This Old Man Read online

  Pammy asked, “Is this Act One, or Act Two, or what?”

  “No acts,” Wing replied. “The players make up the story as they go along.”

  “Why do they use those false, high-pitched voices?” I asked. “It’s hard to take them seriously.”

  “It’s the style, like bursting into song and dance is the style in American musical comedy.”

  “I don’t understand one single word they’re saying,” Pammy sighed.

  “Well, it’s something about the Emperor’s son and the Empress’s handmaiden. Or maybe it’s the Emperor’s friend and his first concubine. It seems to be something like the King Arthur story we read in English last year. Or maybe I’m missing the point.” Wing stroked his chin in confusion. “The language is very difficult.”

  “You’ll never be a Chinese scholar,” I said, chuckling. I noticed a man off to the side of the stage, tossing pillows around. “What’s he doing?”

  “All I know is that he’s some kind of prop man. See, he throws those pillows on the floor for the actors to sit on. You can tell which characters are the most important by how many pillows they’re given to sit on. You see which one is the Emperor?”

  “The one who’s about to fall off?” Pammy guessed.

  “Be quiet for a minute. I want to figure out what’s going on.” We were the only ones who stopped talking. The crowd on the floor—you could tell which ones were the spectators, they had no pillows—seemed to be paying no attention to the actors. Waiters passed among us selling delicacies and steaming tea. All around us people were in animated conversation, laughing out loud and pointing to other people in the room. Wing translated one conversation nearby. It was a business transaction involving a piece of property on Washington Street.

  Two old men sat in a corner playing Chinese chess and arguing over each move. Despite all this distraction, the audience would clap or sigh or gasp at appropriate times in the play. They seemed perfectly capable of concentrating on four things at once. Besides that, the actors seemed to be enjoying themselves enormously.

  “This is really boring,” Pammy said. “Can we go?”

  I pulled her back down. “At least wait until it’s over. I don’t want to be rude to the players. They’re trying so hard to entertain us.”

  “I don’t think you want to wait until it’s over,” Wing said, laughing. “It could go on for two or three days.”

  “I’m certainly glad you warned us,” I hissed. “Let’s go.” After the dark, bustling theater, it seemed very bright and quiet outside. Wing led us through some alleys I’d never been in, with clotheslines strung across them from window to window. Gaily colored shirts hung on one line, some by the shoulder, some by the hem, and there were shirts to fit everyone, infant to grandfather. I tried to figure out which of the two windows would claim them, or if the women in the two apartments had a time-sharing plan for their clothesline, or if they each used half of the line each day. And why were there only shirts?

  Wing said I could spend more time wondering about totally insignificant things than anyone he had ever known. I just wanted to know what life was like in Chinatown.

  Closing off the end of the alley was a group of F.O.B.’s. I thought I spotted Chen in the group. Wing grabbed us each by the arm and spun us around. We ran as fast as we could to the opposite end of the alley, hearing their laughter echo down the narrow tunnel after us.

  “I have something to take care of,” Wing remarked. “Come.” We circled a small, round brick oven that looked like a barbecue pit in a park, while Wing spoke in staccato Chinese to an old man stoking the fire. The man, if possible, spoke even faster than Wing did. They seemed to be bargaining. Wing would offer something, pull back, wait for the counteroffer. Finally they must have come to terms, for Wing took a small ebony box from his jacket pocket and gave it to the man. We couldn’t see what the old man was doing behind the brick oven, but I guessed he was filling the black box with something.

  “What’s he doing?” Pammy whispered to me.

  “I’m not sure. Let’s see what Wing says.” We watched him hand the man some money. There was no change. Wing seemed very satisfied and turned back to us.

  “Okay, we’re dying of curiosity. What’s in the little box?” I asked.

  “Ashes.”

  “You paid money for ashes?” asked Pammy. “Cash money?”

  “These are special ashes,” Wing explained with pride.

  “Don’t tell me. Is that somebody you know in the box?”

  “Oh, no. These are letters.”

  “He says they’re letters.”

  “Letters,” Pammy repeated.

  “But not just letters like you’d write to the telephone company. That old man back there, he is the last of a long line of men who’ve devoted their lives to preserving Chinese characters.”

  Pammy said, “I don’t believe him, do you?”

  “No, listen.” Wing spoke with great excitement. “Before printing presses the Chinese people believed that all characters, all written words, were sacred.”

  “Even four-letter words?” asked Pammy.

  “All words. Long ago these men formed a sort of guild. Freely translated, it’s the Association for the Preservation of Chinese Characters.”

  “Chen’s a Chinese character I wouldn’t want to preserve,” I muttered.

  “Words!” Wing said in exasperation. “The men in this guild would gather old personal letters and posters and scraps of handwritten books and pamphlets, all the written things that would nowadays end up as garbage.”

  “On the end of a stick,” I said.

  “Only, these men would immortalize even the most modest written word by turning it to ash.”

  “It beats me how you can immortalize something by burning it up,” said Pammy.

  “Well, you see, the immortal spirits of the characters are freed when the letters are burned.”

  “You believe the characters have—spirits?” I asked in astonishment.

  “Oh, Greta, of course I don’t!”

  “Why did you give that old man money for a box of burnt-up ashes, then?” Pammy asked.

  “It’s just an ancient custom.” Wing was hedging. “The poor old man has to earn a living, too.”

  I remarked that if Wing had been bargaining so earnestly with the old ash man, there had to be some significance to it.

  “Well …”

  “Just what are you planning to do with the ashes, Wing?” I asked.

  “I’m not too sure.”

  “I think he’s hiding something, don’t you, Pammy? What should we do to make him talk?”

  “Tickle him?” she suggested.

  “Tie him to the cable-car tracks?”

  “Make him sit in the play until it ends next Tuesday?”

  “I’d tell you girls, but you’d laugh.”

  “I won’t laugh,” Pammy said earnestly.

  “I’ll laugh!”

  “Go ahead, Greta, laugh. I’ll tell you anyway. I’m going to take the ashes to the hospital. I’m going to scatter them under Old Man’s bed.”

  “Why? That’ll only make a mess,” Pammy cried, wrinkling up her nose.

  “Because they will … Oh, what the heck. The ashes will chase away the evil spirits that are making Old Man sick. With the evil spirits gone, Old Man’s soul can return to him, and he’ll be well and strong again.”

  Oh, I wanted to believe that, just like I wanted to believe that my mother would get married and live happily ever after. “Do you believe that, Wing?”

  Wing replied, with a sheepish grin, “Can it hurt?”

  19

  After the season of the yellow plum, Pammy and I felt like honorary Chinese, at least. I convinced Elizabeth to scrap the usual Saturday night hot dogs and let us make egg foo yong and snow peas for dinner. I had a burning desire for authenticity, so I was embarrassed to serve our humble masterpiece on the mismatched plates that had come from half a dozen different kitchens. I was incensed when Jo
drowned her foo yong in barbecue sauce, and when Sylvia drank skim milk instead of our pale hot tea.

  “I’m sorry, Greta, I really am, but it’s just too hot for tea.” It was a warm, humid night, but I’d read somewhere that hot drinks were the best thing to drink on nights like this. We had a small fan in the corner, behind Elizabeth’s chair. Our paper placemats fluttered in the welcome breeze. I was extra hot after slaving away in the kitchen, and now I waited eagerly in the gentle wind for everyone’s raves.

  Carmella had a word or two to say. “Whatzis, chicken fry steak?”

  “It’s something Chinese,” Pammy said.

  I added, “It’s called egg foo yong.”

  “Egg foo who?”

  “Yong?” Pammy timidly said.

  “It looks just like barf. Nobody’s gonna eat stuff that looks like that.” She shoved her plate aside.

  I bit the inside of my cheek and looked helplessly toward Elizabeth, whose eyes were fixed on her plate as she kept up her steady rhythm of fork-to-mouth. Elizabeth and I had discussed Carmella during the nights I had been grounded. The word was, we were to go easy on her. She was having trouble adjusting.

  I’d said, “Then how come you sent Darlene away? She was a lot better off than this lunatic.”

  “There was someplace for Darlene to go. There’s no place for Carmella.”

  “We’ve tried, but nobody can get along with her. She stays by herself in that pigpen she lives in. And that brings up another point. How come she doesn’t have to keep her room clean like the rest of us do?”

  “It’s her honeymoon period,” Elizabeth had said. “We’re relaxing the rules on her, until she adjusts. Those are the instructions I got from the higher-ups. What can I say?”

  “And another thing. Does she talk to anybody? Never, except to tell us how stupid or ugly we are. You ought to hear the things she says about you.”

  Elizabeth said, “It makes no difference what she says about me. We must all devote ourselves to making Carmella feel welcome.”

  “She’s just never going to fit in here,” I groaned.

  “You didn’t think you would either, remember?”

  I remembered.

  “Oh, Greta, think how she must feel. She’s in big trouble over this knife business, she’s suspended from school, she has a rotten family to go back to, and here she’s living in a strange home. It’s going to take her some time.”

  I thought of Old Man in that hospital, feeling angry and alone among strangers who didn’t understand him. For Old Man, I promised to give Carmella another chance.

  This dinner, however, was too much, with Carmella telling me that my beautiful Chinese creation looked like somebody’s throw-up.

  She took a bite. Was it to humor me? No, she did it to tell me that although it looked like barf, the taste was something else.

  “Whatchu got here? It taste like shit.”

  “Please, Carmella,” Elizabeth said quietly.

  “Are you gonna eat this stuff, Liz?”

  Jo put down her fork and watched the scene unfolding before her. I think she was intrigued with someone who could easily out-mouth her.

  “’Cause if you’re gonna eat this stuff, you’re no better than it is, get it?”

  “Personally, I think it’s dee-licious,” Sylvia said. “I only had a small piece, but it’s done to perfection.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Pammy said. Her elbows were propped up on the table, and she dropped her face into her hands. “We probably just should have had hot dogs.”

  “No!” I shouted. “We have hot dogs every single bloody Saturday night.”

  Carmella picked up her plate and spun it on her fingers the way Dr. J. spins a basketball. “You know what I think? I think the shit’s gonna hit the fan in a minute.”

  “Put the plate down immediately,” Elizabeth said.

  The plate flew across the room like a Frisbee, so fast that everything stayed on it until it hit the fan and shattered. Flying porcelain was bad enough. The worst part was the egg foo yong running through the blades of the fan as if it were in a blender, splattering all over the walls and Elizabeth’s hair.

  That did it. I had a huge burst of strength, and I grabbed Carmella by the neck and wrestled her, along with her chair, to the floor. I must have taken her by surprise, since she was so much bigger and quicker than I. There were voices in the distant background, calling my name. Mostly I heard only the rush of blood in my head, and the words screaming in there: kill her, kill her, kill her.

  I think I could have. Thank God Elizabeth pulled me off of her. Jo and Sylvia each grabbed an arm and held me firmly until the blood stopped pumping through me at killer velocity. They led me out of the room. The last thing I noticed, besides the horrible mess in Elizabeth’s hair, was Pammy kneeling on the floor picking up glass fragments and crying.

  That night Sylvia was told to take a sleeping bag to Pammy and Jo’s room, and Carmella and I were each locked in.

  Naturally, Mr. Saxe had the news bulletin before I even got to him three days later.

  “I hear you went off the deep end,” he said. “Tell me about it.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. I was just furious, that’s all.”

  “How did you feel afterward?”

  “I felt stupid and childish.” This wasn’t what he was looking for. “I was embarrassed.”

  “What else?”

  “I was shocked.”

  “What shocked you?”

  “I didn’t think I could … I never thought of myself as violent.”

  “Only violent?”

  “As a killer. Is that what you want to hear?” I screamed. I hoped the people in the waiting room could hear.

  “Is that what you feel like, a killer?” Mr. Saxe asked.

  I couldn’t answer. In the Chinese play you could always tell the good guys from the bad guys by the masks they wore. That seemed very efficient, only now I wasn’t sure which mask I was supposed to be wearing.

  “Carmella certainly provoked you to fury,” Mr. Saxe prodded.

  I was back in control. “Didn’t she, though?”

  “Do you think no one else would have responded the way you did?”

  “Hmmm, what would Marla Janssen have done?”

  “Any theories?”

  “My mother probably would have agreed with Carmella and thrown the stuff down the sink and brought her some hot dogs.”

  “Which response seems healthier to you, yours or your mother’s?”

  “I thought it was your job to decide things like that. Isn’t that what they pay you for?”

  “They couldn’t pay me enough to answer such a question,” Mr. Saxe joked. “Anyway, that’s your job, not mine. You don’t have to answer it now.”

  As soon as I walked into the house, I could smell that something was wrong. There was a note scribbled in Elizabeth’s writing, taped to the oak post at the foot of the stairs:

  Greta, I’m picking up Pammy to take her for her final checkup with the OB-GYN. Sylvia’s checked out to her parents overnight, and Jo’s job-hunting. BE GOOD.

  Love, E.

  That meant Carmella was probably here alone, upstairs. Her door was open; she wasn’t in the room. I didn’t sense her anywhere in the house, yet I still had that knotted feeling that something wasn’t right. There was a thickness in the air that left me edgy, the scent of a hungry animal ready to leap out at me when I took my next step, or the one after that.

  My door was closed. Maybe she was in my room. With my heart racing, I turned the knob silently, to catch her. What would she do to me if I caught her? What would I do? I’d have the advantage. I’d race down the stairs and out the front door and scream for help. I stepped back into the hall to see if I’d chained the front door. No, my escape route was clear.

  I pushed my door open, an inch, two inches. I didn’t hear anything, but maybe she was hiding behind the door, waiting to spring. I clenched my fists and danced on the balls of my feet like a boxer prime
d for Round One.

  Carmella was not in the room, but she’d been there.

  Once I’d seen pictures of the 1906 earthquake and fire, when San Francisco was reduced to rubble. That’s how my room looked to me that day. The drapes had been yanked off their rods, all the drawers and shelves had been emptied onto the floor. Socks, underwear, paper clips, broken bottles, T-shirts, pencils, tennis shoes, candles, combs, and letters were scattered everywhere. The stuffed skunk Hackey’s mother had given me: beheaded. The cotton stuffing had burst from his belly and trailed out of his neck like flesh and blood from a fresh corpse.

  She’d ripped pages out of my books and flung them around the room. The note cards for my term paper had been shredded and strewn about, and lay like snowflakes among the clumps of kapok filling from my pillow. My one pair of pantyhose she’d thumbnailed into ugly gashes, and now it hung from the lampshade, obscenely stretched, as though it had just come off an enormous body.

  I began to notice subtler things. She’d emptied a can of baby powder in my sheets, along with a bottle of red nail polish. Sylvia’s bed was neat and perfect, as though Carmella had tucked in all the corners just to show me that this earthquake was destined only for my patch of earth.

  She didn’t know the goldfish wasn’t mine. She’d plucked all the bristles from my hairbrush and dropped them into the fishbowl. The fish lay dead and drying on the floor.

  On every smooth surface—my desk, my bedside table, my closet door—she carved GRETA.

  I thought I would never be able to set the room right again, that I would have to live in this vicious destruction forever—until Hackey came for me. I, who had learned at Anza House to love order, was brought inevitably back to the chaos I’d sprung from and deserved.

  I gagged and ran to the toilet with my hand clamped over my mouth. Where was Elizabeth? Where was my mother to hold my head?

  Afterward I opened the bathroom window and slid to the floor, sick and exhausted. Only then did I see what was in the bathtub. There was the cigar box I’d kept everything in, gaping open, and scattered around it were the pictures of my mother, of Hackey’s mother, of the old Chevy I liked so well, and of Hackey and his customers, and his address book. Carmella had poured something over them—perfume or alcohol or polish remover. I could only guess that she’d thrown a match into the tub to burn the pictures, then gotten scared by the fire. I found two bath towels, holey and black with soot, which she must have used to put out the fire.