Re Jane (4 page)

Devon, peeking out again from the window, called out, “Ma, I need your help. What's the author mean by this?” Devon had completely interrupted our interview, but Beth did not tell her it was rude. Sang and Hannah always used to wave me away when they were with other adults, until I was old enough to learn not to bother them at all. Instead Beth turned her full attention to her daughter. “Let's have a look, sweetie.” Devon brought the paper to Beth and inserted herself into her mother's lap.

Beth studied the page. I mean,
studied.
At first I'd thought, based on the thick white paper and colorful illustration on the cover, that it was some sort of children's newspaper. I was wrong. The text inside was chunky, with little white space. Four minutes ticked by. (I kept making not-so-subtle glances at my watch.) I thought of what Sang would say:
You think time like some kind of luxury?
But Beth was so absorbed in her reading it was as if the rest of us weren't even there.

Finally she looked up. “Okay, sweetie, let's break it down. The author refers to a ‘cultural investigation.' What do you suppose she means by that?”

“I already
know
what that
means,” Devon said impatiently. But her mother was still looking expectantly at her. “
Fine.
‘Investigation.' It's like when a detective goes around and starts looking for clues to solve a crime. Like this one time on
Law & Order
they were interviewing the murder victim's parole officer—” She clamped a hand over her mouth. Beth shot her husband a look. “Ed!”

I don't know how I thought Ed Farley would react. But he just gave a boyish shrug of his shoulders and said, “She wandered in while it was on TV. What, you wanted me to turn our daughter away?”

“And Daddy made me do muffin ears and face the wall whenever they did the shooting scenes,” Devon piped up, thinking she was helping their case.

Beth shook her head. “Sometimes I don't know what to do with your father.” She sighed. Given the rather jocular tone of the family moment, I thought she would leaven her words with a smile, but instead she shot her husband another angry look.

Beth and Devon continued to discuss the article. There was an exhaustive thoroughness to Beth's explanations, so much so that she generated little forward movement. She seemed to circle in place, hovering over each word as she unpacked its meaning, before she moved on. She was, I could tell, a dogged perfectionist—she took all the time in the world to belabor each and every point. It was exasperating to watch. Yet Beth never seemed exasperated. She continued looking intently, tenderly, at her daughter until it was clear that Devon understood the whole piece.

When they were finished, Beth folded her daughter into her arms. “
Wo ai ni,
Devon.”

“
Wo ai ni,
Ma,” Devon said, her arms wrapped in a choke hold around her mother's neck.

Then, perhaps so she wouldn't leave her father out, she yanked on his hand. “
Wo ai ni,
Daddy.”

He put down his paper. “I love you, too, Devon,” he said, and gathered her into a bear hug. Then the family reconfigured into a group huddle.

Devon exchanged another conspiratorial look with her mother.
Should we?
she seemed to say. Beth nodded. Their circle parted. Ed Farley was opposite me at the far end of that circle, flanked by his wife and daughter. Devon and Beth each entwined their arms fiercely around me.

It would have been so easy to write them off. Beth Mazer, with her hairy armpits and her complete lack of social grace. Ed Farley, gruff and a little cold, and probably ten years her junior. Their daughter, Devon, a half-pint-size imitation of her mother, even though she was Chinese. And now they were
touching
me. Sang and Hannah never hugged me. They didn't even hug their own children. We were not a touchy-feely kind of family. I could have chalked up the whole strange experience to potential cocktail-party fodder:
This one time? When I interviewed to be a nanny?
They were a family of freaks.

And yet.

Something in that moment shifted for me; I can't explain why. On a rational level, I recognized the corniness of the moment. I recognized the inappropriateness of their behavior, of the job itself, the underutility of my college degree. Yet I also considered the way Beth had explained the article to Devon, saw the way she was holding her now. I suddenly pictured myself living with them, being taken into the fold. It did not seem so far-fetched that I could be Devon's au pair. My tense shoulders began to loosen. Slowly I returned Devon and Beth Mazer's embrace. I took care not to brush hands with Ed Farley.

And then, just as immediately, we broke free and something shifted again.

“I know what you're thinking. My Mandarin's terrible,” Beth said.

“It's true! All the kids at Chinese school make fun of Ma's
bakgwai
accent,” Devon said.

I didn't know exactly what
bakgwai
meant, but I recognized it as a not-nice way the Chinese kids sometimes referred to the American kids at school. Beth blushed. I was surprised by how deeply her cheeks flushed red, for a woman who seemed to have no sense of shame. She said, “Be honest, Jane. Just how bad is my accent?”

Did she think I was Chinese? If Beth Mazer hadn't waved away my résumé, she would have found, listed under “Skills,” a proficiency in Korean, not Mandarin.

“I'm . . . um, Korean—”

“You're
not
Chinese?” Beth interrupted. “You mean, Ed didn't . . .” I didn't think her face could get any redder, but it grew redder still. Her eyes darted to her husband. “Ed!”

While Ed Farley took his time composing his response, Beth whipped her head back to me. “
Please
don't think I'm one of those people who just assumes. God, I'm mortified! You must think I'm a culturally insensitive
boor.
But it's just . . . we advertised for a Chinese au pair
.
”

“The ad cut out,” was all I could manage.
Nunchi
forbade me from saying anything more, such as,
Why didn't you write a shorter ad?

“Ed. Could I speak to you in the kitchen? Please. Now.” Beth's questions fell flat at the ends, like statements.

Ed Farley let out an exasperated sigh. “If we must.”

The two got up and left the room. I wondered if I should just see myself out. While I puzzled over what to do, Devon bounded across the room and took her father's seat next to me.

I heard indecipherable murmurs coming from the other side of the house.

“It'll be okay,” Devon said, patting my hand, as if our roles were reversed.

I looked over at her, her face contorted into the kind of scrunch that Hannah always yelled at me to fix. Did it bother Devon that she looked nothing like her parents? When I was her age, my hair was much lighter than the black it eventually settled into, and a smattering of freckles spread like wings on either side of my nose. People were always pointing out the differences. It made me grow awkward and tentative in social situations. Yet Devon seemed so assured of her place in the world. She was just like her mother.

I heard a burst, from Mr. Farley. “. . . about to ask if she's Chinese over the phone!”

Beth murmured, “. . . our daughter's development.”

Devon put on a bright smile. “Let's read something.” When she said, “Let's,” she'd actually meant “I'll.” She snapped open her newspaper and began to read, in an even, eloquent voice, tripping over fewer words than I would have if the paper had been placed in my hands.

I heard Mr. Farley's voice again. “Then I guess you can't hire her!”

“But she's . . .” Beth trailed off.

Ed Farley walked briskly back into the room. I stood up. Then, standing close enough for me to smell his clean soap smell, he said, “We'll be in touch.”

I'd heard those words repeated from enough HR departments to know what they meant: Thanks, but no thanks. I'd bombed—for being the wrong kind of Asian. I couldn't even land my backup plan, a job that up until a few moments ago I hadn't even wanted in the first place.

Devon looked up at me and squeezed my hand. “Best of luck,” she said.

“You, too,” I said, though she didn't need it. I squeezed back.

I told Mr. Farley I'd see myself out. I retraced the circuitous route to the front door. Beth Mazer stopped me in the foyer, breathless.

“I am
so
sorry about that,” she said, taking my hands in hers. “It was just an awful miscommunication. . . .” She studied my face. “You seem like
such
a special young woman.”

With that she folded me into her arms. It was unexpected. I fell against her with my whole body. “Good-bye for now,” she said.

When I left the Mazer-Farley house, I still carried the scent of Beth's touch; she smelled of lavender and fermenting onions. An unpleasant smell, but also oddly comforting.

I
wouldn't say my earliest associations with Food were pleasant ones. Sang first opened the store when I was around eight years old. According to Hannah, it took him several years to have enough confidence to start another business, post-blackout. But this time he retreated closer to home, instead of opening in Manhattan like so many of his peers.

Sang was especially irritable in those early days. All of us—Hannah, Mary, even little George—lived in fear and trembling, never sure of what small thing would trigger his too-quick temper. It might have been the way the toilet paper hung from its dispenser, making the user have to inconveniently search through the roll to find where the trail began. He'd come bellowing out of the bathroom. Sometimes I was the last of the family to scramble, and I'd be left to bear the brunt of his wrath.

It was always just him and me. I was the oldest of the children, so after school Sang would pick me up and take me to work on the store, while the others stayed home. He climbed up a ladder to remove the drop-ceiling panels, and he'd pass them down to me. They were stained and moldy on the underside. When the ceilings were done, we put down new flooring. I remembered struggling with the math, trying to figure out how many tiles would fit across the length and width of the store (
“Report card say you good at math. Why you not show?
”), which only made the sums that much harder.

Then it came time to mark the grids across the floor. We each grasped either end of a piece of string, and Sang ran the line on a solid block of chalk he held in his hands. (Later I would learn this was his cheap alternative to buying an actual chalk reel.) How my hands shook as I backed away from Sang! When he snapped the line, the string whipped my fingers and I let go. Sang was furious. We had to redo the line several times before it was perfectly straight. Whenever I stare down at the floor tiles of Food, I can still feel the sting of Sang's words from that day. When all the construction was done, we cleaned the floors—Sang swept, I mopped. The mop was too big and unwieldy for my hands. When I was older and we'd learn about child-labor laws at school, I'd get angry at Sang.
That was against the law! You should go to jail!
Then he'd snap back—
Then who gonna buy your food? Who gonna pay your clothes?—
which would always shut me down.

But through all that, one memory in particular emerged.
Jane-ah! Come here!
Sang had shouted. I hurried toward him, bracing myself for a scolding. Sang was crouched over a ceiling panel; something was stuck to its underside. I crouched next to him. He poked the thing with a Phillips-head screwdriver: it was a dead mouse, fused to the panel and fossilized. A few tufts of hair poked out from the bones. Empty shells that looked like the skin of popcorn kernels studded the mouse's chest cavity. Fly larvae. “I wonder whether he getting eaten alive or he die first,” Sang said. He clucked his tongue. “Either way, I guess he not go to waste.”

After we finished for the day, Sang took me to McDonald's next to the public library. As he ate his Big Mac with gusto, I stared at my Chicken McNuggets and thought about the dead mouse picked clean. Nothing ever went to waste.

* * *

When I arrived at Food after meeting with the Mazer-Farleys, Sang asked me how my “bank” interview went. I told him they'd “be in touch.”

Even my uncle understood what that meant. “Because you not try hard enough,” he said.

“Yes, Uncle. I'm sure that's the reason.”

“You back-talk me?” His nostrils flared, the way they always flared with annoyance. I mumbled no.

Sang ordered me to go change out of my suit. Because, as he'd lectured me many times, the customers might think you were showing off with their hard-earned money. That was one of the reasons he drove a
ddong-cha,
a poop car. Yet Pastor Bae drove a Mercedes-Benz S-class—apparently he wasn't afraid of the congregation seeing what he did with the weekly collections. Hannah, who faithfully wore her darned sweaters and hole-ridden pants at the store, didn't see why we also had to live in a
ddong
house, when other families at church—like the Ohs—had years ago left Flushing for Long Island.

It was busy that day at Food, and the walk-in box was being particularly temperamental. I caught up with my uncle and told him the door was acting up again.

Sang gave me a look—
And so?
—and said, “How long you work here?” Releasing his hand truck, he did the jiggle-slide-shuffle routine with an ease that never came naturally for me. “See? You act like problem when there's no problem.” He slammed the door shut again.

If I hadn't just come back from the interview with the Mazer-Farleys, I might not have opened my mouth right then (it was hard to believe that interview had taken place only a few hours ago). “I think we should have . . . a
conversation
about it,” I said, repeating Beth's words.

“A what?” Sang jerked his head toward the front of the store, and through the rubber flaps of the doorway I could see the growing line of customers at the register, where Hannah was now. “Who got time for conversation? You think time like some kind of luxury?”

With that he pushed aside the thick plastic strips hanging in the doorway and wheeled off.

I stared at the door with a rising anger. I tried it again.
Fuck this.
I grasped the handle with two hands and yanked it free.

The first thing I heard was a
pop!
Then a crunch. The door handle pulled free and clattered to the floor.

Sang heard the commotion and rushed back to the walk-in, immediately followed by Hwan. They both surveyed the damage. Then Sang looked at me, his eyes blackening.

“You . . . nothing . . . but . . . the . . . careless!” Once he wrenched those first words out, the rest poured forth quickly. “What, you do on purpose? Show off how you right? You no idea how much it gonna cost?”

When Sang grew excited, his already tenuous command of English grammar fell in inverse proportion to his rising anger. I always found it odd that he stuck it out with English rather than simply switching over to Korean. But in the house he spoke in Korean only to his wife and in select moments of tenderness, like when he was talking with his daughter.

Hwan was crouched at the door with a can of WD-40 and a pocketknife, trying to pry it open.

“You know why this happen, right?” Sang went on. “Because you act like wild girl!”

But each person has a breaking point. I had reached mine. I shouted, “That door's been like that my entire life!”

There was another
pop!
and crunch between us, but it wasn't the door handle. Then Sang's voice grew eerily calm.

“Okay. Go to office call Mr. Hwang. His brother the repairman. Get the brother number and tell him come to Food right now. But after that you just go home. Today you causing more trouble than you help.
Ga.
” That last command—
Go
—was issued in Korean. Then he turned on his heel and walked away.

When Sang was gone, Hwan said, “I hate this damn door, too.” With a twist of his knife, he set the door free. He dragged the cinder block against it, leaving it a crack ajar. He fixed his steady gaze on my face; I looked away. “Your uncle, he get angry now, but, eh, you know he always cool down quick. You no worry, Miss Jane.”

I looked up. But before I could say, “Thank you,” Hwan was already gone, the plastic strips in the doorway flapping closed behind him.

* * *

The week wore on. At work I measured out my life with cans of Spam, with apples and pears and boxes of Napa cabbage, with milk and honey and D batteries, with dimes, nickels, pennies, and food stamps. With each passing day, my thoughts would turn to the Mazer-Farleys. I took their silence to mean they'd moved on.

One night, almost a week after my interview, the five of us were sitting around the flimsy card table in the kitchen. The remains of our dinner were spread before us: a picked-apart fried mackerel, its shredded skin glinting like flakes of gold leaf; cubes of
kkakdugi
-radish kimchi (a name, I was certain, that derived from the sound you made—
kkak!
—as you bit into it); garlic stems, smothered in red-pepper paste; cold beef chunks and hard-boiled eggs, stewed in soy sauce; shriveled-up baby sardines.

The window fan whirred but offered little reprieve from the late-summer heat, barely moving the air that was thick with humidity and the smells of fried fish and Hannah's fermented bean paste. George left the table for the family computer in the living room. He did not clear away his bowl and chopsticks. Mary left the table to practice piano for church service. She carried her bowl and chopsticks to the sink but did not wash them. Each time someone got up, the table wobbled, despite the folded-up magazine pages wedged under one leg.

After Hannah and I cleared the table and washed the dishes, Sang asked me again whether I'd heard back from my interview. When I told him I hadn't, he shook his head with disappointment. “You want something happen? You gotta make happen. When other people sleeping, you suppose to be digging well.”

Abruptly I rose from the table. The backs of my thighs made a squelching sound against the plastic seat. I opened the fridge to the usual assortment of bruised fruit. We took home the rejects from the store, and that night there were Asian pears, which were my favorite.

When I returned to the table with the most banged-up of pears, Sang was fanning himself with a Con Ed bill. Hannah was boiling water for tea. (She thought that eating hot foods on hot days was good for the system.) I set to work on the pear, slicing away its sores, the card table all the while rocking unsteadily. Then I began to peel.

Sang stopped me. “Look, you waste.” He held up the pear peel and pointed to the white flesh on the underside. I'd cut too thick a peel. He shook his head in disappointment. Asian pears cost us around four dollars each at wholesale. Hannah picked up my too-thick peel and put it in her mouth, scraping off its flesh as if it were an artichoke leaf.

Sang launched into one of his stories that were always the same: the business of Flushing. Which of his friends were making money and which were not. In this case Mr. Hwang and his real-estate deal.

Sang's eyes, seeking an audience, darted through the doorway to his daughter at the piano, but she was immersed in her Bach. Mary always started her piano sessions with warm-up scales, then a couple of Bach two-part inventions, which you could always tell from their utter mathematical symmetry, then something more erratic and swelling: sometimes Beethoven, sometimes Rachmaninoff. Sang's eyes moved on to his son at the computer. George was clicking furiously on the mouse with one hand while punching a key with the index finger of the other. Sang sighed, his story barely started. It felt rude to leave him hanging. “Which deal is this again, Uncle?”

My uncle ignored me. “
Ya!
Georgie-ah!” Sang said. “Your
abba
talking to you!”

George looked up from his computer game and groaned. Reluctantly he trotted back to the kitchen table. Mary stopped her piano. “George! Did you log off? I'm expecting a phone call.” George returned to the computer and replugged the cord into the phone jack.

Sang began his story again. “Hwang just buy house in Great Neck. Kings Point! When he suppose to buy business building instead. Now he have Chinese landlord. Every morning ten, fifteen Chinese people coming up from building basement. They just living
there. Those people, willing to sacrifice anything. Where they go bathroom?”

The phone rang as my uncle went on about the Chinese. Mary rushed across the living room to answer it. “Jane, it's for you.” She held out the receiver.

“Jane!” a voice cried out. “It's Beth Mazer. We've been trying you all night, but the line was busy!”

“I'm sorry, my cousin was on the computer.” I glared in George's direction, but he was engrossed in his pear. His eyes went blank whenever he chewed, as if he were gazing across the pasture. I envied his ability to escape.

“Jane, my
sincerest
apologies for the delay. I was away at a conference and then et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I'm calling to offer you the au pair position with our family, and I'm crossing my fingers that you haven't already been snapped up—i.e., if you even still
want
the position. . . .” She named a figure that would have been one-third my starting salary at Lowood, before factoring in annual bonuses. Of course, her figure included room and board. I wondered whether I'd been her first choice or if she'd made similar calls to others and was forced to move further down her list.

“And,” she continued, “we really loved you—Devon
especially. We'd be
honored
if you joined our household.”

“But I thought”—I cupped the receiver with my hand—“I wasn't what you and Mr. Farley wanted.”

I could see Sang pretending not to listen.

“
Please,
we're on a first name basis in this household. Call him Ed. And again, my utter apologies for that miscommunication.” Her tone was breezy. “While we did
initially
want an au pair who spoke Chinese, we've since had some conversations. Devon's getting quite a lot of exposure through her Chinese school, and . . .” Beth trailed off. “So what do you think? Will you join us?”

I knew I should not have taken that job. I should have held out for a better offer. At the very least, I should have asked for a day or two to think it over. And I definitely should have asked Sang and Hannah's permission.

But sometimes you don't always do what you should do. I wanted that job.

I found myself blurting out, “I'd love to. Thank you for this opportunity.”

“Fantastic! We are so thrilled,” Beth said. We made arrangements for me to start the next morning.