“Seeking a responsible housemate to join a quiet and loving couple with cats.” The advert stated that drugs and overnight guests were not allowed. I scrutinized the photo: an untouched, unfiltered picture of a middle-aged husband and wife, each cradling a calico cat. The amateur, out-of-focus shot of a nerdy cat couple set off red flags. Additionally, having an allergy to cats, I moved to delete the post. My finger hovered over the trash can icon, but my mind rushed in with rebuttals: The rent is so reasonable! It’s close to your office! It’s great to live with nerds because they aren’t drama queens! It was the last rebuttal that closed the deal. One week later I signed the lease.

The wife—Deborah—had given birth by the time I moved in. They named their daughter Drew in honor of Deborah’s fan-girl love of Drew Barrymore. The introduction lived up to my dreams of an ordinary, drama-queen-free new life. Mark—the husband—gave me the tour, “Here are the cats named Malcolm and Angus (in honor of Mark’s fan-boy love of AC/DC), here is your bedroom, here is the bathroom you’ll share with the college student from China. Here is the garage.” The garage was not where I would park my car—it was stacked floor-to-ceiling with pallets of canned beans, canned tuna, canned milk, jugs of water, jumbo packs of diapers and sanitary napkins. They had prepared to survive ten years of famine, pestilence, and drought. A washer and dryer occupied the scant remaining space and seemed to suck out the little remaining oxygen. A queasy sensation squirted through my guts.

The kitchen was no different. Every cupboard a jumble of jumbo-pack crackers, cookies, condiments; every shelf in the refrigerator crammed with cheese, cottage cheese, cream cheese, milk, yogurt. Instead of inspiring confidence, the extreme levels of inventory conjured feelings of depression.

Lin—the Chinese student—fit the stereotype as the only son and child of new-money parents. Rich and flush with cash, he drove a different sports car every other month. He was polite when we passed occasionally in the hall. He’d come home after I’d fallen asleep; I’d leave while he was still asleep. I only knew him by the leftovers he jammed in the fridge—late night pizza, half a burger, half a bottle of Coke. And by the hairs he left in the bathroom, in the shower drain, beard trimmings in the sink.

Deborah regularly shuffled around the house in a burgundy robe, untied. Her brown curly hair hung in dull ringlets. She towered over her husband, standing nearly six-feet tall. With green eyes and fleshy white cheeks, she could’ve looked her age. However, she lumbered her obese body as if she were constantly trudging through thick mud. Thus, she presented as a 28-going-on-58-year-old new mother.

Shepherd’s Pie—one of her favorites—made an appearance every Sunday night. Deborah baked it in a giant chafing dish. It’s normally baked in a casserole, but Deborah doubled recipes and had the cookery to support it. She set out a large glass mixing bowl filled with shredded cheese as an accompaniment. Every meal featured a dairy product. She was addicted to milk—guzzled two gallons every week. Super-sized was her motto: large tubs of yogurt, cottage cheese, and sour cream commandeered the fridge. Along with bricks of sharp cheddar, Monterey cheese, and butter. Milk products release serotonin in the brain, essentially mimicking opium. People become addicted to opium because it masks their pain. Unlike opium, you don’t need a prescription for milk.

Baby Drew did what newborns do: sleep, cry, feed. Her parents mixed her powdered formula from an economy can. Is it ironic that Deborah, who was addicted to milk, did not feed her daughter her own milk?

Mark stood a foot shorter than Deborah. He emanated reliability: always decked out in polo shirts tucked into khaki pants, hair parted reasonably on the side, bespectacled in thin black frames. He nuzzled the cats. He watered the apple tree. He drove a Volvo with a baby seat in the back. He rolled the garbage bins curbside on Wednesday and rolled them back on Thursday.

For a while, everything resembled the advert they posted. I hung my laundry in the backyard. I ate an apple from the apple tree. Malcolm and Angus tried to snuggle my legs but I shooed them away. Allergies.

*  *  *

“This is my mom, Ling,” Lin introduced the petite, middle-aged woman. “She’ll be staying in my room.”

“Ok…” I said, “together, with you?” Skepticism soured my face.

“No!” Lin shook his head. “I’m moving to my friend’s place. I want my mom here to experience a homestay with a typical American family. Mark and Deborah are excited to host her.”

“Right, of course,” I said with forced confidence. I smiled at Ling and said hello.

The only problem: She did not speak English. After Lin left, we resorted to using liberal hand gestures, and spoke extra slow and extra loud. In return, she responded by nodding her head to everything.

Ling was fascinated by Deborah’s cooking. One evening Deborah gave a cooking demo on burritos: the counter was a mess of flour tortillas, a mound of shredded cheese, a generous bowl of sour cream, opened cans of refried beans, a jar of salsa, and ground beef soaking in oil in the skillet. Deborah taught Ling how to smear, dallop, and spread the fillings, creating oversized burritos.

When I came home for lunch one day, I witnessed Ling frying ground beef in the skillet, draped in Deborah’s yellow-checked apron. She set herself up at the dining table with all the fixings, assembling her own burritos, living the American homestay dream.

* * *

As I scooted out the door at dawn, I would run into Deborah or Mark mixing formula with Baby Drew in one arm. A baby’s development suddenly leaps into existence. One morning Baby Drew’s eyes were open and staring; another morning her hair molded into a faux-hawk.

Then she was holding up her head, making a smile, eating strained peas. Because I moved in shortly after Baby Drew came home from the hospital, I unwittingly became an auntie figure. It wasn’t possible to come and go without interacting with her, acknowledging her. Baby Drew hooked me in by grasping my dangling purse strap. Deborah involved me too—would call my attention—“Look! She can sit on her own!” Although I attempted to keep proper boundaries as their tenant—after all, I wasn’t a family member—I inadvertently became entwined and party to her milestones.

On Halloween, Mark, Deborah and Baby Drew dressed as matching Jack-o-lanterns, replete with stem-hat-toppers. By Christmas, Baby Drew had sprouted a tooth and tottered around in red elf booties.

*  *  *

After a twelve-hour workday, plus an hour of commute, my brain reverted to primal mode—eat, sleep, survive. Saddled with a purse on one shoulder, a laptop bag on the other, I trundled to the door. It must’ve been the sound of my heels clacking on the steps that gave me away, because just as I reached the door, it opened with startling urgency. Ling had been listening at the door and her broken English came tumbling out of her mouth.

“You—you husband! You husband Mark!” She pounced on me.

Shifting from my inner world—Take these damn heels off, soak in a hot bath—to interpreting Ling waving and gesticulating and talking madly—I sensed that yes, there was an emergency.

“No,” I corrected, “not my husband. Deborah’s husband.”

“Deborah husband!” Ling axed her English words. “Police! Mark go!” and here Ling mimicked the police pounding on the front door shouting, “Police! Open up!” Upon finding Ling, the police assumed she was the wife and bellowed, “Where’s your husband?”

Ling held her hands up, “No husband!”

The police surrounded her. “No husband!” Ling offered her hands to them again, flapping hopelessly like broken birds. She imitated the police by reenacting how they stormed into the house, cleared the foyer, then the kitchen, and searched the living room strewn with Baby Drew’s playpen, stuffed toys, wooden blocks, and Sophia the Giraffe. The living room—littered with Mark’s half eaten can of salted mixed nuts, black metal eyeglasses and a remote control on the TV tray next to his yellow velour armchair, dented with the impression of his rump.

Ling continued her dramatization, marched through the house, infiltrated to the back bedroom—the master bedroom. She hung her head and locked her hands behind her back as if handcuffed. “Mark!” She held this pose as she reenacted Mark being handcuffed and led out of the house. “Mark! Police! Mark go!”

I was still on the front steps—Ling had blocked the front door and wouldn’t let me advance. “Where’s Deborah?”

“Deborah gone! Drew gone!” Her tone sliced sharp and fast.

After absorbing the shock, I shoved past her and forced myself in, like the police.

Deborah returned with Drew late into the night. Their silhouettes lit by the dim stove bulb, they appeared as cut-out figures. Deborah’s purse spilled keys, tissues, coins, a bottle of pills, and a teething ring. Baby Drew straddled her hip, drooling on her shoulder.

“Are you ok?” I asked.

“No, but I will be.” Deborah spoke as if her spirit lay in a ball at her ankles. She wore a pastel green dress that washed out her eyes.

“If you need any help, let me know.” I offered, because I believed she was as blindsided as me and Ling. I offered, because I thought she was innocent of having prior knowledge.

*  *  *

I came home early from work. Shivering and sweating simultaneously, I’d caught the flu. Same with Deborah, who was weaving around the house in her burgundy robe. “I’m sick,” she announced. “Can you watch Drew?”

I shook my trembling, clammy head, “No, I’m sick too,” and staggered into a steaming hot shower, swaddled in my covers and plunged into delirious sleep.

In one feverish dream, I’m a cumulus cloud, accumulating pressure. So heavy, I’m too heavy to hang around up here. I clutch my cloud-head. Muffled mumbling registers as a muted faraway sound. A murmuring Deborah, a murmuring Ling and a crying Baby Drew.

In another dream, I’m fog. Hovering like a dirty scarf, icicles as tassels. The fog encircles, launching an icy invasion, penetrating all the way to the bones. A murmuring Ling, a crying Baby Drew.

In another dream, I’m singing opera. Singing Shanghainese in a Peking opera. Now singing an old Hunanese folk song. No. It was Ling, singing a Chinese lullaby. I crawled outside drenched in a cold sweat and witnessed Ling sweetly singing to Baby Drew. Apparently, Deborah had disappeared into her room, leaving Ling with her daughter. After singing a few verses, Baby Drew’s cries grew faint, sputtering into whimpers, and then she was sound asleep. Ling had done her duty.

We became a household of women mothering Baby Drew. With Mark out of the picture, we huddled in closer and supported Deborah in unified babysitting. Ling adopted Deborah’s cavernous apron, swimming in yellow checker print. A clever trick when bringing home a new puppy—-you also bring along cloth saturated in the odors of their mother for comforting familiarity. When Ling held Baby Drew, she swaddled her in familiar smells of a baked potato smothered in butter and sour cream. She sang Chinese songs—folk, pop, opera. Malcolm and Angus staged jealous protests, barfing up their food in front of Baby Drew’s playpen.

A week later, Ling went back to China. Lin enrolled in a different college and moved out.

The curtain came down on the American homestay experience.

*     *     *

Symptoms of serotonin deficiency manifest as depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, and suicide.

Twirling the knob, I thrust the door open to discover a strange woman in the house. Her white skin had the texture of tissue paper. Her black hair had been freshly dyed. She rose from the rocking chair and produced a bright smile. “Hello,” she said, “I’m here to take care of Baby Drew.”

“Where’s Deborah?” I asked with no smile in my voice.

Her voice unfurled like a breathy veil, “Do you know what a 5150 is?” “I do,” I said.

“Oh,” she straightened her spine.

“Oh, ok,” her voice descended an octave. We were strangers united in the understanding of police code for people who pose a danger to themselves or others. She implied Deborah tried to commit suicide and was now in a psychiatric hospital. “So I’ll be here until tomorrow, then a different friend will come over. It won’t be long until Deborah comes home,” she said, a trace for a smile. She sat back down in the rocking chair and continued to crochet.

A string of women arrived in turn, mixing baby formula, duly changing diapers, opening jars of strained peas. As part of the string, I was included in the babysitting call-up. Baby Drew grasped my index finger, pulled me through the garage and into the sunlight. We observed ants crawling on the sidewalk. Baby Drew staggered a few steps and stepped on a crack. There went Deborah’s back.

*     *     *

The garage door gaped open like a mouth in a dentist chair, an unknown SUV in the driveway. Two random teenagers loitered in the living room. Baby Drew was barefoot and crying in the hallway, clutching a package of dried seaweed. A thin blonde woman sloppily raided the kitchen—every cupboard exposed—flinging sandwich bags, jars of peanut butter, bottles of soy sauce, and aspirin onto the counter.

“Hi, I’m Faith, Deborah’s sister.” She sported sunglasses on her head, loose hairs escaping the ponytail. A white tank top and grey yoga pants completed her look.

“Deborah’s going to stay at the hospital for a while so I’m going to have to take Baby Drew.” She ordered her children—the teenagers—to start loading the SUV with bags filled with Deborah’s addictions: sugars—jars of jam, chocolate sauces, bottles of honey. And all the dairy. Only the cat food stayed behind. She led Baby Drew to the baby seat which had been transferred to her car. Finally she turned to me and said, “You’re here alone now. The cats are easy—just make sure their dishes are filled.” She pulled out of the driveway and vanished.

I reentered the house that I now inhabited alone. With two cats. They began barfing all over the house. One time on the sliding glass door. Another time just outside my door.

Collecting the mail one morning, a letter came from the Superior Court, addressed to Mark. I didn’t open it. That’s against the law. Instead, I wrote to them, asking for Mark’s criminal background, enclosed with a twenty-dollar check. I still didn’t know why he was in jail.

A month later, a white envelope arrived from the local police department. It contained Mark’s address, his family members, his age and occupation. It confirmed codes for which he was arrested. It detailed his sentence, which included a sentence that stipulated he was not allowed to be in or around children’s play areas. I noticed he’d been arrested before I moved in. Deborah knew all along. She was not innocent of having no prior knowledge. She knew her husband had been charged with child pornography the night I signed the lease at the kitchen table.

*     *     *

The platitude, painted on a wooden board, hung in the foyer: “Home is where the heart is.” Another cliché printed on a refrigerator magnet: “This is a sacred place.” This sacred place had been violated. This home had been invaded by a parade—a charade—of characters entering and leaving unceremoniously. I had been living with imposters. I had been living in a place of unspeakable crimes. My dreams of living with drama-free housemates landed like regurgitated cat food at my feet. Everything lay exposed like harsh lighting on a film set. The amateur photograph of Mark and Deborah holding Malcolm and Angus had been my cue to delete their post. I didn’t listen to my intuition, and was left paying rent (so reasonable!) under unreasonable circumstances. There was no closure. No fairy tale ending. My eyes fell on one of Baby Drew’s books, a book of nursery rhymes:

The farmer in the dell, the farmer in the dell, heigh-ho the derry-o, the farmer in the dell.

Then the farmer takes a wife—

The wife takes a child—

The child takes Sophia the Giraffe—

Then the farmer, wife, child, and Sophia the Giraffe hold hands and skip Sound of Music
style over a grassy knoll and out of sight.

The cheese stands alone.

Lin takes his Porsche and half-eaten pizza—

Ling takes a beef and cheese burrito, and sings a Beijing opera. Son and mother bow and exit stage right.

The police and emergency babysitting crew pirouette in straight line formation. They blow kisses to the audience and perform a pas de deux off stage.

Faith, with sunglasses on her head, tows her two surly teenagers to center stage. They hoist jars of honey, jugs of milk, and jumbo packs of string cheese like trophies. Faith drags everyone off stage.

The cheese stands alone.

I alone in a house where all the adults had gone to jail, gone to the psychiatric hospital, gone to China; I alone in a house with barfing cats.

It was my turn to be gone, my turn to leave the scene of the crime.

I pack my suitcase, toss the house key onto the counter, and drag the bin of cat food to the middle of the kitchen. “Bye Malcolm and Angus!” I shout over my shoulder. Rolling my suitcase through the garage, I squeeze between the inventory that outlasted the people who sought to survive off said inventory.

I exit stage left; the curtain comes down. Thus concludes my American homestay experience.

– Ayoung Kim