Anne Tyler - Digging to America

Wednesday was No Binkies Outside of the Crib Day. Jin-Ho's father said all he could say was, he was mighty glad he had a job to go to. Then he left for work half an hour early. And Jin-Ho was glad she had school to go to, because already she could see how things were shaping up. By the time the car pool honked out front, XiuMei had thoroughly searched the house and found not a single pacifier. They were all in a liquor-store carton on top of the refrigerator, but she didn't know that. She curled into a ball underneath the kitchen table and started crying very loudly. Jin-Ho's mother was in the bathroom with the door closed. Jin-Ho called, Bye, Mama, and after a moment her mother called back, Bye, sweetie. Have a nice day. From the sound of her voice, it seemed she might be crying too.

So Jin-Ho sort of dreaded coming home again. But when she walked in, the house was quiet a cheerful, humming quiet, not a sulking quiet. She found her mother stirring cocoa on the stove, and her grandpa sitting at the table with the newspapers, and XiuMei in her booster seat sucking a pacifier.

Well, hey there, Ms. Dickinson-Donaldson, her grandpa said, and Jin-Ho said, Hi, Grandpa, carefully not looking in Xiu-Mei's direction, because maybe the grownups had failed to notice the pacifier and she was not about to point it out.

But then her mother said, As you can see, we've changed the rules a bit.

Jin-Ho said, Mmhmm, and climbed onto a chair.

I was telling your mom, her grandpa said, if the Binky Party is the big renunciation scene, why put Xiu-Mei through all this misery ahead of time? Right, Xiu-Mei?

Xiu-Mei busily sucked her pacifier.

We should just wait for the actual moment, he said. I know earlier I suggested a tapering-off approach, but I've reconsidered. Then he nudged Jin-Ho with his elbow and said, 'Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.'

Jin-Ho said, Okay…

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

However, Jin-Ho's mother said, turning from the stove, Saturday is still Binky Day! Remember that, Xiu-Mei! Saturday is still the day the Binky Fairy comes; you know that, don't you?

Oh, hon, give it a rest, Jin-Ho's grandpa said.

I just don't want her assuming But he said, So! Jin-Ho! What did you do in school today? and that was the end of that.

Snack was cocoa and alphabet cookies. Jin-Ho picked different cookies out of the tin and set them in front of Xiu-Mei. See?

An A, she said, and Xiu-Mei removed her pacifier long enough to say, A.

Right, Jin-Ho said. She felt happy and relieved, as if Xiu-Mei had just come back from a very long trip. And here's a B. And another A. And a C. And an A again. They seemed to be all A, B, Cs. She rummaged through the tin, hunting up an X to show XiuMei her initial.

Jin-Ho's grandpa was telling her mother that he had been a fool. Maybe it was just too long since I'd been part of the courtship scene, he said. I mean, what was I thinking? I picture how I must have looked, stashing that champagne in your fridge ahead of time like a total idiot, so cocksure, so all-fired sure that she would say yes Well, and she did say yes, Jin-Ho's mother said. You weren't an idiot in the least! She said, 'Yes,' in plain English, and we drank that champagne. It was only later that You know, her English seems to be a lot better than it is, JinHo's grandpa said. Did you ever notice that? She wrote me a letter once when she was away in Vermont, and that was the first time I realized that she often doesn't put article adjectives where she's supposed to. 'I am having very nice time,' she wrote, and 'Tomorrow we go to antique shop.' I guess that's understandable, when you've grown up speaking a language that doesn't use 'a' or 'the,' but it implies some, I don't know, resistance. Some reluctance to leave her own culture. I suspect that that's what went wrong between the two of us. The language was a symptom, and I should have paid more attention to it.

She also didn't put her s's on some things, Jin-Ho had noticed. Too many cracker will spoil your dinner, she would say. Jin-Ho didn't mention that, though, because she loved Maryam and she wanted her grandpa to love her too.

It's nothing to do with language, Jin-Ho's mother said. It's her. She has this attitude that she knows better than us. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if she claimed there wasn't supposed to be an article in those sentences.

She might, Jin-Ho's grandpa agreed. When you think about it the way she observed the Iranian New Year but never ours; and calling everyone 'june' and 'jon'; and that harem in the kitchen cooking rice for every occasion… Well, sometimes it seems to me that most of the adapting in this country is done by Americans. Do you ever feel that way?

But that's not really what I have against her, Jin-Ho's mother said. What I have against her is, she's elusive. Oh, I hate it that the world finds elusiveness so attractive! Elusive people are maddening! Why doesn't anyone realize?

Did she suppose I didn't have my own doubts from time to time? Jin-Ho's grandpa asked. I had recently lost my wife a lot more recently than she had lost her husband. I was working very hard to start over. It wasn't always easy, believe me.

You're well out of it, Jin-Ho's mother told him. Never mind, Dad. Someone else will come along.

I don't want anyone else, he said.

Then he must have thought he had left the wrong impression, because he said, Anyone, I mean. I don't want anyone, period. Jin-Ho's mother patted his hand.

Everybody would be coming to the party except Grandpa Lou and Grandma Pat. They had accepted another invitation and they refused to change their plans. Jin-Ho's mother said she couldn't understand that. Where are their priorities? she asked. Between some random couple and their own granddaughter It's not a random couple; it's their closest friends, Jin-Ho's father said. And their friends are celebrating a golden anniversary, while their granddaughter is merely giving up her pacifier.

Well, I don't know why I care, anyhow. I'm beginning to think this whole event is doomed, from the way they're talking on the radio. After Hurricane Isabel hits, we'll be floating in the Inner Harbor.

You said we couldn't blow away! Jin-Ho told her mother. You said we were too far inland!

No, no, of course we can't blow away. We don't have a thing to worry about. I was exaggerating, Jin-Ho's mother said.

But that evening, she and Jin-Ho's father dragged all the patio furniture into the garage just to be on the safe side.

Maybe the radio announcer was exaggerating too, because he said they'd be hit on Thursday and on Thursday the weather was fine. Jin-Ho went to school the same as usual, came home as usual, had her snack. The sky was getting darker, though, by late afternoon, and there was a bit of wind and a smattering of rain. When Jin-Ho's father got home from work he said, It's picking up out there. Jin-Ho began to feel prickly-skinned and excited, the way she did on Christmas Eve. During supper she kept twisting around in her chair to look out the kitchen window. The air was a weird shade of lavender and the trees were flipping their leaves wrong side to. Keep your fingers crossed for our elms, her father told her. As much money as I've spent on those things, I might as well be putting them through college. Jin-Ho giggled, picturing that.

Then the lights went out.

Xiu-Mei began to cry.

Jin-Ho's mother said, We're all right! No reason to panic! and she got up and fetched the candles from the dining-room buffet. Jin-Ho's father lit them with the pistol thing they lit the bad burner on the stove with two candles on the table and two more on the kitchen counter. Everybody's face looked flickery and different. Xiu-Mei kept waving one hand, and at first they didn't know why but then they saw she was experimenting with the shadows on the wall.