In the Crossfire

It snowed on and off for a whole day. The roofs in the neighbourhood blurred and lost their unkempt features, and the snow rendered all the trees and hedges fluffy. It looked clean everywhere and even the air smelled fresher. Trucks passed by, giving out warning signals while ploughing snow or spraying salt. A bunch of children were sledding on a slope, whooping lustily, and some lay supine on the sleds as they dashed down. Another pack of them were hurling snowballs at each other and shouting war cries. Tian, amused, watched them through a window. He had dissuaded his mother from giving a multiple-course dinner, saying that here food was plentiful and one could eat fish and meat quite often. Most times it was for conversation and a warm atmosphere that people went to dinner. His mother agreed to make dumplings in addition to a few cold dishes. Actually, they didn’t start wrapping the dumplings when the stuffing and the dough were ready, because Meifen wanted to have her friend participate in preparing the dinner, to make the occasion somewhat like a family gathering.

Towards evening it resumed snowing. Tian drove to Corona to fetch the guest, Shulan, and his mother went with him, sitting in the passenger seat. The heat was on full blast while the wipers were busy sweeping the windshield; even so, the glass frosted in spots from outside and fogged from inside. Time and again Tian mopped the moisture off the glass with a pair of felt gloves, but the visibility didn’t improve much. ‘See what I mean?’ he said to his mother. ‘It’s dangerous to drive in such weather.’

She made no reply, staring ahead, her beaky face as rigid as if frozen and the skin under her chin hanging in wattles. Fortunately Shulan’s place was easy to find. The woman lived in an ugly tenement, about a dozen storeys high and with narrow windows. She was waiting for them in the footworn lobby when they arrived. She looked familiar to Tian. Then he recognized her – this scrawny person in a dark blue overcoat was nobody but a saleswoman at the nameless snack joint on Main Street, near the subway station. He had encountered her numerous times when he went there to buy scallion pancakes or sautéed rice noodles or pork buns for lunch. He vividly remembered her red face bathed in perspiration during the dog days when she wore a white hat, busy selling food to passers-by. That place was nothing but a flimsy lean-to, open to waves of heat and gusts of wind. In winter there was no need for a heater in the room because the stoves were hot and the pots sent up steam all the time, but in summer only a small fan whirred back and forth overhead. When customers were few, the salespeople would participate in making snacks, so everybody in there was a cook of sorts. Whenever Tian chanced on this middle-aged Shulan, he’d wonder what kind of tough life she must have been living. What vitality, what endurance and what sacrifice must have suffused her personal story? How often he’d been amazed by her rustic but energetic face furrowed by lines that curved from the wings of her nose to the corners of her broad mouth. Now he was moved, eager to know more about this fellow townswoman. He was glad that his mother had invited her.

‘Where’s your daughter, Shulan?’ Meifen asked, still holding her friend’s chapped hand.

‘She’s upstairs doing a school project.’

‘Go get her. Let her come with us. Too much brainwork will spoil the girl’s looks.’
Tian said, ‘Please bring her along, Aunt.’

‘All right, I’ll be back in a minute.’ Shulan went over to the elevator. From the rear she looked smaller than when she stood behind the food stand.

Tian and Meifen sat down on the lone bench in the lobby. She explained that Shulan’s husband had come to the States seven years before, but had disappeared a year later. Nobody was sure of his whereabouts, though rumour had it that he was in Houston, manning a gift shop and living with a young woman. By now Shulan was no longer troubled by his absence from home. She felt he had merely used her as his cook and bed warmer, so she could manage without him.

‘Mom, you were right to invite her,’ Tian said sincerely.

Meifen smiled without comment.

A few minutes later Shulan came down with her daughter, a reedy, anaemic fifteen-year-old wearing circular glasses and a chequered mackinaw that was too big on her. The girl looked unhappy and climbed into the car silently. As Tian drove away, he reminded the guests in the back to buckle up. Meanwhile, the snow abated some, but the flakes were still swirling around the street lights and fluttering outside glowing windows. An ambulance howled, its strobe slashing the darkness. Tian pulled aside to let the white van pass, then resumed driving.

Tian and Connie’s home impressed Shulan as Meifen gave her a tour through the two floors and the finished basement. The woman kept saying in a sing-song voice, ‘This is a real piece of property, so close to downtown.’ Her daughter, Ching, didn’t follow the grown-ups but stayed in the living room fingering the piano, a Steinway, which Tian had bought for Connie at a clearance sale. The girl had learned how to play the instrument before coming to the United Sates, though she could tickle out only a few simple tunes, such as ‘Jingle Bells’, ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’, and ‘The Newspaper Boy Song’. Even those sounded hesitant and disjointed. She stopped when her mother came back and told her not to embarrass both of them with her ‘clumsy fingers’ any more. The girl then sat before the TV, watching a well-known historian speaking about the recent Orange Revolution in Ukraine and its impact on the last few Communist countries. Soon the four grown-ups began wrapping dumplings. Tian used a beer bottle to press the dough, having no rolling pin in the house. He was skilled but couldn’t make wrappers fast enough for the three women, so Connie found a lean hot-sauce bottle and helped him with the dough from time to time. Meifen was unhappy about the lack of a real rolling pin and grumbled, ‘What kind of life you two have been living! You have no plan for a decent home.’

Connie wouldn’t talk back, just picked up a wrapper and filled it with a dollop of the stuffing seasoned with sesame oil and five-spice powder.

Shulan said, ‘If I lived so close to downtown, I wouldn’t cook at all and would have no need for a rolling pin either.’ She kept smiling, her front teeth propping up her top lip a bit.

‘Your place’s pot stickers are delicious,’ Tian said to her to change the subject.

‘I prepare the filling every day. Meifen, next time you stop by, you should try it. It tastes real good.’

‘Sure thing,’ Meifen said. ‘Did you already know how to make those snacks back home?’

‘No way, I learned how to do that here. My boss used to be a hotel chef in Hangzhou.’

‘You must’ve gone through lots of hardships.’

‘I wouldn’t complain. Life here is no picnic and most people work very hard.’

Tian smiled quizzically, then said, ‘My dad retired at fifty-eight with a full pension. Every morning he carries a pair of goldfinches in a cage to the banks of the Songhua. Old people are having an easy time back home.’

‘Not every one of them,’ his mother corrected him. ‘Your father enjoys some leisure only because he joined the Revolution early in his youth. He’s entitled to his pension and free medical care.’

‘Matter of fact,’ Shulan said, ‘most folks are as poor as before in my old neighbourhood. I have to send my parents money every two months.’

‘They don’t have a pension?’ Meifen asked.

‘They do, but my mother suffers from gout and high blood pressure. My father lost most of his teeth and needed new dentures. Nowadays folks can’t afford to be sick any more.’
‘That’s true,’ Tian agreed. ‘Most people are the have-nots.’

The stout kettle whistled in the kitchen and it was time to boil the dumplings. Connie left to set the pot on, her waist-length hair swaying a little as she walked away.

‘You have a nice and pretty daughter-in-law,’ Shulan said to Meifen. ‘You’re a lucky woman, Elder Sister.’

‘You don’t know what a devil of a temper she has.’

‘Mom, don’t start again,’ Tian begged.

‘See, Shulan,’ Meifen whispered, ‘my son always sides with his bride. The little fox spirit really knows how to charm her man.’

‘This is unfair, Mom,’ her son objected.

Both women laughed and turned away to wash their hands.

Ten minutes later Tian went into the living room and called Ching to come over to the table, on which, besides the steaming dumplings, were plates of smoked mackerel, roast duck, cucumber and tomato salad, and spiced bamboo shoots. When they were all seated with Meifen at the head of the rectangular table, Tian poured plum wine for Shulan and his mother. He and Connie and Ching would drink beer.

The two older women continued reminiscing about the people they both knew. To Tian’s amazement, the girl swigged her glass of beer as if it were a soft drink. Then he remembered she had spent her childhood in Harbin, where even children were beer drinkers. He spoke English with her and asked her what classes she’d been taking at school. The girl seemed too introverted to volunteer any information and just answered each question in two or three words. She confessed that she hated the Sunday class, in which she had to copy the Chinese characters and memorize them.

Shulan mentioned a man nicknamed Turtle Baron, the owner of a fishery outside Harbin.
‘Oh, I knew of him,’ Meifen said. ‘He used to drive a fancy car to the shopping district every day, but he lost his fortune.’

‘What happened?’ Shulan asked.

‘He fed drugs to crayfish so they grew big and fierce. But some Hong Kong tourists got food-poisoned and took him to court.’

‘He was a wild man, but a filial son, blowing big money on his mother’s birthdays. Where’s he now?’

‘In jail,’ Meifen said.

‘Obviously that was where he was headed. The other day I met a fellow who had just come out of the mainland. He said he wouldn’t eat street food back home any more, because he couldn’t tell what he was actually eating. Some people even make fake eggs and fake salt. It’s mind-boggling. How can anyone turn a profit by doing that, considering the labour?’

They all cracked up except for the girl.

Sprinkling a spoonful of vinegar on the three dumplings on her plate, Shulan continued, ‘People ought to believe in Jesus Christ. That’ll make them behave better, less like animals.’

‘Do you often go to church?’ Meifen asked, chewing the tip of a duck wing.

‘Yes, every Sunday. It makes me feel calm and hopeful. I used to hate my husband’s bone marrow, but now I don’t hate him any more. God will deal with him on my behalf.’
Ching listened to her mother without showing any emotion, as if Shulan were speaking about a stranger.

Meifen said, ‘Maybe I should visit your church one of these days.’

‘Please do. Let me know when you want to come. I’ll introduce you to Brother Zhou, our pastor. He’s a true gentleman. I’ve never met a man so kind. He used to be a doctor in Chengdu and still gives medical advice. He cured my stomach ulcer.’

Connie, eating focaccia bread instead of the dumplings that contained soy sauce, said under her breath, ‘Ching, do you have a boyfriend?’

Before the girl could answer, her mother cut in, pointing her chopsticks at her daughter, ‘I won’t let her. It’s just a waste of time to have a boyfriend so early. She’d better concentrate on her schoolwork.’

Ching said to Connie in English, ‘See what a bitch my mom is? She’s afraid I’ll go boy-crazy like her when she was young.’ The girl’s eyes flashed behind the lenses of her black-framed glasses.

Both Connie and Tian giggled while the two older women were bewildered, looking at them enquiringly.

Tian told them, ‘Ching’s so funny.’

‘Also tricky and headstrong,’ added her mother.

When dinner was over, Shulan was eager to leave without having tea. She said she’d forgotten to sprinkle water on the bean sprouts in her apartment, where the radiators were too hot and might shrivel the young vegetables, which she raised and would sell to a grocery store. Before they left, Connie gave the girl a book and assured her, ‘This is a very funny novel. I’ve just finished it and you’ll like it.’

Tian glanced at the title – The Catcher in the Rye – as Meifen asked, ‘What’s it about?’

‘A boy left school and goofed around in New York,’ Connie answered.

‘So he’s a dropout?’

‘Kind of.’

‘Why give Ching such a book? It can be a bad influence. Do you mean to teach her to rebel against her mother?’

‘It’s a good book!’ Connie spat out.

Tian said to the guests, ‘Let’s go.’

The moment they stepped out the door, he overheard his mother growl at Connie, ‘Don’t play the scholar with me! Don’t ever talk back to me in front of others!’

‘You were wrong about the book,’ Connie countered.

Their exchange unsettled Tian, who knew they would bicker more when he was away. It got windy, the road iced over. He drove slowly. Before every lighted intersection he placed his foot on the brake pedal to make sure he could stop the car fully if the light turned red. Ching was in the back dozing away while her mother in the passenger seat chatted to Tian without pause. She praised Meifen as an educated woman who gave no airs. How fortunate Tian must feel to have such a clear-headed and warm-hearted mother, in addition to a beautiful, well-educated wife. Her words made Tian’s molars itch and he wanted to tell her to shut her trap, but he checked himself. He still felt for this woman.
Somehow he couldn’t drive from his mind her image behind the food stand, her face steaming with sweat and her eyes downcast in front of customers while her knotted hands were packing snacks into Styrofoam boxes.

He dropped Shulan and Ching at their building and turned back. After he exited the highway and as he was entering College Point Boulevard, a police cruiser suddenly rushed out of a narrow street and slid towards him from the side. Tian slammed on the brakes, but the heads of the two cars collided with a bang; his Volkswagen, much lighter than the bulky Ford, was thrown aside and fishtailed a few times before it stopped. Tian’s head had hit the door window, his ears buzzing, though he was still alert.

A black policeman hopped out of the cruiser and hurried over. ‘Hey, man, are you okay?’ he cried, and knocked on Tian’s windshield.

Tian opened his door and nodded. ‘I didn’t see you, sorry about this, Officer.’ He clambered out.

‘I’m sorry, man.’ Somehow the squarish cop chuckled. ‘I hit you. I couldn’t stop my car – the road is too damned slippery.’

Tian walked around and looked at the head of his sedan. The glass covers of the headlight and the blinker were smashed, but somehow all the lights were still on. A dent the size of a football warped the fender. ‘Well, what should I do?’ he wondered aloud.

The man grinned. ‘It’s my fault. My car slid into the traffic. How about this – I give you a hundred bucks and you won’t file a report?’

Tian peered at the officer’s cat-like face and realized that the man was actually quite anxious – maybe he was new here. ‘Okay,’ Tian said, despite knowing that the amount might not cover the repairs.

‘You’re a good guy.’ The policeman pulled five twenties out of his billfold. ‘Here you are. I appreciate it.’

Tian took the money and stepped into his car. The officer shouted, ‘God bless you!’ as Tian drove away. He listened closely to his car, which sounded noisier than before. He hoped there was no inner damage. On the other hand, this was an old car, worth less than a thousand dollars. He shouldn’t worry too much about the dent.

The instant he stepped into his house, he heard his mother yell, ‘Oh yeah? How much have you paid for this house? This is my son’s home and you should be grateful that Tian has let you live here.’

‘This is my home too,’ Connie fired back. ‘You’re merely our guest, a visitor.’

Heavens, they’d never stop fighting! Tian rushed into the living room and shouted, ‘You two be quiet!’

But Connie turned to him and said sharply, ‘Tell your mother, I’m a co-owner of this house.’

That was true, yet his mother also knew that Connie hadn’t paid a cent for it. Tian had added her name as a co-buyer because he wanted her to keep the home if something fatal happened to him.

His mother snarled at Connie, ‘Shameless, a typical ingrate from un upstart’s family!’

‘Don’t you dare run down my dad! He makes an honest living.’

Indeed, her father in Tianjin City was just scraping by with his used-furniture business.

‘Knock it off, both of you!’ Tian roared again. ‘I just had an accident. Our car was damaged, hit by a cop.’

Even that didn’t impress the women. Connie cried at Meifen, ‘See, I told you there’d be a snowstorm, but you were too vain to cancel the dinner. Did you mean to have your son killed?’

‘It was all my fault, huh? Why didn’t you learn how to drive? What have you been doing all these years?’

‘I’ve never met someone so irrational.’

‘I don’t know anyone as rude and as brazen as you.’

‘Damn it, I just had an accident!’ Tian shouted again.

His wife looked him up and down. ‘I can see you’re all right. It’s an old car anyway. Let’s face the real issue here: I cannot live under the same roof with this woman. If she doesn’t leave, I will and I’ll never come back.’ She marched away to her own room upstairs.

As Tian was wondering whether he should follow her, his mother said, ‘If you’re still my son, you must divorce her. Do it next week. She’s a sick, finicky woman and will give you weak kids.’

‘You’re crazy too!’ he growled.

He stomped away and shut the door of the study, in which he was to spend that night trying to figure out how to prevent Connie from leaving him. He would lose his mind if that happened, he was sure.