Free The Border of Paradise: A Novel by Esmé Weijun Wang Page A

throat as it returned, and then I rinsed and wiped the sink with toilet paper before rinsing my mouth. When I looked in the oval mirror, I saw that my lips were pale again, and I realized that my purse was still hanging from my elbow like a forgotten limb. I threw the soiled toilet paper into the trash and reapplied my lipstick.
    For the longest time I found bathrooms in America to be comical. American bathrooms, no matter where we were, seemed palatial in comparison with Taiwanese bathrooms, which were, at their best, little more than outhouses even in a wealthy home. To void oneself in this American bathroom was to sit in a jewelry box with jade-colored wallpaper. A closer look and I could see a print of tiny women with parasols. I pulled down the toilet lid and sat, not eager to return to the kitchen. My new life was broken. Everything was concealed by the secrets of language, and even that which was spoken was concealed by another layer of secrecy that I could sense on my skin but not fully understand.
    By the time I returned to the kitchen, Mrs. Nowak was gone, and David was pouring himself a glass of what looked like whiskey. In my pregnant state I could smell its familiar odor from where I stood.
    “Your mother is where?” I asked.
    “Lying down,” he said. He raised his glass. “ Gan bei .”
    I toasted him with my champagne. The tiny click made my back teeth hurt.
    “Were you sick?”
    “Yes.”
    “I told my mother that you weren’t used to the champagne. So that she wouldn’t ______.” He pointed at my stomach. For the most part, he was good about using words that I could understand, and I was good at asking him about the ones I didn’t know. Still, we were in a place with a woman who knew him much better than I did. I didn’t have the words to pierce through my confusion. My blood mouth filled with sand.
    David’s childhood bedroom was bare except for a white wooden bed and white nightstand, a white dresser, and a single poster of strange and painted shapes, which now hangs, curling, in William’sroom. He said, looking around, “The __________ of my child ______.”
    “What?”
    “Sorry,” he said. “At home it’s easy—it’s easy for me to forget what is okay to say to you. I’m sorry about my mother. She loves me. I’ve always been close to her. Understand?”
    “Yes,” I said, and sat on the bed. He sat beside me, his glass half-empty. I said, “Your mother is beautiful.”
    “Well. Yes. She—in the past, people would turn their heads to look at her as we walked down the street. But she never really ______ or cared. God. All that about Jesus. I’m sorry. She has certain ideas about me.”
    “Yes.”
    “I came here to show her that I was okay, because I know she worries. But this has been a mistake. We can leave. We won’t eat dinner here. We’ll go back to the hotel, just the two of us.”
    “Yes.”
    He lay onto the bed, as if merely speaking of these possibilities exhausted him. The small amount of whiskey left in his glass, held aloft, sloshed and dripped onto the sheets. “Come here,” he said, and awkwardly lifted his glass to the nightstand.
    My heart sighed. I curled up beside him in my fancy dress, avoiding the wetness of whiskey, and pressed my face into his ribs. He rubbed my head in slow circles, and I thought, I am happy, I am happy, I am happy. I inhaled the aftershave he had splashed on that morning that smelled of something dark and sour, like small animals and the color brown and himself. When we lay together there was no need to speak, and I preferred it that way because when we didn’t speak we could be any husband and wife, with no struggle in it. We lay in that bed and kissed tenderly, and then we took our set of matching luggage and left. I imagined Mrs. Nowak lying in bed with a towel over her forehead. She didn’t try to say good-bye.
    David and I took a taxi back to the hotel because I didn’t like the subway, and he was hemorrhaging money in those