This Old Man Read online

  “It sounds like something out of The Godfather.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Wing smiled. “Of course, my great-grandfather wasn’t a crook.”

  “I never suspected he was, never for a moment.”

  “How different it must have been for Old Man when he came to this country,” Wing mused. “Do you know he lived in a cave with twelve other men one summer?”

  “In a cave?”

  “They were building the railroad in those years.”

  I couldn’t picture Old Man doing manual labor. Somehow I thought he’d always closed himself in a heavily draped room to read and write and sip hot tea, while everyone else worked to feed him.

  “When he came to San Francisco,” Wing continued, “he took whatever work he could. He speared trash in the streets with a stick. When the stick was full, he got ten cents. Also, he used to strap himself into a harness to wash the outside windows on tall buildings.”

  “Old Man washing windows? I don’t believe it.”

  “He was much younger then.”

  “Yes, but with all his education and learning, couldn’t he get a job as a teacher?”

  “He didn’t speak English. And besides, Chinese were not allowed to work except in the lowest of jobs that no one else would take.”

  “Then who taught the children here in Chinatown? Someone had to teach them Chinese.”

  “You don’t know, do you? There were no children, only men. It was very lonely here for him. He never had an easy life, you see, once he was an adult.”

  If only I had known him when he was a young man washing windows. What did he do after work, I wondered.

  “He tells me the men sat around together telling stories about better days, and gambling away their small salaries. They sent money home to their families in China, and they had nothing to spend the rest on anyway.”

  When had Old Man’s life turned around? When had he gone back to being the aristocrat he was born to be? When his son could support him, I guessed, and his grandsons could serve him. How long had he waited to be treated like a rich man again—fifty years? What a museum of warring memories he must have been.

  17

  I sat in Mr. Saxe’s office, with my chin digging into my knees. I was wearing jeans long enough to cover my sneakers, and a bulky yellow sweater that sent bits of fluff up to tickle my nose. My mood was low—the hormones were battling it out. “I haven’t heard a word from my mother, and it’s been two weeks.”

  “I’m glad you brought it up,” said Mr. Saxe. He didn’t look at all glad. “Let’s talk about her.”

  “I want to know where she is.”

  He shrugged his shoulders, not exactly lying, but implying that he didn’t know.

  “You know where she is, don’t you?”

  There was the slightest hesitation. “Yes, but I’m not going to tell you. Your mother explained all that. I can tell you she’s safe, she’s staying in a rooming house that’s run by a nice Irish gentlewoman, and she’s started school.”

  “Oh, well.” I shrugged. “I never did keep close tabs on her.” Not knowing where she was now made me miss her more than I ever dreamed I would. No matter what, I always used to know where she was. “I’ve got other things going on.”

  “Many other things.”

  I couldn’t think of a single one.

  “Look, Elizabeth doesn’t get home from school until five-thirty. Now’s a good time,” I reasoned.

  Sylvia was into her Miss Goody-Two-Shoes routine. “You’re asking me to break into Elizabeth’s room?”

  “Who said break in? It’s not Watergate, you know. She leaves her room unlocked. We just open the door.”

  “I dunno, I dunno,” Sylvia stammered. “I don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

  “A piece of paper. Or an address book. Or her journal. She’s got to have something that tells where my mother is.”

  “Why do you need to know? Are you going there?”

  “No. It’s just that I have a right to know. She’s my mother. I’m a minor, you know? A minor has a right to keep up with her mother’s whereabouts. It’s in the Constitution.”

  “Okay,” Sylvia said, with a deep sigh. “But I’m not involved. I’m just coming along for moral support. If anybody asks me, I don’t know anything, got that?”

  “For God’s sake, we’re not robbing Elizabeth. I’m just going after some information that’s mine anyway. Never mind. I don’t need your help.”

  “No, no, I said I’d do it.” What a martyr.

  We tiptoed out of our room. There was no need to sneak around, really. Jo’s radio was at top volume so she could hear it in the shower. From the kitchen we heard Pammy’s clunking and clanging as she started the potatoes boiling and got the hamburgers laid out on the broiler pan. As for Carmella, she was occupied. We peeked through her partially open door, hoping we wouldn’t be caught. There she sat, on her bed, with a box of soda crackers, a jar of Skippy’s chunky-style peanut butter, and a quart of strawberry jam. She put the jelly knife down on her bedspread and ground cracker crumbs into the carpet with her foot. She blew crumbs off her lap into the air where they spun in a circle and landed back on the bed.

  Sylvia chuckled. “She even makes peanut butter and jelly look disgusting.”

  “Come on,” I whispered, “before it’s too late.” We opened Elizabeth’s door. The room smelled just like her—a solid, earthy smell like a leather coat.

  A bookcase made of bricks and unfinished, knotty boards hulked along one wall. Books were stacked every which way, some open face down on top of the piles. Elizabeth’s closet was wide open, and a few dresses and blouses hung in a huddle to one side. The other side was bare, except for cartons stacked up to the rod. It looked like she wasn’t at Anza House on a permanent basis.

  The desk, a huge, metal secretary’s desk, was a field of clutter—carbon paper, five-by-seven cards covered with notes, budgets, menus, bills, letters, two calendars. Sylvia stood in front of the desk with her hands on her hips and one knee bent. Her whole posture spelled disapproval.

  I opened the middle drawer of the desk to find the usual treasures—paper clips, tape, scissors. The side drawer was stuck. I opened the middle drawer again to release it. There stood a row of manila folders, one for each of us, with our names printed in purple ink. “Here it is!” I glanced up to show Sylvia that our work was paying off, but Sylvia had vanished and left the door open. Some friend, I thought, as I thumbed through the folders to find JANSSEN, GRETA.

  The folder had my I.Q. and personality tests in it. I’d have to come back another day to read the results. There was a double-spaced report from Mr. Saxe that began, “Greta Janssen, a sixteen-year-old Caucasian female, was referred to this office by Lutheran Social Services.”

  Lutheran? We weren’t Lutheran; we weren’t anything. My mother must have plucked my religion from Mrs. Barnes’s death certificate. I read on: “Greta Janssen appeared frightened and overwhelmed at her first meeting with the social worker. She was reluctant to reveal anything of a personal nature until well into—”

  Elizabeth came up behind me, silently, and said, “Go to your room, Greta. This one is mine.”

  I spun around. There was a look of steel wrath on her face, as she stepped aside to let me by.

  I saw Sylvia deep into peanut butter and jelly on Carmella’s bed just before I slammed my door to have a good brood. Injustice was the topic of the hour. Why should I be caught so indignantly, and Sylvia get off free to stuff her face? Why was my life everybody’s business—from Stanley Quinn’s to Mr. Whatever-His-Name Saxe’s, to Elizabeth’s—and yet when my mother left town, I wasn’t even told where she went?

  Injustice? Plenty. It was plain unfair. How righteous I felt all of a sudden! I wasn’t used to such nobility. Surely there was a halo forming just above my head, like those of the saints in Hackey’s mother’s church. One of her great bold pronouncements came back to me, something she’d be prone to say on the way home from church
, before the spirit left her for the week: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

  I was awash in the mighty stream, which became a virtual flood when Elizabeth came in to mete out her own brand of justice: I was to be grounded for two weeks. I could go to school, I could go to Mr. Saxe on Tuesdays, and that was it.

  I thought I would feel like I had been sentenced to Alcatraz, but instead I felt like a sainted martyr. I’d out-Sylvia Sylvia. Joan of Arc could not have enjoyed her misery more than I did. It didn’t even matter anymore where Marla was.

  Being grounded turned out to be a restful experience. I’d get my homework done by 5:00 and have the whole evening to catch up on sleep or M*A*S*H reruns or to get on everyone’s nerves.

  “Hey, Jo, tell me what’s going on in the outside world?”

  “It’s about the same as always,” she answered. She was making accordion pleats out of the corner of some book.

  “What are you reading?”

  “I don’t know. The Loved One.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “I don’t know. Something about cemeteries for dogs. Mrs. Garrettson made me read it for a book report. She says it’s satire. She has this idea I’m a natural-born satirist.”

  “Is the book funny?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t know, Greta. I’m on page two, and I’ve read it thirty times already.”

  “I can take a hint.” I wandered toward Carmella’s room. “Can I come in?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? It’s a free country.”

  “’Cause I hate you, that’s why not.”

  There was a clear message there, all right. I thought maybe Pammy felt like having company downstairs in the living room. “What are you doing?” I asked her.

  “Staring. Lookit over there. I practically had a baby right there in that spot.”

  “Do you miss the baby, Pammy?”

  “I could see him any time I wanted to.”

  “Don’t you want to?”

  She tucked her teeth over her bottom lip and looked like a little girl in a Cheerios commercial. “I guess it’s better if I don’t. I really don’t want to talk about this anymore, okay?”

  “Leave her alone,” Elizabeth called from the dining room.

  Aha, someone new to prey upon! Elizabeth had her books spread out all over the table. From time to time she pounded away at a relic of a typewriter. I said, “Since you’re making me stay in, at least you can talk to me.”

  “Why not? I can’t stand this paper anymore tonight, anyway. Let’s make some hot chocolate.”

  We spent a lot of time talking those two weeks, though she made it clear she would not tell me where Marla was. We talked about my mother, though, how she and I were alike and different. Up to that point I’d thought the major difference between my mother and me was that she was pretty and graceful, and I wasn’t. Then, with Elizabeth, I discovered some other contrasts that were a lot more interesting. Elizabeth said my mother was a follower, and I was a leader. My mother was dependent, and I was independent. She accepted, I questioned.

  I liked being an independent, questioning leader. It suited me well. It almost gave me confidence to believe that there would never be a Hackey Barnes type to take my life away from me; I wouldn’t have to run away when I was thirty-two or sixty or ninety-two or any age.

  Almost. Then I thought, running away—wasn’t that what I was already doing? Wasn’t I hiding from Hackey, running to keep one step ahead of him?

  “Yes,” Elizabeth agreed, “to some extent. And since you brought it up, I want to tell you something. I think you should get rid of the pictures.”

  “Does everybody know about those pictures?” I shouted.

  “Shh. No one else in the house knows. Besides, look how your marshmallows jumped across your cup when you yelled. You want to scare defenseless little marshmallows?”

  I wasn’t to be diverted. “What do you know about the pictures?”

  “Not much, actually. Only that you took a bunch of shots of Hackey exchanging money with clients and with some of his women.”

  “That’s not the worst of it,” I hinted, though I wasn’t sure I wanted her to pry anything else out of me.

  “What else?” she asked calmly. She was crafty. She knew that if she showed too keen an interest, I’d back away. The chocolate had etched dirty tracks down the walls of her mug. She licked them out as far as her tongue would reach, glancing over her cup from time to time, waiting.

  “He’s got a book with names and addresses.”

  She slammed her cup down. “You photographed his book?”

  “Every page,” I proudly revealed.

  “Good God, child, no wonder he’s after you.”

  “He doesn’t know I have any of these pictures. Anyway, I don’t think he knows.”

  Elizabeth leaned forward eagerly. “Just where are the pictures?”

  “Upstairs,” I whispered.

  “Honey, throw them in the incinerator. Take out an ad in the paper to tell him you did it. Be done with him.”

  “Are you kidding? Those pictures are my insurance policy. Someday I’m going to nail him, Elizabeth, I swear it.”

  “Then go ahead and do it,” she said quietly. “Saxe and I will stand behind you all the way.”

  “There’s just one small catch.” Jo’s mother came to mind: did she wear a prison uniform, a drab khaki dress? Blue jeans? Black-and-white stripes?

  “The catch is?”

  How could I say it without sounding smug, without sounding hopelessly trapped? “Nailing Hackey, you know? Well, it nails my mother, too.”

  Once I’d said it, I was more determined than ever. I had to get my mother’s address. Now I had a legitimate reason. If I knew where Marla was, I could warn her in case Hackey ever got hold of the pictures. I’d just have to slip back into Elizabeth’s room.

  As it turned out, I didn’t get a chance. Elizabeth began locking her door and carrying a thick ring of keys, like a jailer.

  18

  All too soon my period of punishment came an end. In the two weeks I was gone, Old Man had gotten weaker. He’d lost his zest for poetry or conversation. He hardly ate anything, not even the black seaweed gelatin he used to delight in.

  The nurses tried to get him up to walk a little each day, but he would wait for Wing to come, and only then would he walk the square of his room, leaning heavily on his grandson’s arm. After his walk he’d fall right to sleep. He seemed content to sleep with Wing sitting by his bed. When Old Man’s breathing became deep and regular, Wing would collect the dinner bowls and slip out of the room. The nurses said Old Man slept only fitfully when Wing wasn’t there.

  The day I returned to Chinese Hospital, Wing came out of the room and angrily said, “I think Chen has shortened Old Man’s life.”

  “The man is over ninety. It’s a miracle he’s lived as long as he has.”

  “I’m going to lose him this year, Greta, before I even get to high school.”

  “Yes, we’re going to lose him,” I agreed, and I felt a gust of loneliness blow through me. I hadn’t felt anything like it since Hackey’s mother died. “I had a friend who died a couple of years ago.”

  “Oh, a friend,” Wing said, indifferently.

  “She was like a grandmother.”

  “She was? Who was she?”

  “Her name was Edna Barnes. She was the mother of a—friend.”

  “Hackey Barnes,” Wing whispered.

  “She had a heart attack and died right on Clement Street, between the grocery and the cleaners. There was a funeral at her church. The church ladies made coffee and a bunch of cakes for us afterward, back at Mrs. Barnes’s house. I slept there that night, but that was the last time.”

  “She must have been a nice lady,” Wing said kindly.

  “I’m telling you, she made the best pumpkin chiffon pie in the world. I ate a whole one myself, once.”

  “This is no good,” Wi
ng said, shaking his head. “We have to do something to cheer ourselves up.”

  “You want to go somewhere? To the beach, maybe, or over to Ghirardelli Square?” No, no, I hadn’t hit it yet.

  “I’ve got a plan for us, but we have to wait until Saturday.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Bring that little friend, and I’ll show you.”

  “What little friend?”

  “Oh, you know, the pregnant one, who isn’t pregnant anymore. We’re going to a real Chinese street fair.”

  Although the street festival wasn’t for tourists and was more or less hidden in the back streets and alleys, you could tell immediately that there was something in the air of Chinatown that day.

  “Of course it feels special,” Wing explained. “It’s the Season of the Yellow Plum. In Old China this season was six weeks of mud and mildew. The people needed a festival to get through the dreary weeks. We need it, too.”

  He told us to look for everything: in the back of innocent-looking restaurants men would be playing pigow, which was Chinese blackjack, and thirteen-card poker. The alleys would be teeming with street hawkers and fortunetellers.

  “Can we have our fortunes told, please?” begged Pammy.

  “Oh, sure, but not by that one,” Wing muttered, gesturing toward a hungry-looking robed man nearby. “Someday I’ll take you to a fortune-teller whose father is from our city in China. Old Man knows him well. He’s helped Old Man in a lot of personal decisions.”

  I was amazed by the food sold everywhere: hundred-year eggs, pressed duck, smoked fish, shark-fin soup, bird’s-nest soup, pigeon eggs, preserved crab, and steaming rice wine served in individual thimble cups so hot that you had to hold your cup with a handkerchief.

  We passed children with their wares stretched out toward us. We would eat later, Wing said. Now we were going to take in some good old-fashioned Chinese theater. Inside the theater the spectators sat on the floor and watched the actors, who were already going strong on a bare wood stage. I thought the play was fascinating. I could pick out the heroes, with their fierce masks and swords, and the swooning damsels in distress. All the characters entered and exited with no apparent cues.