Chapter Nine
CHAPTER NINE
By the time Joan gave birth, five days over the forty-week mark, she was sick of being pregnant. The nurse took away the baby, and then Joan slept, and when she awoke she was presented with a blue folder with forms to complete.
“Jamie. It’s a girl’s name,” Bill said. “Isn’t it?”
“You can call him James,” Joan said. But she would never do so. She would always call him Jamie.
Jamie was a fussy baby. When he cried, his entire body went red as he wailed and shook. Joan slept very little, but it was manageable; she suffered, but the suffering was tolerable because she could see an end.
“It’s because you’re so young,” Bill said fondly.
To Joan’s relief, his earlier reluctance around her pregnancy didn’t seem to have lingered; he appeared as excited as a first-time father, though Joan had little idea how first-time fathers should be.
Bill marveled at Jamie’s tiny hands and feet and taught Joan how to change a diaper.
They were sent gifts—silver rattles and soft animal-print shirts and pants that made Joan want to weep for how pure they were.
A month after Jamie’s arrival, Dina and Trevor visited with a big red fire engine.
“And you’re doing well?” Dina asked. She seemed softer toward Joan now that she was a mother; the Halls didn’t have children, but Dina seemed to know a lot about them, inquiring how Jamie was feeding and sleeping. Trevor had peeled off upon entering and now sat with Bill in his study.
“Oh, yes. A little tired.” Joan blinked blearily at the fire engine.
She’d once had a toy like that, she recalled.
A blue wooden convertible with a long string attached to the back and wheels that clicked as it was dragged through the courtyard.
Someone had bought that toy for her. Somebody, at one point, had cared enough for Joan to bring her that car.
“Is Bill helping? Men are useless at these things.”
“Bill has been helpful,” Joan said, still staring at the fire engine. “He even changes diapers.”
“Oh, well,” Dina said, “he’s done this before, hasn’t he?
” Though Dina laughed, it didn’t seem to Joan to be a completely nice laugh—but then Joan never knew how to interpret Dina.
Dina and Bill had been friends for years; they had one of those intimate friendships that can sometimes unnerve spouses.
Joan left to feed Jamie in the nursery. When she emerged, she encountered Trevor leaving the bathroom. He had a fine, angular face with pink cheeks, as if he’d just come in from the sun. “Do you need help bringing the fire engine to the nursery?” he asked.
“No, no, I’m fine,” Joan said, although it was quite heavy—the engine was metal and had a child-size seat. She felt milk dripping into her bra and crossed her arms. “I’m doing some sorting later. I’ll take care of it then.”
“It’s a wonderful thing, to have a baby. You should rest. No one cares if the house is clean. They care that you’re doing all right.”
Why, he’s nice , Joan realized. Or at least he can be, when he feels like it. She had the sudden understanding that all big men like Trevor and Bill were once little boys; that they had been babies, just like Jamie.
After the Halls departed, Joan washed the dishes and moved the fire engine to the nursery.
She stroked its cool, smooth metal; it was a finer toy by magnitudes than the convertible she’d had in Taiwan.
She wished, rather impossibly, that she had brought it with her to California.
Joan could imagine giving it to Jamie one day when he was older.
See, she could say. Here is my special toy, just like yours; I had people who loved me, just like you do.
In the afternoon, when Bill was out, Joan retrieved the cookie tin that held her old phone book and passport and went into the office.
“Is it a boy?” Mei asked. This was the most important question.
“Yes.” Joan looked to her side. She had set up a small bassinet which she could move from room to room. Jamie was awake but calm, staring at the ceiling.
“Your husband is pleased?”
Joan took this as an inquiry as to whether she was married. “Yes.”
“Where is he from?”
“He isn’t from Taiwan.” Joan cleared her throat. “He isn’t Chinese at all, actually. He’s American.”
From the silence that followed, Joan knew she’d misjudged how poorly Mei would take this news.
Growing up in Taiwan, Joan had often heard the saying that only those women who couldn’t find a Chinese man had to marry another race—and white men in particular were known for their inability to judge quality or looks.
They couldn’t discern if your cooking was flavorful or if your family was decent; they couldn’t tell if the university you attended was well ranked or even existed at all. In short: they didn’t know anything .
“How old is he?” Mei finally asked.
“Older.”
“How old?”
“Fifty-three.”
“He must be rich,” Mei said. “I can’t imagine why otherwise. If you’ve already shamed yourself, you should have been sending us money.”
Joan had in fact been planning to visit Western Union at some point; she’d been waiting for when she could leave Jamie for a few hours. “Is that all you care about? Money?”
“I hope you understand that you are selling yourself,” Mei said, unbothered. “What I’m saying is, I’m just not sure if you’re any good at it.”
This time it was Joan who hung up. She waited a short while by the phone for the call she knew wouldn’t arrive, and then went to the cookie tin and retrieved the checkbook for the bank account she’d opened upon moving to California.
She kept her checkbook balanced, and the last figure was the remaining tally of all she’d saved from Lotus Garden.
Joan crossed a line through the figure and netted the sum to zero.
She would send her parents this much, Joan decided.
But nothing more. Nothing of Bill’s. She wondered if her parents would speak to her again once the money stopped.
Jamie made a noise, a small rustling sound, and Joan went to him.
He’d spat up, and she ran a washcloth over his bib.
The bib was blue, the same blue as her wooden convertible, and suddenly Joan recalled that the car she’d loved so much had actually been Alfred’s, which had then been passed to her brothers.
It had gone to her only after no one else wanted it.
Jamie cried to feed every two hours. He refused a bottle, and so at night Joan woke and fed him from the breast. Afterward he required rocking and humming before being placed back in his crib—if she tried to set him down too early, he would release a powerful scream.
In the mornings, sometimes Joan was so tired she would fall asleep while brushing her teeth.
She began to go to bed right after dinner.
“When are you getting a nanny?” Bill asked.
Joan didn’t respond. She had not thought they would get a nanny. After all, she had no job herself.
“Of course you’ll get one,” Bill said. “Agatha had two. Besides, how would we ever go out?”
First Joan placed ads in the Chinese newspapers.
Seeking nanny. Live-in OK. No cooking required.
But she received few responses. Next she pasted flyers at the Chinese supermarkets, which met with more success—she received a steady string of calls.
Her first hire, a twenty-four-year-old named Wendy who claimed to be from Shanghai, stayed only a few months; Joan realized Wendy was stealing.
The second one also stole; Joan confronted her when she discovered silverware missing. This time Joan asked why she stole.
“You have so much more,” the woman said. She was from Guangzhou, in her fifties, with thin lips and mottled skin. Joan had hired her knowing she would speak terrible Mandarin and that it would have to be Joan who taught Jamie.
Her third attempt, Joan tried to solve the problem in advance, with both care and money.
She interviewed seven candidates before deciding on her hire, a Cantonese woman named Li Zhou who preferred to be called Linda.
Joan took the amount Linda requested per month and doubled it and gave her every other Friday off.
Linda also stole, however, and was the most profligate—when asked why she had taken not only a coral necklace but also a set of leather-bound books of Chinese poetry, Linda only cried and beat at her lap. The next morning, she was gone.
“I don’t get why they all steal,” Joan said. “I’m paying so much more than other families already.”
“I’m sure they don’t all steal,” Bill said. “I liked Linda. So what if she wanted some books? We should have just given them to her.”
Bill was right, in his own way, though Joan knew it wouldn’t have stopped with only the books— for she understood what really motivated these women was their belief that they were just like her, that nothing separated them except for bad luck in an arbitrary universe, and in taking from her they were simply evening the score.
I’m tired, Joan thought. But I can’t tolerate a thief in the house.
Thus Jamie continued to spend his days with Joan. He could now sit unsupported and was particularly fond of a metal truck with an attached trailer which had once belonged to Theo. “Vroom vroom,” Joan would chant, pushing it back and forth on the carpet. “Vroom vroom!”