So she stayed here, with other old Chinese, in an old Chinatown with signs that were as often as not bilingual with Vietnamese, a Chinatown where June now heard Spanish spoken by the people she passed on the crowded sidewalks. Vendors set racks of wares outside their stores and in the path of potential customers, forcing June to walk around them. There were still a few herbal shops and eateries with names like Queen’s Bakery and Lucky Deli, but so much of what she saw now was clothes. Not even Chinese clothes. How long ago had Chinatown become a swap meet?
The senior citizen apartments loomed up where Broadway intersected with Cesar Chavez Avenue. She could see the new complex rising up across the street; some mix of shops and residential apartments. It was probably part of someone’s revitalization effort, but it didn’t fit in with the older buildings down the street from the 30s and 40s. It was a world away from the herbal shops and darkened tearooms, the restaurants with faded paint and signage from a generation ago. She could already see the logo of the first coffee joint on the outside of the building, and it would not serve egg tarts for breakfast.
June signed in with the security guard in the lobby and took the elevator up to her grandmother’s. To her surprise, A-Nging greeted her at the door with the baby girl in her arms.
“Come in, come in,” said her grandmother.
“I brought oranges,” said June, lifting the bag so she could see before setting it on the kitchen counter.
A-Nging closed the door behind her and said, “That’s a good girl,” but June could not tell if she spoke to her or the child.
The baby looked healthy, staring at June while clutching a sippy cup between her hands.
“How much longer are you babysitting?” asked June. “I mean, a week is a long time for someone to be leaving their baby. Aren’t her parents worried?”
“I don’t see why they would be,” said A-Nging. “She is in good hands.”
June thought that if she had been one of the parents she would be, but she simply shrugged. Not her business, A-Nging would say.
“All right if I use the bathroom?”
She walked into the bedroom to go there and a stabbing pain burst in her temple. For a moment the room swam, covered in black and white feathers. She saw a cradle, surely for the baby, and vaguely remembered a different cradle from when she was too young for a bed. A bird with a human face perched on the rail, watching over her.
Then the pain was gone, and she only saw the painting of the human-headed birds above her grandmother’s bed. Tragic, A-Nging called them. They had died in childbirth before they could love children of their own.
The room smelled of incense and her grandmother had an old-fashioned robe lying on the bed, like one in those Chinese dramas she would watch. June had forgotten she had it. A-Nging had not worn it in years. June remembered that looking at it had made her dizzy when she was young, but now that she was older she could not understand why.
In the bathroom she finished her business, washed her hands, her face, and massaged her temples. The cold water felt good.
When she returned to the bedroom she noticed that A-Nging was still out in the living room. June pressed a hand to her forehead and peered at the robe. It was very fine, with a sheen that gave no clue that it must have been over forty years old; maybe even older if A-Nging had brought it with her from China. A-Nging had told June of how poor they were in Hoipeng, how even their tiny apartment in Los Angeles was better than going hungry. June didn’t understand how her grandmother could have owned such a thing.
“Did you want to try it on?” said A-Nging.
“No.”
Her answer slipped out a little too quickly, a contrary reaction that undermined every attempt she made to be a dutiful granddaughter. June could do the small things, like weekly visits and bringing gifts, but heaven forbid she do more. And she didn’t like dresses.
A-Nging sighed and the corners of her mouth turned down. “I suppose that is all then. You feel nothing from it?”
“It is pretty,” said June, though the apology sounded weak even to her.
A-Nging set the drowsing baby back in the cradle and tucked the blanket around her. June marveled at the girl’s disposition.
“Let’s have one of those oranges you brought,” said A-Nging. “You can tell me about work.”
They opened the window to air out the stuffiness brought on by the afternoon sun, and June sliced the oranges to set on a plate on the table between them. A-Nging asked her more questions about her job than she ever had before. How do foster families work? Who decides where a child is placed? Does it often happen that a child is taken away completely? June could not talk about her current cases, but she could talk about the process in general.
It was grueling work, and there was no question her office was understaffed, but she liked to think she was helping by doing it.
They each had an orange between them, and sixteen evenly sliced peels lay on the dish when they finished. A-Nging picked up the plate and said, “Thank you for talking to me.”
“I do try. Sometimes.” And for the first time in years June felt she had been a good granddaughter.
A-Nging nodded and walked to the kitchen.
June stood and reached for her purse, sitting on the arm of the sofa, when she saw the Chinese newspaper laid out on the small table for the lamp. It was open to what looked to be the classifieds. June couldn’t read it, but could see the photos of apartment buildings, and some of the phone numbers below them had been circled.
“A-Nging? Are you moving?”
“Just thinking about it,” said her grandmother.
June didn’t understand why. Her grandmother had been so happy to move into the senior apartments here, where everything she needed was in walking distance. Were these other places also in Chinatown? Did she not like the new complex across the street?
A-Nging liked to eat at places like the old Phoenix Restaurant that had been around for decades. She would tell June of businesses past as though each one was another friend lost; places where families once came together, where weddings were held, places that had been the pride of Chinatown. So many of them gone.
June pulled away from the paper and noted the time on the wall clock. 5:00.
“I gotta go,” she said. “I’m meeting Heather for dinner.”
A-Nging nodded deeply. “Of course. Take care.” And she waved with an odd bit of finality.
“I’ll see you later,” said June, and she opened the door.
“You can leave it open,” said A-Nging. “I’m going to take the trash out in a minute.”
June walked down the hall towards the elevator and pressed the button, bothered by the nagging feeling that something was off. She wasn’t supposed to have brought something to the dinner, was she? The elevator door opened just as she realized what she was missing. She had left her purse.
June muttered angrily to herself and walked back to the apartment. The door was still open and she could see her purse lying on the arm of the sofa where she’d left it. She strode over to pick it up, and as she did she turned and saw right into the bedroom.
There was a large bird perched on the cradle, one gnarled foot gripping the rail and the other supporting a sippy cup against the baby’s mouth. Its feathers were black trimmed with white, and when its head turned to look at her it had her grandmother’s face.
The hunched figure hopped down from the cradle, legs flowing to the ground as they grew long and wings splaying into arms covered by an ageless silk robe. Her grandmother was no longer stooped. She stood as tall as June, her face still smooth, her hair dark, and her eyes black. Young, and yet older than anything she had seen.
“You had your chance,” said her grandmother. “Get out.”
“No.” The reply came quickly, automatic, before June even realized what she was saying or what she was saying it to. She held up her purse as if it could serve as a barrier between her and the apparition before her. “What’s going on? What are you?”
>
“A ghost, a spirit, a thieving aunt of a bird… I tried raising a child, one that no one wanted. I found Kiang, wandering lost on the streets of Chinatown. He was a good boy until providence took him away from me. And then I found you.”
Her grandmother took a step towards her, and June backed into the sofa. There was no room to run.
“Your parents left you in your stroller as they talked with another family in the park. You were crying and they did not hear you, but I did. I raised you when your blood parents did not show the interest. And yet you were a terrible nestling, never ready to fledge, unable to feel the call.”
June could see just past her, at the painting in A-Nging’s bedroom, of the women who had died and become birds.
Her grandmother followed her gaze and said, “When you were young I tried to tell you they were more than just stories. I am but one, and I collect the children unwatched by their parents, to raise in place of the one I lost. But there are so few Chinese children in Chinatown now.”
June shook, eyes turned towards the cradle, and lunged. Her grandmother reached out a hand to stop her, and June dove beneath it into the bedroom. She picked herself up and snatched the baby from the cradle. The girl cried. June was not kind.
“Unfilial child,” said the thing that had been her grandmother. Her body sucked in on itself, becoming a bird, with thick, cruel talons and the face of a woman filled with rage. “You yourself work to move unwanted children to a better home. Do you think that I never loved you, that did I not care? I waited almost thirty years for you to fledge!”
The spirit bird dove, talons stretched wide. June grabbed the pillow from her grandmother’s bed and swept it between them; pushing, shoving. Something sharp raked her arm and with a final thrust she charged back through the doorway to the living room.
The bird swept out behind her, wingspan as large as a man, its human head dwindling behind a swirl of feathers into the hooked beak of a massive eagle.
“You will leave my baby! She will fly when she comes of age!”
“She has parents!” June shouted. “You don’t know that they abandoned her! My parents, I don’t know that they abandoned me either…”
June opened the door to the broom closet, putting another barrier between her and the eagle. She needed to get away, but if she ran into the hall, the bird would have a long, clear corridor in which to chase her. In the apartment, where it was crowded, and tiny, her wings would not carry her as far or as fast.
Ignoring the baby’s cries she set her on a shelf in the closet and grabbed a broom. The bird skated around the door, but June was ready and batted it away, back into the living room.
“What was all this for?” demanded June. “You wanted to raise a bird child?”
“Each generation procreates to make the next, but I can do no such thing. I can only make another in my image, by feeding her the right foods, the right herbs, so that when she grows she will hear the call.”
June ducked as the eagle swooped over her head and crashed into the venetian blinds by the window. The bird squirmed, trying to untangle itself, beak and talons ripping at the cords. June raised the broom.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she rammed the end of the broom into the eagle hard enough that the screen popped out on the other side and the bird tumbled out the window with a cry.
June dropped the broom and ran back for the baby. She did not think such a thing would kill a bird woman who claimed to be a spirit, but the fall and the blinds would buy her some time. The baby wailed as she picked her up. June tried to mumble something reassuring to her, but her own heart was beating so fast it made no difference what she said. She fled down the hall and for the elevator.
There was a security guard downstairs, and other residents would be in the lounge. Surely her grandmother would not attack in front of so many, not when she had hidden herself all this time.
Her grandmother…her kidnapper.
June thought of the photo of herself as a little girl in the red dress and cried.
* * *
Months later, she came back to the apartment. Management asked her to clear out her grandmother’s belongings. A-Nging had been missing ever since that day.
June packed up everything; the furniture, the tableware, the photos; photos of the man who was not her father but the child before her, and the photos of herself as a child. In A-Nging’s room she filled a box with her clothes to donate to charity, and in a chest she found a silken robe that sang to her as she drew it out. It was white trimmed with brown, of the same sheen as her grandmother’s.
She draped it over herself and felt her head spin. When she looked in the mirror she could see her face on the head of a bird with wide eyes that could see in the dark and tufts of feathers that resembled ears.
Unfilial bird, her grandmother would say.
But A-Nging had not deserved that devotion. June could feel the mix of knowledge rising in her, which foods to feed a child, which herbs must be mixed with broth, how to sew the robes that would enable them to fly. She would be more careful than A-Nging. She knew how to find unwanted children better, those who could be raised without being stolen, those who perhaps, would want to become birds.
* * *
Laurie Tom is a third generation Chinese American writer living in southern California and has visited Chinatown many times during her childhood. She likes going out for dim sum and can’t avoid ordering egg tarts every time. They are a childhood favorite. Laurie’s short fiction has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Crossed Genres, and Penumbra. She is a previous Writers of the Future grand prize winner.
Street Worm
Nisi Shawl
Down, down, down: dust and mud and mortar and steel plunged story upon story into the earth. Brit Williams clung to the chain link fence surrounding the construction site as if only the desperate strength of her thin brown fingers kept her from falling in.
She could see the pit’s bottom—barely. Late afternoon in Seattle during the first week of February meant darkness owned the corners, shadows filled in all the low places and rose like dirty water to hide everything, eventually, even….
Dragging her eyes up along the building’s still-exposed girders and beams, Brit spotted the giant nest, shining grey and silver in the last of the twilight. She hunched smaller in her good leather coat. But as far as she knew, the worm-like things that lived between those web walls couldn’t see her.
“You all right, kid?”
The cops sure could, though. “Yeah,” she lied, meeting the policewoman’s eyes. White people liked that. “Just wanted a look before I got on the bus home.” Did that sound suspicious? Had she said too much?
No. The cop let her walk downhill and cross the intersection without interference. She strode briskly into the cold drizzle as if she really did have somewhere to go.
Well, she did. If she’d only admit to her parents she was crazy, she could go home. She could fit herself right back into their careful, bougie lives.
Except she was sane. Brit was pretty sure of that.
No one else seemed to see the nests, though. Whereas for her they were everywhere. Heading north on First Ave she walked by three, all stuck to the sides of skyscrapers in the throes of renovation. People going the other way faced her and passed on, oblivious office workers and ignorant drunks. The traffic light ahead changed and Brit hurried out into the street to get away from a close one hanging only a few floors above the sidewalk. Behind the nest’s pale sides, paler shapes writhed disgustingly, knotting together and sliding apart—she stopped to watch in fascination till a rough jolt to her shoulder and a muttered curse got her moving again. On the street’s other side she checked her pants’ front pocket. Her cash was still there.
But the clerk at the Green Tortoise Hostel wouldn’t take it.
Brit tried. She showed him she really had enough money, laying a wrinkled twenty on the greasy counter and smoothing it out flat. The man shook his shaggy head like a refugee from a S
cooby-Doo cartoon.
“Nope. Not without proper ID.”
Brit glared at him. She’d shown him that, too. “What ain’t proper about—” She slapped her hand down on her fake driver’s license fast, grabbing it back before he could confiscate it. His large hand rested awkwardly between them.
“Look, do you need help? Somewhere to stay the night?”
Wasn’t that what she’d wanted to pay him for? If she hadn’t been so damn short, he might not have asked how old she was. Lots of people told Brit she acted four, even five years older than her age. She could have passed for eighteen, easily—if she stood a little taller. But no.
“Problems at home? Let me call somebody—” He turned for the phone behind him and Brit bolted back outside.
Getting dark. The rain had slacked off, but the cold felt worse. At least she couldn’t smell Shaggy’s stale cigarette butts anymore.
She took in a deep breath, convincing herself she was better off. So much for Plan A. Plan B was more flexible. Okay, less well-formed. The basics were the same: Stay away from her parents till they gave up labeling her “disturbed.” Skip the appointment they’d made for her tomorrow afternoon with a psychiatrist.
She plodded stoically uphill. East. And south, away from the Green Tortoise. The library would probably still be open, but Brit wasn’t in the mood to read. Too hungry. She pushed open the door of the Hotel Monaco’s restaurant and went in.
Warm air caressed her, carrying in its soft swirls the aromas of fresh bread, baked herbs and onions, roasting meat—
“May I help you?” The way the woman walking towards her spoke made it clear she didn’t think helping Brit was in her power or anyone else’s. Brit had eaten here before. Only lunch, though. Everybody on that shift was used to her, but obviously she was just another black kid to this high-heeled blonde. And obviously she was too young to be eating dinner alone. “Meeting another party?”
Streets of Shadows Page 13