This Old Man (16 page)

Lutheran? We weren't Lutheran; we weren't anything. My mother must have plucked my religion from Mrs. Barnes's death certificate. I read on: “Greta Janssen appeared frightened and overwhelmed at her first meeting with the social worker. She was reluctant to reveal anything of a personal nature until well into—”

Elizabeth came up behind me, silently, and said, “Go to your room, Greta. This one is mine.”

I spun around. There was a look of steel wrath on her face, as she stepped aside to let me by.

I saw Sylvia deep into peanut butter and jelly on Carmella's bed just before I slammed my door to have a good brood. Injustice was the topic of the hour. Why should I be caught so indignantly, and Sylvia get off free to stuff her face? Why was my life everybody's business—from Stanley Quinn's to Mr. Whatever-His-Name Saxe's, to Elizabeth's—and yet when my mother left town, I wasn't even told where she went?

Injustice? Plenty. It was plain unfair. How righteous I felt all of a sudden! I wasn't used to such nobility. Surely there was a halo forming just above my head, like those of the saints in Hackey's mother's church. One of her great bold pronouncements came back to me, something she'd be prone to say on the way home from church, before the spirit left her for the week: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

I was awash in the mighty stream, which became a virtual flood when Elizabeth came in to mete out her own brand of justice: I was to be grounded for two weeks. I could go to school, I could go to Mr. Saxe on Tuesdays, and that was it.

I thought I would feel like I had been sentenced to Alcatraz, but instead I felt like a sainted martyr. I'd out-Sylvia Sylvia. Joan of Arc could not have enjoyed her misery more than I did. It didn't even matter anymore where Marla was.

Being grounded turned out to be a restful experience. I'd get my homework done by 5:00 and have the whole evening to catch up on sleep or
M
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reruns or to get on everyone's nerves.

“Hey, Jo, tell me what's going on in the outside world?”

“It's about the same as always,” she answered. She was making accordion pleats out of the corner of some book.

“What are you reading?”

“I don't know.
The Loved One
.”

“What's it about?”

“I don't know. Something about cemeteries for dogs. Mrs. Garrettson made me read it for a book report. She says it's satire. She has this idea I'm a natural-born satirist.”

“Is the book funny?” I asked.

“I wouldn't know, Greta. I'm on page two, and I've read it thirty times already.”

“I can take a hint.” I wandered toward Carmella's room. “Can I come in?”

“No.”

“Why not? It's a free country.”

“'Cause I hate you, that's why not.”

There was a clear message there, all right. I thought maybe Pammy felt like having company downstairs in the living room. “What are you doing?” I asked her.

“Staring. Lookit over there. I practically had a baby right there in that spot.”

“Do you miss the baby, Pammy?”

“I could see him any time I wanted to.”

“Don't you want to?”

She tucked her teeth over her bottom lip and looked like a little girl in a Cheerios commercial. “I guess it's better if I don't. I really don't want to talk about this anymore, okay?”

“Leave her alone,” Elizabeth called from the dining room.

Aha, someone new to prey upon! Elizabeth had her books spread out all over the table. From time to time she pounded away at a relic of a typewriter. I said, “Since you're making me stay in, at least you can talk to me.”

“Why not? I can't stand this paper anymore tonight, anyway. Let's make some hot chocolate.”

We spent a lot of time talking those two weeks, though she made it clear she would not tell me where Marla was. We talked about my mother, though, how she and I were alike and different. Up to that point I'd thought the major difference between my mother and me was that she was pretty and graceful, and I wasn't. Then, with Elizabeth, I discovered some other contrasts that were a lot more interesting. Elizabeth said my mother was a follower, and I was a leader. My mother was dependent, and I was independent. She accepted, I questioned.

I liked being an independent, questioning leader. It suited me well. It almost gave me confidence to believe that there would never be a Hackey Barnes type to take my life away from me; I wouldn't have to run away when I was thirty-two or sixty or ninety-two or any age.

Almost. Then I thought, running away—wasn't that what I was already doing? Wasn't I hiding from Hackey, running to keep one step ahead of him?

“Yes,” Elizabeth agreed, “to some extent. And since you brought it up, I want to tell you something. I think you should get rid of the pictures.”

“Does everybody know about those pictures?” I shouted.

“Shh. No one else in the house knows. Besides, look how your marshmallows jumped across your cup when you yelled. You want to scare defenseless little marshmallows?”

I wasn't to be diverted. “What do you know about the pictures?”

“Not much, actually. Only that you took a bunch of shots of Hackey exchanging money with clients and with some of his women.”

“That's not the worst of it,” I hinted, though I wasn't sure I wanted her to pry anything else out of me.

“What else?” she asked calmly. She was crafty. She knew that if she showed too keen an interest, I'd back away. The chocolate had etched dirty tracks down the walls of her mug. She licked them out as far as her tongue would reach, glancing over her cup from time to time, waiting.

“He's got a book with names and addresses.”

She slammed her cup down. “You photographed his book?”

“Every page,” I proudly revealed.

“Good God, child, no wonder he's after you.”

“He doesn't know I have any of these pictures. Anyway, I don't think he knows.”

Elizabeth leaned forward eagerly. “Just where are the pictures?”

“Upstairs,” I whispered.

“Honey, throw them in the incinerator. Take out an ad in the paper to tell him you did it. Be done with him.”

“Are you kidding? Those pictures are my insurance policy. Someday I'm going to nail him, Elizabeth, I swear it.”

“Then go ahead and do it,” she said quietly. “Saxe and I will stand behind you all the way.”

“There's just one small catch.” Jo's mother came to mind: did she wear a prison uniform, a drab khaki dress? Blue jeans? Black-and-white stripes?

“The catch is?”

How could I say it without sounding smug, without sounding hopelessly trapped? “Nailing Hackey, you know? Well, it nails my mother, too.”

Once I'd said it, I was more determined than ever. I had to get my mother's address. Now I had a legitimate reason. If I knew where Marla was, I could warn her in case Hackey ever got hold of the pictures. I'd just have to slip back into Elizabeth's room.

As it turned out, I didn't get a chance. Elizabeth began locking her door and carrying a thick ring of keys, like a jailer.

18

All too soon my period of punishment came an end. In the two weeks I was gone, Old Man had gotten weaker. He'd lost his zest for poetry or conversation. He hardly ate anything, not even the black seaweed gelatin he used to delight in.

The nurses tried to get him up to walk a little each day, but he would wait for Wing to come, and only then would he walk the square of his room, leaning heavily on his grandson's arm. After his walk he'd fall right to sleep. He seemed content to sleep with Wing sitting by his bed. When Old Man's breathing became deep and regular, Wing would collect the dinner bowls and slip out of the room. The nurses said Old Man slept only fitfully when Wing wasn't there.

The day I returned to Chinese Hospital, Wing came out of the room and angrily said, “I think Chen has shortened Old Man's life.”

“The man is over ninety. It's a miracle he's lived as long as he has.”

“I'm going to lose him this year, Greta, before I even get to high school.”

“Yes, we're going to lose him,” I agreed, and I felt a gust of loneliness blow through me. I hadn't felt anything like it since Hackey's mother died. “I had a friend who died a couple of years ago.”

“Oh, a friend,” Wing said, indifferently.

“She was like a grandmother.”

“She was? Who was she?”

“Her name was Edna Barnes. She was the mother of a—friend.”

“Hackey Barnes,” Wing whispered.

“She had a heart attack and died right on Clement Street, between the grocery and the cleaners. There was a funeral at her church. The church ladies made coffee and a bunch of cakes for us afterward, back at Mrs. Barnes's house. I slept there that night, but that was the last time.”

“She must have been a nice lady,” Wing said kindly.

“I'm telling you, she made the best pumpkin chiffon pie in the world. I ate a whole one myself, once.”

“This is no good,” Wing said, shaking his head. “We have to do something to cheer ourselves up.”

“You want to go somewhere? To the beach, maybe, or over to Ghirardelli Square?” No, no, I hadn't hit it yet.

“I've got a plan for us, but we have to wait until Saturday.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Bring that little friend, and I'll show you.”

“What little friend?”

“Oh, you know, the pregnant one, who isn't pregnant anymore. We're going to a real Chinese street fair.”

Although the street festival wasn't for tourists and was more or less hidden in the back streets and alleys, you could tell immediately that there was something in the air of Chinatown that day.

“Of course it feels special,” Wing explained. “It's the Season of the Yellow Plum. In Old China this season was six weeks of mud and mildew. The people needed a festival to get through the dreary weeks. We need it, too.”

He told us to look for everything: in the back of innocent-looking restaurants men would be playing
pigow
, which was Chinese blackjack, and thirteen-card poker. The alleys would be teeming with street hawkers and fortunetellers.

“Can we have our fortunes told, please?” begged Pammy.

“Oh, sure, but not by that one,” Wing muttered, gesturing toward a hungry-looking robed man nearby. “Someday I'll take you to a fortune-teller whose father is from our city in China. Old Man knows him well. He's helped Old Man in a lot of personal decisions.”

I was amazed by the food sold everywhere: hundred-year eggs, pressed duck, smoked fish, shark-fin soup, bird's-nest soup, pigeon eggs, preserved crab, and steaming rice wine served in individual thimble cups so hot that you had to hold your cup with a handkerchief.

We passed children with their wares stretched out toward us. We would eat later, Wing said. Now we were going to take in some good old-fashioned Chinese theater. Inside the theater the spectators sat on the floor and watched the actors, who were already going strong on a bare wood stage. I thought the play was fascinating. I could pick out the heroes, with their fierce masks and swords, and the swooning damsels in distress. All the characters entered and exited with no apparent cues.

Pammy asked, “Is this Act One, or Act Two, or what?”

“No acts,” Wing replied. “The players make up the story as they go along.”

“Why do they use those false, high-pitched voices?” I asked. “It's hard to take them seriously.”

“It's the style, like bursting into song and dance is the style in American musical comedy.”

“I don't understand one single word they're saying,” Pammy sighed.

“Well, it's something about the Emperor's son and the Empress's handmaiden. Or maybe it's the Emperor's friend and his first concubine. It seems to be something like the King Arthur story we read in English last year. Or maybe I'm missing the point.” Wing stroked his chin in confusion. “The language is very difficult.”

“You'll never be a Chinese scholar,” I said, chuckling. I noticed a man off to the side of the stage, tossing pillows around. “What's he doing?”

“All I know is that he's some kind of prop man. See, he throws those pillows on the floor for the actors to sit on. You can tell which characters are the most important by how many pillows they're given to sit on. You see which one is the Emperor?”

“The one who's about to fall off?” Pammy guessed.

“Be quiet for a minute. I want to figure out what's going on.” We were the only ones who stopped talking. The crowd on the floor—you could tell which ones were the spectators, they had no pillows—seemed to be paying no attention to the actors. Waiters passed among us selling delicacies and steaming tea. All around us people were in animated conversation, laughing out loud and pointing to other people in the room. Wing translated one conversation nearby. It was a business transaction involving a piece of property on Washington Street.

Two old men sat in a corner playing Chinese chess and arguing over each move. Despite all this distraction, the audience would clap or sigh or gasp at appropriate times in the play. They seemed perfectly capable of concentrating on four things at once. Besides that, the actors seemed to be enjoying themselves enormously.

“This is really boring,” Pammy said. “Can we go?”

I pulled her back down. “At least wait until it's over. I don't want to be rude to the players. They're trying so hard to entertain us.”

“I don't think you want to wait until it's over,” Wing said, laughing. “It could go on for two or three days.”

“I'm certainly glad you warned us,” I hissed. “Let's go.” After the dark, bustling theater, it seemed very bright and quiet outside. Wing led us through some alleys I'd never been in, with clotheslines strung across them from window to window. Gaily colored shirts hung on one line, some by the shoulder, some by the hem, and there were shirts to fit everyone, infant to grandfather. I tried to figure out which of the two windows would claim them, or if the women in the two apartments had a time-sharing plan for their clothesline, or if they each used half of the line each day. And why were there only shirts?