Janice Lee - The Expatriates

She broke the surface and waved to Barbara, who waved back.

“You look like one of those shiny-headed seals,” Barbara said.

“Should I swim under the boat?” Mercy called.

“Aren’t you frightened?” Barbara shouted. “I would be.”

She was, but that’s why she always made herself do it.

“Watch for me on the other side,” she called, but she couldn’t tell whether Barbara had heard her. She treaded water for a few seconds, filled her lungs, and jackknifed into the water.

She went deep, and went down, down. The silence. The loud, echoing silence always shocked her when she was in the ocean. She went deep enough to be sure to not touch the bottom of the boat, slimy and crusted with creepy shelled things. She saw the dark hulk of it in front of her, went deeper. She wondered if salt water was good for your eyes or bad, or neutral. And then came the moment when she couldn’t back out, was more than halfway. You decided to go for it or not. She fought the urge to turn back and instead swam for her life. Her head ached. She swam, powerful strokes with her arms, kicks with her legs, head stretched out as far as possible. The beginnings of panic. She swam and swam and swam. Finally, light above, her neck straining to see. She broke the surface and looked up. Air heaved into her lungs. The sun was shining. Children laughing, people talking. Life going on. No one was watching for her. Barbara had gone off, to pack something or follow some child’s cry. Mercy ducked her head underneath again and came up new. She swam to the back of the boat and hoisted herself up. She rinsed off with the freshwater shower nozzle, tears stinging her eyes, and dressed. She felt so alone. She thought that she must be getting her period. She must be melancholy for a reason.

People were starting to gather their things to make the short journey to the beach. They waved over a sampan, and the first boatload left. When the boat came back, Mercy climbed in with her beach bag that had her sunscreen and towel. An old fisherwoman was steering the boat. She had a big black brimmed hat and leathery brown skin.

She looked at Mercy, with her tanned thighs and white shorts and orange tank top. Suddenly, Mercy felt very exposed.

“ Joong gok yan? ” the woman asked. “Are you Chinese?”

Mercy shook her head no. “Korean.”

“ Hong gok yan .” The old lady nodded. Then said in English, “You no marry.”

Mercy laughed. “What?”

“You no marry.” By this time, another couple and their toddler son had come on board — the worried mother, who had been frightened of accidents.

“Yes, I’m not married.” She smiled.

“You no marry. No have husband.”

“Yes,” she said. “Okay.”

“Never!” The woman leaned over and tugged on Mercy’s earlobes. It was so sudden she couldn’t even recoil.

“Okay, okay!” she said, laughing out of shock.

“Your ear say no children.” The old woman looked at the other woman. “She have no children. But you never get fat,” she said to Mercy, as if by way of consolation.

The other woman looked at Mercy uneasily. “I don’t know…,” she started to say.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Mercy said. “You have no idea how used to it I am. It’s fine.”

The woman looked at her with pity. “Okay,” she said. “But this woman shouldn’t say that to you.”

“Oh, what does it matter,” Mercy said. “She’s just an old woman on a fishing boat.”

The boatwoman pulled on the rope and started the engine. The boat started puttering slowly to the shore. Mercy looked out at the flat horizon and tried to arrange her face in a pleasant expression. When they reached the shore, she got out in thigh-deep water and helped to pull the boat in so she could receive the boy from his mother. She reached her arms out.

“No, thank you,” said the woman. “Bill will get him.” She waited for her husband to get out of the boat and then handed over the child.

“I’m sorry, what’s your name again?” Mercy said, holding on to the boat so the woman could clamber out.

“Jenny,” said the woman. “And Bill, and our son is Jack.”

“My name is Mercy,” she said. She was so tightly wound she didn’t know whether she was mad at Jenny or at the fisherwoman or at the world.

They all arrived at the beach and wended their way to the barbecue pits.

Lunch was jovial, lubricated. The men poured out charcoal and tried to light the fire, swearing merrily. “Man make fire,” Barbara’s husband grunted.

When the charcoals glowed orange, they laid down chicken wire and roasted the chicken wings while drinking bottle after bottle of beer. Jenny was nervous about Jack being so close to the fire and kept talking about it.

Another woman looked at Mercy’s wet hair and said, “You are so brave. I haven’t swum in Hong Kong waters since I saw a bloody Kotex floating by.” The others hooted, and Mercy felt stupid.

“It’s so hot,” she murmured, twisting her hair back. “How can you not swim?”

“Yes!” Barbara said. “You are all old, afraid people. Mercy is the only one who has joie de vivre. She is young! You should try to be more like her.” Barbara was from Korea, and her English was not perfect despite Columbia, but she was the warmest person Mercy had ever met. She invited every stray to her house, cooked them jigae and mandu , and was the den mother for stray Koreans in Hong Kong. Mercy smiled at Barbara gratefully.

A man from New Jersey with a sharp face said, “What’s with the Normals?”

“What?” said Margaret. “What do you mean?”

“I just interviewed a guy from Beijing Normal University. That’s different from Beijing University, right?”

“It’s more of a teacher’s college,” said Barbara’s husband, who was in Beijing every week for work.

Mercy watched Clarke sip his beer, and suddenly it clicked. She knew where she knew him from.

She had been on an elevator with him, and he had been with another man. Two anonymously handsome Western men in suits. They were everywhere in Central. She had, uncharacteristically, been laden with shopping bags, as she had been tasked to buy group birthday presents for a few friends, since she was the only one not working at the time, and she supposed she had looked like a spoiled princess.

“Women!” the other man had said to Clarke, as he scanned her carelessly. “Women and their shopping.”

She had been stunned. The man spoke as if she were invisible, or as if she couldn’t understand what he was saying. Later she had thought of all the things she could have said. Like “I went to Columbia!” or “Because you men take all the high-paying jobs.” Or something. The idea that she was entirely inconsequential to the men in a small elevator was hideous to her at that moment, struggling as she was to find a job, find her rent money, find her life. She turned red, almost stamped her feet, struggled to find something to say. And then they got off. She was left steaming, unfulfilled. And here Clarke was, sitting across from her, as confident as ever, as unknowing, married to a perfect woman who was presumably exempt from the assumptions of him and his ilk.

As Mercy looked over at Margaret, something dawned on her. “Are you half?” she asked.

“A quarter,” Margaret said, a little surprised. “My father is, was, half-Korean — he passed away — but my mom is white. Most people can’t tell.”

Barbara piped in, “I could tell right away.”

“Yeah, but others can’t, really,” Mercy said. “Do you speak Korean?”

“Not at all,” Margaret said. “I feel bad about it, but I think it’s usually the mother who does it, and my mother couldn’t. And we lived in a very homogeneous neighborhood. My dad basically wanted to be white. He didn’t like growing up Asian in California at the time. There weren’t very many. Do you speak?”