“What happened to her?” I asked.
“She disappeared, but then in the morning we saw her again. She was running toward our bunker with an entire village chasing her. The villagers were beating her with sticks and farming tools—shouting and cussing at her. It looked like they were going to kill her. We learned later that the little girl didn’t have any money to buy food, so she stole from the villagers and got caught … The strangest thing was that she came to her rapist for protection. The sergeant took her in. He fired warning shots at the villagers and stopped them from killing her that day.”
“What happened in the end?”
“There is no ending to this story.” Lloyd sighed. “Real life leaves you with no satisfaction. My agent told me it was a good story, but he couldn’t find a market for it. Readers pay for a good time. My characters are ‘too dark and weak,’ as they say.”
Lloyd clammed up the moment I brought up the subject of his son. Did it still hurt not to be able to be there for his son? I wondered. Did he miss him? How did those weekend visits go years ago? When and how did the relationship begin to go bad? I was not interested in investigating what actually happened, but I was interested in Lloyd’s feelings toward those events. I wanted to assure myself that Lloyd would be a sensible stepfather for Lauryann.
One day, by chance, I found a poem written by Lloyd titled “My Son.” It was from a collection of poems he had typed.
MY SON
He peed on me
The infant, my joy, the love of my life
Diaper off
Poop in flight
A real gusher
Splat on the wall.
At two
“Stop!”
The cyclone kid
Tripped
Hit the table
Split a lip.
When the pool
Emptied
In need of repair
He dived into green slime
Looking like a
Creature from
A dinosaur time
“Daddy! Daddy!”
Divorced at three
Weekend visitations
Monthly payments made.
Tough Love
Was my route
I was the beast
The tyrant
With the paddle.
After he turned eighteen
Going his own way
I sent birthday cards
With gifts
Year after year
But heard nothing in return
My brush ran dry
Almost two decades later
With little or no contact
It has become a waiting game
A void for an aging man
To discover if he still has a son.
Lloyd had been trying to hide his broken arm inside his sleeve. Year after year, I would witness him making vain efforts trying to contact his son. He sent him birthday cards, Christmas greetings, and gift cards, but received nothing back. “He knows where I live,” he said. “He knows my phone number and my address.” Eventually, Lloyd stopped sending the cards.
There was no comfort I could provide to Lloyd but to share his sorrow. There was nothing sadder and crueler than being rejected by your own child.
On Lloyd’s shelves I discovered dozens of self-help books on relationships and psychology. Lloyd believed that he had serious shortcomings when it came to communication skills. He wanted to learn from his failed marriages and his poor relationship with his son. He was committed to educating himself. “I’m not good at compromising when it comes to dealing with people,” he concluded. “I have no redeeming qualities in my ex-wives’ eyes. When it came to wooing women at the dating service, my lack of humor was also a problem. I don’t understand why women today place ‘sense of humor’ as a top quality when seeking a husband. Oh, I love him because he makes me laugh! They even vote for a presidential candidate based on whether or not the candidate can make them laugh. Women don’t like stiff and boring men, men like me. I’m not funny. That’s for sure.”
I didn’t think the self-portrait Lloyd painted was realistic. I didn’t think he was stiff and boring. He was good company, attentive and fun. But more than that I appreciated his sincerity and seriousness. This was something I recognized in myself too. I could be funny—sure, sometimes accidentally, or by garbling the language, but this was a part of myself that most people didn’t see because they only saw the Anchee Min who was serious, passionate, and focused. “Take time to smell the flowers,” Qigu ceaselessly hurled at me.
It was strange to share a life with a man who outwardly couldn’t be more different but who somehow seemed to breathe the same air. In fact, our similarities were greater than our differences. We had both chosen badly in the past, and our own inner insecurities and stubborn personalities had only made matters worse. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel like I needed to translate or explain myself across a wide gulf. I felt more relaxed, and we often laughed together. I discovered that, by nature, Lloyd was a very funny man.
I hoped that Lloyd was as interested in me as I was in him. I wasn’t sure if he wanted to marry me. Yet I was not interested in being a mistress, a lady on call, and I would not live with him as his “long-term partner.” I had that with Qigu. I now had too much self-respect to put myself in a situation that didn’t suit me.
Because I had no way of discovering Lloyd’s intentions regarding marriage, I concocted a plan: I would pretend to be the Chinese princess Turandot in Puccini’s opera and play him a riddle. I wouldn’t tell him that it was a riddle. It would be a test that I hoped he would pass, or it would be the end of our relationship.
Lloyd and I met to discuss the direction of our relationship. I told Lloyd the opposite of what was on my mind. I proposed a long-term partnership without marriage. I asked if he would accept my proposal. After I dropped my words, I stared at him.
Lloyd’s expression turned grave. I could tell that he was composing an answer in his head. I was afraid of what he might say. I would be doomed if he accepted my proposal.
Lloyd took a deep breath. He took his eyes away from me and turned to stare at the floor. After a long moment, he said with a steady voice, “Anchee, I am just going to be honest with you. My answer to your proposal is no. I will not accept carrying on our relationship without marriage. If I commit myself to this relationship one hundred percent, I’d expect the same from you. It is only fair. I’ll be willing to work out any problems you have with me. I’ll be willing to accommodate and compromise if necessary. I can change if you think I come on too strong. My bottom line is that we either get married or say good-bye. I love you, but I must be true to myself.”
Joy filled me as my heart was flooded with the music of Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma,” the greatest love song. I broke down and wept because I remembered Qigu’s proposal: “Let’s get married because I don’t want the baby to follow your bad example.” I remembered the judge asking Qigu, “Have you a ring for your bride?” I remembered the cold Chicago morning when I begged Qigu to pose for the camera so that I could have a wedding photo to send to my family in China. I remembered how unworthy I felt about myself. This was everything I had longed for and more.
Lloyd was puzzled by my response. He misinterpreted my reaction and said the strangest thing I had ever heard: “Don’t worry, sex is not important.”
What did he mean by “sex is not important”?
I became suspicious. Was something wrong with his … sun instrument? I wanted his passion. One of the biggest reasons I didn’t regret leaving Qigu was that he was never passionate. He never desired me, and I was starving for affection. I hated to play the beggar in a relationship that left me with no dignity and integrity.
Of course sex is important, I thought. It is extremely important. Why was it not important to Lloyd? My imagination began to run wild: Is he a eunuch? Does he suffer a dysfunction? War damage? Prostate trouble? Premature ejaculation? Psychological impotency? Bad e
xperience in Vietnam with prostitutes? Mental scars left by abusive ex-wives?
I decided to abandon my original plan, which was to delay having sex until we were engaged. I wouldn’t feel secure until I found out if Lloyd was fully functional. I wouldn’t marry a eunuch. The more Lloyd elaborated on the theme that “sex is not important,” the more suspicious I grew. Before we moved forward in our relationship, I was determined to get to the bottom of this. I told Lloyd that I was ready.
“Ready for what?” he asked.
“To have sex.”
He was surprised. “But … you said yesterday that you’d prefer to wait.”
“I have changed my mind.”
“Are you sure? I don’t mean to push you …”
“No, you didn’t. It’s my decision. I’d like to do it.”
“You mean, you are ready-ready?”
“Yes, I am ready-ready.”
“Wow!”
“Will tonight be convenient?” I asked, trying not to look embarrassed.
“Of course. Definitely. No problem. Wow, I mean, convenient. Of course. Wow, wow, of course tonight will be convenient. Absolutely convenient!”
“I’ll be at your place at ten tonight,” I said.
The moonlight outlined the shapes of the distant hills. Outside the window under the sky below Lloyd’s townhouse was a busy four-lane highway. The traffic lights formed a winding red-and-yellow dragon. I thought of dragons because the pleasure I felt was heavenly. Lloyd was more concerned with bringing joy to me than satisfying himself. I burst into laughter when I thought about my worry that he might be a eunuch. “Why did you say, ‘Sex is not important’?”
Lloyd laughed. He said it was due to his limited knowledge of women. After marriage, his first wife accused him, “All you want from me is sex!” It shamed him.
I loved the way Lloyd wrapped his arms around me. I told him that I had dreamt of this moment all my life. “Do you know what ‘forehead touches the ceiling’ means in Chinese?” I asked, then answered, “It means that a miracle has taken place. I’d like to thank the Yellow Pages in the phone book, Robin, her dating service, the stars above, the sun and the moon, the hills, the highway and the winding traffic dragons, and most of all America and what God has bestowed upon me.”
Lloyd said that he was humbled by his good luck.
I kissed Lloyd and asked him to repeat one more time that “sex is not important.”
{ Chapter 32 }
The three of us made a special date. We decorated a chair and placed it in the center of the yard surrounded by blooming roses. Lauryann and I took turns sitting on the chair while Lloyd got on his knees and proposed with his engagement rings. I never expected that such pure happiness would ever be mine. My life had been lived defensively, consumed by figuring out how to suffer less by dodging pain. What was taking place in my backyard was a scene out of a romantic novel.
Lauryann couldn’t wait for me to get off the chair. The moment I accepted Lloyd’s engagement ring, Lauryann took my place. She was thrilled to receive her “friendship ring,” although she lost it almost immediately—by accident. She took it off to wash her hands and the ring rolled into the sink drain. She was too devastated to report what had happened.
I was overwhelmed by my good luck. But at the same time, I suffered self-doubt. A few months of dating a man was not sufficient enough time to really know him. Was he who he painted himself to be? What about his two divorces? After all, it was a one-sided story that I had no way of verifying. In the back of my mind, I was cautious.
Lloyd was the adviser of the high school’s student newspaper. He took his journalism students to national writing competitions and they won awards. He loved his job, but at the same time he resented it. On a bad day he would say, “I’d prefer being sent to Iraq to get shot at than try to keep teaching the walking dead. I’m sick of being mistreated by the morons in district administration.”
I asked Lloyd if he had the support of the parents, and he replied, “I make phone calls and I leave messages. Dozens of messages. But most of the parents never return my calls. One parent who did return the call said, ‘My son didn’t do well in your class because you were boring!’ I wanted to say, My job is not to entertain your kid. My job is to prepare him to survive in life. Her son didn’t want to do homework or read the assignment because it wasn’t fun! Go and ask a plumber, a garbageman, a janitor, or a repairman if his job is fun!”
Lloyd had to visit a chiropractor because his neck was in constant pain from bending over correcting students’ papers. Most of the time he simply had to carry on and live with the pain. Often in the middle of correcting his papers, I would hear Lloyd cuss, “Fucking idiots! No name again, and that’s the first thing I tell them to do for every assignment—write your name, date, and period.” Occasionally Lloyd would be so upset that he would jump up from where he had been sitting. He would grab anything he could reach and smash it. I saw him destroy a pencil jar and a wok lid. He would rip pages from his planning book, break his pen, or shatter a plastic ruler. He had to vent his anger. He became distraught when his open-book midterm exam’s failing rate reached 50 percent.
I sat in the last row of Lloyd’s classroom, against the back wall. My first thought was that these students were not children. They were adult-size boys and girls. Some were taller and weighed more than Lloyd did. I noticed that many students came into the classroom carrying neither a schoolbag nor books.
After taking attendance, Lloyd picked up a trash can. He went around the room asking the students, “Spit it out … Spit it out.”
What kind of teaching style was this? I was startled. Spit out what? Then I saw students spit chewing gum into the trash can. One boy refused to cooperate. “I’m not chewing gum.”
“Spit it out, please.” Lloyd did not move. “I saw you chewing. Come on.”
The boy stuck out his tongue. “I ain’t got nothing in my mouth.”
Lloyd gave him a don’t-you-mess-with-me look. “I’ll write a referral and send you to the office.”
The boy spit the gum into the trash can.
Lloyd ran the class like a Broadway show without intermission. I sat through five of his classes that day. I witnessed Lloyd play at least four characters. He was a Mary Poppins, a comedian, a marine corps drill sergeant, and a teacher all at the same time. He was teaching a lesson on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. He asked the students to pay attention to the part he called “the switch.”
“Shakespeare lets us know that Romeo was madly in love with a girl, but her name was not Juliet. Her name was Rosaline. In fact, Romeo crashes a costume party to see Rosaline but then he discovers Juliet. If you were paying attention, you would have seen his love switch from one girl to another in an instant. Shakespeare makes us see how a young man falls in love with his eyes. He shows us how fickle human love is. Did Romeo know Juliet’s name? No. Did he know where she was from? No. Did he instantly decide that he was madly in love with Juliet? Yes. What happened to his love for Rosaline? Did he just forget her? What does this switch say about Romeo? Why did Shakespeare plant this detail? Why did he bother to show that Romeo was in love with Rosaline before Juliet? Shakespeare could have easily arranged for Romeo to meet Juliet without even mentioning Rosaline, who we never meet in the play anyway. The encounter and the love would have been perfect without Rosaline. Why add this disturbing detail? Why introduce another girl that Romeo was passionate about? Why stain the romance? Why did the author put his leading characters on a suicide mission three days after their first meeting? What did Shakespeare really want us to understand?”
Lloyd drew a timeline on the board and then continued, “Both Romeo and Juliet were from incredibly wealthy families. When Juliet finds out who Romeo is from her nurse, after having just met him and not even knowing who he is or what his name is, Juliet says, ‘My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me, that I must love a loathed enemy.’
Notice that it was within an hour or so of meeting each other that Juliet says this. She, on the other hand, eventually threatens to kill herself if she cannot have him, and Romeo expresses a similar threat, as you will discover.”
Although most of his students showed no interest, I was fascinated by the way Lloyd encouraged independent thinking. I felt bad for Lloyd when he was ignored. The students yawned, slept, idled, flirted, played video games under the tables, and a few stared into space with glassy eyes.
One boy refused to participate when Lloyd called on him. “I don’t need to study this shit,” he said. “I’m gonna be a basketball player like Michael Jordan, and I’m gonna make a ton of money!”
Without missing a beat, Lloyd responded, “I have been teaching for twenty-five years, and I have worked with several thousand students. Every year I hear the same thing you just said. I haven’t seen any of my students make it to Michael Jordan’s level. You need to study ‘this shit’ for a backup plan, in case life doesn’t work out your way.”
A girl came to the boy’s defense. “I hate Shakespeare. This is boring. I don’t need this. I’m gonna be a model. I’ll get to do what I want.”
“That’s what I thought when I first majored in architecture,” Lloyd said. “But my professor at Cal Poly Pomona said, ‘The guy who has the money will have the final word, not the architect.’ ”
“Doesn’t the architect build?” The girl became interested.
“Most architects don’t get to build their dream buildings. The man does what he’s told to do—not what he wants to do.”
“Is that why you aren’t an architect?” the boy asked.
“I changed my major to urban planning,” Lloyd said. “But my professor told the class the same thing—the guy with the money rules.”
“So you quit?” the girl asked.
“I went to my backup plan,” Lloyd said.
“And that is?”
“I earned a teaching credential, which led to this job. I have taught Romeo and Juliet more than fifty times. I have taught some of your mothers, fathers, uncles, and aunts. My point is that you cannot count on your dreams. A big part of life is about being able to pay the bills and put food on the table.”