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

yan?
” the woman asked. “Are you Chinese?”
    Mercy shook her head no. “Korean.”
    “
Hong gok yan
.” The old lady nodded. Then said in English, “You no marry.”
    Mercy laughed. “What?”
    “You no marry.” By this time, another couple and their toddler son had come on board—the worried mother, who had been frightened of accidents.
    “Yes, I’m not married.” She smiled.
    “You no marry. No have husband.”
    “Yes,” she said. “Okay.”
    “Never!” The woman leaned over and tugged on Mercy’s earlobes. It was so sudden she couldn’t even recoil.
    “Okay, okay!” she said, laughing out of shock.
    “Your ear say no children.” The old woman looked at the other woman. “She have no children. But you never get fat,” she said to Mercy, as if by way of consolation.
    The other woman looked at Mercy uneasily. “I don’t know . . . ,” she started to say.
    “Oh, don’t worry,” Mercy said. “You have no idea how used to it I am. It’s fine.”
    The woman looked at her with pity. “Okay,” she said. “But this woman shouldn’t say that to you.”
    “Oh, what does it matter,” Mercy said. “She’s just an old woman on a fishing boat.”
    The boatwoman pulled on the rope and started the engine. The boat started puttering slowly to the shore. Mercy looked out at the flat horizon and tried to arrange her face in a pleasant expression. When they reached the shore, she got out in thigh-deep water and helped to pull the boat in so she could receive the boy from his mother. She reached her arms out.
    “No, thank you,” said the woman. “Bill will get him.” She waited for her husband to get out of the boat and then handed over the child.
    “I’m sorry, what’s your name again?” Mercy said, holding on to the boat so the woman could clamber out.
    “Jenny,” said the woman. “And Bill, and our son is Jack.”
    “My name is Mercy,” she said. She was so tightly wound she didn’tknow whether she was mad at Jenny or at the fisherwoman or at the world.
    They all arrived at the beach and wended their way to the barbecue pits.
    Lunch was jovial, lubricated. The men poured out charcoal and tried to light the fire, swearing merrily. “Man make fire,” Barbara’s husband grunted.
    When the charcoals glowed orange, they laid down chicken wire and roasted the chicken wings while drinking bottle after bottle of beer. Jenny was nervous about Jack being so close to the fire and kept talking about it.
    Another woman looked at Mercy’s wet hair and said, “You are so brave. I haven’t swum in Hong Kong waters since I saw a bloody Kotex floating by.” The others hooted, and Mercy felt stupid.
    “It’s so hot,” she murmured, twisting her hair back. “How can you not swim?”
    “Yes!” 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?”
    “What?” said Margaret. “What do you mean?”
    “I just interviewed a guy from Beijing Normal University. That’s different from Beijing University, right?”
    “It’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