Her eyes glazed over as she spaced out at at the woman just ahead. The woman’s checkbook design boasted Chinese symbols and a border that read, “Printed on 100% recycled paper with soy-based ink.”
Everyone watched the cashier struggle until a female assistant manager finally helped him unjam the tape feeder. The checkbook lady smiled at Lindsey and said, “The Chinese say, ‘Women hold up half the sky.’ They are so right!”
For some reason, people often engaged Lindsey in conversation by quoting Chinese proverbs. More often than not, the speaker was a white lady with permed reddish hair, an animal-print blouse, and oversized pendant jewelry. Did these women feel compelled to educate Lindsey, or were they seeking her approval? Who knows. Perhaps they simply wished to share a bond with her as a sister in this global village.
Yeah, right. No Chinese person Lindsey knew ever talked like that. For instance, Pau Pau never quoted Lao-tzu. That would be absurd. She quoted episodes of Bonanza.
Out in the parking lot, a scrawny twentysomething guy flexed his arm and asked for spare change. Lindsey shook her head and tried to duck out of his way, but he walked alongside her, following her for half a block.
“Hey, Little Sister, wanna see my tattoo?” he asked, flexing his arm, which was decorated with the bold strokes of a graceful Chinese character.
“It means Loyalty. Pretty righteous, huh?” He bobbed his head up and down and waited for a smile.
“Actually, it doesn’t say Loyalty,” she countered.
“Whaddaya mean?” he asked.
She had no idea which character it was, but she was feeling irritable.
“It says Jackass.”
As the guy gazed at her with a slack jaw, she nodded her head.
The guy grabbed his own elbow and wrestled with himself a bit, trying to wrap his mind around her words.
“No way! Liar!” he accused. Then he looked at her for a long second. “You Chinese?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, and walked away as the guy performed a few shadow-boxing moves and hurried off in the other direction muttering, “Man, I’m gonna kill that guy…”
A Tale of Two Steves
That evening Pau Pau wasn’t home by eight, so Lindsey called the mahjong parlor.
“Winning! Even missing Gunsmoke!” her grandmother said.
Lindsey knew that if Pau Pau was willing to miss one of her favorite shows, the winnings must be serious and her grandmother would be home very late. Lindsey decided that she, too, would go out.
She drove to the Orbit Room on Market and Octavia to meet with Mimi and one of Mimi’s former sorority sisters, Andrea Wilson. Lindsey sipped grapefruit juice and vodka, admiring the art deco interior and space-age lighting fixtures as she listened to Mimi and Andrea’s conversation. Having already drunk several concoctions of blue curaçao and lemonade with multicolored sugar crystals around the rim, Andrea was complaining that the fraternity boys she desperately wanted to date had all recently been ensnared by petite Asian women.
“They’re stealing all of our men!” she said.
Lindsey frowned. Andrea smiled and patted her hand. “Oh, I don’t mean you,” she said. “You’re white, anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lindsey asked.
“You know, you and Mimi are different from other Asian girls. You’re normal like me,” Andrea said.
Lindsey did not reply. What the hell did she mean by “normal”?
Lindsey felt the sting of this backhanded insult, but then, shamefully, realized she felt slightly complimented to be viewed as an equal by a blue-eyed blond. She had always seen herself as different from typical Asian-Americans; she hated hip-hop and sappy soul ballads but liked Abba and They Might Be Giants; she was terrible at math but preferred to bury herself in quasi-intellectual fare like Umberto Eco; instead of hanging out at the Asian food court in college, she had spent her days reading French fabliaux at Caffe Roma.
But despite these differences, Lindsey loathed herself for the small pride she derived from Andrea’s opinion. She detested being called “white, anyway,” as if the words were a consolation prize. She knew she loved Peking duck with hoisin sauce and rice porridge with bits of preserved egg; she had gladly eaten her life’s share of wok-fried entrails, nga choy, and fishball soup. She loved her Chinese family and everything seedy, boisterous, and lively about Chinatown.
She wanted to rebuke Andrea in some way but could not think of the right approach. At times like these, she felt the urge to brag that China had invented porcelain, silk, gunpowder, and spaghetti. She was held back, however, by the embarrassment of her dark secret: during pre-kindergarten afternoons with Pau Pau at the travel agency, she had learned many Cantonese words and phrases, but she had abandoned all her Chinese vocabulary by the time she entered first grade. For all her academic education, Lindsey knew she had lost something important. She felt she couldn’t defend herself against Andrea’s half-compliment/half-insult because she had let her own family’s mother tongue slip beyond her grasp, and that somehow incriminated her or at least made her an accomplice in her own whitewashing.
Mimi wasn’t paying attention to the conversation, especially when she spotted her ex-boyfriend.
Steve E. walked into the bar with his rock ’n’ roll hair moussed into a windswept tangle. Lindsey glanced over at Mimi and knew she was a goner.
“He’s got new highlights!” Mimi said breathlessly. Suddenly nervous, she started to twist the ends of her hair into spirals as she sat transfixed at the sight of Steve E.
Mimi was an Asian Hair Victim. Ever since junior high she had been captivated by her own beautiful straight hair, which she kept ultra-long, all one length past her waist. Despite having split ends that really needed to be snipped, Mimi saw long hair as the mark of supreme sexiness. She refused to trim it, even though she often awoke in the middle of the night to find her locks strangling her. Not to mention the fact that every time she got into a car a few strands got caught in the door by accident.
Her hair was her life. She collected hair accessories: barrettes, twisties, scrunchies, and hair bands. Oh, and she was also obsessed with hair bands from the Eighties, like Mötley Crüe and Poison (which, incidentally, was also the name of her favorite designer perfume).
Steve E. had once drunkenly admitted to Lindsey that the things he liked most about Mimi were her long hair and slim body. Of course, he liked her as a person, too. She had a great personality.
“Well, I gotta get going,” Andrea announced. She scooped up her Kate Spade purse and exited quickly, sidestepping any need to backpedal from her previous statements.
As Lindsey quietly noticed the River Phoenix look-alike who accompanied Steve E., Mimi flipped her hair and pretended she did not see her former paramour. Lindsey finished her drink.
The two guys approached, and when they reached their table, Steve E. said, “Hey, Babe.” He kissed Mimi on the lips, as if they had never broken up. She swooned like a backstage groupie, and the couple quickly retreated to a far corner of the bar, leaving Lindsey with the handsome stranger.
“You can call me Steve D.,” he said, and Lindsey almost laughed. He offered to buy her a drink, and she nodded. Removing his jacket, he winked at her in a way that she found sleazy, but cute.
After a few minutes, he returned and set the beverages down.
“Here ya go. What was your name again?”
“It’s Lindsey. Thanks a lot.” Looking out the oversized window panes, she noted that tonight was one of those unusually warm and pink-skyed San Francisco evenings that made the building lights, even the fluorescent ones, glimmer. It was earthquake weather.
“So how do you know Steve E.?” she asked.
“You mean Sheila E.? He used to be my roommate in L.A.”
Lindsey gave him points for the eighties reference. Demerits for being from Los Angeles.
“Where are you from?” he asked, sipping his Newcastle.
“I’m from here,” she replied, expec
ting the surprise she usually got when people heard that.
“That’s cool,” he said. She waited for the inevitable “Wow, I’ve never met anyone who was actually from this city,” but he never said it.
They conversed in a choppy way, interspersed with sipping and self-conscious gazes at the tabletop. He mentioned that Steve E. and the new Filipina had, in fact, just broken up. Lindsey glanced over at Mimi in the corner, missing it when Steve D. slyly checked her out. When she turned back around, his pupils were pinned on her as though he were a starving mutt and she a pork chop.
“Hold on a sec, don’t move,” he said, reaching toward her neck and lightly pinching an imaginary tuft of lint from her hair.
She glanced down at his hands. Clean, short nails. Possible construction job during the summer, but generally well-kept. Small scar on right index finger. B+
Mimi and Steve E. came over to retrieve her handbag.
“You don’t have to drive me home,” Mimi said, before dashing out the double doors.
Steve D. finished his beer, then put his hand on Lindsey’s shoulder and asked, “Hey, do you want to go walk around?”
She slid off the bar stool and followed him outside. The light wind felt refreshing on her bare thighs.
On the corner of Haight and Laguna they approached a Victorian mansion, its gingerbread trimmings and finials highlighted by a nearby streetlamp. Behind the main house was a cottage with a wooden gate, slightly ajar.
“C’mon,” he whispered, taking her hand and helping her through the gate.
They had been making out for a few exhilarating minutes before they heard the car crash. The sound of crunching metal, glass, and splitting wood startled her, but Steve D. muffled her squeal by pulling her close.
She breathed in the faint scent of fennel branches mixed with the musty smell of damp sawdust as they crouched down behind some unkempt shrubbery. They watched a man throw open the gate and storm into the backyard and up a flight of stairs. Lindsey wanted to get the hell out of there, but Steve held her hand tightly as they tiptoed into the carriage house through a sliding door that was open to the yard. It was completely dark inside except for illumination from the streetlight that was shining through a high window.
Old oak barrels leaned against the wall near an ancient-looking copper bathtub and an armoire with a cracked mirror. Steve climbed up a ladder and Lindsey followed, despite being worried about falling on her ass and ruining her platform knee-boots. From the top of the loft they heard muffled voices, running footsteps, and then the rattle of a van as it chugged away.
Lindsey sat back on an old crate as Steve mashed against her, his hands in her sweater. He was all over her like white on rice.
Slowly and cautiously, he slid his hand under her skirt. Kissing her neck, he said, “You’re so pretty, Jinny.”
How unfortunate. Lindsey couldn’t possibly consider doing it with a guy who couldn’t even get her name right.
“Steve?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled, chewing on her necklace.
“My name’s Lindsey, not Jinny.”
He looked up, flashing her a boyish smile.
“Sorry,” he said, reattaching his mouth to her neck. He didn’t realize that, as far as she was concerned, Elvis had left the building.
“So, who’s Jinny?” she asked, nudging his face off hers.
“No one…just…my…girlfriend…in Gardena…” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you and I can’t be friends, right?”
Lindsey had sobered up by now. “If we’re only friends, could you please get your hands out of my underwear?”
They climbed back down the ladder and walked to her car on Buchanan, near the Mint.
“Hey, you’re not mad, are you?” he asked.
For some reason, she wasn’t, and she told him so.
“Good,” he said. “I like you. I have a lot of Korean friends.”
She nodded, amused. “Well, that’s fascinating, Steve, but I’m not Korean—I’m Chinese.” She leaned up against her car and awaited his brilliant reply.
“Well, I like you anyway,” he said, suddenly kissing her on the cheek and turning to walk away. He broke into a short sprint, then, about twenty feet away, he looked back and blew her a kiss. “Bye!”
It was past midnight when she got home, and the apartment was dark except for the stove light. She stepped out of her clunky boots and padded over to her grandmother’s bedroom to see if she was asleep yet.
Pau Pau was under the blankets, shaking. Her eyes closed, she thrashed around, mumbling in Chinese. Lindsey, still feeling the warm effects of her makeout session, snapped into a slight panic. She shook her grandmother lightly.
“Pau Pau, wake up!” She knelt by the bed, her knees still sore from crawling through the hayloft.
The elderly woman fluttered her eyelashes and slowly gained focus on her granddaughter.
“A ghost?” she asked.
Lindsey leaned over and switched on the bedside lamp.
“It’s okay, Pau Pau. You were dreaming. Only a nightmare.”
Her grandmother sat up, now fully awake.
“Ai-ya!” she shook her head, upset.
“What’s wrong, bad dream?” Lindsey asked, relieved that Pau Pau had not had a seizure or something (in which case, she would have had no idea what to do).
“No, no dream!” she insisted. “Gung Gung need more money! We did not burn enough! He is so poor, so poor…” She rubbed her eyes and said, “Tomorrow we go back to cemetery! Must burn more money!”
She had dreamed that Gung Gung was a pauper in the afterlife, wearing tattered clothes and begging for coins. She was convinced that the paper money they had burned at the funeral two years ago was now all spent. She insisted they must return right away to the Chinese cemetery and honor the deceased with a feast, incense, and paper money.
Lindsey agreed to go to the cemetery the next day so Pau Pau would calm down. She turned off the light and went down the hall to wash up for bed.
Not Unlike Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur I’Herbe
By the time Lindsey woke up at 9:00 A.M., Pau Pau had already gone to Chinatown and bought all the ingredients for the luncheon feast. She was slicing meats, chopping onions, seasoning chicken, and darting around the kitchen like the Tasmanian Devil.
While Lindsey showered (she took her time and used the expensive deep conditioner recommended in Mademoiselle), Pau Pau packed up several Tupperwares and wrapped food items in layers of aluminum foil, placing everything neatly into two cardboard crates.
“Fai-dee! Go get ready!” Pau Pau said, informing her that her aunts would be meeting them at the grave site.
“Is my mom coming?”
“Says too busy.” Pau Pau muttered a few words in Chinese and then complained in English about Lindsey’s mom, “Your ma never cook Chinese style. All she feed you is sandwich, hamburg, spaghett!” She said it like that, with no “er” or “i” at the end of the words.
Lindsey went down to the garage and loaded the boxes of food into the car. She also transported blankets, bundles of paper tied with twine, and shopping bags filled with old framed photos in various sizes. Pau Pau came downstairs, and they headed off.
They drove through town and onto the highway, finally exiting at Colma. They proceeded through the maze of different cemeteries that held San Francisco’s dead, and slowly searched for the Chinese section, where they would find Gung Gung’s headstone.
Lindsey spotted Auntie Vivien’s red BMW from afar. She and Auntie Shirley were unloading lawn chairs from the trunk.
Lindsey parked behind them and got out to help Pau Pau.
“Hi!” Vivien pressed against Lindsey in a light A-frame hug that ensured she would not muss her makeup and just-polished nails. Shirley hugged her niece, too, holding onto her for an uncomfortable length of time until Lindsey squirmed out of the tight embrace.
Vivien had been a disco-loving party girl in the seventies, and after raising her kids and divorcing her
conservative husband, had returned to a life of glitz by wearing tons of cosmetics and too-tight clothes. Her sister Shirley was an aging flower child who took the whole Summer of Love thing way too seriously. They made an interesting contrast—one with dark red lipstick, inappropriately sexy stilettos, and a silver blouse tied at the waist like Daisy Duke, the other in a flowing shapeless dress of peach-colored crepe cotton and big quartz crystals dangling from a hemp choker. It was a sunny day.
“Hahng hoi, hahng hoi!” Pau Pau ordered everybody out of the way so she could spread down the big blanket that smelled like mothballs. She laid it out over Gung Gung’s grave and propped up the framed photos of deceased relatives whom Lindsey did not recognize. Pau Pau proceeded to empty out some waterlogged plastic urns, and several earwigs scattered, causing Vivien to jump back in disgust.
Shirley arranged the apricot-colored roses and white chrysanthemums she had brought. “Hi Daddy, how are you?” she said, like he was right there. She hugged the granite headstone and asked, “Have you been on any spaceships, Daddy?”
Pau Pau spread out the dishes she had carefully prepared that morning: salted chicken with scallion dipping sauce, scrambled egg and ground pork casserole, dried salted fish, bitter melon and seared beef strips with greens, and tender chunks of filet mignon, which Gung Gung had especially liked. Shirley had made a sugarless carrot cake.
They all sat down on the blanket, except for Vivien, who sat on a lawn chair to preserve her stockings and the line of her skirt. They ate with paper plates and plastic utensils, nonchalantly munching away as if they were at a regular picnic. In the distance, a hearse and a procession of cars were just arriving for a funeral service over in the German section.
They sat in silence for a while, and between bites Pau Pau got up and lit incense, placing the sticks right into the dirt. She stared at the picture of her deceased husband and stood alone for a long time. Lindsey found the combined odor of the mothballs and incense to be unappetizing, but she just nibbled quietly.
The Dim Sum of All Things Page 10