It is strange being back in Macau, especially by myself. The familiar landmarks of the Hotel Lisboa and the pink and yellow colonial buildings surrounding the fountain in the Leal Senado square are comforting, while I try to navigate an upended world. It’s May 2000, and the city seems smaller than I remember it. But without a buddy, I’m constantly looking over my shoulder.
Dad’s old friend Adriano has hired me for the summer to teach English to the 150 new employees of his soon-to-open private gambling facility. The Legend Club is located in downtown Macau at the Landmark Plaza, just minutes from the Hong Kong Macau Ferry Terminal, to cater to all the gamblers that flood into Macau on the weekends.
Since I used all my money on airfare, I don’t have the means to rent an apartment or hotel room, so Adriano introduces me to a widow who is interested in renting a bedroom in her small flat for around $100 a month. The room is tiny with a hard double bed, but she’ll wait for rent until I get paid.
My first day at the Legend Club, I divide my 150 students into classes based on their jobs and English level. Their English abilities range from carrying on a simple conversation to not knowing a single word. This is going to be challenging, I realize, but I can’t fail. It’s my only way to make money. Or the only way I’ll consider.
I spend days creating a curriculum to match each level of competency, determined to teach every single employee the words and phrases that will be immediately useful in their interactions with casino guests. With a few English workbooks, I’m creating ten different course curriculums. It’s a very steep learning curve—for me, and for them.
For two months I work with the employees on vocabulary words and simple sentences, and they make good progress.
I long for the weekend, until the weekend arrives. The July heat is unbearable, and while the club is air-conditioned, the apartment is not. Early in the morning, I head to the market, but by the time I leave to make the mile-long trek home, the sun is blazing. When I get back to my apartment, my arms are burning with the weight of my groceries. Sweat is dripping down my arms and making rivulets down my legs. I drop into the nearest chair, and when I can’t sit in my sweat any longer, I enter my landlady’s room to borrow a fan.
She arrives home with her usual grunt of acknowledgment and walks into her room, only to burst back into the living room screaming and pointing and waving her arms. I’m scared and have no idea what is wrong. She is lecturing me on “respecting people’s privacy,” “other people’s things,” and “stealing.” I’m flabbergasted until it dawns on me. The fan. I don’t know what to say.
In the Family, we freely lend and borrow things without question, and certainly no one gets angry if you go into their room. In principle, everything is shared and ownership is frowned on. I try to calm her down, but I don’t know what to do. Besides my father, I’ve never seen someone so angry. In the Family, yelling is abhorrent. No matter how big the infraction, we’re expected to work things out with love.
While I fumble for words, she screams: “I want you out of here!” and storms out of the flat.
I walk to my room in a daze and sit on my bed, staring at my shaking hands. System people are terrors to live with.
When she returns a couple of hours later, I say again how sorry I am and convince her to let me stay. But from then on, I am on tenterhooks. She doesn’t want me here, and I don’t want to be here. She is only renting me a room because she needs the money, but she doesn’t really want anyone in her space. Thankfully, it’s only a couple of more weeks until my job at the Legend Club is finished, and I’ll have saved enough money to fly to America.
On a Monday toward the end of my gig, I wake up with a sore throat. The next day, it gets worse. By Thursday, I can barely teach class, and on Friday morning, I wake with a raging fever and it feels like there’s ground glass in my throat when I swallow. I try to walk to the bathroom, but I’m so dizzy I can barely make it. I call in sick.
For three intensely hot days, I lay on my bed, burning with fever and fading in and out of consciousness and delirium. There is no one to call, and my landlady ignores me completely. I realize I could die here, in this bed, with no one to help me.
As always, I pray. I know I left the Family and left Your service. But I also know that You still love me. I’m still Your child. Please heal me and raise me up.
I try to drink sips of water, and on the fourth day, the fever goes down enough that I can drag myself out of bed and down to the street, where I stumble into a taxi and ask them to take me to the hospital. It’s a last resort. I’m sure I don’t have the money to go, and I have very little experience with hospitals.
The doctor tells me I have a horribly infected strep throat and prescribes some antibiotics. I recover within a week. I’m surprised at how cheap the service is; the medical system is subsidized.
I’m grateful to be better, but the experience frightens me. In the Family, someone would have brought me tea and soup and checked on me every few hours to make sure I was okay; I wouldn’t have been afraid of being kicked out onto the street if I lost my job or fought with my roommate. I wouldn’t have even had to have a job. Out here, I am truly alone in a way I’ve never experienced. My parents can’t help. Plus, they live in different countries and keep changing addresses and phone numbers. Even if I emailed them from an Internet café, it would take days for them to respond, if at all.
Live or die. I am on my own.
I have no safety net.
Failure is not an option.
As I board the international flight to Houston, I’m grateful the summer is over, my job is finished, and I’ve saved enough money to make the journey to the US. My students have made impressive progress in just a few months, and I’m proud of them and of myself.
I settle into my seat and think of America, of the culture shock I experienced when I first arrived at twelve. This time, I know what I’m in for, and I have a plan. Well, a plan for how to figure out a plan. I’ve bought a plane-hopping ticket to visit my relatives in three states. I’m going to check out as many top colleges in those states as I can, then decide where to go to school and figure out how to get financial aid and a job. Okay, “plan” may be too grand a word, but it’s enough to get me on the plane.
As the engine rumbles for lift-off, I cling to the words of my great-grandmother Virginia, words I’ve lived by since I left home: “Faith means stepping off the cliff into thin air and having faith that God will put the stepping-stones under your feet.”