Mambo in Chinatown Page 4

  She saw me right away and came over with her loose and graceful stride. “Can you take a break?”

  Mr. Hu had already gone home. I knew the manager wouldn’t report me if we snuck into a booth near the back. “Come on.”

  As we slid in, Zan pulled off the headband she used to keep her hair back. Her hair was plastered to the top of her head and several strands stuck to her forehead. But where it’d been free of the band, her hair was thick, black and glossy. I always wondered how it was that I seemed to be the only person who noticed how beautiful Zan was, even though she never wore a speck of makeup. I guessed most people didn’t look too carefully at the girl who ran the egg cakes cart.

  I groaned when Zan set her tattered copy of the New York State Driver’s Manual on the table. “You don’t own a car. I don’t own a car. We don’t know anyone who owns a car.” I thought of Uncle and his precious Mercedes. “No one who would ever let you practice in it anyway.”

  She shoved the book in my direction. “Doesn’t matter. Come on, test me.”

  “Why don’t you become an accountant or something?”

  Zan raised her eyebrow at me. In high school, Zan and I had been poor students. I had so much trouble with letters and Zan couldn’t do math. We’d tried to help each other but that’d been like the blind leading the blind. “I’m going to get my commercial driver’s license and I’ll be waving at you from one big truck someday.”

  I’d heard it before. I didn’t want Zan to waste her time. I knew she wanted out and somehow she’d grasped onto this idea of becoming a truck driver. She was in that egg cakes cart, rain, snow or shine. Her mom ran the one on Mott Street, and when Zan left high school, her mother had bought a second cart with their life savings so that Zan could operate it on Canal Street. “I just don’t see how you’ll ever—”

  Dampness shone in her eyes. “I will.”

  I placed my hand over hers. “You’re right. One step at a time.” I flipped the book open and read aloud, “Under normal conditions, a safe following distance . . .”

  We both looked up when the door opened again. A group of Asian college kids streamed in, and to make things worse, I picked out Grace Yuan and Winston, my ex-boyfriend. Grace saw me and lifted her hand in an awkward half-wave, then dropped it again. She looked away. Grace and I had been best friends long ago, when we were little girls. Ma’s mother, my grandmother, had been a Yuan too, a distant relative of theirs, so our families had always been friendly. I loved Grace’s grandmother and called her Godmother. Grace was a year younger than I was. The funny thing was that it was after I got left back in fifth grade and we were finally in the same class that she started ignoring me.

  Zan quickly set her book upright to partially hide our faces. I said, “It won’t work, but thanks. This means I’ll have to go back to my dishes anyway.”

  She pressed her lips together. “They’re going to hang out with their cheap orders for hours and you’ll have to wait until they’re done showing off to each other before you can go home. Just because they’ve been out partying and have nothing else to do.”

  “It’s a part of the job. Hey!” I suddenly realized I hadn’t told Zan my big news about the studio. I quickly sketched it out for her and she scrambled over to my side of the booth and hugged me.

  “I’m so happy for you!” Her face glowed. “You’re going to be fantastic.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “You can do much more than you think, Charlie. I know you.”

  I gave her a quick squeeze, then caught the manager giving me the evil eye. “I have to go.” The group of cool kids was staring at us as well. Grace was sitting so close to Winston that her long curls brushed against his fraternity T-shirt. I knew their romantic relationship had ended years ago but it still stung to see them together. His mouth opened, as if he were going to call something out to me, then he shut it again.

  Zan said, “Come by the cart when you can. I’ll miss stopping by to see you here.” She went past the group with her head high, and none of them said anything to her, not even Grace or Winston. It was as if Zan didn’t exist. I hated them for that.

  I stomped inside and started scrubbing some pots I’d left to soak. A few minutes later, I heard someone come in to use the bathroom. It was so grimy, most customers avoided it if they could. Probably one of those kids needed to throw up after drinking too much.

  “So how are you doing, Charlie?”

  I whirled around. Winston was leaning against the door jamb, tall and lanky. I said, “That’s dirty. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  He straightened up, brushed off his shoulder.

  I took a breath. “I’m fine. Did you come to use the bathroom? It’s right there.”

  “Yeah, yeah. See you, then.” He ducked into the tiny bathroom.

  I turned back to the sink and made myself ignore him when he left. Winston and I had been friends since seventh grade. The Winston I’d cared about had been a short, scrawny kid with bad skin who used to laugh so hard at some dumb joke, he’d bend over double. In the months after Ma died, Winston and I spent more and more time together. One afternoon when we were fifteen, his ma was working at the bank and we were at his apartment alone. He kissed me. We hid our new relationship from our families, of course, because even though Pa had never spoken to me about dating, I knew it was forbidden. But being with Winston seemed so natural. It never occurred to me that anything could change, until a year later. That was when Winston shot up by a foot, his skin cleared, and Grace and her friends gathered him into their crowd. He seemed to date every cool girl in the school after that, but it’d hurt twice as much when he and Grace were together.

  Rationally, I understood. He’d been a teenage boy and suddenly, the prettiest girls in the school were fawning over him. Grace was petite and vivacious, all laughter and bubbles. But I’d been left dumb and gasping like a fish at market, and the memory of that feeling still seared. Somehow I never saw these things coming. Hiding my love life from Pa, I’d dated a few different guys since, and even went steady with someone for a while, but no one could compare to the way I’d felt about Winston.

  Pa poked his head into my area. “Was that your old friend Winston?”

  I kept my head bent over the sink full of dishes. “Yep.”

  “Why you not invite him over sometime?”

  “Sure, Pa. Sometime.”

  —

  Zan, perched on our couch, was watching Lisa and me circle our small apartment with our cheap butterfly nets, trying to catch flies. Zan unexpectedly had this Saturday afternoon free because one of the wheels on her cart had broken off at lunchtime and it was being fixed. I’d convinced her to come with me to the tai chi class I attended but Pa wanted us to rid the apartment of flies first. He had occasional Saturdays off, and when he was home, he liked to improve things. The problem was that our place was so cluttered with papers and piled-up boxes that the flies had millions of hiding places. We’d turned off the fans to lure the flies into the open, which meant the apartment was sweltering.

  Lisa was tiptoeing up to a fly that had landed on a stack of clothing. She swung her net and the fly took off.

  “Why don’t you just whack them with a newspaper, like everyone else does?” Zan asked, fanning herself with a piece of paper.

  “No,” Pa said, cradling his pillow in his hands. He was balanced on one of our folding chairs. He stayed focused on the mosquito on the ceiling. “Life is precious.”

  Zan snorted. Her father was a butcher at the live poultry place on Canal Street.

  I said, “Be careful, Pa.”

  With a quick movement, he flipped his pillow hard toward the ceiling. It bounced off and he caught it again. Peering at it, he said, “Got it. Filled with blood too. Need to wash the pillowcase now.”

  Zan said, “But you just killed that insect!”

  Pa sighed as he c
limbed off of the chair. “I know. In a court run by mosquitos, they would probably find me guilty. They are only taking a little blood after all. No reason to kill another living creature. But they’re biting my daughters. I cannot stand it.”

  “And they’re too little to be caught by the butterfly nets. We used to try,” Lisa said.

  “At least it’s a soft death,” Pa said.

  Zan said, “I don’t think it feels so great to the mosquito.”

  “It’s a pillow,” Pa said. “I think it is not a bad way to go.”

  I caught a glimpse of Pa’s face and quickly changed the subject before he started feeling so sorry for the mosquitos that he stopped allowing us to kill them. “Oh, there’s that fly.”

  “Where?” Lisa zeroed in on her target again.

  “It is not easy to be a Buddhist,” Pa said.

  Zan wrinkled her brow. “But you guys eat meat. How does that fit in, Mr. Wong?”

  “You’re right. It doesn’t.” He smiled and shrugged. “But my girls are growing and they need the nutrients. And because I am weak and like the taste. As I said, life is complicated for a Buddhist, especially when you are Chinese too.”

  “You don’t need to eat meat for the nutrients,” Lisa said. Then she swung her net and called, “I caught mine!” She waved her butterfly net around in circles, so the fly couldn’t get out. Pa quickly pried one of the screens off a window, Lisa ran over and stuck her net out. We watched the fly zoom away.

  Pa replaced the screen.

  Zan looked at me. “How do they all get in here when you’ve got screens on the windows?”

  “Some of the screens have rips in them,” I said.

  “Remember last summer when the apartment got invaded by ants?” Lisa said.

  “Ugh! Don’t remind me,” I said.

  Lisa turned to Zan. “This colony of ants showed up in the kitchen but Pa didn’t want to kill them so we would just shoo them away. We could literally see them getting bigger and stronger by the day. We tried cinnamon, garlic, vinegar . . . Nothing helped.”

  I interrupted. “Of course it did. The mint worked, and after that, they all left.” I gave Lisa a look to shut her up. She widened her eyes, remembering I’d secretly bought a bottle of insecticide and sprayed the entire apartment while Pa was at work.

  I could tell Zan had figured it out by the mischievous look in her eyes. “How strange,” she said innocently, “I never knew mint repelled ants.”

  I glared at her. “Lisa found it on the Internet.” In recent years, Lisa’s school had begun lending all of the kids laptops for use in their classes, something I’d never had, so Lisa was our technology expert.

  Pa nodded. “Very wise, that Internet.” To Pa, the Internet was a sort of prophet.

  “Why don’t you do something useful, like help us catch the last fly?” I said to Zan. She grinned and took my butterfly net. Within a few minutes, she’d caught the fly I’d been stalking.

  As we watched it zip away, Zan said, “Have you ever thought that you’re just releasing flies into the world, where they can have babies and bother more people?”

  Lisa giggled. “I hope they have fun.”

  I grabbed Zan’s arm. “Come on, let’s get Godmother Yuan and go to tai chi class.”

  —

  Zan and I walked a few blocks over to Godmother Yuan’s building. We linked arms to fight our way through the crowds, squeezing past stands of live crabs and dismembered eels, the carp lying limp in the blazing sunlight. Especially during the weekends, there seemed to be almost as many tourists as Chinese in Chinatown. We dodged one white couple who were pointing at the roasted geese hanging in the window of a restaurant, then turned the corner onto the twisty little street where Godmother lived.

  It was a bit quieter there and the sharp scent of incense filled the air. Godmother lived on the second floor, above a religious store that sold joss paper, urns and idols, where incense was always burning. Even though she wasn’t really my godmother, I called her that as a sign of affection and respect. Godmother Yuan was a tai chi master. She’d been our friend for as long as I could remember. When Ma died, Godmother, her face covered in tear tracks, held my hand at the funeral as she cradled Lisa on her lap.

  Zan dabbed at her sweaty forehead with a tissue as we climbed the stairs. “Should I call her sifu?” Sifu meant “master” and it was what most of Godmother Yuan’s students called her.

  I shook my head. “You’re not a regular member of the class. Just ‘Mrs. Yuan’ will be fine.”

  Zan smiled. “Do I have to call you sifu?”

  “Ha! I’m just the helper.”

  I stopped in front of Godmother’s door and knocked.

  Her voice came from within the apartment. “Charlie, you know my door’s unlocked.”

  Zan’s eyebrows shot up. “Is she serious?”

  I said softly, “Nothing anyone can say will convince her to do otherwise. She says her door’s always open to her students and friends. It’s never been locked, not even when her husband was alive.”

  I turned the doorknob and the door swung wide. Out of politeness, we didn’t enter. Godmother was walking toward us with her bag over her arm. She was short and round, with a white permed head of curls, like a dandelion, but I knew how strong she was because I’d sparred with her in push-hands training. She wore simple, loose clothing that allowed freedom of movement. I’d never seen her in a dress. It was a well-known Chinatown rumor that a few gang members had tried to take her purse once and she’d sent them running with a few blows.

  “Do you remember my friend Zan, Godmother?” I said. Godmother spoke Toisanese and I only spoke Mandarin, so we always communicated in English. Her family had been in the U.S. so long that her English was better than Pa’s.

  Zan bowed her head and said, “Mrs. Yuan.”

  Godmother said, “Of course I do. Are you joining us today?”

  I said, “Would that be all right? It’s only this one time. Zan can’t make it to your other classes at the Tai Chi Association or Senior Citizens Center.”

  “Any friend of yours is welcome. I wish you could help me with those other classes too, Charlie,” Godmother said as we headed down the stairs. She turned to Zan. “She is my best student.”

  “Oh, that’s not true,” I said. “I’ve just been doing it for so long.”

  “Are you coming to tai chi in the park this Sunday?” Godmother always asked me this.

  “I would like to but it’s too early for me.”

  “When are you going to stop that dishwasher job? It keeps you up until all hours. ‘If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.’”

  “Is that from a Hallmark card?”

  “Who? No, it’s Lao Tzu.”

  I glanced at Zan, signaling her to be quiet. “Actually, I’m starting a new job on Monday. As a receptionist. In computers.” I couldn’t risk Godmother telling Pa the truth.

  Godmother stopped walking so abruptly, I almost tripped. “Really.” She fumbled in her purse until she found a new red envelope. “I always keep a couple in here, in case I run into one of my grandchildren.” She took out two wrinkled five-dollar bills from her wallet, folded them carefully and put them in the envelope.

  “Oh no, Godmother, it’s not necessary.” I knew how little she had. She was well respected but she taught most of her classes, including the one we were going to, for free. Most positions at the Yuan Benevolent Association were volunteer.

  She pressed the red envelope in my hand. “For good fortune.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You must take it or it will be bad luck.”

  “Thank you.” I bent over and kissed her cheek. I thought about what the witch had said. “The Vision told me my new job will amount to nothing.”

  “Hush! Don’t repeat the words of that old po
tato.”

  Zan and I laughed. It was well known that Godmother and the Vision had an ongoing feud, due to some insult in their youth everyone else had forgotten.

  “Another Lao Tzu quote for you: ‘When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.’”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  We climbed up the stairs to the Yuan Benevolent Association. The Benevolent Associations had been formed originally to help families abroad. This one occupied the third floor of a building, and was a place where all members with the Yuan surname could gather and gossip. There was often free tea and food, plus social events like mahjong evenings and these tai chi classes. I wasn’t allowed to be a full member but they tolerated me because my maternal grandmother had been a Yuan before her marriage. After they wed, girls were no longer considered an official part of the family.

  Godmother Yuan tapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll never understand why you don’t join the Wong Benevolent Association. They’re so powerful, many times the size of ours. They just helped that Wong girl from Hong Kong pay her way through college.”

  I’d said it before. “I’m the wrong kind of Wong, remember? I’m a northern Wong. The Wong Benevolent Association belongs to the southern Wongs. Their name is even written with a different character. Anyway, I don’t think I’m cut out for college.”

  “Nonsense. ‘A genius always presents himself as a fool.’”

  “Umm, thanks, Godmother. I think.”

  Zan was grinning.

  Godmother opened the door and we entered a large room with windows that faced the street on one end. We could hear the constant rumble of traffic as the ceiling fans whirred. A few older ladies were already moving the tables and chairs out of the way. Some chairs were set up at the side of the room for qigong work. At the other end was the platform with a statue of the Yuan ancestor on what we called the “god table.” Godmother went to light incense and pay her respects to her ancestor. The smell of roast meat and rice drifted into the room from the restaurants on the street. More people trailed in.