THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2019 65
by his parents until he could do some-
thing right.
We need an average, he told her.
I don’t want kids, she replied.
I
n Hangzhou, they met the rest of her
family. Both grandmothers were still
alive, and many uncles and aunts. A
crowd of thirteen was waiting for them,
the train-station arrival lane filled with
mopeds and cars. Each person wanted
to help carry something. In the end,
they emptied out a suitcase to give each
person a thing to carry. Then they all
gathered at one aunt’s house, a large
apartment with a terrace, to eat. I can’t
eat any more, he told her, face down on
the bed. She said he had to. Per her
translation, her family thought all Amer-
icans could eat and if he couldn’t it would
be disappointing. He might be the first
and last American they’d ever meet and
he had to deliver.
His mother called, but he was eating.
His mother called, but he was on
the toilet.
His mother called, but he was out
on a run.
In Hangzhou, her cousin took them
to see a pagoda. The pagoda had a his-
tory, but he zoned out, as all his energy
was being used to digest food. He sat
down and listened to his stomach.
Moments later, his wife and the cousin
began to argue. He could make out parts.
While admiring West Lake, his wife
had said shuang, and her cousin had said
that that word meant refreshing, not
cool. Cool was ku, as in ruthless or strong,
the Chinese word for “cruel.” His wife
looked down. But immediately back up.
The argument worsened until they had
to leave, and, on the bus, it continued.
At one point, her cousin turned to him
and said in English, Hey, look, I’m ar-
guing with a toddler, after which his
wife swung her hand across the cous-
in’s mouth. Then no one spoke.
She is like a sister to me, his wife
had told him. Or maybe the closest to
a sister that I can imagine.
They had known each other from
age zero through five, then at thirteen,
twenty-one, and now.
She had also said to him, I get that
you don’t want to see your family, but
do you know what it’s like to have that
choice be made for you? My parents
chose to leave. I did not. I was lonely.
In their bedroom, just the two of
them, he asked what the fight was about.
Nothing, his wife said. Just that the
cousin had called her an ABC and said
that she was the most classic Ameri-
can-born Chinese she knew. Only ABCs
went on prepaid tours, spoke bad Chi-
nese, married out, and thought every-
thing was cool or great, when most
things were just plain.
But I was born here, she said. I had
a passport from here that I gave up.
The pagoda is where the legendary
White Maiden is locked. The White
Maiden is beautiful, immortal, and can
turn, when necessary, into the white
snake from which she came. She has
an immortal sidekick who comes from
a green snake. His wife had said that
she remembered the TV show they’d
watched—which had led to arguments
about who was more like the White
Maiden—and her cousin had replied
that it was so ABC of her to remem-
ber the show but not the Ming-dynasty
legend, which she could not read.
His wife cried for ten minutes and
then stopped. I see her point now, she
said, and looked at him inquisitively. You
know what I thought about when she
called me an ABC? He didn’t. I thought
about my parents. Because her parents
had funny names and accents, they had
to spell their names out each time, slowly
and with references. Q for Queen. G for
George. X for Xerox. Z for Zebra. Even-
tually, they changed their names alto-
gether. Raymond like “Everybody Loves
Raymond.” Lucy like “I Love Lucy.”
T
hese were the last phrases his wife
said to him in English. After that
moment, something changed. She
stopped translating for him, too. At
meals, he could only look around or eat
or laugh when everyone else did.
A phase, he decided. Something to
get out of her system. But then he won-
dered if that made him sound like
his mother, who called many things a
phase. His allergy to cats, his view of
the world, etc.
Her family watched television to-
gether. They went from house to
“Edward J. Runt yearned for the day when he would say
to his siblings, ‘It is you, my gluttonous kin, who have taught me the
cold comforts of solitude, philosophy, literature; you who bade me
to suckle at the bittersweet teat of introspection—and I pardon you!
For although my stomach is empty, my soul is nourished.’”
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