Face (23 page)

(Lao Li, his delight in the story all over his face, sneaks a peek at me to see if I am following. I grin like an idiot child.)

“But young trader, too, must leave. His mistress feel such sorrow, she give him that pearl-sewn shirt!” The masks part and
shift again.

“Far away, two men cross path, drink wine, and talk. The night grow late. A warm wind blows, and one man loosen his coat.”
Two white masks, head-to-head, the cloth suspended between them. “Husband say nothing, but he know now she has betrayed their
love. He sells our lady as concubine to magistrate in faraway province.” A large mask painted in blue and green twitches on
the tip of Li’s thumb. The wife’s song arches to a sharp scream, then silence as her mask folds beneath a new lord.

“When silver trader return in one year, he learn this news of his beloved. He falls ill. Robbers steal his silver. This trader
will die here,
but husband send for doctor, lend this man money if he will leave town, never return. Someday die far away.”

With a final grieving moan, the white masks part and lower.

I clapped for the singer and his puppets, for the compliment Li had paid me by not leaving out the sexy part. It was a sad
and funny story, a lot like Lao Li. Old and young at the same time. Real and unreal.

But Li paid no attention. He sank back in his chair, eyes gone hollow. His hands, so alive just moments before, lay motionless
among the painted masks.

They looked cold, those hands. I wanted to reach out and warm them with mine. I wanted to say something bright and cheery,
to bring back his smile.

“Thank you for the story, Lao Li,” I whispered. “I’m sorry it ended sadly.”

I slid from my chair without making a sound.

“Wait.” He pushed himself up, opened the cabinet beside his desk. Behind the inlaid door were stacked some twenty drawers.
Li stood for a moment, surveying, reminding me of my father the one time I’d gone along to visit our safe-deposit box. Dad
had disappointed me by unveiling not pirate’s gold or ruby slippers, but useless, unintelligible documents.

Li opened a long middle drawer and pulled out a parcel of pale green silk tied with a black cord. His hands shook as he began
to unwrap it, and I could practically see the tiny pearls glistening, bringing the story to life.

Unfortunately what emerged was even more ordinary than documents. The closest thing to pearls were the seven bone buttons
that ran from the neck to the crotch. Instead of snowy silk, the fabric was a scratchy blue wool, the label Sears, Roebuck
and Co.

“My pearl-sewn shirt.”

As quickly as it had fallen over him, Lao Li’s sadness gave way to annoyance.

“You see only underwear!” He picked up the garment and shook it
for me to see that, yes, it really was a union suit. “That is no underwear. That gift of love.”

But I couldn’t help it. The thought of some Chinese lady giving Li Tsung Po Sears underwear as a token of love seemed so ridiculous
I burst out laughing.

Lao Li looked from the suit to me and, shaking his head, packed it up again.

“Wool is great luxury in China. Everyone always cold in winter. Also, that is so—” Failing to locate the appropriate word,
he crossed his arms in front of his chest.

I tried to help him. “Personal? Intimate?”

He nodded. “Intimate.”

“So that’s why your wife gave it to you? Because it was so intimate?”

“My wife.” He grimaced. “Not my wife.”

“But you said it was like the pearl-sewn shirt.”

“Not my wife, my—” He paused, apparently reluctant to use the term “lover.”

“Girlfriend?”

He looked at me very seriously for a moment, and then a big grin spread across his face. “My girlfriend!” He chortled, clapped
his hands at the thought. He smoothed the silken wrapper.

“Do you still wear it?”

“Wear it? No.” He gave me a superior smile. “I know that story of pearl-sewn shirt. I know what happen if I wear that gift.”

“And it worked? Her husband didn’t catch you?”

“No. Not husband.”

“So what happened to her?”

His face became grave again.

“It was war. That is truth you must understand. That is lesson of pearl-sewn shirt. You know. When men fight, love die.”

He turned away from me to arrange the masks in their box. When he’d finished, he said, “You know love?”

“Sure.” I slid my fingers across the inlaid threads of a cloisonné vase. “I know love. I guess.”

“No! You do not know love! You know
like.”
He pushed the box toward me. “You. You are somebody’s girlfriend?”

I could feel the heat spread across my face. “I’m only in third grade.”

“In Old China third grade is old enough to marry.”

The blush crept past my ears and down the back of my neck.

“Okay,” he said, sparing me the need to say more. “I find boy for you. You know?”

Tommy and I met two days after the seniors’ center to tour the Lower East Side. Chinatown Annex, he called it, because this
territory belonged primarily to European immigrants until the seventies, when Chinese newcomers from mainland China, Vietnam,
and Hong Kong quietly took it over. Not for tourists, this is where most of the sweatshops are located. Gambling dens. Slum
housing stuck between brand-new high-rises built and sold at exorbitant profits by rich Taiwanese.

I tried to pay attention to Tommy’s civics lesson, to behave like the rational, capable, equal partner we were both pretending
that I was. But my mind kept trapping itself in scorekeeping. This was my third time back. The first was a disaster in some
ways, but in all likelihood I had spooked myself, which might not have been so bad, either, since it forced my hand to try
again. The second visit had gone better than I would have dared imagine. The worst I’d felt was embarrassed and inept, and
though I was remembering things about Li I must have buried for years, none was unpleasant or frightening. I’d gotten through
last night without dreams of any kind—preliminary evidence, surely, that my plan was working. And today, except for these
mental ramblings, it really did seem like a job. An assignment.

If it was this simple, of course, then I was a perfect fool for not returning years ago. The fool part I could easily buy,
but the simplicity still troubled me. If it was so simple, why the same devastating nightmare for over a decade? I couldn’t
shake the notion that something bad had happened to me or my family, something somehow connected to Chinatown. Maybe coming
back wasn’t the cure, but only a first step.

“Ni hao ma!”
A middle-aged man with a shopping cart full of stuffed pink and blue dogs smiled at Tommy, who politely returned the greeting.
When we’d moved on he said, “Just think. A million Chinese have come here since you moved away, Maibelle.”

“I always knew I wasn’t welcome, but I had no idea it was that bad.”

He kicked a crushed paper cup out of his path. “Problem with round-eyes is they think the universe revolves around them. It
would never occur to Chinese to say such a thing. Even joking.”

He had the same flattened tone of voice as when he’d asked about Henry.

I looked straight ahead to a new brick apartment building on the corner. All straight angles up and down. No crisscross of
fire escapes, no tangle of signs or lights, just ladders of faceless regimented windows. If you stared too long at a structure
like that, it could break your heart.

“That building looks like a giant’s thumb… What makes you think I was joking?”

He touched the fabric of my shirt. “It’s not criticism but fact. Take a look.”

Lower, he meant. Street level. He didn’t point or single anyone out. He didn’t need to. We were surrounded by people dressed
in loose-fitting garments, drab prints, plain shoes, unassuming hairstyles. The women wore knee-high nylons turned down like
socks. The men’s collars lay flat and splayed. No ties. No jackets. Men or women, when they caught me looking, they ducked
and rushed headlong into the warm dirty breeze.

“Only way they’d look you in the eye is if they thought they were invisible.”

“I know just how they feel.”

We walked on without speaking, but I sensed him mentally weighing my words and regretted this slip of self-pity.

“When you lived here, Maibelle, only the old people were Chinese-born. Rest of us, if we were honest, were as American as
you. Now hardly any ABCs live here anymore, and nobody feels like they belong.”

“You do.”

“Do I?” He watched two young boys across the street crouching over bamboo cages.

“You were born here.”

“So were you.”

“But you—” I hunched my shoulders against the crickets’ chilling screech.

“A person’s geography is both outward and inward.
Zhu xin.
Bamboo heart. Traitor’s heart, that’s what my father called the ABCs who break tradition and cause their families to lose
face.”

“He didn’t call you that!”

“Chinese lose face for so many reasons. I told my parents I wouldn’t take over the store, I wanted a different life.”

“You said they wanted you to make something of your life.”

“But I wanted a
different
life.”

“You rebelled. That’s good. I’m still trying to figure out how to do that.”

“I’m still trying to figure out how to undo it.” He frowned. “Lunch?”

Noodle shops and tea rooms huddled like expectant children all along these converted streets, but instead Tommy stopped at
a sidewalk vegetable vendor. He scrutinized the brightly colored flats, exchanged a few words with the grocer, and began to
pluck Chinese long beans, green onions, taro root. Pretty soon, his arms were full.

“My mother had no daughters,” he explained. “So I cook.”

I thought of our meal together uptown, his refusal to sit with his back to the door, but banished the prickle of anxiety that
followed. He nodded vigorously at something the grocer was saying. We were partners. I should trust him.

Tommy’s building stood farther down toward the water, on Pearl Street. It had a small antiseptic lobby and empty white hallways.
The flooring throughout, including the elevator, was a pink and tan vinyl flecked with chunks of silver and gold that looked
like the crushed
remnants of a little girl’s birthday party. We rode up nine stories without encountering another person.

“Where is everybody?”

He grinned. “Maybe your giant ate them for lunch.”

“Good. Then he won’t be hungry for us.”

“That’s the Chinese in you, you know.”

“What is?”

He turned the key and pushed open his door. “Man-eating giants.”

“No. It’s Li.” I reconsidered. “At least partly it is.”

“That’s what I mean.”

The apartment was one room, plain and small and filled with light from a sliding glass door that opened onto a balcony overlooking
the East River. It was a magnetic view encompassing both the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, all the way up to Queens. Scudding
clouds. Toy boats. The chop of the waves like pinpricks against the water’s glossy darkness. But all that separated the concrete
platform from the plunge beyond was a
few
metal bars and a two-inch railing.

I turned back to the room. There was no bed, just a couch that I assumed folded out and a couple of overstuffed armchairs.
A kitchenette with a counter and stools. In the center of the room, covering the party leavings, was a reddish-brown Tibetan
prayer rug. I began to relax. Tommy’s life and passion, judging by the physical evidence, were his work.

A sawhorse table held a typewriter and stacks of books and papers, two tall file cabinets with more folders piled on top.
The walls were solid with old photographs, prints, and drawings. Grinning men in bowler hats held up deer antlers. Women hid
behind wedding veils. A smoke-filled opium parlor and a steaming laundry looked equally like scenes from Dante’s
Inferno.
I thought of Tommy’s comment about personal geography extending outward and inward. Though these people were strangers, I’d
lived on their street, gone to school with their great-grandchildren, bought candy and toys at the same shops they’d built
generations earlier. Somewhere back in Old China, our ancestors had
been neighbors. These pictures, unlike my father’s, made no demands. Instead they seemed like an offering.

I pointed. “These remind me of Li.”

Tommy looked over from the kitchenette, where he was unpacking the groceries. “How so?”

“They make me feel like a kindred spirit.”

“The way he did?”

I nodded.

“He once asked me, if you forget where you come from, how can you know where you’re going?”

“But you wouldn’t take over the store.”

“My father thought that’s where I came from. It wasn’t what Li meant.”

I came over to the kitchenette. “How did you get to be friends with Lao Li?”

“His grandparents and some of my great-grandparents came from the same village, so my father and he were in the same fong.
Dad used to say he was sharing me because Li had no sons of his own. That meant I could run errands for both of them. But
I liked Uncle Li, he told good stories.”