the underlying message of what he was trying to tell me.

  “My daughter, the joy of my life, she surprised us by getting herself scholarship into one of the best schools in the country. No one from our family ever has gone that far for college. She is a very ambitious person. She likes to travel and she likes to improve her knowledge. At Harvard, she associates with people of grand pedigrees, high academic achievements and lustrous futures.”

  “And when she graduates, she will be busy with the new life she establishes fir herself and be working hard towards her life goals.”

  “I understand, sir.” I said.

  “This is the life she has chosen for herself, without Heather and my interference.”

  “I understand what you are trying to say, sir. I am not good enough for her. I won't try anything if that is your worry.”

  “No, I did not say that.” John Senior put down his beer and looked at me in the eyes seriously. “That is not what I am trying to say.”

  “I have heard similar introductions before.” I explained. “I am used to it. I never fared very well with the fathers of girls I like...”

  “You are mistaken. I only want you to know that every action in life has its consequences. And before you take an action, you consider all possibilities and your ability to deal with the possibilities.”

  I nodded obligingly.

  “Don't nod so fast,” he pled. “Think about it for yourself.”

  Perhaps out of habit, I nodded again. I made a mental note to stop nodding when people told me something.

  “Will I feel happy when I leave all of this behind as if it is just a dream? Will I be happy when the I don't get to see her anymore? Will she be happy without ever seeing me again? Those are the questions that you should ask yourself.”

  “Sir, I think about them all the time...” I confessed honestly, “already before I came to America.”

  “And what are your conclusions?”

  “Marvey has a wonderful life ahead of her. I know full well that I am not good enough for her, but if I have the opportunity I will give her all I have and I will love her and cherish her. I will never let anyone hurt her again and I will work on my life, so that hopefully, one day, I will grow into the man that is worthy of her.”

  “And now there is an opportunity.”

  My jaw dropped. Was he actually advising for it? “I don't understand...”

  “I have observed the two of you. You are avoiding each other since the storm hit.”

  “No, I...we have a lot of work to do in the yard.”

  “I appreciate all your help, but I don't suppose you are filing in an application to be our gardening boy any time soon. You're here for Marvey, so act like it. Let her know that you're here for her, you're trying to please her dad because you love her.”

  “She probably doesn't think much of me...” I asked, dumbfounded. “There are people out there that can give her a lot more than I do.”

  “And yet she is not with them now. She is with you, in our house. She asked you to spend time with us. When you truly truly love someone, then you can overcome any hurdle. I am just an old man who knows nothing much about the modern world anymore, but I could tell Marvey would be devastated if she could not see you again.”

  “I'm a nobody. She will forget about me.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then consider this. You have self-esteemed issue that is plain to see. I don't know why you feel like that, son. But you shouldn't feel like this about yourself.
You make others worry more about you than you think when you shy away from opportunities lives have given you because you think you're not good enough to seize them and claim them as your own.”

  “Did Marvey ask you to talk to me about this?”

  “What I want is my daughter to be happy. We cannot help her much further in life. She needs someone else, to give her support, to let her spread her wings without a worry in the world because she is loved and protected. Could you do that for her?”

  “I will try my utmost.”

  “That's the spirit.” He said. “So cut all the nonsense about what you deserve and don't deserve. Go for the thing you love like you own it. Be a man.”

  I stared wild eyed at him.

  He continued, “Heather and I were together since high school. Sometimes I think that if she didn't meet me, she would probably be like her friends who left town, and has a career of her own, instead of the wife of a grumpy veteran, taking care of the house, cleaning and cooking for us. It was a waste of her talents. And yet when I have these moments of insecurity, she would tell me that love is not about sacrificing yourself to make the other person happy. Love is gaining so much more from being with each other that it does not feel like a sacrifice. I don't ask a lot from my future-son-law. All I want is that he could make my daughter feels so loved she would not regret choosing to be with him.”

  I looked down into the barrel of the glass bottle, lost in thoughts.

  He smiled and took a gulp from his beer and burped again. It was a loud and satisfying one.

  Chapter 41: Life