IT was
already pitch black outside, but there was still no snow on the
ground. The weather forecast had said the snow would start sometime
this evening, and Lei had been waiting for it anxiously. The
temperature had dropped sharply since that morning as a cold front
from Canada swept down the flat and vast Midwest plains. It was
mid-November, and the snow would be the first of the season. Lei
looked through the glass door that opened to the yard; the light from
the lamp next to the sofa shone through the glass and projected on an
area in the yard. There were a few scattered fallen leaves twisting
and turning in the wind. For a while she imagined the snowflakes
floating down and how different the yard would look when it was
covered under the white snow. Then she caught her own reflection in
the glass door; her face looked hollow and ghostly under the uneven
illumination from the light behind her.
Lei sighed and
lowered the blinds, then went to the bedroom and picked up the dress
she had laid on the bed earlier. The flimsy red silk felt slippery
and cold, and the embroidered flora patterns looked a little too
festive for such a quiet evening. The style was called “ChiPao,”
popular in old ShangHai and somehow revived as a wedding fashion for
its elegant slim cut and high collar that wrapped tightly around the
neck. Ming insisted that she should wear the dress for the party.
Professor Mann, the old chairman of his Department, was retiring and
the new chairman, Professor Eves, was hosting a party to honor
Professor Mann’s thirty years of service. As an assistant professor
on the tenure track, Ming took the party seriously and told Lei that
they should make their best appearances. Lei stood in front of the
mirror and measured the dress against her upper body. She had not
worn it since the wedding night, and that night seemed so long ago
although she had been married less than a year. She had gained some
weight, and she was afraid the dress might not fit anymore. In
college, she had a figure that was the envy of her roommates. Even in
those two years when she worked in the tallest building in her
hometown, she always enjoyed wearing high heels and tight skirts so
that she could walk through the marble lobby and carpeted corridors
with confidence. After the wedding, after she left China and followed
Ming to this college town in the Midwest, after life became a routine
of cooking, cleaning and waiting for Ming to come home -- except for
occasional social nights with other Chinese wives -- she started to
care less and less about her looks. Lei checked herself in the
mirror carefully. There wasn’t a wrinkle on her face, and her long
dark hair still fell straight and fluffy on her shoulders. She was
only twenty-seven and her youth was still there. After putting on
some makeup and doing her hair, she would be transformed to that
young attractive woman once again. This thought brought her some
faint excitement, as if she could relive those old college weekends
when she and her roommates would dress up and go to the student hall
for the weekly dance parties. But Lei did not particularly like the
dress; she thought it made her stand out too much and look too
Chinese. She had other dresses and nightgowns that would give her a
much more Western and cosmopolitan look.
She went
back to the kitchen and took the dishes out of the oven and put them
on the dining table. She also brought to a hard boil the chicken herb
soup that had been simmering on the stove for a couple of hours. Ming
was still in his study. He said another of his papers had just been
accepted by one of the professional journals and he needed to make
some changes. The door was firmly shut from the living room. He
required absolute quiet when he worked. Whenever he walked into his
study, Lei would retreat to the bedroom, to read a book or watch TV
with the volume turned to the lowest. But today was a special day,
and they should finish dinner earlier so that they could show up at
the party on time. Lei knocked at his door. After she heard the
squeaking of the chair and Ming’s footsteps, she quickly went back
to the kitchen and started to ladle the soup into the bowls.
Ming sat
down at the dinner table without saying a word and drank the soup
right away. Lei sat across the table and watched him. He had a
prominent forehead and a square jaw. Like Lei he was also from the
south but he had somehow acquired a short and stocky figure. The
steam of the soup was fogging up his glasses, and she could see him
sweating a bit.
“How is the
paper coming along?” She asked, deciding to break the silence.
Lately they talked less and less, and sometimes she found this wall
between them unbearable.
“It is
fine,” Ming answered.
Lei knew
that he was struggling hard at his job. The student evaluations from
last semester were discouraging. They complained that Ming’s thick
accent and unintelligible English often confused them. His exams were
too hard. His lectures were dull and dry. Ming was upset and kept his
face straight for a few days. It took a lot of effort for Lei to find
this out. He mentioned that research still counted more than anything
else in order to get tenured. He still had a chance.
Lei picked
up her chopsticks and put some vegetables in her bowl. She did not
really have much appetite after a long day of staying home.
“The snow still
has not started,” Lei changed the subject; her excitement could not
be more obvious in her tone.
“What is so good
about snow?” Ming mumbled between his slurps. “When it starts to
melt, everywhere is slushy and dirty.”
“But I have
never seen snow in my life. You know that it never snows in our
city,” Lei insisted.
“The real thing
is never as good as what you have imagined.” Ming gave her an
in-the-know smirk.
He finished
his soup and took a long breath. He seemed to have fully enjoyed it.
Lei learned the recipe from his mother who, before the marriage, had
given her a long lecture on how to take care of Ming. Seeing him
loosening up and relaxing, Lei decided this was a good time to raise
her objection.
“Are you sure
that you want me to wear that wedding dress?” she asked.
“Why not?”
Ming scooped the rice into his bowl without looking up.
“The color is
too bright.”
“I do not see
anything wrong with it.”
“These days no one my age wears it
other than in weddings. It may look too conspicuous at the party.”
“Nonsense. Remember Professor
Sanjeev’s wife Vanita? She even wears Sari at the Department’s
barbeque.”
Lei had met Vanita twice. Vanita
smiled a lot and seemed to take great pride in her traditional
costume, as if she was putting on an Indian culture show at those
faculty events. Lei was not sure whether she liked Vanita or not. Lei
wanted to argue with Ming more, but she realized that it would be all
in vain. Once he set his mind on something, nothing could change him.
Lei found out about his stubbornness only after they were married.
She married him in a rush on New Year’s Eve after they met the
summer that he finished his Ph.D. program. Their meeting was arranged
since Ming’s mother worked in the same office with Lei’s aunt.
Lei had already been informed of Ming’s credentials before the
meeting. The fact that he had studied in the most prestigious
universities in China and the US, the prospect of becoming a
professor’s wife, his family background that matched hers, all
these things convinced Lei’s entire family that Ming was a golden
opportunity for her. At their first meeting, Lei noticed that Ming
was aloof and did not talk much, but she took that as a sign of the
depth of his personality.
But she still found it annoying that
he was so insistent on her wearing the wedding dress for this party.
The style of the dress had become a symbol of oriental femininity,
and she was fully aware of her function for these parties since Ming
needed her to help him to socialize and fit in with the faculty
circle. Although Ming had lived in the States much longer than her,
he still felt uncomfortable among Americans and tended to become
quiet and withdrawn. Lei, on the other hand, spoke English fluently
and was much more sociable. Her training in a foreign language
institute and her two years in a joint-venture company contributed to
these skills. Sometimes, she wondered, maybe that was exactly why he
chose her as his wife so quickly when he had so many marriage choices
back in China.
After dinner, Ming went back to his
office. Lei put all the dishes in the sink and turned on the tap.
Through the windowpane she could see the branches of the apple tree
in her yard; the last few leaves had already turned yellow and were
fluttering in the wind. They probably would not be able to bear a
snowstorm and would soon fall. Lei remembered an O’Henry story
about the last leaf left on a branch, and the melancholy mood of the
story took hold of her. She had been an avid reader of American
literature in her college days. O’Henry, Dressier, Fitzgerald,
Faulkner, Her college library only had these classics. They were
books about poverty, depression, and disillusionment of American
dreams, but they still opened such a new world to her and made her
long to come to the States. This urge became a lot stronger after her
best friend in college moved to New York and sent over many pictures
in which she either posed in front of Statue of Liberty or looked
thrilled under the formidable skyscrapers. The thought of spending
her whole life in an overcrowded Chinese city and never being able to
live anywhere else scared Lei, so when Ming showed up that summer in
her aunt’s house and appeared more handsome than what she had
expected, she decided she would not let him slip away.
Her thoughts drifted away, and after
a while the drain got clogged and the hot water started to fill the
sink. Her hands felt good in the warmth of the water. After almost
eight months since she came to the States, her life seemed to be
stuck in a rut again. First she put off her plan of going to graduate
school because Ming needed her as a housewife during the first year
of his tenure track position. Then the initial excitement of living
in the States quickly subsided after she got used to everything and
found out there was really not much to do in such a small college
town. But everything has its price, and she had already told herself
again and again that if it were not for their marriage she would
never have the chance to live in this country. Whether she was happy
or not was simply a matter of adjustment. Maybe, she thought, things
would change. Ming would get his tenure, and she would go back to
school again and find a job and make new friends. Happiness would be
just a matter of patience, and time too.
Professor
Eve’s house was merely a mile down the street from where Ming and
Lei lived. It was a moderately sized, one-story redbrick house, not
extravagant but certainly bigger than Ming and Lei’s rented home.
As the street got further from the highway the houses increased in
size and grandeur; the end of the street met with a pond and woods,
and beyond that were endless rolling hills.
There were hardly any parking spots
left near the house, and they could already hear noise from inside as
they stood on the front steps. Professor Eves opened the door and
greeted them after they rang the bell. Lei had met him once before at
the department barbeque and had a good impression of him. He was in
his late forties, had a benign face and pepper-white hair. A gray
sports coat with a light blue shirt made him look even younger. Ming
was wearing his dark suit and red tie, an outfit he always wore for
formal occasions. He appeared overdressed and was dwarfed by
Professor Eves. Lei heard that Professor Eves was divorced not long
ago, but she could not detect any sadness in his composure.
After they exchanged handshakes, Lei
took off her coat and handed it to Professor Eves. Her shining red
dress was suddenly fully exposed. This was the moment she dreaded
since she knew it would catch the attention of the party crowd. She
was not a shy person, but she still did not like to be in the
spotlight at a faculty party.
“Oh, Lena. What a lovely dress.”
Vanita said as she came across the living room. Lei had been using an
English name since she came to the States and her Chinese name was
unknown outside her household. Vanita was wearing a Sari again, but
it was in a different color from the last one Lei remembered. The
chiffon drapery of her sari fluttered while Vanita’s husband
Sanjeev followed behind her. “Ming. You are a lucky guy to have
such a beautiful wife,” she said to Ming. Sanjeev also acknowledged
Ming and joined the crowd.
Lei smiled and felt that her own
smile was just as plastic as Vanita’s. Vanita and Sanjeev seemed to
be on the opposite sides of the personality spectrum. Sanjeev was
mellow and gentle, and Vanita was always high-strung, opinionated and
extremely social. Mrs. Mann came to the circle and looked at both Lei
and Vanita adoringly. “You both have the most interesting dresses.”
Then she held hands with both Lei and Vanita and led them away from
their husbands. “Let’s join the ladies first,” she said. Mrs.
Mann was a large bosomed woman, and her seniority allowed her to play
the matriarchal role in the gatherings of faculty and their families.
The presence of both Vanita and Lei
triggered a conversation on ethnic fashions among the wives. One of
them had recently traveled to Thailand and raved about the hand-made
Thai silk. She directed the attention of the group to a young woman
who had been in and out of the kitchen and helping to serve the
snacks. The woman was wearing a full-length dress made of fabric from
the Andes. Someone asked who she was and it turned out she was
Professor Eves’ new girlfriend, although she had not been formally
introduced to any of the wives with that title yet.
“I
heard she used to be his student,” Vanita whispered.
The
group fell silent for a second. One or two of the women frowned as if
they were afraid that the same thing could happen to their husbands.
“Where was his previous wife?”
Lei broke the silence. She regretted it as soon as she uttered the
question. She did not want to sound too nosy.
“Linda? She left Donald for some
doctor in New York,” Mrs. Mann said in a matter-of-fact tone. “She
got custody of both kids.”
“Who would have thought She’d do
that?” One elder woman said, who apparently knew Linda before.
“They had marriage problems for
years,” Mrs. Mann said defensively. “It was not a secret.”
In the spring semester Professor Eves
had had a talk with Ming after student evaluations had been
completed. Lei did not know the details of their conversation, but
she knew that Ming had felt humiliated and was quite distraught
afterward. Since then Ming had no good things to say about Professor
Eves. But Lei did not want to pass her judgment too soon. The
information only made her more curious about Professor Eves.
From the corner of her eyes Lei
noticed that Ming was left alone again after Professor Sanjeev left
him. He did not seem to want to come over and in the ladies and
looked a little awkward. So Lei excused herself from the wives and
walked over to Ming.
“Where is Sanjeev?” Lei asked.
“Kissing the chairman’s ass.”
Ming’s voice was low but full of sarcasm. Lei looked around and
made sure that no one heard him, and then she realized they were
speaking Chinese and no one would understand them anyway. There were
three assistant professors on tenure track this year. Although the
university was no ivy league, the historical tenure rate was only
fifty percent. The job market in academia had been tight for a number
of years and the competition for tenures was fierce. Sanjeev was also
on the tenure track and had joined the department a year earlier than
Ming. He got along with everyone and was well known for his amiable
personality. Both his teaching and research, though not of
extraordinary quality, were well received in the department. The
third professor on the tenure track, as Lei heard, was a new American
guy who just graduated from Berkeley and had joined the faculty that
fall. Ming said he did not know much about the new guy but the very
fact of him being a real American posed a bigger threat than
Sanjeev.
They went to the dining room and got
some snacks, then they returned to the living room where most of
people were scattered around. Ming did not want to enter any circle
of people on his own, but no one was coming over to join them either.
Vanita was still hanging with the wives and chatting with all her
vigor. Lei felt a little pathetic about Ming, and about herself too.
Before she could dwell more on this, Ming walked away after he told
her that he needed to go to the bathroom and that he would also get
some drinks on his way back.
On her own Lei stood next to the
fireplace and decided to check the framed pictures on the mantel.
There was a family shot in which Lei recognized Professor Eves and
his ex-wife as well as two children, both of whom were in their early
teens. It was an outdoor shot, probably at a picnic or on a camping
trip. All of them were beaming under the direct sunlight. They looked
like the kind of wholesome family that would appear in department
store catalogues. Even a marriage like this could fall apart, Lei
thought. She looked more carefully at the wife, but her joyful
expression did not reveal much to Lei. Ming once told Lei that he did
not appreciate American women: “They talk and laugh too loud. They
do not know the virtue of endurance and bashfulness. For them, it is
all about ‘me’.” Lei could not believe that the woman in the
picture would run away and betray the family just because of her own
selfishness. Every marriage had its dark side. Lei sighed. When she
turned back she found out that a young-looking guy with dark curly
hair was standing right in front of her.
“Hello, you must be Lena.”
The guy grinned at her. He was holding a glass of wine and his hazel
eyes looked slightly tipsy.
Lei was surprised. Who would know
her, the secluded housewife? “How do you know my name?” She asked
“Ming has your picture in his
office.”
Although he was wearing jeans and a
corduroy jacket, there was a certain confidence in his forwardness
that convinced Lei that he could not be one of the graduate students.
So she took her bet on the third assistant professor.
“You must be Professor Atkins.”
“Call me Jeff.” He tried to give
Lei a casual and charming smile. But he stared at her dress.
“Chipao.” He was apparently knowledgeable about her dress. “I
always think Chipao is the best Chinese invention in fashion. Its cut
suits Asian women so well.”
That last sentence alarmed her. She
was not sure how she should answer back. She was always a little
uneasy with white men who had Asian fetishes. In the joint-venture
company where she had worked as a translator, there were a few
American expatriates, mostly middle-aged and rather unattractive. But
half of them were married with young beautiful Chinese wives. Her
irritation was combined with such a jealousy when she saw her other
Chinese female colleagues displayed excessive interest and tried
eagerly to make friends with them. She was determined that if she
would use marriage to get out of China at least he should be a
Chinese man.
“How are you such an expert about
traditional Chinese dresses?” She asked him.
Jeff did not seem to detect the
little attitude she was putting on. “Actually I had a Chinese
girlfriend in graduate school.”
Somehow that confession made Lei a
little nervous. She folded her hands in front of her chest as she
suddenly became aware of the sexual tension between them.
“She had the same dress, but in
blue and it had these white plum flowers embroidered on the front,”
Jeff continued. “She didn’t wear it often though.”
“It is such an antique now. No one
wears it in China these days,” Lei explained.
“But I always liked her wearing
it.” Jeff seemed to be recalling something distant in his memory.
“Well, it’s all history now.” He shrugged and looked back at
Lei.
“What happened then?”
“Long story.” Jeff sighed. “We
met in a Yoga class in the campus gym. She was from Beijing and was
also studying at Cal…We even lived together for two years.”
“I am sorry.” Lei tried to sound
sympathetic, but she was already occupied by a curiosity about the
mysterious Chinese girl.
“One day when I got home all her
stuff was gone. I called and called but all she said was that I
didn’t understand her.”
Lei tried to imagine what the girl
would be like. She searched for an image in her mind. She must have
short hair and high cheeks. Girls from the capital city were always
more independent and strong.
“What was she like?”
“She actually looked like you.”
Jeff looked at her with a gaze that made Lei blush. She almost
stepped back but she was already against the wall.
“Maybe in your eyes all Asian women
look alike.”
“No, no. I know the difference. She
really looks like you.”
There was something very tender and
touching in Jeff’s voice that made Lei let down her guard.
“She really broke my heart,” Jeff
mumbled. “That’s probably the main reason why I left California.”
Lei was not used to a male stranger
so easily revealing his emotions to her. She wished she could do
more, like hold his hands or something; she felt that some strange
bond was growing between them and his hazel eyes suddenly looked both
endearing and intriguing, but all she could say was the same
sentence.
“I am really sorry to hear that.”
Jeff took a sip of the wine and
seemed to pull himself out of his nostalgic mood. “This is a quiet
town, isn’t it?”
“This is the only part of America I
know of…” Before Lei could finish her sentence, Professor Eves
was in the center of the room and asking the crowd to quiet down.
Then he made an announcement about the small ceremony for Professor
Mann. Everyone was to congregate in the living room and Lei saw
Vanita checking out both her and Jeff with her big round eyes. Ming
was in the flow of people moving towards the living room; she quickly
excused herself from Jeff and joined Ming.
There were several speeches from
Professor Mann’s students and colleagues, who praised him as a
great teacher, an accomplished researcher and a good leader. In the
end he received a plaque from Professor Eves during a long round of
applauses. The crowd dispersed again and people returned to chatting
and socializing. But Lei didn’t talk to Jeff for the rest of the
party. She stayed with Ming and dared not to look for Jeff in the
crowd, although a few times she thought she caught his quick
glimpses. He must have been observing her, and this thought made her
a little panicky. She tried to nod or smile in the most elegant and
attractive way she could come up with. Ming appeared a little
distracted throughout the rest of the party. He smiled mechanically
and talked as little as he could. Lei took over most of the
conversation when they were talking as a couple with other people.
They
waited to leave the party until half of the crowd had already left.
Ming kept his face stiff and sped their car all the way home. Lei
looked out the window and stayed quiet. It was almost midnight and
there was neither star nor moon outside. The dark silhouettes of the
houses passed by like elapsing shadows.
When they got back to the house, Ming
brushed his teeth and went straight to bed. Lei took off her dress,
folded it and put it away on the top shelf of the closet. She did not
want to wear it anymore, not for a long time. She thought Ming was
already asleep and she slipped into the bed hoping that she would not
wake him up. But as soon as she lay down, he asked a question without
even opening his eyes.
“What did you and Professor Atkins
talk about?”
He sounded so calm, so casual, as if
he was just asking about what they would eat for dinner. Lei did not
feel like giving him a report and said briefly: “Nothing much. He
introduced himself and we chatted a bit.”
“Your face was quite red when I saw
you.”
“It must have been the wine.” Lei
wanted to end this conversation and did not think much about what she
had just said.
“You had not drunk any wine at the
time.”
She was caught, but Ming still
appeared calm and patient. Lei lied quickly: “I took a few sips
from Professor Atkins’ glass.”
“Oh, really? That sounds very
intimate to me.”
Ming seemed to b. Lei’s heart
wrenched and she gripped the blanket tighter.
“These white devils,” he said in
his low voice. “Why do Asian chicks always go for them?”
Lei could not say anything. For a
long while Ming did not say anything either after the last statement
and Lei thought that Ming must be exhausted and had given up his
mental tortures.
“I hate them. I hate them all,”
He said.
Ming’s voice was so low that he
sounded like he was talking to himself. But the words struck her and
made her shiver in an anonymous fear. She stayed still at her side of
bed. The next few minutes passed in silence. Then she started to feel
Ming’s hand touching her shoulder. He was apparently trying to pull
her over to him and was moving his legs over.
“Ming, I am too tired,” Lei
begged.
But Ming did not stop. His body
jerked and he rolled over and pushed Lei to the edge of the bed. One
of his hands was already traveling to her bra and it was gripping her
breast. The other hand was stripping off her underwear.
“Please, Ming.”
Before she could react, he’d
already entered her and started to thrust back and
forth.
“You are mine. You know that!”
Lei closed her eyes and gritted her teeth and tried her best to stop
the scream from her throat.
Ming started to snore quickly after
he rolled back to his side. Lei stayed awake in the bed. She thought
about that fateful summer evening when she met Ming and her
subsequent long-distance courting with him. She thought about that
wedding night, how she had had the first sex with Ming and felt this
strange dislocation as if she was not herself but someone else she
managed to slip to. She thought about the sounds of her city she
heard while she was lying awake on the bed with Ming next to her: the
night train passing the tracks, a baby’s cries, the rustling of the
trees. She thought about how melancholy she was that night as if she
already had known what a price she paid to leave her old life. She
thought about Professor Eves and his ex-wife whose face she knew only
vaguely from the picture. She also thought about Jeff and his hazel
eyes. She even thought about that girl from Beijing she did not even
have a face for. Where would she be now? Was she married? Was she
happy?
After an hour she got up and went to
the living room and sat down in the sofa. It was unusually quiet. She
could hear no noise except for the low humming of the refrigerator.
The usual noise of the occasional passing cars from the nearby
highway had disappeared completely. The early wind had also stopped.
Tears filled up her eyes and turned into a quiet sob. After another
ten minutes she stopped crying and just stared at the emptiness
feeling numb and exhausted.
She went to the
kitchen to get a glass of water. There were traces of ice on the
windowpane. She looked outside and saw snowflakes floating slowly and
freely in the air. A sudden excitement surged and she went back to
the living room and opened the curtain. Through the glass door she
could see more snowflakes. They seemed to have multiplied infinitely
and were taking over everything in their way. Lei’s eyes followed
one snowflake after another until each of them fell quietly on the
cushion of the snow that was accumulating steadily. The dreamy
movement of the snowflakes put her in a trance.
She opened the
glass door and walked out into the yard. She was still in her pajamas
but the cold air did not stop her. She knelt down and put her bare
hands on the snow; then sank them all the way down until they were
completely buried. Her palms felt a burning sensation as if thousands
of needles were pricking her hands. She shivered more. The snowflakes
were all over her head and her body and some of them melted and left
wet spots on her skin and on her pajamas. She scooped up a handful of
snow and pressed them into a snowball. She stood up and threw the
snowball toward the wood fence that enclosed the backyard. The ball
swooshed and splashed and left a white mess on the wall, which she
could barely see under the dim light. Then she squatted down and made
a bigger snowball. This time she hurled it with all her strength and
tried to throw it out of the backyard and over the fence. The
snowball made a parabolic curve and disappeared behind the fence. The
snow was falling more intensely, and Lei could imagine them falling
beyond the fence and on the rolling hills and on the vast open
Midwest prairies. Maybe tomorrow the world would be different, and
she could not wait to see it.
