Buddha Baby (23 page)

Ms. Abilene spoke. She said, "Jilan, I'll deal with you later."

The girl scrambled up and ran away. There was a moment of silence, then Lindsey stammered, "Wha-what are you going to do?"

Ms. Abilene folded her arms over her chest and said, "Something I should've done a long time ago."

Reaching into her pants-suit pocket, Ms. Abilene produced a slim penknife and raised it dramatically in her fist, the blade gleaming in the sunlight. In one swift motion she slashed through the Chinese jumprope that bound Lindsey's legs. She then beckoned for her to follow. Lindsey dusted herself off, rubbed her sore calves, and followed Ms. Abilene across the now-empty schoolyard. The heat of the day rose up from the asphalt and added to her profuse sweating. She was certain that serious pain awaited her inside the cool walls of St. Maude's.

Reaching the building, they walked through the foyer and Lindsey glanced back pleadingly at the portrait of Mary. They headed down the stairway to the basement.

"I'm doomed," Lindsey thought.

Down they went, switching back and forth down the polished steps. They took the exact path that Lindsey had taken the day she went snooping for the Permanent Record. Now she feared she was going to become a permanent resident, buried in an unmarked crypt or beneath a headstone that read, "Here lies a cheeky, cheeky girl." Perhaps she would be shackled to a dungeon wall, only to be found hundreds of years from now by a future Indiana Jones.

At the end of a quiet hallway, Ms. Abilene stopped and turned to Lindsey.

"I know you were looking at the old class pictures."

Lindsey said nothing. Ms. Abilene used a passkey and opened a door.

"Goodbye, cruel world," Lindsey said to herself and closed her eyes.

Click
! She heard a light go on, and instead of a ravenous beast ready to devour her, she opened her eyes to find a room full of filing cabinets. Ms. Abilene walked to the far wall and rifled through one of the drawers. Lindsey waited patiently and considered that she might be receiving her walking papers. After about five minutes, Ms. Abilene exclaimed, "Aha!" and pulled out a manila folder. She held it out for Lindsey.

Hesitating for a moment, Lindsey took the envelope from Ms. Abilene and opened it. Reaching inside, she carefully pulled out about ten photos, all black and white, and all of the same girl.
The
girl. The girl from 1928 that looked exactly like Lindsey. Pictures of the girl sewing, playing with other girls, standing at a chalkboard and copying down lessons.

Lindsey raised her chin and looked at Ms. Abilene who, up until a second ago, she had considered her enemy.

Ms. Abilene smiled and said, "I've thought for a long time that you should have those. I'm not really supposed to, but… well, they're not doing anyone a bit of good down here."

Lindsey looked through the pictures again. Yep. Same eyebrows, same nose, same… arms.

Ms. Abilene slammed the file cabinet shut and Lindsey jumped. Sounding matter-of-fact yet chipper, Ms. Abilene added, "Seeing as how they're pictures of your grandmother, I figured they really belong to your family, not the school."

As they walked back up the steps, Lindsey seemed calm, but her mind was racing. Who knew that Lindsey and her grandmother had looked so much alike as teenagers? More urgently, though, she could not even begin to digest the insane knowledge that Yun Yun had been a student here. If St. Maude's had previously been a rescue mission, where had Yun Yun been rescued
from
?

At the top of the stairs, Ms. Abilene turned to Lindsey, then paused to flip her hair from her face, stopping for a millisecond to scratch the inside of her nostril. She said, "See, I'm not all bad."

Then she slowly smiled, turned, and clip-clopped down the hall.

Lindsey knew what she had to do. In a moment of absolute clarity, she resolved to get to Chinatown and find Yeh Yeh in his store. She would make him tell her everything.

She hopped on the Muni, then got off before the bus route diverted toward Union Square. On the cobblestones of Commercial Alley, she detected the aromas of a nearby bakery, and ventured a quick sniff only to experience, a second later, the pungent odor of rancid fish. She should have known better than to have inhaled so deeply while walking through Chinatown. But no matter. She was on a mission.

Zigzagging her way toward Jackson Street, she passed the black and turquoise tiles of the jewelry shop on Clay, then the orange and green ones of the souvenir place on Washington. She tried to remember if Yeh Yeh's storefront was marked with purple or yellow tiles.

As she walked, she remembered back to childhood when her family used to spend Saturdays in Chinatown. Her mom used to get her hair done on Stockton Street while her dad ran errands, buying Chinese beef jerky or fresh chow fun noodles. Meanwhile, Kevin and Lindsey were free to roam around, conveniently using Yeh Yeh's store as a home base for their tomfoolery.

Yeh Yeh's grocery store had been the first "American" grocery store in Chinatown that sold Chef Boyardee and Nabisco brands alongside fermented tofu and pickled bamboo shoots in jars. In the refrigerated section there was orange Fanta next to soy milk, and root beer alongside imported mango drinks from Hong Kong. Lindsey and Kevin ran up and down the cramped aisles, imitating maneuvers they'd seen in
Shaolin Mantis
, poking holes in packages of fruit pies and Zingers to render them unsellable so Yeh Yeh would let them eat them. On several occasions when their grandmother was in the store, she caught them smashing packages of Oreos and Fig Newtons and ejected them from the premises, driving them out with a litany of growling curses.

Kevin and Lindsey didn't care. There was plenty of mischief waiting for them between Powell and Kearny, Columbus and Bush. They made their rounds to various kid-friendly landmarks like the ice-cream shop, comic-book store, and the Sun Sing movie theater, where they gazed up at the photographs pinned outside under glass. The pictures showed stills from current and coming attractions; on the left side were scenes of warriors performing kung fu kicks and on the right were soft-focus pictures from the late-night nudie movies. After exhausting their possibilities for mischief on Grant Avenue, they walked down to the A-1 Cafe for greasy hamburgers wrapped in yellow-gold wax paper.

Sometimes they would head to the park at Portsmouth Square. At seven and nine years old respectively, Lindsey and Kevin went to watch the old Chinese men play chess and feed the pigeons. As an added bonus, occasionally they learned dirty words in Cantonese.

Over in the sandy area, they would scramble up and down the metal slides. Once Kevin found a butane lighter, and they took turns flicking it on and off. A group of other kids came over while Kevin was showing off, trying to get the flame to grow really big. After accidentally setting fire to one kid's shorts, they all laughed, even the kid whose rump was burning. Kevin pulled off the boy's shorts just in time, but in his haste he also yanked off the boy's
dai foo
, and they all played catch with the underpants as the bottomless boy chased them.

Lindsey chuckled at the memory as she kept walking toward Yeh Yeh's store. Still reminiscing about Portsmouth Square, she wondered if the old guy with the huge goiter was still alive. She hadn't seen him in years. She and Kevin used to spy on him, and marveled at the bulbous growth on his neck that was as wobbly as a water balloon, and resembled a papaya attached to the man's eggplant-shaped noggin. The cumbersome goiter hung alongside his throat like the slightly smaller head of an undeveloped Siamese twin. As Kevin and Lindsey watched him they whispered their speculations to each other, debating whether the obscene deformity looked more like a butternut squash or a Walla Walla sweet onion. They pondered its consistency, wondering if it was soft or hard, and imagined that the thing talked to the man at night.

Passing the dressmaking shops and import stores, Lindsey gazed at the bolts of red silk fabric and big gaudy vases. She remembered how she and her brother used to push past adults' pantlegs and argued about who was the best fighter in the kung fu movies—Ti Lung, Wang Yu, or Fu Sheng. Getting closer to the grocery store, she stopped and peered into the comic-book shop where she and Kevin used to peruse the Ul-traman books. She could see the same posters still pinned to the walls, now tattered, depicting Mothra, Rodan, and Johnny Sako's Amazing Robot.

Moving on, she dipped below Grant Avenue at Jackson Street, and finally spotted the purple tiles of her grandpa's store.

A bell tinkled as she pushed open the door, but she didn't see anyone. She recognized the low freezer with the Coca-Cola logo, and took in the combined smells of dried cuttlefish, rat poison, and candy. She hoped that Yeh Yeh was at the store today, and she peered down the cramped aisles for any sign of his greengrocer's smock.

Glad to be out of the sun, she loitered by the cash register and cooled her hand against the heavy jars on the counter. Through the glass she could see wax wrappers with Chinese writing, and noted that each container was filled with a different kind of
mui
. The crinkly white paper with the twisted ends suggested chocolate bonbons, but inside the wrappers were salted plums and other varieties of preserved fruit.
Mui
could be either wet or dry, sweet or salty, slimy or shriveled. She had seen old men gnaw on them with satisfaction until their tongues bled, but she found the flavors off-putting: tangy, syrupy, and encrusted with salt. The pits of the fruit were at once stringy, meaty, and slippery, and she wondered how the old Chinese ladies could work pieces of
mui
in their jowls for hours.

Just then, Lindsey heard someone singing "Superfreak."

Uncle Elmore came dancing down the aisle. He walked over and grabbed Lindsey's hand, then spun her around and bent her backward in a dip so low her hair touched the floor, which grossed her out. As he hoisted her back up, she gagged in a cloud of Brut by Faberge.

"Watching the store today?" Lindsey asked.

Uncle Elmore didn't seem to be listening. He placed his hand around Lindsey's waist and danced a few more steps, twirling her around a revolving rack of wasabi crackers and dried squid snacks.

Uncle Elmore was like a Chinese Tony Manero from
Saturday Night Fever
who worked in a Chinese grocery instead of a hardware store. She could just picture him strutting down Jackson Street carrying a bucket of tofu to the rhythm of "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees.

"I'm just here for a minute while Dad's out," he said, letting her go. He whipped a banana comb out of his back pocket and quickly spruced up his feathered hairdo. After checking out his reflection in the mirrored I-Ching octagon at the front door, he went to the cash register and hit a few buttons until the till popped open. Pocketing three twenties, he said, "Hey, you don't mind staying up here for a minute, do ya? Dad'll be right up. I gotsa go." He slapped his thigh twice and made a pistol with his thumb and forefinger, shooting at Lindsey as he backed out of the store like he was Leather Tuscadero from
Happy Days
.