Land of Big Numbers

by Te-Ping Chen

  I look at Eric and wonder what he’s thinking, but don’t ask. When we first started dating, I’d ask him all the time, and finally he told me to please stop. “I’m an open book,” he said. “What you see is what you get.” He was that way, too, when I first found out about the woman he’d been seeing a few years ago, a client of his: after I confronted him, he had nodded and said, in just as straightforward a manner, that they had slept together twice and he was very sorry. “I wish it hadn’t happened,” he’d said matter-of-factly, as though describing something that hadn’t actually involved him.

  Outside, the rain starts coming down hard and fast. “We should maybe find a place to pull over,” he says. It’s a narrow two-lane highway, not forgiving for skids. He told me once that his grandmother’s parents had both died in separate car crashes, and so he’s always been a careful driver, ever since he was a teenager. It’s one of the things I like about him, his caution on roads, the safety that comes with him behind the wheel. I tried explaining that to Jessica once, how happy I feel with him when we’re together in the car.

  “Sure,” she said. “It’s the feeling that you’re moving forward.”

  * * *

  When the rain starts pelting down in earnest, we pull over and seek shelter in a huge white roadside structure that says JESUS SAVES CHEAP GAS SOUVENIRS. On one side is a stand with two gas pumps, and inside, a cavernous potpourri-scented shop selling cheap magnets of Arizona license plates with different girls’ and boys’ names on them and mugs with slogans like TODAY SOMEONE THINKS YOU’RE AWESOME and NO COFFEE, NO WORKEE. There are glass cases of miniature horses and cowboys and natives with feathered headdresses cast in resin, and an inexplicable unicorn or two. There are friendship bracelets and mood rings. Out of habit, I buy a few things to give to family back home, things that will pack well—​a Grand Canyon coaster, some magnets shaped like sagebrush—​and peel off the tiny gold stickers that say MADE IN CHINA. By the time I make my once-a-year trip to see them, a little motley pile has always accumulated. By now my parents’ apartment is covered in the strange flotsam of such tokens from across America.

  The woman at the cash register rings me up and clucks appreciatively at my purchases. “I love these,” she says, tapping the sagebrush magnets. “Always think they’re kind of goofy.”

  I ask if she’s the owner and compliment the stand of trees growing out front that we passed on our way in. “They’re lovely,” I say, and they are, a tall trio bearing a loose froth of yellow-green leaves, with bark that’s green, too.

  “It’s all the chlorophyll,” she says. She tells me she planted them three years ago, along with the flowers out back.

  I’m genuinely astonished. “You mean the trees are only three years old?”

  She laughs. “Sure. From little bitty seeds.”

  My reaction seems to amuse her. “It’s the Arizona state tree, honey,” she tells me. “Paloverde. They grow real fast, and can live to be a hundred years old.”

  “Where are you from?” she says, and when I reply, she says, “Oh, wow. China. What’s that like?”

  It was a question that used to throw me, back when I first arrived in the U.S., when I would run through memories of high school and family and then freeze, not knowing what to say. Now I know. “It’s far,” I say, smiling. “It’s very nice. Good food.”

  Eric comes up from behind and puts his arms around me. “It’s been a while since she’s lived there,” he says. “We live in Tucson now.” I know he’s trying to make me feel more comfortable, but it also feels like he’s interrupting. I like this woman, with her gray hair, green thumb, and mugs with their terrible, well-meaning slogans.

  “Gosh, I always thought I’d love to go to China,” the woman says. “Never left the state.”

  “I really like Arizona,” I tell her, smiling, and it occurs to me that I do. My parents came to visit once, not long after we’d moved here. I showed them malls and parks and museums, but really what they couldn’t get over was the heat and the sun and the big blue sky. As soon as I settle down, they plan to join me.

  Overhead, the rain is thundering so hard that we almost have to raise our voices. When it’s over, the sky will turn gold, and then purple, a true Arizona sunset. There’s a lounge on the seventh floor of our hospital that offers a panoramic vista of the mountains, facing west. Our cancer patients like to visit at sundown, hooked to their IV drips. It’s so beautiful that sometimes after treatment they come back to visit, the ones who are well.

  * * *

  By 4 p.m., the number of people taking refuge from the rain has swelled, and soon the woman is busy attending to other customers. She’s taken out a plug-in burner and a coffeepot and looks flushed from all the tourists and truckers who’ve suddenly descended, turning her postcard carousels with slow creaks and peering over rows of painted votive candles. “Oh, my,” she keeps saying. “Welcome. What a storm.”

  I wander in search of Eric, two coffee cups in hand. When I find him, he’s retreated to one end of the store, a green-carpeted expanse set up like a small church, with six wooden pews and an empty pulpit. There’s a piano in one corner with what look like real ivory keys.

  “You disappeared,” I say, and edge into one of the pews beside him.

  He accepts a coffee cup without looking at me. “We can probably get back on the road soon.”

  “There’s no hurry,” I tell him. “The owner has some cookies in the back she says she’ll bring out for everyone,” I say. “She’s so happy for all this company.”

  The roof slants over this part of the building, and here the rain isn’t so loud; it makes a soft, sensuous patter. I spread my fingers over the coffee cup, warming them, and lean my head on Eric’s shoulder. His eyes are to the front, as though watching someone deliver a sermon, and he puts his arm around me and absently tweaks a strand of my hair.

  “The woman says those trees out front are only three years old,” I tell him. “Isn’t that amazing?”

  He says it is.

  We are quiet for a while, listening to the rain. Behind us, I can hear children laughing, and what sounds almost like a party in progress. I peek back toward the counter. A large man with a baseball cap has purchased one of those decorative tins of chili and caramel popcorn, and is loudly urging others to dig in. The woman beside him, his wife, probably, is shaking her head and rolling her eyes. There’s a mighty crack of thunder in the distance, and a collective cry from the crowd, an appreciative one, that it is outside and we are in.

  I turn back to face the front again. The wood of the pew isn’t comfortable, but Eric doesn’t seem inclined to move.

  “It’s been a good trip,” I offer at last, wondering if I should ask him about the lipstick.

  He nods and kisses my head, then deposits another kiss on one shoulder. The pew has a pile of softcover Bibles stacked in one corner. I imagine quiet Sundays here and the liturgy, the passing of the peace. Sometimes in the oncology ward, I’ll offer a few prayers that I learned from the hospital chaplain, and others from patients, too. God grant me the wisdom to accept the things I cannot change was one, and for a while I recited it for patients, until someone told me it was a prayer for alcoholics.

  I put Eric’s hand in mine and study it, and he curls it around my fingers in a warm grip. I have known this man longer than I have known most people, I think. We have shared countless meals and car rides and our toothbrushes have hung side by side for almost a decade. He is weak, I think, but also kind, and tenderhearted, and in moments like these, I tell myself that’s enough.

  The rain comes down a while longer and then abruptly begins to lift. Just before we stand to leave, Eric gestures toward the front of the small chapel with one movement of his well-cut jaw. “That’ll be us someday, pickle,” he tells me with satisfaction.

  He says it with the air of watching a beautiful sunset on the horizon, and there is only the slightest of pauses before I agree.

  Gubeikou Spirit

  Pan entere
d Gubeikou Station at top speed, hurtling through the crowds, hand on her purse. It was late and her father would be getting restless, prone to wandering; she needed to get home, get on the train. At the end of the line a guard lazily waved his security wand over her duffel coat, both sides, slowing her down. “I’m in a hurry,” she said plaintively.

  Down the steps, then, quick-stepping on the too-shallow stairs, dodging the march of people headed in the opposite direction, determinedly clutching their bags as they went. “Let me through!” she cried. But it was 5 p.m. and Gubeikou was crowded. A train had just arrived, disgorging more people now headed to the exits; she was beaten back against the wall by the crowds.

  By the time she reached the foot of the stairs the train doors had closed; it had left the station.

  That was all right, Pan thought. She’d get the next one. She made her way to a bench, sat down. Haste didn’t pay, she reminded herself. Today she’d miscounted the change at the register and ended up 20 yuan short: she’d had to make up the difference. At home as a child, her family had nicknamed her Ranhou Ne? because she was always asking “And then?” from the time she was young.

  “I got some leeks today,” her mother might say.

  “And then?”

  “I’ll make some soup.

  “And then?”

  “And then we’ll eat it.”

  “And then?”

  “And then you’ll go to sleep and stop asking questions, baby.”

  The station filled with people. A middle-aged woman with a perm sat down beside her and fiddled with the clasp on her purse. Opposite them was a yellow ad featuring a grinning Jack Russell terrier jumping in the air to catch what looked like the world, a globe. It was too large: Pan doubted the dog would be able to catch it; it would just bounce harmlessly off his nose.

  Another ten minutes passed. Then, an announcement: “The next train will be delayed. We thank you for your understanding.”

  The train was a marvel, just two years old, state-of-the-art. It had doors that swung open like a singing mouth, emitting a merry chime, and closed after twenty seconds with precision. There were twenty-six lines already built, with another ten under way. No other city in the world had built its subway stations so quickly.

  Half an hour passed. The crowd swelled and milled around unhappily, everyone bundled in their coats. Pan was glad she had her seat. Every ten minutes or so, the announcer would return: “The next train will be delayed. We thank you for your understanding.”

  A pair of teenage boys took off their coats and laid them on the ground and sat atop them. A handful of others followed suit, and then others.

  Pan’s legs were starting to fall asleep, and she twitched her chilly toes inside her pink boots. It had been a while since anyone else had entered the station, she noticed; they must be turning people away.

  Down the platform, a man in a bright-blue coat was the first to try leaving. Indignant, he led a group of half a dozen commuters back up the stairs, where they banged on the access gates, which consisted of tall, solid plates of hammered metal.

  One guard must have taken out a stepladder, because suddenly his whole face and part of his torso appeared, peering out over the barriers.

  “We’ll get the train moving soon,” he said kindly. When shouts rang out, he nodded sympathetically. “I know,” he said. “You’re tired. I’m tired, too. You want to go home and eat a nice meal, rest for a while. I do, too. Please be patient. We’ll get there together.”

  Then he did a little shimmy of his hips, at which the crowd laughed. After the subway system had opened, the government had hired teams of beautiful young women to dress in tight-sheathed skirts and blouses with red sashes across their chests that read TRAIN GODDESSES SERVE THE PEOPLE. During rush hour, they stood on the platform and twitched their hips as they sang the same song:

  Thank you for your cooperation, please line up, do not push

  Be a civilized passenger, for your safety and that of those around you

  We’ll get there together.

  Pan didn’t laugh. Her father was waiting at home, waiting for her to come back and cook dinner. By now he would be pacing anxiously in the living room, where she had left the television on all afternoon in an effort to amuse him, but his favorite program had ended an hour ago and who knew what he might decide to do next: Light the stove? Bang his head repeatedly against a wall?

  She took her subway card and waved it over the gates, which flashed a red X. “Let us go!” she shouted, but the guard’s head had already disappeared.

  That night they slept on coats at careful distances from one another, on islands of spread-out newspapers, heads pillowed on bags. The lights never went out. A baby made small keening noises through the night, but did not cry. They were too far down to get any signal, but Pan, who seized a patch of ground near the bathroom at the west end of the tunnel, kept an eye on her phone anyway, watching the time: 11:10, 4:30, 6:32. Her stomach clenched anxiously any time she thought of her father: perhaps one of the neighbors would have stopped to check on him, she thought to herself. It had happened before.

  At 8 a.m. two guards reappeared, this time through a side door marked STAFF ONLY that had been locked overnight. The first came wheeling a cart stacked with boxes of ramen and tall thermoses filled with hot water. Each person got a cup, a toothbrush, and a sliver of soap, which came in pouches that bore the stamped white letters HUMANITARIAN SUPPLIES.

  “Repairs still under way,” he said shortly.

  A man dressed in an untidy, reflective smock, the kind that street cleaners wore, got up, brushing himself off. “You can’t treat us like this!” he shouted. “We have things to do. Let us go.”

  The first guard shook his head regretfully. “Passengers must exit at a different station from where they entered,” he said. “It’s in the rule book.”

  The second guard taped a sheet of paper to the wall. Owing to a mechanical breakdown, it ran in printed letters, trains at Gubeikou Station will be delayed. We assure passengers they will get to their destinations. Thank you for your cooperation. A red seal was affixed in one corner.

  “Let us out with you,” another man said, pointing at the door through which they’d entered; a third guard was wheeling in another cart.

  “Can’t do that,” the first guard said. He tapped the STAFF ONLY sign and began to lay out trays of plastic utensils, washcloths, and napkins. Other passengers gathered, peppering the man with questions: How much longer? What was the problem, exactly? Could their fares be refunded?

  “We’ll get you to your destination” is all they would reply. They would take messages to loved ones, they said. They would ensure work units were notified.

  One of the teenage boys darted toward the door. In response, the second guard unsheathed an electric baton and whirled it about his person once, striking the young man, who dropped to the ground and began quietly moaning.

  “Look what you made me do,” the guard said angrily.

  In a matter of minutes the men had erected a small supply station near one end of the platform, complete with soy milk, crackers, instant noodles, coloring books, pencils, and stacks of coarse yellow blankets. “Thank you for your cooperation,” they said to the crowd, before leaving. “We’ll get you moving soon.”

  That day, the two teenage boys tried scaling the subway turnstiles, but were warned back by guards who stood just outside, faintly visible through the cracks, wielding electric batons. “Down!” they cried, gesturing at signs that said NO CLIMBING.

  Pan and others tried standing by the entrance, shrieking repetitively, “Let us out!” There was something both liberating and terrifying in all the fuss they were causing; it made Pan think of her grandmother, who, in her final years, had similarly appeared to lose all inhibitions, shedding her pants in a supermarket, calling neighbors “slovenly” to their faces. It also made Pan’s head hurt, and with the guards unmoved, eventually the group’s efforts subsided.

  By the second day, the tr
ain still hadn’t come, to everyone’s bewilderment. The announcements kept playing: “The next train will be delayed. We thank you for your understanding.”

  “Soon,” the passengers kept telling one another. “It must be soon.” Maybe a new part needed ordering. Someone remembered hearing that the trains had been made in Germany. How long did it take to ship something from Germany?

  On the third day, the man in the blue coat set off into the tunnels. “We may as well,” said the man, named Jun. He tied plastic bags around his shoes; the tunnels were damp, and at night they could hear the sound of water dripping.

  “Be careful!” Pan shouted as Jun set off. She liked the slender-hipped way he would stand for hours at the platform, listening earnestly for sounds of the train, the way he helped pick up the scattered ramen lids and neatly stack them after meals. He wasn’t from the city; his speech was lilted like that of someone from the country’s west.

  He returned when they’d nearly given up expecting him, face and hands dirtied. The tunnels extended for miles in all directions, lit by only ghostly lights, he said. He’d gotten lost. The track layout was bewildering, he said. Some tunnels were partly caved in and appeared to have been abandoned halfway, while others led nowhere at all.

  The next day he went back in anyway, this time carrying a bag full of their trash, which he used to mark his way. He began disappearing for hours like that, every day. Occasionally the teenage boys would go with him.

  “There must be a way out,” he said.

  Sensing discontent among their charges, the guards wheeled in a television set, which carried cartoons in the morning, sports games and dramas in the afternoon, and every night, the evening news. There were winter dust storms sweeping the north. There was a new scourge of telephone scams happening; residents were urged to stay on the alert.