The Ayi Chronicles: Part 2

Think she’d gone? Oh no…

(This is the second excerpt from my book Ginger In Her Socks: One Englishman’s Parenting in China. The first part was published here)

Fast forward a few quiet months. Clearly encouraged by the fact that she was allowed to practice her Chinese medicine practices in the house, Ayi Jiang moved on to a more serious cure. I came home one evening and found Keira in a playful mood, even though the Ayi mentioned to me that she had been complaining of a stomach-ache. Ayi Jiang then said that she had given her some treatment for this, but crucially I failed to drill on exactly what it was. Keira and I were playing in the lounge, and as I walked away to pick something up, behind me Keira started screaming in pain. I sprinted back to her, in time to see her pull away a small container from her stomach, and throw it on the floor. I could also see that a huge red welt was rapidly blowing up on her leg — she had been burned.

I went to pick up the container to see what it was, only to quickly drop it again. It was red hot! I ran to put Keira under the cold tap, whilst simultaneously screaming at the Ayi for using such a stupid idea. It seemed that as Keira had said she had a stomach-ache (which to be honest was dubious in the first place), Ayi Jiang had heated up some special local treatment, in a can that was then attached to her stomach in a pouch, like a small hot water bottle. But as Keira had moved around, the container fell out of the pouch, and scalded her leg.

As a parent you always tell the difference between the normal, day-to-day, I want to eat / sleep / poop crying, and the crying when the child really is in pain. This was one of the latter. Keira was wailing and we had a serious medical issue on our hands. Ayi Jiang and I agreed that she would keep Keira cool, whilst I ran to the pharmacy to buy whatever salves and strapping I could find. I immediately set off at a sprint, grateful for the fact that there was a late-night pharmacy just down the road. With some halting Chinese, I explained the situation and was loaded up with all the necessary products to hurry home with.

By the time I got back, Heidi was also home, and was (relatively) calm given that she had just walked in the door to find her child in agony. I proffered all of my medicines, but these were declined as it was decided that we were moving things up a notch, and going to hospital. We jumped in a cab and headed for our nearby hospital, only to then U-turn and to go all the way across town to a different hospital, because some urgent Googling had said it that was the best in town for burns. It may well have been, but at 10.30pm everyone had gone home, and the duty nurse slapped some salve and a bandage on Keira, and sent us home within five minutes of seeing us. We went back and tried to take stock.

At the hospital, we had been told that Keira was to sit still and not run around for two weeks, whilst the wound healed up. That did not sound very realistic, however Keira did soon realize that if she sat still, then she had the benefit of a) her leg not hurting, and b) watching more television. For the next couple of days, she sat on the sofa watching Peppa Pig, looking, if I am honest, unconcerned by the whole issue. We had a few more trips to the hospital, during which we did get to visit the burns unit, where they were equally functional in terms of changing the bandages and sending us on our way again. After one week the pain had gone and Keira was moving around again, and things started to return to some sort of normality. Meanwhile Ayi Jiang was given a stern talking to in terms of keeping her magic potions to herself; but, on the basis that I had still not told Heidi about the earlier text messages, and that she was overall very good with Keira, she somehow yet again managed to avoid being fired.

In fact, as I sit and write this, I wonder exactly what she would have to have done that she would have been asked to leave; clearly the relationship between the Ayi and the household members dictates how much leeway they can earn. Whilst Ayi Xu could do no right, and was on her way out for months, Ayi Jiang seemed to be charmed. Until then she quit.

Ah the old family illness story again. To be honest, she had been saying that her husband was ill for some time, which I guess would explain his lack of function in other areas of life. Because of his illness I did actually believe there was an issue there. Anyway she said she needed to go home and look after him, and could she go the following week? Heidi was upset to see her go; I was…less upset shall we say. At least this time we had a week’s notice, giving us time to recruit a new Ayi, and to do some handover. Ayi Jiang left, the new Ayi went to work, and all was well.

Except it was not. New Ayi kept getting things wrong, breaking things, losing things, and Keira did not like her. I was initially of the opinion that it would improve over time, but it clearly was not working after a couple of weeks. I was expecting then us to go back to the agency and look for an exchange — hey it is all part of the service — but then Heidi stunned with me with some news.

“I spoke to Ayi Jiang and I’ve offered to hire a helper to look after her husband. She’s coming back.”

Oh you have to be kidding me. Ok, yes, I know, at this point I should have said something, but with the house in chaos, Heidi stressed, Keira having poor daytime care, and me clearly weak enough to do anything for an easy life, I kept quiet. New Ayi packed her bags, Ayi Jiang came back, and I checked the bedroom door lock, just in case.

This time, things were fairly uneventful. There were no rushed trips to the hospital, no strange animals lurking in the flat, and no sexual provocation. We went back to normal(-ish), and Ayi Jiang concentrated on doing what she was supposed to, which was looking after Keira. A period of calm, and normalcy, could only mean one thing — she left again. Yep the old ‘ill family’ story again, and this time no extra payment was going to keep her around. This time, we had the ability to manage the change, and Heidi started interviewing new Ayi’s again. We picked a new lady, Ayi Li, and she came in for a week-long handover period, which was just what I wanted, yet another woman in the house. Particularly when Ayi politics started kicking in, as both Ayi’s came to me individually to grumble in Mandarin about how the other one was doing things. Or at least I think they did; Ayi Jiang had the habit of starting the conversation slow, but then getting carried away and speaking really quickly, meaning I soon got left behind and had no idea what she was talking about. Ayi Li however was the reverse; I tried to talk to her, but she did not understand a word that I said, and soon gave up. Not the best of starts.

Anyway Ayi Jiang packed her bags, said goodbye to us all (no hug from me, just in case), and we tried to establish yet another new routine. Ayi Li was quiet compared to the last two Ayi’s — although maybe she was not talking to me because she still could not understand me — but she seemed very efficient. Everything was tidy, everything was clean, cupboards seemed to miraculously get sorted (even then ones that I did not want to), and she too shared the ideal Ayi traits of rarely eating or sleeping. Put simply, she was reliable, and that cannot be overstated when you are trusting someone with your child.

Heidi though took longer to warm to her, and I was a bit concerned when she started nit-picking some minor issues around the house. She kept asking me if I thought Ayi Li was acceptable, and if she was teaching Keira enough. I could sense that we were just at the top of a slippery slope, which could easily tip us in an Ayi Xu-type direction if we were not careful. Not least when Heidi picked up some messages one day.

“I’ve just seen, Ayi Jiang is getting divorced”

Now there’s a shock.

“That means she’s free to come back to Shanghai…” The rest was left unsaid.

Ok this time I am taking a stand.

“No I don’t think we need to have her back. Ayi Li is working out ok and I don’t think Ayi Jiang is any better.”

“You know, I’ve sensed some tension with you about her, you don’t like her do you?”

Ah nuts. Ok this time I need to face up and put all the cards on the table.

“No, not really. I need to tell you something that happened.”

And I told Heidi the full story. Better late than never, right? She was shocked and incredulous, but at least relieved that I had resisted temptation. The fact that I had not told her did not impress her, but in the grander scheme of things it passed with less attention that I had feared. Heidi queried if Ayi Jiang had ever asked me for money — I said no, although come to think of it that might have followed later if I had gone through with everything. And had there ever been a similar incident with Ayi Xu, who Heidi was always suspicious of dressing revealingly around the house (although I have to confess I had never noticed)? Again, no. This answer seemed sufficient. I was allowed to live, and, even Heidi then had to agree, Ayi Jiang was not coming back.

Heidi told Ayi Jiang that her services were not required, but Ayi Jiang was insistent that she wanted to re-join us, and without family hassles could give us her full attention. Heidi refused, but when Ayi Jiang kept pushing, Heidi eventually told her that I had confessed everything, and so she was not welcome.

“Ah but it was only one time, I am so sorry, it will never happen again.”

This woman has some balls. Allegedly — of course I never found out. For a minute I could see Heidi still wavering, but then I reminded her of the sex pest + the second degree burns + live chicken on the balcony, and the cumulative effect finally tipped the scales in favour of a no. At least for a while, or at least…until Ayi Li went down sick. Badly. And had to go home to recuperate. And then I was in trouble.

“What are we going to do for an Ayi?”

“Call the agency and ask them to send a temporary replacement”

“They haven’t got any”

“Oh”

“So Ayi Jiang is coming back.”

For the love of…I looked around for help but found none. The friends that I had told the Ayi Jiang story to thought this was most amusing, and wanted to know if I was going to give into temptation this time around. I told them in no uncertain terms to zip it, and was there on the first morning when she came back, only to hear something I was not expecting.

“I am signed up for a class at the moment, so I cannot work between 9am and 7pm this week.” Well hang on is that not the point of having a nanny in the first place? Next thing I know, I was being told I had to take Keira to school (this I could do before work), pick her up at 3pm (hang on a minute…) and then babysit her until Ayi bothered to turn up at the end of the day (what??). Was she going to donate her wages to me whilst I did her job for her, at the same time I was avoiding mine? Unlikely. This carried on for two days, and then she reappeared in the evening with another, much younger lady in tow. This, it turned out, was Ayi YaYa, who was something of a Padawan to Ayi Jiang’s Jedi (or Sith more likely), and she was going to be filling in during the daytimes whilst Ayi Jiang was doing whatever other thing she was doing.

This all seemed good in practice, but the reason YaYa was younger was because this seemed quite possibly her first job, and despite her on-going confidence and cheerfulness, she did not exude so much confidence that she knew what she was doing. Keira, never one to miss a trick in such situations, was given an inch and took a mile as she was indulged left, right, and centre. I do not know if this applies to other children as much, but I have noticed with Keira that the quality of her behaviour seems inversely proportional to the number of people around her; she rarely plays up when it’s just her and I, but when Heidi and I are both there, she can test her luck on one and then go running to the other if it does not work. Here, she had the two of us, then Ayi Jiang and Ayi Yaya all fussing around her, and she leveraged this to the maximum; it reached the nadir one morning when she was supposed to be having breakfast. Heidi and both Ayi’s were trying to convince her to eat one of the three separate dishes that had been cooked for her, but her condition for doing so was that the high chair be moved into the living room to watch television whilst she did so, something we normally did not allow. Having got the TV on, she then refused all the dishes and wanted a yoghurt; when someone brought her a yoghurt, that too was declined and she wanted a different one, which was also eventually brought out. I was finding it difficult at this point to control my frustration, being unimpressed with the behaviour that my daughter was showing, but also reluctantly knowing that taking her off to school without eating at least something would also be severely frowned upon and would cause even more issues. I went to work muttering under my breath. Thankfully, by the end of that same day Ayi Li had got in touch to say she was fit to return, which meant Ayi’s Jiang and YaYa could take their services elsewhere. Hopefully for the last time.