Face (28 page)

When Li described his flight from China, he said he’d lived for a while in San Francisco before traveling to New York. Later,
when I asked what he’d done there, he fluttered his hand in front of his face and closed his eyes briefly, handed me a bowl
of tea.

“I wait for someone. She never did come.”

“She” who gave him the pearl-sewn union suit, I thought. So it wasn’t just the war. My old friend’s one true love let him
down, left him to live out the rest of his days as a lonely curio dealer. The admission aroused my sympathy, and then something
else.

I set my bowl down with a splash. “What do you care if I have a boyfriend—if I ever get married?”

Li stared at me as if I were half-witted. “If you marry Chinese boy,” he said slowly, “you have almost Chinese children.”

“My children,” I repeated. “If I marry a Chinese boy.”

I suspect all young girls daydream about their future families, and I was no exception. I was going to have two boys and two
girls, all about two years apart. But in spite of the glaring example of my own American grandmother and her Chinese husband,
not to mention my American mother and her
half
-Chinese husband, in spite—or perhaps because—of living in Chinatown, I automatically assumed that white girls do not wed
Chinese men.

“What about the White Witch?” I said, reaching for an argument that would not insult him. “Wasn’t the moral of that story,
it’s bad for Chinese men to have anything to do with white ladies?”

“Aha! You think about stories I tell to you. Good. But Mei-bi, you are not white witch. You are child of witch. If you marry
Chinese man, you have almost Chinese babies. If your babies grow up and marry Chinese, spell of white witch is broken.
That
is moral of story for you.”

He pulled from his desk a softbound book with a cover that showed,
in vivid pinks, blues, and golds, a beaming Chinese family. He’d begun this reading primer with me earlier that week.

“You’re crazy, Lao Li.”

“Some say so. But is very disrespectful for you to say to me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t actually mean it.”

“Apology accepted.” He opened the book and pointed. “This character mean ‘person.’
Ren.
Like somebody walking. You know. One leg, two legs. Very simple.”

But it wasn’t at all simple. I didn’t want to become part of Old Li’s fairy package. It wasn’t my fault my grandmother had
married a Chinese man, so why should I have to undo the results?

“Why didn’t you pick my brother or sister? They’re older. They could fix the spell a lot sooner than I can.”

“Not Chinese enough.”

“As Chinese as I am.”

“Same parents, but they are not Chinese like you.”

I scowled at him and flipped my red hair. “I wish.”

“Chinese spirit is strong in you. I can never mind your red hair. You hear my stories. You pay attention. You work hard. You
know.”

“How do
you
know I’ll even have children? How do you know they’ll be good Chinese? I know lots of ABC full-bloods whose parents say they’re
bad Chinese.”

Lao Li nodded. “I know. Terrible. But not your children.” He jabbed the page. “If you cross walking man, give him arms, and
stretch them wide, he become ‘big’:
da.”

I was staring at this character when Tommy Wah walked in.

He and Li greeted each other and talked for several minutes in a dialect I didn’t recognize. When I asked about it, Tommy
said, “Fuzhou dialect. He makes sure I don’t forget. I see he’s got you doing your lessons, too.”

I looked to see if he was making fun. He grinned and shrugged, noncommittal.

Lao Li placed a wad of money in an envelope, wrapped it in red paper, and tied it with a gold string. “Take this to On Liang
Association,”
he said to Tommy. “Tell Lao On Chou my heart on fire. I cannot come to his birthday celebration, but I wish him many years
prosperity, plenty grandchildren. Make it flowery, you know.”

“I’ll take it if you really want me to,” said Tommy. “But On Ling told me the tong hired a group of singsong girls for the
party.”

“No! Singsong girls in Chinatown, New York City? No good singsong girls in America.”

“Maybe not good.” Tommy grinned. “But you take what you can get.”

“You do not want take that gift to On Chou.” Li grabbed back the packet. “I will take myself!”

“What happened to the fire in your heart?” Tommy wagged his finger at the old man.

“You never mind my fire. You mind your own fire.” Lao Li rolled his eyes in my direction.

Mortified by the sudden swerve of focus, I grasped for some witty, sophisticated barb, something my mother or Anna might say.
When nothing came, I pretended to be engrossed in my lesson. But I’d slid too far over on my stool and now, when I leaned
forward, the thing flipped right out from under me. I grabbed for a handhold and Li’s tea went flying all over the desk, the
primer, my shirt—

“Nice going,” said Tommy. “Is that grass style or running style?”

He shouldn’t have said that. Not while a full bowl of tea still remained. Because next thing I knew and faster than I could
stop it, that bowl was flying after the first one, but higher, wider, and harder. It splashed directly in Tommy’s face.

The bowl landed on his toe and made him jump.

“No!” Lao Li roared, and grabbed my arm. “That your future husband!”

If Tommy had been surprised by my impromptu attack, he was positively astounded by the news that we were engaged. “Future
husband! Old man, you have finally gone around the bend.”

“Around bend?” Lao Li released me and handed Tommy a towel.

“Too far. Wacko.” Tommy skewered me with a look. “You knew about this.”

I grabbed the towel from him. “Sure didn’t know he had
you
in mind.”

“Oh, but you were ready for him to marry you off to anybody else, huh? The ten-year-old concubine!”

“No!”

“The ten-year-old
orange-haired
concubine!” Tommy forced a laugh. “You know what ‘orange’ means in China? It means lots of fun, lots of babies. You get my
drift?”

And suddenly I felt the sting of oncoming tears. Not daring to look or answer him, I began to mop up the desk.

“Uncle Li,” said Tommy. “Let’s leave each other’s fire alone.
Dui?”

“Huh!” said Li.

“Dui?”
Tommy insisted.

“Dui”

But, “He will change,” Li said as soon as Tommy had gone.

“No, he won’t,” I replied. “I don’t want him to.”

The Tommy Wah of my childhood could stroke a bird with his left hand while slitting its throat with his right.

Tommy has changed. His work shows it. And his insistence on businesslike partnership. I believe he’s changed and he seems
intent on proving it, but the embarrassment of Li’s matchmaking increasingly stands between us as the Great Unmentionable,
the wall we pretend isn’t there. I have not returned to his apartment and he hasn’t invited me to. Nor have we met outside
of working hours. Nothing that might be construed as a date. Nothing after dark.

Nothing until he called this afternoon and suggested I get some pictures of a play being staged in Columbus Park. David and
some of his activist friends have a public theater company. Fairy tales for the people. Tommy would meet me there.

* * *

Columbus Park is neither large nor welcoming. It has no play equipment, little grass, and because it’s shadowed by the Criminal
Courts Building to the west, it gets dark early. But people come, as they did when I was small. They talk, waiting for something
to happen. Old men hunch over stone chess tables. Children play pavement games. Toddlers suck on long candy stems and clutch
at their mothers’ sleeves. Older kids taunt each other, shoot and lunge with twig weapons. As the shadows lengthen, parents
pull their folding chairs beneath strings of paper lanterns.

A tent of sheets forms the backstage area. Silhouetted forms rustle the cloth. Their laughter clashes with the wary quiet
of the audience outside.

He insisted he’d meet me here. Now I recognize no one. Eyes pass over me, pull away, steal hesitant glances back again. As
I move, a dark circle widens around me. Without Tommy’s introduction, they are afraid of me, of the bag slung over my shoulder,
of my hair and eyes and skin and height. I try smiling, but my smiles glance off frozen stares.

The muttering backstage falters as a jet streaks overhead, its bright tail crossing the sky’s dying band of color. The crowd
grows silently. Children down in front. Parents behind. The old folks give up their game and join the spectators. But there
are others now. Dim figures behind and around us. Swellings of shape and low voices. I can’t see them, but I sense their breathing,
their bodies adding to the midsummer’s heat. There are no movie theaters in Chinatown. To sit in a close dark space here would
be too dangerous and everyone knows it. Just as everyone knows why the shops must pay
lixi.
Why crimes go unreported. Why young men feel free to leer. Everyone knows. Even I know.

The women around me stoop and crouch by their children. Lights go out in windows overhead. A bird screams from the top of
a tree, and my heart begins to hiccup as the surrounding space contracts. Someone is standing behind me. Eyes tight and hard,
hands clenched. Long black hair. Skin glistening with sweat. The smells of salt and blood and beer.

It’s in my head, I tell myself. My imagination. Because I’ve come alone.

I could run.

Instead I whirl and press the trigger.

The flash bursts in the eyes of a child. Mouth open, closed, wailing without a sound. A lost child.

Arms reach and snatch him up, and a woman with pink plastic elephants in her hair glowers at me, then both of them disappear.
I press the camera to my face, eyes shut.

Everything I’ve gained in the past weeks threatens to topple back into nightmare. But I force myself to open my eyes. I won’t
leave.
Where
is Tommy?

A drum sounds once, twice, three times. Resolute and reassuring. Turn, it commands. Turn and listen and watch. I obey because
it is something I know I can do. Gaze from a balcony into a world that never quite looks back. And find safety there.

A ripple of white silk banners makes snow. The green and blue mask of a horse canters among the folds. Other players creeping
forward from the sides of the stage wear black gowns and white oval masks with the same bold details as the eggshell finger
puppets Li once gave me. I look for Tommy one last time, take a reading of available light, and make the necessary camera
adjustments. No flashes. The narrator addresses the audience in Chinese.

The voice I hear is Li’s.

“Jade Maiden,” he says. “You listen closely. This story is about you.”

It was winter, snowing hard. The plows had not yet come to Catherine Street and the quiet, rare and soft as crushed silk,
seemed to quilt the shop inside as well as the city without. Li said it had been a night just like this when the story began,
but in Old China, in the district of Liu-ho, where a viceroy named Wu Chi lived with his wife and beautiful daughter.

“Into this night, Wu Chi’s favorite steed run away. Horse name is Fortune, but in this snow and cold, Wu Chi believe horse
must not be
too fortunate. You know? He is wrong. Next day old man leads horse home. Oh, so old, ancient, dressed in rags, face all wrinkles,
this poor gamekeeper Chu. But viceroy is so glad for his horse, he tell Chu can have any reward. Chu sees Wu Chi’s daughter,
jade-green eyes, skin like ivory. Chu says he is not married… Viceroy cry out, No! But the girl tell her father, ‘Lao Chu
is my fate.’ And then she recite poem she spoke—a miracle!—day she was born:

Mysterious is will of Heaven!

My love in wooded darkness waits.

Ashes grown cold shall blaze anew,

Jade from gray willow sway once more.

“White turn to green to white. When green again the maiden’s betrothed, Wei I-fang, ride home from duty in Emperor’s army.
He sees peasant woman in front of old cottage selling melons. Perfect melons, round as pearls and so fragrant! I-fang climb
down from his horse to buy one, but closer he sees his beloved has become poor peasant, wife of old man. He is enraged! Draws
sword against Chu. The blade shatters in his hand.