The Curious Tale of Stevie Lee

Gather round everyone as I tell you a fateful story of lies, deception, and love. Yes, I'm about two months overdue on posting this story, but I assure you it is well worth the wait! This tale occurred towards the end of January, when Estee and I were finishing our contracts with the school we worked at. It was a typical cold Beijing night as one of the new replacement teachers arrived at our apartment. She was a young Australian girl by the name of Stevie. Up until that point I was unaware that Stevie could be a girls name too, but I guess they do things differently in Australia. As I was saying, Stevie arrived one old night and it didn't take long for us to realize we had quite the catch on our hands.

Stevie was 18 years old, with jet black hair and a horribly uneducated accent (perfect for teaching children how to properly speak English). I cringed as I heard her continually say "yous" instead of "you," knowing that all the hard work I put into teaching my kids English would be undone in a few days. It was awkward having to ask her to repeat herself so often, but I had an easier time understanding Chinese cab drivers than her. Yous isn't a fucking word!

After a few days of living with us in relative silence, Stevie told Estee all about her interesting past. As it turns out, Stevie was a married woman. According to Stevie, she went on a spring break trip with some friends up to Malaysia, where she met an older gentleman of Malaysian decent. He was from a smaller village known for their bomb making trade, and they hit it off right away. At the ripe age of 17, Stevie left Australia to return to Malaysia, where she married her bomb-making lover.

Once in Malaysia, Stevie tried to begin her new life by working as an ESL teacher. But Malaysia, like the rest of the world, has standards, and they decided that an 17 year old with no College education and no previous teaching course certificates was not qualified to teach young children. Having been rejected, Stevie turned her attention to the one country without teaching standards: China. Stevie was soon on her way up to Beijing, but unfortunately her husbands Muslim heritage/bomb-making trade resulted in him being denied a visa to come to China. Stevie would be making this journey on her own... or would she?

After a few days living in Beijing, Stevie began acting very strange. She hardly ever left her room and became very quiet all the time. We thought nothing of it, until one night when my friend/roommate Russ ran out of bathroom holding a pregnancy test carton that he had fished out of the trash. Yes, Stevie had been blessed with the gift of life. Apparently she had been trying to get pregnant with her husband for a few months, but they soon gave up and assumed she couldn't get pregnant. Smart. Anyways, she was overjoyed with the news, as she explained that "having a child would almost guarantee her husband could become a citizen of Australia!" What a wonderful reason to have a baby!

Stevie was excited to get back to Australia and have her husband meet her there, as it meant she could keep a better eye on him. According to Stevie, it is acceptable in her husbands religion to have multiple partners, and so Stevie was understandable upset that he had been with other women since she left. Yes, he told Stevie that he was with other women, but an agreement had been made prior to their marriage that as long as he wasn't actually having sex with those girls, it would be OK. Who wouldn't want to have a child with this guy, huh?

The problem of moving back to Australia was that Stevie had signed a one-year contract with the kindergarten company. Stevie obviously wouldn't be able to fulfill that entire contract, since she would give birth in 9 months. And Stevie wisely decided she didn't want to give birth in China, which meant she'd have to leave the country before her 3rd trimester. Still, she feared the repercussions of explaining to the company that she would have to end her contract early. Apparently Stevie didn't believe pregnancy counted as a valid "extraneous circumstance" for ending the contract. Thus, a master escape plan was hatched. Early one morning while we all slept, Stevie packed her bags and left for the airport, fleeing the country and leaving our school without a teacher (needless to say our school flipped a shit when they found out she fled)! And that, my friends, is the curious tale of Stevie Lee.