Mambo in Chinatown

by Jean Kwok

  —

  Then Adrienne returned to the studio. The first time I saw her, I gaped and she started laughing. “I almost forgot. You’ve never known me when I wasn’t pregnant.”

  “You look incredible. It’s only been a couple of months.” Adrienne was lean and fit, standing there in a blazer over tailored slacks.

  “Do you know why actresses get back into shape so fast after a pregnancy? Because they have to. It’s their job to look a certain way. If they don’t, people will take photos of them and post them all over the Internet. I’m a dancer and coach. It’s my business to get back into shape because my body is my instrument.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “It’s not. The baby’s crying all night long. I still get up at five a.m. and get on the exercise bike. I used a treadmill when I was younger but now my knees and ankles are shot after all those years of hard dancing in heels.” Then she considered me. I was wearing one of her dresses, fit tight around the bust and hips, flaring out as the royal blue material went past my hips. “You’ve come far, Charlie. I’m proud of you. So when your competition student comes in, I want you to show me your routine. I’ve heard a lot about the two of you.”

  Adrienne watched Ryan and me run through our choreography from beginning to end in the small private ballroom. We were awkward in a few parts, but on the whole, I was glad we’d managed to get through it all.

  “Very impressive.” She frowned, as if she were trying to put her finger on something. “The two of you have a freshness that more jaded dancers lack. Use it. When you dance, I sense the energy in the movement, which is fantastic. I know you’re trying to incorporate all of the technical aspects of the dance at the same time, but what an audience really wants is to be carried away by the emotion between the two of you. In other words, we must feel your desire for each other.” Both Ryan and I stared hard at the floor, avoiding each other’s eyes. Adrienne ignored us, taking on her lecture voice. “Remember, desire is also a form of friendship, acceptance and connection. If you don’t feel it, then you must fake it. Welcome to the world of show business.”

  —

  A few days later, Adrienne approached us as I was chatting with Nina, waiting beside Ryan, who was putting on his newly purchased Latin dance shoes. “You’re ready to be tortured.”

  “What do you mean?” It seemed to me I’d suffered plenty already. My shoes were as full of holes as Nina’s.

  “You need to videotape yourselves.”

  Nina drew in a quick breath. “No.”

  Ryan shrugged. “Seems like a good idea to me.”

  Nina said, “That’s because you’ve never watched yourself on video. Every dancer wants to kill herself after seeing herself on film. It’s a known thing. Don’t do it to them, Adrienne. You’ll destroy their sensitive little souls.”

  Adrienne smiled. “It will hurt, I won’t lie, but the pain of seeing yourself will be an impetus for great improvement.”

  Ryan and I exchanged glances. I took a breath. “Do it.”

  Nina whispered, “You’ll be sorry . . .”

  Adrienne used Ryan’s phone and taped our entire routine. It seemed to me that it had gone well but that was before I watched it.

  —

  Ryan and I sat on the floor, huddled against the wall in the small ballroom, watching the video together. When it was done, we were silent. I glanced over at him. His face was gray. I felt like I wanted to cry.

  I whispered, “It’s my dinner break now. Are you free?”

  He slanted me a look. “Yeah.”

  “Wait for me at the Chinese restaurant on Lexington Avenue, okay?” Since I never actually ate out, it was the only place I remembered off the top of my head. I always noticed it when I went by. Today, I felt like I needed to do something nice for myself.

  “The one on the corner?”

  “I’ll meet you there in a few minutes. You leave now so it looks like we separated.”

  When I stepped into the restaurant, he had gotten a table for us. The place was deserted, except for one other couple in the corner.

  He squinted up at me. “I’ve never seen anything more awful than myself on video.’”

  I burst into laughter. “Did you see my shoulders, raised all the way up to my ears? And I’m supposed to be the professional.”

  “I like your shoulders. You looked great.”

  The waitress came to our table with the menus. She was Chinese, with her hair pulled back neatly from a plain face. I felt like a foreigner, sitting there with a white guy, wearing my ballroom clothing. The menu was long and complicated. I was tired, and as always, it cost me so much effort to read at all. The words blurred into a soup of letters.

  I closed my eyes. “Do you mind if I just do it?”

  “Go for it. I eat everything.”

  I quickly ordered in Chinese. My Chinese wasn’t great but after all of those years in the noodle restaurant, I could order fluently.

  “That was impressive,” he said.

  I breathed in the faint smell of grease and steam in the air. “I used to work somewhere like this, only less upscale.”

  The waitress came with our drinks and all of the food I’d ordered. She placed fried rice and noodles on the table as side dishes. Ryan’s eyes lit up at the sliced beef with red pepper, green scallions, ginger and watercress. I could smell the jumbo shrimp and a vegetable dish with snow peas, baby corn, Chinese cabbage and bamboo shoots.

  I’d automatically chosen chopsticks. Ryan had done the same. He dropped his napkin and stuck his chopsticks into his mound of rice while he retrieved it. Then he saw my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sorry.” I reached over, plucked his chopsticks out and set them on the table. “You can’t do that. It’s how we place chopsticks when we do rituals for the dead and it’s considered very bad luck.”

  “And here I thought I was pretty good too. What else do I need to know?”

  “Do you really care?”

  “Sure. I mean, if I come to dinner at your house sometime, I’d hate to embarrass myself, right?”

  I stared at him a moment.

  He rubbed his chin, not meeting my eyes. “You wanted me to help your friend learn to drive in my car, right? That was what you wanted from our bargain. She probably uses chopsticks, I could look dumb. Umm, never mind.”

  I took pity on him. “Okay. Chopsticks are really important to us because they have to do with food and rice, which is essential to our survival. Your chopsticks are like two lovers. They always need to be together, side by side. We never use only one chopstick for anything. Never tap with your chopsticks on the side of your bowl, because that’s what beggars do and it’s bad luck too. Never gesture toward someone with them or wave them, again, that’s impolite. Don’t chew on them, that’s unhygienic. Never dig for your food with chopsticks because it looks like you’re digging a grave and it’s bad luck as well.”

  “Whew. Lots of bad luck here. Okay, let me give it all a try.”

  He did pretty well and I felt better after I’d eaten.

  Ryan was surveying the restaurant. “They thought about feng shui before they designed this place. Those two Imperial guardian lions they placed at the front door—they’re needed because of the bank across the street, right? Though I don’t fully understand why.”

  I was amazed. “Yes, because a bank is so powerful, the restaurant is afraid it’ll absorb all of the good qi. The lions counteract that stream. I’m surprised you saw that.” Many Chinese establishments took feng shui seriously, and they often consulted a feng shui master before making any architectural and design decisions. I’d grown up with that concept of balancing the energies within a space for good fortune, but I hadn’t expected anyone non-Chinese to notice.

  “We often need to take feng shui into account when we design for some of our clients, whether
they’re Asian or not.”

  “Do you do any of the actual planning?”

  “Some.” He took a sip of his soda. “I’d like to do more. I’ve been thinking about going back to school to get a degree in landscape architecture. Fiona’s always pushing me to do it. But I’m not sure.”

  “Why not?”

  “I love the work, you know? I love being outside, my hands in the soil, creating something beautiful out of the earth. I love knowing that living things will thrive where I place them. Like Evelyn, Fiona thinks I’m crazy for not calling myself a landscaper, but for me, being a gardener is the best part of the job. I wouldn’t want to move too far from that.”

  I thought about what I’d been through in the past months. “I understand that fear of losing yourself, of changing faster than is comfortable. But in the end, your soul’s in your own hands, isn’t it? No one can make you into someone you’re not, no matter what your title is. It’s about becoming your true self.”

  He gave me a crooked smile. “You’re quite something, Charlie. What about you? Do you have a boyfriend who wants you to become a studio owner or something?”

  I laughed. “Oh no, being a dancer and a teacher is more than I’d ever dreamed of. That’s hard enough.”

  Ryan tapped his finger against the table. “The thing is, I’ve been looking at Mateo and Keith and all those guys, and I somehow had the idea that when I was watching them, I was seeing myself. But that wasn’t true at all.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly it.” I chewed on a snow pea. “Everyone around us is so good and then you watch yourself on video and suddenly you realize how far you still have to go. I guess that’s why Nina said not to do it.”

  He chuckled. “I didn’t see anything wrong with the way you looked.”

  “I didn’t notice you doing so badly either.”

  He reached out with his finger and brushed it across my face. “Eyelash on your cheek.”

  My skin tingled where he had touched me. I gestured to the waitress for the check. “I’d better be getting back.”

  —

  I found I couldn’t stop thinking about Ryan after that. When he came in for his lesson the next day, I was aware of every step he took. We were attracted to each other, but like Nina said, that could just be the chemistry of dancing together. He had a girlfriend, and I couldn’t imagine bringing a white guy home to Pa. Pa could barely accept the idea of me with a Chinese man I’d known my entire life, like Winston. Plus there was the strict studio policy against fraternizing with the students. I could lose my job like Estella had. There were so many reasons Ryan was wrong for me, but when he held me in dance position, he felt just right.

  —

  A few days later, Lisa fell from a rope she was climbing in gym class. Although the school nurse could find no sign of an injury, Lisa had a lot of trouble walking after that. Aunt Monica picked her up and brought her to their office. I only heard about it when I got home from work.

  Lisa’s legs started to fail at irregular intervals, and she sometimes needed a cane to go to school. She told the school she’d hurt herself in a fall. Her symptoms terrified me. She also didn’t want to work at Uncle’s office anymore. Uncle Henry and Aunt Monica asked her to go there after school anyway, just so they could make sure she was all right.

  Lisa said, “I have so much homework now and the office is very busy. I’m sure my legs will get better at home. I’m just overtired.”

  Pa said, “I don’t like you being in the apartment alone.”

  “I’m almost twelve years old. And there are so many germs at the office. All of those patients. Maybe I caught something from them.”

  I said, “You never know. She’s been working there the whole time she’s been having these problems.”

  Pa considered. “All right, we’ll try letting Lisa come home after school.”

  “Yippee!” Lisa hugged Pa, then came over and wrapped her arms around me too. “Thank you, Charlie.”

  I held her tight. “Whatever is going on with you, we are going to figure it out and fix it. I promise.”

  “However,” Pa said, as we both turned to him, “I want Uncle Henry to start working on a treatment plan for her.”

  —

  At the next tai chi lesson, I hung around Godmother’s qigong group, hoping to learn something. Pa was absolutely against letting anyone outside of our immediate family know about Lisa’s problems. He was afraid of how Chinatown gossip could destroy people’s reputations, but I trusted Godmother, and I knew that after Lisa’s incident at school, her symptoms would soon be public knowledge anyway.

  Godmother beamed. “Are you finally going to join us for qigong work, Charlie?”

  I shook my head. I’d come a long way but I still wasn’t ready. “I’d like to ask you about healing after the class if you have time.”

  She nodded, then returned to her talk of meridians and organs.

  After the other students had gone, Godmother approached me. “You seem worried.”

  “I am.” I took a breath, then told her everything that had been happening with Lisa.

  Godmother listened, her eyes intent. Then she put her hand on my arm and said simply, “Bring me to her.”

  —

  Both Pa and Lisa were home when Godmother and I entered our apartment. Pa came up to us with his hands outstretched. “Godmother Yuan, what an honor. I apologize, we were not expecting you. Our home is a mess.”

  “Nonsense.” Godmother went up to Lisa, who had been reading a book. She took Lisa’s hands in both of hers.

  “Godmother,” said Lisa in a small voice.

  Godmother said to Pa, “May I?”

  When he looked questioningly at me, I said, “I told her.” Pa frowned. To him, I had aired our dirty laundry in public, but he also knew Godmother was considered a great sifu. Slowly, he nodded.

  “Just lie down and stretch out on the couch,” Godmother said to Lisa while she sat on the coffee table. “Relax. Do not worry about a thing. I am not even going to touch you. I am just going to try to understand what is happening.”

  With a glance at me, Lisa lay down warily.

  Godmother closed her eyes and suspended her right hand about a foot above Lisa’s face. Godmother’s fingers began to vibrate. Then she brought her left hand next to her right and allowed both to travel slowly above the length of Lisa’s body. Lisa shivered. Godmother’s hands reached Lisa’s toes, then circled upward again, drawing loop after loop over Lisa’s body.

  Lisa sat up abruptly, coughing. “That felt so weird.”

  “That’s a good sign,” Godmother said. “Negative energy usually leaves via the mouth.”

  Pa said, “Sifu, what did you find?”

  “There is a great deal of blockage in her body but I cannot determine the source. I tried to shift some of it. One of the problems is that she is not trained. She has never done tai chi or qigong, correct?”

  I nodded. “Very little. But you can heal people who have never trained.”

  “I can try. It’s harder.”

  I was starting to feel desperate. “I think we should bring her to a western doctor.”

  Godmother said, “The problem with western medicine is that they look only at the manifestation of the symptoms. For a western doctor, physical pain and emotion are unrelated. They require separate specialists, different treatments. But to the Chinese, physical pain and emotions are two sides of the same coin. You cannot heal the body without healing the soul as well.”

  Pa said, “Lisa is being treated by eastern medicine.”

  Godmother raised her eyebrows. “But never forget that in eastern medicine, there can be a tremendous amount of bullshit.”

  Lisa giggled.

  “See, she is better already,” Godmother said. “I will return but I am not certain of how much I can do for her.”


  —

  In the course of the following week, news of Lisa’s fall had indeed spread. Neighbors, friends and acquaintances rallied to give us helpful advice on how to strengthen her legs. The hairdresser Mrs. Tam brought us packages of a tea she swore had cured her sister’s bad knees. Mrs. Lee told Pa that she’d recently sworn off carbohydrates and it had helped her general health tremendously. Pa was laughing when he told us this story because then he’d reminded her that she was going to put him, a noodle master, out of business with her low-carb talk, and she’d turned beet red. Mrs. Yuan, Grace’s mother, was convinced we needed to eliminate all sugar from Lisa’s diet. Meanwhile, Winston had started showing up at the apartment as well. He’d come by twice, ostensibly to ask about Lisa’s welfare. The first time, Pa was alone at home, and the second, I was just heading to the studio. I hoped he understood from the way I’d hurried off that there was no hope for the two of us.

  —

  I watched Julian coaching Simone and Keith in their routine together. It was May, so we still had a few months until the competition, but they were already fantastic. That number was romantic, fast-paced, technically and artistically demanding, and had been choreographed by Julian himself. Of course, it also didn’t hurt to have Julian so invested in them since he was the head judge for this scholarship. Ryan and I didn’t have the kind of money to hire him, but Keith did.

  It didn’t seem fair to me to have the head adjudicator coach the people he’d be judging, but Katerina told me, “The ballroom world is so small at the top. Everyone is trained by the same handful of coaches, who are also the people asked to judge competitions. If they were not allowed to judge the people they’d coached, everybody would be out of work.”

  Ryan and I were now painfully aware of what we’d been doing wrong, and I’d been throwing myself into my dancing, trying to forget everything that was happening at home. Ryan had improved tremendously as well.

  As I was correcting Ryan’s arm position after a turn, Julian’s reflection appeared beside us in the mirror. “Ah, Charlie. My favorite dancer with potential.” Julian took my hand and held me at a distance to examine me. “Absolutely beautiful.” I flushed with pleasure, then he turned to Ryan. “So this is your competition student. Hmmm. Why don’t you show me what you’ve been doing?”