Aftershocks

When the ground began to shake under my feet the movement was so strong I felt a wave of vertigo. I flung my arms outward to keep my balance, but it was like trying to stand upright on a rolling log. I squeezed my eyes shut and dropped to the sidewalk. Where was Reny? He had been a few paces ahead of me when the shaking started. I called his name over and over, still not daring to open my eyes. Nausea rose through me, but gradually the rollicking stopped. I pushed up from the sidewalk and took a few deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The nausea began to fade, but before I could call out to him again, Reny popped up from behind a car parked on the street, brushing off his jeans. People began pouring out of storefronts up and down the street. A row of red lanterns had fallen from a flimsy wire hanging overhead in the trees and now the line lay like a vine of enormous faded fruits down the trunk of a tree.

“What was that?” I shouted. “And where were you?”

“What do you mean, what was that? It was an earthquake,” Reny shouted back, ignoring my second question. His face glowed as if he’d just witnessed a car wreck or a murder. Xinzheng had recorded four quakes in the past two years but none had been big enough to do any real damage. Locals dismissed them to the foreigners with the joke that it was only a dragon sneezing.

“Now that’s what I call a sign!”

“What were you doing?” I replied.

Reny tried to pull out a pack of cigarettes, but his hands were trembling so badly it took him three tries to grasp the pack. “When there’s an earthquake. Or a tornado. You’re supposed to get next to something tall and solid. That way, if something bigger falls, it will likely hit the thing you’re next to and you’ll be safe in the triangle shaped open space next to it.” He said nothing about conveniently leaving me outside that space.

Whatever the subject – shoeing horses, lightning storms, military strategies, cancer treatments, wart removal, auto emissions, principles of Buddhism, ice skating techniques -- Reny always had an answer, a reason, advice, or an explanation that was the latest and most expansive that he’d “just read.” This trait had always impressed me, but on the flight to China, after explanations of what made plane engines whine, how birds hitting the cone of the plane cause dents, and why you shouldn’t ask for ice in your drink, I sometimes found my mind drifting out of his orbit. I wiped my sweating hands down the front of my jeans. “What if the big thing falls down parallel with the thing you’re hiding next to? Like right on top of you instead of the car?”

The tiny shudder of Reny’s shoulders said either he hadn’t considered that, or he was still shaking from the quake. He finally got a cigarette out of the pack and fumbled for his lighter. “I’m taking it as a sign,” he asserted once more. “I was right. This is what I’m supposed to be doing.” He managed to light his cigarette, and then reflexively clasped his hand over the sleeve covering his left forearm. The smoking was almost as new as the tattoo. He’d taken up this new habit in the U.S. only days earlier. Both had been a bad idea, but I kept that thought to myself.

“Are you serious?” I asked. “You want to keep going? That was an earthquake, and you think it was a personal sign for you?” I put a hand to my forehead, trying to sooth my aching skull. The air was deathly still, as if the quake had sucked out all the breeze down into the earth’s bowels.

“I believe in signs. You know that about me.” Reny moved closer, pacing and sucking hard on his cigarette. He swung it back and forth in an arch in front of his face while he searched for words. “You know how much that guy humiliated me, Molly. I told him I was going to China.” He paused and pointed the two fingers clenching his cigarette right at me. “He did it on purpose, and I’m going to make this right. Now let’s go.”

Reny didn’t bother asking if I was okay. If I was scared. Did I want to return to the apartment? He just flicked his cigarette to the sidewalk and hurried on. People lingered in front of hair salons, restaurants, wine stores, cell phone shops, and clothing storefronts to look up at the buildings and assess fallen roof tiles and new cracks in walls. Even the blind man who sold baijiu in the grimy shop on the corner came outside to talk with the other sellers and play one-up on how much damage their businesses had suffered. I watched Reny progress further ahead. The sun was hot at eleven o’clock, and I had eaten nothing since the single slice of dry toast at breakfast. I wished like hell I’d brought my water bottle.

According to Google Maps, the tattoo shop was three blocks straight ahead and then down an alley to the left. “I memorized the characters for the shop. I’ll know it when I see it,” Reny had said before we set out that morning. I wanted to ask if he was sure the characters were right this time, but I held my tongue. I was good at that. Reny studied Pinyin each morning. He insisted he could read the characters on menus, and despite the server’s smiles and requests to “sorry, please repeat,” he took pride in ordering our food in Chinese.

Ten meters ahead, he was nearly to the bridge. “Reny! Reny!” He didn’t turn around, so I shouted his name again. Several old women searching the ground for their scattered mahjong pieces stopped their chatter to take a look at me, the disheveled, sweaty-faced foreigner with crusts of dirt on both knees.

Reny slapped his hands on his thighs in irritation and turned. “What? What is it now?”

“Can’t we just walk at a regular pace? Geez, let me catch my breath,” I yelled.

“You know this is important to me.”

“Yes, I know, but do you have to drive us like we’re on our way out of Egypt? I need something to eat.” I pointed at a fruit vendor parked on the street. The cart was filled with small bags of nuts and assorted fruit that had inexplicably been among the few things not thrown to the ground during the quake. Struggling for words, I said, “Wǒ shì xiāngjiāo,” pointing to the smallest bundle. The vendor looked at it but did not move.

“You just said, ‘I’m a banana,’” Remy called from the bridge’s edge.

“Well obviously I was trying to tell him I want a banana.”

“They don’t sell them individually. You have to buy a bunch.” Reny pointed at the heaps of plastic bound bananas on the cart.

“Fine,” I replied, exhaling hard and trying to think of the words again. “Umm, wo shí'èr. Uh, wǒ shì shí'èr gēn xiāngjiāo.”

“Now you told him you are twelve bananas.”

Humiliated, I gritted my teeth and hurried on. We had been in Xinzheng a week and already it was as if the earth would swallow me up. Literally. The more people gathered in the street the noisier it grew. Dust had settled in my hair and on my clothes. I could even taste it in my mouth. I stomped past Reny and down the gritty sidewalk along the bridge. I’d always had a gangling style of walking, even when I was a kid. Sometimes I could feel it when I put my feet down too roughly or swung my arms as if a little too sure of myself. Since our arrival in China I noticed that sometimes Reny purposely hung back until I reeled my body in. I learned to measure my steps, to take girl steps, to control my arms. It was then that he moved a foot or two ahead, talking back over his shoulder at me as he went.

I wanted to be gone from everyone. I regretted not buying the bananas, even if it had meant buying an entire bunch, but buying them would have required Reny’s help in negotiating. He knew it, too. I could feel him smirking even without seeing his face.

Reny was cocky like that about his Chinese. He had always been able to understand it better than I could. I studied the characters and wrote them out over and over. I watched YouTube videos and repeated the phrases aloud. Reny could spit out entire lines. In those days the idea of moving to China to teach English at a university was an exotic dream. “Maybe you can be a teacher’s assistant,” he used to tell me. When I received an offer to cover a full load of freshman English classes he countered with, “Someone must have backed out at the last minute.” Knowing we’d really go all the way around the world made me study even harder. And then it was down to our last week in the U.S. “I’m going to get a tattoo,” Reny had announced. “This is my new beginning.”

It’s our new beginning. I had kept it to myself.

I suggested we bring along one of the exchange students to help him choose the characters, but he brushed me off. He told anyone who would listen that he was B1 Intermediate. That included Hao, the tattoo artist at the San Francisco shop we visited the night before our departure. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but Hao’s look, that quick rise of a single eyebrow when Reny told him what he wanted. That polite smile as he agreed he would give Reny the characters for Man, Strength, Glory. Reny, talking, talking, talking while Hao worked. Explaining to Hao the chemicals in his inks. Telling a story of a mummy found in Iceland with tattoos. Insisting that the first inks contained breast milk mixed with oil. Suggesting Hao rearrange his tools for “superior efficiency.” Hao worked on, saying nothing.

During the entire flight to China, Reny’s swollen, red skin had been carefully covered in a bandage. The truth hit on our second day in China. Reny proudly wore a t-shirt and removed the bandage. Leaning his arm on the railing of the faculty campus apartment building, Reny caught the eyes of a group of students passing by on their way to class. Their exaggerated smiles belied their amusement, and they giggled as they hurried past. A lone girl trailing behind lingered to stare at his arm. Confused, she carefully avoided eye contact with the foreigner who proudly showed off his tattoo of Chinese characters running from the inside of his elbow to his wrist: Monkey Shit Brains. Of course she didn’t read the words out loud. She was far too polite. It was Bartleby Elder, the thundering British ex-pat with flawless Chinese who read the words aloud. His laughter didn’t stop even after Reny stomped away, his humiliation trailing like smoke from an airplane shot out of the sky. 

That laughter still rang in my ears as I trekked across the bridge. Carts, cars, trucks, and buses roiled street dust into my face. How do you know you’re B1 Intermediate? And what was I?  I chewed on the words, tasting the bitter flavor of more things unsaid.

“There it is.” Up ahead, Reny thrust a rude index finger point at the rundown shop in an alley off the main street. Next to the paint-peeled door hung a banner lettered in tall black characters. Reny let his pointing finger follow the lines as he sounded out the name, “Guo Golden Dragon Tattoo. Just like it said on Google Maps.” He nodded a self-satisfied congratulations at his navigation skills and hurried to the door.

The young man behind the counter held a Yu Xi cigarette between two fingers while also cradling an Xbox control in both hands. He was slight compared to Reny, and his thinning hair was pulled into a pony tail that disappeared down the back of his green hoodie. He flipped off the screen and took a drag on his cigarette, not bothering to extinguish it, even for customers. In front of him lay the wadded up empty cigarette pack and the remains of a baozi on a wrinkled square of greasy wax paper. The smell of ground bean sauce reminded me how hungry I was. Tacked up pictures of dragons, curvy women, jacked up cars, stylized flowers, cartoon characters, tigers of every style, spiderwebs, rainbows, disembodied wings, suns, moons, stars, warriors swinging flaming swords, naked women on flaming motorcycles, skulls with flames coming out their eye sockets, and animals of every breed and description covered the wall behind him. He waited quietly while we took in the sea of drawings. Along the corner where the side wall met the back a baby finger sized crack let in a fine line of light.

“You guys feel that quake?” His English was flawless, almost unaccented. Reny looked crestfallen.

“We were right there in it,” Reny replied. “Right there on the street when it happened.” His chin bobbed up and his eyes made a slow blink. The gesture bros like to give when they play one-up.           

The tattoo guy drew a smoke and cracked his knuckles. “It was like batshit crazy, man. I was sitting here playing my game and boom! Got knocked right off my seat.” He noticed me staring at the wall crack running from the ceiling nearly to the floor, the newly stirred dust motes rolling in the shining streak of light. He waved a dismissive hand. “That’s been cracked a long time. Very long time,” he said, shrugging. “Yeah, mostly.” He turned his back to it and flung his arms outward as if herding me away from the sight. “There’s gonna be aftershocks. There’s always aftershocks. The earth has to set itself aright deep down, you know? When I lived in San Francisco, one day after a hit, we had to move our equipment outside just to be out of the building. You’d be surprised at how many people decide they want a tat right after a quake. I guess people realize life is short and you just have to do it, you know?”

“Frisco, huh. So that’s where you learned to speak English so well,” Reny said, his interest piqued even more. “

“Since I was three months old.” Another hand wave. “Yeah, yeah. I came back here two years ago to take care of my grandparents.”

“That was very nice of you.” My words made me cringe. I wasn’t sure why. I wondered what it had to be like, leaving the only country you’d ever known to come to one that everyone told you was your real home but wasn’t. Not really. A place in your blood more than your head.

He shrugged. “It’s what we do,” he said, and I heard the blood talking. Suddenly he looked up at the ceiling, listening, but then gave a short burst of nervous laughter. “Just a bus passing. It’s okay.” His cigarette was down to the filter. He stubbed it out in an overflowing ashtray. “I’m Fairlane. My dad named me after a bowling alley. So American, right?”

Reny introduced both of us followed by the unnecessary announcement that we were American.

“So, you’re here for ink.” Fairlane stretched his neck a little trying to spy the edge of the ink on the raised, reddened flesh peeking out from under Reny’s long sleeve. “Looks like you already got some. Looks fresh, too.”

“That’s what I’m here about,” said Reny. He reached for the sleeve but then hesitated. “The guy that did this. He didn’t know what he was doing.” Even before he could get the sleeve rolled up, Fairlane smacked his hand over his mouth, chuckling for so long Reny began to huff with anger.

“Looks like he knew exactly what he was doing,” said Fairlane. “I’m sorry, man. Really, I’m sorry.” He waved his hand in front of his face, willing himself to stop laughing without succeeding. “I’ve seen that kind of thing before. Australian girl came in here a year ago with one that read: Klingon Diabetes.” He laughed again, and I couldn’t help myself. I laughed too. It felt good. To finally get a response right. When I looked at Reny I wasn’t sure that I had.

His lips were starting to turn purple. “Well, can you fix it? Change it into something else?”

“Nah, nah, man. I can’t do anything with that. Not yet anyway. It’s got to heal. Can’t mess with a fresh tat. You go mucking around with more ink and it can cause real problems.”

“I can’t walk around with this on my arm. We’re in China! And this is Chinese.” Reny pointed at the tattooed arm with an unnecessary flourish to match his unnecessary words. 

Softening his voice a little, Fairlane replied, “Wear long sleeves.”

“For how long?”

Fairlane took hold of Reny’s arm and studied the underside, turning it back and forth in the dim light. Fairlane’s hands were small and hairless with unblemished nails and delicate short fingers that made me think of birthday candles. They were smooth and strong, the hands of someone who did meticulous work. Patient hands. “To be safe, I’d say you should wait about three months. All that red ink. That’s a lot.” He moved his index finger in a circle over the blood red rectangular banner that Reny had insisted on so that the characters looked “more authentic and ancient.”

“Three months? That’s bullshit!”

“Actually, it’s monkey shit.” At that, Fairlane and I both burst out laughing. Something that felt like relief flowed upward through me and trailed out my mouth on the laughter. It was like changing teams near the end of a game when yours is losing. Reny gritted his teeth at the both of us, and for a second I thought he was going to do something childish like slam his fist on the table or fling Fairlane’s game control onto the floor. Despite the recent quake, I realized nothing in this tiny shop was out of place. If anything had been knocked askew, he had righted it already, hardly breaking the momentum of his game. He was watching me taking it all in with a look as if he was trying to say he could see me, could see straight to my skin.

“Can’t you do something?” Reny shook his finger at the long red rectangle now covered in sweat. His flesh looked as if blood was coursing down his forearm. “Change it to another word? Or. . .or put some other marks on it. Even if it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t give a damn, but I can’t walk around with this. Not here.” The skin on his forehead and cheeks had grown tight and shiny with sweat, and he looked as if he might cry. Rage was leaking through his skin and reshaping his cells into a mask I’d never seen before. Or maybe it was that the mask had finally slid off. He looked small and off kilter, standing there waiting for Fairlane to reply. It hit me that Reny wasn’t showing who he really was for the first time. His real self had always been in full view. I was the one who’d had a filter firmly in place until this moment. And now he had a label. Right there on his forearm.

My skin tingled. Cool flesh like when you step out of a steaming bath into cold air. I wanted to peel off my clothes and stand right there in that dingy tattoo shop, naked and ridiculously American. Aftershocks to knock me off my feet, so I could have another good laugh. I am not a banana. The words resonated in my head and this time it sounded like a real joke that made me start laughing all over again, soft and low.

Reny raised his voice. “Do you think this is funny?”

Fairlane didn’t give me a chance to reply. “Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t I do a different tattoo on your other arm? Maybe a dragon. Or a tiger. I got hella tigers here.” He gestured broadly with both hands toward the wall of pictures. “I can do it up in coral and red with black accents. Give it some claws and teeth. It’d be badass, man. Like this.” Reaching up to a blisteringly bright print above his head, he tapped his finger on a roaring tiger drawing back one paw. “Or this one. Tiger and snake fighting to the death. Eh?”  He stepped further down the wall and pointed at a larger picture of a tiger’s body encircled by a stylistic snake. The tiger’s claws were poised mid-swipe on the underside of the snake’s throat. A boy’s vision of a fantasy fight. “Nobody’ll even notice that other one once they see this. I can fix that one up later. What do you say?” He remained in place next to the drawing, and then he added. “No characters.” He gestured with theatrical drama at the wall. “Genuine Chinese tattoo. Real one this time.” I heard the slightest effort at a Chinese accent.

Reny leaned in to get a better look at the tiger and snake locked in mortal combat. The tiger’s left hind leg was foreshortened, and the claws looked more like tiny fingers curled over the paw. “Your girlfriend likes it,” Fairlane said, poking a thumb in my direction. I raised my eyebrows in protest but before I could speak, Fairlane winked conspiratorily at me. I stayed quiet. Reny was about to make a decision.

“You know,” Reny said, giving his next phrase the proper pause before continuing. “When I saw your name on Google Maps, I knew this was the right place. And when that quake hit,” he made a little smack into his palm with his right fist as if he’d been boxing with it, “it was another sign.”

“A sign, huh?” Fairlane’s face drew up in a serious expression, his brows drawn tightly together.

“Yeah, I’ve lived my whole life by signs. When I was trying to decide whether to go to school at Louisville or Ohio, I was driving home one night and a cardinal smashed into my windshield. You know what that meant, right?”

“That you were going to need a new windshield?”

“Louisville Cardinals, man. That’s what it meant. And when I was thinking about going to China to work, a martial arts studio opened right next to my apartment building. Run by Master Chen.” He nodded conspiratorially at Fairlane. “Sensei Chen. Fourth degree black belt.”

“That’s ah, that’s a high belt,” said Fairlane. He eyed his cigarette pack as if he wanted to light up, but he must have changed his mind. Folding his arms tightly over his mid-section, he waited. Looking cool and patient, watching Reny.

“Damn right it is. So here I am.” Reny nodded lightly, as if something of finality was obvious to everyone present. He snapped his fingers and threw a point, Tom Cruise style, at the tiger and snake picture. “Let’s do it.” Suddenly his demeanor changed. He was no nonsense Reny and we, Fairlane and I, were there to do his bidding.

I took a seat in a darkened corner on a bench. The Girlfriend Wait. The sit-until-I-was-called-upon-to-be-impressed-and-provide-praise wait. Fairlane moved with rapid efficiency, laying out needles, ink, petroleum jelly, a stack of c-fold towels on a pristine silver tray lined in paper. He told Reny the tiger and snake were quite complex and would take at least three sittings. When all of his equipment was in place he began the process of sanitizing and shaving Reny’s nearly hairless, pale forearm, while Reny launched into the tale of how the two of us had accepted jobs here at the university. Brave, adventurous, young, unemployed. We wanted a year abroad. A new beginning. A peek at the other side of the world. We’d go back as exotic, mini-heroes to the people we’d known. We could tell them about how we’d survived a real earthquake. We’d tell stories of eating durian and grimace at the memory. We’d greet Master Chen in Chinese when we passed the martial arts studio. Hell, we’d probably sign up for classes. Reny’s voice was the last thing I remembered as I leaned back against the shop wall and drifted down into a light sleep. I lapsed into darkness where time eked away and I was enveloped in softness. All forgotten. I could have been transported to another universe, my rest was so deep.

Sleep lasted long enough that when the shaking ground woke me, for a second I thought I was dreaming I was being thrown sideways onto a bed. I heard a buzz that grew into a roar and was quickly replaced by a scream. Reny. Whirling clouds of dust blew into my eyes. Grit settled in my gaping mouth and on my cheeks. In front of me, the needles and ink Fairlane had set out were scattered on the floor. He still clutched the tattoo machine in his latex gloved hand, but he was lightly covered in gray dust. Reny was standing back, clutching his arm now lined with the unfinished silhouette of a tiger’s form. But the place was strange, brighter, as if the shop had been transported onto a different planet. The once cracked wall had fallen away completely, and the shop was filled with bright sunlight. Reny stared in disbelief at the scrub bushes growing beside the building, now nakedly in full view. Lying in the alley were crumbled pieces of Fairlane’s shop. Brick and smashed concrete. Bits of bent, rusted metal from the roof. There was a terrible creaking noise, and a piece of the roof slid off and clanged onto the dirt next to where the wall had been a minute earlier.

“Oh man.” Fairlane’s voice was an astonished whisper. “Now this. This is a sign.”

Seemingly unaware that he was holding both arms out as if trying to placate some unseen god, Reny was mesmerized by the light now illuminating the black painted walls that remained. Light hit every paper image remaining on the back wall.

“We have to get out of here,” said Reny. “We have to get out of this place.” He was still holding his arms out. Was he extending them to me? Or were they stuck in place in his shock? Then, without waiting for my reply, without even seeing me, he turned and stepped out the now open side of the shop. He circled to the front of the building and down the street, never dropping his arms as far as I could see. He probably didn’t put them down until he got on the plane.

“Aftershocks,” said Fairlane softly, peeling off his gloves and gently laying down his tattoo wand. He surveyed the room, or what was left of it and sighed with something like resignation, or maybe relief.