Face

by Aimee Liu

  His hand on my shoulder pulled without yanking. The crowd thinned and I slowed. We walked side by side. He asked the questions he hadn’t asked before. How long I’d lived in California. What I was doing there. When I’d come back. I kept my eyes on the teased hair of a woman in front of us and answered in monosyllables.

  He didn’t say anything for about half a block. And then the inevitable. “How could you fly if you were afraid of heights?”

  His voice rose at an odd pitch. His brow was furrowed, mouth slightly pursed. The earnest concern made me smile.

  “Now you don’t need to ask why I quit.”

  His puzzled expression remained, but he stopped the questions for a few more blocks. I pretended to look at the window dressings.

  Tommy stopped between the stone lions of the New York Public Library. “Come. I want to show you something.”

  Inside the huge, hushed reading room he called up a small pictureless volume entitled Friends of Freedom, published by an obscure academic press. The cover blurb described it as a history of a community of Quakers that flourished in Greenwich Village in the 1800s as a station on the underground railway. The author was T. T. Wah.

  Speaking in a practiced library whisper, he said it had evolved out of class assignments for one of his graduate professors whose brother needed some gratis manuscripts to launch his new publishing company.

  I flipped through the pages, more to avoid looking at Tommy than to assess his book. What a peculiar thing for him to write about. Chinatown’s Malcolm X cum Studs Terkel. Like me taking pictures of Iowan snow. I stopped turning the pages and pretended to read. My eye caught on a line.

  “Silence was their prison. Stories their refuge. Action their salvation.

  I read the passage again. He was writing about the Quakers, but that didn’t matter. I read it again and tried to sink it in. Refuge and salvation.

  Tommy talked. “The professor’s brother was using the nonprofit press as a tax shelter. It folded within a year. I guess I should be grateful just to be published, only this is probably the first time anyone’s checked it out. You know?” But the way his fingers hovered, grasping the spine and giving the pages an almost imperceptible shake before returning the book to the desk, belied what he was saying.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being proud of your work,” I said. “Now I want to show you something.”

  I scribbled some dates on a slip of paper and handed it to the librarian.

  I had before me copies of Life magazine from 1947 and 1948. The years, my mother said, when my father enjoyed his greatest success. That’s actually how she put it: enjoyment. Though she was the only one, far as I could tell, who’d taken the slightest pleasure in it. Compared to Dad’s attitude about his lost career, Tommy was positively gloating over his accomplishment.

  “There should be cover shots by him,” I said. But the pages refused to open all the way because of the heavy binders, and it was difficult to tell the heavier cover paper from the glossy pages.

  Tommy stopped my hands and closed the book to take it away. I glanced up, prepared for anger, but he was examining the compressed page edges as if conducting an experiment. He held them for me to see, and pointed to bands of white separated by almost indistinguishable stripes of cover color.

  “Look how wide the white is here. And here. And here. A lot of the covers are missing. Out of a bound volume, can you imagine? Some people disgust me.”

  A thickness settled in the back of my throat. Without looking at Tommy’s face I withdrew the volume from his hands, measured the space between the stripes, and opened to the place where a cover ought to be. Only by bending the spine nearly double could you see it, but deep in the valley between the pages a surgical slice had been made, so long ago that the edge had yellowed. I flipped to the contents page. “Cover photo of Manchurian refugees by Joe Chung.” Three pages of photographs and text had also been excised from that magazine. Scores more from the rest of that and the other volume.

  “Quite a methodical operation,” Tommy said. His tone was cautious, and I detected a slight retreat from his earlier condemnation. “Why would anyone do this?”

  “Anyone didn’t.”

  Tommy tried to make eye contact as we left the library. I could feel the white heat of his stare boring into the side of my face. I wanted to tell him to watch where he was going. I wanted him to forget what I’d started. For the first time I felt ashamed of my father, saw his denial of the past in the context of a crime. And I—not my mother, not my professors or his former editors and audience—I was his primary victim.

  I wasn’t conscious of my speed, except to notice Tommy trotting to keep up. The lunchtime mob at Forty-second Street parted like water. I didn’t slow down until I reached Grand Central, down past the benches of waiting room bag people, past the white travelers’ clock, down to the center of the stars. There I stopped.

  “You can see the whole universe from here.” I pointed to the astrological map on the ceiling.

  “You think I’ve never been in here before?”

  Not only did I think it. I knew, though I was not sure how or why. Maybe because the whole time I lived in Chinatown I never came here, either. Except once. I must have been six years old.

  If Tommy believed in stories, I thought, then I should tell him that story. Maybe it would make up for the magazines. Maybe, in some small way, help explain them.

  So we sat at the bottom of the Vanderbilt Avenue staircase and I told him about the winter’s day when my father, left in charge of Henry and me, decided for the first and last time ever to take us to the beach.

  “Of course, I’d never seen a room as large as Grand Central. In those days there were no homeless to speak of. You could appreciate the distance between the floor and the stars. I remember thinking the brass on the information kiosk was gold. But Dad pulled us along so fast I seemed to be seeing in snapshots.”

  We’d run to catch the train—an antiquated car with ceiling fans and hard rattan seats and dull navy-green paint. I thought we would make the whole trip underground, like in a subway, but eventually we came out of the tunnel, crossed water. We kept on. Snow fell and stopped, and still we traveled, passing one commuter station after another and a world of shingled houses and trees, brown factories spurting smoke against an indifferent gray sky. From time to time I saw slices of ocean, but Dad wouldn’t say where we were going or how far away from home. The fans weren’t working, but the floor heaters were. Dry, dusty heat. Henry had brought along a maze book. His head nodded with the motion of the train. I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until a blast of cold hit my face.

  My father hadn’t spoken a word the whole way, and he wasn’t about to start now. We walked the length of a seaside village from the train to the beach and stood watching waves crash into huge rocks until my feet began to freeze. It was only Long Island Sound, and through the gray I could see shadowland across the water, but from the way Dad gazed out beneath his cupped hands, you’d think the whitecaps marked a trail all the way to China. Henry and I had to shout over the wind to get him moving, and even then he wasn’t really reacting to us.

  He picked up a stone long and thin as a shell. He worked his way down between the boulders to a place where the waves touched his toes, then lifted his arm way up over his head, and with a single flick of his fingers sent the rock gliding out over the swollen sea, so far I lost sight of it before it fell.

  That was it. Just one stone. His eyes were watering. He turned, took my brother’s hand and mine, and guided us back to the village, where we stopped for hot chocolate. He bought Henry a Casper the Ghost comic book and we read it together the whole way back while my father stared out the train window.

  When we got home, the police were there. My mother acted as if she wanted them to arrest my father, but they wouldn’t. Anna grabbed me as I walked through the door, and hugged me as if she loved me.

  “It was months before Mum trusted us to my father’s care again. Didn’t H
enry ever tell you this story?”

  “No.” Tommy eyed Orion. “Were you afraid?”

  “Not until later that night, when I heard my mother crying. She wept like she was in pain, as if something had been cut out of her. Something she’d never get back.”

  He nodded. “She go on feeling that way?”

  “Yes.” I turned so he couldn’t see my face. “But she fights it.”

  Lunchtime had passed, the throngs outside gradually eased. We went into a sandwich shop on Lexington that advertised itself as “The Home of the $2 Munch.” In some places two dollars for a thimbleful of soup and a slice each of American cheese and Wonder bread would be considered extortion, but in Manhattan it was tantamount to a gift. Grateful that Tommy made no gesture to buy, I paid for this gift and selected a table in the corner. I sat with my back to the wall.

  “Mind changing?”

  I shrugged, traded places. He methodically removed everything from his tray before claiming the seat he’d requested. His meal now took up half as much space as my tray. I debated whether to follow his lead, but was worried he’d notice I was following his lead.

  He looked at me, and though he seemed amused, his eyes made me think of lasers. He could turn them up so they bore down hard, or soften them until they seemed almost diffuse, but always the beam remained strong and steady. I sensed that he’d burn right through to the back of my skull if I let him hold my gaze. So we ended up playing visual tag. Looking and being seen. He was ahead, but he hadn’t won yet.

  I left my tray where it was, and Tommy sipped his soup. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever watched him as a boy, eating.

  “I don’t know much about you, you know.”

  “Not much to know, boss.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me that. Henry said your family’s been here for generations.”

  “How is Henry?” Tommy’s voice was dead calm.

  “The same.”

  He nodded and let it go. “Not here, but in this country. My great-grandmother came from Szechuan. Her parents sold her to a trader who shipped her to California as a prostitute. My great-grandfather sold trout and salmon to the miners, he fell in love with her, paid a saloon owner one hundred dollars—fish money, my grandmother used to call it. They had three children, two died as babies.”

  I put down my spoon.

  “When the whites in California started killing Chinese workers around the turn of the century, my great-grandparents took their son and came to New York. They opened a poultry store. My grandfather passed the business on to my father before I was born.”

  The baby that didn’t die. I pushed the unbidden thought aside. “You chose not to carry on the tradition.”

  He leaned back in his chair and wove his arms into a defending brace. “My parents gave me an American name. They made me promise to stay in school, make something of my life.”

  I suspect he didn’t mean it this way, but the last phrase came out sounding like a dare. I bit into my sandwich and waited for him to unfold his arms. Tommy’s parents had been shorter than I was at ten years old. Flapping among the bodies of chickens, talking and laughing with customers as their steel blades flew faultlessly, chopping off heads and wings.

  “Where are your parents now?”

  “Both dead.”

  “Oh, God. I’m sorry.”

  He dropped his arms and stared at the people streaming past us on the other side of the glass. Commuters whose day had finished early, bustling for trains that would take them back to those beachfront towns.

  “There are people in Chinatown who have lived in New York all their lives and never set foot north of Broome Street.” He turned abruptly back to me. “Until I was fifteen years old, I was one of them.”

  I pushed my tray onto the empty table next to us. The only other customers now were a pair of young men in ill-fitting business suits who talked intently over monstrous hot fudge sundaes. The heel of the darker of the two jerked up and down as he talked, as disconnected and earnest as the panting of a loyal dog. The other man’s feet never moved.

  “Why did we change seats?”

  “I don’t sit with my back to the door.”

  I inadvertently looked around as the two men got up and left.

  “Why?”

  “Occupational hazard.”

  “Social history is dangerous?”

  He picked up his sandwich, took a huge bite, and chewed slowly. Seamlessly. If he swallowed, I didn’t notice.

  The year Tommy Wah was fifteen years old was the same year my family left Chinatown. The last year I saw Lao Li.

  It was not Li who introduced us, but in my mind Tommy and I were linked by him. Li Tsung Po. Lao Li. A mutual acquaintance? No. More.

  I first met him one cold autumn day when I was eight and had strayed too far from home. I didn’t recognize the street or shops and was just starting to get nervous when I came upon an enormous, brightly painted pillar rising like a god’s leg in front of what was then a small curio store. Of course I stopped. Who could resist? Within the sculpted pictures lay a world of peacocks, mountains, golden leaves. A vivid green and gilt dragon wound round and round, his head rising into the clouds. Tiny white-robed women carried fruit in the palms of their hands; men held lanterns to light the way. It was magical.

  The shop behind the pillar was long and narrow and dark as a wizard’s den, the only source of light a lamp on a desk at the back. There sat an old, old man with a face so thin that knives of shadow stretched beneath his cheekbones.

  He called out in a deep, gruff voice, “Come in, come in. Hurry up.”

  “I’m lost,” I said from the doorway. “I need to get back to Mott Street.”

  “Mott Street?” He cocked his head and pulled on his chin, then slowly rose from his desk and, leaning heavily on an ivory cane, shuffled in my direction. His black robe skimmed the floor. His white hair and spindly beard made me think of cobwebs. I couldn’t move.

  He reached the front of the shop and pointed down the street to the right. “Mott Street is there. Not far.” His front teeth glittered, solid gold. His eyes were tiny insects tucked behind old-man lids.

  Before I knew what was happening, he grabbed my hand and pressed it between his own. “You call me Lao Li.”

  His palms were cold and I could feel the long bones just beneath his skin. It was like shaking hands with a dragon.

  “You are Maibelle, dui

  My hand jerked, but he had it clamped so tight that, instead of pulling away, I lost my balance and fell backward into a pile of brocaded cushions. Having failed—or refused—to let go, Mr. Li fell on top of me. We lay motionless for several seconds, and I’d just convinced myself that I’d killed him when he gave a roar.

  “Jingren de!”

  The sound erupted from deep down, the rumbling of a wizard who knew my name. Then a gurgle and shudder ran through his body, gathered into a yelp, and the old man finally rolled off of me.

  “Hee, hee. Hee, hee! Qing.” He motioned me to rise, though he was still flat on his back.

  I started for the door, but the sight of him sprawled on the floor held me. The black robe was twisted around his legs. His cane had been thrown to one side, the lion carved into its handle snarling up at me. The old man just lay there chortling at the ceiling.

  I asked if he was all right, which started him up again, and though I tried to hand him his cane and help him to his feet, he was laughing so hard he could barely sit. When he took my hand this time, his palm was warm and his eyes bright.

  “Okay, Mei-be.” He let me pull him up.

  “How do you know me?”

  He shook his head. “I know lot of things. Come, Jade Maiden, I show you. My shop is very special.” And then, as if I were his most valued customer, he led me on a tour.

  A case near the entrance contained a trio of jade bracelets thick as doughnuts and a pair of tiny brocaded shoes inset with pearls and black jet. “If you are a girl in Old China,” Li said, “you wear these
when you grow up.”

  It was a sobering thought, since the bracelets were so heavy I could hardly lift them and already my feet were far too big to fit inside the shoes. Besides, they were all the wrong shape.

  As if reading my mind, Li told me, “In China you wear tight bandages, stop bones from growing, then you have lotus feet and shoes will fit.”

  He smiled.

  I said it sounded like torture, and people in Old China must have been very mean.

  He replied that in China passion and pain could not be separated.

  In one corner sat a rickshaw with worn leather seats and several wheel spokes missing. The handles were burnished and smooth as skin, and when I touched them, they were moist, as if with sweat. Mr. Li would not let me sit in the rickshaw because it was liable to break, but he insisted I try the store’s centerpiece, a rosewood throne inlaid with ivory clouds and jade serpents, the legs carved into elephants. It was very uncomfortable, but that hardly mattered because as soon as I was settled, Mr. Li told me of man-eating demons and water dragons ("claws made from lightning, teeth sharp like swords") and an emperor-magician who turned his wife to stone ("that wife ask too many questions").

  As he talked, his long, bony fingers moved like tentacles. I felt his black eyes watching from beneath their great sprouting brows, but I could not decide whether he viewed me with fondness, pity, or amusement.

  Finally Lao Li led me to the back of the store, where the air was thick with peanut oil smells from the noodle shop next door. There, one whole wall was covered with photographs from the time when his antiques were new.

  There were scared-looking children and stern old women wrapped in elaborate gowns. The women’s hair was arranged in geometric shapes that stood up and out from their heads. They had the look of evil queens from some distant, alien planet. The men, always photographed separately and often in Western dress, seemed far less threatening. They had tufted eyebrows, wisps of beard, and cheeks that were either very round or hollow, like Mr. Li’s.