World and Town (29 page)

“
Miss Confucius!” Reedie or Carter would cry—it was never Anderson, always Reedie or Carter. “I’ve forgotten how to write my name again!” And with increasingly outlandish pleas of ignorance, they would slowly coax her out
.

Why did she really try to teach them something? Anyway, she did, though how strange to break down her native tongue into something foreign to herself. Sounds, tones, vocabulary. Was this how her mother had felt, teaching English in China? It was like performing a dissection on herself, and not even for herself; it was like performing a dissection on herself for a bored and antsy class. Thank goodness for her English! People said she spoke so well, they forgot she was Chinese, or half Chinese, or whatever it was she was. Yet even as they
forgot, she remembered that she was whatever it was she was. A person away from herself. With what she guessed must be Chinese ideas and what she guessed must be Chinese feelings. She was pretty sure she dreamed in Chinese. And she craved Chinese food, of course
. Mántóu.
She craved
mántóu. Lăocù huāshēng—
peanuts generally
. Cù—
American vinegar was not vinegar. She missed sea cucumbers, squid. Spicy clams. Before this she had known that her mother was American, but not that her father was Chinese, really
.

Now, every day, she knew: Her father was Chinese. She was raised in China
.

And yet she was not her old self, translated. Neither was she a Chinese in America. She was just foreign
—wàiláide.

What she had always been
—wàiláide.

From elsewhere. A stranger
.

She wrote things in Chinese, just to see things in Chinese
.

Mostly, though, she tutored the boys, who tutored her in return. Reedie taught her about baseball—RBIs, MVPs, the seventh-inning stretch. This involved watching TV, and eating cotton candy. Anderson did famous presidents: George Washington. Abraham Lincoln. FDR
.

Carter’s program, meanwhile, began as a great-experiments course but turned into a kind of experiment of its own, in which he would look at her and tell her what she made him think. For example, when he found Hattie in the library one day, examining some hornhandled knives, he asked her why she was frowning. And when she asked if the knives were a wedding present, then observed that giving knives was bad luck, he laughed
.

“
B. F. Skinner,” he began, and went on to describe an experiment Skinner had performed with pigeons. “He gave the birds treats every now and then,” he said. “A click and a food pellet, on a completely random program. There was absolutely no rhyme or reason to it. But here’s the interesting thing: The birds developed funny little bobs and dances, as if they were trying to repeat whatever it was that brought the food—as if they were trying to figure it out. Was it looking up? Looking down? Clawing the ground?
”

“
The birds danced?
”

“
Yes!” Carter gestured as if amazed himself. “Can you believe it? Even pigeons try to connect what they do with what happens to them. Really, they have no control. But they’re wired to try anyway. They
have a connection bias, just like people—a tendency to look for cause and effect, whether it’s there or not.
”

“
Really.” Hattie eyed some of the other objects on the library table—a geode, a geodesic dome, a wooden pyramid puzzle
.

“
It’s called the superstition effect,” he went on. “Jerry told me about it.
”

Jerry was one of Dr. Hatch’s grad students
.

“
Am I superstitious, do you think?” Hattie picked up the puzzle, which immediately broke apart. “Is that what you mean? Like a pigeon?
”

“
Do you really think giving knives is bad luck?
”

“
Yes.
”

“
QED,” he said
.

She thought about that
.

“
Aren’t you going to ask what that means?
”

“
No,” she said
.

“
Because you know I’ll tell you.
”

“
Yes.
”

They were quiet
.

“
You think I’m like a pigeon? As ignorant as that?
”

“
No!” he said. “Very definitely not.” But after a moment he added, “I can see that you’re from a long way away, that’s all.
”

“
An ignorant place. A backward, superstitious place.
”

“
I didn’t say that.
”

“
An unscientific place.
”

“
Oh, Hattie.” He flushed in a way people in China mostly didn’t, though she did a little, like her mother. His eyes shone blue and clear. “Are you going to go hole up in your room now?
”

How much Carter taught her! That “The Star-Spangled Banner” was based on an English drinking song. That moss has leaves you can’t see. That Houdini had a tool pocket in the lining of his mouth
.

“
Do you know how you can tell a coyote’s tracks from a dog’s?” he asked her once. Hattie had been living in America for six years by then and had finally not so much started to get used to it, as started to accept that she had ended up in a place she would never get used to—that she was like Lin Daiyu in
Dream of the Red Chamber,
trying to make herself at home in a home not hers. But there she was, in the meanwhile, with Carter, at his parents’ summer house in Riverlake, looking at some tracks in the snow. They were on winter break from their respective colleges
.

“
No,” she said
.

“
Look.
”

And though they were mostly similar, Hattie immediately saw how directed the coyote’s tracks were, compared to the dog’s—how the dog’s went every which way
.

“
A dog plays,” he said. “A coyote is always looking for dinner.
”

“
They have to,” she said, after a moment. “Coyotes are on their own.
”

“
Jerry says we’ve neotenized dogs. Domesticated them so that they never learn to stare down a rival the way a wolf does—any of that. They’re playful, but they remain children all their lives. They never grow up.
”

“
Well, maybe coyotes wouldn’t mind not having to grow up,” she said
.

It was cold out—windy. The snow was blowing across the lake in diagonals, like a series of sailboat-less sails. Carter cleared his throat
.

“
Let me ask you, then. Do coyotes allow themselves to have feelings that go nowhere?
”

Even her eyelashes were icing up. Still, she gave her heart’s warm answer
.

“
No,” she said. “They’re coyotes. They know how to take care of themselves.
”

Then she let him take her arm and lead her in, and though they were just friends, they did warm up each other’s digits and more that day. In the morning they agreed to forget what had happened. But forgetting how they’d laid their socks by the fire, and then their long johns, and then their red selves—forgetting how they’d touched each other’s scars and more—was harder than somehow ending up on opposite coasts after college. Hattie couldn’t say he wasn’t honest. And probably she should have told him she was a virgin, just as he probably should have asked. (His own status could be surmised.) Anyway, they both saw what a mistake it was, to have given in to the moment like that. They agreed
.

Still, she was relieved when at Christmas, Carter came down with the flu. The following Easter and summer, Carter was in Kenya; and the following Thanksgiving, Hattie really did strain her ankle too badly to travel
.

And had she not gone back into biology, that probably would have been that
.

• • •

J
ed Jamison and Everett are talking so loud on the checkout line, Hattie can’t help but hear them, and she’s not the only one. The whole store can hear them, and the whole store’s listening—the whole town, it seems.

“Heard you’re building yourself a pole barn,” says Jed.

“It ain’t a pole barn,” says Everett. He has three loaves of bread under his arm and a jar of peanut butter. “It’s a home for me to live in.”

“Heard it’s on Ginny’s property. Ain’t it on Ginny’s property?” When Jed steps toward the register with his wagon, Everett, right behind him, and Hattie, at the end of the line, move up, too.

“Our property,” says Everett, taking his step. “Seeing as we are not divorced. It’s our property.”

“Heard it was the farm that got sold to pay for the property,” says Jed. “Heard the money came from Rex’s place. Making the new property Rex’s place, too, right? In a way it’s Rex’s new place.”

“Interesting,” says Everett. “Here Rex is stone dead but he has himself a new place. And here Ginny and me’ve been married thirty-seven years but our place is still her pa’s. How do you like that.”

“Hear you’re not real married at the moment,” says Jed.

“Did you. Well, we’re still involved, see,” says Everett. He nods. “We’re involved.”

“Heard you’re putting up your pole barn right in the middle of her view,” says Jed.

“It ain’t a pole barn,” says Everett.

“Your structure, then. Heard you’re putting up your structure right in the middle of her view.” Standing almost as tall as Everett, Jed has to lean way down to unload his groceries from his wagon.

“Had to be located somewhere, Jed. And where’m I going to sleep? Tell me. Seeing as how I’m so welcome in my own home. You going to put me up?”

“Not tonight.”

“There you go. Where’m I going to sleep if I don’t build? She mention who put up the house she’s so kindly hogging, by the way? Who figured out where to put the sunroom, so as to take in the view?”

“Don’t think she did.” Jed moves down the counter to be checked out. “Not that I recall.”

“She’ll see better when she can’t see,” says Everett. “Mark my words, now. She’ll see better when she can’t see.”

“Heard it’s a thing of beauty.”

“It’s tall, Jed. I’m not going to tell you different. I’m building tall.”

“Heard you’re ruining her garden with deer.” Jed’s helping bag up his groceries himself.

“Deer do roam these parts, Jed. I didn’t invent ’em.”

“Heard you’re sprinkling your lot with apple scent so they’ll come eat up her garden,” says Jed. “Heard you’re wrecking the whole thing.”

“There a law says a man can’t sprinkle apple scent in his own yard?” says Everett.

“No, sir, there is not,” says Jed.

Everett sets down his econo-sized peanut butter. “Well, then, how do you like that. This here’s still a free country, it turns out. A free country.”

Jed laughs and, when he yawns, puts a hand up to his mouth, egg carton and all. “Guess it is.”

Then Everett yawns, too, and, back behind them, Hattie. She turns her face, hoping they won’t see her
—Hattie nose full of beeswax
!—and happily, they don’t seem to. Still, she’s glad to see them leave the store.

T
hank you so much!” says Sophy. She’s had two guitar lessons from Carter and already she’s, like, a lot better! So much so, that she’s brought her guitar over to show Hattie. She’s even begun writing songs, she says, and as Annie noses open the guitar case, jumps back, then creeps forward again to investigate, Sophy plays one. No sneakers today. She’s wearing silver flip-flops Hattie’s never seen before, and her toenails are pink and purple, alternating—another new thing and nothing you’d call shy. Yet she sings so quietly Hattie has to strain to hear. It’s only on the last time around that she catches the chorus:

O, believe us when we say
We’ll keep the gard’n snake away
And choose you, Lord, choose you
.
We’ll take you in
,
We’ll take you in
,
Into the deepest part
Of our soul and heart
We will
,
We’ll take you in
.

Hattie claps. Of course,
In the deepest part / Of her soul and heart / she does / does want to laugh!
But she does not. Instead, she asks, Do you believe in Satan? And when Sophy says yes, Hattie asks what he looks like.

“He’s like a
k’maoch,
” says Sophy.

“So there are ghosts in both Christianity and Buddhism?”

“It’s all, like, the same thing.” Sophy makes a face Hattie’s never seen before—
two commas and, between them, a sea change
, Lee would say.

Hattie is careful.

“So you’re liking going up to the center?” she asks.

“I’m trying to drag my mom to, like, an ice cream social,” answers Sophy. “They have a guy who plays the accordion—I know she’d just love it. This guy playing and everyone, like, laughing and joking.”

“Like your sisters have come back. Or like life in Cambodia, before Pol Pot.”

“I guess.” Sophy retunes one of her strings, turning the peg, listening, turning it some more. She tucks a stray hair behind her ear as if to help her hear better.

“A warm place,” says Hattie. “With people you can turn to.”

“Yeah. Except people don’t even care who your family is or anything.” Sophy runs a thumb down the strings, listening as each one sounds. “It’s hard to explain.”

“I think I understand—we had all that face stuff in China, too,” says Hattie. “Everyone focused on who your family was. The church was a lot more welcoming.”

“They are!” Sophy stills the strings with a flat hand. “You’re right! A lot more! Like they gave me this pamphlet that says ‘Where friends become family’ and it really is true. It really is like that.”