by Jim Nelson
“Can we?”
“So here’s the deal. We can go, but you have to do everything I say. Everything. If I say we have to leave, we leave. No asking twice. Understand?”
Of course, of course, Hanna assured him. She bounced up and took their dirty plates to the sink. She cheerily started the hot water and squeezed green liquid soap on the scrubbing side of a sponge.
“Forget that,” Uncle Rick said. “We’ll do them later.”
“I don’t mind!” she called over the shoosh of the tap.
“Well, just come back here and let’s finish talking.”
She dried her hands and returned to the table.
“This is really important,” he said. “You cannot tell your parents we went to see Azami at her work. Got that?”
“Why?”
“Because your mom will go ballistic,” he said. “I’ll be in so much hot water, Dee will never forgive me. Do you promise?”
Uncle Rick extended a curved pinkie finger to her. She hooked it with her pinkie and tugged. “I promise,” and she bounded back to the sink.
Eleven
Uncle Rick loaned Hanna one of his thick flannel shirts, giving her one more layer of welcome warmth, as well as a black knit wool cap that made Hanna feel like a sailor. They walked six blocks down misty Geary Street, headlamps and late-night restaurants lighting their way. She loved seeing Uncle Rick’s neighborhood up-close and only felt more attached to it. The walk felt good after gorging on spaghetti, but she was shivering and covered in the fog’s fine mist by the time they reached Aunt Azami’s workplace.
The bar was dim, only illuminated by a jukebox in the corner and the muted orange uplights behind the bar. Thankfully the room was quite warm. The distinct odor of cheap cigarette smoke hung in the air, which Hanna did not appreciate.
“Well, well, well,” Aunt Azami said from behind the bar. She looked Hanna up and down to evaluate her in full. “So Rick wasn’t pulling my leg.”
Hanna said hello, but so softly it couldn’t be heard over the country-western song twanging from the jukebox. Then she coughed into her fist.
“Catching a cold?” Aunt Azami said.
Hanna shook her head. “Smoke.”
“Hey guys.” Aunt Azami went to the other end of the bar. Two men in jackets and baseball hats occupied stools there. Bottles of beer and empty shot glasses were arrayed before them. “Cool it a while,” she said, nodding toward Hanna. They shrugged and stubbed their cigarettes into an ashtray between them.
“We’ll hang out for an hour,” Uncle Rick said, pulling off his jacket, “then we’ll get out of here.”
Uncle Rick directed Hanna to a stool at the other end of the bar, in the corner beside the jukebox. Rick sat beside her, his body mass blocking her off from the rest of the room. She felt a little trapped there, but didn’t object.
Without him asking, Aunt Azami presented Uncle Rick with a glass of foamy golden beer. She set a shot glass before him, reached behind the bar, and came up with a bottle of whiskey. She poured it in a fancy way, moving the bottle up and down while a thin stream of the brown liquid zipped into the glass. She asked Hanna if she wanted a Coke and Hanna nodded yes. At the cocktail station, Aunt Azami filled a squat glass tumbler with a generous amount of cubed ice and added cola from an already-opened can. Aunt Azami presented the drink with two short cocktail straws and a maraschino cherry nestled in the jutting ice, carbonation bubbles sizzling on its taut red skin.
Hanna watched the entire process, amazed. This was not the Aunt Azami she knew. She glided behind the bar with elegant efficiency, utterly in charge of the liquor, the ice, the cash register—the entire establishment. And Hanna was surprised at Aunt Azami’s work clothes, a black sleeveless cotton top that did not quite reach the waistband of her black muslin pants. The tight outfit outlined her thin, lithe figure. Every time she reached for the bottles behind the bar or into the floor cooler for another can of mixer, the wan supple skin around her midsection beaconed. The two men seated at the end of the bar emotionlessly followed Aunt Azami’s movements, especially when skin was displayed. Uncle Rick seemed less interested in the men and more concerned with his beer and whiskey.
Hanna picked the maraschino cherry out from the cola and ate it, nibbling it off the stem with her front teeth. “Does Aunt Azami own this?” Hanna softly asked him.
Uncle Rick laughed showing his teeth. He wiped froth from his beard with a cupped hand. “From the hours she puts in she might as well, but no. She just works here.”
Hanna sipped Coca-Cola through the narrow cocktail straws. It was more sugary than expected. Azami had added something sweet to it.
“Are we going to get into trouble?” she asked him.
“For what?”
Hanna pointed to a sign on the wall:
ABSOLUTELY NO ONE UNDER 21 ALLOWED
“We’ve got an in,” he told her. “Don’t worry about it.”
Hanna sipped more of the sweetened Coca-Cola thinking it felt very city-like to have an “in” at a bar. A few hours in San Francisco and she was connected.
Across the bar, Aunt Azami stood before the two men in baseball caps, arms akimbo. “If you want to give me a hand, buy one of my paintings.”
“Yeah,” Rick hollered across the bar, “help out a starving artist.”
The adults all laughed. Hanna scrunched a little more in her stool and kept sipping her Coke. She had the strange feeling one of the men had suggested something to Aunt Azami, a proposition, and it made Hanna feel sticky inside thinking of it. That and Uncle Rick laughing along with them. Why wasn’t he hurt, or angry?
“Ted’s a scientist,” Uncle Rick told Hanna. “He studies cows.”
“Cows?” In San Francisco?
“I’m a biologist,” he called across the bar. “Get it right.”
Ted and his friend kept their eyes on the small color television jammed into the ceiling’s far corner. A baseball game played out behind an electrostatic fog of TV interference.
“This is my niece,” Uncle Rick called over. Ted hooked his bottle by its neck and moved down the bar to join them. “Hanna loves flowers,” he told Ted. “You should see her. I bring scraps from the Flower Mart to her house, and in an hour she’s made an arrangement.”
“Good, huh?”
“Puts the florists in this town to shame,” Uncle Rick said. “These boneheads that come into the Mart every morning, all they want to push in their cases is roses and tulips, roses and tulips.” He said to Hanna, “You want to be a florist some day, right?”
Hanna, bent over her cola, shrugged. “Maybe,” she said, straws between her teeth.
“Horticulture,” Ted said to her. “The best florists have horticulture degrees. Especially if you want to specialize in orchids.”
“I don’t like orchids,” Hanna said.
“Why not?”
“They look weird,” Hanna said.
Ted and Rick laughed together. Aunt Azami arrived with the whiskey bottle and refilled Rick’s shot. She set a glass tumbler filled with roasted peanuts before the three of them and glided away.
“What kind of cows do you study?” Hanna asked Ted.
“Dairy science.” He scooped up a handful of peanuts and tossed two in his mouth. “Milk safety. I work for McKesson.”
Hanna recognized that name—her mother bought their milk by the gallon at the supermarket.
“Did you go to college?” Hanna asked.
“New York,” he said. “My father wanted me to be an evolutionary biologist, but that’s a fast track to a teaching job. No thanks.”
“You don’t want to teach?” Hanna asked, incredulous. Teaching at a university sounded amazing.
“He didn’t want to teach theory,” Uncle Rick said to her. “He wanted a career,” he added mockingly.
“Oh no,” Ted said to Rick. “Evolution isn’t a theory.”
“What do you mean?” he said. “It’s a theory.”
“No. Evolution is not a theory.”
&
nbsp; “I mean, I believe in evolution,” Uncle Rick said, “but it’s still only a theory.”
“Fine,” Ted said, chewing on more peanuts, “tell me what evolution is. Tell me what you think evolution is.”
Aunt Azami glided back. Hanna, who had watched Aunt Azami intently so far, sensed that one part of her job was to act as a kind of cop around the bar.
Uncle Rick, flummoxed, waved around his whiskey glass. “Evolution is…you know—“
“I know what it is,” Hanna said.
“What is it.” Ted, standing this whole time, pointed down at her. “Explain to me evolution.”
Hanna receded in her stool, back against the bar wall. She wished she’d kept quiet.
“Go ahead, Hanna,” Uncle Rick said. His smile offered her some confidence.
“Evolution,” she said after a moment, “is the process where species change over time. They change each generation due to random genetic changes.” She mentally rummaged around in her memory, worried she’d forgotten something. “Any gene that allows an animal to live longer means it can pass more of those genes on to its children.”
Ted peered down on her, jaw loose. Bits of chewed peanuts pimpled his lips. He turned to Azami. “I want to buy that girl a drink.”
Aunt Azami smiled across to Hanna and gave her a wink. She placed an upside-down shot glass beside Hanna’s Coke and glided away.
“How did you know that?” Ted said to her.
“I dunno.” Hanna shrugged. “I read it.”
“That’s a smart girl,” he said to Uncle Rick.
“Takes after me,” he said back. “And I still say it’s a theory.”
“Okay, okay, it is a theory,” Ted said, raising his hands in defeat. “But I learned a long time ago to quit admitting that. Religious nuts in this country have taken the word ‘theory’ and made evolution into a fiction. So I just say evolution is not a theory. There’s too much evidence. Even people who say they believe in evolution don’t understand it.” He pointed again at Hanna. Ted liked pointing. “You got it right. Most people say evolution makes animals ‘better.’”
“What’s wrong with that?” Rick said.
“It’s random,” Hanna said.
“Listen to the girl,” Ted said. “There’s no guiding hand adding ‘good’ mutations and removing ‘bad’ mutations. Evolution is constant uncontrolled experimentation. Every time an animal is born, dice are rolled. If that animal procreates, its genes get another roll of the dice in the next generation. No good or bad in it. It just is.”
Hanna felt warm and bright inside. She’d never heard an adult so effusive about something she’d said. Uncle Rick beamed at her. He reached over and mussed her hair.
Ted was on a roll now. “Look at humans,” he said, moving his hands to help illustrate. “No other mammal produces bridge daughters. Evolution rolled the dice, and we got pons viviparous hemotrophism. You know what that means?”
Hanna nodded, eager to hear more. In contrast, Uncle Rick’s warmth faded. He cleared his throat and leaned toward his drinks, moving between Ted and Hanna. Ted, standing, leaned around him so he could talk to Hanna.
“Well, pons vivo worked, and it was a huge success,” Ted continued. “A six-month gestation period meant women could produce more bridge daughters. Sure, it takes those bridge daughters fourteen years to produce, but you have them around to help out until the real child is born. Evolution gave humans loaner children until the real ones were ready.”
Uncle Rick, grim, leaned in farther, but Ted moved with him. “I think the Giants just got a man in scoring position,” he murmured to Ted.
“Today, people have one, two children,” Ted said to Hanna. “But back in the day, people used to produce ten or twelve. Have you ever seen photos from the nineteenth century? Those old sepia pictures of farm families?” Ted held his arms out wide, like he was bragging about the fish that got away. “Bridge daughters lined up in feed sack dresses, each of them holding the children the older bridge daughters had given birth to.”
“You mean the bridge daughters had to take care of their brothers and sisters?” Hanna said.
“Of course!” Now Ted contorted like a gymnast to lean around Rick’s bulk. “Bridge daughters practically ran home nurseries by themselves. All those pregnant little girls stuck inside the house all day were ready-made for taking care of children. As well as the household and the farm. Some even ran nurseries at the churches while the adults prayed and sang. I know a guy who wrote a paper on—”
“Bridge daughters had jobs?” This responsibility, as constrained as it may be, was foreign to Hanna’s experience.
“Ask any farmer. Kids are free labor. Bridge daughters doubly so, because you don’t send them to school. Evolution gambled and stumbled on the perfect way for humans to dominate this planet. I mean, can you imagine what the world would be like if women were like dogs, going into heat twice a year—”
“Ted,” Uncle Rick said forcefully, “why don’t you go watch the baseball game.”
Ted retreated two steps, confused. “Whatever you say.” He returned to his stool at the other end of the bar. Hanna watched him, knowing Rick had offended. She could see the biologist grumble under his breath, then knock a cigarette out from a pack and light up. Hanna knew why Uncle Rick did what he did, but she was dying to go over and learn more.
*
Uncle Rick continued drinking past their allotted one hour. The bar grew busy around nine-thirty, with almost half the stools occupied and more patrons standing behind them. Outside on the street, the fog thickened. Water dripped from the eaves above the entry.
Hanna noted the bar’s patrons were mostly men, arriving alone or in groups. The occasional woman appeared, but never alone. She would be with a man or two, or with a female friend. Hanna instinctively understood why, or at least thought she did. This place was warm and cheery, but drab as well, with the slight tang of must in the air. Everything seemed to be coated in the thin grease of age-old grime mixed with cigarette ash. Hanna’s mother would hate this place and tell her father they needed to leave.
Hanna also noticed how men grew brash here. Not out of control, but each drink reduced their inhibitions by a tick. At home, her parents never swore. The men here used foul language like punctuation marks. It cut through the cigarette smoke when uttered. Uncle Rick seemed not to notice, but Aunt Azami would make a worrying glance at Hanna when the basest of the English language was invoked by the men.
So Hanna paid great attention to a young woman who appeared in the doorway a little after ten. She wore a camel coat and a headscarf of mottled red, yellow, and orange silk. With slight, petite movements she unraveled the scarf and removed her coat and placed both on the hooks beside the entryway. When she approached the bar she was all-but-ignored by the other men in the room, who either watched the baseball game or Aunt Azami. When the woman drew close, Hanna saw she was elfin and not terribly taller than herself. The bags beneath the woman’s eyes made her appear exhausted. Her thin pale lips drew into a pinkish smile when Aunt Azami recognized her.
“I want to introduce you to someone special,” Aunt Azami said to the woman. “Maureen, this is Hanna, my niece. She’s staying the night.”
Uncle Rick leaned back so Maureen could offer Hanna a delicate, bony hand. “Nice to meet you,” she said. The bony hand was quite cold. “Azami has told me all about you.”
Hanna admired how this woman carried herself, the elegant way she removed her outer garments, the quiet purposefulness of taking her wallet from her purse and extracting a fresh unfolded ten-dollar bill to pay Azami for her first drink. It was a Coca-Cola in a squat tumbler with a maraschino on top, just like Hanna’s. Certainly there must be alcohol in hers, Hanna believed.
Uncle Rick got up and offered his stool to Maureen. “You two should talk,” he said. “I’m going catch the last couple of innings.” And he joined the men at the other end of the bar, whiskey and beer in hand.
“How do you like San Fr
ancisco?” Maureen asked her as she settled on the bar stool.
“I love it here,” Hanna breathed. “I wish I could live here.”
“It’s a singular city,” Maureen said. “You can be whomever you want to be in San Francisco.”
“Really?” Hanna thought for a moment. “Can I be super-rich?”
“Well,” Maureen said, smiling, “some people certainly try to look that way here.”
“I don’t really want that,” Hanna said quickly. “I was just saying.”
“Azami told me you love flowers.”
Hanna cocked her head, surprised to hear this.
“She shows off your arrangements,” Maureen said. “She brightens up the bar with them, you know.” Maureen pointed to a wall inset over the cash register. “She places them right there. Everyone who comes in, she tells them all about you and your love of flowers.”
Hanna, touched, looked to Aunt Azami to thank her, but she was busy at the cocktail station. No one else showed off her bouquets. She made them for her father but he never took them to the office.
“My aunt makes beautiful origami,” Hanna said to Maureen. “She taught me how to make paper cranes.”
“Ah, yes,” Maureen said. “I love them too.”
“I’m making a thousand of them this year,” Hanna said. “I’d make you one, but I don’t have any paper.”
“Next time,” Maureen said.
“Wait—“ Hanna checked her back pocket. Sure enough, in her tiny notebook accounting for every tsuru she’d made, she found a square of paper. It was her template for cutting more origami sheets. She pushed her cola aside and wiped the bar dry with the sleeve of her sweater. She numbered the crane just as she’d numbered hundreds of cranes before. Then she set about folding it. Maureen watched on with mild interest. When Hanna gingerly pulled the crane’s neck and tail, Maureen’s eyes livened and sparkled. The crane’s wings extended as though in preparation for flight.
“You get number four hundred twenty-six,” Hanna told her.
“Like a serial number,” Maureen said, accepting the crane. “Thank you very much.”