Ha Jin - A Free Life

From I-78 they cruised onto I-81. Pingping and Nan began talking about what crops they'd like to grow if they had a farm of hundreds of acres. Nan thought he'd like to have an orchard of apple and pear trees, whereas Pingping thought she'd prefer a vegetable farm, which could be more profitable. "That would be too much work," said Nan.

"We're not old. We could manage it," she replied. "A lot of work is done by machines here."

They both agreed that if they lived on a farm, they'd raise a big family and build a large house that had at least six bedrooms.

From the backseat came a little voice. "I don't want any siblings," Taotao whined in English, his hands busy working on the Rubik's Cube. His parents laughed.

"Don't worry," Nan told him. "We're just shooting zer breeze."

"Shoot what?" asked Pingping.

"Shoot zer breeze. Zat means just to chat away."

At twilight, they crossed the tip of Maryland and a little strip of West Virginia in less than forty minutes. As soon as they had passed the border between the Virginias, they stopped for the night at an Econo Lodge at Winchester. Once inside the room, Pingping started cooking noodles on her single burner while Nan, exhausted, dropped off to snooze in the bed near the window, breathing ster-torously. The instant Taotao clicked on the TV, his mother told him to turn the volume down. He was watching The Simpsons. Whenever he cracked up in response, Pingping would say, "Don't disturb Daddy. "

When dinner was ready, Pingping woke Nan up, saying he mustn't sleep like this for long and ought to take a shower after the meal. Grog-gily, he sat up and began eating the noodle soup and canned ham.

That night Nan snored thunderously, which frightened Pingping. She worried he might hurt his larynx and made him turn on his right side so as to reduce his snoring. She and Taotao slept in the other bed. Despite the noise Nan made, despite the air conditioner's whirring, mother and son did get a good night's sleep. The motel offered continental breakfast, and the Wus ate bagels with cream cheese and a plate of cantaloupe. Nan drank two cups of coffee. Then they started out to cross Virginia.

Nan loved seeing the farms and the mountains along the way. Even the animals seemed comfortable and docile in the grasslands. He asked Pingping time and again: How about settling down in Virginia? She said that would be great. What impressed him most was the openness of the land, whose immensity and abundance seemed to dwarf humans. Farmhouses with red or black roofs, barns, trucks, all looked like toys. There were few people in sight except that once in a while a stalled vehicle sat on the roadside, its driver and passengers sitting inside or nearby. Somehow Nan couldn't help but think that if he died, he'd like to be buried in such a place, so open, so unpolluted by human beings. This was indeed a pristine piece of land.

When Nan felt tired, he let Pingping take over the wheel so that he could nap. The most pleasant part of the trip was central Virginia. Toward noon a fine shower washed the temperature down, and the air became cleaner, shining softly. Everything seemed to have turned clear in the sunlight. The green hills rising ahead and moving on both sides looked impenetrable with foliage, though in the distance the massive mountains, still under the rain clouds, were indigo. Traffic was sparse on the highway, with only a few semis in view. What's more, all the automobiles seemed subdued-no horn blared and every car was gliding smoothly along the glistening asphalt like a boat.

The landscape changed when they got onto I-77, crossing the spine of the Appalachian Mountains down to North Carolina. As Nan drove along, heading south for Charlotte, the soil became a lighter color, more reddish. More and more cars appeared on the two-lane road. After Charlotte and along I-85, they began to see peanut and tobacco fields. Holsteins, with drooping dewlaps and bald patches, were grazing in pastures, their tails languidly thrashing their hindquarters. Then orchards emerged, peaches studded the luxuriant crowns of the bulky trees, with branches curving down under the weight of the fruit. Once in a while they came across a bunch of mobile homes sitting on the edge of an orchard. Those trailers looked vacant; apparently their occupants had gone deep into the groves to pick peaches. Whenever Nan and Pingping saw a cottage or a small house, they'd say they would have been content with a home just like that. They wouldn't mind living in one of those trailer homes. They asked Taotao what he was thinking, but the boy didn't respond; perhaps he preferred something better.

TOWARD EVENING they arrived in Gwinnett County, Georgia. Peachtree Terrace was easy to find, just off Stone Mountain Highway. Nan parked before a brick building and went away to look for the woman who had the key to the apartment. As Pingping and Taotao waited outside their car, a few black and Mexican boys, who had been roller-skating in the parking lot, came over to look at the new arrivals. They didn't speak to Pingping and Taotao and just stared at them curiously, some chewing bubblegum. They nudged and jostled one another. Pingping couldn't fully understand what they were saying.

"Dey ain't Japs," said a boy with a chipped tooth.

"How d'you know?" asked another.

"Dis ain't fancy car."

"Is Ame'can car. Yuh know what I'm sayin'?" a heavyset boy in short pants said and kicked the rear wheel of the car, its Ford logo missing.

"Yeah. Them Japs don' wanna live here."

"Must be Chinese den."

"Naaah!"

Taotao clung to his mother, who was also a little unnerved. It was getting dark, and the damp air felt solid and oppressive. Large moths zigzagged around the orange lights in the parking lot. Beyond the lampposts and the treetops, the sky was spangled with clumps of stars, partly obscured by the clouds and smog. From the highway in the west came the whirring of the traffic.

Nan returned with the key twenty minutes later, massaging his sore neck with his hand. The apartment was in the basement of the building, whose hallways stank of so much synthetic lilac that Pingping held her breath as she walked through them. If only Nan had asked which floor the apartment was on before paying the deposit. No wonder the rent was so low. He couldn't help but blame himself for not having looked for a place two weeks earlier when he had been here. Pingping told him not to worry. They had arrived safe and sound, which was already something they should celebrate. As they went through the dingy rooms in the apartment, a fusty odor tickled their noses. The carpet in one bedroom and the living room was partly soaked with water. Dead cockroaches lay about, their claws stretched toward the ceiling. Nan picked up the telephone left by the former tenant-amazingly, it still had the dial tone. There was no time to think, and they had to unload the car without delay. Together Pingping and Nan carried in the bags and parcels and put them into the innermost bedroom, where the floor was dry, though also grubby.

Taotao was sitting on the only chair in the apartment, crying noiselessly. Pingping asked, "What's wrong?"

"I want a real home!" he wailed, chewing his lips.

"This is good home. Look how big it is." Indeed, the three bedrooms were spacious.

"No, this isn't a home I want. It's wet and dirty like hell."

"Don't worry your head about that. We can make it clean and comfy. That's why we have hands, right? You will see how nice it look in coupla days."

"Where can we sleep tonight?"

That was indeed a problem, to which she hadn't figured out a solution yet. They didn't have a mattress, and the floor in every room was filthy. The walls were so inadequately insulated that they could hear people yammering next door. Worse, since they'd come in, the ceiling hadn't stopped echoing the clatter of someone's heels.