A Free Life (29 page)

The Wus didn't believe in Chinese medicine despite its holistic approach, despite its emphasis on the balances between yin and yang and between hot and cold winds in the body, but their friend

Janet often asked Pingping about herbs. Janet had once been treated by an acupuncturist for her back injury, so she was fascinated by Chinese medicine. In addition, she also wanted to know if there was an herbal remedy for infertility, of which Pingping wasn't sure.

One afternoon, toward the end of May, Janet came to the Gold Wok, wearing pedal pushers and a thick ring on her second toe. Unlike other days, she overstayed her midafternoon break. She and Pingping were sitting in a corner booth, chitchatting and tittering while Tammie was wiping with a sponge the cruets and saltshakers on the dining tables, a basin of warm water on a stool beside her. On the wall beyond them pranced and frolicked the horses and foals in the mural painted a decade before. Putting her long-fingered hand on Pingping's forearm, Janet said, "I have something to ask you."

"What?"

"Would you like to have another baby?" "I love babies, but I can't."

"Why?"

"I must make money and help Nan and Taotao. Nan like to have a lotta kids, but we can't afford."

"What if somebody gives you money, lots of money?" "What you mean?"

"I mean, I'd love to pay you to have a baby for Dave and me." "I don't understand."

"Dave and I cannot have a baby no matter how hard we try. It's my problem, my eggs are no good." "How can I have baby for you?"

"There are two ways." Janet grew animated, her eyes fully open and glowing. "You and Nan have another baby for us, and we'll pay you ten thousand dollars. Or you and Dave have a baby, and we'll double that."

"That's disgusting. How can I have Dave's baby!" Pingping was blushing to the ears and felt insulted.

"Don't blow your top. You must've misunderstood me. Haven't you heard the term 'surrogate mother'?" Janet scratched her own freckled arm.

"I heard it on TV, but what it mean exactly?"

"The doctor can inseminate a woman's egg with a man's sperm, and then put it into her uterus. That'll make her pregnant." "Then what?"

"After the baby is born, the father has the right to it."

"So the mother can't see her own child again?"

"In most cases she can't. She has to abide by the agreement she signed with the man and his wife before she went through the artificial insemination. But biologically she's still the mother." Janet's face tensed up, as though she were holding back a smile. "If I could get pregnant like you, I'd have a small army of kids and let them populate a whole town."

"This is hard, Janet." Pingping crimped her brows, then muttered, "Why can't you adopt baby? Lots American couples have Chinese girls."

"We've thought of that, but ideally we'd love to have a baby from you."

"Why you give me such big problem? This is very hard for me."

"Look, Pingping, you're so pretty and healthy that we'd love to have your baby. You're just a year or two younger than me, but look at you-your skin and figure are like a young girl's. You can easily pass for twenty-five."

"You don't understand, Janet. Chinese women don't get old very quick like white women before we are fifty. Chinese girls grow up slow. I have my first period when I was sixteen. But after we're fifty, we suddenly become old woman, very, very old."

"Anybody's old after fifty."

"But after fifty, white woman get old very slow, because better nutrition, I guess. Look at Mrs. Lodge. She's eighty-nine and still do yard work and grow her vegetable garden."

"Okay, I see your point. Dave and I will be blessed if you can give us a baby."

"I can't do that, sorry."

"You see, usually a surrogate mother is paid ten thousand dollars. We're willing to double that. Cash. You won't have to pay tax for it. Dave loves Taotao, you know, and I can see that he dreams we can have a son like yours someday."

"Why not girl? I like girls."

"A girl will be great too. We'll be thrilled to have her." "I can't say yes, Janet. Maybe I should talk to my husband." "Sure, I understand. This ought to be a family decision. Talk to Nan, okay?" "All right."

Although reluctant to consider the offer, Pingping saw this as an opportunity to reduce their mortgage, which had agitated her all along. Never had she borrowed money before they bought the house. She had always dreaded debt and paid their bills promptly. What if their business took a downturn? Or Nan fell ill, unable to work for some time? Then they might lose everything. If they couldn't make their monthly payments, for sure Mr. Wolfe would come and take their home back just as banks would repossess houses and cars of insolvent mortgagors. The more she thought about this possibility, the more terrified she was. She felt they must pay off the mortgage as soon as possible.

That night, after Taotao went to bed, she talked to Nan about the Mitchells' offer. "No way," said Nan, whose eyes suddenly blazed. "You must be out of your mind. How can you think I'll let you be a surrogate mother, carrying another man's seed? I'm not that shameless. If you love babies so much, I can give you one. Do you really want one for ourselves?"

"That's not my point. We need money to reduce our debt, don't we?"

"But you mustn't use yourself that way. What will you say to Tao-tao if someday he asks you why you sold his brother or sister?"

"I don't mean to sell a baby. Only because Janet needs my help. She's a friend."

"But the fact is that you'll have to disown the child if you accept her money. How can you face Taotao if he asks you what happened to his sibling?"

This was more than Pingping could bear, and she burst into sobs, which startled Nan. He softened some and said, "Come, don't cry. I won't let you take that kind of risk."

" I know it will be hard and risky, but I can do it for you and Tao-tao. We must get rid of the mortgage as soon as possible. I'm so scared."

" Scared of what?"

"We may lose everything we have if misfortune strikes."

"Don't be a worrywart. Nothing will happen as long as we manage our business carefully. Look at Americans. Don't most of them have a mortgage? Do they fret like us? Many of them feel lucky if they can get a mortgage. We must shed our Chinese mind-set and learn to accept insecurity as a living condition." Despite saying that, he was touched by his wife's willingness to sacrifice, gratitude welling up in his chest.

She whimpered, "From now on we mustn't have sex too often. We don't have any real health insurance and can't afford to get sick or have a baby."

"All right, I'll try to control myself. Haven't I always slept in my own room?"

She grimaced, her lips wet. "Promise you'll never walk out on me and Taotao."

"How can you think of that? I won't leave you, all right? You two are all I have. Where could I go?"

Pingping told Janet about Nan 's objection the next afternoon. To her surprise, her friend accepted the explanation without any resentment and even said, "I knew it would be difficult. Let's forget it."

Afterward, Janet still came to the Gold Wok for lunch regularly. Pingping continued to help her assemble necklaces for five dollars apiece; she could finish half a dozen a week. They remained friends. Both Pingping and Nan were amazed by Dave and Janet's lack of resentment. If they had turned down such a request from a Chinese couple, the friendship might have ended automatically. Nan began to treat the Mitchells better than before and always picked a bigger red snapper for them when they ordered Five-Willow Fish, a deep-fried fish topped with five shredded vegetables.

Once Pingping asked Janet why she had not resented her refusal. Janet said, "If you agreed to give us a baby, we'd have to run away after it's born, so that you couldn't see us again. See, now I still have you as my friend."

EVERY Monday morning Nan went to the Chinese bookstore in Asian Square to buy the Sunday World Journal, which, unlike English-language newspapers, wouldn't arrive until midafternoon every day. He couldn't get it on a daily basis, so once a week he'd drive ten miles to Doraville to buy the Sunday paper; this was his way to keep abreast of the news about China and the Chinese diaspora. Besides getting the newspaper, he'd also visit the stores and the supermarket there to check the prices of groceries. His Monday trip to the shopping center was a kind of diversion to him, a luxury, since he had never taken a day off except on major holidays when no customers would show up. One morning in late June he turned up at the Chinese bookstore again, which was owned by World Journal, whose regional editorial division occupied two rooms in the back of the store. Several editors and typists worked in there on the advertisements and the local news for the southeastern section of the newspaper. As usual, Nan picked up the Sunday paper, then looked through the new books on the two display tables and flipped through some of the journals and magazines on the shelves. Among all the publications he liked the Mirror Monthly best because it carried well-informed articles on cultural and current issues, mostly written by reputable authors and scholars living in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and North America.

He noticed a new book on American life entitled Under the Star-Spangled Banner, written by a recent visitor from mainland China to the United States. He disliked this sort of writing targeted to the readers who could never set foot in America, because the writers often told exotic tales that distorted the truth. He remembered that one author had even bragged that American wives were so understanding toward their husbands that whenever their men were about to travel, the women would pack condoms into their baggage, implying they wouldn't mind if their husbands had a brief fling away from home, as long as they didn't leave behind their hearts with other women. A novelist who was a political officer in the People's Liberation Army boasted that he had walked alone at night through Chinatown in New York without taking fright; in an interview, when asked what the American democracy was like, he replied, "A lot of paperwork and high taxes." A woman author claimed that she had increased her worth from $300 to $5 million after living in the United States for just six years, and that now she was a CEO of a textile company, her cargo containers always on the move, traveling all over the Pacific and the Atlantic. An upstart in Florida even bragged that his ambition was to own a few satellites in space.

Whenever Nan flipped through these books, his heart would sink-almost every person described in them was a paragon of success. Who will speak for the failures? he wondered. What's worse, these books were often crudely written, in a journalistic style, and many of them were a mere mishmash of articles, each of which the author could finish at one sitting. These writers rushed to report sensational news of petty triumphs before they had lived here long enough to develop genuine feelings for this lonesome, unfathomable, overwhelming land. Look at these titles on the shelf-Here Is a Real America, Conquering the United States, I Have Become a Successful Lawyer in the Bay Area, Chinese Celebrities in North America, Our Growth in the USA, A Boss on Wall Street, My Bite of the Big Apple.

As Nan opened the June issue of Harvest, a major literary bimonthly published in Shanghai, an author's name caught his eye- "Danning Meng" printed under a novella entitled Winds and Clouds at an Alaskan Seafood Cannery. Nan was astounded to see his friend's name in such a top-notch magazine. He turned to the first page of the story and skimmed several paragraphs. Without doubt the author was his friend Danning, since the story was set in America and even mentioned Boston. He bought that copy of Harvest.

On his drive back along Buford Highway, whenever he stopped at a red light, he'd pick up the magazine and look at the illustrations and the table of contents. Some of the authors' names were familiar to him, and some were not. At the intersection of Jimmy Carter Boulevard he almost bumped into a brand-new passenger van, which bore a silver Darwin fish and a large sticker with red letters: licensed to bitch! That frightened Nan, and he forced himself not to touch the magazine again until he reached the Gold Wok.

That day at work, whenever he had a free moment, he would read a page or two of Danning's novella. At home that night, he lay on his bed and resumed reading it. He didn't feel it was extraordinary; the writing was sloppy, though the story was interesting and enjoyable. It was told in the first person, in the form of a memoir, and it described how the owner of an Alaskan cannery exploited his workers, who were mostly recent immigrants from Vietnam, South Korea, China, Mexico, and Eastern Europe. The narrator, presented as Danning's doppelganger, was a graduate student specializing in agronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and went to work in Alaska during the summer to make money for the next year's tuition. The cannery was depicted like a Chinese factory, where industrious workers often got into trouble, bad-mouthed by others, while slackers were trusted and rewarded for their clever words and deeds. Many dawdlers would clock in early and clock out late, but would slack off at work; some would find every excuse for staying on so as to get paid overtime. Furthermore, racial prejudice was widespread, the supervisors acted like little bullies, and most of the workers ate seafood whenever their foremen turned away. Fights broke out among them every day, and some girls were at one another's throats over a hunk, though there were decent people among the working hands. One man had previously been a lieutenant colonel in the Vietnamese army, and another a philosophy professor in Romania who could hardly speak any English. It was a dark story in spite of the narrator's breezy voice.

Turning off the light, Nan thought about the novella, which had somehow disquieted him. The story was believable, full of authentic details that brought the setting to life. Apparently Danning had done a lot of research and thinking, and Nan knew his friend had once been to Alaska, though he didn't believe Danning had ever worked in a cannery. What troubled him more was the insouciant style, full of misfired digs and riffs, which tried too hard to be funny and tantalize the reader. As a result, the humor felt forced and glib, not arising from within the drama, as if the narrator laughed before the audience, as if the author had become the victim of his own wisecracks. More troublesome, Danning had overused four-letter intensifiers, which appeared on every page. Still, Nan was happy for his friend, who had made a breakthrough in just two years after his return to China. Beyond question, his friend had become a literary figure of sorts. The fiction editor at Harvest called the readers' attention to Danning's novella in her introduction to this special issue devoted to "literature by students studying abroad." Indeed, the other four featured writers had all lived or were still living in foreign countries. Among the stories Danning's novella seemed to be the center, since the other pieces were much shorter, one just two and a half pages long.