Lost in Space

 

When Deng sat across from Pam at the canteen that day, he wordlessly handed her a piece of paper. She put on her glasses and a second later, her round cheeks became splotchy and red as they usually did when she was angry, embarrassed, or turned on. Deng couldn’t read which emotion was spelled out on her delicate skin as she said, “Oh. It’s time. So soon.”

“Yes. Father made another deposit.”

“We best go next week. I heard there are only a few left with a view.”

Deng folded the bank statement and put it in his front pocket, and though Pam wanted to talk more about the task ahead of them, the determined stabbing Deng made with his chopsticks warned her otherwise. She eased their conversation to the soft and worn topic of their day in the classroom, which because of the curriculum and teaching philosophy hadn’t changed much in the last hundred years.

After dinner, they walked separately to their dorms. Pam shared a room with a Physics teacher. The room was small and the concrete walls had once been white. One window and a small table with a plant separated the two beds. Wall hangings were forbidden by the college so each teacher expressed herself through the duvet; Pam’s had grey, purple, and dark green stripes and the other, younger teacher’s was full of brown bears on a pale pink background.

Pam greeted her roommate, who briefly looked up from her computer to murmur in response. After washing her face and brushing her teeth, she immersed herself in the tiny bed, propping herself up in the corner so that a shoulder blade touched each wall. She reached up and a touched a spot near the window where the concrete had been chipped and felt her body sigh with the relief that yet another day was over. She pulled the duvet around her shoulders and opened her computer to watch “Lost”. But the familiar absorption with survival on the island would not come. Instead she found herself rubbing the gouge and thinking.

She loved Deng fiercely. He was a good son and would be a good father. They had met at university and had been together for five years, both of them luckily finding a position at the technical college on the outskirts of the growing north eastern city. She was an English teacher and he an electrical engineering lecturer. Their buildings were only a few hundred meters apart and they ate all their meals together in the canteen and at night chatted on-line after Deng finished playing football with the people on his floor. On the weekends, they went to the city centre to shop or go to the cinema. The dorms were free so they had been able to save both their salaries for a new home to move to once they were married.

As Pam continued to rub the chipped wall, she thought of how all the long hours spent hunched over desks in crowded libraries and classrooms had prepared her for the very moment when she walked with her husband through the door of their own home. They, as the foreign teachers would say, “had made it.” They were paying back the debt of their parents’ misery and sacrifice by fulfilling this dream and though she should have felt filial pride, she only felt tired. So she turned off her computer and fell into a deep sleep that lasted much longer than usual.

Within three months of receiving the final deposit, Pam and Deng had married and purchased their two bedroom apartment in a new high-rise near the college. It was located on the fifth floor and overlooked a field, a rare sight in the city of seven million people. Twice a week they had taken the long bus journey to IKEA to wander through the maze of displays, stopping occasionally to post “selfies” on their facebook pages. They matched, selected, and ordered several sets of curtains, linens, frames, candles, and decorative pillows. Other items they bought on-line from the comfort of their dorm rooms. The buzz and hum of the days only quietened when Pam could at last, make her perch in the twin bed.

As the pieces arrived and were stuck in corners or on walls, Pam found herself drifting from room to room or stopping to look out onto the field. She posted photos and enjoyed the envy and compliments of her friends. Yet, while gliding through the apartment, she couldn’t fight the sensation of falling. She put out her arms and legs for balance and marvelled that they touched nothing. Deng watched nervously, only occupying the spaces he needed to complete each task. Only when she was back in the dorm, wrapped in the striped duvet, the concrete wall nearby, did she feel the sensation fully leave her.

Finally, the day chosen to be most auspicious for a housewarming arrived. Pam and Deng had invited friends as well as the foreign teachers from the English Department to make dumplings. Deng and Pam greeted each guest, finding new places for the growing collection of plants and candles. After an hour of strained small talk and weak barley tea, they broke off into small groups to prepare the dumplings. Pam moved easily between teaching the foreigners and then ridiculing their large, awkward hands in Chinese.

As the sun began to set, the weight of coldness settled on the apartment. One of the foreigners exclaimed, “Don’t you use central heating?”

“No, we don’t have it yet.”

“But why? Don’t you freeze at night?”

“Oh, we don’t live here.” All of the foreigners’ eyes turned towards them, wondering if something had been badly lost in translation. Pam laughed and her face turned red. “We prefer the dorm.”

“Why a dorm? This place is amazing,” one of the foreign women said, her voice unable to disguise her shock.

“Here, it’s..,” she paused realizing that she hadn’t understood until this moment, “it’s just too big.”