Preparation for the Next Life (37 page)

The door to the back alley was open and the old navy man who should have been dead was half-visible in the doorway, putting the trash out. Along with the sound of garbage cans scraping concrete, his voice could be heard talking unintelligibly. John McIntyre, who could somehow tell what he was saying, replied to him.

Meanwhile, Skinner went over to the Flushing Mall, his phone to his ear, and called Zou Lei.

When she came outside in the purple dusk at quitting time, he was waiting. They ate pizza slices while the streetlights came on, went down past the gas station and walked along the river.

She was so moved she didn’t talk for nearly a mile.

What are you thinking?

You have a great heart, Skinner!

He liked it that she was happy.

Just you say you will marry to me, it’s incredible.

They were headed north in the direction of College Point and the river was getting wider and the buildings were getting smaller and sparser. Ahead, there was an elevated highway standing by itself above a wasteground. The wind picked up.

Today I know what is a real American, she said.

She breathed deep, took in the space, the distant lights across the black water. She could not believe her fortune. How life surprised her. She looked at him with new recognition in the dark.

I’m gonna quit smoking, he told her.

In the front of the house, the windows were covered by white shutters and lace curtains. In the back, there was lumber decaying in the yard next to a rusted can of flashing cement. The house had several stories, maybe three. There were too many windows to see them all. The ones on the upstairs floors were open gray squares reflecting the gray of the sky and the asphalt. The roofs rolled out like tongues, missing squares, tar showing. Rained-on yellow insulation and silver sheathing bulged out of an attic window.

When she went around the side of the house, there were windows above her. Her angle to them was oblique, so she couldn’t see anything through them. At night, sometimes they would one or two be lit. The window immediately to her right when she stood at the door was an aperture into their kitchen. She would hear low voices coming from this window, and sometimes when she knocked on the door the voices would stop, resuming when Skinner’s footsteps would come up from the basement to let her in. Often, rather than knocking, she would call him on her phone to alert him that she was outside. She had never rung the bell. She had to assume that they heard him answering the door and leading a visitor downstairs.

All through the winter, she had avoided being seen. She had not once come face to face with anyone who lived there. Visiting him had become routine; she took for granted that she could come and go.

The whole house gradually took on only one meaning for her, the meaning of him. To lay eyes on it was to see him directly, and she would react to the sight of it based on how things were going between them: if they were getting along, she felt happy, and if they were fighting, she got depressed. While she avoided the Americans, she had never been afraid to enter their house.

One afternoon that spring, when she was standing at the door after knocking, she thought she heard someone come to the kitchen window and look at her and then say something about her to whoever else was in the kitchen.

Who’s outside?

I’ll look. Some dink. Did you order Chinese?

Not us. Must be the tenant.

33

G
ETTING MARRIED WAS A
wonderful idea, she said, but it would not be simple or easy. There might be costs, from seeing a lawyer to buying a ring. And marrying him might not be enough in itself to allow her to stay in the country legally. They might face many more legal and practical obstacles. That was why she urged him to think twice before he did this. In addition, she said, he was a young man and he might regret this later. She didn’t want to take advantage of him…

I don’t see why it can’t work out, he said.

She was just afraid it would be a lot of struggle for him and he already had a struggle on his own. What if I add my burdens to yours? Maybe we should wait.

Waiting didn’t make any sense, he said. If there was something you wanted to do, you better do it today, because you didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow.

On a Sunday morning, she and Skinner walked up Main Street in the direction of Franklin Avenue, passing produce markets. When they were almost to the top of the hill, the produce line ended and Zou Lei’s eye was caught by a set of tubs. The tubs were in front of a store whose sign was invisible. She told Skinner she wanted to see something and she went closer and saw the tubs contained dried prune-like things. On the cardboard, in Chinese, had been written: Six kinds of dates. Temporary shelves laid across cinder blocks held lily flower, lotus seeds, boiled peanuts, bars of Darlie Double Action Two Mint Powers, and Fan Medicated Soap.

What are you looking at? he asked, coming over. She was visoring her eyes and looking through the glass.

I think it’s the Chinese medicine.

Chinese medicine?

Yes. That’s what it is.

She turned to him. Skinner, I think we can go inside. We can look for something that can help you. It can cure many things that the Western medicine feels helpless.

She reached for his elbow.

Oh, he said. Okay.

You can come inside?

All right.

You don’t mind?

No.

They went inside and it smelled like ginger. There was an island full of dried things in the center of the floor: animals that looked like plants, plants that looked like animals, sheets of horn, cartilage, treelike sprouts of bone, wood, or root. The walls were covered in medication boxes just like Duane Reade, except the medications were different. They sold Goupi Medicated Plaster. There were rows of apothecary jars behind the counter containing abalone. In the back of the store, there was a giant wall of labeled drawers like the card catalog at a library or safety deposit boxes in a bank.

Three men in suit jackets manned the counter, negotiating with a group of customers speaking Chinese. The men had cell phones and keys on their belts. One of them—a balding man in glasses—said, Ten percent off—Ten—and made a cross with his index fingers to indicate the Chinese character for ten.

Another man who had been watching the negotiation turned and looked at Skinner and Zou Lei. His eyes passed over Skinner and he asked Zou Lei, What do you want?

I’ve brought my friend to get medicine. He’s suffered shock. The shock was severe.

But the man put up a finger right away to stop her. He didn’t know what she was talking about, so she would have to talk to Mr. Jia. He indicated him by lifting his chin at him and then turned away with his hands behind his back and walked away to another part of the counter.

She made a loop around the store, passing the male performance enhancers in the case at the back: Hard Ten Days, Hard Black Ant, Street Overlord, German Bullwhip. To her, they weren’t remarkable, and Skinner didn’t see them.

Skinner picked up a handful of gold foil-wrapped candy out of a tray in the center island.

Think these are good?

Maybe, she said.

He smelled the candy through the wrapper. Smell that, he said. What’s that smell?

She hunted for the word. A strip of cardboard, which had been sliced out of a cardboard box, stuck out of the tray, saying Gold Tree Ginger Candy. The characters had been written deftly with a pointed laundry marker.

It’s the ginger.

Should I get them?

I think we need to find something that can help you, not just taste good.

True. He dropped the candy back in the tray. I just don’t know what any of this stuff does.

I don’t know either, but we can look.

She began going through the products on the shelves one after the other, looking at them, turning them over, putting them back: Dacon Pain Patch, Foot Patch, Organic Sorghum Groats, Motherwort Tea, Vita-Kidney, Vita-Hero (Male Enhancement), hawthorn berry, Banlangen Isatis Root Supplement, Chickenbonegrass Abri Tea, Tibet Guava Tea, Fried Semen Coicis (Job’s Tears).

There was a poster on the wall catty-corner to the apothecary jars, showing a very white-skinned woman holding up the OK sign with her long-fingered porcelain hand. She was looking at you through the O of the OK sign. In Chinese, it said: When your monthly is OK, everything’s OK. With her other eye, she was winking.

The other customers went out and Zou Lei went back to the counter to talk to Mr. Jia, who was now free.

What does she want? Mr. Jia asked his associate over his glasses.

She wants to tell you herself.

I’ll tell you.

Good. You tell me! Mr. Jia told Zou Lei over his glasses. He kept his chin lowered and stared at her with a droll expression as if this were a comic situation and he could barely suppress his laughter.

I’ve brought my friend to get medicine, she said, and began to explain what was going on with Skinner. I don’t know what to call it. He served in the army in Iraq. There was too much shock there. There were many bombs that went off constantly. The bombs went
off in his ear in an unbroken chain. He suffered shock. Himself, he is very brave, but he has anxiety. He drinks more than amount.

He was wounded?

Yes, he was wounded. His back was wounded. But also he suffered some concussion in his head.

Mr. Jia gestured to Skinner to come over. Let me see your arm. You can push the sleeve up. But Skinner found it easier to take his hoodie off entirely. Mr. Jia looked at the other men and said, The American boy’s muscles are so big, he can’t push his sleeve up. And they all smiled. In English, he told Skinner:

You are big man. Good!

He took Skinner’s arm and felt his wrist pulse for fifteen seconds. Then he told Skinner to open his mouth and stick his tongue out. He moved his hands towards Skinner’s face as if he were going to touch his tongue and Skinner flinched.

Look at that! A soldier is that easy to scare! he said to the other men.

And, in English: Don’t worry. Not touch. Only look.

Mr. Jia squinted through his spectacles at Skinner’s tongue.

I already see it. I already tell. You have disease. The internal body not working right. He called his associates over and told Zou Lei to look as well. You see? He reached out towards Skinner’s face again, and Skinner blinked. You see that reaction? It’s the disorder. A normal soldier is not afraid of the single hand. He would block my hand. Instead he flinches. His pulse is throbbing-surging, a sign of shock.

Oh, yes. We see it, the associates said. It’s very clear. His reactions are disordered.

You see it too? Mr. Jia demanded of Zou Lei.

You get a hit! he shouted at Skinner. Almost the same like punch. Piiyaa! He slapped his hands together. Skinner blinked. Affect body, affect mind. No balance. Right? Now, one day happy, one day sad.

The pharmacist pretended to be sad like a little child, boohooing and rubbing his eyes with his fists.

Right?

Skinner just stared, but Zou Lei agreed that that was it and Mr. Jia burst into a smile.

He told his associate to bring him the Primary Wuzhihuang, an orange box the size of a fifth of vodka. He showed them the gold
seal on the box, making sure that Zou Lei read it: National Brand of China.

Return the balance, he said. Look. You read. He pointed at the ingredients: Pure polygonatum, coronarium, angelica sinensis, scutellaria barbata. Pure, he underlined—the one word he tried to say.

The fact that the ingredients were pure was what justified the price of $59.99, he explained.

She hesitated, and asked him if he understood what was wrong with Skinner. She wanted to describe his symptoms again to make sure there was no confusion.

The symptoms come from the cause, don’t they? Then we must treat the cause, not the symptom. That’s what makes Chinese medicine superior to Western medicine. Putting a Band-Aid on a disease doesn’t fix it. The disease is still present. We must treat the inside. His imbalance was caused on the inside. This medicine works on the inside. You have heard of cells, haven’t you? The cells in the body, yes? This medicine powerfully goes into the cells. It cures the cells. Then what do you think happens? Naturally, it cures the body. Fix the cell, fix the entire body.

What about his drinking?

This one. He pointed at the Scutellaria in the ingredients. Toxins out, he said.

He has psychological pain.

He’s schizophrenic?

No. He has sadness.

If his body feels better, his mind will feel better. For his glorious service, I’ll give you ten percent off.

She was going to ask him another question, but the door opened and other customers came in and Mr. Jia went out from behind the counter to greet them. They were Chinese and were already telling him what they wanted.

What’d he say?

He say he will give a discount.

Together they contemplated the orange box stamped with gold writing.