The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

in Hong Kong waters since I saw a bloody Kotex floating by.” The others hooted, and Mercy felt stupid.
    â€œIt’s so hot,” she murmured, twisting her hair back. “How can you not swim?”
    â€œYes!” Barbara said. “You are all old, afraid people. Mercy is the only one who has joie de vivre. She is young! You should try to be more like her.” Barbara was from Korea, and her English was not perfect despite Columbia, but she was the warmest person Mercy had ever met. She invited every stray to her house, cooked them
jigae
and
mandu
, and was the den mother for stray Koreans in Hong Kong. Mercy smiled at Barbara gratefully.
    A man from New Jersey with a sharp face said, “What’s with the Normals?”
    â€œWhat?” said Margaret. “What do you mean?”
    â€œI just interviewed a guy from Beijing Normal University. That’s different from Beijing University, right?”
    â€œIt’s more of a teacher’s college,” said Barbara’s husband, who was in Beijing every week for work.
    Mercy watched Clarke sip his beer, and suddenly it clicked. She knew where she knew him from.
    She had been on an elevator with him, and he had been with another man. Two anonymously handsome Western men in suits. They were everywhere in Central. She had, uncharacteristically, been laden with shopping bags, as she had been tasked to buy group birthday presents for a few friends, since she was the only one not working at the time, and she supposed she had looked like a spoiled princess.
    â€œWomen!” the other man had said to Clarke, as he scanned her carelessly. “Women and their shopping.”
    She had been stunned. The man spoke as if she were invisible, or as if she couldn’t understand what he was saying. Later she had thought of all the things she could have said. Like “I went to Columbia!” or “Because you men take all the high-paying jobs.” Or something. The idea that she was entirely inconsequential to the men in a small elevator was hideous to her at that moment, struggling as she was to find a job, find her rent money, find her life. She turned red, almost stamped her feet, struggled to find something to say. And then they got off. She was left steaming, unfulfilled. And here Clarke was, sitting across from her, as confident as ever, as unknowing, married to a perfect woman who was presumably exempt from the assumptions of him and his ilk.
    As Mercy looked over at Margaret, something dawned on her. “Are you half?” she asked.
    â€œA quarter,” Margaret said, a little surprised. “My father is, was, half-Korean—he passed away—but my mom is white. Most people can’t tell.”
    Barbara piped in, “I could tell right away.”
    â€œYeah, but others can’t, really,” Mercy said. “Do you speak Korean?”
    â€œNot at all,” Margaret said. “I feel bad about it, but I think it’s usually the mother who does it, and my mother couldn’t. And we lived in a very homogeneous neighborhood. My dad basically wanted to be white. He didn’t like growing up Asian in California at the time. There weren’t very many. Do you speak?”
    â€œI understand everything, but talking is hard. I grew up in Queens.”
    â€œHave you gone to Korea while you’ve lived here? It’s so close.”
    â€œNot yet,” said Mercy. “Soon.”
    â€œI’ll take the both of you,” said Barbara. “It is so wonderful now, you cannot imagine. I grew up there, and it is so changed now!”
    â€œWe’re going soon,” Margaret said. “For school fall break, and Clarke needs to go see the office there.”
    The conversation fizzed on in the hot summer sun. Mercy drank cold beer and listened in on the exchanges. She heard a woman slip up and say something about a helper’s “owners,” instead of “employers.” Then her