janey's dad | c.h./the ghoul | part 01
➥ pairing | cooper howard/the ghoul x f!reader
➥ word count | 3.7k
➥ warning(s) | 🔞 smut; age gap, hair pulling, teasing, making out, mutual pining, lipstick kink, stockings, frottage, porn w/ feelings, porn w/ plot, mild angst w/ happy ending, divorced!coop, babysitter!reader, pre-war/bomb
➥ summary | “We really, uh, shouldn’t - oh fuck, you look --”
➥ notes | i'm so sorry this is later than it should be. i am unfortunately a corporate slave and this fic just did not want to cooperate 🫠
there are a lot more things planned and this fic is turning into a bit of a beast (20+ pages and counting rip lmao) so i've decided to split it into two parts to make it more manageable for myself
mostly un-beta'd atm
a special thanks to @corinthianism for all her lovely help ❤️!!
feel free to send in thots, questions, requests! | masterlist
Divorce is hard, but being a divorcé is downright hellish.
One of the ugliest things in the world, if Cooper Howard has any say. At least when he was a Marine, they told him where to point his gun, where to aim; nameless threats vanishing with a quick squeeze of the trigger.
Here, these ‘enemies’ aren’t enemies — not really.
It’d be easier if they were.
Worse still, they have names he holds as dearly as his own. There’s Barb, whip smart and always so clever. Then Janey, the light of his life and so sweet his teeth ache.
Once upon a time, life was sweeter than apple pie on Sundays.
Then came the separation.
Afterwards, he finds it hard to look at what’s left of his family without losing breath like a horse kick to the chest. Their absence rips open a hole inside him ten miles wide, its edges jagged and wrong.
And when he can’t take the silence anymore, fingers of malt liquor help dull the ache, though it’ll never be enough to mend what’s broken.
See, war’s something he understands.
But these domestic battlefields where he sits across from his ex-wife while lawyers barter this weekend and that holiday?
How he struggles to meet his daughter’s eye every time she asks if he’s coming home?
When Barb keeps the house and the money while he keeps the scrapbooks and the dog?
He doesn’t — can't — refuses to comprehend.
Because in what world can you reconcile looking down the barrel of a smoking gun only to find the woman you love staring back, finger on the trigger? Left out to hang as Vault-Tec orchestrates his downfall.
The true depth of their involvement is unknown, but it’s no coincidence his bank accounts dried up faster than the Mojave in June. The ink still wet when the media snapped up the story of his failed marriage.
Thus, his reputation (rather what’s left of it) unraveled faster than a spool of thread.
Knocked on his ass and kept there by a boot heel crushing his windpipe. Whose? He hasn’t got a fucking clue.
But whoever they are, they’re making sure he stays a washed up nobody who struggles to land a call back, much less pay his monthly alimony on time.
See what we can do? You were America’s favorite gunslinger - now look at you. Mind your place.
Hell, millions used to scream his name.
Nowadays people whisper it behind their hands like a dirty secret, “Oh, did you hear? Cooper Howard…” as they dissect pieces of his life into bite-sized Before’s and After’s. “Hah! Serves him right. Y’know, I never liked him much.”
While he grits his teeth and swallows his bitterness with a smile, he hates how he can’t protect Janey from snide reporters and nosy strangers. Juggling actor-father-divorcé with fumbling hands.
It’s only been six months; a heartbeat, a lifetime, and already he’s scraped thin like butter over too much bread.
Something’s gotta give.
After all, he’s only one man.
But just when it's bleakest, the clouds part.
A young woman moves in next door, the first bright thing that’s come his way in a long, long while.
At first, he kept his distance.
Exchanged vague hello’s and how-are-you’s. Then Janey took a shine; always so friendly and eager to talk about her latest books.
Any reservations he might’ve had died when he saw how enamored you are with her.
Only made sense that over time small pleasantries turned into playdates. Then those playdates turned into sleepovers.
Before long, you’re watching her when a gig runs late.
Rustling up grub and tucking her into bed more often than not these days. And when he slinks in through the door, knees aching and stripped to the bone, there you are with a shy smile and a warm meal.
So what if he takes himself in hand after you leave, stroking his cock to the thought of you down on your knees in that pretty little sundress?
Imagines the wide stretch of your ruby lips as you swallow him down, lipstick smeared an awful mess?
Cums hard to the fantasy of your teary eyes and hiccupy breaths as you choke?
What you don’t know can’t hurt you.
After all, he’s a gentleman... he promises to keep his hands to himself.
“All right, Sugar Bomb, it’s bedtime.”
Bundled in navy bedding up to her nose, Janey’s wide brown eyes peer up at you from beneath a riot of frizzy curls. Roosevelt, her ever faithful companion, plasters himself to her side. The tip of his tail swishes once, twice before falling limp.
“Ah, c’mon guys. Don’t look at me like that.” You sigh with a fond shake of the head, hip popping out to rest against the doorframe. “I don’t make the rules, I just follow ‘em.”
A muffled response sounds from the lump of little girl, “Nmfhm.”
Squinting, you dip your head and tap the side of your ear, "Pardon?"
“Mnhfmmmm.”
“Ye—eah… Didn’t catch that, Mumbler.”
Janey tugs down the blanket, her mouth pursed in a moue of displeasure. “I said,” she crosses her arms with a huff, “not until Dad gets home.”
Shit.
“M’sorry, baby. He’s still gonna be a while.” Walking across the room, you stop beside the bed and motion your hand back and forth. “Scooch over.”
Gangly limbs fumble as Janey wiggles into the middle of the mattress, her feet tangling in the blankets. Roosevelt takes a toe to the nose during the transition, but flops across her knees all the same.
Together they settle with a bounce of springs.
In the open space, you slide in.
The bed sinks under your weight, a plume of rich cologne tickling your nose; mint-spiced citrus. Cooper. Your stomach swoops, and your heart trips.
“I didn’t see him at breakfast — or lunch!” A pout tugs at her mouth. “Not even dinner. I gotta go home tomorrow. So when am I gonna see him?”
“Oh, bug.” You sigh, propping yourself up on your elbow. “Your dad’s been real busy at work. And I know that’s been hard for you, but I promise to make sure he’s here for breakfast tomorrow.”
“D’you mean it?” Her cold nose digs into your skin. “Me and Roosevelt miss him so much.”
Cuddled into your chest, Janey tosses an arm around your back. Her fuzzy head rests in the crook of your arm, springy curls tickling your skin.
You squeeze her tight and trace your fingertips over her forehead.
“I can do you one better,” you say, bopping the tip of her nose just to hear her giggle - a soft sound that sits warm and gooey in your chest. “I pinkie-promise.”
Her finger loops around yours, so small and fragile.
“I’ll even make pancakes. How’s that sound for a promise?”
“Oh, yes, please! I think Dad will like that,” a wide yawn cuts her off mid-sentence. “He’s sad, but he always smiles when you make food.”
Janey’s words — unexpected as they are sudden — cut so deep it steals the breath from your lungs. You flounder, your heart a throbbing bruise in your chest.
“... Then pancakes it is.”
As if nothing happened at all, she asks, “Do I have to go to bed now?”
“Afraid so, little miss.” Your responding chuckle sounds stilted even to your own ears. “Just you wait. When you wake up, Dad’ll be home.”
“Fi—ine, but I want extra pancakes.” Janey pauses, considers you with narrow eyes, then adds, “With syrup!”
“Whatever you want,” you say with an indulgent smile. “Now... time to sleep. It’s really past your bedtime.”
She gives you one last squeeze then lets you tuck her in nice and tight, blankets pulled up to her chin. You drop a kiss on her forehead while Roosevelt re-settles on the pillow beside her after a quick scratch behind the ears.
Everything in order, you turn to go only for a little hand to stop you.
“Yes?” you reply, glancing at her from over your shoulder.
“... can you put on one of Dad's movies?”
The tremble in her voice - like she’s about to get scolded - breaks your heart clean down the middle. Stitching on a soft smile, you nod and walk to the darkened TV set in the room's corner.
After fiddling with the nobs, static flashes to life.
“The Man from Deadhorse okay?”
The holotape sliding into the track swallows the sound of her tiny “Yeah.” Starting up with a whirl of machinery, the second-hand Radiation King flickers to life in black-and-white.
A vast plain and bright sky stretches across the screen.
Then Sugarfoot creeps into frame with the one and only Cooper Howard sitting astride the noble steed. The sheriff’s badge on his chest glints in the sun.
“Thank you,” she mumbles, already half-way to sleep.
“Anything for you, baby. Sleep tight.”
Flicking off the lights, you leave the door cracked. Walk away pretending like hearing her whisper goodnight to the TV doesn’t lance through you like lightning.
The desire to whisk her into your arms and soothe all of her ails is almost impossible to ignore.
Somehow, you distract yourself by wiping up the table, then by fixing a plate of dinner for whenever Cooper rolls in. Though all the while, how brokenhearted Janey sounded sits in the back of your mind like a leaden weight.
When Cooper stumbles into the living room, it’s half past midnight.
You’d gotten up to greet him, curled as you were in an armchair reading, when something about the stern line of his mouth gave you pause.
Where the usual lighthearted greetings lingered, a pensive stillness trembled to life.
Tension crackles through the air; a held breath of agitation. By the faraway gaze and defeated slump of his broad shoulders, it’s plain to see the night didn’t go as intended. And no matter how much you long to soothe, you can’t.
After all, he’s not yours to touch.
Instead, you offer a sympathetic smile and ask, “Rough night, huh?”
Cooper ignores the prompt, squeezing past with a brief touch to your elbow as he makes a beeline for the dry bar. The heat of his body is there and gone in a flash, his cologne teasing your senses. He says, “Thought you’d be asleep by now.”
Your heart flutters in your throat. “Ah,” you lick your lips, “well, I was going to finish my chapter first.”
Humming, he turns his back to you and fiddles with high balls and decanters. The tink of crystal glassware fills the air as he speculates which alcohol goes best with his mood.
“Thanks again for watching Janey.” He nods in approval and fixes his whiskey neat. “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble, Mr. Howard.” You shrug. “She’s a sweetheart.”
He shoots you a dry look from over his shoulder, stirring the dark amber of his drink with a forefinger. When he sucks his skin clean with a soft pop - a flash of a pink tongue taunting, teasing - your stomach swoops.
God, I wonder what else his mouth can do.
Flustered, you clear your throat and stare at a spot on the wall.
“How many times do I gotta tell you to call me Coop?” he says, digging through some drawers until he finds what he’s searching for: a lighter. “It must be a million and one by now.”
Flint sparks as flames jump, eating away at the end of a cigarette. Cooper inhales in short little puffs, pulling on the filter. His cheeks hollow, the shadows enhancing the cut of his jaw before the tip catches alight.
“Well,” he exhales, his gaze catching yours through a plume of smoke as he turns, brow raised. “Anything to say for yourself?”
“Old habits die hard, I guess,” you chuckle.
The corner of his mouth lifts in a lopsided smirk. “I’ll drink to that.” He knocks back the last finger of whiskey before refilling with gin.
Springs groan in protest when he drops to the couch, settling in with an outstretched arm and wide spread thighs.
“It’s been a long fucking day,” he rasps.
Gulping, you try to ignore the space at his feet.
The stirrings of desire provoked by the urge to sink to your knees and fill it with your body, to ease tension from those shoulders with your hands, your mouth, your cunt — if he’d let you.
“You heading home?” Nursing the fresh drink, he swallows a mouthful, only to hiss low through his teeth at the chemical burn. His throat bobs, framed by the open collar of his shirt. “Whew! Goddamn, that’s strong.”
“No, I can stay for a while.” A bird on a wire, you perch on the cushion beside him. “Got nothing else planned for tonight, anyhow.”
Cooper snorts. “I doubt that very much. A sweet young thing like you,” he motions towards you with his glass, “I’m sure you’ve got plenty of fellas calling, especially on a Friday night. Don’t waste your time with me.”
“That’s not why I--” you stop yourself short.
Save for the bustling LA avenue right outside the complex, the apartment itself is stone silent for several heartbeats. Words hover on the back of your tongue, catching in the bend of your throat molasses thick.
Meanwhile, Cooper continues to swirl the alcohol in his glass.
Maybe in a different life, you wouldn’t hesitate to express yourself.
But here — with him — you shouldn’t.
Christ sake, he’s a grieving divorcé, you chastise yourself. The last thing he needs is me trying to lay one on him.
When you speak, his name glides off your lips for the first time, clementine sweet, “... Cooper, I’m not wasting my time. I enjoy spending it with Janey - and you.”
“Well,” he husks, hooded eyes dragging down your visage in a slow once-over, “you’re the first one in a long while to feel that way, sweetheart.”
Dripping like honey whiskey from Cooper’s lips, the simple phrase burns its way down-down-down until it blooms like liquid fire in your belly. Warms you all the way to your toes as your heart pounds against your ribcage.
“I mean it.” Your knuckles twist in the pleats of your sundress, bolts of blue fabric bunched around your knees. “Everything I do is because I want to.”
The flash of red nails plucking at the sheer nylon of your stockings snaps up his attention, his gaze snagging - staying as he chases the curve of your exposed leg, hungry.
He wets his lips, and tenses his jaw when he spots how the soft fat of your thigh dimples in because of your garter. “That’s awful sweet of you to say.”
You tremble beneath the intensity of his attention.
Greedy.
Little kisses of awareness spark bright along the path his eyes carve like the caress of shy fingertips.
However, before you’re able to confront him about his interest, the heat leaches from his expression, grows mute and cold like a muzzled dog.
Readjusting the waistband of his slacks with a tug, he says, “I know you got better things to do than keep an old man company.”
Irritation sparks. “Cooper--”
“If this is about paying you for tonight,” his lips quirk into a sheepish smile, “I won’t be able to yet.” He scrubs a hand through the stubble peppered along his jaw. “The gig tonight didn’t… Well, it doesn’t matter.”
“No, that’s not what I --”
He plows on, “Anyway, the one I’ve got tomorrow should be enough. How about I stop by around seven o’clock? I’ll treat you to dinner as an apology.”
Frustration bubbles beneath the surface of your skin, antagonism thrumming through your veins. Your hands shake almost as much as your voice. “Cooper!”
“I… uh, yes?” He blinks.
Your brows furrow. “You don’t get it,” you say. “I mean, you truly don’t know?”
“I’m afraid there’s a lot I don’t get. You’re gonna have to be more particular.”
Maybe not said in so many words (or at all) but actions speak far louder.
Otherwise, why else would you spend most of your time in his apartment, fill every spare moment with Janey, and reserve evenings for his company?
Hell, you even cook and clean!
Almost scream your interest from the rooftops, and it’s obvious to everyone but him, it seems.
Here you are thinking he was preserving your dignity whenever he ignored a passing comment or lingering touch when, in fact, he’d been oblivious to their existence to begin with.
How a man can be so obtuse when you’re throwing yourself at him is beyond you.
If he wasn’t so captivating…
“Are you kidding me,” you ask, mindful of your tone, “how could you not know?” You throw your hands in the air. “I’ve been — for months!”
“Well, I don’t have a goddamn clue what you’re talking about, sweetheart,” he snarks, setting his glass on the table. “Care to enlighten me?”
Fine. If that’s how he wants to play, let’s play.
When he moves to take another drag from his cigarette, you strike, fingers locking around his wrist mid-lift. And although his glassy eyes narrow, he keeps his hand still.
Waiting to see what you'll do.
Tucking your knee under you for balance, you bend forward and watch his face from beneath your lashes. When your lips wrap around the filter, a dark hunger bleeds into his expression, his pulse a steady thud against the pad of your thumb.
Inhaling, the cherry lights up, a flashbang in the dim overhead light.
Cooper’s breath hitches, and then you’re pulling away with a lungful of smoke; the taste of ash heavy on your tongue.
He tracks your movements with greed, gaze flicking for the briefest of moments past your chin before refocusing on the ring of red lipstick staining white paper.
“If you wanted one,” he chokes, gripping the back of the couch with white knuckles, “all you had to do was ask.”
With a coquettish grin, you exhale to the side and stare at him with hooded eyes. “Is that so?” Plucking the cigarette out of his limp hold, you stub it out in the ashtray. “What if I wanted to ask for something else, Mr. Howard?”
The next moment finds you deposited in his lap, his hands shooting out to grab at your waist only to freeze before they make contact.
“Woah! I--”
“Tell me something.”
Your lips caress the shell of his ear, sharing breath - sharing space as you plaster yourself to his front, arms looped over his shoulders. He jolts, body trembling with restraint.
“Would you give me what I wanted if I said please?”
The distance between you snaps taut with anticipation. “C-Coop,” he stutters. “Call me Coop.”
You hum. “Well, Coop, would you?”
“That depends almost entirely on what you’re asking for, sweetheart.”
Red nails skate along the back of his neck, play in the downy soft hair of his nape just to feel him shiver. And then you’re leaning back with your hands braced on his knees, your legs falling open in invitation.
The hem of your dress bunches around your waist, exposing the soft cotton of your underwear, and the darkened patch of slick soaking through.
“I think you know exactly what I want,” you purr. “Because you want it too. Don’t you?”
He bites down on a strangled moan when your hips arch forward, rocking the soft plush of your ass against the heavy weight of his thickening cock. The zipper digs into your skin as he tents the front of his slacks.
Mouth dropping open, his tongue flicks out to wet his lips - a slick circle of temptation that makes you clench. “I, uh, I don’t…”
Reaching between your splayed thighs, you hook a finger beneath your panties and pull the fabric aside. He jerks forward, exhaling hard at the flash of your soaked cunt and twitching clit.
“C’mon, be honest.”
With a sigh, you gather your arousal on the tips of your fingers.
Cooper’s gaze is a heavy weight pinning you in place as you pretend it’s him dragging his knuckles over the top of your mond. Him dragging calloused fingers up along sticky folds to play with your sensitive clit, ripping soft little mewls from your lips.
“Can’t you see what you do to me, Coop?” you say, pulling your hand away to show the webs of slick stretching between your fingers. “I’m so wet. Please, I’ve wanted you for so long…”
His hips rock against your ass in an aborted thrust. “Shit - shit!” Eyes slamming shut, he grits his teeth and digs his fingers into your sides hard enough to bruise. “We really, uh, shouldn’t - oh fuck, you look --”
“Why not?” Your hand brushes over his groin. “I can feel how hard you are.”
“It isn’t right, that’s why.” He stutters, stumbles over his words, “Besides, Janey…”
“I can be quiet,” you say, lips trembling. “I promise.”
“Goddamnit, you can’t say things like that and expect me not to --” Cutting himself off, strong fingers seize your chin and tilt until you’re met with Cooper’s severe expression, his scorching gaze. “You need to tell me now: are you sure this is what you want?”
There’s no hesitation, “Yes.”
In what world would you refuse?
The words barely pass your lips before Cooper’s bowing his dark head, mouth ravenous as it captures yours in a slick glide of bruising lips and hungry tongues.
He steals your breath, licks into your mouth and traces along the sensitive inside of your lip.
Pulse jump starting, your toes curl over the edge of the cushion and your thighs squeeze the barrel of his chest, kneecaps digging into his ribs.
“Oh,” a moan punches itself out of your throat - a breathy little thing swallowed up by his lips. “That’s--”
Anticipation swells, simmers between you like a band before it snaps. A strong forearm locks around your waist, tugging you into the cradle of his chest until you’re plastered from stem to stern.
Too hungry for tenderness as his free hand slips up to cup the back of your head, fingers catching in the briar of your hair and tugging at the roots.
You claw at his shoulders while sparks of pain ricochet down your neck, sufficing into a prickly flush that heats your blood. “Hnn, Cooper,” you gasp.
He murmurs your name through languid flicks of his tongue and sharp little nips of skin that leave your mouth tender and swollen. When he pulls away to survey his handiwork, his eyes are dark. Fathomless.
"I never thought I'd get the chance to kiss you like this," he says, wicking his thumb over the pillow of your bottom lip. "You taste as good as I imagined."
Dragging your nails across his scalp, you plead, “No more teasing - I can't take it.”
"Well," he grunts, fingers twisting up in your dress, “If that’s how you feel, then you better put those hips to good use and work for it, sweetheart."
part 2 dropping soon
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languages, travel, identity, grief
Maybe some of you have heard of Xu Zhimo's Second Farewell to Cambridge (徐志摩 再別康橋 Translation: Saying Goodbye to Cambridge Again, by Xu Zhimo | East Asia Student). It's an achingly lovely poem about a Chinese scholar who studied in the UK, and how he left so gently, taking nothing with him as he went. It brought me solace over the last year.
I thought for a very long time about how I felt about having to leave China, and what it felt like to mourn for a future that was never going to mine. I cried. How am I supposed to explain why? I'm not Chinese. I've got no family there, or a childhood to look back on. I couldn't explain it even to myself.
That pain was coupled with a type of uncertainty, a discomfort at myself for feeling so strongly. This feeling was not allowed. It meant - what? Something awful, probably. I was a racist, probably. I should hate myself, probably. Fetishization is the word that gets thrown around for white people and their time spent in East Asia at one end of the spectrum - at the other end it's just seen as embarrassing and deeply, you know, cringe. It's a self-interrogation - why do I feel so sad? Why do I feel this pull so strongly anyway, to a country that's not even mine? Why should it matter so much when I leave? I didn't feel like this grief has any sort of legitimacy. But it has taken from September - eight months after leaving - for me to pick up Chinese again.
I felt, for months, hollow and unsettled and drifting from place to place. I opened my textbook, and closed it again. The memories there were too painful. I'm not going to write about why I had to leave, but it wasn't by choice. I had loved the people in the school, even if it was for a short time. When you have no internet and are training eight hours a day, the days are coloured more sharply: bright and hurtful and wonderful all at once. We had no running water. It was in an abandoned hotel. I miss the monk at the temple door opposite the school, always on time at 6am to open it for our classes. I miss the folk at the local shop who invited me to watch films on their projector; once they killed a chicken for us. I miss the woman in the woods who gave me the chestnuts she had picked. I gave the chestnuts to the cook, and we steamed them and ate them by the lake. He wanted me to marry his son; he wanted it so strongly that he brought me pork, and desserts, and gave me paper, and promised me I could have a jade bracelet, that he would buy me a house. I miss the oldest martial arts teacher, who spoke in such strong dialect I could barely understand him. When I was sad and missing home one night, he told me that I should stay after dinner. In the silence and against the cicadas, he started to play the erhu for me. Later, my friend told me that he hadn't know what to say, how to comfort me; I was a foreigner and a young woman, after all. We had very little in common. But nobody has ever played a piece of music for me like that before.
And I miss X, my best friend there and partner in snack-smuggling crime. She is 19 years old, and a janitor's daughter, and one of the wisest people I have ever met. (She also rides an excellent motorbike, and lent me her hanfu, and we sped through the city giddy with our own daring and trying not to be caught.) We got matching haircuts; she had always wanted to cut her hair like a boy, and was too scared to do it alone. When I left, I told her to stay in touch: she shook her head. She said that some people were meant to know each other for some time, and no more. I think the death of friendship by attrition, by - as Elrond said! - the slow decay of time, is one of the saddest things of all. I deleted Wechat. I don't want to read over the old messages. By having this place - her, and the chestnuts, and the cicadas - as a memory, I can tuck it away it. I can keep it close.
I wrote a poem myself on the plane. That was the last I thought about China, the last thought I let myself have, in eight months. I kept myself away from it. It felt like a wound. And against that hollowness, there was constantly the question: Why should I have any right to miss this place? Who I am there? Why does it matter? We are all different people, wherever we go, and whoever we are with; we wear different skins, large or small. In China I was [...]. She was who I was. That name, that I introduced myself to people with - she was bright and friendly and tried to translate things just so. Everybody who goes as the only foreigner to a place - or the only foreigner that speaks the language - is a little bit self-obsessed. It happens. It's unfortunate, and something to guard against. But it also gives you its own kind of identity in a way: your identity is Foreigner. Your identity is a cultural bridge. Everyone you meet, in a country as friendly and curious as China, has questions about you. You stand with your feet in both worlds, and are not really part of either of them. That identity is easy to slip into, like cool water, like trying on new clothes. It's easier that thinking: who am I outside of that? Where am I going? I don't really know. I don't think anyone really does.
And then the second thing happens. I speak Chinese well, by this point. My accent is there, but it's slight. I am short, and have dark hair, and a generally similar build to many East Asians - so the questions I have got in the last few years have changed. Sometimes people think I have been raised here. Sometimes they think I am ethnically Russian, and nationally Chinese. Sometimes I get asked if I am half Chinese. Usually they know I am a Foreigner, 100% white - but not always. There is a peculiar rush that comes from that acceptance; from feeling the relief, just for fifteen minutes, that you belong. It's not about 'passing', or race-bending, or anything twisted - it's nothing so unnerving as that. It's just the human need to belong. Everyone gets tired of being stared at, after a while. And after a while, you start to think - I wish I understood. I wish they understood. I wish this were easy.
But then the conversation keeps going. You don't know a local word, or you misunderstand. You say something in a strange way, or you make a strange gesture, and the glass shatters, and - there you are again, naked again, exhausted again, explaining yourself again. That's the other half of it. There's solace in the Foreigner identity, because that means that's all you are. You don't have to think about your parents, or whether they worry about you so far from home; of course they do. The Foreigner is good and filial and a wonderful daughter. You can craft her into any shape you like. But it also marks you out again and again, endlessly and again, as Other.
There was a paper published a while ago that showed measures of acceptance of non-natives in native-speaking communities. It highlights a strange, but familiar experience to those who have lived abroad - the people who spoke the language to a medium level felt more accepted and less lonely than those that spoke the language to a high degree. It makes sense, and mirrors what I have found with both Chinese and German. When you speak a little Chinese, you are a wonder - a curiousity! Look at the Western girl go! People are kind, and curious, and will slow down to include you in conversations. You are thrilled with what you can access - all this knowledge, that other people don't have! Look how special you are!
And then you get better. And then you realise, cut by cut, that you will never be one of them. You don't want to be Chinese, per se; but you do want to be accepted. You are happy to be British; but you miss China like a wound, an old one, festering, even when it was never yours. How do you tell your family that you are not grieving a lost romance, a beautiful girl, but a language and a life? That there are words of majesty, of playfulness, that will never be yours? You speak well enough that people no longer bother to dumb things down, or explain them; you sit with your discomfort, smile painted on, because - you know. It's not bad. You understand most of it. And on the edge of that circle, smiling uncertainly, following the vast majority of what is being said, you are not clever enough and not witty enough to keep up with the chengyu, the cultural references, the slang, and the raucous laughter around you erupts, and you don't know what you've missed, and everybody says - she's quiet, that one. Maybe all the foreigners are? And all you are doing is sitting and feeling the distance between You and Them as heavy and as stifled in your chest as an ocean of dark.
So you go back. Back to your people. But when you sit with the other foreigners, you are apart. They laugh; what are these nutters doing? The Chinese don't make any sense. The Chinese do this - they do that. You sit there, and then there is a pressure building in your chest too, a discomfort, the desire to stand up and say - well, actually.
You are responsible for everything the Chinese teachers do, and have to explain things in a way that the students understand - Confucian thought, and Buddhist philosophy, translated in pithy bite-size adages for the West. You have no qualifications for this; everything you assert, you feel unsure. Uncertain. Someone else could explain it better, more nuanced, and you need to do more reading anyway - but here you are, and here they are, and you're the only one. And you do know. Not enough, but enough that their jokes, their pains, make you uncomfortable. You feel the need to defend both parties; to be a diplomat, every second of every day. In turn, when the students come to the teachers with problems, you have to translate their grievances in a way that the Chinese teachers will be sympathetic towards. Once I got asked: why do you never join us after class? Why are you always so quiet when you're not working? As a translator, you are always working. Every time you speak, you are working; what you choose to say, and what you choose to not say, and where you choose to intervene. You are building relationships, and disappearing, and you are becoming invisible, and you're a nothing, and you're everyone and you're nobody and nobody realises you are doing anything more than translating at all.
I wanted to stay. I couldn't have stayed. I wanted to be accepted as one of them. I wanted to be accepted for who I was. That means a foreigner. I wanted to be true to myself, which means that I would always be the Foreigner, which means I would always be apart from them. It is that contrast and juxtaposition which causes the grief. And there was never an ending to it, a resolution, a chance to reconcile myself (in China) with myself (in the UK), because all at once I had to leave. The grief comes most from the second arrow - not the pain of leaving, but the bewilderment of not knowing why I was in pain at all.
It's been eight months. Slowly, as spring comes, I feel like I am on surer ground. I can look at my old books, those painstaking notes, and I could look at new ones too and I'm starting to think, because this is what I tell my students, and maybe there's some truth in it - it's okay if you're not perfect. It's okay if you didn't achieve what you wanted to, and that the language - in its wholeness, and who can ever know that? - will never, not quite, be yours. It's the struggle and the process that means that I will know and understand Chinese in a different way, in my own way, in a slanted-to-reality sort of way, that is a treasure in and of itself. There is beauty in its brokenness too.
And there is sorrow, too. The sorrow that comes with easing yourself into a different life, and it holding you gently for a while. I sat there - I spoke to them. It's not only missing a place; it's missing a person you were, a stage of your life, for a time. It's knowing that a place has reached inside your ribs and taken root there - even if you don't return, you can never fully get rid of that again. You are two people now, with feet straddling two oceans. There are parts of you that loved and suffered and hated and grew in Chinese, not English. You can't explain that. You can't even begin. Sometimes - not often - you are a stranger in your own land. The poets spoke of that. In the age of fast travel, of the weekend break, we have forgotten the ways a place can burrow itself inside you, and find its own home.
It's not the same as the grief that someone Chinese will face. But it's still grief. I have put my life into Chinese. Maybe that is all it takes to grow love.
Now, I turn back to Chinese - as a foreigner, as Melissa, as myself. It's a bittersweet thing. I know that I cannot hold all of it. It will spill out, like the sun, and there is no way I can be that without losing myself and my history and my own green woods. But I think I am ready now. I am surer, and a little steadier on my feet.
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