Because the Wangs lived nearby, whenever Nan needed help, he'd ask Mrs. Wang to come in and work a few hours. The old woman was more than happy to do that, to make a couple of dollars. Sometimes Mr. Wang would drop in and palaver with Nan and Pingping. He was often bored at home despite having on his roof the satellite dish called "the Little Ear," which enabled him to watch many TV shows in Mandarin and Cantonese. There were few Chinese living nearby- most of the Asian immigrants lived in Duluth, a town seven miles to the northeast-and the Wangs seemed to have no friends here. They had a daughter working for a Taiwanese airline in Seattle. She was there just temporarily, so the Wangs wouldn't go and join her. The old man would sigh and say to Pingping, " America is a good place only for young people. Once you're old, you feel awful living here, just a nuisance. "
"Why won't you go back to China?" Pingping asked, knowing he had been born in Fujian Province. "I heard that lots of people bought retirement homes there."
"I wish we could do that. It costs too much. Besides, I don't trust the mainland government."
"How about Taiwan? Can't you live there?"
"The same thing. The legal system is a slum there, not a good place to retire to. Many people are desperate to leave the island. They don't want to get trapped there when the mainland launches an attack."
"How about Singapore?"
" That small country is just like another province of China. The Chinese government controls nearly everything there. Here's a copy of the United Morning Post, published in Singapore. You should read it. Terrible. The paper not only uses the Communists' language but also reprints the news distorted by the mainland media."
"Do you plan to stay here for many years?"
" Hard to say. "
To a degree, Nan and Pingping felt uneasy about the Wangs' situation and often talked about the old couple. They couldn't help but imagine their own old age, though it was still far away. It must be frightening to lead such an isolated life. Would they end up like the Wangs, who wandered around like scarecrows, still out of place after living here for three decades?
Probably not. Unlike them, Nan and Pingping spoke English better and were never afraid of isolation. They wanted to take root here, having nowhere else to go. That was why Nan had seized every opportunity to learn English. He knew that in this land the language was like a body of water in which he had to learn how to swim and breathe, even though he'd feel out of his element whenever he used it. If he didn't try hard to adapt himself, developing new "lungs and gills" for this alien water, his life would be confined and atrophied, and eventually wither away.
Whenever Nan had a free moment at work, he would read his Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary because it was monolingual. He still used his bilingual dictionary, which was getting tattered, especially when he couldn't figure out what a noun referred to as described in English. He could see that on the whole the definitions of the word entries written in English were more accurate than those given in Chinese. In addition, using the monolingual dictionary was a way to make himself think in English. He highlighted the words and phrases unfamiliar to him so that he could review them after he went over the entire volume. He had also bought a softcover New English-Chinese Dictionary for Pingping, but she seldom bothered to open it. Even when she came across a new word in her reading, she wouldn't look it up, able to figure out its meaning from the context most times. She was so smart that she had little need for a dictionary.
7
ON SATURDAY MORNING a UPS van came to deliver their boxes, all of which bore the sticker FRAGILE, a few wrapped with duct tape and a broken one spewing foam peanuts. Nan found that a box, number 21, was missing. This upset him. He was sure it contained some of his poetry books, though he couldn't name the titles at the moment. The deliveryman promised to check on it and have it sent over within a day or two, which actually never happened. Nan used a hand truck to move the boxes into their apartment through the screen door of the living room, but the Wus had to leave for work and couldn't open them until they were back at night.
That night, after unpacking them, they found the microwave broken. Taotao helped his father set up the computer, which was out of order too. Only the Sanyo TV set still worked, but it had more noise now and could pick up merely two channels. Nothing had been insured, so there was no way to claim damages.
" This is a minor loss that will preempt real disasters," Pingping said, just to console her son and husband. Yet Taotao was inconsolable and eager to have his computer fixed so that he could play chess with it again. For this machine assembled in a barn in Keene, New Hampshire, Nan had paid only seven hundred dollars, so it wasn't worth repairing. Taotao then wanted a new computer, but his parents refused to buy that, saying they'd have to save every penny for the home they'd purchase in the future.
"Do you want to throw away five hundred and fifty dollars every month?" Pingping asked him, referring to the rent they paid.
"No."
"Then we mustn't continue to waste money this way. Once we have our own home, we'll get you a computer."
The boy knew it was futile to argue, yet he wouldn't drop the topic without another try. He said, "I don't want to go to the restaurant anymore. Leave me at home."
"That's illegal," put in his father.
"It's not safe here," his mom added anxiously. "What if somebody breaks in and snatches you away? He'll sell you to a stranger and you won't be able to see us again. Would you like that?"
"No. I just don't want to stay in the damned restaurant anymore. It makes me sick just to smell the air in there."
"You have to come with us."
The couple living upstairs started fighting again. That stopped the Wus' argument. Neither Nan nor Pingping had ever met the man and woman, having to go to work early in the morning and come back late at night. Yet they had heard enough of their exchanges to know them almost intimately.
Would that couple ever be quiet and peaceful? They always yelled at each other as if they couldn't live for a day without a fight. Sometimes they'd wake Pingping up in the middle of the night.
Taotao kicked a squashed box, sullen and tearful.
"You're a sex maniac," said the woman upstairs. "I've already let you have it twice this week-when will it ever be enough for you? I can't sleep afterward. I'm having an interview tomorrow morning. Just leave me alone tonight, okay?"
"Don't talk to me like that," the man snapped. "If you hate sex so much, why live with me?"
"Get real here. You begged me to shack up with you. I still hate myself for listening to you."
"I'll be damned if I can understand this."
"You can never understand a woman. Else your wife wouldn't have left you for the other guy." "Shut the hell up!"
Then came a crash. Shoes started scraping the floor. They must have been grappling with each other.
Pingping noticed her son prick up his ears. She said, "Taotao, go to bathroom and brush your teeth." That also meant it was time for bed.
The next day they cleared out a space in the storage room in the back of the restaurant and put in a small desk, at which Taotao could do his work for the time being. Both Pingping and Nan felt for him. Every day the boy had to stay with them for more than twelve hours, and not until ten p.m. could they go back together. To make Taotao more comfortable, Nan got a thirteen-inch TV for him, but they made him promise not to watch it too often. They also put in a love seat bought at a Goodwill store, on which the boy could nap. When it wasn't busy, Pingping would go to the back room and check on him. If he was idle or watching TV, she'd urge him to do his "homework," assigned by her. Seldom would he come to the front to see his parents.