Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO
The wedding was simple: the courthouse followed by sheet cake and fruit punch in a community room at the YMCA. Being an adult was delightful, Joan thought. Each new milestone was remarkable and thrilling.
Shortly after they were married, Milton took Joan to a video store.
The store, which specialized in Chinese titles, was near downtown.
Milton was excited, exclaiming he couldn’t wait to show her someplace new, though the store had not, in truth, been new to Joan.
She’d first visited on her own a month earlier, in search of a historical miniseries she’d watched in Taiwan, The Supreme Kingdoms .
The shop owner, a Beijing native with tobacco-blotched teeth, had an arcane filing system he refused to explain to customers, which meant Joan had to ask for the series (all episodes but the pilot had been out on loan).
Weeks later, the same owner watched Milton escort Joan into the store, raising a few fingers in tepid greeting before returning to his newspaper.
Once inside, Milton wrapped his arms around her from behind, resting his chin on top of her head.
Joan blushed; she was not used to public displays of affection.
She liked the feeling elicited by Milton holding her, a contented pleasure which spread from the center of her body—but that she did enjoy it so made her feel as if she were showing off.
Joan was only just learning how to manage a husband.
Her best friend, Kailie Chan, whose wedding dress Joan had borrowed for the ceremony with Milton, had told Joan the trick to a good marriage was to award your spouse a victory each day.
A man’s ego was like a baby, Kailie said. It required constant feeding.
“Isn’t it incredible,” Joan said upon Milton ushering her farther in, “that there’s a shop right here in California just for Chinese videos? I wonder what Americans think when they walk past.”
Milton beamed, and Joan felt the brief thrill of checking an item off her to-do list. She had already delivered to her husband his victory today.
It was midday, the sky cloudless. The light streamed milky yellow through the window, settling into rainbows on the ground.
Joan wandered to the shaded half of the store.
She examined a series that looked to be about the Japanese occupation of Manchuria.
Did she want a sad story? She didn’t think so, but most of the historical dramas she favored seemed to have tragic endings, and even if they didn’t, you couldn’t help but recall what had really happened in the end.
“What’re you looking at?” Milton asked.
“Hmm? Something on the war, I think.”
“Come here,” Milton said. He stood by a dark curtain that separated two shelves from the rest of the store. He smiled impishly, motioning to the area beyond.
Joan didn’t move. She knew what could be found behind the curtain. She had glimpsed the space on prior visits, though always with her face in motion, as if performing a greater scan of the area. As if what lay beyond held no interest.
Pornography! Joan had no experience with such material, although at least to herself she could admit she was intrigued—yes, she was interested, she wanted to know!
The human body, so mysterious, soft and malleable and sticky—she was both intensely curious about its abilities and squeamish over the possibilities.
As a child, Joan had occasionally spotted photographs of nude women: a scattering of magazines at the newsstand in Taipei, carelessly stowed behind the candies and cigarettes.
The covers were always large—too large, it seemed, for the gray plastic sleeves they were to be contained within—the oversize font running across the women’s permed hair; inches of milky cleavage, shoulders exposed.
As Milton beckoned, Joan could feel the owner’s gaze on her.
Were she to look back, she was certain she would find his face set in the same dour cast that to certain Caucasians might sound a warning, a signal to brace for rocky service ahead: definitely no speaky English, a laggy response time, perhaps a mentally slow second uncle who slept in a back room?
But Joan knew such a man must contain multitudes: English lessons on the weekends; revenue figures scrolling past expenses in a ceaseless ticker inside his brain; the cash he secreted from the wasteful hands of the IRS; a few failed business deals already under his belt; relatives who’d starved back in China and a disappointed wife and unappreciative children at home.
Such a man might believe Joan decent, but the moment she went through that curtain he would recategorize her as that other kind of Asian, the wanton sort, uneducated and shameless.
It was Joan’s first real experience choosing between embarrassment and preference. She did not turn away but instead straightened her back and followed Milton.
They were the only customers in the aisle.
The videos were crammed in the same random fashion as in the rest of the store, but here there were only two rows of shelves facing each other, extending nearly to the ceiling.
Milton had recently detailed to Joan each of California’s major fault lines, and she could not help but imagine an earthquake now, the tapes falling onto her and Milton, all the naked men and women crashing to the ground.
Milton perused a display at eye level. Something in his manner, a hint of sly familiarity, prompted her: “Have you been here before?”
“All men do it,” he answered naughtily. “What do you think?”
Joan forced herself to look at the videos.
Alone with Milton, her embarrassment was quickly overrun, and she greedily took in her surroundings.
She was surprised by the number of titles, which appeared to offer settings of greater diversity than the imperial dramas that ruled the rest of the store.
There was also racial diversity: white people, and what looked to be a Mexican man on one cover, a woman in a red dress beside him, shoe straps dangling from her fingers.
And here was a Black man and an Asian woman, actually, two Asian women and four Black men, and several Japanese titles, one of which she dared wedge out with her finger—the translated copy promised a story of betrayal and gangsters, of steamy encounters and possible blackmail.
Blackmail!
A man pushed aside the curtain and, upon seeing Joan, spun around and left.
“Have you found one?” Milton whispered.
Joan hadn’t known she was expected to pick something.
Conscious of the possibility of another customer entering, she hastened to choose.
She reached for the video directly facing her, which had on its cover an Asian woman with her face cupped in her hands.
Joan liked the woman’s expression, which looked serious, as if she were about to review a grocery list or discuss an unfair medical bill.
This particular actress had her long straight hair swept behind her back rather than in the usual tight curls.
Once Joan held the video, however, she regretted her choice.
She wished the male actor were on the cover as well—the man should really bear some of the pressure of expectation, she thought.
The back also bore frustratingly limited copy: it described only a sexy “high-stakes” situation.
But what was the situation? And what about it was high-stakes?
There came at that moment the chime of the bell—another customer—and so Joan quickly dropped the video into Milton’s outstretched hand and went outside, where she waited for her husband.
They returned to the store two weeks later.
Joan had spent the morning packing the rest of her belongings to move to Milton’s apartment.
For nearly two years Joan had woken up at five to prepare a fiber-rich breakfast as well as a lunch to be reheated by her seventy-four-year-old landlord, Iris Mahoney; Joan also was responsible for changing the litter box of Felix, Iris’s bad-tempered tabby, and cleaning the house.
The Craftsman bungalow was technically three bedrooms, though Joan didn’t live in one of the three.
She was instead allowed use of the non-permitted attic.
The space was narrow, asymmetrical, with unpainted walls; when she lifted her arms, her fingers grazed the ceiling.
There were some books left to pack, as well as her favorite green wool coat.
Joan had left the coat for last, as she knew she wouldn’t forget it.
On the desk were some items she had purchased when she’d accompanied Milton to the university art shop earlier that week.
She’d been entranced by the supplies, their breadth and specificity, and thus had allowed herself a rare splurge: a stainless-steel protractor and calipers set and a matching mechanical pencil and a Staedtler eraser and two pads of gridded paper.
Joan dropped the pads into her tote and the rest of the supplies into its large pocket.
She then packed the books and green coat in her duffel.
After she finished, the room was empty of her possessions.
As was her daily custom, she went to the chest at the foot of the entrance and removed from it a rag and wiped the dust from the furniture.
“I wish you weren’t leaving,” Iris said when Joan came downstairs.
“Me too,” Joan said, but this was only to be polite.
Iris had been nice enough, but she’d also been unfair.
The attic had been advertised as a stand-alone unit with bathroom attached, and the cleaning characterized as “light straightening”—all false claims. Joan thought she understood why, as Iris lived on a fixed income and didn’t seem to have family nearby, but at the very least her rent should have been lower.
“Was it because you had too much work? I should have had you manage less. You do get used to the assistance.” Iris coughed helplessly.