The Dim Sum of All Things

by Kim Wong Keltner

  Stockton Street was their stop. Pau Pau pushed toward the front, bulldozing against those who were trying to board the bus. Lindsey made her way to the back door, and when she finally jumped from the step, Pau Pau was waiting impatiently on the crowded sidewalk.

  “Gee whiz! What take so long?”

  Lindsey tried to explain how it’s best to exit a bus from the back door, but Pau Pau just threw up her hands. She darted swiftly across Clay Street like a strong and determined quail as Lindsey tried in vain to keep up, bumbling as clumsily as a one-legged pigeon.

  Passing the corner newsstand where Lindsey and Kevin used to buy fireworks and Wacky Packs, they neared the modest, maroon-tiled building where her family’s travel agency had been. Now the office was occupied by an acupuncturist, and the sign with the neon airplane was gone.

  Gung Gung had been big into neon. He’d loved anything flashy, shiny, and all-American, such as Cadillacs and taps on his wingtips.

  He was always cracking jokes and making people feel at ease. Lindsey recalled how Gung Gung used to prepare raisin toast and Ghirardelli chocolate with hot milk. In the summer he would peel ripe nectarines for her and sprinkle sugar on the slices.

  “Very nice! Very tasty!” he would always say.

  She held on tightly to these memories. She wished she had talked to him more before he died, but it had never occurred to her that he wouldn’t always be around. She felt guilty for having only childhood memories of him and for never having thanked him for anything.

  “Fai-dee!” Pau Pau yelled, hurrying through the Washington Street crosswalk.

  Before Lindsey knew it, Pau Pau had ducked into Orange Land and was tossing inadequate mangoes, inspecting law bok, and selecting tender bok choy. Old ladies were shoving Lindsey, stepping on her feet, and generally treating her like a nuisance because she wasn’t moving quickly or decisively enough. Pau Pau handed her a twenty-dollar bill and several plastic bags filled with taro, siew choy, mustard greens, dow gok, and snow peas.

  “Go pay over there,” Pau Pau ordered, shoving her way out to the narrow, fishy-smelling sidewalk.

  Lindsey stood in line at the cashier. People jostled each other even though there was nowhere to move. One after another, several old ladies cut in front of her and tossed their purchases on the scales as the cashier rang them up, unaware of Lindsey’s presence. She tried to push her way up but was afraid of being rude, despite the fact that she herself was being bumped, squished, and elbowed. She waited, but the line didn’t get any shorter.

  “Ai-ya!” She heard a familiar voice behind her. Pau Pau grabbed the bags from her hands, hoisted the items above the heads of other shoppers, and in one swift motion, overpowered two ladies who were attempting to cut in front. She paid the cashier and thrust the packages back into her granddaughter’s hands.

  A few doors down, Pau Pau entered a store that sold mostly dry goods: rice-paper candies, various kinds of dried mushrooms, and stuff that looked like yellow shredded sponge for bird’s nest soup. Lindsey glanced around at the other dried items: whole pressed ducks, flattened flounders, crystallized ginger, medicinal roots, dehydrated sea horses, and clumps of stringy brown seaweed.

  Pau Pau purchased several packets of herbs folded individually in wax paper, a box of back plasters, and two cans of hairspray with black tint for covering gray hair.

  “One more place,” Pau Pau said, walking through crowds that parted effortlessly for her, like she was a Chinese lady Moses.

  They stepped into a meat market, where Pau Pau cut several people in line and ordered two pounds of pork, trimmed and cut to her specifications.

  “Sow yook,” she said. “You have to get skinny kind of pork, not too much fat.”

  She pointed to two specific fish in a tank of a hundred and made sure the butcher retrieved exactly the ones she wanted.

  “Must buy swimming fish,” she explained. “Fish in American store—Safeway, Cala Food—already dead. No good.”

  Leaving the bustling market, Lindsey organized the heavy bags of groceries and distributed their weight evenly so the handles didn’t hurt her palms.

  “Okay, you go home, I play mahjong,” Pau Pau said before turning to depart.

  Lindsey replied, “Okay, see you later tonight.” After a brief moment of hesitation she quickly added, “I love you.”

  Pau Pau nodded in an unsentimental way, thrust her hands into her pockets, and walked off toward Spofford Alley.

  On her own now, Lindsey strolled down Grant Avenue before heading home. She stopped at a store window with pretty silk lanterns and vintage advertisements depicting 1930s-style Shanghai girls. She was attracted to the sepiatoned nostalgia of the posters but suddenly felt uncomfortable when two white women approached and also stopped to admire the display.

  They were tourists who had just traipsed up from North Beach, one wearing a floral tent and the other wearing a Property of Alcatraz sweatshirt stretched snugly over her tiramisu-stuffed paunch. Lindsey looked up and was amused to see an ancient, white-haired Chinese man zooming by on a zippy Razor scooter. He bounced against one of the tourist’s ample posteriors and nearly fell. Deftly regaining his balance, he swore at the women in Chinese, then readjusted the bulging plastic sacks on his handlebars before pushing off and coasting away.

  Lindsey eyed the tourists.

  “Aren’t Oriental girls beautiful!” Alcatraz exclaimed.

  “Yes, they’re so exotic! Maybe Dede would like that…”

  Lindsey listened, feeling that somehow she, too, was being judged.

  “So graceful,” Alcatraz marveled again.

  The women followed Lindsey into the curio shop, and the three browsed in close proximity for some time. A stationery section displayed notebooks and address books with closeups of pretty Chinese faces. On a nearby shelf, Asian motifs adorned an assortment of pencil cases, jewelry boxes, and lipstick containers. Lindsey picked up a few items, but as soon as one of the tourists touched the same thing and remarked, “How darling!” she reconsidered her interest.

  She didn’t quite know why she was ambivalent about her own desire for the trinkets. Would she get any closer to her Chinese heritage by purchasing that embroidered coin purse, or would she disgrace her ancestors by writing a white guy’s phone number in that brocaded filofax?

  She decided to purchase a coin purse with a fan-pagoda motif.

  “Thanks,” she said to the woman behind the counter.

  “ABC?” the woman asked.

  “Yep,” she replied, knowing that Mainland people derived great amusement and satisfaction from identifying American-born Chinese. Lindsey tucked away her change, and the woman nodded and swaggered off, seeming confident that she had Lindsey all figured out.

  Lindsey suddenly remembered she was carrying raw meat. She needed to hurry home, but first she stopped in a corner store to buy a pack of gum.

  She placed a pack of Wrigley’s Doublemint on the counter and waited to pay as the old Chinese guy behind the register slowly stubbed out his cigarette. Pondering the illegality of smoking indoors in the state of California, she spotted a ripped calendar taped against the wall. At the bottom was a black-and-white group photo with a caption that read, “This 1988 calendar compliments of the Chinese Six Companies.”

  As the grocer talked lazily over his shoulder to a younger man unpacking cans of lychees, Lindsey focused on the photo of smiling Chinese men in suits and realized that her Gung Gung was standing third from the right. She recognized his big smile and the same posed stance from the picture with Jimmy Carter that hung above her bed.

  She fished out two quarters, her eyes still glued to the tattered calendar. The man began speaking to her in Cantonese, but she only responded by blinking a couple of times.

  “ABC, eh? What you looking at? Look at old picture?” he asked.

  She nodded toward the photo. “That’s my grandfather.”

  The man scooted closer to the calendar to get a better look.

  “Oh yeah? Whic
h? This one?” He pointed to the man on the far left, but she shook her head. He went down the row until finally she said, “Yes, that one. That’s him.”

  The man furrowed his long eyebrows and looked up at some paint that was flaking off the wall. He seemed to be recalling a faraway time, and then, as though the name were magically written on the ceiling, he said, “Sam Gin?”

  She couldn’t believe it. “Yeah, that’s him!”

  “Ah,” the old man nodded. “You daughter?”

  “Granddaughter,” Lindsey said, poking herself in the chest to illustrate the veracity of her claim.

  “Oh!” the man exclaimed. Excited, he began to talk quickly in Cantonese but then waved his hand in front of his face and said, “Sorry, I forget.” He thought for a second before restarting in English.

  “Sam Gin, very good man. Gave me ride to airport once.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes, yes, yes. Was president of Six Companies. And travel agency. Know everybody!” The man kept nodding for a few more seconds but said no more.

  She smiled. “Did you know him well?”

  “Oh, long time ago,” he said, lighting a new cigarette.

  She wanted to ask more questions, but the old man’s mind shifted back into the present. He yelled something in Chinese to the guy who had been unpacking the cans.

  She couldn’t think of any other questions to ask. The man smiled and opened his cash register.

  “You keep, you keep,” he said, handing her two quarters. She took them, knowing it would be insulting to him if she refused.

  “Okay, bye bye now,” he said. With nothing else to do but leave, she thanked the man and left.

  Chinese Water Torture

  Lindsey awoke and could not get back to sleep. She felt restless and hyper-awake and sensed that she had been dreaming about something thrilling, but now she could not remember the shadowy images no matter how hard she tried to conjure them. She kicked out of her sheets, grabbed a notebook, and poised a pen above the page, trying to will herself to recall any vivid details. But the more she tried to put words down on paper, the more her ideas evaporated from her imagination and the only thing she could visualize was the ink drying up inside the pen’s cartridge.

  At times like these, when she couldn’t sleep, she often fell into worry about a multitude of life’s details: the coffee she spilled on Mimi’s sweater, global warming, increased parking ticket fines, and what she would do with the rest of her life.

  From her vanity she gazed out the window at the night sky, which glimmered like an intense sapphire. She wondered if anyone else in the city could see the financial district resting perfectly still, resembling a geometric pack of stars and galaxies floating against ultramarine blue glass. She slowly scanned the dark skyline of baby supernovas, as its imprint burned in her head like a silent film dissolving on a silver screen.

  For forty minutes she sat wide awake, as her stream-of-consciousness worries drifted in and out of her mind like seafoam at low tide. She burrowed back under her comforter and eventually accepted the gentle gravity that drooped her eyelids like luxurious, plush curtains. She rested her head against the pillow and sank into a deep sleep. Her worries, like loose rocks in the caves of Ocean Beach, washed back into a crevice of her memory, where they would wait, dormant until the next wakeful night.

  Every night that week Lindsey dreamed of the ocean, and Saturday she decided to go to Fort Point for a walk below the Golden Gate Bridge. She drove the winding road through the Presidio and descended into the cool stand of silver-green eucalyptus trees that swayed on the side of the road like a forest of tall, lanky boys.

  The fog resembled bright white crystalline cotton reflecting off the liquid metal waves. She considered San Francisco Bay similar to a distant but protective ancestor, one who spoke no English yet communicated affection with the forceful motion of smooth, jade water.

  Watching the swells crash against the wet, black rocks, she imagined the boat that had brought her grandfather here. How totally unsanitary it must have been, she thought as she pulled some Purell from her bag and rubbed her hands together until the alcohol gel evaporated.

  She sat on the hood of her car and watched the surfers bobbing like puffins atop the waves. Roaring in her ears as loud as a roller coaster, speeding vehicles overhead rumbled between the red-orange girders of the bridge.

  She walked closer to the fort and explored around the back, out of sight from the parking lot. Sand crunched under her boots as she kneeled down for a closer look at some pinkish pale specks fluttering in the water.

  She heard a voice next to her.

  “I was wondering what those were, too.”

  It took a second to register who he was because it was puzzling to see him so completely out of context. How strange it was to be standing here at Fort Point, standing next to Michael Cartier.

  The logical question that she might have asked was, What are you doing here? but she didn’t say that. In fact, she didn’t say anything at all, and neither did he. In a moment of paused time, they stood and just looked at each other in the crisp November sunlight.

  He wore jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and dark brown suede shoes with crepe soles. She looked around and didn’t see anyone who might be accompanying him here, but just as she was about to ask, he broke the silence and said, “Are you here by yourself?”

  She nodded, forgetting that she knew how to talk.

  “It’s funny,” he said. “I always noticed that clipping taped up on your desk, that scene from Vertigo where Jimmy Stewart is carrying Kim Novak out of the water. And it was on TV last night. I watched it and it gave me the idea to come here.” He smiled, and Lindsey noticed a certain kindness in the crinkles around his eyes.

  “And here you are, just like that,” she said.

  He nodded. “And you, y’just hang around here on a regular basis?”

  She felt her feet sort of lift from the ground in the brief moment his hand touched her shoulder. They walked together along the concrete slabs near the edge, where the land dropped off and the Pacific Ocean began. An enormous, cracked, and rusted chain barrier separated sightseers from the ocean, but Lindsey and Michael stepped over it for a closer view of an old clipper ship that was cruising under the famous landmark. She figured it was a private charter for a wedding or some other special event, but with its billowed, wine-colored sail, it was nonetheless a spectacular sight, conjuring up romantic images of nineteenth-century adventurers sailing around Cape Horn.

  “Let’s go look in the fort,” Lindsey said, finding her voice. She high-stepped back over the crusty cast-iron chain.

  “Okay.” Michael looked back for a final glimpse of the ghostlike ship, which was gliding gracefully out of view. As he raised his leg over the barrier, the sole of his right shoe suddenly slipped on the wet concrete and propelled him backward. Since his left leg was already hoisted in the air, poised for the small hop over the chain, the rest of his body had no choice but to swiftly fall back. He tumbled fifteen feet below, into the salty, shallow bay.

  In the distance, a wave crashed against a large rock, sending up an impressive splatter of white spray, so no one noticed the relatively modest splash made by Michael’s flailing body. Lindsey had been watching the surfers again, and when she turned to point out a particularly skilled boogie-boarder, she realized her companion was no longer on dry land.

  Hopping back over the chain, she looked down and saw him, standing chest-high in the bay water, soaking wet. He did not appear hurt, but he seemed to have difficulty keeping his balance as the waves pushed against him and washed the sand out from under his legs.

  “Are you okay?” she yelled.

  He waded over to a more shallow area and stood to catch his breath, slightly bent over with his hands on his knees, like a quarterback in a football huddle.

  “Yeah, I just came down here to see these starfish,” he said, pointing to the pink and orange sea creatures that clung onto a phalanx of shiny blac
k mussels.

  A small crowd gathered to watch. Michael managed to hoist himself up and climb to safety. Dripping on the granite walkway, he ran his hands through his sopping hair and tried to pull off his sweatshirt, which was heavy with salt water.

  A teenage boy in a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt ran up and asked, “Hey, can I take your picture?” He handed Lindsey his camera and stood next to Michael. She clicked the camera and handed it back.

  As the boy ran off, Michael yanked off his sweatshirt and twisted the water from it.

  It would be an outright lie to say that Lindsey didn’t check out Michael as best as she could. He was standing there in broad daylight with nothing on but wet blue jeans, socks, and shoes (and, presumably, underwear). He was somewhat pale, but that was fine with her, since no self-respecting San Franciscan actually went out of his way to tan, for heaven’s sake.

  She looked away, embarrassed by seeing so much of his flesh.

  “Um, do you want a ride back to your house, or do you have a car?” she asked, trying to keep focused on practical matters to avoid picturing the rest of him unclothed. She noticed his skin had goose bumps and his Levi’s were stuck to his legs and forming small puddles under his feet.

  “Well, I walked here,” he said, looking up. “But if this were Vertigo, shouldn’t I be waking up in your bed?”

  She just about fainted right there. She stood for a few seconds, not really knowing what to say.

  He held up his clothes and said, “Seriously, though, the whole reason I’m walking around today is my apartment is being flea-bombed and I can’t go back for another two hours. Is it okay if I take a shower at your place?”

  Her mind raced a mile a minute. Flea-bombed? Who could make up something like that? If he wanted to come over to her place, then how great was that? But what about Pau Pau? Him naked in her bed…. Fleas are unsanitary. But he was getting rid of them…. He’s standing there half-naked right now! He would drip all over the car, but so what? He had nice skin. He must be cold.