She blurted out Pau Pau’s American name, “Lucy Lee,” and the man yelled it back over his shoulder and shuffled away.
Her grandmother appeared and escorted her into the gambling clubhouse. With a tattered sofa, an old televison that broadcast Beijing news, and a card table loaded with tea and hot water thermoses, the room was homey. Low lamps, like those in paintings of dogs playing poker, dangled above the mahjong tables. Fluorescent panels and the glow from a red-and-gold altar gave the place the ambience of an old auntie’s tenement kitchenette, complete with the bracing scent of Pine-Sol. There was no opium, and no doped-up nubile Chinese beauties.
Pau Pau patted Lindsey’s arm and brushed her palm against her cheek affectionately, “What you doing here?”
She introduced the old men and women in the room, and they all nodded and smiled with various amounts of teeth, some missing, some gold.
“They all happy because now they see my tiles!” Pau Pau whispered loudly. Then she added, “Let’s get something to eat.”
After quick good-byes, they stepped out into the cool, damp alley. Pau Pau fished a Salem cigarette from her saggy knit pants and lit it with detached satisfaction.
Merging into foot traffic, Lindsey was reminded of the hundreds of times she and Pau Pau had walked these narrow Chinatown paths. When she was little, she had refused to go to preschool and had screamed at every baby-sitter, so her parents had eventually decided to park her at Pau Pau and Gung Gung’s travel agency office. Walking now, she gazed at the purple glass circles embedded in the pavement and remembered how much they’d delighted her when she was a child. For a moment she stopped and stared at a tank of lethargic Dungeness crabs.
“Fai-dee!” her grandmother yelled, pushing her way through the crowd. Pau Pau always walked purposefully and fast, not thinking twice about throwing an elbow or shoulder to get other pedestrians out of her way. Lindsey lagged behind, mumbling many “excuse me’s” and “pardon me’s” as she tried to navigate the walkway.
A few blocks away, they arrived at a restaurant decorated with rosy pink wallpaper in a Versailles-meets-Hong Kong pattern. Crystal chandeliers drooped with stringy clumps of oil-saturated dust that coated the brass chains like coconut sprinkles. At the small tables, English- and German-speaking tourists, along with locals speaking different Chinese dialects, chewed on piping-hot dumplings and fried taro root squares.
Pau Pau used her thin, machete-like arm to hack through a swarm of bewildered Midwesterners who waited patiently in the cramped doorway stacked with a high, swaying tower of cardboard boxes. She walked briskly toward four decrepit Chinese men hunched around a small table, and she chided them loudly in Cantonese, shooing them away. They unbent their skeletons, stood shakily on weary legs, and shuffled out the door clutching their plastic decks of playing cards. Pau Pau smiled and waved for Lindsey to come sit down.
“They already finish eat,” she explained, pushing aside the dirty plates. They sat for a few seconds, but when no server came immediately to the table, Pau Pau became impatient and walked decisively into the kitchen. Lindsey heard muffled shouts, and a few exclamations later, her grandmother returned carrying teacups, napkins and chopsticks. She was followed closely by two waitresses balancing small heaping dishes of greasy, meaty morsels.
Lindsey removed a moist towelette from her backpack and sanitized her hands before eating. She picked at the wide noodles folded with shrimp and green onions as Pau Pau urged her to eat faster before the food cooled and congealed. After gnawing on a soft and frightening chicken’s foot, Pau Pau picked her teeth behind one cupped hand and lit a cigarette under the No Smoking sign. Lindsey drank tea to wash down the lard that was coating her esophagus.
She Was a Freak Magnet
Although Lindsey didn’t realize it, living with her grandmother had begun to change her in small ways. She was gradually becoming more thrifty, and also more germ-phobic. Now in the habit of washing and saving disposable utensils, she reused plastic bread bags to carry her lunch to work, and she checked out magazines from branch libraries instead of buying them. In public places she never touched a handrail, doorknob, or toilet seat without first covering the inside of her hand with a napkin, and she trained herself to inhale with only shallow breaths when she stood in crowds. She now kept wads of Kleenex in every pocket, with a few tissues stuffed up her sleeve for good measure. Her purse was equipped with a small sewing kit, a plastic hair bonnet in case of rain, and a small bottle of Purell antibacterial gel for any germ-related emergencies.
Her paranoia about germs wasn’t completely unfounded. After all, she did take the bus to work every day. Nothing was as repulsive as the combined odors on a Muni bus. Although she smelled weird things daily in her grandmother’s apartment, like rubbing alcohol and salted fish, hairspray and vinegar, or menthol and suet, none of these odors could compare to public transportation’s urine-based fragrance. On a good day, the only additional smells were diesel exhaust and Eau de Nursing Home, but this morning Lindsey was experiencing a particularly complex bouquet of whiskey-infused sweat, an overdousing of a Chanel #5 knockoff, peanut butter with an after-whiff of Egg McMuffin, and lastly, a lingering human-produced gas that wafted somewhere from her right.
As she lifted the inside of her sweater collar over her face like a surgical mask, the last assault to her nostrils was a scent akin to wet dog mixed with stale bologna. Settling into her Jane magazine, she recalled the time her friend Mimi complained that white people in bad weather reeked like poodle hair.
Flipping through the pages of the magazine, Lindsey suddenly heard a soft-spoken, priestlike voice somewhere within her personal space.
She steeled herself for the inevitable. Years ago she had accepted the fact that weird people on the bus somehow always found her and sat either right next to her, or at least within touching distance. The voice came closer.
“Ni ho ma?”
She hadn’t had coffee yet, her Advil hadn’t kicked in, and wherever that voice was coming from, she knew that someone was about to get in her face.
She looked up from a mouthwash advertisement and saw a pasty lead-singer-of-Chicago-look-alike approaching. He sat down beside her, slowly inching forward as if she were a lamb at the petting zoo. With a pained voice, he asked, “Where are we going this morning, China Doll?”
In this type of situation Mimi swore by the deadpan staredown technique, but Lindsey didn’t want to risk eye contact. The guy nudged a bit nearer.
“Speak Eng-lish?” he asked, his own speech becoming broken. She glanced around at the other Muni passengers, but they all looked away. Staring at the man’s sand-colored, shapeless shoes, she cringed as he inched even closer. She felt his eyes laser-cutting small holes like cigarette burns into the boob region of her white Banana Republic sweater.
Imperceptible to those surrounding her, she checked the grip of her rubber soles against the bus floor and quickly, in one maneuver, lurched up. She strode to the front of the bus, feeling Chicago guy’s eyes still pinned to her cardigan.
Thankfully, the bus was pulling into the next stop at Fifth and Market. She was still four blocks away from work, but she was willing to walk. She’d do anything to escape the greige guy.
Lindsey leaped to the sidewalk and swung at some hovering pigeons with her Gap bag, yanking the drawstring back like a yo-yo just in time to avoid accidentally swatting the guy who sat in front of Walgreens combing his calico cat. She had a certain affection for that furry feline, with its purple sunglasses, even if she did think it too unsanitary to touch. She considered petting the cat and then disinfecting her hands with the Purell gel in her purse, but instead, she just kept walking.
She arrived at her building and rode the elevator to the eighth floor. Once inside the office, she checked on the temporary worker who was taking her shift that day. Grabbing a steno pad, she darted back into the elevator.
She walked to New Montgomery and was a little intimidated as she strode through the Palace Hotel. She was exci
ted to attend her first work-related seminar, even if she was slightly confused as to why her boss was sending her to a conference.
The topic of the seminar was How to Establish a Community of Diversity in the New Millennium Workplace. Just saying that phrase out loud bored her.
At Vegan Warrior, establishing a community of diversity was going to be a little tough, seeing as she was the community. She was the only non-white employee, and as the receptionist, she was a peon who didn’t have the authority to create a more diverse staff, and she was never asked even once to partake in brainstorming meetings of any kind. She didn’t know what her boss expected her to bring back from this session. She supposed her Chinese face must have counted for something.
As she grabbed an orange juice and made her way to a seat, she realized that she was not alone in her predicament; a smattering of other non-white participants dotted the room with deer-in-the-headlights expressions.
A permed, middle-aged white woman in a shapeless, teal-and-mauve tunic welcomed the crowd and plugged the names of several corporate sponsors. She then spent ten minutes describing her very own book about melting pots and business plans, Cash Cow at the End of the Rainbow.
Lindsey scanned the room, observing that the audience sorely needed diversity in terms of haircuts, fashion, and personal hygiene. Something was definitely wrong with people whose politics blinded them to the benefits of emollient face creams and attractive footwear, she thought.
An LCD-projector with PowerPoint slides flashed the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of the word “diversity,” and the audience was forced to read aloud in unison. Some people clapped weakly. A vegetarian luncheon was mentioned. Lindsey longed for assault weaponry.
“The New Age must be dedicated to establishing a reputation for diversity!” The woman’s voice rose to a screech at the last syllable, which jolted open the eyelids of a few snoozers. Lindsey opened her notebook and wrote:
REPUTATION FOR DIVERSITY
Starring Chow Yun Fat as an undercover cop searching for Lindsey Owyang, a karaoke superstar whom he’s protecting so she can play the lead role in the upcoming live-action Hello Kitty movie. Chow Yun Fat infiltrates a tedious conference to protect Lindsey O. from the excruciating boredom that might create slight crow’s feet on her creamy visage or cause her eye sockets to bleed. The undercover cop becomes enraged that the vegetarian pot-stickers are served cold and flavorless, so he lifts his machine gun studded with inlaid jade and pumps cloisonné bullets into a crowd of frumpy women without makeup and earnest men in sensible shoes. RATED R.
She continued her notes:
WE ARE ALL DIVERSE
A Gary Coleman comeback vehicle starring Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Lopez, B.D. Wong and the guy who plays Mini Me in Austin Powers. Gary escapes from the plastic surgery clinic where he has been held hostage since the cancellation of Diff’rent Strokes. After 10 years of radical surgeries, Gary now looks like Mini Me. Samuel L. Jackson is the clinic gardener who hides Gary/Mini Me under a hydrangea bush as the savage clinic guard (played by an unknown actor who bears an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Drummond) uses a weed whacker to decapitate various exquisite topiaries. B.D. Wong is a social worker from Los Angeles who has come to the clinic for a routine eyelid surgery, and he and Samuel Jackson try to convince Gary to embrace his inner black man. Jennifer Lopez plays the voluptuous anaesthesiologist whose butt Gary/Mini Me falls in love with. RATED PG-13.
Lindsey looked up for a moment and fixed her eyes on a skinny Chinese man sitting a few tables away. His bad posture and lack of muscles, paired with his camellia-white skin, inspired another vignette:
A fey drone by day, he trades his wire-rim glasses for contact lenses at night. Before he heads to Tranny Shack, he slithers into a stretchy sequined number so tight that it holds together his boneless body with a pleasantly clingy pressure, giving him such confidence that his coworkers at the San Francisco Food Bank would never suspect his secret life as a female impersonator. His version of Madonna’s “Live To Tell” is a triumphant affair at the “Man-donna” Midnight Show. RATED R.
SLOUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGQUEEN.
As she wrote, she could feel a pair of eyes on her. Yep. Hoarder at ten o’clock. His overactive sweat glands made his skin appear coated in Vaseline. He looked like a genetic cross between a sea slug and country singer John Denver. Catching her eye, he wiggled his eyebrows at her. For the rest of the conference Lindsey made sure to avoid him.
A few hours later, when the conference finally ended, Lindsey remembered to walk home via Chinatown so she could pick up the salted chicken Pau Pau wanted for dinner. Although there were numerous stores along Stockton Street that sold takeout and various roasted fowl, Lindsey made sure to go to the one that Pau Pau liked best.
As she waited in line she dreaded her upcoming exchange with the butcher. The man’s maniacal expression showed the emotional toll that resulted from chopping car-casses all day. He wore a paper Popeye hat and wielded his cleaver with half-open eyes, like he was asleep standing up, yet he managed to slice and dice with expert precision.
Lindsey practiced in her head what she would say to the man and watched as he slammed down his cleaver before ambling over to a teeming tank to retrieve a live catfish. He netted the writhing, whiskered animal and smacked its head a few times with a stainless steel rod. With each clobbering, the fish just wiggled even more defiantly. Lindsey’s jaw dropped. The catfish was like Rasputin. It just refused to die. The butcher eventually threw it in a sack and hoisted it over the counter to an old lady. Lindsey almost passed out.
Her head was reeling when the butcher returned to his block and pointed his cleaver at her. Wide-eyed, she held up a single index finger and stammered, “See, uh, see yow gai, please.”
She knew see yow was soy sauce, and gai was chicken, but that was practically the extent of her vocabulary. Immediately, the butcher began to fire questions at her in Chinese: How many? Cut up, or whole? With sauce or plain?
It was her own fault. She knew that uttering one phrase in Chinese made people think she knew more words than she actually did.
Lindsey froze, and the way her eyes got as big as frying pans made the butcher cackle like a madman. He seemed to know she couldn’t understand him, and even more worrisome, he stared deep into her eyes like he was looking right through her head clear to the back wall. He kept talking, seeming to enjoy making her uneasy. He began to maneuver the cleaver around like a swordfighter in the movies, and Lindsey guessed he was asking if she wanted the bird halved, quartered, or what. She was so freaked out that she gestured for him to just throw the chicken whole into a bag. He laughed at her squeamishness as he twisted off the shins and wrung off the limp, softened neck, then in one lightning-quick motion he sliced the head clear in half. Lindsey almost fainted at the sight of the cross-sectioned brain.
After she paid for the chicken and exited the store, she started up the hill. Pretty soon she realized that she really needed to pee, and estimated that she wouldn’t be able to make it home in time. She had to map out a strategy.
It was really difficult to find a public rest room in Chinatown. Not to mention they were always really filthy. The word “filth” achieved a new superlative in relation to this neighborhood’s water closets, and Lindsey was worried.
She thought about sneaking into one of the restaurants, but they all had signs posted Toilet for Customer Only, and she was afraid of getting caught and thrown out. She briefly considered eating a meal at one of the fancier places, just so she could use the bathroom. But she didn’t have time for that. She ducked into one of the trinket shops instead.
Lindsey feigned extreme interest in some discounted happicoats, and when the salesgirl wasn’t paying attention she made her way to the back of the store and found a door. She peered inside. Nope. Broom closet and extra inventory of fart bombs. She tried an adjacent door, and the foul odor told her she had found the right place.
Lindsey held her breath and secured her
parcels in the crook of her forearm. There were no seat covers or tissue, and as she squatted she tried not to think of all the employees, deliverymen, and assorted germbags who might have done their business there. As she peed she noticed the black, gummy soot and shoe dirt that had begun in the corners and seeped across the concrete floor. With the exception of the well-worn path from the door to the sink to the toilet, the sticky layers had built up into an encrusted relief of godknowswhat. The drainage grid in the center of the floor was crooked and corroded, clogged with a few soggy cigarette butts and stanky, greenish water.
As she balanced there, she reached for the paper napkin in her sleeve, but it was trapped under the plastic bag handles weighed down by the heavy chicken. She managed to rip a few shreds of tissue from the fifth pocket of her Levi’s that were crunched down at her knees, and soon her task was done.
At the sink, goopy snail trails of pink liquid soap had long since dried and turned gray. She lifted the faucet lever and shuddered as she picked up the remains of a slick, cracked bar of soap whose shape had been influenced by the countless spinning grips of latherseekers, and now resembled a set of brass knuckles. The soap was deeply scored with furrows of grime from a hundred previous hands that had deposited all their ink, scalp scum, sloughed skin, and various dogday particles onto the soft, wet pellet.
Her hands felt dirtier after washing them, and she used her last tissue to flush the toilet and turn the doorknob. On her way out of the store, to appear inconspicuous she asked the salesgirl for the price of a lucky bamboo sprig, and when she walked away without buying it the shopgirl called her a cheapskate tourist.
The Dim Sum of All Things Page 2