July, 2005 

“It’s a bad idea, Piper. No, a terrible idea.” 

I looked around the swampy, football field–sized hut where we  stood—inside the world-famous Shanghai Fabric Market. Fabric  bolts, stacked in giant, colorful, Jenga-like towers, surrounded us,  blocking any clear view of a restroom. I heard a man hock a loogie behind me, and I stiffened, willing away the exclamation that  appeared like a cartoon thought bubble from my head: Tuberculosis! My eyes burned from the thick curtain of tobacco smoke; I felt like  I was swimming open-eyed through ashtray water. 

“The bathroom won’t be very nice here; I bet you’ll have to  squat over a hole. I only need ten more minutes,” I pleaded. “Come  on, you’re four years old, Piper—a big girl! I’ll buy you an ice  cream in ten minutes if you can just hold on.” 

“But I need to go now now now now now, Mommy!” Her lip  quivered. As she clutched her crotch with one hand and her butt  with the other, her seven-month-old baby sister, Lila, woke up in  her stroller, observed Piper’s distress, and dissolved into tears. Lila  hated feeling left out. 

I paused to problem-solve. Four months earlier, my American  family, complete with husband, two kids, and myself, had relocated to Shanghai, a city famous for, among other things, its fabric markets.  We had moved to “the Paris of the Orient,” which had sounded potentially glamorous but so far had proven to be anything but. However,  there was a possible upside: I’d overheard two expat women talking  about an amazing market, even giving clear directions on how to find  it. According to them, a person could purchase a new wardrobe at  said market for the cost of a closet full of clothes from the Goodwill.  Except made to order! After being measured by a professional tailor  from top to toe! Finished in twenty-four to forty-eight hours! I had  never given much thought to my wardrobe, but this sounded like  something I couldn’t afford to miss. Plus, I needed a win. 

I had chosen one shirt for myself, and I had already found the  tailor to make it for me. She had measured every part of my thorax  and was madly scribbling diagrams and notes in characters I couldn’t  read on her tiny pad of see-through paper. I already had picked the  fabric, too—a simple black linen. The shirt was going to cost me  six bucks. If I walked away now, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to navi 

gate my way back through the harlequin, sauna-like maze—packed  with people hollering at each other in close proximity—to this  unmarked stall. It didn’t help that I was directionally challenged. 

Piper could just pee her pants. Wouldn’t be the first time, or the last. I  thought these things, I admit it. I was not in contention for Mother  of the Year. 

I looked at my girls. Four large blue leaking eyes blinked back  at me. 

“Number one or number two?” I asked. 

“Two!” she cried. 

I sighed. “Okay then, let’s go find the bathroom.” I turned and  smiled at the tailor. “Deng yi xia.” Wait a minute. It was one of the  few Mandarin phrases I knew. I pointed at Piper, crossed my legs  and then pointed at my crotch. She nodded. My Mandarin was  poor, but I was fluent at charades. 

I pushed the stroller down the aisle and held Piper’s hand as both girls whimpered. I turned right at the end of the row the tailor  had vaguely gestured toward. In the far corner was a door-sized  hole in the wall that looked like it had been knocked out with a  sledgehammer. I knew I had found the bathroom—I could smell it  from ten fabric stalls away. 

It was worse than a roadside Porta-John in Arizona in July, the  kind that hadn’t been cleaned or emptied since the Village People  were in the Top 40. A rectangular lean-to, about thirty yards long  and with filthy plywood walls, each section green and slimy around  the edges, had been scabbed onto the building. The “roof” was a  patchwork of rusted tin siding. The space between the roof and  the walls provided the only light. No bathroom stalls, no sinks, of  course no toilet paper. There was only a long, deep cement trench  jutting up about a foot out of the ground. The trench sat three feet  in from the back wall and stretched the entire length of the room. 

A short, dirty hose protruded from the shorter wall to the left  of the trench at about knee height. Two women were squatting over  the trench near the right wall, about ten feet apart. Without their  unknowing demonstration and the ungodly smell, I would not have  known the trench was a toilet. 

The women stared at us as they squatted and chatted. I under stood nothing but the smell. 

I turned away and blinked, forcing myself to breathe through  my mouth, eyes watering. 

“Now do you think you can wait, Piper?” I quacked. She shook her head and whimpered. 

“Alright then.” I sucked in air over my teeth. “Do you see what  those two women are doing? Squatting over the trench like that?  That’s what you need to do. I’ll stand up there with you and hold  your hands. We’ll do it together, okay?” 

She nodded. 

Lila turned up her scream as I stepped onto the lip of the trench.  I didn’t look at her; I knew that would just make it worse. I turned to pull Piper up. We faced each other, straddling the gully of stool. “Wait, wait, wait a sec,” I said, stepping down. “Let’s take those  pants off first and get them out of the way.” 

Piper stepped down next to me. “Should I take my shoes off  too, Mommy?” 

“Oh my God, NO!” I blurted and saw the panic light up her  eyes. I paused. I needed to make this no big deal. “I mean, I think  we should just leave your shoes on, because, you know, it’s a little  dirty in here, which is fine. Let’s just get those pants and undies off.  Then we’ll step back up on that trench.” 

I crammed Piper’s bottoms into the storage basket under the  stroller and squeezed Lila’s chubby hand. “I’ll be right back, baby  girl,” I said in my soothing voice. She shrieked louder. 

“Okay, Piper, let’s do this!” I said, switching to my peppy voice.  We remounted the trench and resumed our straddle. “Now squat  down and get your bottom close to the trench. I’ll hold your hands.” “Okay, Mommy.” 

“And when you’re done, we’ll stand up together and step down.  I’ll grab the wet wipes and hand sanitizer and clean you up. That  should work.” 

We squatted. 

“See? You can do this.” 

She stared at my face as she did her business. I smiled at her,  projecting calm. Then I made a fateful error—I glanced down. Why? Why did I look? For the same reason people rubberneck at  car accidents, I guess, but I will always wonder. I knew what I would  see. Best-case scenario (BCS), it would be foul and atrocious. But,  of course, it was not BCS, it was WCS. There were layers of generations of excrement. A surrounding swamp. An overpowering smell.  I felt my gag reflex kick in. I turned my head away from Piper so we  wouldn’t be face to face as I imitated a cat ejecting a furball. And then it happened. We were both sweating. Her hand slipped. “NO!” I screamed. I grabbed her other hand with both of mine and pulled it straight up as hard as I could. Too late. Her foot sank into the  mire as she lost her balance and swung her arm out. In her panic, she  kicked and splashed a wave of sludge onto her other leg and my jeans. 

“Oh my GOD!” I yelled. I picked her up and tossed her from the  swamp to the ground in front of the trench. She rolled twice and  then screamed, “Mommy!” 

I spotted the cracked hose by the far wall. “Come here, Piper,  hurry!” 

I ran and she waddled toward the hose. I cranked open the  spigot and doused her as she moved toward me, hard, like I was  putting out a fire. “Turn to the side, honey!” I yelled over the hose. I  sprayed her everywhere—her shirt, her head. “Close your mouth!”  I yelled, but she couldn’t—she was crying too hard. 

Once I was sure I had removed every speck of poo from Piper,  I turned the hose on myself. 

I sprayed my pants with as much pressure as I could make with  my sweaty, shaking thumb. 

It was only when I felt I was as poop-free as I could get that I  noticed the crowd of local women that had formed in the center of the  bathroom. They were staring at me and my girls, smiling. Some were  hollering and pointing. Everyone seemed to have an opinion about the  ridiculous foreigners and their very bad day. I didn’t want their opinions. I wanted their help, and I really wanted to cry, but my kids . . .  I dropped the hose and looked up at the rusted roof, swallowing the massive knot in my throat. It immediately bobbed back up  again. I heard a woman laugh. 

My eyes narrowed. In washed the fury. I looked back at the  crowd and inhaled to full height. At five foot seven, I felt giant. I  thought about my life in the US and how ready I’d been to walk  away from it. How I had dropped everything—my booming career,  beautiful home, great friends, cuddly cat—and left it all in the dust  to move here and start from scratch. I had crossed the globe to build  a life where I could be better at everything, a life where I could spend time with my kids without mentally writing emails, resuscitate my marriage (if that was even possible), and finally find myself,  becoming the person I was put on Earth to be. I’d walked away  from that life and every creature comfort I had worked so hard to  provide for my family and myself, for this. 

“What the heck are you looking at, you—” I hesitated, glanced  at Piper, and then looked back at them. “YOU STUPID PEOPLE!” No one responded, most likely because they didn’t speak English. “Mom!” Piper protested, sniffling, hose water still trickling  down her face. “They don’t understand you. And also, you shouldn’t  say stupid, it’s mean.” 

I looked at Piper, so sweet, so unjaded, so wet. I looked at Lila,  eyes like saucers, too shocked to continue crying. I took a ragged  inhale, looked back at the women, and squeezed Piper’s hand. I  wanted to stop myself, but for the life of me, I couldn’t. 

“You know what, sweetie? You’re exactly right. Stupid is a mean  word, but more importantly, in this situation, it’s the wrong word.”  I took a step forward. “Hey ladies! Never mind what I said before.  You people aren’t stupid, you’re ASSHOLES! Well how do you like  this, you assholes?” I reached down, grabbed the hose, and pointed  it at the women closest to me. I spun that spigot hard to the left  until it would twist no more and then I stood there with my two  hands holding a hose that for some reason had lost pressure and  could barely spray far enough to lightly mist the front row. 

The women saw my intent. As I frantically tried to create pres sure, grabbing the water line and bending it in my hand, they ran  from the room, all in a fuss. 

When the room was empty of bystanders, I dropped the hose.  I looked at the dirt floor and then the tin ceiling, and I laughed. I  laughed and laughed, loud and crazy-like. 

And then I cried.