Your bank has good security, Aunt Lydia said as my uncle handed over his card.
I was so embarrassed that when Henri managed to seize one of my chopsticks, I almost welcomed the distraction. I snatched the utensil from his grasp, accidentally poking him in the cheek, which gave rise to indignant shrieks. I jumped up and bounced him in my arms, chanting apologies to him and everyone else within earshot. Once Uncle Mark had signed the receipt, we hustled out the door.
Back in the flat, I set Henri before the iPad and called my bank, still feeling more irritated than worried. A cheerful woman with a South Asian accent answered my call, assuring me that she’d do her best to resolve my problem if I wouldn’t mind holding. Classical violin music filled my ear.
Ms. Desjardins? The woman pronounced it “Dessjar-dinns.” I was used to it.
Wong is fine, I said.
Pardon?
Wong. Ms. Wong.
Oh, right, sorry, Ms. Wong-Dessjardinns. I believe I’ve figured out the problem.
Great, so I can use my card now? I glanced over at Henri, who’d fallen asleep in child’s pose, as though he’d been begging for something on his knees and suddenly plunged face-first into slumber.
No, I’m afraid not. It’s a bit more complicated than that.
What is it? The question spilled from my mouth, leaving behind the bitter aftertaste of dread.
The woman spoke carefully. It appears that Mr. Dessjar-dinns has removed you as an authorized user of his credit cards.
What does that mean?
It means your credit card no longer works.
I slapped my thigh so hard I winced. Henri didn’t stir.
It appears he also changed the settings of your joint account so that both of you, together, must approve all future withdrawals.
So I can’t use my debit card, either?
Not if he doesn’t approve the transaction.
When did he do this? Why wasn’t I notified?
January twenty-third, so, yesterday.
I charged into the bathroom and shut the door. You don’t understand. I’m in Hong Kong. I don’t have any money.
I do apologize, but because the primary account holder is Mr. Dessjar-dinns . . . her voice trailed off.
Deh-zhar-daaa, I snapped.
Pardon?
Nothing, sorry, forget it. What options do I have? I’m abroad, you see, and I have my baby here with me. Can you give me access until I can reach my husband?
In the same monotone the woman said, I do apologize, but I’m not permitted to do that.
My voice ricocheted off the bathroom tiles. How could he have done this without anyone notifying me?
I do apologize, but he’s the primary account holder—
All right, all right, I get it. I ended the call and then dialed Oli’s cell again and again.
His voice-mail message taunted me like an incessant advertising jingle. Hello! You’ve reached Dr. Olivier Desjardins. Please leave me a message and I’ll get back to you shortly!
At last I gave up.
Obviously I wasn’t in any real danger. My aunt and uncle would give us everything we needed—he knew that as well as I did. What he wanted was to shame me, to force me into confessing my sorry situation to my family.
And I can’t say that I blame him. After all, he’d begged me not to go, and I hadn’t listened, opting instead to attempt to outrun our problems like some reckless, angst-ridden juvenile.
You seem surprised, Detective. You probably think what he did was unacceptable, evidence of some deep misogynist streak, an obsessive need for control. That’s the kind of knee-jerk reaction a lot of us feminists would have, but I can assure you that’s not Oli. The truth is, I put him under a lot of pressure when I left my job, rendering us a single-income household. The baby had just been born and our expenses rose alarmingly. Henri couldn’t have been more than a couple weeks old when sleep deprivation led me to make a slew of costly, careless errors—I missed a couple credit card payments and got slapped with a bunch of late fees; I wrecked my car’s side mirror while backing out of the garage; I left the faucet on in the laundry room, which resulted in two grands’ worth of water damage. After that, Oli took charge of our finances for a while, arranging for our bills to be sent to his email address. Honestly, it was a relief when he changed the structure of our bank account, demoting me from joint account holder to authorized user. It assuaged some of the guilt I felt for not working. And with my head and heart full of Henri, I was more than happy to relinquish responsibilities, especially if that lessened Oli’s stress, too.
Oh, don’t look at me like that. Surely by now you know I’m not some deluded housewife, content to perpetuate the patriarchy. My mom used to give me that same look, as if she could not quite believe she’d fought this hard for gender equality, only to watch her daughter give it all away. But that’s the thing her generation doesn’t understand. Equality is about having choices, even if my choice isn’t the one she would have made.
You know, a couple of days before my wedding, she cornered me to ask about our finances. I remember being taken aback. She’d more or less left me alone to figure things out since I’d graduated college. I told her Oli and I had merged our accounts to have one less thing to worry about.
She hitched her lips to one side. It’s not a bad idea to have some money of your own.
A giggle escaped me. What did she take us for—a helpless, financially dependent damsel and a boorish chauvinist? At the time my salary was three times his! When I saw she was serious, however, I gathered myself. I didn’t know where to begin. I settled for explaining that California was a joint-property state. Say I were to stop working for a couple of years for whatever reason, and then Oli and I divorced, all assets accumulated over the course of the marriage would be divided straight down the middle. If anything, I joked, I should be making him sign a prenup, in case we split before he becomes an attending.
I heard the cockiness in my tone, and she did, too. Her mouth formed a grim line. She said, I know, I know, you went to the best schools. You have a fancy job. I’m just saying, think about it.
I did not.
Now, I chucked my useless plastic cards on the bath mat. During my last conversation with Oli, before I’d boarded the plane, he’d said, You can’t have it both ways. You can’t drop a couple grand whenever you feel like it and then get mad at me for working to earn that money.
I was so enraged, I couldn’t speak. Our house, our rules, my parents had intoned variously throughout my teenage years. All that latent adolescent ire flared within me, and the only thing I could muster was a cold, Don’t you dare, before ending the call.
There was no way I could let him win—not by apologizing and pleading for mercy, not by humiliating myself before my uncle and aunt. What can I say, Detective? You don’t earn straight A’s all your life without being uncommonly competitive.
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make light of what I’ve done. I was trying to explain how my almost pathological sense of drive kicked in, convincing me that only one option remained. I reached for my phone and typed a message to Winnie: There’s a problem with my bank account and I need access to funds fast. Do you still need someone to go to Guangzhou?
Her reply came within seconds: Chat now?
I perched on the edge of the tub and waited for her call. She didn’t waste time with pleasantries. She told me to grab a pen and paper because she couldn’t send anything in writing.
Telling myself there was still plenty of time to back out, I complied.
The following morning, she said, a driver would arrive at my aunt’s flat to ferry me across the border to the Baiyun Leather World Trade Center, the world’s largest retailer of replica designer leather goods.
Hang on, I said. I haven’t agreed to anything yet. Is this place dangerous?
Ava, Winnie said, it’s a regular mall.