Maid in China

To be quite honest with you, our marriage falling apart during the year that my husband's work kept us in Chengdu wasn't really a surprise. If I had put any real thought into it, I would have been able to realize that our relationship wasn't remotely strong enough to survive the stresses of coping with a completely foreign culture, spending very little time together, and having virtually none of our habitual outlets for blowing off steam available to us.

What was a surprise was where I ended up finding comfort during the worst of it. But that's getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning.

My name is Victoria. My husband's name was David. We had been married for five years. We'd met when David was getting his masters in international business law, and I was a -- well, I guess you could say I was a party girl. My family had plenty of money, and I was a legacy enrollment theoretically getting my bachelor's in business management, but what I really spent most of my time doing was shots at a number of different college bars. I had a rocking body, I knew how to flaunt it, and college boys and townies alike loved buying me drinks and trying to get into my pants. Quite a few of them pulled it off over the years, since I liked to have a good time. David didn't try to, which was the first thing that made me curious about him.

After a few conversations with him I knew he was exactly the kind of guy my parents would want me to marry -- he was obviously going to be making a lot of money very soon -- and he was pretty cute. When he did eventually get into my pants he wasn't brilliant, but he got the job done. He was on track to finish his degree before I finished mine, and I figured being his trophy wife would be less of a hassle than completing the necessary credits, so I made up my mind to fall in love with him, and shortly afterward he fell in love with me.

We got married in the summer after his graduation and spent five glorious years in a loft apartment in Northern Virginia, where his first job landed us. Close to the bustle of DC, with absurd amounts of money coming in after the wedding and with David's star on the rise, I had the best time of my life making a really stylish home we could be proud of, putting on my flirt-with-the-men, gossip-with-the-women act at all kinds of social gatherings, and doing the weekly rounds of Pilates, yoga, couture shopping, and Botox in order to keep my reputation as the most attractive wife in the firm.

Then David got assigned to Chengdu, and he was thrilled, since it meant he was already trusted enough to be the face of the firm in one of the most important international markets. I was excited too: I had seen a lot of amazing East Asian tourist destinations on Instagram, and the thought of weekend trips to the high-end shopping meccas at Hong Kong, Macau, or Singapore almost made me physically aroused. David really enjoyed our session the night he gave me the news.

But the prosaic reality, after the exciting glow of the first two weeks in a new place faded, was hard to deal with. It turned out that Chengdu was deep in the western interior of China, too far away from the big coastal hubs to make weekend trips worth the travel time, and worse yet, David imposed a budget on me for the first time ever. He hadn't told me before the move, but he was actually taking a significant pay cut in order to build up a reputation as a savvy international operator.

"It'll be fine, because the cost of living is so much cheaper here," he said, "and when we get back to the States I'll be able to negotiate a much higher salary than I would have if we stayed. But you know you were spending a little recklessly in NoVa. And we can't afford to do that here."

I saw even less of him than I had back home; he was taking grueling crash courses in Mandarin in the evenings, after spending long days at the office getting familiar with the workflow and logistics. He asked me, once, if I wanted to join him in learning the language, but I said something cutting and bratty and he never brought it up again. Our sex life vanished almost overnight.

The only real consolation was that the house the firm was renting for us was lovely and palatial, with ultramodern labor-saving devices everywhere, despite an old-fashioned exterior that matched the surrounding historic Sichuan architecture. It even came with a live-in maid, a tall, slender, quiet girl who introduced herself as Yiman. Her English was very good, although clearly learned in a Chinese classroom rather than from talking to Americans. She wore a gray uniform with sturdy shoes, and kept her long black hair wrapped up in a hairnet whenever she was working.

But with Yiman to clean up after us, do the grocery shopping, and prepare meals, I felt as though I had very little to do. Not that I had ever aspired to be David's live-in maid and do all that work myself -- that was what cleaning services and Postmates had been for, back home -- but without my old rounds of yoga, exercise, aestheticians, and shopping to keep me occupied, I was feeling bored and restless.

And horny. David had never been spectacular in bed, although he always finished the job -- but since moving to the other side of the world, he seemed to have no time or desire for sex, and if there was one thing I refused to be it was a nagging wife; so he didn't offer and I didn't ask and eventually, three months into our year-long lease, Yiman walked in on me frustratedly masturbating on the bed with my phone in one hand, trying to find anything accessible via the Great Firewall that could get me off.

Of course she turned around and withdrew immediately, waited for an appropriate amount of time for me to compose myself, and then knocked meekly.

"It's okay, come in," I sighed, and lay staring at the ceiling as she came in. My phone was face down on the bed, my hand was out of my panties. She looked at me carefully, but since I refused to meet her gaze, she just started to do her usual picking up of our discarded clothes. Eventually, realizing that she would want to make the bed and that disrupting her routine would be impolite of me, I rolled out and went to go shower.

I had never been a big user of pornography back home, always figuring (correctly) that I could get laid in real life just as easily. Steamy scenes in regular movies and books had been about all I had ever masturbated to, so I had no idea where to go online that wouldn't be blocked as a matter of course by the Chinese government. The burning need in my loins only ached more as I showered, and I tried to finger myself as the water ran over me, but I could hear Yiman moving in the other room, and the fire ebbed, leaving only the ache as I sobbed frustratedly into the pouring water.

I was afraid for a moment that Yiman would tell David about seeing me masturbating -- there was a stupid, uneducated assumption in the back of my head that every foreign culture would see the wife as the man's property -- but I ended the night wishing she had. Maybe then he would have realized that I needed some sexual attention. But instead he only went immediately to sleep, and I tried again and failed again to get myself off with my hand.

It was five months before we had our first explosive argument, in which I screamed at David that I should never have come to China, since I was clearly useless to him. He responded that I could at least have tried to be pleasant, and that would have been of some use, but no, I was barely there at all. I lost it at that -- I was the one who was barely there?! -- and threw something porcelain and decorative at him that shattered against the wall. He turned around and walked out of the house immediately. A curt text informed me that he would be sleeping at the office this week. I crumpled into a ball on the floor and wept.

Yiman's hand on my shoulder was the first thing that shook me out of my misery. I pulled myself together with a jerk, cutting off a sob and sitting up with an abruptness that must have looked hilarious. But Yiman's face was nothing but concern, her large brown eyes looking into my watery blue ones, and her delicate, sparse eyebrows puckered anxiously.

"You need my help?" she said.

I shook my head and tried to stand up. My knees gave out immediately. She caught me, and with my hands in hers I looked up at her again with an apologetic grimace that would have been a smile if I could have managed it in the moment, and nodded ruefully. I did need her help.

She carefully led me, half-staggering and half-supported, to a couch in the sitting room, and had me lie down. She brought me first water, with a dissolvable tablet that she said would relieve pressure, and then tea. There was, of course, a lot of sinus pressure after my crying jag, and I took the water, the tablet, and the tea without asking any further questions. I was soon feeling much calmer, and looked up at Yiman, who had returned from sweeping up the debris of the porcelain decoration I had broken, and was kneeling at the side of the couch watching me.

"Thank you," I said. "I'm so ashamed of myself."

She nodded seriously.

"It is hard for you," she said. And she took my hand, and just held it. I looked at her, smiling my gratitude, and felt so much more at peace and comforted than I had felt in longer than I could remember. It wasn't just the feeling of being touched after so long -- although that was very much part of it; even back when we had had sex, David was never much for cuddling -- but the feeling of being understood. She knew why I felt ashamed, and didn't think I was wrong to feel that way, but also understood the reasons for the outburst I was ashamed of.

God, I wish she had a cock, flew through my head before I had a chance to stop it. And then: I'd suck it so hard. My face burst into a deep blush, and I looked away, terrified that she would somehow be able to read my thoughts in my eyes. But she only kept holding my hand and cocked her head curiously.

"Is it okay?" she ventured at last. "I am doing something wrong?"

"No, no," I shook my head, but still didn't trust myself to look at her. I squeezed her hand to try to reassure her. "No, you're perfect. I just have... foolish thoughts sometimes."

Finally, when I felt my blushes had receded enough that I could look her in the eye again, I turned my head. For the first time, I realized how extremely pretty she was. Her height and the sexless practicality of the maid's uniform had always given me the impression of a gawky youth; but her lips were plump and tender, with an unpainted pinkness in their depths; her eyes were luminous; and her skin was pale and flawless. As she looked at me, I wondered what she saw.

I could make a pretty good guess. A heap of straw-colored hair, tangled and unstyled, since there was no one to style it for. A face that had lost most of its habitual tan since moving to Chengdu, and was currently an unattractively mottled pink over dead-fish white, with red-rimmed eyes, chapped lips, and a snotty nose. I dropped my eyes in embarrassment.

"You need things to do," she said.

I looked at her in surprise. She was entirely correct, of course, but I shrugged my shoulders. "What can I do? I can't go anywhere, I don't speak the language, and he gives me hardly any money."

She stroked my hand with her thumb.

"I can take you," she said. "There is a lot that doesn't cost very much." She smiled brightly. "This isn't Shenzhen. People can live here."

I had not even gathered enough about Chinese cities to understand the reference at the time (I came to learn that an American equivalent would be something like Silicon Valley-era San Francisco). But I nodded.

And for the next three months, I experienced almost the complete opposite of the numbing tedium of the previous five. Yiman took me everywhere, not just in Chengdu but throughout Sichuan province, wherever the very fast and frequent railway lines went. Restaurants, museums, tea shops, galleries, historical sites, panda sanctuaries, operas, markets, temples, concerts, and festivals meant that there was always something to see, taste, hear, or experience. And with Yiman at my side to translate, to explain cultural or historical significance, to find the best route or argue down the price with a sharp tongue and winning smile, it was like floating through the most vibrant dream, with so many new ideas and colors and shapes and sounds all being filtered through her kind, shrewd, protective, and increasingly English-proficient (as we spent more time together) perspective.

We stood on cobblestones under an awning as rain drizzled, munching on go kui (deep fried meat pies) and looking out at the city splayed out in front of us from our stop on the Longquan mountains. I looked up at Yiman with adoration. I felt like I was on a honeymoon with her. The days had been breathless, packed, and full of delight. I felt an impulse to kiss her, as fleeting as my earlier wish that she had a cock, and looked down in sudden embarrassment.

She watched me, smiling slightly. When I looked back up, she held my gaze and raised her eyebrows very gently. Her tongue peeped out and licked her lips clean of any flakes of go kui. They parted slightly. The moment hung, suspended in silence.

And then the tram arrived: our ride to go back down the mountain towards home. We giggled at each other and ran to catch it.

David had returned to sleeping in the house, but we had not exchanged more than a half dozen sentences. He was gone before I got up, and returned after I had gone to bed; and I went to bed early and slept soundly now, my mind full of all the things Yiman had shown me and my body worn out from the exercise of getting there.

One night, though, I did wake up to hear David questioning Yiman. They both spoke in Mandarin, so I couldn't tell what they were saying, but he was asking questions in a peevish tone and she was replying in short, polite bursts. I asked her about it the next day.

"Your husband wanted to know if you'd been going to a... beauty salon," she said, supplying the last words with a smile that acknowledged they weren't exactly idiomatic. "He said you've been looking prettier lately."

"And what did you tell him?" For some reason I couldn't explain, I felt nervous about David learning about our daily excursions, even though they really cost very little. But somehow, in a way I couldn't explain, I felt that he would understand it as a betrayal of our marriage.

"I said sir, I have accompanied her on every trip she makes out of the house, and she never even looked at the salons."

"What did he say?"

"He said, so she is going out to places?"

"And you said?" I felt on the edge of my seat.

"I said that you had taken an interest in Chengdu's historical and cultural sites, and you were educating yourself."

"And he believed that?"

Yiman's eyebrows went up, as if to say why shouldn't she be believed, but she shrugged.

"He accepted it."

That afternoon, David was home before we were. We had only gone down to the Chengdu Culture Park, taken tea there, and looked at the statues, while Yiman told me the significance of each one. But he insisted that we must have gone somewhere expensive, and when I showed him my empty hands as proof that I hadn't done any shopping, he roughly pulled off my coat to check if there was anything new and expensive hidden underneath it.

That set me off, of course, and the argument quickly turned into a screaming match, at which Yiman faded into the background. I told him I was sick of being ignored, so yes of course I would go out and see what was interesting about the city we were stuck in, and he replied that it was a sleepy backwater piece of shit city but he was working to change that, and we both said a lot about how the other one didn't care about us or our interests, and when I gestured to Yiman in order to tell him that she had given me more love and affection and care in three months than he'd given me in six years, I realized that she wasn't in the room anymore, and the words died on my lips.

Seizing on my sudden silence, he said that he would fire her -- she was clearly taking advantage of me and stealing our money -- to which I told him in no uncertain terms that if he fired her I would divorce him and tell my family that he put his hands on me. That was the first thing that shook him. He didn't want to have that reputation, and he especially didn't want my family's connections to get in the way of his ambitions, so he grumbled something about never laying a finger on me but that he would do a full audit of the household finances this weekend, and went off to get ready for his evening Mandarin class.

I found Yiman sitting very still and pale in a chair in a corridor behind the kitchen which went to her quarters. She looked up at me swiftly, made sure I wasn't hurt or in distress, and then began crying softly. I opened my arms, and she leaned into them, and I held her while she sobbed gently for a while, then composed herself.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"No, no," I said, trying to be soothing.

"Yes," she said. "I wanted to help you, but I only made things worse."

"You did help me," I told her, and knelt down so that I was looking up at her now. My hands held hers in her lap. "I'm so much happier than if I had just stayed stuck in this house. I'm a bigger person, a better person, because of you. Look," I turned my face up to show her, "I didn't even cry."

She looked down into my face, and we sat there frozen for a moment, her in her chair, me kneeling before her. And then she bent her head, and I raised mine up to meet hers, and we kissed.

It was soft, and glorious, and magical. It felt like the culmination of everything the last three months had been. I felt flames of desire lick across my body; my nipples became turgid, my loins quickened. Distantly, I heard the front door shut behind David. I didn't care. I kept kissing her. My hands went around her neck in an embrace. Her hands came to rest gently on my shoulders, as though in preparation to push away, and then they slipped down, and she began stroking my back gently.

At last the kiss broke wetly. Our eyes glistened in the light from the kitchen.

"God, I want you," I heard myself say huskily.

"Yes," she panted. I saw her breasts rise and fall behind the plain white blouse she had worn instead of her uniform, as was her habit when we went out.

"But I'm so nervous," I said, laughing shakily. "I don't know what to do."

That had an effect on her I hadn't expected, but felt deeply familiar after so much time being guided by her. She sat up, brushed her hair out of her face, and pulled my hands up, indicating that I should stand. We both did.

"Follow me," she said, and led me down the hallway toward her quarters, where I had never been.

Her rooms were much less well-appointed than the rest of the house, with bare white walls and short stiff carpeting. The entrance room contained only a cabinet, a desk and a chair where she could take simple meals, plus one more article of furniture; past that was the bedroom, with nothing more in it than a bed and a clothes closet. When I glimpsed her bed through the doorway, I felt my loins moisten suddenly at the intimacy of the sight.

But it was the other article of furniture in her front room that she guided me toward. It was a high table with a stool at the side, covered in a cushioned faux leather. A massage table, just like the ones I had seen in dozens of spas and similar establishments in the United States.

She gestured for me to get up on it, and I climbed awkwardly up in the skirt I had worn to the park. She plugged in a little conical plastic device that was sitting on her desk, and pressed some buttons. Soft music began to play, gentle purplish and pink lights circled around the ceiling, and a scent of incense from a burner somewhere in the device made the room suddenly less stark and more calming.