A Good Fall

by Ha Jin

  “What’s wrong?” Sherry asked. “You’re not pleased?”

  “If the department voted to grant me tenure, Nikki would be the first one to notify me.”

  “Read the letter again. They held the meeting the day before yesterday.”

  “Still, this information shouldn’t have come from Peter Johnson first. He can’t bear the sight of me. You know that.”

  “You’re too paranoid. Johnson wouldn’t dare to pull a prank like this on you. Give Nikki a call and find out if it’s true.”

  “All right.”

  He dialed Nikki’s number, and at the third ring her carefree voice came up. When he mentioned his misgivings, she laughed. “Of course it’s true,” she assured him.

  He wondered why she hadn’t told him, but he didn’t come out and ask her. Then she added, “Peter was quick. He was supportive this time.”

  “Oh, I didn’t expect such an upshot.”

  “You earned it, Rusheng. I planned to call you yesterday, but my daughter was leaving for a Scholar Bowl tournament today, so I was busy helping her pack. Then, after seeing her off this afternoon, I was stopped on the way home by a friend I hadn’t seen for years. So I came back late and meant to call you tonight. Sorry I wasn’t the messenger of the good news, but I’m really, really happy for you. In fact, except for three or four people, our whole department supported you. Yours is a strong case, and I’m sure the dean will approve it. You should celebrate, Rusheng.”

  Before hanging up he thanked her and said he would let her know the date for his celebratory party. Finally he was convinced. Oh, sometimes even good old Homer nods—how absentminded those erudite professors could grow when they devoted themselves to their magnificent papers and books, preoccupied heart and soul with all the marvelous, cutting-edge theories, like intertexuality, polyphonic narratology, deconstruction, and new historicism. They’d never even noticed a simple wrong word, “respectly.”

  “I’m tenured, wow, I’m tenured!” Rusheng cried out. He rushed over to his wife and grabbed her by the waist, swinging her around and around and around.

  “Put me down! Put me down!” she shrieked.

  So he did. “I’m tenured. Wow, I don’t have to worry about being fired anymore. I’m a real professor now! This can happen only in America!”

  “And you’ll get a big raise.”

  Suddenly he burst into laughter. He laughed and laughed until he doubled over, until Sherry began slapping his back to relieve his coughing. Then, straightening up, he broke out singing “Born to Be Wild,” a song Molin’s band often performed.

  “Born to be wild!” Rusheng chanted, stunning his wife.

  Not knowing the whole song, he went on belting out the refrain with garbled words: “Born to be happy! Born to succeed!”

  “Calm down, calm down!” his wife pleaded. But he wouldn’t stop giggling and kept chanting, “What a wonderful world! Born to be tenured! Born to stand out!”

  Sherry picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Molin, come over quickly. Rusheng has lost his mind … No, he’s not violent. We just heard he got tenure and he was shocked by the good news. Come and help me calm him down.”

  A few moments later Molin arrived. Rusheng was still singing, though he spewed out snatches of Beijing opera now: “Today I’m drinking a bowl poured by my mother / Ah, the wine makes me bold and strong …”

  “Give him some Benadryl,” Molin told Sherry. He pulled Rusheng up from the sofa and guided him away to the bedroom.

  No sooner had Rusheng sat down on the bed than his wife came with a cup of warm water and two caplets. She made him swallow the soporific, then sister and brother put him into bed. A film of sweat glistened on his domed forehead. She threw a blanket over him and said, “You must have some sleep, dear.”

  Rusheng was still humming something, but his voice was subdued, and his exhaustion was now apparent. Sherry dimmed the light on the nightstand and went out with her brother. “What should I do if he goes hysterical again? Take him to the hospital?” she asked Molin.

  “Wait and see. He may become himself again tomorrow.”

  “I hope so,” she sighed.

  A Pension Plan

  IT WAS SAID that Mr. Sheng suffered from a kind of senile dementia caused by some infarction in his brain. I was sure it was neither Parkinson’s nor Alzheimer’s, because I had learned quite a bit about both during my training to be a health aide. He wasn’t completely disabled, but he needed to be cared for during the day. I was glad to attend to him, because I’d been out of work for more than three months before this job.

  Every morning I’d wash his face with a hand towel soaked with warm water, but I’d been told I mustn’t shave him, which only his family members could do. He was sixty-nine, gentle by nature and soft-spoken. He’d taught physics at a middle school back in Changchun City three decades ago, but he couldn’t read his old textbooks anymore and was unable to remember the formulas and the theorems. He still could recognize many words, though. He often had a newspaper on his lap when sitting alone. My job was to cook for him, feed him, keep him clean, and take him around. A young nurse came every other day to check his vital signs and give him an injection. The twentysomething told me that actually there was no cure for Mr. Sheng’s illness, which the doctor could only try to keep under control and slow down his deterioration. I felt lucky that my charge wasn’t violent like many victims of dementia.

  Mr. Sheng’s wife had died long ago, before he came to the United States, but he believed she was still alive. Oftentimes he couldn’t remember her name, so every morning I let him look through an album that contained about two dozen photos of her and him together. In the pictures, they were young and appeared to be a happy couple. She was a pretty woman, the kind of beauty with glossy skin and a delicate figure you often find in the provinces south of the Yangtze River. Sometimes when I pointed at her face and asked him, “Who’s this?” he’d raise his eyes and look at me, his face blank.

  About a month after I started, his daughter, Minna, intervened, saying the photos might upset him and I shouldn’t show them to him anymore, so I put the album away. He never complained about its absence. Minna was a little bossy, but I didn’t mind. She must have loved her dad. She called me Aunt Niu. That made me uneasy, because I had just turned forty-eight, not that old.

  Part of my job was to feed Mr. Sheng. I often had to cajole him into swallowing food. Sometimes he was like a sick baby who refused to hold food in its mouth for long. I made fine meals for him—chicken porridge, fish dumplings, shrimp and taro pottage, noodles mixed with shredded shiitake mushrooms, but in spite of his full set of teeth, he seemed unable to tell any difference among most of the foods. A good part of his taste buds must have been dead. When eating, he’d jabber between mouthfuls, his words by and large incomprehensible. Yet once in a while he’d pause to ask me, “See what I mean?”

  I’d keep mute. If pressed further, I’d shake my head and admit, “No, I didn’t follow you.”

  “You always space out,” he’d grunt, then refuse to eat any more.

  Lunch usually took more than two hours. That didn’t bother me, since in essence my job was just to help him while away time. Due to his willfulness about food, I decided to eat my own meal before feeding him.

  After lunch we often went out for some fresh air, to do a little shopping and get that day’s World Journal; I pushed him in a wheelchair. Like a housewife, he was in the habit of clipping coupons. Whenever he saw something for sale, he would cut the ad out of the paper and save it for Minna. That made me feel that he must have been a considerate husband willing to share lots of things with his wife. Now, with my help, he enjoyed frequenting the stores in Flushing. For food, he claimed he liked freshwater fish, perch, carp, eel, dace, bullhead, but he wouldn’t eat seafood, or anything from the sea except for scallops. The last was recommended by the young nurse because it contained little cholesterol. She also told me to give him milk and cheese, but he disliked them.

/>   One afternoon we went out shopping again. As we were approaching a newsstand on Main Street, Mr. Sheng cried, “Halt!”

  “What?” I stopped in my tracks. People were pouring out of the subway exit.

  “Wait here,” he told me.

  “Why?”

  “She’s coming.”

  I wanted to ask him more but held back. His mind could hardly take in a regular sentence. If I asked him a question longer than ten words, he wouldn’t know how to answer.

  More people were passing by, and the two of us stood in the midst of the dwindling crowd. When no passengers were coming out of the exit anymore, I asked him, “Still waiting?”

  “Yeah.” He rested his hands on his legs. Beside him, a scrap of newspaper was taped to the top horizontal bar of the wheelchair.

  “We must buy the fish, remember?” I pointed at the ad.

  He looked vacant, his pupils roving from side to side. At this point the subway exit was again swarmed with people, and pedestrians were passing back and forth on the sidewalk. To my amazement, Mr. Sheng lifted his hand at a young lady wearing maroon pants, a pink silk shirt, and wire-rimmed glasses. She hesitated, then stopped. “What can I do for you, Uncle?” she said with a Cantonese accent.

  “Seen my wife?” he asked.

  “Who’s she? What’s her name?”

  He remained silent and turned his worried face up to me. I stepped in and said, “Her name is Molei Wan.” Not knowing how to explain further without offending him, I just winked at the woman.

  “I don’t know anyone who has that name.” She smiled and shook her dark-complected face.

  “You’re lying!” he yelled.

  She glared at him, her nostrils flaring. I pulled her aside and whispered, “Miss, don’t take it to heart. He has a mental disorder.”

  “If he’s a sicko, don’t let him come out to make others unhappy.” She shot me a dirty look and walked away, her shoulder-length hair swaying.

  Annoyed, I stepped back to his chair. “Don’t speak to a stranger again,” I said.

  He didn’t seem to understand, though he looked displeased, probably because he hadn’t caught sight of his wife. I pushed him away while he muttered something I couldn’t catch.

  The fish store was nearby, and we bought a large whitefish, a two-pounder. It was very fresh, with glossy eyes, full scales, and a firm belly. The young man behind the counter gutted it but left the head on, like I told him. By no means could Mr. Sheng eat the whole thing—I would cook only half of it and save the other half for the next day or later. On our way back, he insisted on holding the fish himself. I had tied the top of the plastic bag, so I didn’t intervene when he let it lie flat on his lap. Bloody liquid seeped out and soaked the front of his khaki pants, but I didn’t notice it. When we got home, I saw the wet patch and thought he had peed. Then I found that neither of his pant legs was wet. “You meant to create more work for me, eh?” I said. “Why didn’t you hold the fish right?”

  He looked puzzled. Yet he must have meant to be careless with the fish, peeved that I hadn’t let him wait longer outside the subway terminal. I began undressing him for a shower, which I had planned to do that day anyway. As for his pants soiled by the fish blood, I’d wash them later. There was a washer upstairs on the first floor of the house, where his daughter lived with his two grandchildren and her husband, Harry, a pudgy salesman who traveled a lot and was not home most of the time.

  I helped Mr. Sheng into the bathtub. He held on to a walker with its wheels locked while I was washing him. I first lathered him all over and then rinsed him with a nozzle. He enjoyed the shower and cooperated as usual, turning this way and that. He let out happy noises when I sprayed warm water on him. He should be pleased, because few health aides would bathe their patients as carefully as I did. I had once worked in a nursing home, where old people were undressed and strapped to chairs with holes in the seats when we gave them showers. We wheeled them into a machine one by one. Like in an auto bath, water would spurt at them from every direction. When we pulled them out, they’d hiccup and shiver like featherless turkeys. Some of the aides would let those they disliked stay there wet and naked for an hour or two.

  After toweling off Mr. Sheng, I helped him on with clean clothes and then combed his gray hair, which was still thick and hadn’t lost its sheen. I noticed that his fingernails were quite long, with dirt beneath them, but the company’s regulations didn’t allow me to clip them, for fear of a lawsuit if they got infected. I told him, “Be a good boy. I’m gonna make you a fish soup.”

  “Yummy.” He clucked, showing two gold-capped teeth.

  I couldn’t drive, so whenever Mr. Sheng went to see the doctor in the hospital, Minna would take both of us there in her minivan. She already had her hands full with her four-year-old twin boys and her job in a bank, and had to use a babysitter. Her father didn’t believe in Western medicine and became unhappy whenever we visited the hospital. He might have his reasons—according to the young nurse who came every other day, acupuncture and medicinal herbs might be more effective in treating his illness. But he would have to pay for the herbs since Medicare didn’t cover them. Even so, he’d make me push him from one herbal store to another, and sometimes he went there just to see how those doctors, unlicensed here because of their poor English, treated patients—feeling their pulses, performing cupping, giving therapeutic massages, setting bones. He couldn’t afford a whole set of herbs prescribed by a doctor, usually more than a dozen per prescription, but he’d buy something from time to time, a couple of scorpions or centipedes, or a pack of ginseng beard, which is at least ten times cheaper than the roots and which he asked me to steep in piping-hot water to make a tea for him. He would also have me bake and grind the insects and promise him never to disclose his taking them to Minna, who regarded Chinese medicine as quackery. I had no idea if centipedes and scorpions could help him, but whenever he ate a few, he would grow animated for hours, his eyes shedding a tender light while color came to his face. He’d sing folk songs, one after another. He always got the lines garbled, but the melodies were there. Familiar with those songs, I often hummed along with him.

  Together we’d sing: “As the limpid brook is babbling east, / I shall keep your words secret and sweet.” Or, “A little pouch with a golden string, / Made for me by the village girl / Who smiles like a blooming spring.”

  But often I wasn’t so happy with him. Most of the time he was difficult and grouchy and would throw a tantrum out of the blue. Because Medicare covered acupuncture, he went to a clinic for the treatment regularly. The only acupuncturist within walking distance and listed by the program was Dr. Li, who practiced in one of the tenements on Forty-sixth Avenue. I often missed his office when I took Mr. Sheng there because those brick buildings appeared identical. One afternoon as I was pushing him along the sidewalk shaded by maples with purple leaves, he stopped me, saying we had just passed Dr. Li’s clinic. I looked around and figured that he might be correct, so we turned and headed for the right entrance.

  Excited about my mistake, he told the doctor I was “a dope.” Lying on a sloping bed with needles in his feet, he pointed at his head and said, “My memory’s better now.”

  “Indeed,” Dr. Li echoed, “you’ve improved a lot.”

  I hated that donkey-faced man, who lied to him. Mr. Sheng couldn’t even remember what he’d eaten for lunch. How could anyone in his right mind say his memory had gotten better? He smiled like an idiot, his face showing smugness. I was pretty sure that he had identified the right entrance only by a fluke. Outraged, I flopped down into his wheelchair and pretended to be trembling like him. I groaned, “Oh, help me! Take me to Dr. Li. I need him to stick his magic needles into my neck.”

  Li laughed, quacking like a duck, while Mr. Sheng fixed his eyes on me like a pair of tiny arrowheads. Red patches were appearing on his cheeks and a tuft of hair suddenly stood up on his crown. That frightened me and I got out of the chair. Even so, I couldn’t help but add,
“Take me back. I can’t walk by myself.”

  I shouldn’t have aped him, speaking out of turn. For the rest of the day he went on jerking his head away from me, even though I cooked his favorite food—chicken porridge with chestnuts in it. I thought he must hate me and would make endless trouble for me. But the next morning he was himself again and even gave me a smile of recognition when I stepped into his quarters in the basement.

  Mr. Sheng developed a strange habit—he would prevent me from leaving him alone and want me to sit by him all the time. Even when I went upstairs to launder his clothes, he’d get impatient, making terrible noises. He just needed my attention, I guessed. When I walked out of his room, I could feel his eyes following me. And he had become more obedient at mealtimes and would swallow whatever I fed him. One morning I asked him teasingly, pointing at my nose, “What’s my name?”

  He managed to say, “Jufen.”

  I gave him a one-armed hug, thrilled that he’d remembered my name. To be honest, I liked to stay with him, not only because I got paid eight dollars an hour but also because his fondness for me made my work easier. It took less time to feed and bathe him now. He was so happy and mild these days that even his grandchildren would come down to see him. He also went up to visit them when his son-in-law wasn’t home. Somehow he seemed afraid of Harry, a white man with thick shoulders, shortish legs, and intense blue eyes. Minna told me that her husband feared that Mr. Sheng might hurt their children and that, besides, Harry didn’t like the old man’s smell. But honest to God, in my care, my patient didn’t stink anymore.

  He had quite a number of friends in the neighborhood, and we often went to a small park on Bowne Street to meet them. They were all in their sixties or seventies, three or four women while the other seven or eight were men. But unlike my charge, they weren’t ill; they were more clearheaded. Though Mr. Sheng could no longer chat with them, I could see that they used to be quite chummy. They’d tease him good-naturedly, but he never said anything and just smiled at them. One afternoon, Old Peng, a chunky man with a bullet-shaped head, asked him loudly, “Who’s this? Your girlfriend?” He pointed his thumb at me, its nail ringwormed like a tiny hoof.