“You think I came back for you?” She bit her lower lip, her teeth showing neat and white. That was another miracle about her: before going to America she’d had compressed teeth, but now they were all regular and pearly, and her upper lip looked normal, no longer protruding. For sure, American dentists know how to straighten out teeth.
Indeed, she didn’t return for Chigan. She missed their daughter. That was why Chigan’s parents had prevented Dandan from meeting her. They despised Jinli, declaring they had no such daughter-in-law, even calling her “hussy” in the presence of others. Naturally, when Jinli stood at their doorstep one evening and begged them to allow her to say a word to Dandan, her mother-in-law refused to let her in, saying, “She doesn’t want to see you. She has no such mother as you. Get away with your penciled eyes.”
Chigan’s father was standing in the living room, holding a flyswatter and shaking his gray head. His back toward the door, he pretended he hadn’t seen his daughter-in-law.
“When — when will she come home?” Jinli asked.
“This is her home,” said Chigan’s mother.
“Please, let me have a look at her.” Tears were gathering in her eyes, but she tried suppressing them.
“No. She doesn’t want to be disturbed by you.”
“Mother, forgive me just this once, please!”
“Don’t call me that. You’re not my daughter-in-law anymore.”
The door was shut. Jinli realized they’d never allow her to see her child. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t get in touch with Dandan, who was kept from coming out of that brick house, a Russian bungalow. She didn’t beg Chigan, knowing he dared not oppose his parents’ will, and he might prefer such an arrangement as well.
When we heard she couldn’t see her daughter, some of us thought it served her right, because hadn’t she abandoned the child in the first place? But a few felt for her and said that since she couldn’t see her daughter, she shouldn’t stay for Chigan, who didn’t deserve that kind of devotion. We were all eager to see what she would do next.
Two years after she left for America, her name had been removed from the payroll of the Teachers College, so now she no longer had a work unit and belonged to the army of the unemployed. How can she live without a job? we wondered. This is China, a socialist country, not like in New York where she could get along just by pleasing an old man. She didn’t know she had lost her teaching position for good, assuming the removal of her name was temporary. She was shocked when they told her that because of her lifestyle in America, she was no longer suitable for teaching.
Somehow she found out that it was Professor Fan Ling who had spread the concubinary story. A few people urged her to go slap Fan Ling. Nobody liked Professor Fan, who was a smart tigress and had earned a master’s degree in education from Moscow University in the early 1950s. According to Jinli, Fan Ling had slandered her because she wouldn’t agree to be the sponsor of Professor Fan’s nephew, who wanted to go to college in the U.S. “You see,” Jinli told others, spreading her slim hands, revealing a chased gold ring on her third finger, “I’m not an American citizen and it’s illegal for me to do that.” Her words might be true, but we were not fully convinced.
She was informed that Fan Ling was going to attend the faculty and staff meeting on Tuesday afternoon. This would be a good opportunity for her to catch the professor and disgrace her publicly. We were eager to witness the scene, though also ready to intervene in time so that she wouldn’t rough her up too much. Fan Ling was old, suffering from high blood pressure and kidney disease.
To our dismay, Jinli didn’t show up in the auditorium on Tuesday afternoon. Professor Fan sat there in the back, dozing away peacefully, while the principal spoke about how we should welcome a group of heroes coming from the Chinese-Vietnamese border to give speeches on campus.
Later Jinli declared she would “sue” Fan Ling for calumny and make her “pay.” That was an odd thing for her to say. Who had ever heard of a court that would handle such a trifle? Besides, there was no lawyer available for a personal case like this, which should be resolved either through the help of the school leaders or by the victim herself. Some people thought Jinli must have lost her nerve; this might prove that she had indeed led a promiscuous life abroad. Also, why on earth would she think of “pay” as a solution? This was a matter of name and honor, which no money could buy. She ought to have fought for herself, that is, to combat poison with poison.
One morning she went to the city’s Bureau of Foreign Affairs to look for a job. She had heard there was a need for English interpreters. Our city was just opening to foreigners. To attract tourists, an amusement park was being constructed on one of those islands in the middle of the Songhua River. Jinli filled out six forms, but no official in charge of personnel received her. A young woman, a secretary, told her to come back next Thursday; in the meantime, the bureau would look into her file. Jinli pinned to the forms a copy of the certificate that confirmed she had studied English at an American language school and passed the standard exams, her spoken English rated “Excellent.” She told the secretary that ideally she’d like to be a tourist guide.
“We need nine of them according to what I heard,” the young woman whispered, her eyes still fixed on the applicant’s lips, rouged so heavily they looked purple.
Jinli thought she would be asked to take an English test for the job, so she began listening to the BBC and Voice of America for at least three hours a day and reviewing a volume on TOEFL. Even when she was washing laundry, she’d keep the radio on. She returned to the bureau on Thursday afternoon and was referred to a section director. The official was a large man, fiftyish, with a bald patch on his crown. He listened attentively to her describing herself and her qualifications for working with foreigners. She grew excited, a bit carried away in her enthusiasm, and even said, “I lived in New York for four years and visited many places in America. As a matter of fact, I have lots of connections there and can help our city in some ways. I have an international driver’s license.”
The man cleared his throat and said, “Miss Chen, we appreciate your interest in the job.” She was taken aback by his way of addressing her, not as a “Comrade,” as though she were a foreigner or a Taiwanese. He went on, “We studied your file the day before yesterday. I’m afraid I have to disappoint you. That’s to say, we can’t hire you.”
“Why?” She was puzzled, knowing there couldn’t be enough applicants for the nine positions.
“I don’t want to be rude. If you insist on knowing why, let me just say that we have to use people we can trust.”
“Why? Am I not a Chinese?”
“You’re already a permanent resident in the United States, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but I’m still a Chinese citizen.”
“This has nothing to do with citizenship. We don’t know what you did in New York, or how you lived in the past few years. How can we trust you? We’re responsible for protecting our country’s name.”
She understood now and didn’t argue further. They had gotten her file from the college and must have been notified of her lifestyle in New York. Anger was flushing her face.
“Don’t be too emotional, Miss Chen. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I am just passing the bureau’s decision on to you.” On the desk a shiny ant was scampering toward the inkstand; he crushed it with his thumbnail and wiped the dead ant off on his thigh.
“I understand.” She stood up and turned to the door without saying goodbye.
Waiting for the bus outside the office building, she couldn’t stop her tears. Now and again she wiped her cheeks with pinkish tissue. She fished her makeup kit out of her handbag and with the help of the mirror removed the smudges from her cheeks. The leatherette case in her hand attracted the eyes of a teenage girl, whose gaze roved between Jinli’s necklace and the glossy case.