This Old Man

by Lois Ruby

  Wing looked shocked that I’d suggest something so improper. You’d think I’d propositioned him. “Old Man demands his privacy,” Wing said firmly. “This is my stop.” He hoisted the basket up onto his shoulder and was gone.

  Well, you can bet that I was there—same time, same station—the next day, and we continued our conversation as if there’d been no break.

  “Why does he demand his privacy?”

  “Why!” Wing chuckled. “Because.”

  I chewed the inside of my mouth.

  “Old Man demands a lot,” sighed Wing.

  “Does he usually get whatever he wants?”

  “Always. Do you have a grandfather?” Wing seemed to want assurance that all grandfathers were tyrants.

  I wasn’t sure how to answer. My mother’s father lived in North Dakota and hadn’t spoken to us since my mother went into her present line of work. That’s pretty tyrannical behavior from 1,500 miles away. My father’s father was unknown; like father, like son, as they say. I decided to answer no, no grandfather. If anything, Wing looked envious.

  “I wouldn’t mind having a grandfather,” I said.

  “I don’t have an extra one. And I don’t think the one I’ve got is going to live much longer,” said Wing.

  “But he’s been in the hospital for weeks. Why isn’t he getting any better?”

  “Hard to explain,” Wing said, with his finger pressed to his chin. “Old Man has no confidence in the foreign doctor.”

  “I can’t believe there’s not a Chinese doctor in that hospital. He’s in Chinese Hospital, in Chinatown. Is this, or is this not, Chinatown?”

  “Sure, he has a Chinese doctor, but the doctor practices modern Western medicine. Old Man refuses to get better. He calls the foreign doctor a turtle.”

  “Why? Does the doctor creep around?”

  “No, his fingers fly over Old Man’s flesh. But Old Man calls him turtle because this is the worst insult he can think of. Turtles are revolting to the classical Chinese mind. I remind him that the turtle also symbolizes longevity, and maybe the doctor is preserving his life, but Old Man means the other kind of turtle.”

  “I’d be furious, if I were that doctor.”

  “Old Man would probably feel better if the doctor did get mad. But he doesn’t understand what Old Man says, and he doesn’t know about turtles. That makes my grandfather even madder.”

  The cable car jerked to a stop, with its tail hanging off a steep hill. People rushed on and off. We stood up and put the basket back down on the floor. A woman yanking a small cranky child came between Wing and me. I stepped on the little girl’s foot, but she didn’t dare say a word, because she had tromped on mine first. “You brat,” I muttered. She gave me a very ugly look. I said to Wing, “You must have lots of patience,” to which the mother replied, “You have no idea, no idea.”

  “Sure I have patience,” Wing said, stepping in front of the mother. “I’m the first son of the first son.” He seemed to think this would explain everything.

  Fortunately, he was talking to the right person. I remembered from my feasting on Pearl Buck’s books that the birth of a son was a prized event, a festival in the life of a Chinese family. It must have been all the more prized in Wing’s family, because Old Man was pretty old when his first son was born. But what if Wing had been a girl? (What if I had been a boy? How would that have affected Hackey’s enterprise?) “Would you be the one taking Old Man his dinner if you’d been a girl, Wing?”

  “No! My first brother would have the honor. In Chinese custom, a son is called Ten Thousand Pieces of Gold. A daughter is only One Thousand Pieces of Gold. Of course, I don’t believe that myself,” Wing said hurriedly. “But we would never send One Thousand Pieces to Old Man.”

  “He’s a male chauvinist pig,” I bellowed, stamping my foot.

  “Momma! She stepped on me.”

  The mother winked at me apologetically. She held half a dozen packages by string. The little girl didn’t carry a thing. She was too busy tugging at her underpants.

  “Yes, he’s a male chauvinist,” Wing whispered. “It’s his way. Here, let’s get off and walk the rest of the way.”

  We pushed toward the exit and jumped off as the cable car slowed down. It didn’t cost us a cent, I thought with satisfaction. I pictured the mother piling all her packages around her while she rummaged in her purse for some change. It served her right, raising a brat like that.

  The steps of the Chinese Hospital were carved out of the grade of the Jackson Street hill: flat on one end and steep at the other end of the first two steps. A pagoda roof hung over the entrance, sloped and curved, in gold, green, red, and rust.

  Wing pointed to a window on the third floor of the new section: Old Man’s room. He shouldn’t have been in the modern section, didn’t they understand that? He didn’t speak a word of English. He should have had a room just beneath the pagoda roof.

  In the lobby, Wing told me, “You can wait here.” So, I wasn’t even to be allowed up in the elevator. I picked up a copy of a Chinese newspaper, printed on thin, crinkly plastic. The squiggly characters made tidy columns, up and down. I studied this for at least ten minutes and finally had to conclude that I couldn’t make out a single word. There was a copy of Newsweek on the magazine rack. I had a little more success with that. I turned right to the section about what’s new on the medical front:

  A VACCINE TO SAVE LIVERS AND LIVES—Heptavax-B is being distributed as a vaccine against Hepatitis B, the most ominous form of viral liver disease, afflicting up to 200,000 Americans every year …

  All the time I read, I wondered what was going on upstairs. Did Old Man’s dinner please him tonight? Was he asking Wing about school, about the family, about the foreign doctor’s report? Later I learned that Old Man asked no questions. He issued proclamations. But that day, the first, I thought he was much like other old men.

  And so I began to visit him every day but Tuesday, which was Mr. Saxe day. When I say “visit him,” I mean visit the lobby, the magazine rack. I learned a lot about medical breakthroughs in Newsweek:

  THE MASTER TRANSPLANTER—Dr. Thomas Starzl of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is so shy about his personal life that he won’t tell the interviewers how many children he has … Starzl, in truth, is a superstar in surgery: one of the very few men capable of transplanting the liver.

  Newsweek had a love affair with livers.

  I also visited the first-floor rest room and the information booth and the water fountains up and down the hall. I was never allowed upstairs. True, there was no one guarding the elevator, and there was a big sign flashing STAIRS that drew me toward it often. But I stayed on the first floor, because there was Old Man’s privacy to be considered.

  As the days passed, I began to wonder how his privacy could possibly be violated if I were just on the third floor. If I were down the hall from Room 311. If I were outside his door. “Wing,” I asked once, “why do you tell me I have to stay in the lobby?”

  “It’s only for a few minutes,” he answered. He had a habit of picking at his thumb, where there were always little frayed bits of skin. “How long do I stay up there? Fifteen minutes?”

  “I thought I’d just see what color the walls were on the third floor.”

  “Yellow,” he snapped.

  “You’re not being fair. What harm could I do in the hall?”

  “Old Man is very sick. He deserves his privacy,” Wing replied. He was immovable on this subject, and we didn’t discuss any others.

  And then I knew. Wing wasn’t preserving Old Man’s dignity. He was keeping his grandfather, his family treasure, all to himself. He wasn’t about to share him with me, even if we were the best of friends (which we weren’t yet). I decided to give Wing a week more of this self-indulgence before I quietly moved upstairs.

  The first trip up, the next Monday, seemed very symbolic. I had a little debate with myself: elevator vs. stairs. There were attorneys for both sides, and plent
y of cross-examination. But the jury was hung. I had to compromise. So I walked up one flight and caught the elevator on the second floor. The door opened to the third floor, without ceremony. I don’t know what I was expecting—a six-piece band? The entire receiving committee was one small Chinese nurse, who asked if she could help me.

  “I’m just waiting for a friend.”

  She smiled and left me alone, walking soundlessly from room to room. Old Man’s room was three doors down from the elevator. If I’d meant to stay away from it, I’d quickly forgotten the resolution. I put my ear to the door. The little nurse came by and said, “Are you a friend of Mr. Kwang’s?”

  Was I? I shrugged, or smiled, or nodded, or all three, as I listened for voices inside. I heard Wing’s voice, soft and monotonous, as though he were reading the paper to Old Man. Then there was the sound of bowls being laid out on Old Man’s table, with what I guessed was Wing’s terse explanation of what was in each dish. There was no sound from Old Man. He was either eating silently or rejecting the whole meal. I imagined Wing’s mother bringing home the freshest, crispest vegetables at 4:00, for his dinner. She would stir-fry the vegetables, heat his broth well past boiling, and steam his rice, before she returned to work at 5:00. I swear, I felt the hot steam that clung to her cheeks and eyelashes. Old Man had better love this meal.

  Then I heard the shrill orders coming from Old Man: “Kyi! Kyi!” But since I didn’t know what it meant yet, I still had my ear to the door when Wing burst out. I caught the aroma of Mrs. Kwang’s dinner. Breathing it in, I waited for Wing’s reaction, with my hands up as if to ward off blows.

  “You aren’t very subtle, Greta,” he said. “Old Man always tells me the White Ghosts aren’t subtle.” Wing fought back a smile, and I guessed he wasn’t angry.

  It occurred to me that Wing was very subtle.

  3

  Hackey was everywhere. I thought I saw him in a Chinatown souvenir shop. The gray pin-striped suit looked like one of his cheap cuts. I recognized the stocky build, the shifting from leg to leg, even the way he rolled his head to ease the tension in his neck.

  I saw him from the Geary bus. He was standing outside the Kaiser Hospital with a silly bouquet in his hands, and I wondered if he were taking it to someone in the hospital, or if one of his ladies had given it to him.

  Another time I came around a corner at school, between classes, and I heard his voice. I froze. He couldn’t know I’d transferred to Washington High School. It couldn’t be Hackey.

  He was in my dreams. He was taking me horseback riding, English style. He said a lady of my breeding should learn to ride English. He gave me an expensive bridle of fragrant leather. Nothing but the best for the lady, he said. His voice rolled like the gentle hills of the pasture. I loved him more than anything, except maybe the leather bridle. I would do anything for him. He said, “That’s what I’m counting on,” and I woke up, sat up so fast that I was dizzy. “Sylvia!”

  “I’m sleeping.”

  “Sylvia, please wake up. I’m having a terrible dream.”

  Sylvia rolled over and turned on her bedside lamp. That was a pretty decent thing to do. “Tell me about it,” she groaned. I had a feeling she was doing what her mother always did.

  “I was in a pasture, ready to mount a magnificent black stallion.”

  “Um-hmm?” She sat up, holding her head. Her hair stood up in little caverns. She tried to listen to me, with her eyes closed.

  “Someone was with me, a man.” I paused. How could I tell her about Hackey?

  “So?”

  “He gave me a saddle and reins. He would have given me the horse if I’d asked.”

  “This is a bad dream?”

  I didn’t dare get in deeper. “It seemed scary at the time. Never mind. Go back to sleep.”

  She turned out the light and flopped back on her pillow.

  No, I couldn’t explain about Hackey.

  On Tuesday I told Mr. Saxe. “I’ve been seeing him everywhere, or hearing him, or sensing him in a crowd, like on the cable car. He’s even been in my dreams.” I told him about the horseback riding, and he nodded gravely. If only he’d been in my room instead of Sylvia. “The scariest time, besides the dream, was when I heard his voice at school. I was scared to death he’d told the principal he was my father and had to take me to a dentist appointment.”

  “Greta, listen. He doesn’t know where you go to school. I’ve spoken to the principal at your old school, and he knows not to reveal any information without checking with me first. Your new principal fully understands the situation. If Hackey so much as comes into the school yard, she’s going to call the police immediately. Hackey can’t get to you.”

  “I know, I know.” I shifted in my chair.

  “But you’re frightened.”

  “I see him everywhere.”

  Mr. Saxe pulled my chin up so I’d face him. A shiver ran through me. “This is a big city. More than a million people live and work here. Your chances of running into him are nil, zilcho, zero. You understand?”

  I nodded, never taking my eyes off Mr. Saxe.

  “You only think you see him because you’re expecting to see him. Put him out of your mind.”

  “What shall I think about instead?” Yes, what—the pictures I had hidden in my room, which Hackey would probably kill for?

  “How about school?”

  I shook my head. School was a struggle, because I’d transferred midyear. I had to fit into classes, I had to make friends. I hated lunch hour; it made me feel like Charlie Brown.

  “Well then, think about your new friends at Anza House. You said Sylvia’s coming around.”

  “She can keep right on going. Besides, I wouldn’t want to be seen with her at school. You’ve met her, she’s a rhino. If I had lunch with her, she’d use up the whole lunch hour just to eat.”

  “Okay, think about the warm sourdough bread and thick, cold butter you get at Fisherman’s Wharf. Think about boys, tall, handsome young men, or even your little Chinese friend. Or books. Do you read? Or movies. There are lots of things a bright girl can focus on.”

  In the end I settled on Old Man, to get my mind off Hackey.

  “I really would like to meet your family, Wing.” I wanted to see the woman who steamed Old Man’s rice. “Since we’re in the neighborhood, couldn’t we stop by your house?”

  “No one’s home.”

  “Five sisters and two brothers, and you tell me no one’s home?”

  Wing was wearing a football jersey, number 34, with the sleeves rolled up. It was one of those hot days that pop up, totally out of character, in San Francisco, the kind of day that a tourist would think was typical, but wasn’t. Wing wiped his sleeve across his forehead, then down his jeans. “You see, my parents both work. My oldest sisters are married, and all my little sisters and brothers are at Chinese School.”

  “Don’t tell me they go every day. Don’t tell me that,” I groaned.

  “They go every day. This is my first year not to go, only because of Old Man’s dinner. So I study with a tutor at night.”

  “Poor Wing!”

  “It’s not so bad. It’s kind of like brushing your teeth. Not much fun, but necessary. And you feel good after it’s done.” He ran his tongue across his teeth; I thought he could taste the Chinese words.

  What came to my mind was the newspaper with those indecipherable characters strung together in columns. No wonder it took years and years to learn to make sense of those squiggles.

  “We have to learn the old ways here,” Wing said, with a gesture that encompassed all the grime, the crowded buildings with pagoda tops, the shops and vegetable stands and second-floor Chinese restaurants.

  “What for? You’re not going back to China, are you?”

  “Not me! But Old Man still dreams of going home and finding it the way he remembers it in 1911.”

  “I used to read lots of books about China. Like, I can tell you all about how the women used to bind their feet and let t
hem out each night to breathe. I can also tell you that Old Man’s not going back there, unless he goes back in a pine box.”

  “Yes, we will probably send his bones back,” Wing said simply. “Look at the store across the street, the one on the corner. That’s where my parents work.” We darted between the sightseeing cars and buses along Grant Avenue. The grocery was a small dark hole at the corner of Grant and Washington. Piles of tomatoes faded in the sidewalk sun. There were huge mountains of Chinese cabbage, bean sprouts, snow peas, onions, something shaped like large cucumbers, and millions of flies flitting restlessly from peak to peak.

  Wing’s mother was round, like Wing, with bright eyes and beautiful black hair pulled into a ponytail that swayed as she moved through the hills of vegetables. She carried a red fly swatter. A flood of Chinese words poured from her, apparently summoning her husband from the darkness of the store. She and Wing talked at the same time, in rapid-fire, sing-song Chinese.

  Wing’s father appeared and talked louder and faster, over the other two, with his hands waving to swat the flies off his vegetables. Suddenly everyone was quiet, turned around politely, and smiled at me. Mrs. Kwang said something in Chinese to the others, and Mr. Kwang smiled broadly and said between his teeth, “Bak le, bak le.” He went back into the store where an ancient gray man in slippers waited to pay for his cucumber.

  Wing’s mother checked to be sure her husband was out of earshot. “Wing has told me about you,” she said in near-perfect English. “Would you like a California navel orange?” She picked one out and polished it on her apron. “You see? The California orange has a bellybutton.” She giggled.

  I liked her, and at the same time I wondered what Old Man thought of his daughter-in-law. A heavy woman with a shopping bag came into the store and impatiently gave Wing’s mother her order. Mrs. Kwang waved to us in a tiny, girlish gesture behind the woman’s back.