The Natural Laws of Good Luck (26 page)

“What you mean cultivate?”

“Cultivate, like taking care of the garden, turning over the dirt and pulling the weeds so seedlings can grow.”

“Yeah, how to do this? In China, maybe smoking together, drinking three bottles, and eat very special food. In China, maybe give expensive gift or money.”

“No, that's bribery. You can't do that here.”

“Chinese people make things happen this way for a thousand years—make good things happen, make bad things happen, too. Make anything happen. Not do, maybe very bad for you, bad for your family. Not do, maybe lose a lot of business, lose job. Do,
maybe you go to jail, nobody see you again, because lately Chinese government make these things illegal. Who they want to catch, they can catch, because they know everybody have to give gift.”

Zhong-hua said that a Chinese business spent sixty out of every hundred yuan it earned on gifts to the key players of other companies every year. Individual employees must give gifts to their superiors, their colleagues, and their business contacts at every major holiday. As an employee of the steel company, Zhong-hua never had to worry about apartment rent and always had food and a pocketful of bills, but never knew whether he would be going home at night or going to jail. I asked Zhong-hua if he missed the partial security of cash flow. He said, “You don't understand the mind of Chinese person. The tiger never eats behind. Tiger only eats the food at face's front.”

It had been treacherous to navigate the politics of China, and we were having trouble navigating here. The summer camp where Zhong-hua had taught Tai Chi before his surgery didn't call to invite him to teach again. There had been a misunderstanding. A girl had fallen on her hip, and Zhong-hua had rushed over. He was skilled in healing arts such as herbal medicines and massage. He had said, “Do you want me to give you a massage?” She said, “Oh, that's OK,” meaning no thanks. The girl told the director later that Mr. Lu had touched her body. She said she didn't mind because she knew he was trying to help her, but her mother had told her to always tell if someone touched her for any reason. The director called me for a meeting and asked me to tell my husband never to touch any student, not even on the shoulder, not anywhere.

Chinese people are reluctant to touch in any casual manner, yet they will readily administer acupressure or massage to a stranger in need. Another cultural fine point requires one to say no when offered anything by another person. The other person is only polite to persist with their offer. “No” usually means “no” to an American but has a different meaning to a Chinese person. My heart sank as the director sternly asserted that she had to protect
her institution. I felt confused and defensive, even though I knew this woman was only trying to do her job.

My boss surprised me by suggesting that my husband teach brush painting to my clients. There were fewer land mines for Zhong-hua as teacher in this gentler environment. Zhong-hua started the class by writing a poem in calligraphy on the blackboard. He translated: “Not at home, I think of home and am happy.” A few of the clients showed a natural talent for brush painting. Others excelled only at rocks or only at mist. One put the brush down and folded her arms in defeat, while another wrapped up supplies for practicing at home. Arthur made only geometric lines because curved lines upset him. His bamboo forest looked like a bar graph and the sparrows like jet bombers. Despite this, he seemed to identify with the dilemma of a fellow nervous outsider and opened his gracious, magnanimous heart. “I'm no good at this kind of painting, but it's cool. Thanks for coming in and teaching us about this and about China and everything. I really appreciate it.” After everyone left, Arthur, who hated messes, chatted with Zhong-hua while helping him clean up the ink spills.

I thought we had come a long way from the time when Zhong-hua wanted to set up a table at the mall to sell his friend's meat grinders—that is, until he announced his desire to make Chinese dumplings and sell them on the sidewalk in front of the state capitol. I assured him that he needed a permit for this, a permit both very difficult and very expensive to procure. “I don't think need” was his answer. A little research proved me right about food vending but also revealed a series of court struggles between Mayor Giuliani and some street artists. Giuliani had appealed all the way to the Supreme Court and lost the appeal. Art is protected under the First Amendment and can be created, displayed, and sold in public places without a license. (Previously, the police could confiscate the art and throw the artist in jail.) And so off we went to New York City to sell our teapots and scarves in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

We stayed overnight at our friend Michael's apartment nearby. Michael helped my husband set up a display that somehow made use of an ironing board and folding chairs and then stood by my husband hour after hour in the cold, kindly urging him to attempt some sort of sales pitch. Zhong-hua slumped down in the folding chair so that his jacket rode up like a turtle shell to shield him from the wind. He stared straight ahead and moved as little as possible. Michael shot me perplexed looks of concern but stood by in faithful silence, a large, bald angel. We didn't end up in jail, but a policeman chased us away the second day because functional art was not allowed. If the item was useful in any way, it was not art. If it had a use but could also be hung on a wall, it could be considered art while hanging there.

We retreated to Michael's for supper, and I remember the impressed look on his face when my husband ate the entire loaf of French bread. Michael hurried down to the street and bought another, which my husband also ate. After that Zhong-hua considered Michael his best friend. He said friends are brothers. You can ask them for anything at any time. You can go to their house anytime and borrow their stuff anytime. Friends will do anything for you, and you have to be prepared to do the same for them.

My husband's early enthusiasm for owning a gas station—convenience store plagued me, because business was the one area in which I had no interest or good sense. He had too many expectations for me as his left hand. I was supposed to be able to translate everything from documents on the sealed vault of a head gasket cylinder to printouts of the vendor rules for the International Gift Fair at the Javits Center in New York City. My mind became very clumsy when fumbling with engine parts or business matters, so I offered a halfhearted hand when he said fiercely, “I
really, really
want to do business!” Boxes bulging with black, red, and white Tai Chi shoes, silk scarves, and tunics occluded the path through the upstairs hallway, and teapots crowded every shelf and cupboard.

Zhong-hua made up his mind to go to the Javits Center International Gift Fair, this time just to look. I found out that only legitimate
retail business owners who carried credentials and paid in advance could enter the trade show. “Zhong-hua, you will drive all that way to somewhere you've never been, probably get lost; then, if you find it, you'll get a parking ticket and the door will be shut in your face anyway. And you have no place to stay.”

Zhong-hua listened patiently to these reasons not to go, then nodded succinctly. “Yes, you are right.” He packed a lunch, filled a thermos with green tea, and waved his hand over his head on the way to the car. “This kind of thing very easy for me. I can go, no problem.”

Four hours later he was calling me on his sister's cell phone from inside the Javits Center. I think he said something about the back door. After a few hours of alternating between exploring and enthroning himself in the men's restroom, Zhong-hua left the Javits Center. He soon needed a bathroom again. Since his surgery, this was usually the case. He drove to Michael's apartment in Manhattan. Michael had already told Zhong-hua he would not be home until the next day, but my husband had this exasperating proclivity for stubbornly refusing to accept the most irrefutable facts. “Just try,” he said to himself.

“Yes, Michael is at home,” the doorman told him. Zhong-hua rode up to the fifth floor but couldn't remember the apartment number, so he called Michael on the cell phone and walked the halls until he heard a phone ringing. Michael had a lady friend in crisis staying with him for the weekend. I don't know who was more mortified—Michael, because he had lied to Zhong-hua about not being home, or Zhong-hua, because he had somehow known all along that Michael was home and had caused him to lose face by showing up. Zhong-hua slept on the couch, and Michael went out to eat with the lady. A few weeks later, the painful awareness that friendship had different parameters in America prompted Zhong-hua to call Michael to apologize.

Zhong-hua went back to keeping late-night company with the Champ, and I desperately hoped my husband understood something I didn't about the ancient Taoist secret of “accomplishment by not-doing.”
To think that we were sinking, even privately, was an assault on our well-being because I knew from experience that my husband could hear my thoughts, or so it seemed. If I thought I was old and ugly, he became attentive by night. If I thought his hair was looking wild and crazed, he let it become more so. I wanted to convey confidence in my husband's ability to work if that's what he wanted. On the other hand, maybe he needed the pressure off. I wasn't sure which message to send.

Zhong-hua said I thought too much. I recalled that when we worked as gardeners, he had hoped to cure me of this bad habit. A person preserving energy for survival does not have the luxury of entertaining thoughts about terrible things. Terrible things included anything doubtful, impatient, fearful, pitiful, mournful, or sentimental. Thoughts of this nature must be banished. Zhong-hua didn't like me to retell any current news story or gossip about other people's misfortunes. The negative and positive forces in the universe were held in delicate balance and could be tipped the wrong way by one careless thought. Even the playful question “Do you love me?” elicited from my husband a look of startled horror; I had let slip yet another terrible doubt.

Zhong-hua called me a combination of my Chinese name,
Ai-lin
, and my birth name,
Ellen
. He said, “Eh-lin.”
Ai-lin
fit me a little too perfectly. It meant “forest mugwort.” True, if I were a flower, I would have a woody stem, furry leaves, and a bitter taste. I wouldn't show up at funerals, and my odor repelled mosquitoes. It was hard to tell if a person attracted a name or the name caught the person in its snare. Zhong-hua's name meant “Middle Kingdom,” and indeed, he was completely ruled by his stomach. I had an auntie named Sweetie. She was so nice that she let the preacher's widow move in with her and boss her around until she had to die of cancer to escape. Then there was Sweet Sweet, “double sweet.” Ugh. “Sweet and Sour” would be more fair.

Zhong-hua had pickled the penis of the first deer he found at the side of the road in a bottle of Chinese wine. My work with
schizophrenic and bipolar individuals who lived alone was to help them reduce the terrors of life to true proportions. They did a heroic job, but the true proportions sometimes got the better of me. On the serpentine road home, I tended to look forward to the power of the deer-penis wine to float sad things. The taste was so vile that I only took one swallow, let out a yelp, and continued on my way past the shoe shrine and the peppery pots bubbling on the stove. An hour or so later, I would notice that I could not feel my lips.

Around this time my husband made some mildly critical comment such as “You is not good English teacher because you always want yourself to learn something—forget about student.” At hearing this, the deer-penis wine inside me responded with long, damning tirades that reached as far into the past as possible: “Well you are a bad teacher, too. You are the worst Chinese teacher I have ever come across, and I'll tell you why. . . .” During the pause I would try to think of why. Then: “It's because you don't care. Yes, that's true! You don't care! You send me to the Dong Shi to get cow stomach and sheep's lung, and you don't even care that the people don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Why? Because you just don't care. Well, let me tell you something—I will figure it out. I don't need you to teach me how to say
duck head
. I don't need you to teach me how to say
squid
, and I don't need you to teach me how to say
niu pai
—I mean
steak
, right?” By this time my argument had lost forward momentum and began veering to the left and right, pursuing less highly charged topics like the hair in the bathtub and the lack of consistent dinnertime ritual.

Zhong-hua was leaning back, enjoying himself. He held up his index finger importantly. “Have no dinner, you say why no food? Have dinner, you say why nobody eat with me? Somebody eat with you, you say why nobody talking? Woman is you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What is woman?
You
is woman!”

Months after I had ceased grumbling about not having a wedding ring, Zhong-hua came home with a small white box and presented
it to me. It was a ring—a gigantic, gaudy, diamond-studded globe. I didn't know quite how to handle the situation. There was nothing in his face to indicate that he was making a joke, and I certainly didn't want to hurt his feelings. After all, it was sweet of him to remember that I wanted a ring and had been without one since the vacuuming incident.

I decided to pretend to like it and wear it. By the third day, it had lost a few of its diamonds from knocking about on my hammer-holding hand. But there were still about a hundred on there. I thought maybe if he'd gotten it at Wal-Mart, we could go there and return it for a small, inconspicuous one. When I tactfully mentioned this, he said no, he had gotten it at a garage sale. Well! Should I be insulted? Knowing how my husband revered garage sales, I thought not. But the ring was so not me that I opted to display it respectfully on my treasure shelf. This worked well for a while as I was realizing more and more that I didn't care at all for rings.