Rebellion

by Molly Patterson

  She giggles and remarks that his pronunciation isn’t bad at all, looking expectantly at him to see if he understands. But of course he doesn’t. “How strange,” Lulu says. “It’s like having a conversation in front of a dog. He follows whoever is speaking with his eyes.”

  Lulu’s forgotten the bike key upstairs, so Juanlan climbs the stairs to retrieve it. At the door to the flat, she doesn’t bother to take off her shoes. The key isn’t on the table, as Lulu said it would be; nor is it under any of the magazines or hiding behind the bowl of peaches. She searches the floor, then looks under the sofa before moving on to the shelves. The bottom two are filled with pens and rubber bands and other household goods, but the top shelf is for display: it holds photographs from a shoot Zhuo Ge and Lulu had before their wedding. Juanlan’s mother asked her why someone would waste money on such a thing, as if Juanlan herself were the one who had come up with the idea. “Your father and I only had one wedding picture taken, and that was after the ceremony,” she said crossly.

  Juanlan didn’t point out that such customs didn’t exist back then, that they’d gotten married in simple clothing—her mother with a short bob in a white-collared dress, her father in a Mao suit buttoned so tightly it looked like he could hardly breathe—and that weddings nowadays are a more elaborate affair. “Lots of people take these photos,” she said. “It’s a popular trend.” She hadn’t seen the actual photographs when she was defending them to her mother, but there was a studio near Chunxi Lu that had wedding portraits up in the window, and she’d stopped to look at them every time she was in the area. The portraits stood out because the people staring out from them were clearly not models. They were good-looking in the way of average people, and in each case the woman was more good-looking than the man.

  When she finally saw her brother and Lulu’s pictures in Heng’an, she was surprised by how similar they were to the ones she’d seen in Chengdu; in the soft light of the camera lens, dressed up in other people’s clothing, they looked almost like strangers. At the time, she’d been struck by how mismatched they appeared: Lulu’s delicate limbs, pale skin, and black-grape eyes beside Zhuo Ge’s square head and tobacco-stained teeth. In Juanlan’s favorite of the portraits, the two of them were dressed like foreign movie stars, he in a white tuxedo and she in a tight-fitting gold and silver dress that looked like it was made from melted coins.

  Now, after spending so much time with the Lulu of swollen feet and limp hair, it is not her physical appearance that strikes Juanlan, or the difference between her and Zhuo Ge as a pair. It’s the expression on their faces. In each one her brother is staring dreamily at Lulu, and in each one she is facing away.

  After a ten-minute search, Juanlan finds the bike key on the floor beside the television and heads back downstairs. Lulu is seated on the bench, and Rob is sitting beside her, angled so Juanlan can’t see his face. “Juan Mei,” Lulu calls as she crosses the concrete toward them, “wait till you hear what I taught your friend.”

  He turns to show a wide grin. “Lulu was just teaching me some Chinese.”

  They speak in parallel, in two different languages, and Juanlan is the only one to understand both. It should make her feel that she’s at the center of things. But instead she feels that in her absence the two of them have become fast friends in the way very young children are friends, playing together without words. Rob demonstrates what he’s learned: he points above and says the word for sky, points at his head and says head, points at his foot and says foot. Lulu claps and laughs and grins like a baby. “Feichang hao!” she exclaims.

  Rob says “xiexie” and then screws up his face, trying to think of another word to show off his learning. He points at himself and says, “Lan.”

  Juanlan shakes her head. “This is a Sichuan person’s way of speaking. It’s ‘nan,’ not ‘lan.’ Lulu is a bad teacher.” She explains the difference, the confusion of sounds. Lulu is watching, trying to follow along, and at one point she protests, but Juanlan holds up a hand and continues speaking to Rob. “People will not understand you in other parts of China. They will think you are saying ‘blue,’ like the color, not ‘male’ like a man.”

  “What do you mean?” he says. “I thought I was saying ‘me.’” He points to Lulu and says the word for female. “Doesn’t that mean ‘you’? No?” He laughs and says to Lulu, though she can’t understand, “What have you been teaching me, anyway?”

  They are a quick-talking comedy performance, something that would be on the New Year’s Day Special on television.

  Lulu still has a smile on her face, and it doesn’t fade when Juanlan tells her that Rob hasn’t learned anything at all, that he doesn’t understand the meaning of any of the words she’s taught him. She exaggerates the mistakes, even lies about what he got right and what he got wrong. “We’re going now,” she says when she’s done. “We’ll see you and Zhuo Ge at the restaurant at six.”

  Rob follows behind her. “Baibai,” he says to Lulu, and Juanlan thinks for a moment that she has taught him that, too, until she remembers that it’s originally an English word, something they all understand.

  Riding out from town, Rob asks about Lulu. How old is she? Is twenty-three a normal age to have a baby in China? Does she want a boy or a girl, and does she know which one they’re having, and is that an even more important issue in China because of the one-child policy?

  “I don’t know” or “I guess,” Juanlan says in response to every one but the first question. Her brother and Lulu are having a girl, of course, but she doesn’t pass on this information, thinking of the day Lulu pointed at her stomach and said that when she imagined what was inside, it wasn’t a curled-up baby but a ball of twisted white worms. “Like you see in the shit of a sick pig,” she’d said. One afternoon a few days later, Juanlan saw a ripple of movement over the globe of Lulu’s stomach that made the foot of the cartoon cat on her T-shirt kick. It might have been a knee or an elbow, or even the baby’s head. Juanlan wanted to ask what it felt like, but Lulu was staring down at it with a slack expression, as if she felt absolutely nothing at all.

  The sun has burned through the thin layer of clouds. The sky is a hazy blue, and the wind blows the hair back over their heads as they ride. It’s been weeks since the sun came out. Even here, not close to any river, Juanlan can sense the sodden quality of the ground, and she thinks of the news reports from other parts of the country. The flood is a disaster unfolding over a period of months. It’s strange to think that it’s getting worse even now, as they pedal their bikes past a field of yellow flowers in the sun. Rob is smiling and loose-limbed and too tall for the bike, and he laughs at this quandary, exaggerating the way his knees rise almost to the level of his chest as he pedals. His face in the sun does not appear young, but the lines at the corners of his eyes make him look kind. After a few minutes, Juanlan asks to stop so she can put her hair back in a ponytail and Rob plants his feet on the ground and walks his way over, still straddling the bike. Then he reaches back to get something out of his backpack. “Say cheese,” he says, lifting a camera to his face.

  “The scenery is not very good,” Juanlan protests. “You should wait until we’re somewhere more beautiful.”

  “I want to capture this moment.” The camera lens blinks. “You’ve got a look on your face like you’re going to kill me. Now this time: smile. Yi, er, san.”

  A prickle in her stomach. “When did you learn the numbers?”

  “So I said it right, then?”

  Juanlan bites her lip. Yes, she concedes, he spoke correctly. “Did Lulu also teach you that?”

  “All the way up to ten, though I can’t remember that far.” He lifts the camera again, and Juanlan shields her face, unhappy at the thought of her sister-in-law teaching him anything. He is supposed to be her foreigner, helpless but eager. She is supposed to be the one to show him the way. “Come on, now, smile!” he says again.

  From behind the web of her fingers, she speaks the phrase Rob used when she first saw him o
n the street by the bus station, trying to tell people he didn’t want what they offered. “Buyao,” she says, mimicking the tone of a foreigner. Buyao, xiexie, buyao, buyao.

  They return from the bike ride late in the afternoon, and there is time only to separate and shower. In less than an hour she’s back at the Friendship Hotel, waiting for Rob to come downstairs. When he appears, it is without a backpack—he could be a Western businessman preparing for an evening out on the town. “Shall we?” he says, and gives her his arm.

  The restaurant is not a fine one; it has smudged walls and plain wooden tables well dented with use. Against one wall is a bar with three large jars of baijiu, one flavored with peaches, one with goji berries, and one with several snakes coiled around one another. “Jesus!” Rob exclaims, and Juanlan assures him they won’t have to drink any of that.

  A tiny woman in an apron comes out from the back. “Your brother and his wife are already here,” she says. “Right back this way.” She leads them through the nearly empty restaurant, out a door, and through a narrow alleyway. The walls are damp and mildewed, the sky overhead a small rectangle of white. The woman warns them to watch their step, not to slip. “Tell him to be careful,” she instructs Juanlan. “I can’t speak the foreigner’s language.” It’s clear that she wants to say more, to explain that she’s never had a white man in her restaurant before, but Juanlan is already tired of having this kind of conversation with store owners and restaurant owners and street snack vendors, so she takes the opportunity to speak to Rob. Instead of passing on the woman’s instructions to be safe and to watch his step, she asks if he’s going to ask Lulu to teach him more Sichuanese.

  “Sure. I could write up a section for the guide on the Sichuan dialect,” he says, “and include a few useful phrases. My publisher loves that sort of thing—all the regional differences.”

  As if on cue, a man’s voice somewhere nearby shouts a boisterous “Gua hou!” The phrase is purely regional, and Juanlan considers trying to explain it to Rob—stupidest gourd—but it’s clear he hasn’t noticed or heard. It’s all the same to him, a blur of sounds he can’t recognize or distinguish. When she glances over at him, he gives her a wink.

  They pass two rooms, each filled with loud conversation. In the third they find Lulu sitting alone, idly picking through a basket of dried peas. She cracks one with her teeth and then turns and spits it out on the floor. “I’ll break my molars with these things,” she says. She gets to her feet, her small stomach poking the front of her dress. Juanlan is reminded of a moment early on in her relationship with Du Xian when they were on the bus and a pregnant woman boarded. Juanlan had blushed deeply, suddenly aware in a way she never had been before of the sex that others were having. A man had given the woman his seat, and Du Xian and Juanlan stood swaying over her, grasping the loops that dangled from the ceiling and avoiding each other’s eyes.

  Lulu pulls out a chair next to hers and gestures to Rob, telling him to sit.

  “Where’s Zhuo Ge?”

  She frowns and flicks a hand at the door. “Some of his friends are in the room next door. They work at the electrical plant; I don’t know how your brother knows them. They wanted us to join them, but I told your brother it’s too much for Wah-buh.” She turns to Rob, as if she has only just remembered him. “His skin is so dark! What’s the good of being white if you’re going to be out in the sun all day?” She touches a finger to his arm, and he cocks his head in mild surprise. “Aren’t you going to tell him what I said?” Lulu asks.

  Before Juanlan can translate, Zhuo Ge comes in through the door. “Mei! I’m glad to see you and your friend didn’t ride off all the way to Tibet.” He glances at Rob and laughs in a familiar way. Even though he can’t have understood the joke, Rob laughs, too. “Did you order any drinks?”

  “I didn’t have time,” Lulu says. “These two just arrived.”

  He shouts for the laoban to come, and she arrives instantly, asking what she can get them.

  “Bring six bottles of Snow to start.” Zhuo Ge nods at Rob and says slowly, in his best approximation of proper Mandarin, as if that might help, “This guy can drink a lot of beer, I bet.”

  “He can’t speak Mandarin,” Juanlan says. “You might as well speak normally.”

  Her brother takes a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and flips it open, pushing it toward Rob in offering. Though he’s told her he doesn’t smoke, Rob takes one and fits it between his lips. “You don’t have to accept the cigarette,” she says. “I can tell my brother you don’t want one.”

  “It’s okay.” He leans toward the flame that Zhuo Ge has lit. “Xiexie,” he says.

  Zhuo Ge turns to Juanlan. “You lied. He can speak Chinese.”

  “That’s all he can say. That and ‘hello.’”

  “Not true,” Lulu puts in. “I taught him a few words earlier.”

  Zhuo Ge looks from his wife to Rob, and makes a joke about her Mandarin being worse than a foreigner’s. Rob watches the exchange, his eyes opened wide in readiness for the translation. Juanlan duly repeats her brother’s joke, and when she’s finished Rob laughs in an exaggerated way and throws back his head, which makes Zhuo Ge laugh again, and Lulu, too.

  When the owner returns with the beer, Zhuo Ge rattles off six or seven dishes that he wants her to bring. There is no menu, or if there is one, he doesn’t ask to see it. “What does your laowai want to eat? Beef? Americans love to eat beef.”

  Before she can answer, he’s ordered a braised beef dish as well as beef with pickled peppers. “What else should we get?”

  “That’s plenty,” she says, but Zhuo Ge ignores her and asks the owner what else is good. They go back and forth, discussing various dishes and speculating whether foreigners like to eat this or that. When the owner leaves again, he opens a bottle of beer and pours the contents into four small glasses. “For a toast,” he tells Lulu. “Just a sip, and when the owner comes back we’ll get a bottle of Coca-Cola for you. Or peanut milk. Which do you want?”

  Lulu waves a hand dismissively. “I’ll drink tea.”

  “Not tonight,” Zhuo Ge says, pushing back his chair and going to the door. “We’ve got to honor our esteemed guest.” He steps out into the alley to call out for a bottle of Coca-Cola.

  “Zhuo Ge!” another voice yells from nearby. “You’re not giving the laowai Coca-Cola, I hope!”

  “It’s for my wife! We’re having beer.”

  “Why not baijiu? What, you’re afraid he’ll drink you under the table?”

  Zhuo Ge shouts back that it’s true, he’s heard legends of the laowai’s drinking abilities, and when the man responds that he wants to see how much he can consume, Zhuo Ge steps out into the alley to continue the exchange. Lulu rolls her eyes and, pushing the basket of dried peas toward Rob, grumbles that in a moment there will be a group of men coming to toast him.

  As they nibble on the peas, Juanlan asks Rob about his trip to Kangding. He tells her he was lonely, that the town closed down at six or seven at night and there was nothing to do. It was windy, he says, and beautiful, but he wouldn’t want to go back by himself. Juanlan thinks of her father’s warning about those who are alone. There is a danger, perhaps, in the solitary soul bumping around without a purpose.

  Zhuo Ge returns with three men, one of them holding a bottle of baijiu. The laoban follows them into the room with several small glasses and sets them in a stack on the table. “My friends want to toast your foreigner,” Zhou Ge says, distributing the glasses among them. The white liquor is poured and one by one the three friends toast Rob, who each time throws back the entire shot. “Gan bei!” they shout, and Rob repeats the phrase to laughter and praise.

  “You can just take a sip,” Juanlan says, trying to intercede. “Or drink beer instead.” She admonishes the men, telling them that he doesn’t know the damage that baijiu can do.

  “Foreigners have good constitutions,” says one of the men. “He’ll be fine.”

  Then it’s Zhuo Ge’s turn,
and he instructs his sister to translate. Sloshing baijiu into Rob’s glass and then his own, he looks around, meeting each person’s eye as he takes a dramatic pause. “Heng’an is known for three things,” he begins at last. “Plum blossoms, coal, and beautiful women. Heng mei, heng mei, heng mei.” He speaks slowly, enunciating the different tones. “Go on,” he says to Juanlan. “Tell him what I said.”

  She tries her best to describe the phrase, how it’s based on little more than the fact that there is a small coal mine in the most distant county of their prefecture, and plum blossoms that color the mountains pink in the spring, and a claim that the town has the prettiest women in the country, a claim that every locality seems to make. “The three words sound similar in Chinese,” she says, “so we call them the Three Heng Mei. Heng mei, heng mei, heng mei.”

  To her surprise, Rob repeats after her, botching the tones but trying so valiantly that all the men encourage him. He goes on in English, “And I’ve seen at least one of those three things since I came to town.” He raises his glass to Juanlan. “Heng mei,” he says. Then he turns to Lulu and addresses her with a little bow: “Heng mei.”

  The men all break out in enthusiastic cheers. It is a common joke, which makes it all the better.

  Juanlan bites her lip as Rob’s glass is refilled. He will be ill before long, and so will Zhuo Ge, so will all the men. But not before Zhuo Ge extracts a promise from Rob that he’ll write up the Three Springs Hotel in the travel guide. “That would require him to write about Heng’an,” Juanlan says, and Zhuo Ge says, of course, no guide would be complete without it. He makes her translate for Rob, makes her obtain the foreigner’s assurance that he’ll write about their town and their family’s hotel, and Rob says, of course, he’d be happy to do it.

  “Gan bei!” the men shout. “Gan bei! Gan bei!” Juanlan watches the baijiu spilling into the glasses and turns to Lulu to make the necessary complaints. But her sister-in-law is not looking at her; she’s staring down at the bowl of dried peas. On her lips is the faint outline of a smile, meant for no one to see.