“Really?”
Lindsey gave her friend a reassuring hug, trying not to inhale the residual toxic fumes from Mimi’s chemically singed hair. As Mimi whimpered slightly, Lindsey said, “He’ll be sorry. That Hoarder’s gonna end up wallowing in the ninth circle of the Underworld with nary a single Asian lady to wipe the sweat from his brow. He’ll be begging for St. Joseph to toss him cold, greasy lumpia!”
As she shifted her weight, she accidentally squished a gold Via Spiga sandal under her boot and winced. Seeing the metallic straps bend and contort, she thought briefly of her midget toe and how it would never be loosely cradled by such glamorous strips of softened leather. Quickly, she dismissed her sandal-envy and concentrated instead on how she would avoid the wrath of Mimi and her meticulous, shoekeeping ways.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Mimi said. She sniffled a little, loosened an arm from their embrace, and reached for a tissue. Lindsey picked up the sandal and readjusted the straps to their proper form. She smiled sympathetically. “Don’t worry, Imelda, he’s an idiot.”
Driving home with the luxurious sweater resting on the passenger seat, Lindsey cranked up the radio as it played “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors.
“I got plans for you,” she said to the sweater as she sang along all the way down Bush Street, making all the green lights.
She pulled her car into the garage and went upstairs, making sure to open the front door quietly so as not to wake her grandmother. After she washed up and changed into her nightgown, from her bedroom window she looked out at the altar that burned at all hours in the Chinese family’s duplex across the street. She watched her neighbor place kumquats and sticks of incense on the red lacquer cabinet. Getting into bed, Lindsey gazed into the red glow from the single crimson Christmas light that illuminated the round belly of the ceramic Buddha figurine, and slowly she blinked to sleep.
The following afternoon Lindsey sat on the bedspread-covered sofa and studied the living room decor. In her apartment there was no altar; instead, the walls were covered with many different sizes of framed photographs. She saw snapshots of cousins crunching candy canes beside a blue-and-silver tinsel tree, Pau Pau and her school-age daughters at the airport clutching Pan Am satchels, and a picture of herself when she was five, in front of the Snow White ride at Disneyland. But these mementos were overpowered by the sheer quantity of the other frames that sandwiched them, all photos of Gung Gung in his prime, spanning a period of thirty or so years.
Gung Gung had come to San Francisco in 1915 from a village in southern China called Toisan. He and another boy had immigrated as the “paper sons” of a successful Chinese-American merchant. Although the boys were unrelated and neither had met their so-called “father,” they pretended to be brothers and were given new American names. To acquire U.S. citizenship, they became Sam and Bill Gin. Now, so many years later, no one mentioned or even remembered their true names.
That was all that Lindsey knew about Gung Gung’s beginning, and as she studied the photographs on the wall it was difficult to imagine her dapper grandpa as an immigrant boy. Somewhere along the way he obviously became a true believer in American superiority and was never one to miss a photo opportunity. In his three-piece suit, he was captured on film with the politicians of his day: Alan Cranston, Dianne Feinstein, George Moscone, Jerry Brown, and a young Ted Kennedy. Lindsey remembered him telling her as a child never to give up on the idea that, in the United States, even a Chinaman travel agent like him could be president…and why not him? If he could shake hands with enough influential dignitaries and capture the moments for posterity, maybe he could get that much closer to his goal. He even painted the exterior of their twelve-unit apartment building bright white, topped it with an oversized flagpole waving the stars and stripes, and named the place The White House Apartments. “I live in the White House!” he used to brag. The neon light he had installed above the entryway still buzzed brightly, twenty-four hours strong.
One particular photo caught Lindsey’s eye. The black-and-white glossy showed Pau Pau and Gung Gung standing with another couple, and a caption read, “San Francisco Chinatown Lions Club welcomes Mayor Joseph Alioto and Wife, 1967.” The men shook hands as the women beamed for the camera. Lindsey was struck by how lovely Pau Pau looked in a Chinese dress with a high Mandarin collar, fitted short sleeves, and diagonal neck opening.
She didn’t hear Pau Pau shuffle up behind her.
“What you look at?” Pau Pau asked.
“This picture of you is so…” Lindsey did not immediately know the word she sought.
“I was not so young, but not bad!” Pau Pau laughed, her lips parting only slightly as she sucked on a toothpick. “Still, long time ago…” she trailed off.
Lindsey examined the photo for a few more seconds.
“Where did you get this dress?”
“I had lots like these! In China too. Had lots, but could not bring here.”
“How come?”
Pau Pau pinched Lindsey’s cheek, somewhat harder than usual.
“I had to carry your mommy. She was only baby. Bring no-thing else,” she said. Her voice carried what could only be described as sarcasm, as if she meant to say, “You silly, stupid girl!”
Pau Pau looked up wistfully to the cottage-cheese ceiling, then pointed to the photo of her younger self.
“I had this dress make in Chinatown. Not so expensive make, so had many same style, different color and what is…pattern. Different pattern, hai la…”
“Do you still have them?”
Pau Pau nodded with bright eyes. None of her daughters had ever expressed interest in cheongsams. When they were younger, they reviled any old-fashioned dresses they said would make them look “too Hong Kongie.” They preferred blue jeans and white go-go boots, and later, macramé ponchos and shapeless, granny-type frocks. Rebuffed by her own kids, Pau Pau now seemed flattered that her Americanized granddaughter was interested in her old cheongsams.
A few minutes later, digging in the back of her closet, Pau Pau unveiled one Chinese dress after another, all with the same notched collar and hidden side zippers. A variety of rich brocades, slubby-textured silks, and cotton blends were represented in both vivid colors and subdued hues. Intricate spirals, delicate nature motifs, even canary and black op-art diamonds added to the mix.
“Wow! These are great!” Lindsey exclaimed. “Can I try one on?”
“You too fat, not so skinny like me!”
Lindsey sucked in her stomach.
“Okay, you try, you try,” Pau Pau said after some reconsideration.
Pau Pau did not think to step outside the bedroom for modesty’s sake while Lindsey removed her T-shirt and jeans. She casually observed Lindsey’s body, noting with minor curiosity the changes that had occurred since last bathing her more than two decades ago.
As Lindsey hoisted up her left heel, Pau Pau said, “Siu siu, tschow gerk,” addressing the midget toe with affectionate honors, just in case it was listening. Pau Pau referred to her granddaughter’s special foot as a “small, stinky foot,” even though it was not particularly either. Lindsey’s foot was a size seven, and even the midget toe never smelled bad. Pau Pau was just in the habit of calling it that.
The elderly woman had her own theories about the midget toe. While Kevin made jokes about having dropped a giant can of concentrated Hawaiian Punch syrup on Lindsey’s foot when they were kids, Pau Pau took the whole matter more seriously. She once quietly mentioned her own mother’s bound feet, with their broken bones, gray flesh, and putrid smell. She recounted how, as a child back in Shanghai, she had watched her mother unwrap the strips of cloth beneath her embroidered slippers, and saw how the fabric was sometimes soaked with the faintly yellow pus that leaked from the crevices of the collapsed foot. Pau Pau believed that Lindsey’s little toe was not an aberration but a genetic reminder of the suffering endured by the generations of women who came before. While Pau Pau herself had escaped the pain of footbinding, she said
she was reminded of the old Chinese custom every time she thought of her granddaughter’s toe. She was superstitious about it, too. Not knowing if the toe was a blessing or a warning, she said it was important to keep the nub happy, or at least appeased. She suspected that, if treated badly, the toe might retaliate and perhaps grow to gigantic proportions. As a matter of course, she always encouraged Lindsey’s sensible sockwearing habit.
Lindsey stepped into a narrow silver dress and got the zipper up most of the way, but the neck opening was impossibly small.
“See, must be slender for these kind! Too much sport as teenage!” Pau Pau swatted at Lindsey. “Sport make big feet, too!”
Back when Lindsey was in high school, Pau Pau used to criticize her for being on the soccer and swim teams, saying that these activities were unladylike and would make her grow “deform,” even more deformed than just one little roast beef-deficient toe. Now, noting that Lindsey’s body was still more athletic than willowy, she shook her head in dismay, regarding Lindsey’s muscles, however small and out of shape, as the unfortunate result of tomboyish defiance.
“If listen to me then, you might fit now,” Pau Pau said with a shrug. “You put back, okay? I brush denture.” Pau Pau pulled out her mouthpiece and shuffled away.
Lindsey began to react differently to the bits of trash she suspected were Michael’s. Through sidelong glances she deduced that Coca-Cola, Twix, and Reese’s peanut butter cups were his vending machine items of choice. She never saw him with the oatmeal-nut clusters that looked like clumps of cat litter, and this apparent snack wisdom made him more attractive to her. Now, whenever she saw an empty Coke can on the conference table, she picked it up and scrutinized it for a lip imprint before tossing it into the recycling bin. She liked to think it was Michael’s mouth that had touched it.
To any casual observer, there was nothing going on between Lindsey Owyang and Michael Cartier. But she was certain there was. He came in each day around 9:30 A.M. and, timing his arrival, she mastered the art of the casual pose. She was convinced that she could feel his presence before he popped out of the elevator. Sometimes she would flash him a smile as he walked by her desk, or sometimes she would deliberately not look up from her Excel spreadsheets.
Michael played right along. He obviously liked it when she looked up from her work or asked him how his weekend was. When she ignored him (every third day, down to a science), he would pause for a second and look at the New York Times headlines, or pick up an imaginary paper clip on the carpet.
Today, as scheduled, she feigned indifference when he walked in. But, God, she could tell without even looking up that he looked gorgeous today, his face a bit flushed from walking in the morning air.
“Hey Lindsey, did I get any calls yet?” he asked. He stopped to casually sort through the incoming faxes.
She continued to itemize the FedEx bill, coding amounts by department and adding them up on her calculator. She did not look up for a while, but when she finally did glance at him, he, in turn, made her wait as he pretended to study a fax.
“No calls yet, but I’m sure you can invent better excuses to talk to me,” she said, smiling mischievously as his eyes sprang off the fax to meet her flirtatious gaze. She noted with sporting satisfaction that his face brightened and his demeanor shifted.
He leaned over the raised partition of her desk, and she looked away coyly, suddenly disarmed. She was unable to sustain eye contact, afraid she’d actually kiss him right there or betray that she wanted to.
“Okay then,” he said with a smile. “I’ll try to be more clever next time.” He headed toward his office, looking back once over his shoulder, keeping his eye on her.
She blushed, and a small smile curled around her strawberry-glossed lips. This was fun.
Later that morning, she was replaying the scenario in her lightly Aqua Netted head when the phone rang her out of a fantasy world involving Michael’s hand under her linen skirt.
“Good morning, thank you for calling Vegan Warrior.”
“Hello, is Lindsey Owyang there? This is her dad.”
She snapped quickly out of her Spice Channel brain and into her dutiful daughter persona.
“Oh, hi, Dad.”
“Hi there. Are you busy?”
“No, not really. What’s up?”
“This weekend is the Gin Family Association dinner at Empress of China. Can you make it?”
“Um, yeah, I guess.”
“Mom and I will pick up you and Pau Pau around six on Saturday then, okay?”
“All right.”
Lindsey hung up the phone and pressed the Replay button on the soft-porn video that was projected on the inside of her eyelids. She had just gotten Michael’s hand into her underwear when the phone rang again.
“Vegan Warrior.”
“Did you pick up the hypertension medicine for Uncle Bill?”
Her brain was still elsewhere. “What? Who is this, please?” she asked the caller.
“Um, hello, this is your father.”
“Oh, hi. Yeah, sure, Dad.”
“Okay, see you Saturday.”
Chinese + English = Chinglish
When Chinese immigrants first came to San Francisco in the mid-1800s, laws excluded them from bringing their wives or families to join them. As a result, the men formed Benevolent and Family Associations that grouped men according to their homeland villages or last names and provided services and a sense of community to the immigrants, who could not count on any city services to guide or protect them.
Chinatown was then, and is now, a very unknown place to those unfamiliar with its day-to-day reality. There’s a lot to see beyond its touristy curios and souvenirs. But as with most environments, if you look closely enough and stand quietly, you might unexpectedly catch a glimpse of something small but authentic: an elderly man in an old-style Mao jacket fishing a five-dollar bill out of the gutter, a red-tailed hawk silently circling above a squalid alley searching for a pigeon lunch, or a plump little girl inhaling a sweet jeen-deui sesame ball.
Among these sights on an early Saturday evening, you might have seen Lindsey, holding open the heavy car door for her ancient uncle Bill. Her family was completely blocking the single-lane traffic on Grant Avenue as they tried to maneuver the old guy from the sedan to the curb in front of the Empress of China restaurant. Cars were at a standstill all the way down past California. Drivers within view of the elderly man waited patiently out of respect, and those in minivans further down the line seemed resigned to the fact that Chinatown traffic was always terrible. All refrained from honking their car horns, as if lulled into a calm melancholy by dusk’s darkening shadows.
Lindsey’s Auntie Vivien was hoisting the wheelchair out of the trunk, while Mr. Owyang shifted the car into park and went around to the passenger’s side to lift Uncle Bill out of the seat. Gin family elders with red sashes rushed out to greet Uncle Bill, who stared out blankly from his cataract eyes. A Chinese man fastened a boutonniere across Uncle Bill’s lapel, next to his small pin bearing the dignified image of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Other men crowded around and lifted Uncle Bill’s stroke-impaired arm and shook his hand vigorously.
Lindsey felt stupid just standing there holding the car door. She watched the old men fuss over her uncle and wondered what past deeds he had accomplished, and what kind of life this man had led. She felt out of place, as if her ignorance of Chinese grammar might be discovered at any moment. She looked up at the apartment lights blinking on one by one, and the sight reminded her of an Elmer Bischoff painting she’d once seen at the University Art Museum in Berkeley.
“Hey, close the door,” her dad called, starting up the engine and lurching the car forward. Lindsey obliged and followed her uncle’s entourage into the restaurant foyer and up the elevator.
Once they arrived on the fifth floor, a chubby singer who resembled an Asian Pillsbury Doughboy belted out “melodies” in Cantonese, and the volume from the speakers was as loud as the chandeliers were blindin
g. The walls were decorated with swaths of embroidered crimson silk and antique canopies stitched with turquoise and gold thread.
Newly arrived guests all wrote their names on a red tablecloth and collected their seat numbers as Mr. Hong Kong Poppin’ Fresh continued his set from the stage. Lindsey and her family sat bundled in their coats, cracking salted melon seeds between their teeth. Shortly thereafter, Auntie Vivien sat down with two of her three children, Brandon and Cammie, and Auntie Shirley blustered over to the table, infusing the surrounding air with her signature patchouli fragrance.
They settled in and made small talk as they scanned the other guests, most of whom they only saw once a year, at this banquet. The Gin Family Association continued to invite Lindsey’s family every year even though Gung Gung had passed away and two of his daughters had different married surnames now. They were all still considered Gins despite the fact that Gung Gung himself had only become a Gin by means of a false certificate. Looking around, Lindsey wondered which other families were impostors.
She sat next to her mother and looked across the table at her aunties, who were squabbling over whose fake diamonds looked more real. Vivien and Shirley were different from Lindsey’s mother, who was the only one born in China. Although they had all been named for movie stars—Lillian Gish, Vivien Leigh, and Shirley Temple—Vivien and Shirley were as overdramatic and spoiled as film divas compared to their older sister. They said it was tough luck for her that she had had to work as a kid, shelling pounds of shrimp for a local restaurant to help their parents make ends meet. That was back in the early forties, and both Vivien and Shirley weren’t born until eight to ten years later. They had benefitted from their parents’ following financial success but, unfortunately, had never learned the value or satisfaction of earning one’s own money.
Even now, neither had had much of a job history. Vivien dabbled in real estate but mainly lived off the income from rental properties acquired by her ex-husband. Shirley had business cards that touted her as a “painter of auras” and “chakra reader.” In reality, she was a part-time file clerk at the corporate office of Whole Foods.
The Dim Sum of All Things Page 5