The Lost Year
Written on December 13, 2007
Moving to the city seemed to sap the inspiration from my very veins. We lived in a stream-lined, sterile and emotionless apartment in a neighborhood filled to the breaking point with people so caught up in their status on the social totem pole that I found it impossible to discern who was trustworthy or not. My husband’s job kept him away from home five days a week and I found my Mandarin wanting so severely in fluency that I could barely function, let alone hold a proper conversation with anyone.
The instant we stepped out of the door, all eyes were on us. I felt as though every stranger on the street thought that they had the right to claim a part of our life as their own. In a city of millions, that can be overwhelming – Especially if one is shy.
There was no easing ourselves into the world around us. We were simply there, struggling to survive in a sink or swim environment.
I tried to learn how to integrate myself and the kids into the community. I tried so hard… For the sakes of my children, if nothing else, I fought to keep my head above the water, but we were different. We were always going to be different. There was no changing that fact and where my friends in the countryside had never made me feel like a foreigner, the people I found surrounding me refused to allow me to forget it.
In the States I was “Elizabeth the Artist”, “Elizabeth the Wife and Mother” etc., but in Shijiazhuang I had no name. I was simply an outsider to them; I was someone to be held at arm’s length and not to be trusted.
I missed my friends terribly. The kids were constantly calling for them and I felt helpless to console their little hearts, because I too detested our new home.
If we went outside to play or run errands, complete strangers would grab my children, stare them in the face and say, “Give us a look!” If I said “No” the other adults would say “Yes”. If I said it was time to go home, they would ask the kids if they wanted to go someplace else entirely, then proceed to pick them up and walk off with them! It was frustrating. No, it was infuriating!
I suffered a second miscarriage, then a third which led to a nasty uterine infection and a trip to the hospital.
Sam fell down, breaking her tooth in a manner which required a root-canal. There was no Novocain to be found in the dental hospital, so I had to hold her down while they drilled away.
Three months later, she began to vomit bile laced with blood. We rushed her to the children’s hospital where a blockage in her intestines was discovered. Yet again, I found myself holding my little girl down while she underwent a painful procedure… And even then, while my terrified child screamed, there were people gathering in the doorway trying to get a glimpse at the “foreign doll”!
The Mama Tigress in me had had enough. As far as I was concerned, the Chinese in our immediate vicinity had taken it too far. Why couldn’t they accept the fact that these little “dolls” were children? What’s more, they were children who were scared to go outside because of the way people treated them.
There was no balance while we remained in that neighborhood. There was no safe place to call home. There was no refuge…
Perhaps if we had found some friends the year would have turned out differently, but the Chinese around us didn’t want friendship. Not really. They wanted to tell others that they had an American friend, but the relationship would bottom out after that.
I didn’t want pretend friendships. I wanted something real, something genuine.
We did not ask to be isolated. We did not ask to be treated as something other than human. Those decisions were made without our consent and I once again found myself in a “make the best of a rotten situation or resign yourself to being miserable” scenario.
It is not in my nature to give up easily, but I was alone in a city four-million souls strong, trying to raise two children while studying the language and the customs of a culture in which I no longer felt welcome.
Something had to give…
