Joan Is Okay(3)

By now, Fang was twenty feet ahead of us at a sleek black booth, calling us a private sedan. In the sedan, he gave the suited-up driver with white gloves no directions. He said just the name of the hotel and the driver was off.

I was checked in with simply a handshake.

Hotel amenities: a three-inch binder.



* * *



—

A HUNDRED PEOPLE CAME to my father’s funeral, most I didn’t know. He had two brothers and many friends. My mother has a brother, two sisters, and more friends. These aunts and uncles I’d spent less than a week with in total for the entirety of my life.

Eighteen years ago, my parents moved back to Shanghai and have lived there ever since. Once I was bound for college, they saw their jobs as parents complete. Fang was already established then and I was on my way. None of their siblings had immigrated, and my parents were still not as comfortable in America as they’d hoped. So, after they left, it was just me and my brother in the States, the rest of our immediate family abroad.

At the funeral, I couldn’t talk about my father in a significant way, and once I got a few words out others just wanted me to stop. Afterward, a smaller group of us gathered for dinner at an upscale restaurant, in a private room. The room had a round banquet table with a lazy Susan wheel built in. Customary in this country for families to sit for hours-long meals and turn this wheel back and forth, politely forcing everyone to eat. Once one meal ended, another began. Elaborate dishes were brought out, at least ten varieties of soup. Children would run around the table, laugh hysterically, and hide behind the upholstered chairs.

But there were no children at this dinner and I wondered why. To the woman next to me, I asked where so-and-so was. She pointed to herself. She was this former so-and-so, my father’s youngest brother’s second child, now my cousin of twenty-two.

Oh, I said.

Hasn’t China changed? my cousin asked. In the last ten years, it’s become brand new.

I said I didn’t know the country too well.

She said that given how my face was Chinese it was a shame to know nothing about myself.

We pushed the lazy Susan clockwise and then counterclockwise.

About our country, continued my cousin, it used to be poor, but now we have caught up. We have surpassed most Western countries, even yours.

She showed me her fancy leather wallet and told me the price. She passed me her new phone, which she noted was even more advanced than mine. So palpable to me what she was trying to prove. Everything was a race.

I told my cousin that I was sorry for her loss. My father was a good uncle to you and a good comrade overall.



* * *



—

TO RESUME WORK ON MONDAY, I had to fly back the next day. Neither Fang nor my mother suggested otherwise, as they both knew my job had come to define me and in China there was not much for me to do. My aunts had already helped my mother clean out the apartment; other family and friends regularly brought over food. My brother was also staying another two weeks to settle the rest of my father’s accounts.

Fang had stronger ties to China than I did and knew more people at the funeral. Born in Shanghai, he was raised by my parents until age six and then by my mother’s side—her own parents and siblings—after she and my father left for America. Common of many families at the time, that only the parents went first, and the phrase “it takes a village” has never sounded hyperbolic to me but the truth. Plan was to send for him sooner, but by accident I was born and a few more years had to pass. From Oakland, my parents and I moved to Kansas. Then one grandparent died, followed swiftly by the other. There was a day in Wichita when I didn’t know I had a sibling, and within twenty-four hours, an older brother appeared. To curious neighbors, he was simply a relative from China, visiting for a little while. Odd and obvious. A twelve-year-old boy who looked so much like my mother and half like me.

At Pudong, I went to the ticket counter to trade my first-class seat for coach. The airline clerk squinted and asked if this was what I really wanted. Once I switched to economy, I wouldn’t be able to switch back. The seats in economy didn’t recline into beds, I would be without L’Occitane kits and Veuve Clicquot, no more pretty flight attendant with white teeth.

Economy isn’t a good time, she said in English, and if I was doing this to experience poverty or connect with the masses, it wasn’t a well-conceived idea.

Clearly, she thought I was insane. While holding my blue US passport, she told her colleague beside her in Shanghainese that I probably had a disease. The colloquialism she used can be said in jest, can be well-meaning or serious. It means that something is not right about this person, that literally she has mismanaged one or two of her nerves.

The flight back was shorter, fourteen hours with a tailwind. In coach, I slept most of the way and woke up to find that I had missed both meal services included with the price. My father hated waste, so I asked the average-looking flight attendant with yellow teeth if I could have a snack.

You see, my father, I said to her, he would’ve been hungry, and I still need to respect his wishes.

She said not too happily that she would see what she could do.

Before landing, we hit a long stretch of turbulence that prevented anyone in coach from moving freely in the aisles. From a distance, she threw me a bag of apple slices and a shrug. The slices weren’t crisp but grainy and wet. Still, I ate them all and saved the bag.