Janice Lee - The Expatriates

Margaret watches her handsome husband wipe his mouth with a napkin.

“I know what happened,” she says.

“Let’s talk about it later,” he says, giving her a kiss on his way out the door.

Priscilla has worked her magic, chosen a caterer, talked about lighting, flowers, music, specialty cocktails. It’s going to be big. Over a hundred people, more like a wedding. Names she got from Clarke’s secretary and had Margaret vet, because Margaret hadn’t been able to generate anything by herself.

Later, when Margaret checks her phone, it won’t swipe open. It works only every fifth or sixth time, and then not at all, presenting her with a black screen no matter what she does. Being without a phone makes her feel as if she doesn’t have an arm, so she decides to go to the store to get it fixed.

But every single day is filled with little traps. She decides to switch handbags, from a black one to a brown one she hasn’t used in a while, when she discovers a little red plastic dinosaur in the side pocket. And an old dusty lollipop. They were treats from the doctor when they went to get G’s shots the year before. A punch to the heart. She sits there on the floor of her bedroom, again, with the contents of her bag strewn around her, and clutches this cheap plastic dinosaur and the lollipop and tries to recalibrate her life so she can live it for the next five minutes. Then blinks, gets up.

She goes downstairs, where the newspaper is waiting. She reads it with another cup of tea. Today in the Mainland News column, a story of a boy who was kidnapped as a child and then found his way home through Google Maps. A picture of him with his newly found parents, with awkward positions and tentative smiles. Now in his twenties, he had been adopted by a family who loved him, but he always remembered the landmarks in his old village, and he tracked down his family. In China, this must happen every day, children going missing, being kidnapped, abducted. In a country of a billion, what is a child a day?

She wonders if his parents will be a disappointment. If he will love them, or if he is too ensconced in his new life to have room for them. She went to a lunch for an organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of sex workers in India a few years ago and was told that many girls go back to sex work after being freed, because it is the world they know and all their friends are there. It’s too hard to go out and forge a new life and easy to fall back on the old one. This organization is trying to help them stay out of their old trade by teaching them a new one: making bras and panties. They showed photos of brightly colored underwear and the young girls who made them, and Margaret couldn’t help but wonder if there was any other clothing they could have made, something not so suggestive, like hats, or socks, or scarves.

She closes the newspaper. The house is quiet, with Essie dusting or mopping or whatever she does to keep the house immaculate. Oh, yes, she was going to go get her phone fixed before being derailed by the handbag. She drives to the mall and goes to the phone store, where they sell her a new phone and try to persuade her to add another line to her account.

“No,” she tells Jingo Wong (another odd name!). Does he know his name alludes to extreme patriotism? “No, thank you.”

He swipes on his own phone, but not before she sees a photo of him with his girlfriend. They are wearing matching furry white hats. A glimpse into another person’s life — and all the attendant love and heartache therein.

“If you get the new number, you get the cheaper price for the phone,” he tells her helpfully. “Can start the new contract.”

But she can never even think about altering anything about her cell phone account. She remembers teaching her children her telephone number. “Six two eight eight…,” G would say, as if it were a magic incantation, so pleased with himself. She imagines him chanting the number now, in a small, windowless box, remembering it for when he can call it, for when he is older and can do something about his situation. She told him about country codes, but how much can a child be expected to know? Still, she cannot ever give up this phone number.

She worries sometimes that her inability to move on is just narcissism, that she cannot imagine her child not needing her. Everyone always talks about the resilience of children, how they adjust to new lives, how they survive, and she sees this sometimes, has seen it, in small moments: when Daisy was lost for a few minutes when she was five, and how she hadn’t cried out, how she had slipped her hand into another woman’s, believing she would take care of her; or how they settle into new situations so quickly and don’t look back once their parents are out of sight. This is how you can tell the survivors, she supposes. But while she wishes G is happy, she cannot imagine such a thing.

She thinks about what she would say to him if he came back. She knows that the children who come back talk about how they are afraid their parents don’t want them anymore, that they are defiled, or that what they had to do to survive will be held against them.

“I love you,” she would say. “I love you no matter what happened, what you said, what you did, what you thought. I understand. I understand. Mommy loves you no matter what.”

Her eyes fill whenever she thinks these thoughts, and she feels secretly ashamed, as she is being indulgent or maudlin, definitely, or again, narcissistic somehow.

Jingo comes back from ringing up the sale on her new phone. She thanks him and leaves.

The mall fills up with office workers looking for lunch. She is hungry but leaves the mall so she can go to her favorite Vietnamese place on Stanley Street for pho. Margaret lines up with everyone else and is given a number. Soon she is led to a table already occupied by three other people. She sits down, points to what she wants on the menu, and waits.

Around her, people chatter away in Cantonese. This is a local place, and she is the only nonlocal. The food is good and cheap, and she loves coming here. When the pho comes, she dumps in the tiny red peppers and the sprouts, inhales the pungent steam of the broth. She eats quickly, sweat beading on her temples as the peppers fire up in her sinuses and her mouth starts to burn. Simple things: taste, smell, heat. She takes a sip of water, sits back, her hunger sated. She is sitting with a twenty-something man and two women, who must work together. They chat animatedly, dropping in an English word here and there, taking no notice of her. It feels good to be totally anonymous. She pays the bill and leaves.

It’s time to go home, to be there for when Daisy and Philip return from school. As they come in the door, shedding their backpacks and scuffed sneakers, she hugs them, gets them a snack, and watches them drink milk and eat, her babies.

Daisy gets up and surreptitiously signals to her mother to follow.

“Mom,” she says, “I think I got it.”

“What?” Margaret says. “Got what?”

Daisy huffs with frustration. “You know, the thing. Remember the tea?”

Oh. Margaret vaguely remembers going to a tea for mothers and daughters the previous spring, at which adolescence and sexuality were discussed. She had still been reeling and barely functional, but she had gone for Daisy, so she could be there with her mother.

“You mean your period?”

“Yes! I have this kind of brown stuff coming out.”

“Oh, sweetie,” she says. “Does your stomach hurt at all? Like cramps?”

“A little last night, but I didn’t know why.”

Margaret pulls her into her bathroom. “Here.” She reaches down to the drawer and gets out pads and liners. “Why don’t you start with these? You can let me know if you want to try tampons, but try these first.”