Beautiful as Yesterday Page 14

  SEVEN

  November

  AN AIRPORT IS A city’s heart. Whenever Mary is in an airport, she can feel its restless pulse. When she was in her twenties, she loved traveling, always asking for a window seat so she could look out through the double glass at the thick clouds and passing oceans, the mountains and fields, feeling the slight shaking of the wings. Now, though the airport’s energy still excites her, she would rather stay home, tidying the house or tending the garden.

  United Airlines Flight 858 will be one hour late—the matter-of-fact female voice is announcing both in Mandarin and in English. Mary sits in the waiting area reading the Chinese Sing Tao Daily that she has brought from home. Its front page offers detailed biographies of George W. Bush’s newly appointed cabinet members. Mary scans their names and quickly flips to the next page, then the next, until she reaches the Home and Garden section. Realizing that her eyes are merely browsing without comprehending the content, she puts the newspaper down to look at the screen suspended from the ceiling in front of her. Now and then people pushing carts loaded with luggage show up, but of course, they are from other flights.

  It’s raining outside, the overcast sky dark gray. The weather worries Mary, and she prays silently for her mother’s safe arrival. Bob had wanted to take a few hours off from work to be at the airport with her, but at the last minute, he had to meet a client. Newly promoted to senior manager, overseeing an eight-person team, he is on call twenty-four/seven.

  Lately, Bob has become addicted to computer games. To wind down from work, he claims. Some days, once Alex has gone to bed, Bob sits at his desk playing racing or war games. Mary doesn’t mind the racing games much, but she hates the war games, where Bob plays the hero, using all kinds of weapons to kill his enemies. “I bet the two kids who did the Columbine High School shooting grew up playing these kinds of games a lot,” Mary once said. “But it’s not real.” Bob shrugged, smiling. But he did promise that he wouldn’t allow Alex to play his games. Eventually Mary gave up, after Yaya and Julia had told her that their husbands also liked playing computer games. “It’s a man’s thing. It’s like shopping to women, I guess,” Yaya said.

  And Bob now watches more sports on TV. He’s always been a sports fan, particularly baseball, football, and hockey. When he started to see Mary, he tried to cultivate her interest in baseball. He explained the rules to her patiently: how to pitch, how to hit, each player’s position, scoring…He took her to Candlestick Park to see the Giants play the Dodgers, always in the best seats. All his effort, however, did not convert Mary to a baseball fan; quite the opposite, she concluded that baseball games were boring and the players weren’t even fit. Bob’s tutoring in football didn’t go well, either. Mary thought the game cruel, with players knocking one another down constantly. But she hid her boredom and sour views of these sports, continuing to accompany Bob to stadiums and arenas, where she was more entertained by the crazy costumes and makeup and cheering in the bleachers than by the game itself. Bob did not give up hope until Mary fell asleep during a game between the Yankees and the Red Sox in New York, where they had flown specifically to watch it.

  Maybe Yaya was right, playing computer games and watching sports are what men do in their spare time; it’s not like they use these things to avoid their wives. As long as Bob prays before each meal and they still sleep on the same bed, she shouldn’t worry too much, Mary thinks with little comfort.

  The plane arrives finally. Not knowing how long customs will take, Mary continues looking at the screen, rising periodically to stretch. It is not until an hour and a half later that the first passenger from Flight 858 comes out the exit, welcomed by a big family. She finally sees her mother on the screen, dragging behind her two suitcases, one of which—apparently with a broken wheel—zigzags dangerously. Mary recognizes the broken suitcase as the one her father bought her for her first year of college in Beijing, remembering that she hated it because it was too brightly colored and had no style. Dangling on her mother’s right shoulder is the black purse Mary gave her at least six or seven years ago, during one of her visits to China. To the purse strap is tied a stuffed plastic bag, which bumps into her mother’s waist with each step she takes. The bag must be heavy, for her mother walks with her right shoulder much lower than her left. Her jacket is two sizes too big, making her appear fatter and shorter than she is. Mary finds herself slightly irritated by her mother’s shabby looks—didn’t she tell her to buy good-quality suitcases and clothes?—but immediately she feels guilty for thinking ill of her own mother, who has come thousands of miles to see her.

  Mary darts to the banister by the exit.

  Her mother appears at the exit, but instead of continuing to walk, she drops one suitcase on the floor and begins to massage her upper chest over the area of her heart with her free hand, as if she were feeling pain there. Then she picks up the suitcase and looks around eagerly.

  Mary raises her hand and waves, but after seeing her mother still looking vacantly into the waiting crowd, seemingly overwhelmed by the noise and chaos, she runs over.

  “Ma!” she shouts, startling her mother.

  “Guo-Mei, you’re here!” Her mother calls out Mary’s Chinese name, her face suddenly radiant. “Why didn’t I see you? I was just thinking that you got stuck in traffic. You must have waited a long time.”

  Compared with the last time Mary saw her, her mother has more wrinkles on her forehead and more white hair. The veins on the backs of her hands show prominently.

  Without thinking, Mary gives her mother a bear hug, as many people around them are doing with family, relatives, or friends who have just arrived. Her mother, taken aback by this American greeting, remains motionless in her embrace, arms stiff at her sides. After a brief moment, she hesitantly places her hands on Mary’s shoulders. Mary realizes that she is being very Western with her hug; she knows that Chinese, even within a family, usually shake hands or pat each other’s shoulders in greeting. In fact, in all her previous visits to China, she has never hugged her mother, not even when saying good-bye—it is just not the custom there. But somehow, being in the United States has made her forget that custom, at least momentarily. She loosens her arms awkwardly, her face flushed with embarrassment, and quickly grasps the handles of her mother’s luggage.

  On the way to the parking lot, her mother keeps asking questions: How’s Bob? How’s Dongdong? How’s Mary’s work? How’s Guo-Ying? A few times she tries to take the broken suitcase from Mary, saying that she knows the way to drag it easily. Mary insists that she can handle it. When they get to the car, Mary opens the door, helps her mother in, and fastens the seat belt for her. Her mother peruses the car as though she has never ridden in one before. “Is this your car? So big! The seat is so soft.”

  After they reach the 101 freeway, heading south, her mother looks out the window attentively, saying repeatedly, “I see, America is like this,” while in fact, apart from the sound-reflecting walls on both sides of the freeway, advertising billboards, fast-food chains’ garish signs, and some commercial or residential buildings, she can see little. But Mary refrains from commenting on her mother’s remarks—fourteen years ago, when she sat in an airport shuttle on her way to Berkeley, she made the same remarks.

  Forty minutes later, they arrive home. As Mary unloads the luggage from the trunk, her mother stands in the driveway, surveying the front yard and the house. “You don’t see this kind of mansion in Nanyi,” she says, shaking her head in apparent disbelief. “How do you keep the grass so green?” Following Mary, her mother steps into the house and immediately takes off her shoes. Mary shows her Bob’s study, which will be her bedroom during her stay, and suggests she wash herself in the hallway bathroom, then take a nap. Her mother says that she isn’t tired at all, and it is not until she takes a look at the whole house and the backyard that she sits down to drink the water Mary has poured for her. Then she tells Mary she is hungry and wants porridge.

  “You and Bob must have to work ver
y hard to pay for this house,” her mother says, with both pride and worry in her eyes, while eating the fish fillet porridge Mary just made. “I cannot help you at all. Not just that, but now, I’m a burden to you.”

  Mary is touched, but other than assuring her mother that she isn’t a burden, she doesn’t know what to say.

  “When will Dongdong be back?” her mother asks eagerly. She asked the same question twice at the airport and later on the drive home, and Mary told her that she needed to go into the office for a while in the afternoon to get some work done, then she’d pick him up at his kindergarten on her way back. But rather than pointing this out, Mary repeats her answer.

  Despite her denial, her mother is indeed exhausted from the twelve-hour flight, and after washing herself in the bathroom and changing into the flannel pajamas Mary has prepared for her, she lies down on the futon and soon falls asleep, snoring slightly. Mary closes the door for her mother and stands against the doorframe briefly, knowing that from now on her life won’t be the same.

  At four, Mary is home with Alex. Before they enter, she reminds Alex how to say Granny in Mandarin. “Wai po, remember? W-A-IP-O. The fourth and then second tone.” Alex frowns. “Wai po, wai po, wai po. Is it enough now?” At this moment, the door opens, and her mother stands there with a broom. “I was sweeping the backyard. There were some fallen leaves,” her mother says to Mary, though her eyes fix on her grandson. She has changed to a blue cardigan with shiny gold buttons and a pair of fat-legged black pants with creases down the front, and her hair has been combed carefully, with pins on both sides above the ears.

  “Call wai po,” Mary urges Alex, speaking Mandarin.

  Alex steps back and hides behind Mary.

  “Dongdong.” Her mother squats. “It’s wai po. You’re so tall. I dreamed of you often in China.”

  “Call wai po!” Mary orders.

  Silence, then “No. I don’t understand her.”

  Mary turns to grab Alex’s arm, speaking English. “Be polite!”

  “Wai po!” Alex yells at the top of his lungs, then runs into the house through the gap between his grandma and the doorframe, into his room, and slams the door shut.

  Her mother stands slowly, managing a smile. “Dongdong is taller than I thought. I hope the clothes I bought for him fit.”

  “They’ll fit, I’m sure.” Mary wants to console her mother. “You know, Dongdong…”

  “He’s so tall already,” her mother murmurs. “Let me finish sweeping the yard.”

  Mary sees Bob’s white Volvo turning in to the street: Bob had called her earlier to make sure he wouldn’t get home before she did. “Ma, Bob is here.”

  Her mother looks over her shoulder. Their eyes meet: Mary sees doubt and anxiety in her mother’s face. Her mother drops the broom and walks to the door, stretching her cardigan left and right. “It’s not too big, is it?” she asks.

  Mary says it looks good on her, then adds, “Ma, no worries. I’ll be the translator between you and Bob.” While she’s saying this, it occurs to her that she’s playing the role of a diplomat.

  To her relief and gratitude, Bob behaves naturally and warmly. “Ning hao. Huan ying. Hen gao xing jian dao ning,” he says and holds out his hand to his mother-in-law. Then he switches to English, inquiring about her trip and her health. Mary translates for both sides, adding her own words here and there to spice up the conversation. Her mother keeps smiling as if impressed by her son-in-law’s friendliness and liking him. Bob smiles constantly too, as if genuinely welcoming his mother-in-law to live with them for six months. As they’re chatting in the family room, Alex slips out of his room and sits next to Bob, staring at his grandma.

  That night, they have dinner at a Shanghainese restaurant in Mountain View. At the rectangular table, Bob and Alex sit on one side, Mary and her mother on the other side. To avoid silence and keep everyone engaged, Mary jumps from subject to subject, switching between Mandarin and English, speaking a lot, laughing a lot, not realizing until the end of the dinner that she has done most of the talking. When they get home, Mary goes straight to the master bathroom and only now runs her hands across her face and releases a long sigh.

  The next day, Mary takes the day off from work to show her mother around. They stroll in Mary’s neighborhood. She points out the local streets, various architectural styles—ranch, Eichler, Victorian—different trees and flowers. Then they walk to El Camino Real, a thoroughfare thronged with shops and restaurants. When they pass Safeway, her mother says that she wants to go inside to see how Americans shop, a request that doesn’t surprise Mary because a few of her friends visiting from China had asked the same thing. If Mary had never lived in China, she would have laughed at this request. Don’t people from everywhere shop for groceries the same way? But she knows exactly what it’s like to be Chinese and visiting the United States for the first time, especially for a Chinese person like her mother, who has lived in a small inland city since birth and never traveled.

  Mary clearly remembers the first time she entered a grocery store in the United States, the day after she arrived in Berkeley in 1986. For three hours, she indulged herself in the smells and colors of merchandise that was completely new to her, studying the brands and ingredients and nutrition lists. Fruit jam, cereal, pasta, wine, yogurt, butter…especially cheese, piles of various shapes and textures and smells, often with odd names, a lot of French or Italian that she couldn’t even pronounce. Why on earth do people need all these different cheeses? she wondered. She wrote down the words she wasn’t familiar with, but soon she gave up and pushed a cart around like everyone else. Walking from one aisle to another, she couldn’t help but recall the farmers’ market in her hometown, where rotten vegetables and animal intestines littered the ground, the farmers with callused hands and bitter faces stood in front of their stalls waiting for customers.

  She thought of her mother too. If her mother was here, would she pick a bundle of vegetables and swing it left and right to dispose of the water inside? Would she fumble in a pile of neatly arranged Fuji or Gala apples to look for the most perfect ones? Or maybe she wouldn’t dare touch the produce and would end up buying nothing. All of the produce here—after converting its price into Chinese currency at the one-to-eight exchange rate between the dollar and the yuan—was so expensive that her mother’s monthly salary could purchase only ten pounds of broccoli. Even Mary herself, with a full scholarship from Berkeley, held her breath at the sight of the price tags, which she swiftly converted into Chinese currency in her head, a habit that she retained for years.

  However, she had to buy something: since she couldn’t afford to eat out, she had to cook. At last she found what she could afford: a big bag of potatoes at half of its original price and a package of beef sealed with clear plastic wrap, on sale because it was close to its expiration date. They were good bargains; she rarely had a chance to eat beef in China because it was so expensive there. Also, beef stew with potatoes was considered a delicacy for Chinese. When she was little, people always said that the best thing in a utopian communist society was that you could eat beef stew with potatoes at every meal. Then she had often dreamed of this dish, imagining its taste and smell. Now, to her amusement, she would eat it for days, if not weeks.

  The memory provokes a comfortable sigh from Mary: many years have passed, and how different she is today.

  Her mother stops here and there to peruse certain products, like Italian prosciutto or premade pizza dough, with curiosity and caution, carefully picking something up and putting it back with both hands as if it were fragile; afterward her mother shakes her head, seemingly having decided that it wasn’t something she could cook. Mary and her mother keep walking. A few times, Mary unwittingly looks to see if anyone is watching them: they’ve been walking around the store for half an hour with an empty cart.

  It is not until her mother stands in front of big bags of potatoes that her eyes shine with excitement. She reaches out and lifts a bag. “Is this one on sa
le? Two dollars for such a big bag! In RMB…” She calculates with her fingers. “It’s only eighteen yuan, not bad for so many potatoes. What do you think?”

  “Ma,” Mary whispers, “just get whatever you want. It’s not much money for me. This place is just like a farmers’ market in China.”

  “It’s not easy to live abroad, and if you can save, why not? I like eating potatoes anyway.” Before Mary can stop her, her mother quickly tears open a bag and takes out a potato, feeling it like an expert. “Look! It’s heavy and its skin is smooth. There are no sprouts, either. A very good one.”

  “Ma, you’re not supposed to open the bag.” Mary looks around again. “Put the potato back. Let’s just take this bag.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they walk out the door with the bag of potatoes and a package of beef.

  Her mother is delighted. “I haven’t cooked beef stew with potatoes for years. You see, now that you and your sister are both living abroad, I just need to cook for myself, and there’s no point spending time fixing a fancy dish like this.” There is an awkward lull, then she adds, “You know, it was your father’s favorite dish.”

  It is windy outside, the ground wet from yesterday’s rain. As they walk home, Mary carries the bag of potatoes, her mother next to her holding the package of beef—she has insisted on helping.

  Mary hasn’t walked to buy groceries for a long time: you drive wherever you go, that’s life in the suburbs; she’s used to it. Especially in this kind of windy weather, Mary thinks, only people without a car would walk more than half an hour to bring home groceries, as she had done when she was a student at Berkeley, before she had a bike. By the time she arrived home, her hands were burning from the plastic bags’ handles.

  Ahead of them two Asian women in colorful sweaters—Vietnamese or Thai, Mary surmises—are trudging along, arms locked tightly, grocery bags in their other hands. The younger woman is pregnant, presumably the daughter of the older woman. Three boys are with them, the oldest about ten, and they keep poking one another in the armpits or ribs and giggle all the way. Twice the younger woman stops, dropping the bags in her hand, and fixes the older woman’s silk shawl, which has been ruffled by the wind. While she does it, she speaks gently into her mother’s ear.