Death, Wealth, and Daikon

Rujing tosses daikon into the communal wok, stirring in a few precious drops of oyster sauce with her silver spatula. Sweat drips down her neck and arms.

She has fourteen minutes left in the kitchen. Plenty of time. Unlike her roommate Xixi who always went over her allotted thirty minutes. If Xixi was too stupid to learn the trick of pre-chopping the vegetables in her room, Rujing was not going to educate her.

Rujing had sliced the daikon into thin, almost translucent slivers. The tofu was cubed. The mushrooms were slimy to the touch but irresistible at 70% off. The rice was leftover from yesterday.

Their 2-bedroom apartment was shared between three families–the Li couple (Tina and David; curiously, they only used their American names) in the smallest bedroom, Xixi and her daughter in the living room, and Rujing, her husband and son in the master bedroom, which afforded them their own bathroom. Auntie Li, David’s mother, occupied a foldaway cot in the hallway.

However, there was only one small kitchen for everyone, the fridge cornering the 2-burner stove. The immigrant families that cycled in and out of apartment 408 had long ago implemented the rule of thirty minutes per family every evening.

Rujing hums a patriotic Mao song as she cooks. She dislikes Mao, as they all do, though they wouldn’t state such a thing even to themselves that boldly. But she grew up on these songs, and she had left China before other music started flourishing again.

“Wah, Rujing!” exclaims Xixi, strolling in silently on pink slippers. “What a dress you’re wearing.”

Rujing flinches at the comment. She’s in fact wearing her husband’s t-shirt he received when he started as a lab custodian at Boston University. They had only one size left–XXL, and so it draped across Rujing’s stout frame in the most unbecoming way, with oddly-placed sweat-stains. But who cares, she was cooking in her own home. Who cares except Xixi, who did even her set of house chores in long skirts and jade bangles.

Rujing glances over and the jab comes to her in a flash. “I wear this because I’m proud of my husband getting a job so quickly in America.”

“Well–” Xixi huffs. She pats the careful curls in her hair. “You are a good wife,” she bites out. “I was just making a joke.”

Xixi’s husband is in New Jersey, supposedly visiting an old friend with an opportunity. He had been gone for two weeks. One week in, Xixi, who already colored her eyebrows and lips on a daily basis, started donning her kitten heels to wander around the CVS, the only place within walking distance of their Quincy suburbs. It was clear she was trying to catch a worthier man’s eye.

Truthfully, Rujing both pitied and admired Xixi’s pharmacy prowling–at least she was taking action, unlike the Li’s who cloistered themselves in their rooms all day, watching pirated Chinese soap operas. They didn’t even take care of their mother, who slept all day in her cot, a thin sheet draped over her face like she was already dead. It was blasphemous.

Xixi sighs dramatically. “Ai-yah, my own husband is worthless. He will never find a job.”

So typical, to suddenly switch to self-pity and try for some sympathy. Rujing turns off the burner and opens the fridge, rummaging within her family’s shelf before finding the tupperware of rice. She revels in the cool blast of air. The families had one window A/C unit, but they had never used it given the expense. “Liming qian de hei’an,” she finally says, repeating the old proverb. It’s always darkest before dawn.

“Like our apartment,” Xixi laughs.

It was a running joke between the tenants that 408 was a confusing fortune. 4 was an unlucky number, as it sounded like the word “death,” but 8 was the lucky number, sounding like the word “wealth.” Hopefully, the unlucky will eventually lead to the lucky.

“But anyway, listen,” Xixi says, stepping forward. “I want to ask you, can my daughter borrow the second grade math workbook from your son?”

Rujing freezes for two seconds before she composes herself enough to yank open the microwave door, throwing in the rice. This woman! How dare she.

Rujing had been cajoling and threatening Xiaoli all summer to finish the set of five workbooks she found at a Barnes & Noble flash sale. The kindergarten and first grade ones were a breeze, given he just finished first grade. Rujing had graciously handed them to Xixi. But he had balked at the long subtraction in the second grade books, the exercises that required borrowing from the preceding number. Mei, a year younger, was evidently ready for subtraction.

“My son is in the middle of them,” Rujing says, emphasizing that at least she had the preferred gendered child. “When he is done, I will of course give them to Mei.”

“Oh, I thought he was done already,” Xixi says innocently. As if the whole apartment couldn’t hear Rujing yell at Xiaoli just last night.

Rujing turns back to the wok, fuming. What would become of them if Xiaoli couldn’t even handle subtraction at six years old? Both she and her husband had found math easy; she had gotten second place out of her whole high school in algebra, beating all the boys. Xiaoli just wanted to play with his Lego set. Her husband said that was a good quality, fitting for a future engineer. But she wasn’t so sure. He stacked the bricks into giant colorful patterns but didn’t build anything recognizable. What if all their hard work to bring Xiaoli to America, where he could have a better chance, resulted in failure?

“He’ll be done soon,” Rujing states firmly. “He has a puzzle-oriented mind. He builds elaborate things with his Legos. And my husband said when he takes him to work, he wanted to know what all the machines did.”

Rujing would never brag about her son like this to anyone else, but Xixi riled her up too much.

“Oh how wonderful,” Xixi says. “My daughter also loves puzzles. In fact, this morning she–” Xixi cocks her head. “Do you hear that?”

“What?” Rujing pauses the microwave. A low, continuous moaning sound seeps in from the closed kitchen door. “Is that Auntie?”

“Must be,” Xixi shrugs. “I guess she’s just dreaming.”

On days when Rujing and Xixi felt a bit of camaraderie, they sat on Rujing’s bed and traded conspiracy theories of how the Li’s could keep affording rent. A rich uncle in California, from a yellow envelope Xixi had glimpsed. Or savings after giving up their child for adoption. Or perhaps even prostitution. That last one came from Xixi, who was plainly jealous of Tina’s lush black hair, her shapely legs. Rujing never bothered to compete on beauty—she was short, her nose large and bulbous, her hair like dry grass. Her husband didn’t care about beauty, and she didn’t care about his small eyes and asymmetrical jaw-line. Their relationship was stable because they were both experts in hard work.

Xixi’s husband, meanwhile, was likely up to no good in New Jersey. Rujing always thought it strange that he tended to ignore Xixi, even when she pressed against him, sliding her hand into his and showering him with compliments.

Suddenly, a shriek pierces the air from the hallway like the underworld’s opening.

“What the—“ The two women rush out of the kitchen.

Auntie Li is standing upright on her cot, her small body rigid, her hands twisting maddenly in her lap as if she was trying to wipe off her skin. “No, no, don’t take me! Please don’t take me!”

Xixi steps to the Li’s door and starts banging. “Your ma is going crazy!” she yells.

Rujing gingerly approaches the old lady. “Auntie,” she murmurs. “It’s okay. No one is taking you anywhere.”

Xixi throttles the doorknob and gasps as the door opens, unlocked, revealing a bare room with one stained, rose-patterned mattress lying crooked in a corner.

Auntie doesn’t turn to look, but she wails all the same, as if she already knew. It’s true, Rujing thinks, no one took her anywhere.

“They left!” Xixi exclaims. “They left and they didn’t pay the rent!”

“Nor bring their mother,” Rujing mutters.

“I don’t have anything more to give you. I didn’t do anything to anyone,” Auntie sobs. “I was just a girl, a stupid, useless girl.”

Rujing and Xixi look at each other. They didn’t know the Li story specifically, but they knew such stories well enough. Tugai. Pidou, the struggle sessions where landowners were beaten and tortured by the peasants, sometimes killed. No one spoke about the events, but everyone knew anyway.

Yet, as the two women trade furrowed brows, Rujing knows they’re both thinking the same things. How are they going to cover the rent? What will they do with Auntie? What if they get kicked out?

Stuck at home all day with only chores and a 3-channeled TV they couldn’t understand, they had little to occupy themselves except to imagine the worst, and try to prepare accordingly. Rujing counted every cent. Xixi repeatedly flipped through the Chinese newspaper they got once a month for the job ads as if, if she looked one more time, she’d find some place that called her back. And they both obsessed over their only child.

“Of course you didn’t do anything, Auntie,” Xixi finally says. “You are safe now.”

“No, no! Please, no more,” Auntie screams.

Rujing feels her right eye twitching, pulsing into her skull. A sign of bad–no, good! The right side was good luck. She takes a breath, seizing the unexpected positivity by reaching up and grasping Auntie in her arms. The old woman was so thin that Rujing could feel her collarbone jabbing her cheek. She lowers herself onto the cot, holding Auntie in her lap like a baby. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

Xixi sits down beside her and places Auntie’s bony feet in her lap. “Yes, it’ll be okay,” she says.

Rujing feels they’re talking as much to themselves as they’re to Auntie.

“Please,” Auntie whispers, perhaps finally exhausting herself. She grips Rujing’s arm with rice-paper fingers. “Not me.”

“Not you,” Xixi agrees, rubbing the old woman’s ankles.

Rujing notices that Xixi wasn’t wearing her wedding band, the American custom that Xixi loved as much as she loved all displays of affection. Rujing looks away quickly. Xin li jiao cui. An exhaustion of the hearts. Because this was exhausting, this living on the precipice, this living with no certain future, and no past they could return to. This fight.

“Not us,” Rujing says, rocking them all on the little cot with the faded yellow peonies. She could smell her dish simmering, the oyster sauce brightening the crunchy daikon, tossing the mushrooms anew.