Guard Dependent

“OK so you just gotta roll up like momma does and wave you’re hand and they’ll open the gate. “  We’re discussing strategy around entrance to a neighboring compound.  I can just drive to the gate and wave at my own compound these days.  Each place has its own routine.  Some places the gate may as well not even be there.  Others you just have to say “club house, kids” and up she goes.  At this one we’re heading to, it’s guard dependent. 

Roll up.  Oozing confidence.  Wave without looking, like Hitler. Guy walks over.  My daughter begins the engagement, with the guard in Chinese:  “seeing a friend.  2303.”  And then, to me.  “She’s not home. “  “Is anyone home?”  “I don’t know.”  Great.  The call to the home seems to be taking some time.  No one is answering.  “Here.  Guard.  Talk to my friend.”  “No.”  That must be a ‘no-no’ they impress upon guards on the first day of Guard Training 101:  Anyone could be on that cell phone. 

A car rolls up behind me.  I’ll be nice.  I turn, get out of the way, and park on the side of the road.  My daughter now begins to plead in earnest in Chinese.  She’s making a forceful case.  She speaks so confidently in this, one of her two mother tongues.  And while the guard is being friendly, he isn’t budging.  I ask the guard for his name in Chinese.  He gives me his surname.  And then his name:  Zhang Hai Ping.  Lesson two on the first day of Guard Training 101 must be: assholes will invariably demand your name.  Provide it. 

I do a half hearted make believe call in English and repeat his name aloud over and over.  This foolishness isn’t swaying him either.  My daughter says she’ll just walk.  I note the cold and her attire.  He doesn’t budge.  Then an SUV pulls up.  He asks them where they’re going.  She smiles breezily and says in Chinese that she is with the real estate.  The gate goes up, they head in.  My daughter doesn’t miss a beat and says “how do you know who they are.”  He says he recognizes them.  They come often.  But it isn’t plausible, as he asked in the first place.

Then, it snaps and the observant, analytical side of my temperament, the part of me that was admiring my daughter’s fluidity is switched off.   He is making my daughter stand in the cold.  I raise my voice suddenly and making my way towards him, start yelling about how ridiculous all this is in Chinese, demanding he open up the gate.  And remarkably, sadly I think, he capitulates immediately and raises the gate for her. 

Later I text my daughter the three characters “张海平”。She texts back “Ha Ha Ha.”  But I’m not feeling mirthful or successful.  Routinized, rather, into something effective, fated, familiar.