Buddha Baby (31 page)

Standing on the driveway of her grandparents' house, Lindsey held an invitation to the St. Maude's jubilee addressed to her grandmother but couldn't stop staring at the taxidermied jackrabbit with deer antlers affixed to its head.

"What the hell is that?" she said aloud, giving the inanimate monstrosity a wide berth, but no one was around to answer. She called out a hello through the open garage door. A moment passed before she heard her dad's voice. He yelled, "Come help me drag out some more stuff for the donation pick-up!"

She had come by just to drop the invitation into the mail slot and planned a quick departure, but now she wandered inside the dark garage and found her dad immersed in a huge cleaning project.

"It's about time we clean out all this old junk," he said. "There's fifty years of stuff here, and your Auntie Geraldine and Uncle Elmore can't clean worth a dang. Give me a hand."

She slipped the invitation into her coat pocket, and helped him drag out a laundry basket filled with moldy shoes. After heaving a few more bags of old clothes to the sidewalk, she helped him move a few boxes of miscellaneous housewares.

Stopping to catch her breath, Lindsey figured this might be a good time to ask her dad what he knew about Yun Yun. She didn't want to bust right out and ask him about her twin sister, Opal, so instead, she thought of something more innocuous. She said, "Dad, when you decided to send us to St. Maude's, did it have anything to do with Yun Yun?"

Her father kicked a few more dusty boxes out to the driveway and said, "No, why would it?"

Lindsey sat down on a broken garden table. "Well, I found out that… that Yun Yun went there a long time ago."

"Oh, yeah?"

Her dad, stacking chairs, seemed nonplussed by this bit of news. Lindsey wondered whether he already knew and was feigning disinterest, or simply didn't care.

"Yeah," she said. "In fact, St. Maude's is having this big reunion and I'm supposed to give Yun Yun this invitation."

Her dad wiped his brow with his sleeve. He said, "Well, she's upstairs."

Before she could ask him anything else, her dad disappeared into the depths of the garage. Lindsey dusted herself off and thought about following him inside to question him further, but instead, she hesitantly headed up the back stairs. She thought about sliding the invitation under the bedroom door, but knew that that would have been chickenshit of her. She was going to give the invitation to Yun Yun herself. The woman was just her grandmother, for heaven's sake, not some ogre. Why was it so hard just to talk? She was determined to thwart the insidious silence that had settled around her family like Sunset District fog.

Having no idea what she was going to say to her grandmother, she ascended the steps. For a half-second she considered turning around, leaving, and just sending the invitation through the mail. She told herself to get a grip.

Screwing up her courage, she emerged from the stairwell, stepped across the hallway, and knocked on her grandmother's bedroom door.

Taking a breath, she listened for a reply.

"Eh?"

Lindsey pushed open the door.

"Hello Tinky Winky, hello La-La…"

For some reason her grandmother was watching
Teletubbies
.

Lindsey said, "I'm helping my dad clean downstairs. And I brought you some mail."

Yun Yun sipped a cup of tea. After a moment she said, "Do you know the red one is Chinese?"

Confused, Lindsey glanced at the television and watched as the red Teletubby counted, "
Yut
,
yee, som .
. ."

Yun Yun was actually smiling. Lindsey had never seen her grandmother so amused. After watching her for a moment, Lindsey handed the invitation to her without saying anything.

Yun Yun sliced open the envelope with the pinky-nail she kept extra long for ear scratching. As her grandmother read the card, Lindsey stood in silence. For what seemed like a long while, neither of them said anything, just watched the television screen as Tinky Winky and Dipsy rubbed bellies and repeatedly exclaimed, "Eh-oh!"

As Lindsey awaited a response, she could hear Yeh Yeh shuffling around in the adjacent bedroom, presumably getting ready to head to Chinatown and open his store. She could see him through the open door, pulling on galoshes and a rain slicker. He didn't seem to notice her standing in Yun Yun's bedroom. After a minute, he made his way through the hallway and headed down the front stairs.

Lindsey turned toward Yun Yun and found her still captivated by the Chinese Teletubby. Lindsey cleared her throat and was about to back out of the room, but as she turned, her grandmother said,

"Yeh Yeh say you go and visit him down in Chinatown. Two, maybe three times?"

"Urn… something like that," Lindsey answered with trepidation.

Yun Yun stared at the television screen as she talked. "He say you been asking questions about me."

Lindsey waited to get yelled at, but her grandmother went silent again. Not knowing quite what to do, Lindsey made a motion toward the door.

"He say you been asking questions," Yun Yun repeated. She slowly nodded her head as if mulling over something in her mind, and then added two little words that packed a wollop.

"Is okay," she said.

Lindsey tried not to smile, but inside she felt a small triumph. Maybe Yun Yun didn't think she was such a scurvy dog after all. It occurred to Lindsey that even if her grandmother wanted to forget, maybe she didn't want to be forgotten.

And just then, Yun Yun lifted her hand and held up the invitation. Still looking at the television, she said, "You going to drive me?"

Stunned, Lindsey got a hold of herself. "Yes," she said. "Sure, I will."

Yun Yun turned up the volume and Lindsey took that as a signal for her to leave. Closing the bedroom door behind her and bounding down the front steps, she felt the strange optimism that came from finding an easy resolution to an anticipated difficulty. The brief exchange with her grandmother had been the most positive interaction they had had for as long as Lindsey could recall.

As she walked through the gate, she found Yeh Yeh and her dad arguing on the sidewalk.

"It's about time we throw out all these old things," her dad was saying.

"No, no, no. I need these," Yeh Yeh replied emphatically, gathering up a loose collection of his miniature knives, fondue forks, and other tiny tools. "Perfectly new screwdriver kit! How can throw away?"

"But you have ten sets. How about giving three to charity?"

Lindsey watched as Yeh Yeh scowled at her dad. "You… kids," he muttered disapprovingly.

Lindsey smiled to herself. It was the first time she had ever witnessed anyone calling her dad a kid, treating him like a foolish whippersnapper who was driving the older generation nuts. Up to this point, she'd thought she'd cornered the market on youthful disrespect in her family. It was funny to get a glimpse of her dad as a son.

"
Ai-ya
!" Yeh Yeh suddenly exclaimed, running up to the driveway.

"What, you crazy? Cannot throw out my jackalope! It once belong to Mayor Sutro!"

He snatched up the taxidermied rabbit by its antlers, and as he cradled the thing safely in his arms, he dusted off its muzzle with his sleeve.

Her dad sighed with exasperation, then went back inside the garage to place the screwdriver kits back in their rightful place.

Lindsey approached her grandpa.

"Yeh Yeh," she said, pointing to the treasure in his arms, "where did you get that?"

The old man got a faraway look in his eyes and said, "It was gift when I leave my employ at the big house, Mae's Menagerie. A big pink house filled with animals!"

Yeh Yeh's words jarred Lindsey's brain. She thought hard for a moment. A pink house filled with
animals
! She thought about the day she took Jilan home.
Mae's Menagerie
! Isn't that what Mrs. Clemens said her "establishment" had been called?

Just as Lindsey was about to open her mouth, Yeh Yeh looked up to the rising hill in the distance and beyond to the sky. Suddenly his eyes became wide. Before Lindsey could ask him anything, her grandfather suddenly thrust the jackalope into her arms. He said, "Fast! You put back. Here come my bus!"

Her dad wandered back out onto the driveway and together they watched with amazement as Yeh Yeh's spry, ninety-year-old legs pattered down the sidewalk to the corner just as the 66 Quintara came careening to a stop. Yeh Yeh climbed aboard, and the bus lurched out in front of a motorcycle that whizzed by in a blur of gleaming chrome. Lindsey's dad shook his head. He scoffed, "Crazy Chinese drivers!"

Lindsey approached the imposing pink mansion surrounded by blooming camellia trees. Set back behind a row of canary palms, the house, just south of Alamo Square, reminded her of a Victorian wedding cake with frosting sagging at its sides.

She had never taken a long look at the building, but now that she studied it, she was fascinated. While the other houses on the block had been updated to include modern patios and added garages for Subaru Foresters, this grand Painted Lady was an untouched relic. With its high widowVwalk tiara and crumbling stone lions carved into the pillars, it seemed like the kind of place that would have been destroyed years ago either by earthquake or corrupt developers, but somehow the old gal miraculously managed to survive the decades. A black cast-iron fence encircled the property with rusted fleur-de-lis and qua-trefoils. She was undeterred by the fence's fanglike appearance, and climbed the rotted, wooden stairs.

Looking up to the darkened windows, she imagined eyes staring down at her from somewhere behind the gossamer fabric. She ducked beneath the thick, overgrown curtain of wisteria and rang the bell. A few moments passed before she heard the sound of small feet running, and soon enough, the door flew open, revealing Jilan in a polka-dotted bathing suit and white cowboy boots.

"Where
have you
been?" the girl said.

"Urn, I dunno. Around. Is your… grandmother here?"

"Yeah, yeah. She said you'd come back sooner or later. We got a kiddie pool out back. Did you bring your suit?"

Jilan left the door open and walked back through the dark hallway as Lindsey followed her in. Passing the portrait of the wolfhound and the parlor filled with tufted furniture and trophy heads of animals, Lindsey made her way through the dimly lit house by feeling along the wainscoting. She turned a corner and came to a high-ceilinged room that opened onto a massive garden enclosed by topiary walls.

While the interior of the house resembled something out of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
, the backyard was strewn with plastic kiddie toys—which relieved Lindsey, assuring her that Jilan had a certain degree of normalcy to her childhood. She watched the girl fill up her inflatable swimming pool with a hose and again asked her the whereabouts of her grandmother. Jilan pointed to an oval-shaped stained glass window high up in a mansard gable. She said, "Try the Bengali room."

Lindsey didn't know where the Bengali Room was or why it was called that, but she traced her way back through the hall and started up a steep stairway, running her hand along the curving oak banister. She recognized the dizzying, harlequin-diamond wallpaper from her previous visit, and as she climbed farther up, she kept her eyes off the florid carpet pattern to avoid vertigo. Reaching the third floor, she made her way down a hall where an uncurtained window let in a wash of sunlight that illuminated the slow-motion, swirling patterns of dust, like a projector beam in the darkness of a movie theater.