China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh Read Free Book Online Page B

just tell him ‘no’.”
    “Like you did when he told you to take me out?” she asks.
    “That’s different,” I say, “taking you out is enjoyable.”
    She nods and looks at the vid. She is crying again, without allowing any sound to escape. I feel trapped. A few minutes and her father will be here. She takes a shuddery breath. “It’s okay,” she says, “you don’t have to ask me out anymore. I mean, you’re very nice but I know you really don’t want to.”
    “That’s not true,” I lie. “I enjoy our evenings together.” It’s not altogether a lie.
    She shrugs.

    “I consider you a friend, San-xiang,” I say as gently as I can.
    “Well maybe I’m not looking for friendship,” she snaps and then covers her face with her hands.
    I don’t know how to respond but she doesn’t say anything else. After a moment she goes back into the bathroom. I hear water running. My water bill is going to be terrible this month, last month it was pretty good, but this month will be bad. If I took public housing I wouldn’t have to pay anything for the first 800 liters of water I used.
    She comes out with her make-up repaired and her eyes red and we watch the vid until my system tells me that her father is outside. I check, and sure enough, there he is in his coveralls. I let him in, and while I am at it I take San-xiang out of the system so she can’t get in unless I let her.
    I open the door and say, unnecessarily I’m sure, “Your father is here.”
    I hear the lift open and then Foreman Qian walking down the hallway. I open the door, and he glances at me once and brushes past me. “San-xiang,” he says.
    “Baba, ” she says poised on the couch, holding her back very straight but keeping her eyes down. Perfect posture for a Chinese girl.
    In Chinese he demands, “How do you explain this?”
    “I am not explaining,” she says.
    “This is terrible, what you have done to your mother! You could have at least called and told us where you were. Where have you been!”
    “Here,” she says so softly I can barely understand.
    “Here? With Zhang Zhong Shan?”
    “Here.”
    He looks at me, his face very red. “You told me you hadn’t seen her!”
    “She asked me to.”
    He looks back at her. “You stayed here alone?” He is trembling
with fury, I have never seen him like this. His face is so red I am afraid he will make himself ill.
    “Foreman Qian,” I say, “perhaps you would sit down. I have tea, beer.”
    “What have you been doing for two days! What is your mother going to do when she hears about this! And you,” he turns to me, “how could you do this! I have had you to my home and now you are taking advantage of my daughter!”
    “Foreman Qian,” I say, the words sounding as ludicrous in Chinese as they do in English, “I have not taken advantage of your daughter, I did not even ask her to come here.”
    “I cannot believe this!” he says to her, ignoring me. “You want us to treat you as if you are an adult, but you do this?” I am embarrassed. Foreman Qian sounds like the cliché of the Chinese father, protecting his daughter from bad influence. Like a vid. People do not act like this in real life. But then, people don’t try to marry their daughters to bent foremen they barely know, either. “What if they found out at your job! Do you think you would ever be transferred to China if they thought you were an immoral girl?”
    “The Great Cleansing Winds campaign is over,” San-xiang says, “No one talks that way anymore.”
    “Well why don’t you just tell them at work that you are staying with an Engineering Technician without citizenship and see how they talk.”
    San-xiang flushes.
    Foreman Qian rounds on me, “I would have been happy to treat you like a son, I had no idea you were so stupid.”
    “I have been entirely respectful with your daughter,” I say.
    “She called me Tuesday and asked if she could come here, she told me she had an argument with you and her