The Natural Laws of Good Luck (18 page)

“No I don't think we can.”

We got another job at a home for retired nuns. These keen-minded and less heavily drugged ladies initially demanded to know the definitions of
yin, yang
, and
qi
; see xeroxed charts showing the pathways of energy through numbered meridians; and hear explanations of the metaphysics of breath. It was not unusual for a whole room of Sisters of the Sacred Heart performing the Tai Chi form “White Crane Spread Its Wing” to be stopped in their tracks by one of them piping loudly: “Master Lu, what is the symbolic spiritual meaning of this movement we are doing? Can you talk about that for a few minutes, please?”

“Yes, this-ah mean another person try to hit you, you need bring right arm up. This another person have power too big, so you don't need push. Let another person make his power all gone, then your stomach turn like this way, make stomach energy out through your shoulder—this easy way make another person fall down.”

Zhong-hua was very traditional in this way of teaching the precise martial application of every form. The poetic name of one Yang-style form, “Parting the Wild Horse's Mane,” carried this explanation: “If some person punch you, grab his arm like this and pulla. With left hand, pusha he hand off. He fall down, no problem.” The explanation for “Looking for a Needle on the Sea's Bottom” involved the opponent's genitals coming to a bad end. The nuns' faces registered silent consternation at Chen-style forms, such as “The Ape Presents Fruits,” or smiling nods at “Stepping Up into Seven Stars.”

Zhong-hua broke them down further by talking about the philosophy of Chinese medicine in unintelligible English punctuated with Chinese. “Yes-ah, you see, in China we call this
chenrou
(wind up), and this we call
liuliu
(save and store). In Tai Chi you need think circle, circle, all the time circle. Bring qi from under belly button—China call
dantien
. With your breath, move qi through your body. Blood follow qi. Where qi stops, blood stop. If qi stop in your
beihui
(energy point at top and center of head), then blood stop in your
beihui
. This is called ‘Big Problem.' Maybe have something grow up in there, like cancer something, on-the-bone something.”

The class stood on shaky legs until their eyes glazed over and they begged for chairs. The director intervened crossly with the order that no explanations were necessary and that if Mr. Lu didn't want to get fired, he must give no lectures. The next time, he curtailed his speech to directives and body parts: bend your elbow meant bend your knee, turn your wrist meant turn your waist, and circle your ankle meant circle your shoulder. The sisters, ranging in age from late eighties to one hundred years old, adapted to this language of interchangeable joints and followed along in happy confusion.

There is a Tai Chi form called “Wind Brushes Emerald Willows.” There is also a private girls school near our home called Emma Willard. My husband had once visited this school, and thereafter, in every Tai Chi class, announced this form as “Wind Brushes Emma Willard.” Many such pathways were made in his brain that could never be redirected. Encouraging the nuns to feel the qi energy moving through their bodies and out their palms, my husband would say, “Feel your hands warm and tingle.” Then he would look over at me and ask in a low voice, “What means warm and tingle?”

One sister quipped every few minutes, “I don't get it. Why are we doing this? Why are we here?” These questions, repeated many times a day, seemed to refer to life on earth in general. Another sister said testily, to me this time, “So what is this qi?” I explained that
qi is breath energy and one could bring it into the body from the universe.

“Like God?”

“Well, yes, maybe like God.”

“Oh, well, He can come in whenever He wants anyway. I don't need this foolishness.” She stood frowning skeptically in the doorway for several classes, then one day marched in and planted herself in the prime spot right in front of Mr. Lu, giving him her rapt attention from then on.

The “I don't get it” sister had been a trial lawyer. Her name was Barbara, and she was ninety-six years old. Dementia had touched her mind but left her sense of humor intact. She was usually muttering under her breath: things like “I'm still a lawyer, but a lot of good it does me here. What's the point?” She greeted the nurse with “Hi there, Useless.” But from the very first class, Sister Barbara took to Zhong-hua and faithfully attempted her version of the exercises, or at the very least gazed lovingly at Mr. Lu. For the Qigong exercise “Ten Dragons Climbing the Mountain,” all ten fingers are crooked to rake the head from hairline to the base of the skull. Barbara's wig would slip off first, and the dentures would soon follow as the dragon fingers stretched the skin on her face.

“This ain't right, teacher.”

“No problem.” Zhong-hua bent to swoop up the hair. “No hair no problem. No need.”

After that, wig and teeth were gleefully discarded at the beginning of class, much to the disgust of another sister whose hair still grew from her head. “Put that back on! Who wants to see that bald eagle's head? I'll never do that. When I go bald, I'll keep my wig on like I should.”

Now that she had Mr. Lu on her side, Barbara told her to shut her trap. The final Qigong exercise for those still standing required inhaling deeply in Horse Stance and then grabbing both buttocks in big handfuls with a guttural exhale from the
dantien
, the energy
center of the body, three fingers below the belly button. The students were never guttural enough and had to repeat three or four times until my husband heard the right kind of grunt. Satisfied, he grinned, said “Thank you very much,” and bowed.

The last ten minutes of class were reserved for neck and shoulder massage. At first, the sisters squeaked and shrank fearfully in their chairs.

“Mercy! You're hurting me.”

“Oh. Oh. Ah. Uh.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Lu. You're so kind.”

“God bless you.”

Barbara especially loved the massage part. When she was too confused to keep up in class, she came anyway to interrupt at random times throughout the hour. “Hey, teacher, my shoulder hurts, you know.” After class, Barbara's teeth remained behind, unmissed until mealtime. A few times the nurses caught her waiting slyly behind the door, sans wig, hoping to follow Mr. Lu home.

I gave several workshops at the convent in mask making, dragging Sweet Sweet along as my assistant to get her legs unfolded for a while. She was annoyed and wouldn't talk to me in the car but rose to the occasion once we were there. She helped one sister mix colors for a fish mask and another whittle a beak for a dove that looked kind of like a blowfish. One sister made a mask of Puerto Rico, including native flowers, mountains, and streams. When it was dry, she put it on and began to sway and bend, singing a song of praise to her beloved land. Another sister made a dachshund mask. Her eyes brightened when she spied a tiny LEGO monkey that had fallen into my box of beads and buttons. She reverently glued the monkey on the dachshund's head, then put it on and told me this story of the year she turned eighteen: Her twin brother had a small monkey he carried inside his jacket everywhere he went. The monkey went with them as they traveled together across Germany by train. For her birthday, her brother surprised her with a dachshund puppy. The same year
she resolved to join the convent and had to say good-bye to her two loves, her brother and her puppy.

On Chinese New Year 2004, we made dumplings at the convent with the sisters, who helped roll the dough by hand and spoon in the fillings of shrimp or pork with ginger and leeks. The director had admonished us that the sisters had little appetite and one dumpling each would suffice. The sisters slurped down their firsts and stood in line elbowing and nudging one another for seconds and thirds. Those in wheelchairs sent couriers to refill their plates. Da Jie had come along to help roll the dough. She soon felt herself in safe company, and her laughter, as always, rang like silver bells. Rather than sustain the effort to make her broken English understood, she cleared herself a space in the corner by the window, closed her eyes, and danced with outstretched arms while humming along loudly to the Chinese folk tunes that played over the speakers.

One sister, whom I had told of my husband's singing ability, requested a song. Not able to refuse an old woman, he burst forth with a traditional Chinese song in his booming Pavarotti voice. The sisters clutched their napkins to their hearts, and the dumpling line stopped moving as they all turned to listen. This was the first time I had heard his arresting voice since he sang the Chinese national anthem at a karaoke bar in China. In his youth Zhong-hua often hiked with a friend from the village where he taught school to a secluded riverbank five miles away. There Zhong-hua belted out the classic opera melodies while the friend coached him. “Keep going, buddy! You will be famous. Who has this kind of voice? One in a million, that's who. Keep going! Don't you care about the government.” This traditional music was banned as reactionary. Chairman Mao's government had ordered six brand-new operas composed and performed all over China. These were the official operas of the revolution. If caught singing the old classics, a person could be beaten, jailed, or even killed. The singing sessions were very secret.

I cannot sing, and Zhong-hua's voice seemed the most enviable of his gifts. I would have traded all my capabilities for that one. But whenever I asked Zhong-hua to sing, he just shook his head emphatically: “No need. These things all in the past. Sing song is in the past.”

The Power of Destruction

A
PERSON HAS A FORCE FIELD
. Things happen there. I noticed that when my husband passed through a room, glass objects that had collected dust on the shelf for years quaked and shattered. Legs fell off chairs, handles dropped off pots, and the china Dalmatian toppled onto the German shepherd and cracked off his hind leg. Maybe the goblet on the shelf had been walking toward the edge since it was used last Thanksgiving. Maybe I didn't put enough glue in the hole when I made the stool. By the time he had been here about eighteen months, the breaking objects got bigger and of greater significance to daily life. He could break things that were far away and not in line with his intent. One day, while splitting wood, he made an unlucky swing with the iron maul; it struck the plastic wedge askew and sent it spinning end over end through the air. The wedge crashed through the kitchen window forty-five feet away.

One bad week shortly after the Chinese New Year started with the tape player incident. Zhong-hua set it on the trunk of the car and forgot to place it inside before we drove away to teach Tai Chi class. I wasn't paying attention. Fifteen miles later he remembered the player. We drove back and found the black plastic fragments and colored wires by the bridge where Route 2 crosses the Quaken Kill. Zhong-hua pawed around in the snow and rescued several
cassettes of soothing music, the casings all cracked and the ribbons tangled like linguini. He found the two halves of an uncashed check from a student along with a paycheck from the grocery from four months earlier that he had stashed in the tape box. Money dealings in China are almost always in cash, and he could not get in the habit of regarding checks as actual money.

Soon after this, he was loading the woodstove and forced the door closed on a stick of wood with a pointy end, shattering the hundred-dollar fireproof glass. He drove our reconstituted silver spray-painted Nissan pickup to the barn to unload some boards and parked it on the slope, forgetting that the emergency brake didn't work. When he turned his back, it drove away by itself in reverse, coming to rest a few hundred yards away against a tree in our neighbors' woodlot. The door fell off. He wired it back on but afterward was obliged to climb in and out the passenger side.

The wind howled and rattled the glass of the old farmhouse windows. A massive ash tree crashed to the ground across the frozen dirt drive. Zhong-hua filled the chainsaw with gas and drove it into the massive trunk. The engine seized, and within the hour the saw was pronounced dead by Earnie, the local chainsaw expert. Zhong-hua had filled it with pure gas and neglected to add the special oil ingredient. He thought the oil additive was optional. He replaced the saw with a cheap electric one, designed for occasional bush trimming in the suburbs. He ran it all day. The engine was still moaning and sputtering in the moonlight until it started spewing black smoke. This one was pronounced dead under warranty. Number three made it through two days and then expired. The store manager was unhappy but gave him a new one and told him not to come back. By this time, only small branches of the great ash remained to be sectioned, but darkness descended on the rising and falling of cut after cut. I refrained several times from running out to stop him. He was convinced that the leaves falling from the trees were choking the pond—maybe he was acting on this belief. I wanted to trust his good sense but didn't, actually. It was
my reluctance to be the one always taking charge mingling with a manic sadness in the air that turned my mind from asking aloud, “Have you lost your mind?” In the morning I looked out, and all the small trees surrounding the frog pond lay on the ground. The pond, just freezing around the edges, looked as startling as an eye plucked of lashes.

The razing of the pond left an unsettling carnage, severed tree trunks with sap dripping, and toppled branches clawing at the blue sky. Burning rituals ensued. Zhong-hua spent long hours tending the fires. Dense smoke billowed from the wet branches. One fire was directly above our buried telephone line, which melted, cutting off our connection. Our alarmed neighbor saw the smoke and rumbled down on his tractor to make sure no disaster had befallen us. He cast a disturbed glance at the pond's nakedness but didn't say anything.