The Dim Sum of All Things

by Kim Wong Keltner

  “Where can I get some of those fabulous fur-trimmed pants?” Lindsey wondered to herself.

  The pounding, exuberant music continued its beat while the masked characters tempted the lions with iceberg lettuce, dangling the crisp leaves from decorative fishing poles. The lions moved aggressively yet gracefully, hypnotized and temporarily tamed. They crouched down to eat the vegetable offering, and then suddenly, as the cymbals crashed loudly, they tossed the lettuce into the air, startling the nearest viewers with a friendly spray of shredded lettuce.

  In a joyous finale, the lion dancers were joined by other members of the martial arts group, weaving together to form a human scaffolding of legs and shoulders. The majestic lions, with the help of their human framework, grew to a height of twelve feet and displayed red satin banners with auspicious New Year’s couplets written in Chinese calligraphy. A thick braid of firecrackers was set afire and erupted in a series of ear-shattering mini-explosions. Clouds of dark blue gunpowder smoke billowed up through the air as bits of red paper flew every which way in a celebratory fire hazard.

  On the following Sunday, Lindsey and Mimi set out early for the Alameda flea market. They were ready to pick up some bargains, and maybe even some guys.

  As they made their way toward the bridge on-ramp, Lindsey noticed Mimi’s pink patent leather slingbacks.

  “Are you sure you can walk all morning in those?” she asked.

  Mimi ignored the question. She was curling her eyelashes with the aid of the passenger-side mirror. As she squeezed the delicate, wispy hairs with the rubber-padded implement, she stuck her tongue out to one side of her mouth and contorted her face like a winking ghoul.

  “Did you say something?” Mimi asked, now shaking up her mascara tube and plunging the small wand into the base as if she were churning butter. “Hey, you wanna stop off and go to confession?” She pointed with her lips toward a clump of folks who were gathered under a marquee that identified an unassuming stucco building as a Chinese Mennonite church.

  Lindsey craned her neck for a better look. “Hmm, who knew? I guess that’s like Vietnamese Amish people or something.”

  They drove in silence for a while, both of them still somewhat sleepy. Neither was accustomed to rising so early, but by the time they crossed the bridge, sped through the Alameda tube, and pulled into the stadium-sized parking lot, they were lively enough. The thought of shopping always perked them up.

  Endless aisles of yesteryear’s detritus loomed ahead of them. In addition to broken lamps and moth-eaten daybeds, they saw Bauer flowerpots, cradle telephones, rusted kitchen tools, stained muumuus, and fifties costume jewelry. While Mimi checked out a booth with vintage shoes and purses, Lindsey meandered toward a display of collectible lunchboxes depicting sixties and seventies TV shows.

  She saw one with scenes from Bonanza, and one with Bruce Lee as Kato in The Green Hornet. She knew Pau Pau and Brandon would have gotten a kick out of those. Spotting one from Kung Fu, she wondered why David Carradine, a Caucasian actor, played the part of the Chinese lead. A thermos from The Courtship of Eddie’s Father triggered her memories of the sitcom; even as a kid she’d thought it odd that the Japanese housekeeper was named Mrs. Livingston.

  She noticed a lunchbox with Hong Kong Phooey and another showing a fat, mustached, Chinese man with his family members who resembled Shaggy and Velma from Scooby Doo, except with black hair and slanty eyes.

  “That was a Hanna-Barbera cartoon about Charlie Chan solving crimes with his kids,” the vendor said, snarfing scrambled eggs from a paper plate. “It’s mint. One hundred fifty, if you’re interested.”

  Lindsey traced her index finger over the embossed words The Chan Clan, and she tapped the surface lightly. Before sidling away to rejoin Mimi, she thanked the guy, who waved at her with his spork, which had a goober of egg-white dangling from its blunt tine.

  “See anything good?” Mimi asked, slipping out of some too-wide clogs and back into her own pink sandals.

  “Interesting, but no must-haves,” Lindsey said as they continued down the midway.

  Snaking through the maze of tables, it was apparent to Lindsey that Asian stuff was a hot item. She approached a selection of chalkware busts depicting Chinese children with cherry lips and elaborate hair ornaments. Some sucked their thumbs with sweet innocence, and others glanced coyly to the side with enchanting allure. The busts were lovingly crafted, yet mannequinnish, as if they knew they had been created to please the Western gaze and dared not express anything other than simpleminded charm. Lindsey herself was quite taken with the figures, and she contemplated whether it was inconsequential or deeply wrong that she found the objectifying sculptures to be pleasing to her own eye. She pressed a finger to the crumbling face of a girl’s head, pockmarked with chips and dents that showed white, powdery plaster beneath the crackled paint.

  As she and Mimi moved on, Lindsey couldn’t stop thinking of the statuettes. She thought back to a book she’d seen a few months ago about San Francisco’s Pan-Pacific International Exposition in 1915. She had read that one of the most popular exhibits had been called “Underground Chinatown,” and it had portrayed subterranean hovels with tawdry dioramas of opium smoking and enslaved prostitutes. She had read that, after complaints from Chinese elders, the exposition’s directors had changed the name of the attraction to “Underground Slumming,” and replaced the Chinese slave girls with debauched white girls.

  She ruminated on this bit of history and wondered why the concept of secretive, exotic Asians seemed to appeal to everybody. She realized that she, too, was strangely comfortable with motifs that reduced Chinese culture to only that which was entertainingly decorative.

  The whole matter put Lindsey in a funk. She trailed Mimi and responded with lackluster comments as her friend fired questions at her regarding the multitude of halter tops, miniskirts, and fashion accessories she held up for opinion.

  “Kind of tired?” Mimi asked. “There’s a coffee stand over there. Get me one too, okay?”

  Lindsey jogged over to the coffee cart to retrieve a couple of double lattes. When she reentered the area where she had left Mimi, she pivoted around but didn’t spot her. Must have turned the corner, she figured.

  Jostling through the throngs of shoppers, she could see Mimi sifting through Bakelite barrettes about halfway up the next section. Pausing to sip her coffee, she looked across the aisle to a table display of lotus slippers, the kind for bound feet. She approached the row of tiny shoes but stayed a couple of yards away. She didn’t want to spill coffee on the silk, but also, she hesitated for a reason she wasn’t sure of. As she studied the slippers from the short distance, she could see that some had heel reinforcements carefully sewn on, one arched dramatically into a pronounced point, and others were slightly ripped, with tattered padding peeking out from beneath the pinpricked embroidery.

  Several weeks ago, similar slippers had been featured on the Roadshow. She had been watching it with Pau Pau, who’d explained that in the old days the ladies sewed their own designs all by hand, and the slippers themselves were never meant to be saved. “Once worn out, like saving underwear!” her grandmother had said, in a tone of voice that had expressed that she found the idea preposterous. And now Lindsey was seeing the slippers for sale, again. To no one in particular, she asked aloud, “If they can outlaw used panties on eBay, why are these slippers everywhere?”

  She stood for several seconds, holding a latte in each hand, and stared at the display. From behind, a set of elegant, tapered fingers reached out and dislodged a paper cup from her loose grip.

  “Are you talking to yourself again?” Mimi slurped some steamed milk. “I hope you remembered to get nonfat.”

  Lindsey nodded, and they continued on their way. They still had at least twenty rows left to peruse.

  Over the next couple of weeks Michael made several attempts at reconciliation with Lindsey, but she would have none of it. She found little presents on her desk, like a chocolate-caramel Twix, a s
moothie from the downstairs cafe, and an article about the city’s cherry-headed conures that he had clipped from the newspaper. Lindsey was unfazed. She didn’t eat the candy bar, gave away the fruit shake, and slammed the article in a dictionary without reading it.

  It hurt Lindsey to like Michael as much as she did. She didn’t completely allow herself to believe that he really liked her back. For real. She was afraid it was all some kind of bad joke, and she’d end up like Sissy Spacek in Carrie. Would Michael eventually rip out her heart while it was still beating, just like that insane shaman in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? She had walked the plank as far as she could go for now, and she wasn’t ready to jump.

  Thoughts of Michael were temporarily stalled when Lindsey found out that Pau Pau had arranged another “date” for her. This one was with the grandnephew of Fanny Lee, Pau Pau’s arch rival in the cutthroat mahjong world of Spofford Alley. The old ladies’ hope was that maybe the two youngsters would hit it off and marry, and thus, the mahjong winnings would conveniently stay in the family no matter who won a set.

  Lindsey was supposed to meet the guy at North Beach Pizza. As she waited for whatever his name was, she watched the delivery guys smoke cigarettes while leaning up against their double-parked cars. She studied the condiments on the table and rearranged her butt on the booth seat, unsticking the back of her legs from the vinyl.

  A few minutes later, a Chinese guy strolled through the door. She recognized him immediately as a grammar school classmate.

  “Hey, Franklin Ng, what are you doing here?”

  “Oh hey, I haven’t seen you in a while! What are you doing here?” He stood next to her booth and scanned the restaurant, but there were no other customers at this early hour, only the employees preparing for the evening ahead.

  “I think I’m your date,” she said as he sat down.

  She had known Franklin since third grade. To other kids in the class he’d been most memorable as the boy who’d fallen asleep each day and earned the lowest marks of everyone, almost flunking every year. As a straight-A student, she had snubbed him initially, not wanting any association with a dumb kid to drag her down academically or socially. He’d been one of those kids who’d brought Chinese soup in a thermos for lunch and had tried to share his salty plum wafers or rice candies, when she’d only wanted Hershey’s bars.

  Sometime midyear she’d discovered that he attended the same Chinese school with her in the afternoons. When she hadn’t been ditching out with Kevin and Brandon, she’d sat in the back of the class, fumbling with her mok-but ink and bamboo calligraphy brush. She had never understood what the teacher was saying, and she’d failed her memorizations. She’d had no friends at St. Mary’s, so when she’d spotted Franklin a few rows away, she’d been glad to see a familiar face. Since he’d been a bad student too, she’d figured that maybe they could commiserate.

  But at St. Mary’s, Franklin had not been a bad student at all. In fact, he’d been one of the top students. He’d spoken Cantonese a mile a minute and had had the teacher praising his elegant touch in penmanship. On the playground, he’d been the most popular kid, with his Botan chewy candies, sesame crackers, and assorted flavors of Pocky sticks. Lindsey had stood friendless against the chain-link fence while other kids had played Chinese jumprope and Chahng-Chahng-Doe, which was the Chinese version of Rock-Paper-Scissors. As she’d watched Franklin from a distance, she’d been awestruck by his afternoon popularity. He’d seemed to be a totally different person than he had been in regular school. From 8:30 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. he’d been the dumb boy with bad grades and weird food, but here he’d been the life of the party. Strangely, here in Chinese school, Lindsey had been the dumb kid.

  Among all the Chinese students, she’d been lonely for someone to talk to, so one afternoon she’d approached Franklin.

  “Where do you get all that candy?” she’d asked. Since she’d usually ignored him, she’d wondered if he would even talk to her.

  “Oh, my family has a grocery store, and I can have all the candy I want.”

  “Then why don’t you have Lemonheads or Crunch bars?” she asked, feeling around in her own jumper pockets for any spare Jujubes.

  “Sometimes I do, but I don’t like them as much. They’re too sweet.”

  She’d frowned. “How come you’re always asleep in class?”

  “I work in the store at night and weekends. I stock the cans and keep the inventory.”

  “What about your homework?”

  “I don’t have time,” he’d shrugged.

  “Where is this store, anyway?” she’d asked.

  “It’s on Franklin. I’m named after the store. My dad worked there before my brother and me got born. He looked up at that big sign all day and told my ma just to call me that name. So that’s why I’m Franklin.”

  “Really? I thought you were named after Benjamin Franklin.”

  “Me?” He’d guffawed, not unlike Lindsey’s Gung Gung.

  Just then the class bell had rung.

  “That’s a good one,” he’d said. “C’mon, let’s go inside.”

  And that’s how they’d become friends. Sort of. They’d been friends in Chinese school and during the summers, when Lindsey would sometimes poke her head into Franklin Market to see if he was there. He’d give her free Jolly Rancher Fire Stix and watermelon-flavored Now or Laters. But during regular school hours, during recess and at lunchtime in front of her white friends, she wouldn’t talk to him very much, just from time to time when she thought no one was watching. She did stop making fun of him, however, and even made a point of “accidentally” stepping on Valerie Crinion’s foot the time she called him a lazy, sleeping Chinky.

  Now, here in the pizza place, Franklin looked very much the same as he did back then. He was skinnier than she would have expected, but he also looked very stylish in his black Dolce & Gabbana slacks.

  “So, what are you up to now?” she asked.

  “My dad and mom still have the store, but I’m a mortgage broker. How about you?”

  “Oh, not much. I work downtown as a receptionist.”

  “That’s cool,” he said, looking at the menu for a minute. “Do you want to split something? I’m not too hungry.”

  They agreed on salads and garlic bread, and discussed how these set-up dates were mostly terrible but they both participated to please their family matriarchs. Talking for a while about the other kids in their classes, they traded gossip each had heard over the past few years. They stuck to light topics and skirted around anything uncomfortable about their past. Neither mentioned the awkward truth that, as classmates, they had both been alternately considered smart and dumb, depending on the time of day. They did not delve into how difficult it was for each of them to have split identities as American schoolkids and Chinese schoolkids, nor did they talk about how their self-esteem had risen and fallen several times per day back then, as they’d ridden a wobbly teeter-totter that had tried to balance Chinese and American expectations.

  After dinner Franklin suggested getting gelato down the street. They strolled down upper Grant and browsed through the display windows. They looked in a record store and stopped in front of a vintage clothing boutique.

  “Don has pants just like those,” Franklin said absentmindedly as they passed one designer shop.

  “Who’s Don?” she asked, not recognizing that as a name of any of their former classmates.

  “He’s my boyfriend,” Franklin said, giving her a quick nod. He looked at her for a second, and then added, “Yeah, we’ve been together more than a year now.”

  She was unfazed by his gayness, but she wondered if she should warn him that “Don” was in her pantheon of Asian Hoarder names.

  They procured their frozen confections and stood on the steps of Saints Peter and Paul’s Church to say their good-byes.

  “Hey, I’m glad it was you tonight, Lindsey. At least we had stuff to talk about.”

  “Yeah, me too,” she said, and with a friend
ly hug they went their separate ways.

  They Eat Horses, Don’t They?

  Neither Mrs. Owyang nor her sisters ever wanted to go to China. None of them had any interest in experiencing China’s pain and trauma firsthand, even though Pau Pau and Gung Gung had seldom revealed any details of their struggles. The idea that China was filled with suffering was an unspoken truth that floated like a mist in the air. It had settled and stiffened into a transparent mask on Pau Pau’s face, like a sticky film that could never be washed off.

  Everyone in the family made a big deal out of what a wealth of knowledge Lindsey would gain on this trip. It was not a cultural treasure trove any of them personally cared to attain for themselves, but somehow they were positive it would be a great road of discovery for her. The only person who had anything bad to say was Auntie Vivien. “Uncle Donald and I went to Guangzhou to get Cammie,” she said. “They were so disorganized there, I had to wait three days to see her, and her blanket was filthy. So backward over there!”

  Lindsey had done little traveling, and her own attitude about the trip was nonchalant. She saw this journey as neither a vacation nor a chore, and her indifference was a marked contrast to even her boss’s enthusiasm.

  “You’ll have a wonderful time!” Howard exclaimed when she went by his office to give him the name of the temp who would be filling in for her.

  “What a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” he said. “When you come back, you’ll have to give me the inside story on the real China, okay?”

  She didn’t know if there was a fake China, but she just nodded her head.

  Walking from Howard’s office, she decided to stop by Michael’s desk. Her anger and doubts had dissipated, and she wanted to make up with him before leaving the next morning. She braced herself as she approached his door but was disappointed to find the desk empty. He had already left for the day. Now she wasn’t sure what to do. She knew she still liked him.