The Natural Laws of Good Luck (14 page)

I didn't know what to do, and when I recalled what I had learned from the other kids, it didn't apply to this one. Mavis was eight when she confessed that she had no idea how to write a poem for school. I told her this was very easy—just climb a tree and wait there until one came. To my surprise, it worked. Trial and error was always an acceptable way to proceed, better than giving up. I rewired lights by looking at how the guy before me had done it and, when the pipes under the sink fell apart, put them back together with hardly any leaks. Gradually, I gained authority. I thought being able to tell a Phillips screwdriver from a regular one made the world more hospitable; held securely in the hand, the way the star-shaped tool fits the star-shaped groove is an antidote to anxiety. By the time my son wondered how he could learn to do something with his hands besides catch a ball, I had the answer: “Honey, you just have to be willing to be bad at it for a while.” I had mastered other things by first being terrible at them, and now I wondered how long I would have to be a terrible stepmother before I learned how to do it.

Sweet Sweet's cousin Xiou Mei brought over her old computer so that Sweet Sweet could talk in chat rooms with other enthusiasts of Japanese anime cartoons. Despite this global competition, I resumed reaching out to Sweet Sweet with as much detachment as I could muster. I got used to “No” and sometimes, amazingly, “No thanks.” If I was going somewhere, I opened the door to her room. She would be there, all right, hunkered down over the computer with bloodshot eyes. “Sweet Sweet, I'm going to an African dance party. It's cool music. You might like it. Want to come with me?”

“OK.”

“OK” always surprised the hell out of me. Off we went to the riverfront warehouse where a Senegalese dance troupe was performing. People were already dancing. I spotted some old friends and eagerly joined them, towing Sweet Sweet by the hand. We were in the middle of the happy dancers. A young African woman bumped up against Sweet Sweet, who was making minuscule hip movements and twitching her shoulders in her own shorthand version of dancing. The woman said “Hi” and smiled warmly, looking directly into Sweet Sweet's eyes. Sweet Sweet kept up her understated swaying; her lips curled up just a little, accepting that a stranger was dancing with her, just inches from her face. We danced until we were hot and sweaty and the drummer's hands disappeared into the final frenzy of sound.

Every night we bumped heads in the center of the table over the family bowl. Together we slurped, smacked, belched, and spat fish bones on the table. Before school, after school, all weekend, and on vacations, Sweet Sweet sat immobile in front of a computer screen. The neat stockpiles of candy in her drawer could keep her going in the Chinese chat rooms for twelve hours at a stretch. When she got tired of that, she played solitaire. She came out to eat, use the toilet, and once in a while ask me for help with English essays. Those evenings would begin with the question “Did you read the story?” No, she had not read the story. “OK, let's read the story together.” At the end, I asked, “What do you think?” Shrug. When I asked, “Do you like this story?” her answer was, “I never think about.” Her English class was reading
The Great Gatsby
. The assignment was to find a place where Nick is suspicious that Gatsby is not what he says he is. Her response: “Gatsby really love Daisy with true love.” That's what grabbed her, so I had no choice but to abandon the teacher's agenda and follow her lead.

“Really? OK. How do you know that? Do you think he loved her or his perfect idea of her?”

She cocked her head and thought. “No. I think he really love. He know Daisy do some bad thing, but he never tell.”

Homework took us hours. We read
The Great Gatsby
from front to back and back to front. We read Langston Hughes's “One Friday Morning,” about a girl who has a scholarship taken from her because she is black. The teacher wanted the students to talk about irony. Why was the author emphasizing the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance? What was he showing the reader? The hesitation was long enough for me to gaze out the window at the pond. The heron rose from the darkening reeds, his long legs streaming with silver strands of water. “Incomplete America,” she said.

Da Jie

D
A JIE COULD DISPERSE OUR GLOOM
whenever we succumbed to bicultural fatigue. We had only one technique for dealing with this, which was basically to cease talking altogether until our communicating faculties recharged. Da Jie was a traveling party. Instead of walking to the door, she pulled her car up on the grass as close to the door as possible and honked loudly until someone ran out to carry her bag and her little shih tzu dog inside. My own dogs, not allowed in the house, pressed their noses to the glass door to observe this imperial brat, who was shaped like a small keg of whiskey.

Before sitting down, Da Jie unwrapped a pork bone for her dog-child to munch on. Soon the bone spun around on the floor with the dog prancing happily in the grease. She tracked it into the living room and then bounded upstairs to leave a turd on our bedroom floor.

Da Jie's first concern was that her brother not perish from my cooking. To prevent that, she tried to educate me. She brought three chickens, dead but not beheaded, plucked but not really. Old chickens were best for soup, she said. “Small feathers around pee-pee part you need pull out. You need cut up-ah.” She laughed uproariously at my efforts. “Oh, you cut like that. He-he-he! Maybe OK. He-he-he. You kill me! Now you need boil short time. Now
you need take out, wash again. Now you need boil again. Now you need take off dirty. Now you need boil one more time. OK-ah. Now you need put green onion. Put ginger. Now you need cut daikon. Small piece no good eat. Cut big piece. I show you-ah. No, no, Ellen-ah. You need not cook too little. Not cook too long. I remind you later make sure, OK-ah.”

Da Jie lay down sideways in our one plush chair, her feet hanging over one arm and her head pillowed on the other. I hastened to get the woodstove blazing for her pleasure while Zhong-hua made tea and peeled some fruit to place before her. By now the brat was back, crawling backward dragging the pork bone and growling through clenched teeth. Zhong-hua unwrapped the remaining packages of meat and fish while I peeled garlic, chopped ginger, and dashed outside to dig scallions in the dark. One would think we had a host of visiting dignitaries rather than just one.

Zhong-hua drew up a kitchen chair next to his sister, and the tea party began in earnest. The talking became more and more excited and loud, the teacups emptied and refilled, steaming water replenished the tea leaves in the pot, the mountain of cubed papaya shrank, crisp winter melon replaced the papaya, and pork knuckles and fish heads bubbled furiously on the stove. Brother and sister read their way through the mint green and hot pink pages of the Chinese newspaper, crumpled them up, and strewed them about like big paper flowers. The wood floor creaked as Da Jie rolled her weight around in the big chair. Such evenings always passed in a cacophony of abundance. I sat on the arm of Da Jie's chair and followed as best I could the deep-throated speech that sparred and thrust about the low-ceilinged room propelled by a tireless recycling of air.

Da Jie brought over some “very, very special” tea that cost one hundred dollars per pound made from the first leaves gathered in the mist on Tai Mountain in the two hours before dawn. I brewed the tea in a tall light green pot with old monks and flying cranes painted on it that Zhong-hua had made under my tutelage when
he first arrived. He was very proud of it. Da Jie sat sideways in her favorite chair, and Zhong-hua pulled up one of the folding metal chairs from the kitchen. I set the teapot carefully on the floor between them, and the dainty cups Zhong-hua had painted with cucumber vines and ducklings on a trembling TV table. They took turns leaning forward to fill and refill the cups. Da Jie's voice became more and more shrill, and she poured the tea right up over the rims, paying no mind to the puddles on the table, which turned into a lake and sloshed onto the floor.

They had drained five pots of tea, eaten both platters of fruit cubes, and were gnawing on boiled pork knuckles. Then Da Jie had to pee. When Da Jie's feet felt around for the floor, they struck the teapot and broke off the spout. A split second of dismay stilled his face, then Zhong-hua said emphatically that this teapot was no good in the first place. His sister agreed, and we all laughed from the belly now that the beautiful pot was no more. Da Jie clapped her hands. “Ellen-ah, I tell you: I believe I lose something, must mean my luck change. Maybe whole life get better now. I this time break teapot is good thing! Good!”

As conversation gained speed, I understood less and less. My Chinese relatives did not usually bother to translate, but once in a while Da Jie patted my leg. “Ellen-ah, you know we talk about what? We talk about my mother after Chairman Mao times get very fat. Very fat. Oh my God! Fat! You know, Ellen-ah, my mother have small feet, lotus flower feet. Cannot walk far. Cannot walk fast. My mother have best heart. Before she get fat, long time family have not enough food. My mother just drink water, chew small piece dry, flat bread. Food she all give to husband and children. Two hands can fit around my waist like this because nothing to eat. Also, mother worry about my brother—he cannot run after she because he feet lotus flower feet.” The Chinese language is not gendered. There is just one word for
he
,
she
, and
it
, which is why many Chinese people, when speaking English, sometimes use
he
and
she
interchangeably. Chinese also does not use different tenses
to indicate past, present, and future. The present tense usually does triple duty, with the context clarifying time frame. Grammatical differences, added to the inverted sentence structure of English, make it a mind-twisting challenge, as is Chinese for the English speaker. Personally, I think English is harder to learn.

“Zhong-hua love running along top of rooftop. Rooftop not flat, so very dangerous. Some neighbor look up and see my brother running on roof. He tell my mother. Mother say, ‘Son, you want to fall off rooftop and die? Don't bother. Instead, I beat you dead right now with this stick!' Zhong-hua like to swim in the river. Every year some children dying in river because river very deep, water too quickly. Mother hold Zhong-hua's arm when he come home; with her fingernail scrape off river dirt and know Zhong-hua go swimming. She say, ‘Oh, you want to die in the river? No need! I beat you dead.' She beat him so hard he cannot sit down in school for a week. Teacher say, ‘Sit down! Sit down!' but he cannot sit. My God! You know, Ellen-ah, my father's mother don't like my brother. Zhong-hua is only son of oldest son. Tradition say he is number one, most important grandson, but grandmother say she don't believe this old stuff. Instead, she give special food to our cousin, younger than my brother, also taller, more handsome. Grandmother little bit mean. She tell Zhong-hua, ‘You don't need eat my food.' He every time very hungry, walk six miles home.”

They lapsed back into Chinese, and Zhong-hua brought out more pork knuckles and cold, spicy chicken feet. Da Jie smacked my leg. “Ellen-ah, we talk about my father very smart. He oldest of eight brothers. Uncle pay money send just my father to special school learn old culture stuff. He seven brothers cannot go to school because family too poor-ah. My father is special person: he can same time read two books, write down something with left hand, same time write down something with right hand. His brain both sides same time working.

“When Chairman Mao become number one man in 1949, he decide make country perfect. He say things like ‘More and more people
make China stronger.' Some people say no, this is wrong. They say Chairman Mao should make plan so China not get too many people. Chairman Mao said, OK, anybody can disagree, but they need write down their suggestion. He say people having ideas is like One Hundred Flowers Blooming. He say government really want to read all people's good suggestion. But when so many smart people talk, Chairman Mao get worried. He don't like. He say we need to find all these bad people and make them learn how to be good. When father twenty-two years old, he was accountant. Some government people asked him, ‘If a person borrow $100 from bank, should she pay back $110?' They ask him, ‘This fair? This way good for people?' Father think about, but he not sure because his brain think from both sides. He say, on the one hand maybe this way; on the other hand could be that way. Government people wrote down she name on bad people list.

“Chairman Mao say all the people who criticized should be punished so they can learn. He say father need go three years country do farmwork, wear piece of wood on she neck say she very bad. Anybody can throw stones, shout, spit in father's face. Chairman Mao say this fine. Zhong-hua just small baby. This 1958.

“Then Chairman Mao make Cultural Revolution. Old idea, old art, Confucius, Buddha, he say all no good. Taoist person no good, too. Young people from city need go to country work hard. Never know how long need stay, how long not see family. Terrible. We don't like talk about.”

Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution lasted officially from 1967 to 1977, but according to Zhong-hua, it included all the years of Mao's reign of power. The government demanded that people inform on others who showed any interest in things foreign, exhibited bourgeois tendencies, or seemed less than enthusiastic about the revolution. Mao said, “All erroneous ideas, all poisonous weeds, all ghosts and monsters, must be subject to criticism; in no circumstance should they be left unchecked. However, the criticism should be fully reasoned, analytical and convincing, and not rough.” The last part was ignored.

Zhong-hua told me that his favorite teacher in grade school was removed from the classroom and forced to walk around the perimeter of the school every day for months, wearing around her neck a pair of high-heeled shoes found in her desk drawer. High heels were a bourgeois symbol. At the marketplace, a person needed to hold Mao's Red Book to his heart and recite from memory if he wanted to buy something. If he could not remember, he was turned away with verbal abuse hurled at his back and would quickly be reported to authorities. Even at the dinner table, every family member had to hold the Red Book up and recite or risk being reported by his or her own kin.