Maureen McHugh - China Mountain Zhang

"Thank you."

I should tell her to be out by the weekend. I should tell her right now. But it seems terrible to sit eating her food telling her not to stay. Tomorrow I'll eat before I get home. She doesn't think about the position she's put me in because she doesn't have any friends, she's not accustomed to being around people. I am furious. But as always, I hesitate to reject her. I look into that monkey face and think, she's been rejected and hurt enough, and I put it off. I am a coward.

We sit and watch the vid for awhile, "Do you want to see kite races?" she asks.

"I don't really care," I say. Actually I don't watch the kites on vid much, but since I took her she thinks it's the most important thing in my life. We watch a serial. We make small talk. I fall asleep in my chair and wake up with a jerk. Where can she go? She can't get housing, not unless her parents will file a separation. Surely she has friends. Surely it is not my problem.

I go to bed and sleep badly. I dream of middle school.

In the morning San-xiang doesn't get up when I do, so I leave early without coffee. I am on the site by six-forty-five and sit in the gray morning waiting for coffee and for the day to begin. The crew greets the site of their tech engineer perched on the back of a concrete bench with dismay-"Jesus, Zhang, you goin' to be bustin balls all day today?" And the tone of the day is set.

We are under deadline and I am mean, I do not want to be here Friday night under the lights, working. I want to be here Saturday even less. If we work on Saturday, the men will expect big bonus and I will get chewed out.

Foreman Qian shows up at a little before nine and disappears into the trailer. If he stays in the trailer, maybe I will get some work out of the crew. But he doesn't. He comes back out, coffee cup in hand, and surveys the crew work.

"Zhang!" he snaps.

"Foreman Qian," I say, trotting over, dutiful dog.

"You think Friday already you finish?"

I drop into Chinese. "If the weather is good, yes. If the weather is bad, or we have problems, no."

Foreman Qian nods. Sips his morning tea.

"Engineer Zhang," he says, "Have you talked to my daughter?"

"Lately?" I ask. "Not since Thursday."

He looks unhappy and tired. "She gives you a call, you call me, okay?"

"Something is wrong?" I ask.

"A misunderstanding," he says. "She is staying with one of her friends."

I nod, we stand looking at the crew for a moment in apparent comraderie. Then I trot back and Foreman Qian goes into the trailer. I don't like being in the middle of this, tonight I'll tell her to call him. That will take care of my problems.

In the afternoon we have a box playing-we always have a box playing, sounds of Brooklyn -and I catch a weather report. Rain tomorrow. The crew watches me, obviously they already know. I rest a polisher on the edge of the granite planter I am working on.

"Okay," I say, "I hear it. Work starts at noon tomorrow. Tell your mothers to put your dinners on the counter, we'll be working under the lights."

"Shit," someone says. But I turn the polisher back on and go back to work. I pretend not to notice them bitching. They knew what I was going to say, but hell, bitching is one of the few satisfactions they have.

It is seven-thirty when I leave work. I get my dinner on the way home, stopping for a hamburger on the way to the subway. The subway isn't crowded. Above me a paper sign says "Una luz brillara en tu camina/Ven a la iglesia. Descubre lo que has perdido." Discover what I have lost? Not by going to church. I think whatever I have lost was gone before I was born. I fall asleep on the subway and nearly miss my stop.

The apartment is dark, for a moment I think she has left, but then the lights come up and I see her bag sitting by the door. I check through the whole apartment. No sign, no note.

Perhaps she, like me, is working late? Maybe she went to dinner with someone from work?

So I sit in my chair and go to sleep with the vid on.

The door wakes me and I sit up. The system has shut the vid off, which means I've been asleep for more than twenty minutes, I am confused and feel as if it is later than that.

"San-xiang?" I say.

"Hello," she sings out, "I thought you'd be asleep."

I was. "I was watching the vid. Did you work late?"

"Tonight is my political study meeting."

Oh yes, the optimum size of a community. Now what? Tell her she has to go. "Your father is very worried about you," I say.

"Did you talk to him today? What did he say?"

"He asked me to call him if I saw you. I think you should talk to him. And I think you should decide what you are going to do." Well put, I think to myself.

She sits down on the couch. "If I call him, he'll make me come home."

"But he threw you out," I say.

She makes a gesture with her hand, waving that away. "He didn't really mean it."

"What are you going to do?" I ask.

"I don't know." She looks down at her feet, "Call him, I guess. Do you mean tonight?"

Shit. Grow up. All right, if you want me to be the parent. "Yeah, tonight."

She sits there for a moment, then gets up and goes into the kitchen. There is a long silence, longer than it takes to jack in and connect. Finally I hear her say, "Baba? Shi wo." Papa, it's me.

A pause. "Zai Zhang gongchengshide jiali." At Engineer Zhang's place.

A long pause. Dui, she breathes. "Wo dengideng." I'll wait.

I hear the snap when she takes off the contact. "He's coming to get me," she says. She is about to cry and escapes into the bathroom. I think about getting a beer but decide I am too tired. At least I can sleep late tomorrow and there won't be anyone here.

I try not to listen to San-xiang crying in the bathroom.

She comes back out and sits down on the couch. It is not my fault she is ugly, I have no reason to feel guilty. I have always had tremendous trouble defining the limits of responsibility.

"My father is very upset," she says, and has to regain her self-control.

I nod.

"I am in big trouble," she says.

"You're an adult," I point out.

"Sometimes my father makes that hard to remember. He is pretty good at making people do what he wants."

"You can just tell him 'no'."

"Like you did when he told you to take me out?" she asks.

"That's different," I say, "taking you out is enjoyable."

She nods and looks at the vid. She is crying again, without allowing any sound to escape. I feel trapped. A few minutes and her father will be here. She takes a shuddery breath. "It's okay," she says, "you don't have to ask me out anymore. I mean, you're very nice but I know you really don't want to."

"That's not true," I lie. "I enjoy our evenings together." It's not altogether a lie.

She shrugs.

"I consider you a friend, San-xiang," I say as gently as I can.

"Well maybe I'm not looking for friendship," she snaps and then covers her face with her hands.

I don't know how to respond but she doesn't say anything else. After a moment she goes back into the bathroom. I hear water running. My water bill is going to be terrible this month, last month it was pretty good, but this month will be bad. If I took public housing I wouldn't have to pay anything for the first 800 liters of water I used.

She comes out with her make-up repaired and her eyes red and we watch the vid until my system tells me that her father is outside. I check, and sure enough, there he is in his coveralls. I let him in, and while I am at it I take San-xiang out of the system so she can't get in unless I let her.

I open the door and say, unnecessarily I'm sure, "Your father is here."

I hear the lift open and then Foreman Qian walking down the hallway. I open the door, and he glances at me once and brushes past me. "San-xiang," he says.