Mambo in Chinatown (3 page)

“There are many things that are not legal but commonly accessible if you know the right people.” Lisa imitated a commercial. “Snake penis wine is sure to warm your kidneys and enrich your qi, not to mention what it’ll do for your sexual prowess.”

I tried to stifle my laughter. “You shouldn’t be talking about such things.”

“What? I have to listen to it all the time. Half the stuff here is for helping those old guys in bed. Look here.” Lisa pointed to a jar of dried seahorses. “Also a popular choice to improve your virility. Only four hundred dollars a pound. Ironic that it’s actually the male seahorse that gets pregnant, isn’t it? Doesn’t seem too manly to me. But who am I? I just keep my mouth shut around here. If I were to speak, I’d tell them to just go get some Viagra.”

I snorted and covered my smile. “Well, I still believe in this stuff when it’s used right. If Uncle sells it, I’m sure it helps. Don’t you remember, that milk-vetch root soup cleared up my skin?”

Lisa didn’t answer. I started walking around the jars, reading their labels now. It’d been a long time since I’d been here, since my hours at the restaurant usually didn’t allow me to visit. I passed a jar filled with dried, dark red centipedes, and one that appeared to hold a large baked cobra. “But I don’t know why they have so many poisonous animals in here.”

“Because ‘poison fights poison.’ That’s what they believe.” Lisa shrugged. “I personally think it’ll just give you a stomachache and some really weird dreams.”

“Lisa.” It was Uncle Henry, standing in the doorway. There was a young man next to him.

Her smile vanished immediately. “Yes, Uncle.”

“Uncle Henry,” I said, greeting him with the honor due an elder.

“Charlie, so glad you stopped by. Have you met Dennis? He has an undergraduate degree in pharmacology and has been opening my old eyes to modern science.” Uncle smiled at me and his face changed from stern to handsome. As always, he wore a dark green Mao suit, buttoned up to the neck.

Dennis shook my hands. He had a shock of black hair, full lips and bushy eyebrows. “I’m really learning a great deal here. It’s fascinating.”

I decided not to mention my new job. If it didn’t work out, I didn’t want Uncle’s pity and it wasn’t much anyway, not compared with what someone like Dennis could do. I’d always wished I could be better than I was for Uncle. In high school, the only respect I ever got from the other kids was for being Uncle’s niece.

Uncle Henry had a softer version of Pa’s features. I’d heard matrons whispering, “What a fine figure of a man Doctor Wong is,” even though most of his hair was gray by now. He was a traditionalist and refused to consume any sort of non-Chinese food. If he hadn’t had rice, then he hadn’t eaten. He and Aunt Monica had never been on a vacation away from their house. He didn’t see the point of wasting money, he said, although he would like to return to his home, China, some day. I remembered that when I was a child, he’d often paid special attention to me. He was the one who would sit at our plastic table in our tiny apartment and try to explain fractions to me. When Aunt Monica got impatient with me for not catching on faster, he would soothe her by saying, “Charlie is trying.” But that had changed as I’d grown older.

“We need an extra pair of hands for a moment, Lisa,” Uncle said. When Lisa followed them down the hallway, I trailed after her.

He opened the door of the examination room to allow Lisa to enter and I saw a woman lying on her stomach, acupuncture needles protruding from the smooth curve of her naked spine. The smell of mugwort drifted out to me. Uncle stepped in behind Lisa and Dennis, then turned to me with a smile. “Would you please watch the front office for me for a moment, Charlie?” With a little nod, he closed the door in my face.

It was clear he remembered as well as I did the day I’d been fired from his office. When I was around twelve, before Ma had died, they had tried to have me help in his office just as Lisa was doing now. “I would be happy to teach Charlie,” Uncle Henry had told my parents.

I remembered Aunt Monica standing over me with her hands on her thick hips. “How could you have dropped the vat of rat fetuses all over the waiting area? Do you know how much that’s worth? And we’ll never get the oil stains out of the carpet.”

After that, I’d been banned from working in the office. I felt guilty that Lisa had been stuck with the job simply because I’d been no good at it. But at least she wasn’t a dishwasher. I would do anything to keep her out of the restaurant life.

I’d been sitting behind the desk in the office a few moments when Aunt Monica and the Vision walked in, trailed by Todd, the Vision’s assistant.

I stood and greeted them. “Aunt Monica, Mrs. Purity, Todd,” I said. Behind her back, everyone called Mrs. Purity by her true title, the Vision of the Left Eye, but none of us dared do it to her face. Like most children in Chinatown, I’d been taught to be afraid of her. She was considered the most powerful witch in the area, and people believed witches bound the souls of young children to themselves to serve them. Witches needed souls who would do their bidding to travel in between ours and the spirit world. They were even suspected of murdering children to gain their souls. As kids, we’d been forbidden to be alone with her.

The Vision was small, her back more crooked than I remembered, dressed in too-short cotton pants and a flowered shirt, looking just like the hundreds of old ladies in Chinatown. She carried a red plastic handbag. Her face was shaped like an iron with a small
pointed forehead and blunted at the chin, the brown skin unwrinkled and unflinching, and set deep in one socket was that wandering eye, roaming loose in the blankness of her face, staring where it would.

Aunt Monica gave me a controlled nod. Her lips were screwed tight, her eyes cold under reddened, hooded lids. Her hair was white and had been for years because Uncle Henry didn’t want her to color it. He said the dyes caused cancer. It was well known that they’d been desperate to have children, especially a son, but they had not been successful. I remembered from my childhood that their house had been filled with fertility Buddhas and ancient drawings of plump, healthy boys. They believed that this would help bring a male child into their life. Aunt Monica had followed a diet of coconut and eggs, so the baby would have smooth white skin, and had stopped watching animal shows on television for fear that the baby would emerge looking like an ape. But no child came at all.

I’d always suspected that Uncle’s own desire for a boy was the reason my Chinese name, Cha Lan, meaning “beautiful orchid,” had been turned into Charlie in English. Everyone knew it was easier to be accepted with an American name, so after choosing a Chinese name for a child, many parents would ask English-speaking friends and family for suggestions for an American equivalent. I’d been the one who had suggested Lisa when my little sister had been named Lian Hua, “lotus flower.”

After I’d figured out from Uncle’s behavior that boys were more desirable than girls, I’d asked Pa, “Did you want a boy too?”

Pa beamed and said, “When I could have two girls who remind me of their ma? Of course not!”

Ma had hit him playfully, saying, “You are a charmer.”

“I got you to come with me, didn’t I?” said Pa. But then their
laughter had died. Ma’s face had grown tight, as if with grief for something she had lost.

Todd, the Vision’s assistant, gave me a friendly smile. He was tall, with hair that was shaved high up behind his ears in a partial mohawk. Despite his hairstyle, there was a sweet light in his eyes. I remembered him as a solitary kid from high school, where he’d been a few grades ahead of me. He’d been working for the witch for a while now. He was wearing neon green sneakers, and kept tossing the top of his mohawk out of his eyes as he cracked his gum. He was the least mystical person I could imagine. I didn’t know why the witch put up with him, except that possibly he was useful for carrying heavy things. “What’s up?” he said.

“I’m all right. You?”

“Yeah, I get by,” he said.

The Vision had her functional eye aimed directly at me. “This is the older daughter.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Monica in the half whisper she always seemed to use with the witch.

The Vision reached out and took my hand in hers. Her skin felt cool and slightly damp. The waiting room was full and I realized the Vision was going to impress us with her psychic abilities. I tried to pull my hand away but she held on and closed her eyes. She spoke loud enough for everyone to hear, “No boyfriend, husband or mate.”

My chest tightened with fear. It had been a while since I’d dated anyone. How did she know? And what was she going to say about me?

“You are without equal,” Aunt Monica said to the witch.

The Vision continued. “You must take your own blood, your menstrual blood. You take the papers you catch the blood with and wait until the night the moon disappears altogether. That night, you
lay the papers on the roof tiles of the man’s house. Anchor them with a stone. Let them dry for seven days and seven nights under the sun and the growing moon. Then crumble them into ash and put them in his coffee.”

I choked and yanked my hand out of hers. Everyone around us looked impressed. The witch paused. Her eyes were open again. I managed to nod.

“When he drinks it, he will know no one but you.”

My cheeks were on fire. Obviously the witch had looked into my future and seen that the only way for me to ever get a boyfriend was for me to bespell him with a used tampon, and now half of Chinatown knew that as well. Todd chewed vigorously on the gum in his mouth, trying not to laugh.

Aunt Monica stared at the Vision. She clasped both of her hands around the Vision’s and said, “Thank you for this wisdom.”

“I could do no less for your niece,” the witch answered. “If she should need a beauty potion—”

“I have a new job,” I blurted, desperate to change the subject. I also knew how powerful the Vision was. While I’d already given up on my love life, I still had some hope for the studio now.

“I know,” said the Vision. “It will amount to nothing.”

Her words fell upon me like stones. She blinked and turned her normal eye to me. Her face cracked into a smile. “Do not take it so hard, girl. A husband is a fine thing to have. Use the spell.”

Lisa, Dennis and Uncle Henry came out of the examination room at that point, followed by their patient. She seemed to be in her late thirties and was dressed plainly, with a dirty air filter mask sticking out of her bag. I guessed she was a garment factory worker, possibly a seamstress. She bowed low to Uncle Henry. “I couldn’t move my arm without pain before I came to you. Now I’ll be able to work again. However much I owe you, it cannot repay my debt.”

Uncle Henry spoke in a voice so soft that I could only hear him because I was standing right next to them. “I know your husband just lost his job. There is no charge.”

She pressed her lips together and I was afraid she’d burst into tears. Wordlessly, she pressed his arm, then left. A few of the patients were already crowding around the Vision as I waved good-bye to Lisa and exited the office. My uncle’s patients and her clients often overlapped. While I was walking back to our apartment, I was filled with pride for my uncle. Turning over in my head the Vision’s bleak words about my future, I wished I had inherited some of his gifts.

I
t’d been a quiet evening at the noodle shop and I peeked out to see that there were customers sitting at only two tables. I had to finish out the week at the restaurant before I started at the dance studio on Monday. Mr. Hu had grumbled about finding a replacement for me, but we all knew he’d find someone without much trouble. Now I hoped the manager would close the restaurant when the last customers left. Pa had already started cleaning the kitchen. My shoulders and calves ached, as they always did by this time of night. The door swung open and my friend Zan entered.

She saw me right away and came over with her loose and graceful stride. “Can you take a break?”

Mr. Hu had already gone home. I knew the manager wouldn’t report me if we snuck into a booth near the back. “Come on.”

As we slid in, Zan pulled off the headband she used to keep her hair back. Her hair was plastered to the top of her head and several strands stuck to her forehead. But where it’d been free of the band, her hair was thick, black and glossy. I always wondered how it was
that I seemed to be the only person who noticed how beautiful Zan was, even though she never wore a speck of makeup. I guessed most people didn’t look too carefully at the girl who ran the egg cakes cart.

I groaned when Zan set her tattered copy of the
New York State Driver’s Manual
on the table. “You don’t own a car. I don’t own a car. We don’t know anyone who owns a car.” I thought of Uncle and his precious Mercedes. “No one who would ever let you practice in it anyway.”

She shoved the book in my direction. “Doesn’t matter. Come on, test me.”

“Why don’t you become an accountant or something?”

Zan raised her eyebrow at me. In high school, Zan and I had been poor students. I had so much trouble with letters and Zan couldn’t do math. We’d tried to help each other but that’d been like the blind leading the blind. “I’m going to get my commercial driver’s license and I’ll be waving at you from one big truck someday.”

I’d heard it before. I didn’t want Zan to waste her time. I knew she wanted out and somehow she’d grasped onto this idea of becoming a truck driver. She was in that egg cakes cart, rain, snow or shine. Her mom ran the one on Mott Street, and when Zan left high school, her mother had bought a second cart with their life savings so that Zan could operate it on Canal Street. “I just don’t see how you’ll ever—”

Dampness shone in her eyes. “I will.”

I placed my hand over hers. “You’re right. One step at a time.” I flipped the book open and read aloud, “Under normal conditions, a safe following distance . . .”

We both looked up when the door opened again. A group of Asian college kids streamed in, and to make things worse, I picked out Grace Yuan and Winston, my ex-boyfriend. Grace saw me and
lifted her hand in an awkward half-wave, then dropped it again. She looked away. Grace and I had been best friends long ago, when we were little girls. Ma’s mother, my grandmother, had been a Yuan too, a distant relative of theirs, so our families had always been friendly. I loved Grace’s grandmother and called her Godmother. Grace was a year younger than I was. The funny thing was that it was after I got left back in fifth grade and we were finally in the same class that she started ignoring me.

Zan quickly set her book upright to partially hide our faces. I said, “It won’t work, but thanks. This means I’ll have to go back to my dishes anyway.”

She pressed her lips together. “They’re going to hang out with their cheap orders for hours and you’ll have to wait until they’re done showing off to each other before you can go home. Just because they’ve been out partying and have nothing else to do.”

“It’s a part of the job. Hey!” I suddenly realized I hadn’t told Zan my big news about the studio. I quickly sketched it out for her and she scrambled over to my side of the booth and hugged me.

“I’m so happy for you!” Her face glowed. “You’re going to be fantastic.”

“I’m scared.”

“You can do much more than you think, Charlie. I know you.”

I gave her a quick squeeze, then caught the manager giving me the evil eye. “I have to go.” The group of cool kids was staring at us as well. Grace was sitting so close to Winston that her long curls brushed against his fraternity T-shirt. I knew their romantic relationship had ended years ago but it still stung to see them together. His mouth opened, as if he were going to call something out to me, then he shut it again.

Zan said, “Come by the cart when you can. I’ll miss stopping by to see you here.” She went past the group with her head high, and
none of them said anything to her, not even Grace or Winston. It was as if Zan didn’t exist. I hated them for that.

I stomped inside and started scrubbing some pots I’d left to soak. A few minutes later, I heard someone come in to use the bathroom. It was so grimy, most customers avoided it if they could. Probably one of those kids needed to throw up after drinking too much.

“So how are you doing, Charlie?”

I whirled around. Winston was leaning against the door jamb, tall and lanky. I said, “That’s dirty. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

He straightened up, brushed off his shoulder.

I took a breath. “I’m fine. Did you come to use the bathroom? It’s right there.”

“Yeah, yeah. See you, then.” He ducked into the tiny bathroom.

I turned back to the sink and made myself ignore him when he left. Winston and I had been friends since seventh grade. The Winston I’d cared about had been a short, scrawny kid with bad skin who used to laugh so hard at some dumb joke, he’d bend over double. In the months after Ma died, Winston and I spent more and more time together. One afternoon when we were fifteen, his ma was working at the bank and we were at his apartment alone. He kissed me. We hid our new relationship from our families, of course, because even though Pa had never spoken to me about dating, I knew it was forbidden. But being with Winston seemed so natural. It never occurred to me that anything could change, until a year later. That was when Winston shot up by a foot, his skin cleared, and Grace and her friends gathered him into their crowd. He seemed to date every cool girl in the school after that, but it’d hurt twice as much when he and Grace were together.

Rationally, I understood. He’d been a teenage boy and suddenly, the prettiest girls in the school were fawning over him. Grace was petite and vivacious, all laughter and bubbles. But I’d been left
dumb and gasping like a fish at market, and the memory of that feeling still seared. Somehow I never saw these things coming. Hiding my love life from Pa, I’d dated a few different guys since, and even went steady with someone for a while, but no one could compare to the way I’d felt about Winston.

Pa poked his head into my area. “Was that your old friend Winston?”

I kept my head bent over the sink full of dishes. “Yep.”

“Why you not invite him over sometime?”

“Sure, Pa. Sometime.”

—

Zan, perched on our couch, was watching Lisa and me circle our small apartment with our cheap butterfly nets, trying to catch flies. Zan unexpectedly had this Saturday afternoon free because one of the wheels on her cart had broken off at lunchtime and it was being fixed. I’d convinced her to come with me to the tai chi class I attended but Pa wanted us to rid the apartment of flies first. He had occasional Saturdays off, and when he was home, he liked to improve things. The problem was that our place was so cluttered with papers and piled-up boxes that the flies had millions of hiding places. We’d turned off the fans to lure the flies into the open, which meant the apartment was sweltering.

Lisa was tiptoeing up to a fly that had landed on a stack of clothing. She swung her net and the fly took off.

“Why don’t you just whack them with a newspaper, like everyone else does?” Zan asked, fanning herself with a piece of paper.

“No,” Pa said, cradling his pillow in his hands. He was balanced on one of our folding chairs. He stayed focused on the mosquito on the ceiling. “Life is precious.”

Zan snorted. Her father was a butcher at the live poultry place on Canal Street.

I said, “Be careful, Pa.”

With a quick movement, he flipped his pillow hard toward the ceiling. It bounced off and he caught it again. Peering at it, he said, “Got it. Filled with blood too. Need to wash the pillowcase now.”

Zan said, “But you just killed that insect!”

Pa sighed as he climbed off of the chair. “I know. In a court run by mosquitos, they would probably find me guilty. They are only taking a little blood after all. No reason to kill another living creature. But they’re biting my daughters. I cannot stand it.”

“And they’re too little to be caught by the butterfly nets. We used to try,” Lisa said.

“At least it’s a soft death,” Pa said.

Zan said, “I don’t think it feels so great to the mosquito.”

“It’s a pillow,” Pa said. “I think it is not a bad way to go.”

I caught a glimpse of Pa’s face and quickly changed the subject before he started feeling so sorry for the mosquitos that he stopped allowing us to kill them. “Oh, there’s that fly.”

“Where?” Lisa zeroed in on her target again.

“It is not easy to be a Buddhist,” Pa said.

Zan wrinkled her brow. “But you guys eat meat. How does that fit in, Mr. Wong?”

“You’re right. It doesn’t.” He smiled and shrugged. “But my girls are growing and they need the nutrients. And because I am weak and like the taste. As I said, life is complicated for a Buddhist, especially when you are Chinese too.”

“You don’t need to eat meat for the nutrients,” Lisa said. Then she swung her net and called, “I caught mine!” She waved her butterfly net around in circles, so the fly couldn’t get out. Pa quickly
pried one of the screens off a window, Lisa ran over and stuck her net out. We watched the fly zoom away.

Pa replaced the screen.

Zan looked at me. “How do they all get in here when you’ve got screens on the windows?”

“Some of the screens have rips in them,” I said.

“Remember last summer when the apartment got invaded by ants?” Lisa said.

“Ugh! Don’t remind me,” I said.

Lisa turned to Zan. “This colony of ants showed up in the kitchen but Pa didn’t want to kill them so we would just shoo them away. We could literally see them getting bigger and stronger by the day. We tried cinnamon, garlic, vinegar . . . Nothing helped.”

I interrupted. “Of course it did. The mint worked, and after that, they all left.” I gave Lisa a look to shut her up. She widened her eyes, remembering I’d secretly bought a bottle of insecticide and sprayed the entire apartment while Pa was at work.

I could tell Zan had figured it out by the mischievous look in her eyes. “How strange,” she said innocently, “I never knew mint repelled ants.”

I glared at her. “Lisa found it on the Internet.” In recent years, Lisa’s school had begun lending all of the kids laptops for use in their classes, something I’d never had, so Lisa was our technology expert.

Pa nodded. “Very wise, that Internet.” To Pa, the Internet was a sort of prophet.

“Why don’t you do something useful, like help us catch the last fly?” I said to Zan. She grinned and took my butterfly net. Within a few minutes, she’d caught the fly I’d been stalking.

As we watched it zip away, Zan said, “Have you ever thought that you’re just releasing flies into the world, where they can have babies and bother more people?”

Lisa giggled. “I hope they have fun.”

I grabbed Zan’s arm. “Come on, let’s get Godmother Yuan and go to tai chi class.”

—

Zan and I walked a few blocks over to Godmother Yuan’s building. We linked arms to fight our way through the crowds, squeezing past stands of live crabs and dismembered eels, the carp lying limp in the blazing sunlight. Especially during the weekends, there seemed to be almost as many tourists as Chinese in Chinatown. We dodged one white couple who were pointing at the roasted geese hanging in the window of a restaurant, then turned the corner onto the twisty little street where Godmother lived.

It was a bit quieter there and the sharp scent of incense filled the air. Godmother lived on the second floor, above a religious store that sold joss paper, urns and idols, where incense was always burning. Even though she wasn’t really my godmother, I called her that as a sign of affection and respect. Godmother Yuan was a tai chi master. She’d been our friend for as long as I could remember. When Ma died, Godmother, her face covered in tear tracks, held my hand at the funeral as she cradled Lisa on her lap.

Zan dabbed at her sweaty forehead with a tissue as we climbed the stairs. “Should I call her
sifu
?”
Sifu
meant “master” and it was what most of Godmother Yuan’s students called her.

I shook my head. “You’re not a regular member of the class. Just ‘Mrs. Yuan’ will be fine.”

Zan smiled. “Do I have to call you
sifu
?”

“Ha! I’m just the helper.”

I stopped in front of Godmother’s door and knocked.

Her voice came from within the apartment. “Charlie, you know my door’s unlocked.”

Zan’s eyebrows shot up. “Is she serious?”

I said softly, “Nothing anyone can say will convince her to do otherwise. She says her door’s always open to her students and friends. It’s never been locked, not even when her husband was alive.”

I turned the doorknob and the door swung wide. Out of politeness, we didn’t enter. Godmother was walking toward us with her bag over her arm. She was short and round, with a white permed head of curls, like a dandelion, but I knew how strong she was because I’d sparred with her in push-hands training. She wore simple, loose clothing that allowed freedom of movement. I’d never seen her in a dress. It was a well-known Chinatown rumor that a few gang members had tried to take her purse once and she’d sent them running with a few blows.

“Do you remember my friend Zan, Godmother?” I said. Godmother spoke Toisanese and I only spoke Mandarin, so we always communicated in English. Her family had been in the U.S. so long that her English was better than Pa’s.

Zan bowed her head and said, “Mrs. Yuan.”