Mambo in Chinatown (5 page)

Julian watched for a few minutes, then stopped the couple in midstep, very close to where we were sitting. Although they’d been gliding across the room a moment ago, they froze the moment he touched them, completely balanced. Katerina’s leg was extended behind her red Lycra dress with her toe pointed, her head arched back. Viktor, extremely thin, all long arms and legs, made me think of a giant stick insect.

“Viktor, if I may.” Julian gently extracted Viktor from Katerina and took his place. Then he placed his hands on her shoulders and arched her back slightly more, turned her head a fraction to the left. “You have a lovely position, Katerina, but we need a bit more stretch
here to balance the pivot turns.” There was something British in his voice.

He stepped away and allowed Viktor to take position again. At his nod, they resumed as if nothing had interrupted them and flew across the ballroom. They looked like a fairy tale come true as they flowed across the floor, their long strides eating up the ballroom, Katerina’s expression a blend of joy and passion.

Now that they were out of hearing distance, Simone and Estella spoke to each other in mock whispers. I watched them in the mirrored wall facing us.

“Julian has such . . . line,” Simone sighed.

Estella giggled. “I’d do a dip with him anytime.” They both laughed. “You have to admit,” she continued, “Viktor and Katerina look good together.”

“Of course, they’ve been dancing together since they were five or something in Russia. He’s a powerful dancer but Katerina . . .”

“She is big, isn’t she?” said Estella.

“She would never have been allowed to keep all that weight at Juilliard,” Simone said. I studied Katerina. She was tall, broad-shouldered and voluptuous. She was more athletically built than the model-thin Simone, but to my eyes she was stunning.

“You’re so bad,” Estella said with a laugh.

I barely knew I had spoken aloud: “I think she’s lovely.”

Both women glared at me. “Were we talking to you?” Simone said.

I’d just arrived at the studio and they already disliked me.

—

A few weeks passed, and Uncle and Aunt were taking us out to dinner because it was Uncle’s birthday. The glamour of the dance studio had already rubbed off on me a bit. I chose a dress with an open
neckline that evening and put on lipstick. The dress was quite modest but revealed my neck and collarbones. I understood the moment Pa paused that I’d done wrong.

“Don’t you like it?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“You look like a dancing girl,” he said.

“Ma was one,” Lisa said.

“Your mother was a dancer,” he said. “There’s a difference.”

“She wore beautiful clothes too.” I glanced at the photo of Ma onstage.

He sighed. “Your mother was a very lovely woman.” His face softened. “And she was already married to me. Come on, put on something befitting a modest girl. And maybe you should wash your face too.”

I felt the familiar knot of anger rise in my throat and swallowed it down again. Did he have any idea what other young women my age were wearing? What they were doing? I was too old to be living at home with Pa. He was so protective, he wanted to keep me away from boys until I turned twenty-five, at which point he would expect me to somehow be married. There was no in-between phase.

But I didn’t think I could leave my family. Lisa needed me, and I couldn’t leave Pa with all the bills to pay alone. My sister had been only three when our mother died of a massive stroke. At fourteen, I was the one who’d comforted Lisa on the nights when there was no one to hold either one of us anymore. Pa had shrunken into himself. He could barely care for himself, let alone two young girls. He would just scratch the back of his head, rub his eyes like he had something in them, then retreat to his own room again.

When Ma was alive, I used to breathe in her scent. On the surface was the oil and sweat of the restaurant, but underneath that was her smell, cool and lemony. I still floated in that bubble of loving
her with everything that I was. I had Pa but I loved him in a different way. After Ma’s death, everything had changed. It was afterward that I truly hated school and my classes became so difficult. The other kids ignored me, the teachers found me to be a silent problem, sullen and unresponsive at the back of their rooms. I’d had Winston, Zan and another friend, Mo Li, but then Winston had left me as well. I couldn’t do chitchat with a big crowd of girls like Grace could. I was tactless, too honest, hopeless at pretending, and I was also miserable. I just did my best to hide away in my baggy clothing, and Pa had no idea how to guide me to become a woman either, which was just fine with me. There’d been a few boys in high school who’d liked me anyway but none of them turned into anything serious, especially since I had to hide the relationship at home.

And now here we were. I obeyed Pa and put on a shapeless top that covered my neck, and a thick pair of pants. I gritted my teeth and took off the lipstick as well. Pa nodded in approval when I came out. Lisa made a face at me behind his back and we wrinkled our noses at each other.

Then, at the last minute, just as we were supposed to leave, Lisa said, “I’m not feeling so well. Maybe I should just stay home.” She was hardly ever sick. And we so rarely got to eat at a restaurant, I knew she must really feel lousy to decide to miss it. I went over to her and smoothed out her hair. Her forehead felt sticky underneath my hand.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m not hungry,” she whispered, “and I see Aunt and Uncle every day anyway.”

I said, “Maybe she’s tired since school’s just started again.”

Pa shook his head. “You have to come, Lisa, we cannot disgrace ourselves this way. This is an important day for Aunt and Uncle and
they have reserved a table at the restaurant. We are their only family. We cannot let them down. I promise we won’t stay too long.”

But we both knew we would. Pa always forgot his promises once he was with Uncle Henry and they were chatting and laughing about old times.

—

I was surprised to find Dennis seated next to Uncle Henry at the restaurant. Uncle even had an arm slung around the back of Dennis’s chair, laughing at something he’d said, while Aunt Monica beamed. It was unusual for an assistant to be invited to a family event, but I understood. Dennis was becoming the son Uncle and Aunt had never had.

I sat between Dennis and Lisa, and when we were choosing what to order, I said, “How about Peking duck?” I knew that was Lisa’s favorite dish.

The older people gave me disapproving looks. “Charlie,” Pa said. “We never have duck for a birthday celebration.”

Of course. Duck eggs were used in funeral rites and thus duck was bad luck at other times. For a birthday, the “three lives” were acceptable: chicken, pork and fish. Noodles were always necessary too, to represent longevity of life. They ordered pork in black bean sauce, noodles, a soy sauce chicken complete with head and claws to symbolize wholeness, a tofu dish and a whole steamed carp. Although Pa loved fish with bitter melon, nothing bitter was permitted on a birthday, lest the taste bring bad luck in the year to come. Pa, Aunt and Uncle started to drone on about their times in China and the people they’d known then. I felt overwhelmed with shyness next to Dennis. Even though Lisa and he worked together, they didn’t speak either.

Finally he said to me, “So are you still in school?”

“No.” There was an awkward pause. I didn’t want to discuss my
dishwashing job or the studio. I made an effort. “You did your degree in pharmacology?”

He brightened. “Yes. I’ll probably go back to school for my master’s in a few years but I wanted to explore my options before I did. So much of eastern medicine is uncharted territory.”

At that moment, the inevitable noodle dish arrived. Uncle took a bite and said to Pa, “Ah, these are good but nothing compared to yours.”

Pa roared his great laugh. “You put the tall hat of flattery on my head. I am an illiterate man, you are the one of learning. Older brother, you are doing so well. Are you ever going to expand your office?”

“This is my home. No, I don’t want to leave Chinatown. These are my people. I live for them.” I could tell he meant it.

Dennis smiled. “Your dedication is admirable, Mr. Wong.”

Uncle Henry patted Dennis on the arm and spoke to Pa. “This young man can practically run my office without me already. He has already taken over some of the more standard cases, which frees me to visit patients at their homes.”

“Here, eat more,” Aunt Monica said, heaping my plate with a pile of mushrooms, which I didn’t like. But since mushrooms brought good luck, I would be in trouble if I didn’t eat them on Uncle Henry’s birthday. I started chewing my way through the pile. She eyed me. “You don’t look very well.”

I was embarrassed she’d said that in front of Dennis, who was politely pretending not to listen. “What do you mean?” This was so unfair. Pa had made me take off my makeup and now I was going to get crap because I didn’t look pink enough.

“You are skinny and anemic,” she said.

“Maybe I have something for you,” Uncle Henry said.

“Oh no. No,” I said. I knew what this would mean: a gift from
his office. I’d already consumed enough strange animals boiled in bitter herbs. “I’ve just started a new job. That’s the only reason I am more tired than usual. It will get easier soon.”

Pa said with pride, “She is working in an office.”

“Really?” Uncle made an impressed face. “Going up in the world, eh? What are you doing?”

I took a deep breath. “Data entry. Some telephone work. In Midtown.”

“Oh, good, good.” Uncle dug out the eyeball of the fish and put it in Pa’s bowl. “What a delicacy, eh? Take more, brother. But especially if you are starting something new, you need more energy. In fact, both of your girls look a bit pale.”

Lisa was resting her chin on her hands, as if she was exhausted.

Uncle said, “I have a fresh shipment of Tibetan caterpillars.”

“No!” I said.

Aunt Monica glowered at me. “Silly girl, those caterpillars sell by weight for twice the price of gold. They can cure infection, inflammation, fatigue, phlegm. Even cancer!”

“Really?” Pa’s eyes widened.

I nudged Lisa underneath the table for help, knowing that we would be force-fed the valuable caterpillars if we didn’t stop this now. I didn’t care whether they worked or not, I still didn’t want to eat any worms.

Lisa raised her head and said, “I feel just fine.”

“Harvested by nomads,” Uncle Henry said. “The caterpillars only live in the grasslands above ten thousand feet and are infected by a parasite, a type of fungus. The fungus kills the caterpillar, then feeds on its body. That is why they are so powerful.” Uncle waved his chopsticks at Pa for emphasis. “I will give you a few. Boil them with ginseng until the soup condenses to the size of one rice bowl. It’ll be nice and concentrated.”

Lisa and I exchanged a look. We were sunk.

“Amazing,” Dennis said.

“Why don’t you take them?” I said.

Pa gave me a quelling look. “We cannot possibly accept them for free, brother. No, you must eat too. We will pay full price.”

“Ridiculous, you are my own family. A token amount is enough, one dollar per caterpillar.”

“That is insane. We must give you at least ninety percent, how else will you survive? You will go out of business like this.”

This reverse haggling went on for a while, with Pa fighting to chip in more and Uncle arguing for him to pay less, until they arrived at what they both secretly felt was the right price for a family member, about sixty percent of the retail price. Lisa and I were used to this. At the end of the meal, there would be a similar fight over the check, with everyone struggling to pay until the person who was actually supposed to get the check won. In this case, it would be Uncle who paid since he had invited us. It all seemed senseless to me but it had to do with honor. Even though Uncle’s medicines were so expensive, half of Chinatown credited him with saving their lives.

“How do you really feel?” I asked Lisa in a low voice.

“My head hurts. We’re not going to leave early.”

“I know. He always forgets. But let him have a good time. I guess he doesn’t have much else.”

Lisa sighed and we both looked at Pa as I put my hand over hers and she gripped it. She spoke in a low voice. “I’m glad I have you, Charlie. Sometimes I’m scared.”

This didn’t sound like Lisa. I tried to get her to perk up. “You should be afraid of that caterpillar soup.”

She smiled for the first time that evening. “Believe me, I am.”

I
fidgeted in Mr. Song’s shoebox of an office at the middle school, waiting for him to appear and wondering why he’d asked me there. He was Lisa’s guidance counselor. Lisa was never in trouble. When she was younger, she used to have anxiety attacks when she didn’t get a perfect score on a test or when she couldn’t understand how to do something, but that hadn’t happened for a while now. His desk was cluttered with stacks of folders. A few books on the shelf partially covered a ribbon with printing on it. I nudged them away to read “Cornell.” Mr. Song had a photo of a beautiful Asian woman in a bridal gown on his desk, probably his wife. I patted my own puffy hair, trying to tame it.

He stepped into the room, dark and handsome, and I understood why he needed that picture. It must have been to keep the swooning teenage girls away. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

I blurted out, “Is Lisa in trouble?”

“Oh no! I hope I didn’t worry you.” He sat in his chair and rocked back. “Due to Lisa’s test scores coming into our sixth grade, we’d already flagged her as a student to watch. I know she’s just settling into our school now but something her English teacher showed me really gave me pause and made me think we ought to sit down and discuss her future.”

He pulled out one of his folders and flipped through the loose handwritten pages. “The teacher asked the class to describe snow to someone who lives in the desert, someone who has never seen or felt snow before. Let me read you a few typical responses. ‘Snow is white, cold and fluffy. It forms a blanket over everything. You can find it in your freezer.’ Or ‘Children jump and play in snow, bundled up in their winter clothing.’”

I was tense. “What did Lisa write?”

He took out a page he’d marked with a yellow Post-it note. “Light snow is like a dance of fairies: wild, chaotic and free. Heavy snow is sorrow, blanketing your eyes until you are blinded by it. Melting snow is a long glide of tears for the loss of someone you never had the chance to know.”

I blinked the emotion from my eyes, keeping them averted so Mr. Song couldn’t see. And I’d thought Lisa didn’t care about not having a mother. “I’ll get her to rewrite it. The teacher probably wanted—”

“No.” He leaned forward. “Lisa is extraordinary.”

I exhaled. “Yes, she is.”

“We have our own honors program and she’s already enrolled in it. However, I can’t help but feel that a child like this could truly blossom in the right environment. We are only a middle school. She’ll need to leave in a few years anyway. Have you ever heard of Hunter?”

“Hunter College?” Lisa couldn’t be that advanced.

“No, Hunter College High School. It’s a laboratory school for intellectually gifted students.”

I swallowed. “We couldn’t afford—”

“It’s free. The school’s from seventh to twelfth grade. The test for admission is this coming January and is extremely competitive. The kids need to already be in the top percentages in both math and reading before they’re allowed to take the test. Lisa qualifies. Out of about thirty-five hundred kids who take the test, less than two hundred are admitted. The admission rate is only about six percent.”

Lisa was such a perfectionist. If she tried and didn’t make it, she would be crushed. “Is it worth it? She’s just settling in here.”

“I know. It’s just that Hunter is such a special place, offering her all of the support and facilities to develop her gifts. She’d be among bright, creative kids. I have a feeling she’d thrive at Hunter.”

I studied his glowing face. “Did you go there, Mr. Song?”

He coughed into his hand. “I see Lisa is not the only intelligent one in your family.”

“Oh no. I was a hopeless student when I was here.”

He looked sad. “Then I believe we failed you.”

I’d never thought of it that way. “How long have you been here, Mr. Song?”

“Just a few years.”

I was still puzzled about what a man like this was doing in our Chinatown school. “Are you Chinese?”

“Korean. You’re trying to figure me out, right?”

Taken aback, I nodded.

“I want to make a difference to the kids here. Contrary to popular opinion, I’m not the only one.” He stood and extended his hand. “Please talk to your parents about allowing Lisa to take the Hunter
test. A few of her peers have qualified as well. Just give her the chance.”

—

I managed to get to Pa’s noodle restaurant before the noontime rush. When I gestured to Pa from the back alleyway, he nodded at his assistant to take over and stepped outside to talk to me.

“What did the teacher want?” he asked.

“He thinks Lisa is gifted. He wants her to take a test for a special school.”

“Where is this school?”

I knew what Pa meant. “I think it’s not in Chinatown.” He wanted to keep us close and protected.

He shook his head. “Is this necessary?”

“She doesn’t have to take the test but Mr. Song felt it would be a great opportunity for her if she got in.”

“How would she get to this school? Take the subway alone? Now she can just walk. This city’s not safe for such a young girl.”

Sometimes it felt as if Pa was still living in China, while Lisa and I were in America. “It’s for her future. Things are very competitive in this country. She could maybe get into a top college, and the right preparation could change her life. And Mr. Song said that she might not be accepted at all.”

Pa bristled, as I knew he would. “Lisa is very smart!”

“There are a lot of bright kids. Other students from her middle school will try for a spot too. There’s a good chance she won’t be admitted. But Pa, we need to give her the opportunity. Otherwise, she might end up as a dishwasher like me.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, waving his hands. “Let her try. Then we will decide what to do.”

—

I tried my hardest at my new job. I made a copy of the phone instruction sheet and took it home to study. For the first time, I understood how all of the buttons worked and made sure I could connect people and put them on hold. It worked most of the time until I was under stress, with students in front of me and someone on the phone line, and then things would go wrong.

My main problem was the written work. Somehow, I would mix up times in the schedules. I checked and double-checked whenever I could, which meant I caught most of my own mistakes, but when I had a student on the phone who was in a hurry and dictating the changes to their appointments at lightning speed, I didn’t always manage to correctly record what they’d said. Even when I repeated it back to them right, I sometimes wrote it down wrong. I started to come to the studio early on a regular basis so I had more time to make up the sheets for each of the dancers with their schedules for the day. I filled them in twice: first in pencil, then after double-checking with the main appointment book, I finally put everything in pen.

Several times, Simone had stormed up to my desk. “Where is this student I’m supposed to have now?”

“I’m so sorry, let me check.”

“You are supposed to get it right the first time! Why else are they paying you?”

She normally didn’t waste too much time on me, thankfully, and stomped back into the main ballroom, where she could practice again. Although I made mistakes with the others’ schedules as well, everyone else remained quite kind to me, even Estella.

Adrienne managed the business part of the studio while Dominic was its artistic soul. He taught most of the dance sessions for the
professionals, except when they’d have a guest coach come in from outside the studio. Adrienne gave coaching sessions as well, but Dominic was the world-famous choreographer. He went through the studio making small adjustments to student and professional alike.

“We are so lucky to be at Adrienne and Dominic’s studio,” Katerina told me once. “They were the reason we came from Russia. Every day, we can be trained by them.”

Whenever I entered the studio, I breathed in the smell of it: air-conditioning, cologne and perfume. No food smells, no garlic oil, no dirty dishes waiting for me. I loved that my clothing no longer smelled like food. I smeared my hands with moisturizer every night and the skin began to knit together, the ridges in my nails filling out.

When a student came in, he or she would report to me, then sit at one of the tables in the ballroom until the teacher was available. When I saw a teacher correcting a student’s body, moving a hip or shoulder back into place, I thought of Ma, and how safe I’d felt when she’d done that for me. I knew I would never be able to afford the lessons, and yet I spent as much time as I could watching at the glass doors to the ballroom, struggling to decipher the mysteries of dance.

Mostly what I learned instead was the rhythm of the studio. Dance session was held daily in the early afternoon for any professional who wasn’t booked, and the sessions were taught by Adrienne, Dominic or an outside coach. I learned many dancers retired in their thirties or early forties. The ones who had won national or international titles became coaches and judges. The bulk of the student lessons were taught in the evenings, after people got off work.

Social dancers came in for a small set of lessons or to reach a goal, like learning how to salsa in time for a party. Wedding couples usually wanted to avoid the “clutch and sway” syndrome for their first
dance. Serious students, on the other hand, returned regularly. Some of these were social dancers, people who loved being at the studio every week to dance together. Most were competition students. Mateo’s Japanese student, Okina, booked double lessons several times a week with him. I heard that she had been winning competitions for years. Keith was Simone’s competition student and he was by far the best male student in our studio. Katerina and Viktor trained regularly with their serious students as well.

I also finally figured out that Mateo and Nina weren’t a couple off of the dance floor.

“You see him?” Mateo asked me when a good-looking guy wearing a T-shirt underneath a leather jacket strode into the ballroom. Estella greeted him and they stood chatting near the glass doors.

“Is he one of Estella’s competition students?” I answered.

“Oh yes, and she’s possessive too. Rushes to put on more makeup before he comes. He’s a big television producer, does half of the daytime soap operas. But he just doesn’t know that he’s gay yet. I can tell. If he ever got a chance to try me, he’d leave her skinny butt in a second,” Mateo said. He stood up and walked deliberately toward the pair, swinging his hips. As he passed, I saw him turn his head and catch the guy’s eye, giving the man a long wink that made him flush as red as his T-shirt. Estella’s lips thinned. Mateo glanced back at me through the glass and pretended to fan himself.

My favorite time of day was before the studio opened, when the professionals were rehearsing. I thought to myself that this was when their true selves were revealed. When they were lounging around in the waiting area during the day, they were diminished, as colorless as the rest of us ordinary people. But then they stood up as dancers and started to move, and it was as if a light shone from
within them. I held my breath at their swiftness, strength, grace and power. They were dressed in their rehearsal clothing then—sweats or plain T-shirts—but were all the more breathtaking for it.

I realized that the professionals were not physically flawless. Nina really did have a perfectly proportioned face but Simone had bad skin underneath her makeup and her features were oversize. Estella’s nose was very sharp. Viktor had a long awkward face with uneven teeth. Mateo’s head was completely square and Katerina’s features were as full-blown as the rest of her.

Yet when any of them walked into a room, heads turned. Their attractiveness had more to do with how they moved, how they held themselves, than how they looked. Sometimes I would see Viktor on break, slumped in a chair like a puppet without a master, but then later he would flow across the dance floor with the controlled power of a storm. I began to see beauty as something that could be unleashed from within a person rather than a set of physical features like a perfect nose or big eyes. This was true of the students as well. It didn’t seem to matter whether they were tall or short, fat or thin, they all transformed within a few lessons. Something to do with the magic of coordinated movement, the choreography of two people together, the achievement of control over their bodies.

Ma had said to me, “In the west, they believe in separation of body and soul. They think that the soul separated from the body will find enlightenment, but for the Chinese, we strive for unity. If you look at a child, you can see they are still struggling in their bodies, trying to master them. It is when you become one with your body and soul, that is when you will be whole. That is beauty.” I’d never fully understood the truth of that the way I did now.

Later, for lessons, the male dancers would change into shirts and ties that they kept in the teachers’ room and the women would put
on skirts or tailored pants, but during their own rehearsals, they were free to be as they were. They weren’t trying to be polite or charming. Viktor and Katerina cursed each other in Russian across the floor when parts of their routine didn’t work.

I said once to Nina, “You and Mateo look different when you’re on the floor together. It’s like you are
more
.”

She nodded. “When we dance together, we are at the edges of who we are. We have to push our own limits to find out who we can become, together.” Then she’d shaken her head and said, “Now I desperately need some more coffee.”

Sometimes Simone practiced with her professional partner, Pierre, who was from Haiti. They were a breathtaking couple, with her white-blond hair against the ebony of his skin. Most of the time they rehearsed at his studio down in the Village. Simone, Pierre, Nina and Mateo were mainly Latin dancers, while Katerina and Viktor specialized in the smooth dances like waltz or foxtrot.

Every day, I watched the dancers, hungry for something I hadn’t known I wanted, holding my breath for the day I would make a mistake so great I would be asked to leave.