A Free Life

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ONE DAY in the early summer of 1991, Nan came across an advertisement in World Journal for the sale of a restaurant in Georgia. The asking price was $25,000; the owner claimed that its annual business surpassed $100,000, more than enough to make a decent profit. "Perfect for your family," the ad declared. Nan brought back the page of the newspaper and showed it to Pingping. They talked about it late into the night.

For months they had been thinking about where to go. Should they stay in the Boston area? Or should they migrate to another place where the cost of living was lower?

By now they had saved more money, having worked nonstop without spending a penny on rent for the past three years. They had two CDs in the bank, $50,000 altogether. Yet even with this much cash, they still couldn't possibly buy a home or business in Massachusetts, where everything was expensive. Nan earned ten dollars an hour at the Jade Cafe; wages like that wouldn't qualify him for a loan from the bank. He'd heard that some Chinese restaurants in Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama were quite affordable. Nan had been following newspaper ads, which seemed to confirm that. After working at the Jade Cafe for four months, he was already an experienced cook.

But what about Taotao's schooling? They decided this wouldn't be an obstacle if they left the Boston area, because Pingping could teach him math while Nan could help him with his English. Despite the mistakes he made when he spoke the language, Nan knew English grammar like the back of his hand. The crux of the problem was whether they'd be willing to go to the Deep South, where they had heard that racial prejudice was still rampant, and where the Ku Klux Klan was active and even dared to march in the glare of daylight. On the other hand, they had also read articles, written by Chinese immigrants living in the South, that bragged about the quality of life there. One woman in Louisiana boasted that her family had sixty-four oaks and maples in their backyard, something they could never have dreamed of when they had lived in northern California. Others even praised the climate in the South, which was similar to that in their home provinces back in China, not dry in the summer and with no snow, to say nothing of blizzards, in the winter.

That night, the Wus decided to contact the owner of the Georgia restaurant. When Nan called the next morning, a feeble male voice answered the phone. On hearing of Nan 's interest, the man turned animated and identified himself as Mr. Wang, the owner. "I can guarantee you that you'll make good money here," he told Nan.

"Then why are you selling the business?"

"My wife and I are getting old and can't run it anymore. Too much work. Sometimes we go back to Taiwan to visit friends and family, and it's hard to find someone to take care of this place when we're away."

"How long have you owned it?"

"More than twenty years. Truth be told, it's an ideal family business, very stable. If we could manage it, we'd never sell it."

" But the economy is in recession now, and lots of restaurants have folded in Massachusetts."

" I know. Some people here have lost their businesses too. We have fewer customers these days, but we're doing okay. Believe me, the economy will come around. Like I said, this place is very stable."

Nan asked him about the living environment of the Atlanta suburbs, which Mr. Wang assured him was absolutely congenial and safe for raising children. He had only heard of the Klansmen but never seen them in the flesh. Besides, there were thousands upon thousands of Asian immigrants living in the Atlanta area, which, he claimed, was almost like virgin land just open for settlement. In fact, Gwinnett County, where Mr. Wang was living, was one of the fastest growing counties in the whole country, and every two years a new elementary or middle school had to be added. Still, all classrooms were bursting at the seams, and on every campus some students had to attend class in trailers. All these nuggets of information were encouraging. Nan wanted to go down to Georgia and take a look at the restaurant. He told Mr. Wang he would come as soon as he got permission from his boss at the Jade Cafe.

Pingping grew excited after Nan described to her his conversation with Mr. Wang. If this deal worked out, it would mean they'd have their own business and eventually their own home. She urged Nan to set out for Georgia that very week. He should pay a deposit if he believed that the restaurant was in good condition and the area adequate for living. He should also look around some to see how much an average house cost in the vicinity. As long as there were Asian immigrants living there, the place should be safe.

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THREE DAYS LATER Nan set out for the South. He followed I-95 all the way to Virginia and switched to I-85 after Richmond. He drove for fourteen hours until he was too exhausted to continue and had to stop for the night. He slept in his car in the parking lot of a rest area near Ridgeway, North Carolina. Before sunrise, when tree leaves were drenched with heavy dew and a thin fog was lifting, he resumed his trip. Entering Durham, North Carolina, he caught sight of a burgundy motorcycle, which reminded him of the Yamaha scooter the wild Beina used to ride. He floored the gas pedal, but his car couldn't go fast enough. In no time the motorcyclist's white helmet, jiggling and dodging, disappeared in the traffic ahead. Nan sighed and shook his head vigorously to force the image of his ex-girlfriend out of his mind.

Because of the construction along the road, it took him almost a whole day to cross the Carolinas, and not until evening did he arrive at Chamblee, Georgia, a suburban town northeast of Atlanta. He checked in at Double Happiness Inn on Buford Highway, managed by a Korean man who spoke Mandarin fluently but with a harsh accent. Tired out, Nan showered and went to bed without dinner, although Pingping had packed a tote bag of food for him-instant noodles, a challah, two cans of wieners, fish jerky, macadamia cookies, dehydrated duck, pistachios, clementines, as if none of these things were available in Georgia. She had also wedged in a coffeepot, with which he could boil water for oatmeal and tea.

The next morning, Nan went to see Mr. Wang. The Gold Wok was in Lilburn, a town fifteen miles northeast of Atlanta. It was at the western end of a half-deserted shopping center called Beaver Hill Plaza, where several businesses and a small supermarket clustered together. Among them were a fabric store, a Laundromat, a photo studio, a pawnshop, and a fitness center. A few suites were marked by for rent signs, which gave Nan mixed feelings. The vacancies implied that it would be easy enough for the restaurant to renew its lease, but it might also mean there wasn't a lot of business.

Mr. Wang, tall with withered limbs and a scanty beard, turned out to be much older than Nan had expected. His back was so hunched that he seemed afflicted with kyphosis, and his neck and arms were dappled with liver spots. As he spoke to Nan, he kept massaging his right knee as if he suffered from painful arthritis. He made an effort to straighten up but remained bent. He grimaced, saying that his chronic back pain had grown more unbearable each year. Somehow Nan couldn't help but wonder whether he had a prolapsed anus as well, since both afflictions, he'd learned, were common among people in the restaurant business. The old man and his wife were glad to see Nan and eager to show him the place. Nan went into the kitchen and checked the cooking range, the ovens, the storage room, the freezers, the dishwasher, the toilets, the light fixtures. He was pleased that all the equipment was in working order, though the dining room looked rather shabby. In it there were six tables and eight booths covered in brown Naugahyde, and the walls were almost entirely occupied by murals of horses, some galloping, some grazing, some rearing, and some frolicking with their tails tossed up. From a corner in the back floated up a Mongolian melody, which was supposed to match the theme of the horses on the walls. The Wangs had hired only one waitress, a dark-complexioned young woman from Malaysia named Tammie, who spoke both Cantonese and English but no Mandarin. Nan opened the menu, which offered more than two dozen items, mostly for takeout, none of which cost more than five dollars. Although it was unlikely to generate $100,000 worth of business a year as the ad claimed, the restaurant was in good trim.

As Nan was coming out from the kitchen, a young man wearing aviator glasses and a gray jersey strolled in, clamping a toothpick between his lips. Nan stepped aside to let him pass. Without a word the man went straight in. Presently Nan heard the brisk ring of a spatula scraping a pan.

" Like I told you, this place is perfect for a family like yours," Mr. Wang said to Nan.

"Does your wife speak English?" asked Mrs. Wang, a waistless and short-limbed woman wearing a seersucker shirt.

"Yes, she can do anything. By the way, I haven't seen lots of customers. There aren't many, are there?"

" Tuesday is slow," she replied.

"Can you cook?" Mr. Wang asked Nan.

"I'm a chef."

"Excellent. That will make all the difference. I can guarantee you that you'll get rich soon." "Well, I'm not so sure."

" Look, I pay the chef, the fellow in the kitchen, eight dollars an hour. I used to cook myself, but I'm too old to do that anymore. If you and your wife both work here, all the profits will go into your own pocket."

" You use a chef?" Nan was amazed, not having imagined this place could make enough to pay that kind of wages. He had taken the man wearing glasses for a family member or relative of the Wangs.

"Yes. You can go ask him how much I pay him. That's why we can't keep this place any longer-most profits end up in his wallet. It's like I'm just his job provider."

This was encouraging. If they could afford to hire a cook, the restaurant must be doing quite well.

The old couple invited him to stay for lunch, saying this was the minimum they should do for a guest from far away. Nan accepted the offer and, together with Mr. Wang, sat down at a table. He poured hot tea for his host and then for himself, and they went on talking about life in this place. The old man assured him that Gwinnett County had excellent public schools. A girl in his neighborhood had gone to Berkmar High and was at Duke now, a premed. Nan was impressed. Mr. Wang also told him that compared with the other counties in the Atlanta area, Gwinnett had a much lower realty tax. That was why many recent immigrants from Asia and Latin America preferred to live here.

Ten minutes later, Mrs. Wang stepped over gingerly and put before them a lacquered tray containing a bowl of pot-stickers, a plate of sauteed scallops and shrimp mixed with snow peas and bamboo shoots, a jar of plain rice, two pairs of connected chopsticks, and two empty bowls. "You can have a bite if you want," she told her husband.

"Sure, I'm sort of hungry." But the old man just picked up a pot-sticker, saying to Nan that he didn't eat lunch nowadays.

Nan broke his chopsticks and began eating. He wasn't impressed by the quality of the food. The pot-stickers had the stale taste of overused frying oil.

Then he asked Mr. Wang about the lease, the various taxes, the cost of utilities, and the service of the local distributor that delivered vegetables, meats, seafood, condiments. Meanwhile, three customers showed up. One ordered a takeout, and the other two, a middle-aged couple, were led by Tammie to a corner booth. The wide-eyed waitress kept glancing at Nan as if she wanted to speak to him but withheld her words.

After lunch, Nan took leave of the Wangs, saying he would come again the next morning. He tootled through several residential areas in Lilburn and Norcross, mainly along Lawrenceville and Buford highways and Jimmy Carter Boulevard, and he saw numerous homes for sale. Most of them were new and had four bedrooms and a brick front, priced between $120,000 and $130,000, but outside those subdivisions developed recently or still under construction were older houses, some priced even below $80,000. He hadn't expected that a brick ranch would sell for under $100,000. In the Boston area, a three-bedroom house of this kind would cost at least three times as much.

Nan 's car had no air-conditioning, and time and again he drank Pepsi from a bottle lying on the passenger seat. It was hot and humid, waves of heat lapping his face whenever he stepped out of the car. It was so muggy that his breathing became a little labored. For the first time in his life he physically understood the word humid. Back in Boston, when people said "It's so humid," he hadn't been able to feel it. Now at last his body could tell the difference between dry heat and damp heat. Yet the sultry weather shouldn't be a problem if his family lived here, because there was air-conditioning indoors everywhere. Back in China, he had once stayed in Jinan City for a month in midsummer; whenever he walked the streets, his shirt and pants would be soaked with sweat, and it had been hot indoors as well as outdoors. There you simply couldn't avoid sweltering in the dog days' scorching heat, but this Georgian humidity and heat shouldn't be a big deal. More heartening was that there were indeed many Asian immigrants living in the northeastern suburbs of Atlanta. Within four or five miles, Nan saw one Chinese and two Korean churches. Without question this was a good, safe place.

That night he called his wife and told her what he had seen and heard. Pingping was so impressed that she urged him to clinch the deal with Mr. Wang the next day, paying a deposit that should be less than twenty percent of the agreed price. Also, she warned him not to haggle too much. One or two thousand dollars wouldn't make much difference as long as the business was solid.

Before hanging up, she said in English, "I miss you, I love you, Nan!" Somehow her words sounded more natural from a thousand miles away. He hadn't heard her speak to him so passionately for a long time.

"I love you too." Despite saying that, he wasn't sure of his emotions. He still didn't have intense feelings for her, but he felt attached to her and understood that they had become more or less insep-arable-neither of them could have survived without the other in this land, and more important, their child needed them. If they moved to Georgia, it would mean they'd have to live more like husband and wife from now on. In a sense he wasn't displeased with that prospect, since whenever he was with Pingping, he felt at peace. Still, these days his thoughts had often turned to Beina, who seemed to accompany him wherever he went, enticing him into reveries. When he closed his eyes at night, her vivacious face often emerged, as if she were teasing him or eager to talk with him. Then he'd again smell the grassy scent of her hair. If only he could love Pingping similarly so that she could replace that woman in his mind, who was, he knew, merely a flighty coquette.

Late the next morning, toward eleven, he went to the Gold Wok again, but he didn't immediately go in. He parked a short distance from the restaurant and stayed in the car, waiting to see how many customers would appear. It was drizzling, the powdery rain blurring the windshield. It wasn't hot, so he didn't mind staying in the parking lot for a while, listening to a preacher on the radio. The man was speaking about a verse from Matthew, expounding on the necessity of "fresh wineskins for new wine." Nan was fascinated by his eloquence and passion despite the man's oddly hoarse, croaking voice. Meanwhile, in less than half an hour, five people turned up at the Gold Wok, three of whom appeared to be Mexican workers from the construction site nearby. They looked like regulars, and when they came out, they each held a tall cup of soft drink besides the food in Styrofoam boxes.

When Nan told the Wangs that he wanted to buy the restaurant, they looked relieved. Then began the bargaining. Nan managed to beat down the price by $3,000 on the grounds that he didn't like the horse murals and the Formica tables in the booths. This was the first time in his life that he had ever haggled with someone, and he took great pride in the result, feeling like a real businessman. The amount he'd saved translated into 25,000 yuan, thirty times more than his annual salary back in China. Somehow, whenever Nan handled a large sum of money, he couldn't help but convert dollars into yuan in his mind, and the habit made him very frugal. At times, though, he wished he could grow out of this mind-set, because he believed that here people got rich not just by how much they saved, but more important, by how much they made, and that in America one should live like an American.

" When will you come and take over?" Mr. Wang asked Nan with a little chuckle.

"Probably in a month or so."

"Too long. How about two weeks?"

"I'll try. It shouldn't be a big problem. I'll let you know soon after I get home."

Nan wrote him a check for $2,200, a ten percent deposit. The Wangs asked that he keep Tammie, who had been working for them since her late teens, almost a decade by now. "That's fine," Nan promised. He was going to need help anyway. Currently they paid her one dollar an hour because she kept all the tips.

That afternoon Nan hit the interstate, heading back north.

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HE RETURNED to Woodland two days later. Pingping was overjoyed to hear about the restaurant and the Atlanta suburbs. They were both pleased to know Mr. Wang was from Taiwan, for generally speaking, the Taiwanese were more trustworthy than the main-landers, who often ignored rules and laws. The Wus knew some people who'd been swindled even by their fellow townsmen from the mainland.

One thing Nan and Pingping had forgotten to consider was where to live. Nan had noticed some apartment buildings in Norcross, a neighboring town north of Lilburn, but he hadn't brought back any information on housing. So the following day he called the Gold Wok and asked Mrs. Wang about affordable housing in the vicinity. The old woman said she was going to mail Nan an apartment book. " There are some copies outside. They just arrived," she told him.

He remembered seeing a red wire rack beside the entrance to the restaurant that held several kinds of booklets and leaflets. "Can you send it along right away?" he asked.

"I'm going to do it today."

Everything seemed to have fallen in place, and the Wus began planning to move. Even Taotao had to decide what toys and books to take and what to donate to the thrift shop behind the town library, run by the Unitarian church.

The main difficulty was Nan 's books, most of which were in the boxes stored in the small shed attached to Heidi's garage. Years ago when Nan still planned to return to China, he had collected more than forty boxes of used books, determined to establish his own library once he went back. But when they had come to stay with the Masefields, Nan had had to leave the books behind in Watertown. He'd talked his landlord, Mr. Verdolino, into renting him a basement room for sixty-five dollars a month and had kept his three thousand volumes there for two years. Later he realized that the amount he paid for the rent would eventually buy him those books again. Ping-ping urged him to get rid of them, since he couldn't go back to China anymore. Nan took some boxes of the books to local libraries and bookstores, but no one wanted them, all telling him that the titles were too specialized. Indeed, who among general readers could use a book like Anna Akhmatova's Complete Poems in the Russian or Hans Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations? Heartbroken and having nowhere to send the books, Nan had just left the few boxes next to a bunch of trash cans on a sidewalk lined with dirty snowbanks. The following week he threw away another three boxes.

For a month afterward he felt miserable, almost ill. If only there were a way to keep those books. Try as he might, he couldn't steel himself to dump them all. Fortunately, a friend of his who was returning to China came and picked thirteen boxes from his collection. Nan helped her pack them up and even drove a van with her all the way to New Jersey to have them shipped to Tianjin City by sea. Then he persuaded Heidi to let him use a little space in her shed in which to store the remaining eleven boxes. Now, to save postage, he would have to get rid of some of them again. In America every town had a library; why should he keep hundreds of titles at home? After carefully going through them, he kept about two thirds of the books, seven boxes in all, and discarded the rest.

Everything else was easy to pack; the Wus didn't have many belongings. Pingping phoned Heidi, who was on Cape Cod with her children, to let her know of their imminent move. Heidi sounded excited and also relieved. Two days later she returned to Woodland. She gave Pingping $1,200 to buy mattresses-twelve one-hundred-dollar bills in an envelope-since the Wus couldn't take along the ones they had. She also told her to clean their attic apartment before they left. Livia had come back with her mother too, and on the way she'd bought Taotao a Rubik's Cube. Now, as the adults were talking, the girl and the boy were in the living room, Livia showing him how to work the puzzle. The girl had an appointment with her orthodontist at eleven a.m. to adjust her braces, so a few minutes later Heidi called her out, ready to go.

"Keep in touch, Taotao," said Livia as she followed her mother to the passenger van.

"Sure." The boy nodded.

"Remember, I'm your friend." She waved her thin, short-nailed hand. Her flip-flops seemed too big, pattering on the driveway. "Sure, thanks for the cube."

The Wus waved as Heidi's van drew away. The boy returned to the living room, to the unsolved puzzle.

The Atlanta apartment book arrived, a thick volume containing hundreds of listings. Pingping and Nan were impressed by the rents, which were much more affordable than in the Boston area. They folded several pages that showed housing in the eastern suburbs. But to their dismay, there was only one listing in Lilburn, and that place was too pricey, so they had to look for an apartment in an adjacent town. They noticed that housing was much cheaper in some areas near Stone Mountain, a town six miles south of Lilburn in Dekalb County. Nan phoned two of those places. Without difficulty he rented a three-bedroom apartment at Peachtree Terrace, which was within Gwinnett County and, according to the map, just a fifteen-minute drive from the restaurant. Nan wanted a study for himself, hence the third bedroom. Ideally, Pingping had hoped they could walk to work, but Nan told her that unlike Boston, the city of Atlanta sprawled in every direction, one having to drive to get around, so they'd better stay at Peachtree Terrace. The rent was a reasonable $550 a month.

A UPS van came to pick up their boxes. Altogether there were thirty-five. The driver was a tall woman with a squarish jaw and a tanned face. She wore the brown uniform, the short-sleeved shirt showing her muscular arms and bulging chest. Nan helped her load the shipment and was impressed by the ease with which she lifted the heavy boxes and lodged them onto the shelves in the van. He liked to see the woman work with her sinewy hands and could feel energy radiating from her sturdy body.

When everything was loaded, she assured him that the whole batch would arrive intact. With a ballpoint attached to a clipboard she scribbled an X at the bottom of a form for his signature, then handed the paperwork to him. He signed it and asked her to handle their boxes carefully, though he didn't reveal that the shipment contained a microwave, a roaster, a computer, even a TV set. He gave her a ten for tip, and she beamed, panting a little. She promised to stick fragile labels to all their belongings when she got back to the local UPS headquarters.

What a woman, so hardy and so independent! Nan watched her hop into the brown van and pull it out of the yard.

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on the morning of July 6, a Saturday, the Wus got up at four o'clock. Pingping had put blankets and pillows in the backseat of their car the night before. As Heidi had instructed, she checked all the doors and windows, then left the key on the kitchen table and locked the front door. It was still damp and chilly outside. She couldn't stop shivering as she walked toward their loaded Ford parked in front of the garage.

There was little traffic on I-95, and a faint mist veiled the land on both sides. The hazy air seemed stirred by the shafts of light projected by their car and was rolling by like strips of smoke. The woods on the roadside were dark and looked as solid as if they were a rocky bank. Pingping was happy and excited. Despite knowing that Nan didn't completely love her, despite getting carsick easily, she felt hopeful and safe with him. Their move to Georgia showed that he was willing to live and raise Taotao together with her. Don't mind going anywhere as long as we're together, she told herself. The more you move, the stronger you'll grow, not like a tree that can be killed if you uproot it. Sick of living under Heidi's roof. At last we can have a place for ourselves.

She looked at Nan, who seemed calm. In fact, he had been better tempered these days. He was driving steadily in spite of their old car that wobbled a little and couldn't overtake any vehicles on the road. Ahead of them, the blacktop looked endless and mysterious, yet Pingping was sure it was leading them to a new life. Deep down, she knew Nan would work hard and together they would make a decent living.

When they had passed New London, Connecticut, suddenly the sun came out, a giant disk flaming a good part of the eastern sky. More cars appeared on the highway, and patches of ocean shimmered as they went. Pingping kept telling Taotao to look at the sun and the water, but the boy just grunted. He was too sleepy to open his eyes, dozing away all along.

Because their car was fully loaded, Nan wouldn't let Pingping behind the wheel at first. From time to time she kneaded the nape of his neck to relieve his tension. She could see that he was nervous, especially whenever a semi passed them, its powerful wake shaking their car a little. This happened more frequently as they were approaching Stamford. Yet somehow she felt peaceful. As long as the three of them were together, she wasn't afraid of restarting their life anywhere.

They didn't want to get stuck in New York City traffic, so Nan turned onto I-287 as soon as they cleared the Connecticut border. After he drove a dozen miles or so west, the Hudson River emerged, immense, serene, and as breathtaking as the ocean. A lighthouse stood on the eastern bank like a behemoth penguin gazing at the distance. Many white houses on the western shore were drenched in the sunlight and nestled in the woods on the hills along the water, against which herons and gulls were sailing and bobbing. Far away, a yacht was churning a whitish trail. Swarms of sailboats were moored in the southwest, their sails fluttering like wings. Other than those small vessels, there was no trace of disturbance on this wide and tremendous river. Near the lower end of the Tappan Zee Bridge, a red stubby boat was anchored and planted with fishing rods; two men were sitting on it, smoking and drinking beer. Nan veered into the outside lane and slowed down some so as to take in more of the view. If only he could live in a place like this, so clean and tranquil. The river, though mighty and vast, wouldn't be roughened by storms and hurricanes the way the sea was. The hills on the shore were as bright as if every treetop, though viewed from the distance, were distinguishable. What a sublime place! Who were the lucky people living in these hills? How fortunate they were to be able to enjoy the peace and quiet here. If Nan came back to this life again and could choose where to live, this would definitely be one of his choices.

"This sight beats the Yangtze," said Pingping.

"Also the Yellow River," echoed Nan.

They both laughed, then Nan tooted the horn. "Don't do that," Pingping said. "You might confuse other cars."

Soon they entered New Jersey. It was getting hot, the wild grass on the roadside flickering in the withering breeze. Then hills appeared, most of them wooded heavily and some devoid of human traces. Pingping felt drowsy but forced herself to chat with Nan so he could remain alert. He told her to take a nap and not to worry about him, because enjoying the scenery would keep him awake.

After they turned onto I-78, the land was still rugged, and some places were crowded with houses and buildings. The Wus took a lunch break at the first rest area after the toll bridge over the Delaware River so as to avoid the gathering heat. Around two-thirty, they set off again. Taotao kept asking what crops were growing in the vast Pennsylvanian fields. His father told him they were corn and soybeans. Nan was struck by the undulating landscape, so sparsely populated that most farmhouses looked deserted. Few human beings were visible on the farms, while dappled cows with bulging udders grazed lazily in the meadows. There were also horses and colts walking or lying in the distance. The land was rich and well kept, though some pastures were enclosed by wire fences. The sight reminded Nan of his first impression when he had come to the United States six years ago-he had written to his friends in China that nature was extraordinarily generous to America; it was a place that made their native land seem overused and exhausted.

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.

₅

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.

They were all hungry, so Pingping went about cooking dinner. This was easy, since they had a lot of canned food. As the tomato soup was bubbling on the stove, she brought out a head of lettuce and a bag of poppyseed rolls. Nan opened a can of fried anchovies and a jar of spiced bamboo shoots. Fifteen minutes later they sat down to dinner on a pink sheet spread on the dry floor of the innermost bedroom. While eating, they talked about where to sleep. Because the linoleum floor of the bathroom could be wiped clean, they decided to spend the night in there. Done with dinner, Pingping began wiping the bathroom with paper towels while Nan was doing the dishes.

She spread a blanket on the floor, and together they lay down in the narrow space between the toilet and the bathtub. With Taotao in between the parents, the family tried to sleep. In spite of the two thick blankets keeping them warm, both Pingping and Taotao remained awake, but Nan slept soundly, though he didn't snore as he would when sleeping alone. As long as he was fatigued, he could always fall asleep the moment his head hit the pillow. If he wasn't exhausted, he would read for a while, which would induce him to sleep within an hour. Tonight, dead tired, he slept deeply regardless of the damp and the confining space in the bathroom. The toilet bowl against his right shoulder would whistle and hiss whenever somebody flushed in a nearby unit, but nothing could wake him up. Meanwhile, Pingping and Taotao tossed and turned beside him. If only they could have adjusted the central air-conditioning, which, on full force, went on without letup as if to refrigerate the rooms. What's worse, the floor was hard and musty. Pingping was afraid a roach or a mouse might crawl on her. For the whole night she drifted off fitfully. Whenever she was awake, she'd pat Taotao to help him sleep.

Unsure whether the apartment was safe, they went to the bank first thing the next morning to open an account and deposit the certified check they had with them. Nan and Pingping sat patiently, with Taotao on his mother's lap, while a clerk, a young woman with a receding chin, was getting through the paperwork with them. It took a solid hour to set up the account. Back in Boston such a matter would have taken at most twenty minutes, but this was the South. The woman seemed surprised that they deposited such a large check-$50,000-and glanced at them from time to time. Pingping understood the meaning in her eyes and knew they didn't look like people who could have so much cash. There was no way this woman could imagine the sacrifice and labor this check embodied. Pingping had never once bought new clothes for anyone in the family. She had always chosen the cheapest foods at the supermarket for themselves.

From the bank they went to Mattress King at a shopping center.

Pingping insisted on buying three full-size mattresses, plus the box springs, though Nan suggested they get at least one larger one so that they could sleep two in the same bed more comfortably. But she didn't want a queen- or king-size mattress. In the matter of shopping she always had the final say; Nan wasn't good at comparing prices and often felt a bit disgusted with money, for which he had worked jobs he loathed. The sales representative, a man with a beer belly hanging over his belt, said to Pingping with a smile, "Ma'am, I'm going to have these mattresses treated for you, to prevent bugs, okay?"

"How much that cost?" she asked.

"Ninety-nine dollars apiece, ma'am. You should have them treated, or they won't last in this climate."

"Hmm…fine, fine." She was pleased that he was so polite. Back in the Northeast salespeople had often followed her in stores, suspecting she might shoplift, and nobody had ever treated her as courteously as this gentleman.

The final bill was $962.82, including the delivery fee. Ping-ping handed the salesman ten one-hundred-dollar bills. He looked amazed, hesitating as if reluctant to touch the cash; then he took the banknotes and went into the back room to make sure they were genuine. A moment later he stepped out and gave Pingping her change and a receipt. He promised to have the mattresses delivered that very day.

After that, the Wus stopped at a large thrift store on Memorial Drive, where they chose some used furniture-a sofa, three chairs, a desk, and an hexagonal dining table. They paid $170 for those pieces and another $25 for delivery. They also bought a vacuum cleaner at a department store, getting a good price on the already-assembled floor sample.

As soon as they came back, they opened all the windows to air out the rooms and dry out the wet carpet. Nan plugged in the vacuum and began cleaning the floors. The living room had a screen door facing the backyard, where grass grew on a narrow lawn closed in by holly shrubs, which were dense and tall enough to keep people out. But Pingping and Nan kept that door shut most of the time, afraid someone might sneak in.

Both the mattresses and the furniture were delivered that afternoon, dragged in through the screen door of the living room. After Pingping checked and smelled the mattresses, she said, "I don't think these are treated." Nan took a look, but couldn't determine whether the salesman had made good on his promise or not. There was no time to regret or complain, so they went on cleaning. In a wink the apartment was transformed into something resembling a home. Even Taotao couldn't stop jumping on the mattresses in the dry bedroom. He laughed loudly and poked fun at Nan, kicking his shins and pulling his belt from behind. His mother kept saying to him, "Stop messing around! Do something to help."

That night Nan phoned Mr. Wang. Then he set about writing down some notes of the landscape he had seen on their trip to Georgia, hoping he could make a poem or two out of them eventually. He was still moved by the splendid views, though he didn't know how to describe them dramatically to make them vibrant. Meanwhile, Ping-ping was teaching Taotao how to solve some math problems that combined multiplication and division.

₆

IN THE SHANG LAW OFFICE at the Chinatown Plaza in Cham-blee, the Wus and Mr. Wang were about to finalize the sale of the restaurant. To Nan 's surprise, the paperwork didn't include Ping-ping's name. The attorney explained that Mr. Wang had never mentioned her as a cobuyer. Although Nan had left his wife's name with him, the old man had forgotten, probably because he had always been the sole proprietor of the Gold Wok. Now Nan wanted to have Pingping mentioned as a cobuyer in the papers. Mr. Shang, the lawyer, looked displeased and said it would take several days to repre-pare the paperwork and to meet them again. Pingping intervened, saying this wasn't a big problem and there was no need to waste so much time. She urged her husband to complete the deal as quickly as possible. The truth was that she was worried about Taotao, who was staying with Mrs. Wang at the restaurant.

Nan signed the contract. Pingping wrote out a check for $19,800 and handed it to Mr. Wang. Then she made another check for $120 to the lawyer for his fee. "Congratulations!" said Mr. Shang, a spindly man wearing gold-rimmed glasses. "This is your first step toward becoming a millionaire," he said to Nan, scratching his fat ear. He leaned back on his large chair and laughed gratingly, his half-gray mustache waggling. He gave Mr. Wang and Nan each a copy of the contract, then shook hands with everyone.

Together with Mr. Wang, the Wus headed back to the Gold Wok. Pingping said she shouldn't have gone to the attorney's office and she hoped Taotao was all right.

Both Nan and Pingping were overwhelmed. Now they owned a business; they had become their own boss. Even though he knew the restaurant couldn't make them rich, Nan couldn't help imagining the prospect of managing a business of their own. A kind of euphoria possessed him. At the same time, he tried to remain levelheaded. All his life he had never been interested in making money, but now he'd flung himself into the thick of it and was bowled over by becoming a small restaurateur. He knew that without his wife's backing he wouldn't have dared to attempt such a thing.

The Wangs had worshipped the God of Wealth. In a tiny alcove in the restaurant's dining room, this deity was represented by a porcelain statuette, like a smiling Buddha, with a bulging belly and ruddy, smooth cheeks. At his bare feet sat bowls of tangerines, apples, peaches, cookies, two miniature cups of rice wine, and four smoking joss sticks stuck in a brass censer. Nan and Pingping had mixed feelings about this superstitious practice, but should they evict the god? What if there indeed existed such a supernatural power that could decide the vicissitudes of their fortunes? In any event, they mustn't offend this deity, so they decided to leave him undisturbed and make similar offerings to him.

For several days, even when Nan was working at the cutting board and the sizzling wok, Pope's lines would echo in his mind: "Happy the man whose wish and care / A few paternal acres bound, / Content to breathe his native air / In his own ground." He was aware that he wasn't completely at home here, but still he felt that his feet were finally standing on solid, independent ground.

Unlike the Wangs, the Wus kept the restaurant quiet and didn't play any music. They had grown up with loudspeakers everywhere, punctuating their daily life with roaring songs and jarring slogans, so they detested any kind of sound pollution that forced people to listen to it regardless of their states of mind. They had changed the menu; Nan added a few more dishes and decided not to use MSG in anything they offered. Also, he prepared some dishes differently. For example, formerly the cold cuts called Five-Spice Beef would be piled on a plate with sliced meat atop slivers of cucumber. This was misleading or deceptive, because there was actually more vegetable than meat. Now Nan put the beef and the cucumber in separate piles on the same plate, so the customer could see how much meat and vegetable were actually served. He wanted to be honest. He understood that, unlike in China, here honesty was one's best credit. His wife and son liked the various kinds of chicken he made, especially Strange-Flavored Chicken, a Szechuan dish. Another improvement was that he would change the frying oil every three days. Most Chinese restaurants did this once a week, which often contributed to the unfresh taste of their foods. Most American restaurants used new oil every day. For the Chinese, such waste amounted to a sin. For decades, cooking oil had been rationed in China, each urban resident entitled to only four ounces a month; as for the people in the countryside, a whole household had been allocated only a few pounds a year. These days Nan often thought that if his parents had seen him pour a trough of used vegetable oil into plastic jugs for disposal, they'd have chastised him, not to mention the piles of chicken skin and pork fat he dumped into the trash can every day.

Tammie, the waitress, was very fond of Taotao and talked to him whenever she wasn't busy. Since school hadn't started yet, the boy came to the restaurant with his parents every day. Pingping made him read books and do math problems in a booth when business was slow in the early mornings and afternoons. Nan noticed that Tam-mie often avoided speaking to Pingping, perhaps because his wife was much better-looking than she was. He realized that the waitress had probably lived a lonesome life. Very likely, she longed to have a family; she was at least twenty-seven or twenty-eight. With her broad cheeks and heavyset body, she couldn't easily fetch a bridegroom here unless she had a lot of money or a green card, neither of which she possessed. Nan knew he might get into trouble if the INS caught him employing her, but it was unlikely that the agents would swoop down on such a small restaurant. Tammie often said she missed her parents, who had emigrated to Malaysia from southern China in the 1940s. Nan paid her three dollars an hour besides letting her keep all the tips, because she also helped do dishes and kitchen chores, mainly stringing beans and wrapping wontons, dumplings, and egg rolls. This way he wouldn't have to hire another hand, and Tammie was pleased with the arrangement. What Nan liked most about her was that she spoke English all the time, which was good practice for him and Pingping. Tammie understood Mandarin but couldn't speak it fluently.

In the first week the restaurant made a profit of almost six hundred dollars. Nan and Pingping were amazed. This place was a little bonanza, and business would almost certainly go up in the fall. It looked like they might indeed build a small fortune if they ran the Gold Wok well.

The Wangs lived just on the other side of Beaver Hill Plaza. Their house, a two-story brick bungalow painted gray, was visible from the restaurant. Nan and Pingping envied the proximity of their house to the Gold Wok. If only they could own a home so close by. They asked Mr. Wang teasingly whether he'd sell his house to them as well. "Give me one hundred and fifty thousand, it's yours," the old man told them in earnest. That was too high a price, at least $40,000 above its assessed value.

Because the Wangs lived nearby, whenever Nan needed help, he'd ask Mrs. Wang to come in and work a few hours. The old woman was more than happy to do that, to make a couple of dollars. Sometimes Mr. Wang would drop in and palaver with Nan and Pingping. He was often bored at home despite having on his roof the satellite dish called "the Little Ear," which enabled him to watch many TV shows in Mandarin and Cantonese. There were few Chinese living nearby- most of the Asian immigrants lived in Duluth, a town seven miles to the northeast-and the Wangs seemed to have no friends here. They had a daughter working for a Taiwanese airline in Seattle. She was there just temporarily, so the Wangs wouldn't go and join her. The old man would sigh and say to Pingping, " America is a good place only for young people. Once you're old, you feel awful living here, just a nuisance. "

"Why won't you go back to China?" Pingping asked, knowing he had been born in Fujian Province. "I heard that lots of people bought retirement homes there."

"I wish we could do that. It costs too much. Besides, I don't trust the mainland government."

"How about Taiwan? Can't you live there?"

"The same thing. The legal system is a slum there, not a good place to retire to. Many people are desperate to leave the island. They don't want to get trapped there when the mainland launches an attack."

"How about Singapore?"

" That small country is just like another province of China. The Chinese government controls nearly everything there. Here's a copy of the United Morning Post, published in Singapore. You should read it. Terrible. The paper not only uses the Communists' language but also reprints the news distorted by the mainland media."

"Do you plan to stay here for many years?"

" Hard to say. "

To a degree, Nan and Pingping felt uneasy about the Wangs' situation and often talked about the old couple. They couldn't help but imagine their own old age, though it was still far away. It must be frightening to lead such an isolated life. Would they end up like the Wangs, who wandered around like scarecrows, still out of place after living here for three decades?

Probably not. Unlike them, Nan and Pingping spoke English better and were never afraid of isolation. They wanted to take root here, having nowhere else to go. That was why Nan had seized every opportunity to learn English. He knew that in this land the language was like a body of water in which he had to learn how to swim and breathe, even though he'd feel out of his element whenever he used it. If he didn't try hard to adapt himself, developing new "lungs and gills" for this alien water, his life would be confined and atrophied, and eventually wither away.

Whenever Nan had a free moment at work, he would read his Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary because it was monolingual. He still used his bilingual dictionary, which was getting tattered, especially when he couldn't figure out what a noun referred to as described in English. He could see that on the whole the definitions of the word entries written in English were more accurate than those given in Chinese. In addition, using the monolingual dictionary was a way to make himself think in English. He highlighted the words and phrases unfamiliar to him so that he could review them after he went over the entire volume. He had also bought a softcover New English-Chinese Dictionary for Pingping, but she seldom bothered to open it. Even when she came across a new word in her reading, she wouldn't look it up, able to figure out its meaning from the context most times. She was so smart that she had little need for a dictionary.

₇

ON SATURDAY MORNING a UPS van came to deliver their boxes, all of which bore the sticker FRAGILE, a few wrapped with duct tape and a broken one spewing foam peanuts. Nan found that a box, number 21, was missing. This upset him. He was sure it contained some of his poetry books, though he couldn't name the titles at the moment. The deliveryman promised to check on it and have it sent over within a day or two, which actually never happened. Nan used a hand truck to move the boxes into their apartment through the screen door of the living room, but the Wus had to leave for work and couldn't open them until they were back at night.

That night, after unpacking them, they found the microwave broken. Taotao helped his father set up the computer, which was out of order too. Only the Sanyo TV set still worked, but it had more noise now and could pick up merely two channels. Nothing had been insured, so there was no way to claim damages.

" This is a minor loss that will preempt real disasters," Pingping said, just to console her son and husband. Yet Taotao was inconsolable and eager to have his computer fixed so that he could play chess with it again. For this machine assembled in a barn in Keene, New Hampshire, Nan had paid only seven hundred dollars, so it wasn't worth repairing. Taotao then wanted a new computer, but his parents refused to buy that, saying they'd have to save every penny for the home they'd purchase in the future.

"Do you want to throw away five hundred and fifty dollars every month?" Pingping asked him, referring to the rent they paid.

"No."

"Then we mustn't continue to waste money this way. Once we have our own home, we'll get you a computer."

The boy knew it was futile to argue, yet he wouldn't drop the topic without another try. He said, "I don't want to go to the restaurant anymore. Leave me at home."

"That's illegal," put in his father.

"It's not safe here," his mom added anxiously. "What if somebody breaks in and snatches you away? He'll sell you to a stranger and you won't be able to see us again. Would you like that?"

"No. I just don't want to stay in the damned restaurant anymore. It makes me sick just to smell the air in there."

"You have to come with us."

The couple living upstairs started fighting again. That stopped the Wus' argument. Neither Nan nor Pingping had ever met the man and woman, having to go to work early in the morning and come back late at night. Yet they had heard enough of their exchanges to know them almost intimately.

Would that couple ever be quiet and peaceful? They always yelled at each other as if they couldn't live for a day without a fight. Sometimes they'd wake Pingping up in the middle of the night.

Taotao kicked a squashed box, sullen and tearful.

"You're a sex maniac," said the woman upstairs. "I've already let you have it twice this week-when will it ever be enough for you? I can't sleep afterward. I'm having an interview tomorrow morning. Just leave me alone tonight, okay?"

"Don't talk to me like that," the man snapped. "If you hate sex so much, why live with me?"

"Get real here. You begged me to shack up with you. I still hate myself for listening to you."

"I'll be damned if I can understand this."

"You can never understand a woman. Else your wife wouldn't have left you for the other guy." "Shut the hell up!"

Then came a crash. Shoes started scraping the floor. They must have been grappling with each other.

Pingping noticed her son prick up his ears. She said, "Taotao, go to bathroom and brush your teeth." That also meant it was time for bed.

The next day they cleared out a space in the storage room in the back of the restaurant and put in a small desk, at which Taotao could do his work for the time being. Both Pingping and Nan felt for him. Every day the boy had to stay with them for more than twelve hours, and not until ten p.m. could they go back together. To make Taotao more comfortable, Nan got a thirteen-inch TV for him, but they made him promise not to watch it too often. They also put in a love seat bought at a Goodwill store, on which the boy could nap. When it wasn't busy, Pingping would go to the back room and check on him. If he was idle or watching TV, she'd urge him to do his "homework," assigned by her. Seldom would he come to the front to see his parents.

Pingping scolded her son one afternoon, saying, "Don't be so lazy and watch TV all time."

"Duh, I'm tired." He looked peeved.

"Tired? We're all living fast life here. You must do same."

"That's not proper grammar, Mom."

"What?"

"People say 'We're living a busy life,' not 'a fast life.' "

"I mean burn candle at two ends."

"How can you do that?"

"I mean make two hundred percent effort."

"Impossible!"

"All right, you live busy life. After this show, go back to homework." "Okay, okay!"

Whenever she said something wrong in her unique ungrammati-cal English, the boy would correct her. Sometimes he even did that in the presence of others. She was annoyed but never discouraged him, because she was determined to learn the language. What she and Nan didn't know was that Taotao had been simmering, angry about their awkward English, which sometimes embarrassed him. He was especially discomfited by Pingping. She'd toss out malapropisms right and left, such as "gooses," "watermelon skin," "deers," and "childrenhood." One day the boy threw a tantrum, accusing his parents of having messed up his English, because that morning, his second day in school, he had blurted out the term "peach hair" instead of "peach fuzz," for which some of his classmates had ridiculed him. He knew he had picked it up from his mother. "You're ruining my career!" he screamed at Pingping that afternoon. She broke into peals of laughter after hearing him explain why, and she went into the kitchen to laugh more to herself.

Every day she assigned him some math problems in addition to his schoolwork. However much he complained, she'd make him finish the assignments before they closed up.

₈

WHEN they moved to Atlanta, the Wus hadn't known that the children at Peachtree Terrace went to schools farther south, which belonged to another district. This meant Taotao wasn't supposed to attend an elementary school in Lilburn. If there had been a grownup in their apartment to accompany him after school, his parents wouldn't have minded letting him go to Shiloh Elementary in Snell-ville, which had a fine reputation. As it was, the boy would have to join them when he got off the bus in the afternoons, so he needed to attend a school near the Gold Wok. Fortunately, the Wangs allowed the Wus to use their address so that Taotao could go to Rebecca Minor Elementary. When the secretary at the principal's office called the Wangs, Mrs. Wang said Taotao was their grandnephew, who had come to stay with them. Mr. Wang told the Wus that they ought to live closer to the restaurant, to save the time and hassle of traveling back and forth every day. Also, gasoline was expensive nowadays as a consequence of the Gulf War. The Wus realized they'd have to move to Lilburn soon, but this town had few apartments for rent, which were all expensive besides. Every weekday they dropped their son at Rebecca Minor Elementary before going to the Gold Wok, and in the afternoon Taotao would get off the school bus at the east side of Beaver Hill Plaza and join his parents at the restaurant.

At work, the Wus couldn't stop feeling antsy about what might happen to their apartment, because Peachtree Terrace wasn't a safe place. Sometimes at night they heard gunshots in their building. Police cruisers would come, strobe lights slashing the parking lot, and people would gather around to watch the police making arrests.

Whenever such an incident happened, Nan would say they must move out soon.

One night the Wus returned from work and found that a window in the bedroom used as Nan 's study was open. At once Nan flicked on all the lights to see what was missing. The computer and the microwave were gone; so was a pair of Pingping's leather sandals. Other than those, they had lost nothing else. How fortunate it was that they'd kept all their papers in their safe-deposit box in the bank. On the carpet of the living room two pairs of muddy shoe prints stretched parallel to each other, one under eight inches long and the other about a foot. Apparently two people, a grown-up and an adolescent, had committed the burglary. At first, both Nan and Pingping were outraged and cursed the thieves. They wondered whether they should report the crime to the police, but eventually decided not to. The police might summon them to the station, and they didn't want to go through the tedious process. They couldn't afford to lose a whole morning, plus probably a good part of an afternoon. Actually, their loss was minimum, as both the computer and the microwave were already broken. Having calmed down, they couldn't help smiling, amused that the thieves had made fools of themselves and must be racking their brains trying to make those machines work.

"I'm pleased they removed the junk. Good riddance," Nan said. " I want my computer back," wailed their son. "It was already broken down, not worth keeping anymore." "I want it back. It's mine."

His mother stepped in. "Be reasonable, Taotao. This way we won't have to bother to dump them. We just paid those fools a pair of my old shoes."

"It's my computer."

"All right, once we have our own home, we'll buy you a new one," Nan said.

"When can we have our house? I don't want to live here anymore."

His parents looked at each other. Nan realized Pingping was thinking the same thought. He managed to answer his son, "I'll start looking for a new place soon."

"Yes, Daddy will take care of that," Pingping said. "You must stop hoarding things."

Neither Nan nor Pingping could say when Taotao had become a hoarder: he had never let go of anything that once belonged to him, not even a pencil stub or a paper clip. For some time his parents had wondered what was wrong with him. Then one day back north, on his way to work in Natick, Nan by chance listened to a psychiatrist on the radio discussing the psychology of hoarding with a caller whose son had the same problem-"a real dog in the manger," the boy wouldn't even let his newborn cousin wear the booties he had outgrown long ago. The man and his wife had been separated, and the psychiatrist said their shaky marriage might account for their son's obsession-unconsciously the boy wanted to hold things together. The thought came to Nan that Taotao must have been frightened all these years when Pingping and he were often absent from his life. Now the boy must still be afraid of losing his parents, and this fear was manifested in his clinging to all trifles. Look at his duffel bag, full of trinkets: assorted batteries, dead wrist-watches, rulers, a shoehorn, key chains, dog tags, pencil sharpeners, baseball cards, seashells, coins from various countries that Livia had given him. He had even saved every section of comics from the Boston Globe back in Massachusetts; his parents had forced him to dump them before the move, but now he had begun collecting the funnies from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. What puzzled Nan was that Taotao never looked at those pages again once he had thrown them into the pile in his closet, next to the carton containing issues of National Geographic, which his parents had subscribed to for him. The boy's hoarding saddened his parents. Nan and Pingping agreed not to talk about their marital trouble in front of their child again.

"I wonder why the thieves didn't take Taotao's telescope," Pingping said to Nan when the boy was brushing his teeth in the bathroom.

"The computer must have seemed worth a lot of money to them."

"If they'd walked off with the telescope, that would have killed him."

"Maybe we should store it in the restaurant."

So they took the thing along when they went to work the next morning. For the whole day Nan continually looked through apartment books and the "Home Finder" sections of the Sunday Atlanta Journal-Constitution for a safe nearby place, but he couldn't find one. There were a few houses listed for rent in Lilburn, all too expensive.

To Nan's delight, Mrs. Wang showed up the next afternoon and said that she and her husband were going to visit their relatives in Taiwan for at least three months. She would be happy to let the Wus "keep the house" for them. Nan and Pingping understood that also meant she'd want them to pay some rent. They offered her six hundred dollars a month, which Mrs. Wang happily accepted. "Nan, we trust you like a son of ours," she said with feeling.

Her words made Nan 's gums itch, knowing the Wangs had no son. But Pingping tittered and asked her, "Then I'm your daughter-in-law, right? And Taotao is your grandson, right?"

" Right."

"Then you should let us use your house for free, shouldn't you?"

Mrs. Wang looked baffled; her small eyes dimmed while a wormlike frown gathered at her forehead. Pingping said, "Just joking. We'll take good care of your house."

Nan was worried that the managerial office at Peachtree Terrace might not let him get out of the lease easily. He talked to Shona, the black woman in charge of the apartment complex, and she agreed to cancel his lease provided Nan was willing to lose the security deposit. He was unhappy but had no choice. However, a week after the Wus had moved out, Nan received a check of $275 from Shona. She didn't write a word and just refunded him half the deposit, which pleased the Wus.

Since moving into the Wangs', the Wus hadn't been able to figure out what the little red flag on the mailbox was supposed to do. Back in Massachusetts, the Masefields hadn't had such a thing on their box, and Heidi had always taken her mail to the post office. Now every morning before going to work, Nan would raise the tiny flag as a way to greet the postman, who drove on the right-hand side of his van. Then one day Pingping found a slip of paper in the mailbox, bearing these words: "Don't let your kids play with the flag! Keep it up only when you have mail to go."

Taotao loved the Wangs' house and often set up his telescope in the backyard at night to look at stars. He was happy that at last he could use the instrument freely. His parents joined him in observing the sky a few times, but unlike in the Northeast, the air in Atlanta was still a touch humid in the fall, so even such a large telescope, 225 power, couldn't penetrate the hazy atmosphere completely. Tao-tao once sulked and kept twisting the focus knob and the eyepiece. Nan told him, "The sky will be clear in the wintertime. Why don't you wait until then? I bet you can see stars clearly when it's cold."

The boy agreed and stowed away the telescope in a closet. However, when winter came, he didn't take it out. In fact, the frustration in the fall had squelched his craving for stargazing. He'd never touch the telescope again, as if it was just a toy he had outgrown but still wanted to keep.

₉

BOTH Nan and his wife often dreamed of their native land. Yet neither of them missed their parents a lot, because they had grown up in kindergartens and boarding schools. Unlike Nan, Pingping sometimes remembered her father fondly. She didn't love her mother that much; she had been grouchy, especially when frustrated at work, and had often vented her frustration on her children. As the oldest child, Pingping had to do many of the household chores and look after her siblings. Her mother would scold her if she didn't rinse the laundry clean enough, and would even slap her if her siblings had fought with other kids whose mothers came to complain and make scenes. So Pingping had never missed her mother. Every so often, she still dreamed of China, but in the dream she was sometimes tormented by a full bladder; she'd toss in bed and shout, "Where's the toilet?" A few times she awakened Nan, who slept in the other bed in the same room.

Nan dreamed of different things and people. Once, in a nightmare, he appeared to be an escapee, hunted by men wielding truncheons and wearing helmets marked with a swastika, but the setting was his alma mater, the small college in Harbin, and all the Nazis had Chinese faces. As he was fleeing, from behind him rose ferocious barks made by the hounds sicced on those who lagged behind. Another time he dreamed that a friend of his was being arrested by the police and frog-marched to an execution ground below the dam of a reservoir. His friend wasn't shot but was booted half to death, and Nan woke up drenched in cold sweat. More often he dreamed of Beina, that capricious woman. She would come to him snickering or sobbing; once she even caressed his throat and kissed his cheeks with her moist lips. She was different from a decade before, her egg-shaped face smooth and pale as if she were ill. Never did she look cheerful, more often irritated and grimacing, her large eyes tearful; neither did she ever speak a word to him. He was upset about her silence because she had a lovely ringing voice, and because her reticence contradicted her reckless nature. Once Nan dreamed that he and she were jogging together on the sports ground behind the classroom building of their old college, she following him stubbornly despite her heavy boots and the piercingly cold wind. Several times she appeared when he was talking with someone else-she stayed in the background but within earshot, listening closely. Whenever he woke up from such a dream, he'd feel a numbing pain in his chest. If only he could forget her. If only he had just flirted with her instead of being deadly serious and getting himself wounded. He wondered whether she ever dreamed of him.

"I know you miss her again," Pingping said to Nan one morning after putting Taotao on the school bus. Now that they lived near the restaurant, they didn't have to hustle to work.

"Who are you talking about?" He pretended to be puzzled.

"Beina. You met her again in your dream last night."

"I didn't mean to."

"If you love her so much, why did you marry me? Liar! Why did you tell me you loved me?" She turned away and broke into sobs.

He said no more as a cramping headache suddenly seized his scalp. He got up, slipped on his green raincoat, and made for the door.

"Come back!" cried his wife.

He went out without turning his head. It was chilly outside, a mizzle falling almost like a fog, but there wasn't a breath of wind. Most of the trees had already shed their leaves, which were scattered on the lawns along the street, a few plastered on tree trunks and some caught in evergreen shrubs. In Nan 's mind was falling another drizzle, in which he and Beina were walking under his raincoat toward their classroom building. Their body heat mingled while he wrapped his arm around her shoulders firmly. She was so little in his one-armed embrace, like a child, and she couldn't stop laughing. Around the campus, frogs were croaking lustily. The path through the aspen grove was misty and seemed to lead to a place far away. If only they could walk like that for hours.

Nan was heading for the Gold Wok. The cars, parked diagonally in Beaver Hill Plaza, had been washed clean, brighter than usual, and the asphalt was spotted with oily sheen. He didn't go to the restaurant and instead continued toward Lawrenceville Highway, which was two hundred yards to the north. He thought about his dream of the night before, in which Beina again wept wordlessly. He wondered why she appeared so wretched. Did her husband abuse her? Was she in trouble? Did she need him to help her? To rescue her from that bastard? Why was she always sad in his dreams?

At the same time he tried reasoning himself out of his fantasies. How ridiculous you are. The dream was nothing but vagaries of your mind. She had no need for you then and has no need for you now. Have you forgotten her words-"I can't stand you anymore"? Like some women she too wanted a man of wealth or power. You're nobody, just a piece of garbage dumped by her. Drop all the illusions! Stop wallowing in despair. Pull yourself together and focus on what's going on here and now.

Still, the pain was real, constricting his throat. He crossed Lawrenceville Highway and strolled toward Kroger because the other shops weren't open yet. Once inside the supermarket, he poured himself a cup of coffee and picked up a half blueberry muffin, both free for sampling; he walked around, pushing a shopping cart, which he actually didn't need. At the end of an aisle he stumbled on a table that displayed wristwatches for sale, all at a big discount. His watch had died a few days before, so he decided to buy one. He disliked those with leather straps because in the summer he'd sweat so much in the kitchen that the leather would rot within a year. So he picked one made in Brazil with a steel strap and a calendar on its face. The original price had been $140, but now it was marked down to $19.99. He touched his pockets and realized he'd left his wallet home. Yet in his hip pocket he found a twenty and a ten. He was glad he had the money on him.

At the express lane a gawky, pink-faced boy checked him out and said, "Twenty-three forty-seven." The screen of the register showed the same amount.

Nan was puzzled but handed him the money anyway. As the cashier was making change, Nan said, "Zer marked price is nineteen ninety-nine. Why such a big difference?"

"Six percent sales tax, sir." The boy grinned while his pale blue eyes batted.

"Still, it shouldn't be so mahch."

The boy gave thought to that, then pointed at a counter, saying, "The computer must've made a mistake. Go to Customer Service. They'll help you. I'm sorry about this, sir." He handed Nan the change and the receipt.

At the counter a fortyish woman with amber hair looked at the receipt and the watch. Without a word she punched away at a keyboard. "I'm going to give the money back to you, all right?" she said to Nan.

"Fine."

She came over and handed him $23.47, together with the wrist-watch. Perplexed, Nan said, "I want zer watch." "You can have it."

"But you gave me all zer money back."

The woman, wearing a nametag with SARAH printed on it, beamed and narrowed her eyes. "The store has a new policy-if the computer overcharges you, we give you the purchase for free. We apologize for the mistake, sir."

"Wow, sank you!"

Nan put on the watch and stepped out of the supermarket, impressed by the store's effort to inspire the customers' trust. His mood was lifting, and he was amazed that he was actually so easy to please. Just a free little timepiece could cheer him up. As he was about to cross Lakeside Drive, he caught sight of a pack of Virginia Slims lying in the roadside grass, the cellophane wrap dotted with rainwater and a cigarette sticking out of the top of the case. He picked it up. He didn't smoke, but the pack was hardly used and its contents still dry, so he put it into his pocket. With a lightened heart he headed home.

₁₀

SLUMPED at the kitchen table, Pingping was smoking while Nan was away. Usually she wouldn't touch cigarettes, but when distressed, she'd indulge in one. She always kept a pack around, secreted somewhere Nan couldn't find. If only she didn't love him so hopelessly. How often she was torn between love and bitterness; and she even tried to hate him, but never could she summon up any real hatred. Despite her misery and feeling of being misused, every night before going to sleep she'd repeat to herself, "I love my husband only," as though this thought were her only way out of the labyrinth of love in which both she and Nan were trapped. It was clear by now that she could never go back to China and live as a self-sufficient person again, yet she wouldn't regret having settled down in Georgia and was willing to accept the prospect that she and Nan would have to remain together for a long time, probably for the rest of their lives. Still, why couldn't Nan outgrow his feelings for his first love, for that heartless woman? Why would he continue letting her suck all the energy and lifeblood out of him? Stupid ass. He'll get feebler and feebler if he doesn't quit pining away for her. Why can't he see that her life belongs elsewhere and has nothing to do with his here? He's just a miserable man, just an automatic generator of suffering and pain.

Unlike him, Pingping had never missed her ex-boyfriend, compared with whom Nan was a better man; Nan hadn't hesitated to marry her and wouldn't shirk his responsibilities as a husband and father. If only he were more responsive to her love and devotion. If only there were a way to soften his hardened heart.

The kitchen door opened. At the sight of Nan, Pingping averted her eyes and took a short drag on her cigarette. He said harshly, "You're not supposed to smoke in this house." The instant he let out those words, he changed his tone. "This isn't our home." He took out the Virginia Slims and inserted something into the case.

She blew out a puff of smoke. "I don't care." Despite saying that, she stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer serving as an ashtray.

"Then I have another pack for you." He smiled and handed her the opened Virginia Slims. "It has two thousand lucky pennies in it too."

"You bought this for me?" She looked puzzled, her eyes wider. She shook the case. "My, twenty dollars!"

"I told you, didn't I?"

" Where did you get this? You smoke too?"

"No. I found it on the street."

" Who lost it, do you know?"

"No idea."

He also showed her the brand-new watch on his wrist. She was amazed he had gotten it free. Hurriedly she made oatmeal for both of them. After breakfast, together they walked to work as if their squabble had never happened. Nan was amazed that just a free wristwatch had actually averted the crisis between them. He felt rather trivial as he remembered he had never been like this before. He had despised money back in China and never cared to save any, and before he met Pingping, he had always spent every penny of his salary each month. On the other hand, he felt that a good life should be uneventful, having few dramatic moments; instead, it should be filled with small delights, each of which should be appreciated and enjoyed like a gift. Pingping and he had too few such delights in their life, so a tiny windfall, a free watch, could bowl them over and switch their emotions to another gear. He wondered whether this piece of luck had come his way at the critical moment purely by accident. Life was truly mysterious. If he were a Christian, he'd have believed this might be a gift from God, but he didn't belong to any church and so he didn't allow his thoughts to stretch heavenward.

₁₁

AT BEAVER HILL PLAZA a jewelry store had opened recently. It was five doors down from the Gold Wok to the east. Its owner was Janet Mitchell, a woman in her late thirties, with rusty hair and sloping shoulders. She had come from New Jersey to Atlanta the previous year with her husband, who worked for GE. Despite her trim figure, Janet walked with a lurch, the result of a traffic accident three years before. The damages she had collected enabled her to start her own business, whose clientele consisted mostly of young women living in Gwinnett County. She hired a salesgirl to work at the counter of her store while she herself made earrings and necklaces in the back room, which had a glass cutaway. Two or three times a week she would come to the Gold Wok for lunch and was particularly fond of the noodles and Ma Po Tofu offered there. Janet had caught the Wus' attention from the very beginning, because she wouldn't use a fork and would pick up a sliver of meat or a piece of stir-fried vegetable with her fingers if her chopsticks couldn't do the job. She and Ping-ping liked each other, and whenever she was there, the two of them would chat and giggle. Janet was amazed that Pingping, having learned English mainly by osmosis, could read local newspapers.

Sometimes when it wasn't busy at the restaurant, Pingping would go to Janet's store to see how she made jewelry. Besides showing her the craft, Janet also told her where to buy the beads, shells, stones, pearls. She even let Pingping assemble a necklace, just for fun; the piece turned out as elegant as those for sale. Janet was greatly impressed. Whenever they were together they'd talk about all kinds of things. Janet asked Pingping many questions. Why did Chinese children do so well in school? How come there weren't many fat Chinese? What did she think of the one-child policy in China? Why did some families abandon girl babies there? Did the Chinese really respect old people? Must Pingping take care of her parents even if she was far away from home?

To the last questions Pingping replied "Not really," though every year, before the Spring Festival, she'd send five hundred dollars to her parents, as well as to Nan 's. Their parents had all retired with full pensions and free medical care, so the remittances were mainly meant to make their holiday more festive.

One afternoon at the Gold Wok, Janet asked Pingping why Chinese women looked better than Chinese men. The question stumped Pingping, who had never thought about it before, but she admitted that some Chinese men were skinny perhaps because they had starved when they were young. If a man didn't look physically strong, he might be viewed as a weakling, especially in America. "But there is many handsome men in China," she told her friend. " Nan is handsome, right?"

Janet smiled without speaking; apparently she didn't think so. She then came up with another question. "I saw on TV the other day that Chinese women prefer double-fold eyelids, like the Western type. Some girls in Shanghai went through cosmetic surgeries to reshape their eyes. They already looked pretty, why did they bother to do that?"

"They like double eyelid, but that isn't really Western. Look, I'm double, right?" Pingping's forefingers pointed at her dark brown eyes while she flapped her lids. "I'm natural, right?"

"That's true. People tend to assume Chinese have slit Mongol eyes."

" China is big country, have all kinds people."

Nan was slicing pork tenderloin in the kitchen and pricked up his ears to listen in on them through the window that opened onto the dining room. He liked Pingping best when she was happy and bubbly. Despite feeling uncomfortable about Janet's curiosity that bordered on nosiness, despite having warned his wife not to tell her friend too much about themselves, he wouldn't think ill of Janet, who was a regular and was so fond of Taotao that she often bragged about him to her husband, Dave Mitchell. Dave, a husky man with a boyish face and a barrel chest, would come to dine at the Gold Wok with his wife on weekends.

Nan craned his neck to glance through the window at Pingping and Janet, who were sitting in a nearby booth, a pot of tea between them. He returned to the cutting board, working slowly so that he could eavesdrop on them more. Janet said in her contralto voice, "Come on, don't tell me this place doesn't make money. Everybody can see it's a cash cow. You and Nan have transformed it totally."

"I tell you truth," said Pingping. "We need money for house. This business can't make enough for that."

"Well, it depends on what kind of home you're looking for."

"Just small house, enough for three of us."

"That shouldn't be expensive here. If you were living in New York or San Francisco, you could say you can't afford it, but here real estate is cheap."

"We really don't have enough money."

To Nan, the business of the Gold Wok wasn't bad, but it didn't fetch a large profit. By now he understood that a tiny restaurant like theirs could never make a lot of money, but it could save a good part of its earnings through tax breaks. His family's living expenses had been reduced considerably since they took over this business. They ate at the restaurant, and most of the stuff they bought was tax deductible, things like lightbulbs, coffee, tea, detergent, paper towels, even gasoline. Eventually they could save most of the profit the restaurant made. No wonder a lot of Americans kept a small business even though they held regular jobs in large companies. Everyone tried to outsmart the IRS.

₁₂

EVER SINCE the Wus had revived the Gold Wok, Nan had been troubled by the fact that legally he was the sole proprietor of the restaurant. What if he died of illness or got killed in a traffic accident? He was afraid that the state would take away his business and deprive his family of their livelihood. He talked with Pingping about this and convinced her that they should have both of their names included in the deed for the restaurant. He called Mr. Shang one day in late October and made an appointment for the following week.

Together Nan and Pingping went to the law office in Chamblee early on Monday morning. Mr. Shang, in a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows, was sipping coffee when the Wus arrived. On his desktop lay a sticky doughnut half wrapped with a piece of glossy paper, a bite revealing the dark jelly stuffing. He beckoned to the couple to sit down in front of him. "I have your paperwork ready," he told them.

"Sanks," Nan said.

"Let me explain how we should do this-I'm going to file a straw for you."

"What's that?" Pingping asked.

Mr. Shang shot her a reproachful look. He pushed up his glasses with his thumb and resumed, "A straw is also called 'bail common,' which we borrowed from the English law. The procedure works like this: you sell the property to me for one dollar and then I'll sell it back to both of you at the same price."

Nan felt uneasy. "Is there anozzer way to do zis?"

"No, this is the only way, inasmuch as you're not allowed to transfer property within your family." Mr. Shang lifted his coffee mug and drank noisily. His secretary, a stout woman with large eyes and tawny hair, came in and placed a brown folder on his desk. "Don't go, Cathy," he told her. "We need you as a witness."

In an undertone Nan explained the procedure to his wife, who seemed uncomfortable about this straw thing. He said, "Let's do it now, all right? It will be hard for us to come again."

To their surprise, Mr. Shang said to Pingping in stiff Mandarin, "Believe me, this is the only way to make you a proprietress."

So in the presence of the secretary, Nan signed the sheet that specified him as the seller, and then Mr. Shang signed the other one that sold the restaurant back to both Nan and Pingping. The attorney assured them that he'd go to the deeds office and register the transaction soon. For the registration and the lawyer fees Nan wrote him a check for two hundred dollars, and Cathy gave the Wus a receipt.

Once they were back at the Gold Wok, Nan and Pingping talked about the straw and grew more agitated. What if the lawyer wouldn't file all the papers? In other words, Mr. Shang could register himself as the buyer of the property without carrying out the second part of the straw-not selling it back to them. The more they thought about this possibility, the more jittery they got. They regretted not having asked for a copy of the paperwork. Now all they had was a receipt for the fees they'd paid. Then again, Mr. Shang could shred the check so that they wouldn't have any evidence for the transaction.

The next morning Nan called the lawyer's office and asked for a copy of the papers, but Cathy said her boss wasn't in and had them with him. Stupefied, Nan couldn't help but imagine that they'd sold their business for only one dollar. At the same time, he kept reminding himself that he shouldn't be too paranoid or think ill of Mr. Shang. He could see that Pingping was a bundle of nerves, so he ought to appear composed and cheerful. According to the attorney, they'd receive a notice about the registration from the deeds office within two months. What could the Wus do in the meantime? It looked like they could do nothing but wait anxiously.

₁₃

AFTER Thanksgiving Nan would call the lawyer's office once a week, but the secretary always answered ambiguously, saying Mr. Shang was not in and the Wus would receive the notice from the deeds registry soon, so they should set their minds at rest. But she couldn't confirm whether the papers had been filed. Sometimes Nan felt that Mr. Shang was actually in his office when he phoned but that the man avoided speaking to him.

The more Nan thought about the impasse, the more befuddled and outraged he was. Mr. Shang, as his business card indicated, had gone to law school in California and must have grown up in the United States. It was unlikely that he'd act like a corrupt official, yet Nan felt as helpless as if he were again under the thumb of a bureaucrat, like back in China. But what should he do? He was at a loss.

One day at noon, Janet came in to have Dandan Noodle. Pingping and she chatted again while Janet was eating. By chance Pingping mentioned their predicament. Janet was surprised. "You should sue this obnoxious lawyer!" she told Pingping, her violet-colored eyes flickering.

"But we're not sure about his crime."

"Press charges for your suffering, for the mental damage he has done to you. This is outrageous."

"That cost more money. He's lawyer and know how to guard himself."

"Maybe he does, so?"

"We just want our business back, no more trouble." "Don't worry. He won't get away with this. Let me ask Dave. He may have a better idea what to do."

Nan wasn't positive about Pingping's revealing their trouble to Janet, who he felt gossiped too much. He was afraid she might spread their story, and that would make them appear stupid in others' eyes. Yet if she could help them figure out a solution, he'd be more than grateful. He simply couldn't bear this uncertainty any longer.

Janet came in the next afternoon and told the Wus, "Dave said it wasn't a big deal. You can always go to the deeds office and file the papers by yourself."

"Reelly?" Nan felt dumb for not having thought of this before. "Zer lawyer said he must do zat."

"He just wants extra business. People file their business deals by themselves all the time. That's what Dave told me."

"Where is zer deeds awffice, do you know?" asked Nan.

"It's inside the courthouse in Lawrenceville."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

The next morning Janet and Pingping went to the lawyer's office together. Mr. Shang was with a client when they arrived, so Cathy let them sit in the waiting room, saying her boss would be with them shortly. She offered them each a cup of coffee.

When Mr. Shang was done and came up to them, Pingping asked him whether he had filed the papers. He answered, "I've been too busy to go to the deeds office these days." He glanced at Janet, who was glaring at him.

"Can we file it by ourself?" asked Pingping.

"You sure can. Cathy, get her papers from my office and give her the refund. Mrs. Wu, I'm pleased you can do this by yourself." Somehow he sounded relieved. He went on, "Excuse me, ladies. I have to meet a client who's waiting." He motioned to a young woman sitting near the entrance of the waiting room and riffling through a fashion magazine. "Come in, Miss Han," he said.

Pingping noticed that the attorney's socks were not mates, one black and the other blue. For sure Mr. Shang wasn't an absent-minded man, so he might have been color-blind.

The secretary wrote Pingping a check for eighty dollars and handed her the papers. Pingping and her friend left the office and headed for Janet's passenger van. "He isn't that bad," Pingping said as they pulled out of the parking lot.

"Lawyers are all the same," Janet replied. "You should know your rights when you hire them."

"I didn't expect he refund the money."

"He had to. That's for the filing fee."

They stopped at Asian Square to pick up a World Journal for Nan. Nan always read the Sunday newspaper, especially the enclosed weekly magazine that carried a number of articles written by well-known journalists and experts. Mr. Liu, the dissident living in New York City, had a column in the weekly, and Nan enjoyed reading that old man's writings. On their way to the deeds office, Pingping wondered whether Mr. Shang had refunded the eighty dollars because Janet had accompanied her, ready to challenge him. He couldn't possibly have forgotten to file the papers, since he went to the courthouse frequently, representing his clients. Yet somehow she didn't feel that the attorney was as greedy and sneaky as she had imagined, though she knew he had intended to torment her and Nan. They should have registered the transaction by themselves long ago to save all the doubts and miserable feelings that could easily poison one's mind and spawn hideous thoughts. She wondered why Mr. Shang had looked relieved when she said she'd handle the papers by herself. Probably having tormented the Wus enough, he had felt it was high time to bring the whole thing to an end. Or perhaps her request foiled his attempt to rob his clients and thus checked the crime he had been hesitating to commit. If so, this meant he still had a heart and dared not act like an outright crook.

Pingping and Janet found the deeds registry in the courthouse and filed the papers. The whole procedure took just a few minutes, and Pingping was amazed.

₁₄

NAN was anxious, because the Wangs, having stayed in Taiwan for three months, would be coming back in two weeks. The Wus would have to move again. For days Nan had been considering where to go. He and his wife were a little spoiled by living so close to their workplace that they now felt reluctant to move far away. If only they could afford the Wangs' bungalow. These days Nan often looked through ads in Gwinnett Creative Loafing in hopes of finding a safe, affordable apartment nearby.

By now the Wus had $32,000 in the bank. They noticed that there were some smaller houses for sale for less than $90,000, though all of them were far away from the Gold Wok. With their business worth so little, they couldn't possibly get a mortgage from the bank. It seemed impossible for them to think of buying a house now.

Then one morning in early February Janet stopped by and said, "Pingping, I saw a home for sale on Marsh Drive. It's not big, can't be too expensive."

That street was just a five-minute walk from Beaver Hill Plaza, so the Wus were all ears. Nan asked Janet, "Do you know zer price?"

"Uh-uh. I guess a hundred grand, tops."

"But we have no that kinda money," Pingping said.

"And we can't get a loan eizer," added Nan.

"If I were you, I'd talk to the owner and see if there might be a way."

Early the next morning, the moment Taotao left for school, Nan and Pingping went to Marsh Drive to see the house. It was a brick ranch sitting on the northern side of a small lake and in the middle of a lot bigger than a third of an acre. The backyard, covered by grass and gently sloping toward the green water, was flanked by two steel fences, and a flock of Canada geese perched on the edge of the lake, basking in the sunshine. A dozen pines and sweet gums cast shadows on two semicircles of monkey grass, which resembled two large flower beds but with only a few young cypresses and some dead leaves in them. A woodpecker began hammering away on the other shore, and except for the rapid knocking, all the other sounds subsided at once. Having looked at the outside of the house, the Wus went to its front and rang the doorbell.

An old man came out. Seeing that the Wus were potential buyers, he let them in. His name was John Wolfe, and he was a retiree living alone. He wore a hearing aid but looked in good shape, with thick shoulders, a flat belly, thin legs, and a bush of white hair. After giving them a brief tour through the house, which had a half-finished basement, two small bedrooms and one large master bedroom, and two bathrooms, he told the Wus that the asking price was $85,000. Somehow the house felt smaller than it looked from the outside. Seated on a sofa in the living room, Nan explained their interest and difficulty. "We can't get a mortgage from zer bank because our business is too small," he told Mr. Wolfe.

"I know the Gold Wok. Its soups are delicious. Has Mr. Wang retired?"

"Yes. We have zer place now."

"Do you own it or run it?"

"We two own it togezzer." Nan put his hand on his wife's shoulder. "How much down payment can you plunk down if I let you buy this house?"

Nan looked at Pingping, then said, "Maybe sirty percent."

"Holy smokes! I didn't expect you'd pay that kind of cash. That will do-I mean, we can figure out a way. Now, how about the rest of the payment? Are you willing to pay some interest, say seven percent?" He tapped his right foot on the beige carpet.

"Zat's a little bit too high for us," Nan said. He turned to Pingping and asked, "What do you think?"

"Seven percent is fine if he doesn't change it," she said.

"Seven percent fixed," he told the old man.

Pingping added, "We'll try to pay all your money in three and four years."

That was indeed possible, since the restaurant could fetch a profit of more than $30,000 a year. Mr. Wolfe seemed unconvinced and said, "I don't mean to be nosy. Tell me, how much can you two make a year?"

"Maybe sirty-five thousand," Nan answered.

The old man's face crinkled into a smile while his bell-shaped nose quivered. He confessed that he hated to let an agent take a five percent cut from the sale, so this would be a good arrangement. After some calculation, an agreement was reached: besides the thirty percent down payment, the Wus would give him at least $1,000 a month until the mortgage was paid off.

Nan was eager to buy this place mainly because he liked the lake on the south of the property; according to feng shui, that symbolized the abundance of life. What's more, a nameless creek flowed in the east, about two hundred yards away from Mr. Wolfe's property, meandering along the edge of the woods. That was also an auspicious sign, which might embody the spring of life. Nan had never taken feng shui seriously, but at the sight of this house, somehow he couldn't stop thinking of that occult system. As their conversation continued, the Wus realized why the old man actually couldn't wait to sell his home. His ex-wife had left him the year before and he had a girlfriend down in Florida, near Pompano Beach, and was anxious to join her there.

Pingping, however, was suspicious about the feng shui of this place, where at least one marriage had disintegrated. She couldn't share Nan 's enthusiasm and superstitious thoughts, but she supported the deal and had paid a five-hundred-dollar deposit. The house was close to the shopping plaza and solid in every way despite its low ceiling. Mr. Wolfe had built it himself, so the brickwork and the woodwork were fine-the living room walls were oak-paneled and even the carport was constructed of cherry red bricks with zigzag furrows on their sides, the same as those used for the house.

Coming out of Mr. Wolfe's, Nan and Pingping headed back to the Gold Wok. They were excited, never having dreamed they might soon own a house on a piece of land they could call their own.

₁₅

ON THURSDAY MORNING they took Mr. Wolfe to Mr. Shang's office to sign the contract. They used the attorney again because his fee was $120, half the price Mr. Wolfe's lawyer would charge. Ping-ping was surprised by the change of the law office in less than a month. Now the suite was divided into two parts, one of which had become a gift shop lined with shelves displaying merchandise for overseas Chinese to buy for their families and friends in Taiwan and on the mainland-Wisconsin ginseng, multiple vitamins, capsules of fish oil, dried sea cucumbers, Spanish fly, love lotions, growth hormone release formulas, cosmetics, electronic gadgets-whereas the other half of the suite was still used by Mr. Shang as his office. Apparently the attorney wasn't doing well. These days so many small businesses had gone under in this area that some suites and rooms in Chinatown were vacant, marked with FOR RENT signs. But Mr. Shang was effusive and congratulatory when he saw the Wus again. Beyond his desk sat a Chinese girl, plump and pimply, typing at a computer and wearing headphones. Beside the mouse pad was a tiny CD player. She was wagging her head rhythmically while punching the keyboard. Mr. Shang declared to Nan, "I told you that you were going to be a millionaire." Nan wondered why Cathy, the secretary, wasn't here. Probably she had been laid off.

"It's just small house," Pingping told him, smiling.

"This is a big step, though," said the lawyer.

Mr. Wolfe chimed in, "A home is where you start to build your fortune."

"That's right," Mr. Shang agreed. "This is a major step toward realizing your American dream."

Nan couldn't help but wonder why Mr. Wolfe suddenly sounded like an old Chinese. What fortune had he built at the house on Marsh Drive? Just a broken marriage.

The transaction was quite simple. Mr. Wolfe had already written out their agreement on the price and the format of payment, and the attorney was just supposed to go over the contract, serve as a witness, and ascertain the validity of the sale. Mr. Shang took the sheets of paper from the old man and read them carefully. Then he said to the three of them, "This is fine. Everything is clearly spelled out. Because there's no mortgage from the bank, the sale is very simple. It's just between you two parties."

"So we should go ahead and sign zis contract?" asked Nan.

"Yes."

Mr. Wolfe shook his head, but scrawled his signature without a word. The Wus followed suit, signing their names as cobuyers. Then Pingping took out an envelope that contained a certified check for $25,000 and handed it to Mr. Wolfe. At the sight of it, the old man was elated. He scrutinized the check and put it back into the envelope. Smiling faintly, he inserted the money into the inner pocket of his jacket.

In the parking lot of the office he praised Mr. Shang to the Wus. "He's a good guy and doesn't rip off his clients. I should've used him for my divorce."

₁₆

MR. WOLFE departed for Florida a week later. The Wus went to clean the home every morning before they began their day at the restaurant. Along with the house, the old man had left them some furniture and all the household tools, which came in handy for their cleaning. One morning they happened upon a vase standing on the doormat and holding a bunch of mixed snow crocuses. Attached to it was a note saying, "Welcome to the neighborhood-Mrs. Lodge." They placed the bouquet on the round coffee table in the living room, which at once brightened as if the yellow and white flowers had become a vibrant center. They had no idea who Mrs. Lodge was and whether they should return the vase. Knowing that colored people weren't always welcome in a predominantly white neighborhood, the Wus hadn't expected such warm greetings. Mrs. Lodge's present made their day. On their way to work, they read the names on some mailboxes while walking along the left-hand side of the street so as to avoid the traffic coming from behind, since there was no sidewalk anywhere in this neighborhood. They found that the Lodges lived about a dozen houses away from theirs. On the front porch of that raised ranch hung a large wicker swing, and on the well-kept lawn stood a willow oak and a colossal magnolia, its broad leaves scintillating with dewdrops in the sun. A flock of grackles were walking on the grass, most of them with their bills ajar as if they were choking. Suddenly one of them took off, then the entire flock followed, whirring and swirling in the air like a twisting blanket. And a few were crying gratingly. Nan and Pingping thought of going in to thank Mrs. Lodge, but decided against it, unsure that this was an appropriate time. "There's no hurry. We can always do something in return," Nan told his wife.

It was said that Lawrenceville, an adjacent town to the east, had once been a base of the Ku Klux Klan. The Wus had heard some white men sing the praises of the Klan and claim to feel proud of being rednecks, but they had never seen a Klansman in the flesh. And they were convinced that the area was safe and peaceful, though not without racial prejudice. For instance, at A amp;P the supermarket at the plaza, where the Wus usually went shopping, two women cashiers, one twentyish and the other middle-aged, had often scowled at them. One day the younger one, with thin limbs and honey-colored hair in loose ringlets, even overturned every one of the Wus' purchases as she was ringing them up, while the older woman watched with a smirk. Thereafter, the Wus always gave those two women a wide berth. Nan noticed that their shunning them seemed to have embarrassed the older one. She once motioned for them to check out through her lane, but they pretended they hadn't seen her. A month later the supermarket went out of business. Despite their treatment by the two women, the Wus were upset and disturbed by its disappearance, because from now on they'd have to do their shopping at Kroger or Winn-Dixie, which were farther away. Also, if a big store had failed like that, the Gold Wok could easily go under if they didn't manage it well.

Pingping was always attached to old things. Once she got used to something, she'd automatically take it as a part of her life, so she missed the now defunct supermarket a lot. Two years earlier Heidi had gotten her worn-out washer and dryer replaced, and Pingping had been so disappointed that for months afterward she'd mention the old machines, saying they could still have run properly. Now, for weeks she talked about the vanished A amp;P and wondered what would become of its employees. Nan told her to stop worrying about that. This was America, where everything came and went quickly. Deep down, however, he too was shaken and was more determined to run their business well and never to miss the monthly payment to Mr.

Wolfe.

The day before the Wangs returned, the Wus moved out of the bungalow and set up their residence at 568 Marsh Drive.

₁₇

NAN remembered noticing a sly, gleeful look passing Mr. Wolfe's face when the contract was signed at the Shang Law Office two weeks before. He couldn't figure that out until his neighbor Alan Johnson talked with him. Alan, an engineer of fifty-three who worked for General Motors, was rearranging the worm fence on his lawn. At the sight of Nan he stopped to greet him. The two men chatted about the schools in this area. Recently the districts in the county had been redivided and the older teenagers on Marsh Drive had begun attending Parkview High, a top school in Gwinnett County, so their parents were all pleased. This also meant the houses on the street would appreciate more in value. As their conversation went on, Alan switched the topic and said, his chunky face grinning, "Have you spoken to Gerald?" Gerald's house was next to the Wus'. "No, about what?" asked Nan.

"You should make him keep his property nice and clean. John, the former owner of your house, used to have an exchange of words with him every once in a while and even tried to take him to court once."

"For what?"

"Gerald is lazy. He's the shame of this neighborhood. People are mad at him. Look at the mess he's made of his property." Alan pointed at Gerald's house and yard. Indeed, the mailbox, flagless and partly squashed, sat on a stack of building blocks as unsteadily as if it could be swept down by a gust of wind. Numerous brown patches marred the lawn, on which stood a few spindly pines almost choked by wild vines. The front porch of the house was half shielded by plywood, and on it was piled all kinds of stuff Gerald had brought back from construction sites where he had worked as an electrician: bundles of rubber-sheathed wire, cans of paint, scraps of rug, buckets of plaster, bricks, ceramic tiles, boxes of nails and screws, broken fans, even a used air conditioner. On the east side of the house was parked a truck, its windshield and a front wheel missing, and it was propped up with wood blocks. Although the Wus had noticed the sorry state of Gerald's house, they hadn't been concerned. The idea that the mess would affect the appearance and value of their property hadn't crossed their minds, because they had never owned any real estate before.

"What happened to him?" Nan asked Alan. "Out of work?"

"No, he makes good money. His wife divorced him two years ago and he has to pay child support."

"He has children? I haven't seen zem."

"He has a boy and a girl, nice kids. It's a shame the family fell apart."

Nan thought of asking him about John's wife, but held back. Why had there been so many broken marriages in this neighborhood? Wasn't this a bad omen? The other day he and Pingping had talked with Gerald, who said he made sixteen dollars an hour but had to pay so many bills that he couldn't have his roof replaced. Indeed, its brown shingles looked decayed, already bleached by the sun and partly damaged by hailstones. There was even a family of squirrels living in the roof, who had gnawed off the tip of the northwestern eaves and used a missing louver board on the west side of the roof as an entrance.

The Wus had noticed the junk cars, the oil drums, and the piles of firewood and plastic pipes in Gerald's backyard, in the middle of which sat a large trampoline. Toward the lakeside all the trees were entwined by vines, almost blocking the view of the water and giving a swampy impression. One pine had fallen into the lake; against its root leaned an overturned canoe, which Gerald had never rowed. Goby, the kinky-coated collie Gerald kept, was tethered to a fence post by a long chain all the time, and his doghouse looked like a chicken coop. Gerald never walked him, and the confinement seemed to have maddened the dog, who often gasped and coughed. Goby had angry eyes and yowled a lot, sometimes furiously in the dead of night, triggering the crescendo of baying as about a dozen dogs at the houses around the lake joined in. From the day the Wus moved here, Goby would growl and woof at them, even though Tao-tao tried to appease him with scraps of food over and over again. Once Pingping saw a white man enter Gerald's backyard to read the water meter, and the dog made no noise whatsoever. Indeed, Goby wouldn't bark at Caucasians, neither neighbors nor strangers. "That dog is racist," Pingping said. Both Nan and Taotao agreed.

The Wus weren't really bothered by the messy state of Gerald's home, and they didn't intend to talk with him as Alan had urged them to do. Instead, they felt sorry for him and decided not to pressure him like the other neighbors. Similar to Gerald, they viewed themselves as poor people.

Nan now understood why Mr. Wolfe had smiled secretively when Pingping handed him the check-the old man must have believed nobody would want to live with a neighbor like Gerald, whose wretched house would make the adjacent homes depreciate in value. The Wus didn't mind having such a neighbor, since they wouldn't be selling their house anytime soon. Their only regret was that, had they mentioned Gerald's house in the negotiation, they could have haggled down the price considerably with Mr. Wolfe.

₁₈

IT SNOWED on Saturday night a month after they had settled into their new home. This was rare in Georgia. The three-inch snow on the ground excited the children in the neighborhood, some of whom came out the next morning, riding on makeshift sleds, frolicking on the white lawns, and throwing snowballs while shouting war cries. Owing to the weight of crusted ice, some branches, especially of pines, had snapped and fallen to the ground. Electrical wires were mangled here and there, and workers were busy repairing them. The din raised by chain saws came from everywhere. In the Wus' backyard icicles still hung on the sweet gums at the waterside, having expanded and thickened the shadows cast by the trees on the lake. The waterfowl were all out of view and nestled in the bushes on the other shore to keep warm. From time to time they let out lethargic cries.

Taotao, accustomed to being alone, didn't join the kids of the neighborhood and instead played with his mother on their own lawn. Through the sliding glass door Nan watched his wife and son in the backyard; both of them were in the winter gear they had worn in the Northeast-leather gloves and tall boots. Pingping donned a flesh-colored stocking hat and a quilted coat that came down to her calves. Taotao wore a blue parka. Together mother and son were pushing a snowball already two feet across, while their breath clouded before them. The boy wanted to save some snow, so they were rolling the snowball around. Observing them, Nan was moved by the tranquil sight. His wife and son looked so happy and intimate. Suddenly Pingping took a pratfall, having stepped on one of the terrazzo tiles set a yard apart to form a curved path toward the lakeside. Taotao broke out laughing and clapped his gloved hands while his mother picked herself up from the ice-crusted grass. Nan chuckled over his tea mug.

Although touched by the peaceful scene, he still felt a lingering pain in his heart. The previous night he had again dreamed of his first love, Beina. In his sleep the two of them walked outside the campus of their old college. Moonlight filtered through the aspen grove and was shimmering on the snow grayed by thawing. For some reason, they quarreled again, and angrily she hurried away to the entrance of her dorm building. He shouted, "Beina, Beina, wait a second, let me explain!" She wouldn't listen and faded into the darkness of the doorway. His friend Danning appeared from behind a thick birch and dragged him away, saying, "She's not worth your love. Forget her. My friend, you must save yourself!" Somehow later Beina embraced him at a train station and wept wretchedly. After he woke up, he mused about her tears but couldn't guess why. He hoped her husband hadn't treated her too badly. She had looked colorless and must have been ill. Why had Danning Meng, the man who had studied physics at Brandeis and returned to Beijing two years ago, appeared in his dream? Nan was positive that Danning and Beina hadn't known each other at all. What a bizarre dream.

Peals of laughter came from outside and brought Nan back to his wife and son. He went on observing them, happy to see them in such buoyant spirits. He had just finished reading A House for Mr. Biswas and still vividly remembered the struggle the protagonist waged for having his own shelter in his own corner of land. He felt fortunate that he might achieve such a goal in just a few years. Though their mortgage was unpaid, he was on his way to becoming an independent man. His heart was filled with joy and gratitude. At long last he was hungry for making money, a lot of money, so that his family could live in peace and security.

With the back of his hand he touched his face, which wasn't hot today. Ever since the outset of the winter, he had often run a low fever. He had lived in cold climates all his life, and now in the mild Georgia winter his body was ready to resist cold, of which there wasn't any. Small wonder, bugs abounded here in the summertime. Any insects could easily survive a mild winter like this. Nan had noticed that a lot of roaches hibernated in the firewood left by Mr. Wolfe, stacked along their western steel fence. Just now as he talked with Gerald, Gerald had told him, "This snow's killing all them bugs. There'll be a bumpa peach crop nex' summa." If only there were more cold days like this one.

On such a crisp morning Nan felt energetic and clearheaded. He was in the mood for writing a poem about the scene in the backyard, about the joy and serenity of life, but he couldn't decide how to begin. He thought a good while about such a poem, which should start with a line like this: "Snow has been falling in the Southeast," but he didn't know how to proceed from there. In an hour or so he'd have to go to the restaurant, where there were chickens to cut up, flounder to clean, and spring rolls to wrap. It was always busy on Sundays, and he had to get everything ready before noon, the opening time. So he returned to his room and lay down on his bed to rest some more before setting out for work.

₁₉

NOWADAYS Taotao no longer stayed at the restaurant after school. Their house was so close by that he could walk back and forth. If he was at home alone, Pingping would call to check on him. Sometimes she'd go back to see if he was doing his homework. Nan had bought him a cheap computer because Taotao said he would build one by himself eventually. The boy knew two older kids who had just assembled their own computers, and his parents agreed to buy the parts for him. Both Nan and his wife felt fortunate about the way things had worked out. They were eager to get rid of their debt, though Pingping insisted on keeping a tidy sum in the bank as a backup fund. The economy was still in recession despite the start of a slow recovery. She wanted to make certain that they could have enough money for the monthly payment even in a lean time. On average they managed to pay Mr. Wolfe $1,500 a month.

Luckily the Gold Wok continued thriving. To increase its food variety, Nan added steamed dumplings and several kinds of noodles, such as noodles sauteed with beef and snow peas, or with shiitake mushrooms, or with dried shrimp and scallops. The new offerings helped fetch more customers. Their Yangzhou Rice had become a favorite choice for lunch, loved by the Mexican workers at the construction site of an apartment complex off Lawrenceville Highway. Nan had been wondering how to make the restaurant more profitable, but it was too small to expand further. Yet there was an obvious way, namely to install a bar. Alcoholic beverages were lucrative, but neither Nan nor Pingping knew how to mix drinks. The Gold Wok did have a license for alcohol, yet to date it had offered only a few bottled beers and wines. For weeks the Wus had been wondering whether they should set up a bar, which meant they'd have to hire a barkeep. That would cost a lot.

When working in New York, Nan had heard a good deal about bars in Chinese restaurants. Many of them were tended by Caucasians, because most Asians couldn't communicate with customers well enough in English. ABCs, American-born Chinese, didn't take bartending as a real profession, so they wouldn't man bars. In a Chinese restaurant, all too often there was unspoken contention between the barman and the waitstaff. At some places the bars even offered appetizers, directly taking business away from the dining tables. It was commonplace that a barman often acted like a lord in a Chinese restaurant and was feared by waiters and waitresses, because he could create trouble for them by slightly altering the drinks ordered by their customers. If a complaint came up and their boss intervened, the barman could simply say he couldn't understand the English used by the waiter or waitress who had placed the order. Worse yet, it was almost impossible for the boss to follow the sales at the bar, so the barkeep could give favors freely to barflies, especially to young women, and some barmen even pocketed the money that was supposed to go to the cash registers. In short, a bar could be a bonanza but also a major bugbear.

Pingping didn't know what a bar would entail, so Nan explained everything to her. He even thought of finding a Chinese fellow, sending him to a bartending school in Atlanta and then hiring him afterward. But Pingping was adamantly against setting up a bar, which she said would throw their business out of kilter. Since physically the restaurant couldn't be expanded any more, there shouldn't be a bar that might destroy their peace of mind. What they needed most was a stable clientele, which didn't even have to be large. Nan agreed.

For months Nan had been working at least fourteen hours a day, sometimes without seeing the sun for a whole week, as he had to go to the Gold Wok early in the morning to get things ready. He'd slice beef, cut chickens, boil the bones to make stock, heat up a samovar for tea, chop broccoli and scallions, steam rice, deep-fry pork and chicken cubes. In the afternoons his legs often felt heavy and bloated; he'd sit down whenever he could, even when working at the wok, so as to avoid developing varicose veins. The restaurant had fully occupied his body and mind. Even at night he often dreamed of greeting customers and cooking their orders, his head full of the din of the kitchen while his limbs remained hot and sore as a result of the long working hours. His hands, always marked by nicks or burns or blisters, would throb a little whenever he woke up in the morning. Despite the hard work, despite his fatigue, he felt content and was determined to succeed. At long last life had become simple and clear to him, as if all the confusion and uncertainties had never befogged his mind.

One afternoon Pingping handed Nan a letter. "It's for you." "For me? From whom?"

"How can I know? Must be from a secret lover of yours." She tittered, seeing his eyes flash with annoyance.

He hadn't expected that Sam Fisher would write back. A month earlier Nan had sent the poet a letter to inform him of his move to Georgia. He told Sam about the Gold Wok and his intention to continue to write poetry, which he had almost stopped doing, actually. He just meant to keep in touch with Sam in case he might consult him on the craft of poetry writing. Besides telling Sam that he loved his book Fire Sutra, he also took the occasion to send his greetings to Dick Harrison, the tall young poet, who had been friendly to him when Nan was in New York. In his reply Sam Fisher encouraged Nan to write more poetry, saying that he had talent and should persevere to develop it, and that what was fundamental was "to sustain a great sentiment" in his heart. Sam also mentioned that he had lately fallen in love with some of Tu Fu's poems, which he hoped he could translate someday.

The letter touched and upset Nan at the same time. He had been so devoted to making money lately that his desire to be a poet was almost gone, though he still read poetry before going to sleep at night. He was very fond of a thick anthology called Great Poems, especially the short explanatory essays before each poem, and he pored over the book whenever he had time. He knew some of the poems, but some he had never read before. He wrote back to Sam Fisher and offered to help if Sam did embark on translating Tu Fu.

₂₀

THE WUS knew very few Chinese living in this area. Neither had they gone to any Chinese church or visited the community center in Chinatown. They just wanted to lead an undisturbed life and didn't mind their isolation.

However, one afternoon in mid-March, two Chinese, a young man and a woman in her mid-thirties, came to the Gold Wok. They ignored Tammie's greetings and went straight to Pingping and Nan at the counter. The woman, who had a bony face, glossy skin, fierce eyes, and permed hair, introduced herself as the wife of a graduate student at Georgia Tech, whereas the man said he was a leader of the Chinese student association of that same school. They had come here to solicit a donation for the flood victims in mainland China. Nan wasn't interested and said he had no money.

The woman, named Mei Hong, persisted, "Look, Mr. Wu, you're from China, aren't you? Even if you're a rich American businessman now, you shouldn't forget your ancestors and homeland. Think about what you can do for your country."

"China is not my country anymore, and I'm not a rich man," Nan said. "I've been working my ass off day in and day out to keep this place alive. Besides, you shouldn't parrot that JFK crap here. Every citizen has the right to ask what my country can do for me."

Stumped, she stared at him for a moment, then kept on, "Do you know how much damage the Yangtze flood did last autumn?"

"I know, but it's over. It's spring now."

"No. Seventy million victims are still suffering from the aftermath of the calamity. Tens of thousands of them are homeless and waiting for your help. Eighteen provinces are still struggling to recover from the losses-"

"Give me a break! How can I be a savior of so many people? We've separated ourselves from China long ago, and for good. We don't owe it anything."

The young man tugged at Mei Hong's elbow, saying, "Let's go. It's no use arguing with such a miser who has forgotten his roots." His eyebrows were tilting as he kept pushing his flat nose with his knuckle.

Pingping said to Nan, " Why not give them a few dollars and send them away?"

"No, this is a matter of principle. I won't spend money this way." Mei Hong went on, "You act like the U.S. government. Don't you feel ashamed?"

"I'm not as rich as Uncle Sam." Nan raised his voice. "I don't collect taxes from others."

"All right, do you know China appealed to the United States for help last autumn? Guess how much the U.S. government offered our country."

"How much?"

"Twenty thousand dollars."

"Yes, that's just enough for one of those cars," the young man said, pointing at the parking lot. "The United States, the richest country in the world, meant to humiliate China with that piddling amount of money."

"What does this have to do with me?" Nan asked. "If my business went belly-up, China wouldn't come to my rescue, would it? Where could I get even one dollar?"

"But you're a Chinese and obligated to do something," Mei Hong said.

"I've done enough for China. Don't want to be charitable anymore." "Don't you have your parents and family back home?" " Yes, I do. "

"Then how can you be so cold and cut yourself off completely? How can you see your own people suffering and dying without lifting a finger to help?"

" Because even if I donated millions, the money would never reach the victims, and the officials would gobble it up. I don't want to fatten those parasites."

"We know what you're saying might be true to some degree, but we have made sure that the money we give will be spent on the victims. That's why so many people have contributed. One fellow at Georgia State is so poor that he lives in a decrepit van, but even he gave twenty dollars."

"Yes," the young man added, "a chemistry professor donated a thousand. He's from Nanjing originally."

Mei Hong went on, "We ought to separate the Chinese government from the common people. In this case, we're helping the victims."

Their words mollified Nan some. Pingping put in, "How about fifty dollars?"

Mei Hong said, "How about sixty? I gave seventy, but I'm not as rich as you. I came to America only last summer. Even my daughter gave twelve dollars-that was all she had for pocket money."

"Give them sixty and let them go," Nan grunted to Pingping.

She opened their checkbook. "Who do I make the check out to?"

"The Georgia Tech Chinese Student Association."

While his wife was writing the check, Nan said to the solicitors, " We give this money not because the victims are mainlanders. If they were people in Hong Kong or Taiwan or elsewhere, we would do the same. We just don't want to have anything to do with the Chinese government."

" We understand. Some old overseas Chinese said the same thing, because they were hurt by the revolution and the political movements," Mei Hong admitted.

That made Nan ponder. He knew that Pingping and he were actually making this donation to China, and that if they hadn't been from there, the solicitors wouldn't have come to them.

"Here you are." Pingping handed them the check.

The solicitors accepted it with a bow, which made the Wus cringe. Before turning to the door, Mei Hong said with wholehearted sincerity, "On behalf of all the suffering Chinese on the mainland, on behalf of our country, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. You will receive a thank-you letter from the Chinese consulate." She bowed again, and so did the young man.

"No need to hear from them," Nan said. "They wouldn't even renew my passport."

"We know how you feel," said Mei Hong. "For several days we've been begging around shamelessly for our motherland. We only hope our children won't repeat the same act in the future when our country becomes rich and strong."

Both Nan and Pingping were astonished and wordlessly saw them walking away. When they had gone out the door, Nan shook his squarish chin and said to his wife, "Such hotheads! They acted like state delegates, so damned sincere as if the whole of China rested on their shoulders and they couldn't even feel the weight."

"You shouldn't have said that."

"Said what?"

"We have nothing to do with China."

"I know," he sighed. "I was just angry. If only we could squeeze the old country out of our blood."

Nan had once thought they could dissociate themselves completely from the Chinese community here and just live a reclusive, undisturbed life, but now it was clear that China would never leave them alone. Wherever they went, the old land seemed to follow them.