I relayed what Dr. Levy said about getting pregnant soon if we planned to have a baby. Cai wept again, promising me he’d get tested the following day. I hadn’t thought about trying to have a baby in the near future, but now with Dr. Levy’s warning, this was something else I’d have to consider.
After we hung up, I kept hearing the way Cai cried, “No,” followed by sobs. Despite our thirty-minute conversation, I felt more confused than ever and started to question his role in my infection. Maybe I really did contract it from a toilet seat. But what about the peep shows in New York and his flirtatious telephone chat with that prostitute in Wuhan? On the other hand, I was grateful he didn’t blame me and accuse me of cheating. This situation had the potential to get ugly and it hadn’t. It could have been so much worse.
When I phoned Cai a few days later with my negative HIV test result, he shrieked into the phone. “That’s wonderful. I’m so happy.” He sounded like I’d just received a hefty promotion. “I was tested for many xìngbìng, and they all turned out negative, too.”
Remembering the Pap-like swab test, I wondered how the doctor tested Cai. “Was the test very uncomfortable?”
“Not at all! I just peed in a cup.”
Maybe Chinese doctors used different testing methods. Or maybe we weren’t tested for the same diseases if he peed into a cup and I didn’t. Again, I knew I should have been more forthcoming with my questions, but I could only think about holding my marriage—and my peace of mind—together. This was our first crisis, and he’d said everything I wanted to hear. It didn’t seem fair to either of us to give up now when I didn’t have conclusive proof. Had Cai been in my shoes, I would have been devastated if he left me when I hadn’t done anything wrong. So when Cai said he couldn’t wait to see me in two weeks, I replied in all honesty that I felt the same.
• • •
The moment I spotted Cai at the Wuhan airport, I ran into his arms. He hugged me as if we hadn’t seen each other in years. Nothing on Cai’s face showed any sign of guilt or wrongdoing. This joyful, loving man was the Cai I’d fallen for two years earlier. Instead of driving straight to Hidden River, he took me to a midrange hotel for the night. Cai held my hand as he opened our room door, as if we were newlyweds. “I wanted us to have some alone time after everything you’ve been through.”
I felt grateful for a night alone with Cai and, as crazy as it sounded, also felt closer to him than ever. But before I could enjoy my time with him, I needed to hand over his medication. “You have to take one of these every day until the bottle is empty. You’ll probably feel like you need to throw up.”
Silent, as if I’d given him change for bus fare, he packed the bottle away in his overnight bag. I then pulled out a box of condoms. “We have to use these until you finish the medicine and I test negative.”
Cai held me tightly. I figured he’d go back to being the old Cai and would treat me as kindly as he had in my dorm room during our tutoring days.
And it seemed very possible that he would. Unlike my last two trips to Hidden River, this week passed without incident. Cai was just as thoughtful as he had been back when we first met, and refrained from going to those marathon card games at his friends’ homes. Without knowing anything about my ordeal, Mama had even lightened up about my eating habits.
On my last full day in China, Cai and I stayed at his Wuhan apartment so we wouldn’t need to wake up too early for my morning departure the following day. As we strolled down Liberation Road near the Conservatory, Cai stepped into a small bookstore. Ever since the missed opportunity in Shanghai, I cherished any chance to browse through books in China, even if they weren’t in English.
“Come here,” he beckoned after several minutes. In his hands, he held a Chinese-English Merck Manual. Cai opened it to a page and thumbed down until he found what he was looking for. He pointed to the English and Chinese entry for chlamydia. “Is this what you had?”
“No.” I gently took the book from him and flipped through the bulk of the STD section until I got to trichomoniasis. I placed my finger on the passage for trich. “This is it.”
Cai slowly brought the book closer, my finger still in place, and read the Chinese. Then he started laughing. “This isn’t a sex disease. It’s called ‘women’s disease’ in China.” He chuckled. “All women get it.”
I had never heard anyone in the United States speak of a women’s disease apart from urinary tract infections. But even those weren’t limited to just women. Perhaps I really had caught it from towels or a toilet seat. If Cai seemed so adamant, I figured he knew something I didn’t. I was tested several times over the next two decades and the results were always negative.
If your husband is sweet, be you sweet;
If sorrowful, be you sorrowful.
—Ban Zhao
Instruction for Chinese Women and Girls
Chapter 22
A Chinese Conception
Once Cai had returned to Hong Kong—his student visa and passport updated and good for another year—conceiving became my main focus. Remembering Dr. Levy’s words after I contracted the STD, I didn’t want to lose my opportunity to become pregnant before my uterus became scarred and infertile.
During a lunch break at work, my colleague Zara and I strolled over to a market at a neighboring public housing estate. Sheltered by bamboo poles hung with drying laundry was an outdoor hardware stall that sold red posters decorated with four Chinese characters that people hung around their door frames to bring in good fortune.
“Do you have one for becoming pregnant?” I asked the female shopkeeper in rudimentary Cantonese.
“Yes, over here.” She reached up and pulled down a foot-long narrow poster. The vertical characters read 早生贵子. Give birth to a precious son soon. “Oh m’okay ah?”
“Okay. M’goi sai.” I thanked her and paid the $1.50 while she rolled the banner and secured it with a rubber band. Although I thought the preference for sons silly and outdated, I figured the banner could apply to girls since the 子 character was also found in the word for child.
That evening while Cai cooked dinner, I taped the poster on the left of the inside front door, hoping it would make a difference. We’d only been trying for three months, but even with our upcoming week of spring vacation in San Francisco, I was still determined to get pregnant.
After we ate and I washed the dishes, Cai lounged on the sofa and read a trashy Hong Kong newspaper, one full of blood-splashed color photos of people in car accidents or domestic fights that involved knives and axes. Photos of women in string bikinis covered the back page.
“This article says you can take medicine to have a baby. Some people even get twins.” Cai spoke as if he’d just read about the latest digital camera to hit the market and was contemplating buying it. “You should ask your doctor for some.”
Normally I would have rejected advice in a tabloid, but by now I was truly anxious that something was wrong with me. Why hadn’t our earlier attempts succeeded? Had the STD scarred my uterus so that I wouldn’t be able to have children, just as Dr. Levy had warned?
“I don’t have a problem,” Cai reminded me. After all, he had Ting-Ting from his first marriage. When we had first started trying to get pregnant, Cai had told me that it took Wei Ling and him a few years before they conceived Ting-Ting. There was something abnormal about Wei Ling’s uterus, he explained. It never occurred to me that Cai might be the one with the problem. Since we weren’t having success, something must be wrong with me.
The following Saturday, I was back in Dr. Levy’s office to ask her about fertility medication. Cai stayed home, enjoying a leisurely morning on his one day off.
“Cai told me he didn’t cheat,” I said to Dr. Levy as soon as she entered the examining room and closed the door. “I must have gotten it from something else.” While I waited for her to reply, I realized it’d been six months since I was diagnosed
with the infection. Maybe Dr. Levy had forgotten. But then she looked at me with a pained expression. She remembered.
“Anyway,” I continued, trying to shake off her discouraged look, “we’ve been trying to conceive for several months but nothing’s happened. Cai thinks I should take fertility pills.”
Glancing at the first page of my chart, Dr. Levy folded her hands together on her desk. “Susan, you’re only twenty-six. You’re still very young.”
I stared at the floor.
“How old is your husband?”
“Thirty-five.”
“It could be him.”
“But he has a child from his first marriage.”
“Things can change over the years. You should try for a full year, and if you still haven’t conceived, come back and we’ll run some tests. It’s too early to worry now.” She peered into my eyes as if to say, “All right?”
“Sure.”
“You should start taking prenatal vitamins and folic acid, which you can buy over the counter. I’ll give you a basal temperature thermometer so you can chart your ovulation. Also, there’s no medical evidence behind this, but several of my patients have taken a couple teaspoons of Heinz apple cider vinegar in a cup of warm water every day and have become pregnant.”
“Vinegar?”
“Yes. Make sure it’s in a glass jar. A plastic one won’t do. And it needs to be red cider, not white. Don’t worry, Susan. You’re too young to worry.”
I returned home to find Cai reading another Hong Kong newspaper on the couch. He didn’t look up. “Did you get the medicine?”
“No. She said we should try for a year. I have a special thermometer to find out when it’s a good time. She also suggested drinking apple cider vinegar.”
Cai just nodded and continued reading the paper. Since I felt like it would be rash to talk with friends and coworkers about trying to get pregnant, I figured he similarly didn’t want to get his hopes up before we had a positive pregnancy test. At twenty-six, I was ready to have a baby.
I was convinced Cai would become more patient and less moody if we had a little boy or girl in our lives. He must still feel incredibly heartbroken over his separation from Ting-Ting. Another child couldn’t replace her, but I figured he’d feel more settled—and behave more nicely—with a baby who would act as a steadying presence in our lives.
Chapter 23
Spring in San Francisco
The cover ad on the free real-estate magazine showed rows of new single-family houses, San Francisco style, built so close to one another that they appeared to be townhouses. Painted in light earth tones, the green-, brown-, peach-, and beige-colored homes came in two- and three-story models. The Lius, Chens, Zhous, and Zhangs have already moved in, the caption read. You could be next.
Cai picked up the magazine at a rice and noodle shop on Grant Avenue. It was our first full day of a weeklong vacation in San Francisco. He had received a green card after we married and needed to touch down in the United States once a year to keep it. The previous summer we had spent a quick week together in Chicago visiting my family.
“These are so nice.” He pointed to the cover sketch. “We should look at them in case we want to move here.”
“Really?” Was he serious?
“It’s much better than in New York or Chicago. We’ll just see these houses. No pressure.”
Although this was the first time we’d discussed moving to San Francisco, I decided not to discourage Cai as I had when he’d talked about buying a gas station in New York. Given the choice between moving to China and San Francisco, I knew there was only one answer for me. I’d visited San Francisco twice with my parents in my teens and early twenties and was familiar with the touristy areas.
This new development of 235 homes was in a neighborhood called Bayview. I’d never heard of it, but the name sounded nice enough. And the price, at $255,000 for a three-bedroom house, seemed like a bargain even in 1997. With our small savings and the $30,000 Cai had earned through a high-interest savings account with the Bank of China, we could make a sizable down payment. But $255,000 was the most we could afford. Cai wanted to keep Yoshimoto’s money in reserves to pay bills if we couldn’t secure jobs in San Francisco right away.
After a twenty-minute bus ride, Cai and I found ourselves surrounded by modest San Francisco bungalows, their aluminum siding tattered after years of wear, and large one-story factories producing pastries and house paints. At the end of the street we arrived at an open landmass, a third of it covered with cranes and bulldozers. Cai and I walked toward the completed homes and found the model house. We entered the garage, empty but for an older Filipino man seated at a desk in back.
“Good morning.” The man stood up to greet us. “I’m Bob. Let me know if I can help you.” He sat back down and let us look over the plan of the development.
“Can we see the model?” I asked.
“Sure.” He pointed to a door. “You can take the stairs over there.”
Cai and I climbed up to the living room on the first floor. The house was long and narrow, about 1,600 square feet, and almost four times the size of our Sunshine City apartment. We entered the eat-in kitchen with tiled counters and peeked into the adjoining den overlooking the small backyard. Once upstairs, we reached an open hallway with built-in linen cabinets and a guest bathroom. At one end of the hall were the master bedroom and bath—and walk-in closet—and at the other end were two guest bedrooms. Cai and I beamed at each other in excitement.
I didn’t expect to fall in love with a house in San Francisco. I figured they’d all be old, small, and shabby—at least the ones in our price range. Was this one too good to be true?
Cai chuckled. “It’s so light and big. And new. Shall we buy it?”
As I nodded my head yes, I suddenly realized I wanted nothing more than this house—and to get pregnant. I couldn’t imagine finding a better deal on a house in San Francisco. And if Cai were to find a job related to Chinese music in the States, it would be in San Francisco. He already knew some former classmates in his field who lived there. We didn’t have that luxury in other U.S. cities. If these new houses were really going quickly, I couldn’t see the sense in waiting any longer. And buying a house in San Francisco would mean we wouldn’t be returning to China.
“We’re only here for five more days,” I told Bob back in the basement. “We live in Hong Kong and are going back on Saturday. If we’re interested, how do we go about reserving a house?”
Bob explained we’d need a $10,000 deposit and should first get preapproval for a mortgage. He suggested that we go to a bank in Chinatown that had financed many people who had already bought into the development.
“Maybe we should call your parents,” Cai said on our way to the bus stop. “Would we be able to borrow the deposit from them?”
“Probably.” My parents would have no problem sending us the money, but I knew they would think our decision shockingly impulsive. After all, we had no jobs or guaranteed income in San Francisco. I normally would have shied away from such a rash move, but these were special circumstances. We needed to act quickly before Cai changed his mind.
In Chinatown we first stopped at the bank to apply for preapproval. On our way out, we found a phone booth and called Chicago to ask for the $10,000 loan. “Cai and I don’t have access to our accounts here but will pay it back as soon as we return to Hong Kong,” I reassured my parents, both of whom were on the line. “Can you send it by Friday?”
“You don’t have jobs there,” my dad said, as I knew he would.
“I know, but Cai has some friends here and they’re in the music field. If he can find a job anywhere in the United States, it’s in San Francisco. And I’ll search for a job on the Internet before we leave Hong Kong.”
“When will the house be finished?” my mom asked.
“They say December, but we�
�ll move at the end of February, just after my work contract ends.”
My mom agreed to wire the money to the developer. “We’re glad you’re moving back home,” she said. “I could never imagine you living in China with little babies crawling around on those cold, dirty floors.” Cai stood next to me, but I didn’t relay the last part of that message.
With our preapproval mortgage papers from Bank of America, we signed papers with Bob on Friday and learned that my parents’ wire transfer had gone through. That was when it finally hit me.
We’d be leaving Hong Kong in nine months. I hated to go, but I was looking forward to a stable life in San Francisco, free from worries about student visas, expired passports, or time apart from my husband. His green card granted him the right to live and work in the United States. I would be closer to my family, yet still in an area with a large Chinese population. But most importantly, I was saved from a life in China. I was convinced that we were moving forward and things were going to be great.
Chapter 24
A Surprise Guest
The Handover was the event of the summer of 1997. After ruling Hong Kong for a hundred and fifty years, Britain relinquished this last major colony and returned it to China. Suddenly many of the people I knew from Washington, DC, descended upon Hong Kong for the historic occasion. My brother Jonathan flew in for the week and he, Cai, and I roamed the city, hitting parties in the expat community.
At the largest of these parties, I met up with Janice for the first time in months. Our interaction felt a bit forced, but we promised to make plans to see each other soon. Cai and I also took Jonathan to dinners with our mainland friends that week. On June 30, the night of the Handover, the three of us walked side by side along the harbor front in Tsim Sha Tsui, the rain and fog blurring the lit skyline. Maybe due to the weather or perhaps because of Hong Kong’s uncertain future, the streets were eerily empty. Without much deliberation, we returned to Sunshine City to watch the midnight ceremony on TV. And just like that, Hong Kong belonged to China. But life in the former colony seemed to carry on as usual, especially when it came to my marriage.
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