Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (Vintage International)

by Maxine Hong Kingston

  Hardly resting at the street corner, she kept walking; she wasn’t going to lose her momentum. “Your grandmama was an abandoned grandmama,” she said. “Give me a cigarette, honey girl.” Managing the purse and the box, and his laundry, he lit a smoke for her and one for himself. “Your mother and your father lost me on purpose to die in the high-up Sierras. Left me like an extra cat or dog that’s cute no more. Oh, you should see the ex-pets dumped in the wild woods. Perfectly good dogs. I fed them my food. I made a wish at those dogs to turn back into wolves. But they forget how to be animals. They thought I was going to take them home. I walked up and down the roadside, and two dogs and a skinny skinny cat and one creature I don’t know what it was followed me.”

  “Did it have a tail? How big was it?”

  “It might have had a tail tucked up. It was brown and white and about this big. O life. The hundred and eight outlaws had a saying: ‘Even an ape will cry when another ape is sad.’ Your parents are heartless, little Wit Man. Oh, my poor honey girl, you had to be raised by them.” Well, he had been raised by her too, and he would probably be better off psychologically if she didn’t call him “honey girl,” mutt hong nay, which doesn’t sound good translated or untranslated. “I tell you, honey girl. Your mother said, ‘Do you want to go on a picnic, PoPo?’ We went in your father’s pick-up truck. I sat in the back. They sat up front plotting against me. We bought takeout, a fire duck with plum sauce and steam rolls.”

  “Do you want my jacket, PoPo?” She was wearing one of her Malay dresses, and you could see her bony tan shoulders through it. They took turns holding the purse, the pink box, the cigarettes, the heavy wet laundry; he took off the pea coat, she put it on. It hung heavy and long on her, an old urchin of the U.S. Navy.

  “Your father drove high, high; he wound around in the mountains so I didn’t know east or west. The wind was getting me. I pressed against the backs of those two in the cab. They were talking too much to each other. They were passing picnic spots by. Pretty soon, no benches, no barbecue stoves. We were driving into the wild woods. They acted as if they couldn’t hear me banging at their heads and calling Stop.

  “At the top of the mountains, they stopped, and your father lifted me down from the pick-up. He carried me. He said, ‘Upsy Daisy.’ Your mother handed me the blanket and said, ‘Spread the blanket under that tree, PoPo.’ They put the bag of duck on the ground. I cleared off stones and pine cones. I got tangled in the blanket trying to shake it out in the mountain wind, and do you know what those two kai dai did?” Wittman didn’t know the translation for “kai dai,” such a dirty word that the dictionary leaves it out and nobody claims to know what it means. “Those kai dai got in the truck and drove away. I thought to myself, they’re hurrying down to State Line to do some gambling before we eat. But they didn’t come back, and they didn’t come back. I ate fire duck without them. Some picnic. A dog came out of the forest carrying a doggie dish in his mouth. I fed him their duck; it served them right. I had lunch. I had dinner. I stood beside the road—they had gotten me off the highway to a hidden road—and looked for the pick-up, and never saw it come back or go by. I gave steam rolls and soda to that dog and another dog and the cat and the creature animal. I patted them—‘Good dog. Good dog’—and kept them with me. Those animals were so worn out, they didn’t read my mind that I might need to eat them by and by. Oh, honey girl, I’m a perfectly good grandmama, and they dumped me. But a ‘perfectly good dog’ isn’t as good as a ‘good dog,’ is it? Oh, honey girl, I began to cry. I wept loud. The sun was setting. Oh, who wouldn’t cry? It’s not fair. Why hadn’t they warned me? They could have given me a chance. Judges and employers give people chances. Did they think they had already heard all my conversation? If they were tired of me repeating myself, they could have told me so. I would have done something about it. I repeat myself but not because I forget that I’ve told a story already. I know I told it before. I tell a thing over again because I like going through it again. I could keep a calendar, and not tell the same things so often. I’m going to read more, and know facts that nobody’s heard yet. Maybe they don’t like my habits? Your mother and I were at a banquet, where a bit of food spilled on my skirt. I licked my finger and cleaned the spot. Your mother said, ‘Stop that, PoPo, that’s an old-lady habit.’ I stopped, and don’t do that anymore. She didn’t notice I changed. That was my last chance. It’s hard to keep being new and different, honey girl. I was falling behind on the news. The newspapers were piling up in my room. Don’t grow old. Otherwise, out you go.”

  “Yeah, be fun or else, no more use for you. Otherwise, old-age home. Otherwise, divorce. Otherwise, up for adoption. Dog pound. You’re a perfect and good grandmother. PoPo, you come live with me. We be cronies.” It’s not fair, a crone is an old sheep, but a crony is a friend through time.

  “Oh, but no, thank you. You one good boy, Wit Man. I found me a place to live. Let me tell you what happened.”

  “You were waiting by the side of the road, the sun going down.”

  “I was weeping by the side of the road, the sun going down. High high in the cold, far mountains, the trees are thick, and the woods are dark long before the sun goes down. Oh, those two ex-children of mine acted so caring of me. ‘Why don’t you get out here and take a pee, PoPo?’ ‘Go ahead, start eating, PoPo. Don’t wait for us.’ Under the tall red trees, I cried and cried and cried. There was no other sound in the air.

  “It happened that an old Chinese man was driving through that forest with his windows down. He heard crying, and thought, ‘Who can that be weeping in the dark woods?’ He braked beside me, and stuck his head out the window. ‘Lady, why do you weep?’ ‘Sir,’ says I, ‘I have been forsaken by ungrateful children.’ ‘Aiya,’ the old man said, ‘no-good children. Come with me. Come home with me. I’ve been seeking a wife. Will you marry me? And return to the City, and live with me?’ I put the picnic blanket in the car, and got in next to him. Fortunately, Reno was nearby. We drove there, and were married. The numbers we bet on were our wedding date and our ages. We won a great deal of money. Such a lucky day. We’re living together now on Washington Gai. You can tell your no-heart mother and father that their plot to kill me has failed. My love story is the talk of Chinatown.”

  A miracle, all right. Wittman hoped that when he grew old, he would become like that old man. A babe goes bouncing down the street; a wrinkled popo lags along. Why, he’d whistle at the latter and mean it. He was beginning already. He liked the way her eyelids draped at the corners. Debbie Reynolds eyelids. She wore October opals at the top tips of her ears, perhaps a fashion of a country nobody else knows about or comes from. Perhaps her family sold her, but earmarked her to find again.

  “Tell me some more about your old man,” he said.

  “He’s important. A big shot. He owns the building we live in. He collects the rent from a whole building. I help him collect. His office is on the ground floor, and our apartment is the top floor. We don’t work and live in the same room. Do you know what he was doing in the Sierras? He was waiting for a storm. He wanted to ride a tree, as he did when he was a lumberjack. He hugged the trunk at the tiptop of a sequoia—the tree whipping around and around in the thunder and lightning. It staggered backward and forward, arms waving, almost losing its balance. My old man, the best tree rider, could let go of his tree and fly to the next tree. He went for one last ride, but it didn’t storm, and he found me.”

  Wittman pictured a tree flinging the old man—slingshooting him out of a fork—and he catches another tree. And many lumberjacks riding a forest, and flying from tree to tree. Angel shots. “PoPo, will you do me one favor, huh? Will you ask your old man for some costumes and make-up and lights? I like put on a play. He doesn’t have to do work; he could just help out with money.”

  “What will my old man think of me? No sooner does he take a wife, but my needy greedy relatives come out of hiding. The next thing he knows, he’s sponsor of a village. They want airplane tickets, and they wan
t to be house guests, and they want clean jobs. And they want a college education for every kid all the way up to M.D. and Ph.D. And they want Wilson tennis rackets. There’s a lady in our building whose cousin is living in her guest room; he sits all day long to be served like he’s king of America. Relatives keep asking for more until everybody is down to living on shrimp paste on rice. Any pair of undershorts my old man buys for himself, they’ll call a luxury. They don’t understand that nowadays we don’t live in a bare room and eat hom haw on rice so they can go to college. They ask too much. I’ve seen it before. I’m protecting my oi yun from relatives.” GrandMaMa was the witch under the eclipse in King Solomon’s Mines. “I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen it before.”

  “Yeah,” said Wittman, “they think they can come over here and take advantage of us Americans, they got another think coming. We’re wise to their actions. Good thing we don’t have any more people to come from China. You’re the last one. I’m not asking for money for keeps, PoPo. We make our nut, your oi yun can have all the profits. Everyone will call him Angel. Come on, you used to help me do plays. You like be in my play, PoPo? Play Mother Hsü. You get to tell off Cho Cho. ‘Kill me or lock me up in the tower; this hand will never write a ransom note.’ And you scold your son, stupid, foolhardy to ride to your rescue and get captured. You can take care of yourself; you don’t need rescue. Onstage downstage-center death scene, PoPo. Climactic and dramatic seppuku harakiri. You fall on the longsword—the gim, your oi yun needs to help me buy. His name will be on the program: Angel—Mr. Oi Yun.”

  PoPo giggled. “His name isn’t Oi Yun, Mr. Beloved. He’s Mr. Lincoln Fong.”

  Wittman’s English better than his Chinese, and PoPo’s Chinese better than her English, you would think that they weren’t understanding each other. But the best way to talk to someone of another language is at the top of your intelligence, not to slow down or to shout or to talk babytalk. You say more than enough, o.d. your listener, give her plenty to choose from. She will get more out of it than you can say.

  PoPo said, “Who I really want to play is the princess with the eighty-seven attendant faeries, represented by two dozen beautiful actresses, leading up to my entrance. Did I tell you I played such a princess on the London stage?”

  “Yeah, you have, PoPo. How about I arrange six beautiful girls representing the eighty-seven faeries?”

  “How about ten or twelve?”

  “How about eight? And your oi yun plays K’ung Ming, the tactician for the three brothers. We’ll invent a way to give him a tree ride on stage—K’ung Ming controlling the winds. And controlling the atmosphere. Everywhere he abides, gibbons and birds fill the forest; villagers sing in taverns and fields. He outlives the three brothers, and takes over the try for emperor.”

  “Yes. Yes, that sounds like my beloved.”

  They were then in front of Wittman’s pad. “Well, PoPo. I live up there now. Do you want to come in and drink tea? Do you want to sit awhile?”

  “No, thank you,” she said. “My oi yun has a car. We’re going to meet at a dim sum parlor, and he’ll drive me home. Am I sah chun or am I not? Sah chun, ma? If you need a ride anywhere, you call your popo. Look up Mr. Lincoln Fong of Washington Gai in the telephone book, Lincoln Ho in the Chinese phone book. Honey girl, you aren’t lonely living up there by yourself, are you?”

  “No, no, not me. Don’t worry about me. I just got married myself, PoPo. Isn’t it lucky, we two newlyweds meeting on the street?”

  “Yes. That’s very good. Lucky. You and I, a bridegroom and a bride.” She smiled up at him. “A tall newlywed and a short newlywed.” She made him laugh. She patted him on the arm. “Lucky.” She took off his coat, and took her purse and the pink box. “You want some money? Here.”

  “No, thank you, PoPo. It’s okay. Too much. You buy something for your oi yun.” She was giving him a roll of tens.

  “No, no. Wedding present. You buy persimmons for your oi yun. Sayonara, honey girl.” His sah chun grandmama sashayed away sassy down the street. She was wearing a batik cloth tied over her skirt, and her feet were bare brown in sandals. Persimmon season. She’s lived for a long time, and in many places. Lucky to have her here now. It was her that Samuel Pepys saw in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which featured four peacocks and six monkeys and twenty-four Chinese faeries.

  There. Wittman Ah Sing had gotten married, found a venue for a theater, found his grandmother, who gave him money that he did not have to report. Good work. Phone the wife, and so to bed. A reader doesn’t have to pay more money for the next chapter or admission to the show if there’s going to be a show; you might as well travel on with our monkey for the next while.

  7

  A PEAR GARDEN IN THE WEST

  THE CHINESY BANK with dragons coiling its red pillars was closed for making change, so Wittman Ah Sing went to a newsstand and bought cigarettes with a part of the grandmother money. He intended to pay her back out of Unemployment money. At his phone booth, he called his people. Yes, he does have people, and they belong to him whether they like it or not.

  “Ma? I’m not sick or in trouble.” He always had to say that right off.

  “Good. Why you call then? You find a job?”

  “I found PoPo.”

  “Aiya.”

  “Not her body. Her. She’s alive, and she’s married.”

  “Aiya. That old body, married? Who married her old self?”

  “I think, Ma, that there are people who know how to prefer old bodies. Good thing too, else we’re going to be lonely most of our time.”

  “What kind of man is he? Did you meet him?”

  “A good man. He gives her everything. You don’t have to let her take back her furniture. She’s here in the City, and lives in a building that her old man owns.”

  “I knew she would make for herself a happy ending. How about you? Job yet? Don’t grow up lazy, Wit Man, that’s the worst.” He showered her voice with long-distance dimes.

  “Ma? I’m producing a show. I’m a show producer. And our Joang Wah will sponsor. They like see you and the aunties do your historic War Bonds Rescue China act. Do you remember how it goes?”

  His mother went quiet. He dropped in some more dimes. “Ma. Ma, are you there?”

  “Remembering or forgetting the act is not the problem, Wit Man. I contributed to the world war effort that ended up with A-bombs. I’m changed now. I did those shows because I wasn’t thinking. You were a baby. But now you’re draft-age. I’m not sending you off to Viet Nam. I’m not helping drop the H-bomb. Don’t you think about Viet Nam? What’s the matter for you? You’re too carefree, like your father. I want you to run for Canada. Go.” His mother was so advanced, he could hardly keep up with her.

  “I do think about Viet Nam, Ma. I’m against it. You put on your show after all these years, it won’t be the same but. You guys are old nowadays. Not so smooth on your feet, okay. Tap shoes skid, okay. Legs kick crooked, okay. Make the audience see through propaganda.” Still talking down to her, he was trying to explain Brechtian.

  “You young kid, don’t know nothing. The legs are the last to go.”

  “Ma, if you can stir up a war with your dancing, you can stop one, right? Why don’t you and the aunties make up an Anti-War Bond show, and see what happens? If it doesn’t work, I’ll go to Canada.”

  “Maybe I take you to Canada. I don’t want to stay here and get persecution when I refuse to roll bandages and knit socks. Wit Man, do me one favor.”

  “Sure, Ma.”

  “If you go to Viet Nam and get shot down, I don’t want you to scream Mama. I can’t take that, hurt soldiers yelling Mama on the battlefield, crying for their mother in the hospital. Scream Daddy, why don’t they? You don’t yell Mama, okay? Have consideration for me for once in your life.”

  “Teach Daddy to the audience at the Anti-War Bond show.”

  “I’ll talk to the girls. Some are for Viet Nam but. I have to argue them out of it. Good night, Wit Man. Long distance cost
s too much.” She didn’t ask after Taña.

  A group of tourists walked by, a lone man with his herd of widows. And crossing the street, a family of tourists, all dressed in the same fabric.

  He dialed Lance’s number. “Howzit? This is Wittman.” Lance liked to put you through identifying yourself. Beat him to it.

  “Howzit? What’s up?”

  “You’re not giving a Hallowe’en party, are you?”

  “Sure, I’ll give one if you like. Feel like partying again already, huh?” Always pinning you with motives.

  A woman’s voice came from another place, “Hallowe’en party? I was about to send out invitations. You’re invited, Wittman.” It was Sunny on the extension.

  “Sunny, is that you? Hi.” It’s a marriage where he won’t be able to talk to his friend alone again. He has to address the both of them, the Kamiyamas as one. “Listen, will you do me a favor, and not give a party that night?”

  “You’re giving the party?” “A party costs at least fifty dollars.”

  “Well, yes. That night will be opening night for our play. I need your party guests for audience, and you up front.” That is, the plural you. If he were to ask to go out with just one of them, would there be a break in the marriage? “The read-through is tomorrow night at our Benevolent house. Bring people for me to read, okay?”

  “We’re looking forward to it, Wittman,” said Sunny. “Hold it,” said Lance. “It’s a kung fu challenge, Sunny. He’s couched it in Japanese politeness, but he’s handing us a kung fu challenge all right. His gwoon is about to raid our gwoon; we have to beat him to the punch.” “What’s a gwoon, Lance?” “It’s a school of martial arts. The students of a gwoon will march or drive to another gwoon and attack during practice. That’s the walkthrough-town of the Seven Samurai and the Magnificent Seven. They fight aikido against chi kung, tai kwan do against zazen, monkey style against wu style against push hands against karate. For keeps. Winner takes all. The sensei roshi whose students lose has to give over his gwoon, his teaching business, his students, his reputation, the Benevolent house, and he has to admit that his form of kung fu is not the superior form. I know what you’re after, Wittman—you heard him, Sunny—my mailing list and my phone tree. I accept your challenge. I and my men will be there at your Benevolent house tomorrow night.” “Oh, Wittman,” said Sunny, “you better be ready. His jiu jitsu is getting so superior.” “Chinese against Japanese, Wittman, just like in a Bruce Lee movie. This time, Japanese win.”