Wang Lei closes her eyes. Fingers press against the edges of her eyelids. Cold glue is traced along her skin. Her eyes flutter from the touch.
“Bie dong,” hold still, Sarah says in Mandarin.
Wang Lei can feel the heat of Sarah’s body—feel her chest rise and fall. She can imagine Sarah biting her lower lip with precision. Sarah smells like lilacs and soap. An American smell. Every morning, even when Wang Lei cannot fathom removing her long underwear, Sarah will rub an American lotion over her goose-bumped skin.
Sarah holds her breath, carefully placing the false lashes on the glue.
Wang Lei giggles, not because it’s funny, but because Sarah’s seriousness is confusing. When they had first become roommates, two months ago, she couldn’t tell when Sarah was joking. She joked without smiling. “It’s called sarcasm,” Sarah explained.
Sarah blows on the wet glue.
Wang Lei smells her breath, hot and minty.
“Fine. I am done,” said Sarah.
Wang Lei faces the mirror. Foreign lashes feather against her skin. The black lines around her eyes draw out their oval shape. She presses her lips together. Even they are painted black. The darkness contrasts with her pale skin, lending an unrecognizable sharpness to her features. Although Sarah wears the same makeup, their faces look completely different—small blue eyes instead of brown; long blonde hair instead of shoulder-length black, freckled dots along her cheeks instead of smooth whiteness. Sarah looks like the girls from Titanic, she thinks, except with black lipstick.
Sarah smiles. “You look hot.”
Wang Lei does not understand what heat has to do with their costume, but Sarah’s expression suggests this is a compliment. Sarah rests her hand on her hip. She wears a bandana across her forehead and a skinny braid falls to her cheek. A cut-off white shirt ends around her ribs, revealing the ring inside her belly button. Plaid boxer shorts peek out of her baggy jeans.
“What are we?” Wang Lei asks.
Sarah says, “We are—” then an English word that Wang Lei does not understand.
“We should get plastic noses,” says Wang Lei, laughing.
“No.” Sarah crosses her arms, tapping her foot. “How do I explain?” She reaches over to her CD player, playing a song with a loud beat, a man shouting in English. “Have you heard of this music?”
Wang Lei nods her head. The man shouts in an angry voice. The bass of the song beats against her head.
“We are like the people who sing these songs.” The song has a loud gun shot. One man argues with another man. “It is very popular in America.” Sarah turns up the volume.
Wang Lei squints her eyes. “What kind of people are they?”
Sarah rocks her head, moving her shoulders from side to side. “They are black.”
“Are they singing about love?”
“They are singing about poor neighborhoods.”
Wang Lei stands to her feet, her pants dropping down to her hips. She pulls her pants higher, over her waist, over the blue-striped boxers. With her jeans held to her ribs, she adjusts the belt to a tighter hole.
Sarah stops her. “No, you wear them low.”
Sarah tugs on Wang Lei’s jeans, elongating the exposure of her stomach.
Wang Lei lets go of the pants. They fall on her hips. Her stomach is completely bare—a whiteness of skin that has never seen the sun, that has never been touched by another person. The black music continues to beat in the background. She jumps up and down, feeling the heavy jeans rise and fall. Rise and fall. The pants tickle her tummy. She giggles, throwing her hands in the air. The black men continue to argue. The beat bounces off the walls. Wang Lei claps her hands.
Sarah loves this song. Matt, her classmate in Harbin, once asked, “Why’s a girl from Seattle listening to rap?” Back at home, Sarah occasionally listens to hip-hop, but something about living in China makes her listen to it more. It reminds her of the house parties she used to frequent with her girlfriends.
She looks at Wang Lei now, clapping her hands, thinking that this is not her usual party companion. But nothing in Harbin can be defined as usual. In particular, social interactions.
Sarah’s program matched each American student with a Chinese roommate. The Chinese roommates kept most of their stuff in their other room on the main campus, which they shared with seven other people. When the Chinese roommates first arrived in the foreign dormitory, they were surprised by how large the rooms were for just two people. A private bathroom was unheard of.
The extra privacy must have affected their inhibitions, because last week, Matt told Sarah that he woke up to his roommate’s heavy breathing. Matt said it was a deep moan, and then a high-pitched, “ahhh,” followed by a sigh of relief, in what he assumed to be an ejaculation.
“Disgusting!” Sarah screamed, biting her lip immediately. Her bedroom door was open; they were within earshot of passing students and the director. When she entered the program, she had signed a language pledge restricting her from speaking English. In the beginning, she had spoken only in Mandarin, but after five hours of daily classes, her mind exhausted, she gave in behind closed doors. “Disgusting,” she whispered.
Matt said, “The guy learned to jack-off, but never learned to clean up. The maid came in and freaked out. Yellow stains everywhere. She refused to wash his sheets.”
Sarah busted up laughing. She had signed up for the Harbin program because she wanted a complete immersion in Chinese culture. Located thirteen hours north of Beijing, Harbin was the capital of the most northern province. Sarah was fine with having hot water only between 5:00 and 7:30 p.m. once a day. She was fine with the common bouts of diarrhea after meals whose name she had trouble pronouncing. She thought she couldn’t be shocked by the most severe cultural differences. And yet her roommate’s naiveté about sex had surprised her. All the Chinese roommates were twenty-years-old, just like the Americans, but none of them had had sex, or kissed, or held hands. In fact, men and women didn’t even talk to one another.
One time, after Wang Lei had had her period, she hand-washed a pair of red and white polka-dotted underwear, hanging them up near the window above her bed. They were huge, like a stretched-out kite that extended the entire width and length of a hanger. When Matt stopped by, she didn’t know how to react—a man had never visited her living space before. She sat on her chair, sitting straight up, too surprised that a boy was talking to Sarah on her bed to hide her blood-stained panties. Although nobody had ever told her why she got her period, she knew enough that day to begin hanging her underwear in her closet.
Sarah once asked her what kind of man she would like to marry. “Someone handsome? Someone”—and she had to look this word up in the dictionary—“sexy?”
“It does not matter if my husband looks good on the outside as long as he is a good person within,” Wang Lei said.
“But attraction is so important. How can you imagine kissing a man if you are not attracted to him?”
Wang Lei scrunched up her eyebrows. “Kissing?”
Sarah had just learned the verb “to kiss.” It was a new word for both of them.
The next day, Sarah cut up a copy of Men’s Health that Matt’s girlfriend had mailed him, posting around their room pictures of men with their shirts off. Glistening pecs above Wang Lei’s bed. Rippling biceps taped to her desk. Six packs bulging inside her closet. Sarah even snuck an NFL pro-athlete under her pillow. When Wang Lei came home that night, she looked around the room and grinned. She could not focus on a single image.
Sarah said, “Look! Don’t you think he’s sexy? Or him? Or him? Or him?”
Wang Lei just giggled and said, “No, roommate, do you?”
Their costumes are hidden under large winter coats. Wang Lei wears a long black coat with imitation fur along the hood; Sarah wears a puffy blue coat. They leave the dorm, walking through the Harbin campus. The wind whips the coal dust across their cheeks, burning their skin red. They weave in and out among students on bikes and on foot. Trucks honk their horns to get through the street. Women dressed in green jumpers collect garbage in straw baskets. An old man clears his throat of phlegm and spits onto the dusty cement. Wang Lei never noticed these details when she first moved here as a freshman two years ago, but ever since she met Sarah, she notices these unusual habits. Sarah would say, “Why do they always spit? Why are there always people collecting garbage on the street, yet there is still garbage everywhere? Why do girls never speak to boys?”
Sarah bundles her scarf over her face, squinting against the wind. They pass two college girls walking hand-in-hand, swinging their arms as they walk. Harbin girls always hold hands—when walking down the street, when sitting next to each other at the movies. But Sarah explained to Wang Lei that in America when two girls held hands, it meant they were lovers. Sarah didn’t know the Chinese word for women lovers, so she said the word for husband and wife. Wang Lei understood her meaning. Sort of.
They leave the campus through the Harbin Institute of Technology gates. They are thirty-five minutes late to the party, but Sarah says it is fashionable to be a little late. When they arrive at the party, the hot air warming their bodies, it seems that Sarah is right. Nobody seems to be upset that they are the last ones to arrive. Numerous friends, including boys, greet Sarah with bright eyes and friendly jokes. Sarah moves like a movie star, immediately removing her puffy coat, scarf and hat, revealing the smooth skin of her white torso. Her waist is slender, accentuated by the large jeans resting on her hips. Her costume is a hit.
Wang Lei moves towards the wall, smiling. She greets the other Chinese girls, removing her hat, scarf and gloves, but still wearing her long black coat. One roommate is dressed like a ghost. Another is a witch. One roommate is an American, wearing tight blue jeans and a cowboy hat. They ask her what she is supposed to be.
Wang Lei says, “I am black.”
They give her a peculiar look.
She smiles, “I am a black American who lives in a bad neighborhood.”
They look at Sarah who has a full cup of Hapi beer in her hand. She laughs and tosses her hair over her shoulder. She is playing with the exposed ring in her navel. She touches a boy’s shoulder freely. He puts his arm around her bare waist, his eyes dropping down to her exposed skin.
The roommate in the cowboy hat asks, “Can black people not afford to cover their bodies?”
The Chinese girls have permanent smiles on their faces, looking as if at any moment they could take out their textbooks to start a study group. Sarah expects this limited interaction, even knew that as soon as they arrived at the party, Wang Lei would find sanctuary among other Chinese friends. Looking at Wang Lei now, she remembers what another classmate told her: Most girls in Harbin don’t know how babies are created. Before their wedding night, they have an appointment with a specialist who tells them how to have intercourse. They are like little girls in twenty-year-old bodies, who could easily out-math the average American yet do not understand the basic functions of their bodies.
She turns to Matt. “I knew she would not take off her coat. I think you should go flirt with her.” They converse in Mandarin, mixing in English words.
Matt sips his beer. “We cannot have her falling in love. I am leaving in two months.”
She punches him on the shoulder, “Arrogant fool.” Matt’s All-American look—short brown hair, large “barbarian” nose, 6’2 build—has given him celebrity stardom among the locals. Women selling fruit will stop mid-work to say, “You are superman! You are Tom Cruise! Come, hold my baby.”
Sarah looks around the room. Her American classmates mingle casually with teachers and students. One American is dressed in a traditional cheongsam. Another borrowed a green jumper and carries a straw basket and a broom. Finding a Halloween costume in Harbin is not as easy as it would have been in the States. But that’s what appeals to Sarah. Nothing is easy in Harbin. Buying food, taking the bus, using the holes in the floor to take a crap. Adjusting to life in Harbin has been such a change for Sarah that she hasn’t had time to dwell on her nonexistent love-life. The Chinese men, with their tapered pants and shy demeanor, rarely approach her. There are only twelve American boys in the program—one is married, four have girlfriends back at home, and one, she suspects, is gay. Just six slim options in a city of four million. She looks at Wang Lei, smiling, giggling, bobbing her head up and down, and Matt’s roommate sitting with his legs crossed in a Michael Jordan jersey. Just because Sarah can’t find someone, it doesn’t mean Wang Lei can’t.
She turns to Matt. “Is it spring?” she says. “Because I think love is in the air.”
Wang Lei sits up straight when she sees Sarah approaching her. Her tall American friend who looks like the actor from Titanic is behind her. She has two cups of Hapi beer.
“You should take your coat off,” Sarah says.
Wang Lei stands up and removes her coat. The air caresses her bare stomach, but she doesn’t rush to cover herself with her hands. She doesn’t fidget with her falling pants.
The Chinese girls all “oooh” in surprise.
“Have a beer,” says Sarah.
Wang Lei takes the cool glass in her hands and toasts Sarah with, “gan-bei,” dry your glass.
“OK, then,” Sarah says.
Wang Lei tips her head back and pours the beer down her throat. She keeps gulping and gulping, until nearly half the glass is empty. Then she sputters, spraying coughed up beer on the floor, gasping for breath at the unfamiliar taste. Third Uncle always made it look so easy. Sarah’s glass is empty.
“Slow down,” says Sarah, patting her on the back while she coughs and giggles.
Wang Lei can sense the other Chinese roommates staring at her. She turns her back to them.
“Let’s get you some water,” Sarah says.
As Sarah continues to socialize, toasting “gan-bei” to teachers and classmates, Wang Lei pretends to drink her beer. She pours the liquid into dirty glasses around the table. Sarah introduces her to other men. Not only does she know American men, but she knows Chinese men as well. Wang Lei follows her lead. She tries to flirt in the same way—she lets her shoulder-length hair fall over her shoulder, tossing it back with a flick of a hand. She stands with her shoulders back, her chest pushed forward. She leans her weight to one side, bending one leg slightly inward. Occasionally, she will rest her hand on her hip, touching her bare skin.
Sarah introduces her to Gao Yen, a Chinese roommate who lives on the second floor. They have never spoken to each other before, although he tells Wang Lei they have two classes together, Aeronautics Engineering and Nonlinear Mathematics. She blushes. Their class has over a hundred students in a large stadium-seat classroom—how did he notice her? If she were Sarah, she would respond with a funny, non-smiling joke. Maybe she would even laugh, resting her hand on his shoulder.
Sarah links arms with her now, their bare skin touching. She leans her weight against Wang Lei, wobbling just slightly. Wang Lei follows her lead, swaying in the same way, swishing around the half empty cup in her hand. A drop splashes on Gao Yen’s hand.
“Can you tell that we are twins?” Sarah asks Gao Yen, resting her head on Wang Lei’s bare shoulder. Her black lipstick has faded to an ashen gray and her skin is damp from drinking, but she still looks as radiant as before. Her eyes are like the sky on a clear day. Sometimes when she speaks, Wang Lei cannot look away. Americans always look directly in your eyes when they speak, as if every word they say is important. Gao Yen’s gaze wanders down to Sarah’s chest, her stomach, her smooth-white skin, her slender, endless waist. She exudes a power that Wang Lei cannot explain. Neither can Gao Yen. He nods his head up and down, sipping his beer. “Pretty.”
Wang Lei looks away. Sarah is pretty—all the boys in the room think so. She is just like a movie star. Then Gao Yen looks at Wang Lei’s stomach, not Sarah’s, and smiles. Wang Lei feels an unusual feeling creeping over her. Did Gao Yen call them both pretty? Nobody has ever called her pretty before. She looks down at her Halloween outfit, picturing what it would be like to receive comments like that all the time. Her shirt with the English writing ends near her ribs. Her chest does not have the same shape as Sarah’s. Her waist does not have that sharp curve along the side that Sarah’s does. It goes straight down from her ribs to her hips, but it’s flat, and just as white and smooth. She has a round birthmark near her belly button that nobody has ever seen, that she never imagined anybody would see. Her father has never even seen it. And now an entire party of teachers, directors, classmates and building mates have seen her bare stomach. Her bare birthmark. When they pass her in the hallways, dressed as she normally is, they will remember her outfit on Halloween—the white skin, the brown birthmark, the black eyeliner, the fake lashes. They will all remember her as Gao Yen has. Pretty.
She turns to Sarah and whispers, “Did Gao Yen call us pretty?”
Sarah says, “Do you like him?”
Wang Lei taps her foot, looking up at the ceiling. “OK!”
A smile creeps across Sarah’s lips. “Listen to me carefully,” Sarah says, “Here’s what you have to do.”
After the party, Matt and Sarah listen to Wang Lei and Gao Yen’s conversation coming from the common room. The latch on the door is loose, making it easier for them to eavesdrop. They press their backs against the wall, spy-style, feeling successful at getting their roommates alone together. Wang Lei is following all of Sarah’s instructions. She asks Gao Yen about his family, about his classes, about popular movies he likes to watch. She laughs at all the appropriate times. Eventually, Gao Yen gets up and turns off the lights. It’s nearly 2:00 a.m. and they have been sitting in the room for over an hour. Another five minutes pass. They don’t speak. Matt, with his body weighing on Sarah, practically has his ear inside the room. Sarah covers her mouth.
Then Gao Yen asks, his voice cracking, “Will you be my girlfriend?”
Wang Lei responds, “OK.”
Sarah can hear a kiss—just a peck.
Wang Lei giggles.
Sarah and Matt exchange a silent high-five. Gao Yen starts talking about classes and Wang Lei responds with a challenging math riddle.
It’s a start, Sarah thinks, as she relaxes against the wall. Sarah realizes that Wang Lei is more vulnerable to getting hurt, but what is one little kiss for a twenty-year-old woman? Sarah stretches out her neck. She was up the previous night studying for a hundred character mid-term for her Chinese Newspaper course.
Matt pokes her in the side. He gives her a mischievous grin. “Let’s show them what to do next.”
She slaps him lazily on the shoulder. “Shut up.” She’s always regarded Matt as off-limits. His girlfriend sends him care packages every week.
“No, seriously.” He sneaks his hand under her coat. He grips her by the waist, pulling her close. They kiss.
Sarah pushes him away. “You have a girlfriend,” she says, almost a little too loudly.
Matt brushes his hand up and down her back. He says, “So you don’t want to?”
She wants to resist, to push him away, to maintain the simplicity of their relationship. Sarah has never been the other girl. But his girlfriend is thousands of miles away, in another time zone, in another country, in a different world. Do Western rules cross international waters? Is this cheating if they are in Harbin and his girlfriend in is New Hampshire? He fumbles under her shirt, trying with one hand to unhook her bra. She yearns to unhook it for him.
Wang Lei’s excitement is greater than she could ever imagine. A kiss. She was kissed! Gao Yen called her pretty. She touches her lips with her fingertips, feeling the suppleness of her upper and lower lips. Freshly kissed lips. Still tingling. She feels her cheek, imagining it still wet with his saliva. She recreates the way his lips neared hers, the pounding of her chest, the heat of his body—approaching her, nearing her, engulfing her. She can’t wait to tell Sarah everything.
When she enters the dark hallway that leads to her room, she overhears heavy breathing. It doesn’t sound like Sarah is sleeping. At night, she doesn’t make any noise. Wang Lei presses her ear against the door. Her roommate whispers something in English. A deep voice responds. Sarah is in there with a boy. Maybe they too are kissing. Wang Lei holds her breath, listening to their movements, wishing more than ever that she could understand English. She hears a rough smacking sound, like a person eating a warm bowl of noodles. Is he kissing her on the lips? Is he kissing her on her freckled cheeks? Is he kissing her on her smooth white stomach? Wang Lei covers her mouth to shield her gasp.
That evening Sarah had told her, “Always ask him questions. Boys love to listen to themselves talk. Start the conversation off easy, like ‘Where are you from?’ or ‘How did you like class on Friday?’ Avoid ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions.” Wang Lei followed her directions exactly. She asked him about their test on Friday. He said it was difficult. She asked what questions he found hard. He said the last section. She asked him which one? He said problems number 140-148. She asked, why? Then he began explaining the quadratic form of rational functions in a parabola.
Sarah knows exactly what boys want. What if Gao Yen expects this same knowledge from Wang Lei? Will he be surprised that he is her first kiss? Have other girls her age kissed boys before? Wang Lei has never spoken to her friends about the subject. What if they have had their first kiss years ago? Gao Yen’s kiss was so pure, so memorable. Certainly he won’t want to kiss another woman. Just her. She caresses her lips as if they are a part of her that she never knew existed. She doesn’t remember the last time she was this happy. And it’s all because of Sarah.
She presses her ear to the door, hearing that lip-to-skin noise. The door swings slightly open. The building is old. Many of the latches are loose. Through the crack between the door and the wall, she can see nearly the entire room. A candle burns on the nightstand, casting an orange glow across their bedspreads. Poking from under the blanket is a foot with long, skinny toes and hairs along the top. He doesn’t have a sock on. She pushes the door open further. It doesn’t make a sound. She ducks down to her knees to poke her head into the room. She can see the back of a bare leg, white and shiny. It belongs to Sarah. Across the floor, she sees a pile of clothing—the small, cut-up shirt, the baggy jeans, his large clunky shoes, one lone sock. She hears a soft moaning. He repeats her name. “Sarah, Sarah.” Their voices sound so different than the way they usually talk, more relaxed, more comfortable. That foreign feeling creeps over her. She doesn’t understand it, but it feels like that tingling sensation when Gao Yen was about to kiss her. She can feel his imagined warmth in the darkness.
Wang Lei crawls inside the room. She rounds her back, uses her hands and the balls of her feet so her knees won’t make a shuffling noise on the floor. Near the door is Sarah’s desk. Wang Lei gently slides the chair to the side, making sure not to drag the legs on the carpeted floor. With just enough space, she crawls under the desk, peering at Sarah’s bed. She can see a mound of blanket, rippling with movement.
The man pulls Sarah so they are sitting up. The blanket drops. His back muscles flex with each twist in movement. Sarah’s fingers grip the ridges of his spine. They kiss. But their kisses are not gentle. Wang Lei can hear them. They use their tongues. Their bodies twist. Their arms and legs blur together. They are both on their knees. The candle projects a shadow of their silhouettes onto the wall. Their silhouettes flicker each time the flames dance, looming over the lovers like a gray cloud. Wang Lei thinks that even in their shadows it looks like they are one body. He moves with a rhythm as if he is dancing. Sarah dances with him. But Wang Lei understands that this is more than just a dance. They dance in a way that should not be seen by others. They dance with an agenda.
Wang Lei knows that she should leave. She should crawl out of the room in the same way she had just entered. But her curiosity keeps her watching. She keeps her eyes on the bed. Their bodies move with such tenseness. Such energy. The heat radiating from the candles seems to warm up the room. They are sweating. She can feel her skin burning. Every part of her body feels warm and sensitive.
Then the man collapses onto Sarah. The two bodies relax. Sarah points her pale, white foot. Each toenail is painted a deep red. The room becomes quiet. Nothing but their breathing.
Wang Lei’s heart is racing. It suddenly dawns on her that the room is too quiet for her to leave with subtlety. She holds her breath. She crawls backwards and makes sure not to rub her pants against the rough carpet.
“Wang Lei?” says Sarah.
Upon hearing her name, Wang Lei feels stricken with panic. She jumps to her feet and rushes out the door. She slams the door completely, hoping that the thin wood of the door will prevent Sarah from following her. But she can still hear Sarah through the physical barrier.
“Wang Lei,” Sarah says, “Please, do not be scared.”
Wang Lei hears Sarah’s words, but she has already begun running down the hallway. She pushes through the double doors of the empty front entrance. The Harbin chills sting her cheeks and she realizes, at that moment, that she has been crying.
The campus is empty. Snow has begun to fall. Her breath creates a small cloud. Her heart will not stop racing. She runs with long strides, past the engineering building, past the cafeteria, past the main library. She knows she is running back to her old dorm room, to a bed that has been empty for the last two months.
With each stride, she hears her footsteps echo against the buildings. It doesn’t sound like a single pair of feet, but many pairs, as if she is not alone, as if she is being followed. She thinks about her little sister. Zhu Ming is five years younger than her. It’s rare for her to think of Zhu Ming since her sister was sent as a baby to live with a relative in another province. Her parents do not have a single picture of Zhu Ming hanging up on their walls. They speak of her as if she is a distant cousin. Zhu Ming likes to study science. Zhu Ming likes to eat spicy noodles. Zhu Ming has joined a singing club. It has been many years since Wang Lei has seen a picture of Zhu Ming and she wonders what her little sister, now almost a woman, looks like.
When Wang Lei arrives at her old dormitory, she is overwhelmed with sensations of familiarity. She uses her old key to open her old door. She sneaks in between the four rows of bunk beds, surrounded by the smells of shampoos and carpet mildew and the snorings of her old roommates. She climbs into the top bunk of her unused bed. Her blankets remain folded without a wrinkle at the foot of her mattress. She covers herself with her blanket, still panting from her run, still shivering from the cold. She plucks off the fake eyelashes and rests her cheek against the pillow.
“Wang Lei? Is that you?” says her roommate on the bottom bunk. The room is dark. It is nearly 3:00 a.m.
Wang Lei can sense an alarm in her roommate’s voice. She says, “Go back to sleep. It is just me.”