Face

by Aimee Liu

  One day he gave me a set of miniature masks in the form of finger puppets. Made of clay, they were smooth and cool as eggshell, the painted surface chalky.

  “This story is called Pearl-sewn Shirt.”

  On one forefinger he placed the mask of a beautiful young woman, pink as a baby with curving red mouth and gentle, lifting eyes. On the other he placed a young merchant’s face, white with darkened eyes and a serious half-smile. Lao Li danced the man and woman together, accompanying them with the high-pitched wail of Chinese opera: quick, teasing movements and song, slowing to the low swoon of courtship, then picking up to the measured beat of marriage.

  “Great joy. Pure bliss. Young bride demonstrate her love by sewing for husband a shirt of pearls. Alas, husband must soon go away to sell his silks and jewels.” The bride’s mask plucks a white embroidered cloth. “But as reminder of fidelity, wife will keep that pearl-sewn shirt and show her face to no man until beloved returns.

  “Days pour into months, months into years. Neighbors begin to whisper that young wife has been abandoned, husband killed. But one day young wife peek around compound wall. Beloved returns!” A new man’s mask, all white with swooping eyes and bloodred lips, swaggers to and fro.

  “No! No! This is not husband but no-name silver trader. She pull away but too late. He has seen her great beauty and cannot rest.” An orange puppet quivers to a high note. “New man find town matchmaker! She bewitches our lady with stories of love and pleasure. Young wife beg her new friend stay, talk late. Deep in night, matchmaker secretly push this silver trader into our lady’s bed.” The white and pink masks roll together. “Such rapture! Such passion!”

  (Lao Li, his delight in the story all over his face, sneaks a peek at me to see if I am following. I grin like an idiot child.)

  “But young trader, too, must leave. His mistress feel such sorrow, she give him that pearl-sewn shirt!” The masks part and shift again.

  “Far away, two men cross path, drink wine, and talk. The night grow late. A warm wind blows, and one man loosen his coat.” Two white masks, head-to-head, the cloth suspended between them. “Husband say nothing, but he know now she has betrayed their love. He sells our lady as concubine to magistrate in faraway province.” A large mask painted in blue and green twitches on the tip of Li’s thumb. The wife’s song arches to a sharp scream, then silence as her mask folds beneath a new lord.

  “When silver trader return in one year, he learn this news of his beloved. He falls ill. Robbers steal his silver. This trader will die here, but husband send for doctor, lend this man money if he will leave town, never return. Someday die far away.”

  With a final grieving moan, the white masks part and lower.

  I clapped for the singer and his puppets, for the compliment Li had paid me by not leaving out the sexy part. It was a sad and funny story, a lot like Lao Li. Old and young at the same time. Real and unreal.

  But Li paid no attention. He sank back in his chair, eyes gone hollow. His hands, so alive just moments before, lay motionless among the painted masks.

  They looked cold, those hands. I wanted to reach out and warm them with mine. I wanted to say something bright and cheery, to bring back his smile.

  “Thank you for the story, Lao Li,” I whispered. “I’m sorry it ended sadly.”

  I slid from my chair without making a sound.

  “Wait.” He pushed himself up, opened the cabinet beside his desk. Behind the inlaid door were stacked some twenty drawers. Li stood for a moment, surveying, reminding me of my father the one time I’d gone along to visit our safe-deposit box. Dad had disappointed me by unveiling not pirate’s gold or ruby slippers, but useless, unintelligible documents.

  Li opened a long middle drawer and pulled out a parcel of pale green silk tied with a black cord. His hands shook as he began to unwrap it, and I could practically see the tiny pearls glistening, bringing the story to life.

  Unfortunately what emerged was even more ordinary than documents. The closest thing to pearls were the seven bone buttons that ran from the neck to the crotch. Instead of snowy silk, the fabric was a scratchy blue wool, the label Sears, Roebuck and Co.

  “My pearl-sewn shirt.”

  As quickly as it had fallen over him, Lao Li’s sadness gave way to annoyance.

  “You see only underwear!” He picked up the garment and shook it for me to see that, yes, it really was a union suit. “That is no underwear. That gift of love.”

  But I couldn’t help it. The thought of some Chinese lady giving Li Tsung Po Sears underwear as a token of love seemed so ridiculous I burst out laughing.

  Lao Li looked from the suit to me and, shaking his head, packed it up again.

  “Wool is great luxury in China. Everyone always cold in winter. Also, that is so—” Failing to locate the appropriate word, he crossed his arms in front of his chest.

  I tried to help him. “Personal? Intimate?”

  He nodded. “Intimate.”

  “So that’s why your wife gave it to you? Because it was so intimate?”

  “My wife.” He grimaced. “Not my wife.”

  “But you said it was like the pearl-sewn shirt.”

  “Not my wife, my—” He paused, apparently reluctant to use the term “lover.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  He looked at me very seriously for a moment, and then a big grin spread across his face. “My girlfriend!” He chortled, clapped his hands at the thought. He smoothed the silken wrapper.

  “Do you still wear it?”

  “Wear it? No.” He gave me a superior smile. “I know that story of pearl-sewn shirt. I know what happen if I wear that gift.”

  “And it worked? Her husband didn’t catch you?”

  “No. Not husband.”

  “So what happened to her?”

  His face became grave again.

  “It was war. That is truth you must understand. That is lesson of pearl-sewn shirt. You know. When men fight, love die.”

  He turned away from me to arrange the masks in their box. When he’d finished, he said, “You know love?”

  “Sure.” I slid my fingers across the inlaid threads of a cloisonné vase. “I know love. I guess.”

  “No! You do not know love! You know like.” He pushed the box toward me. “You. You are somebody’s girlfriend?”

  I could feel the heat spread across my face. “I’m only in third grade.”

  “In Old China third grade is old enough to marry.”

  The blush crept past my ears and down the back of my neck.

  “Okay,” he said, sparing me the need to say more. “I find boy for you. You know?”

  Tommy and I met two days after the seniors’ center to tour the Lower East Side. Chinatown Annex, he called it, because this territory belonged primarily to European immigrants until the seventies, when Chinese newcomers from mainland China, Vietnam, and Hong Kong quietly took it over. Not for tourists, this is where most of the sweatshops are located. Gambling dens. Slum housing stuck between brand-new high-rises built and sold at exorbitant profits by rich Taiwanese.

  I tried to pay attention to Tommy’s civics lesson, to behave like the rational, capable, equal partner we were both pretending that I was. But my mind kept trapping itself in scorekeeping. This was my third time back. The first was a disaster in some ways, but in all likelihood I had spooked myself, which might not have been so bad, either, since it forced my hand to try again. The second visit had gone better than I would have dared imagine. The worst I’d felt was embarrassed and inept, and though I was remembering things about Li I must have buried for years, none was unpleasant or frightening. I’d gotten through last night without dreams of any kind—preliminary evidence, surely, that my plan was working. And today, except for these mental ramblings, it really did seem like a job. An assignment.

  If it was this simple, of course, then I was a perfect fool for not returning years ago. The fool part I could easily buy, but the simplicity still troubled me. If it was so simp
le, why the same devastating nightmare for over a decade? I couldn’t shake the notion that something bad had happened to me or my family, something somehow connected to Chinatown. Maybe coming back wasn’t the cure, but only a first step.

  “Ni hao ma!” A middle-aged man with a shopping cart full of stuffed pink and blue dogs smiled at Tommy, who politely returned the greeting. When we’d moved on he said, “Just think. A million Chinese have come here since you moved away, Maibelle.”

  “I always knew I wasn’t welcome, but I had no idea it was that bad.”

  He kicked a crushed paper cup out of his path. “Problem with round-eyes is they think the universe revolves around them. It would never occur to Chinese to say such a thing. Even joking.”

  He had the same flattened tone of voice as when he’d asked about Henry.

  I looked straight ahead to a new brick apartment building on the corner. All straight angles up and down. No crisscross of fire escapes, no tangle of signs or lights, just ladders of faceless regimented windows. If you stared too long at a structure like that, it could break your heart.

  “That building looks like a giant’s thumb… What makes you think I was joking?”

  He touched the fabric of my shirt. “It’s not criticism but fact. Take a look.”

  Lower, he meant. Street level. He didn’t point or single anyone out. He didn’t need to. We were surrounded by people dressed in loose-fitting garments, drab prints, plain shoes, unassuming hairstyles. The women wore knee-high nylons turned down like socks. The men’s collars lay flat and splayed. No ties. No jackets. Men or women, when they caught me looking, they ducked and rushed headlong into the warm dirty breeze.

  “Only way they’d look you in the eye is if they thought they were invisible.”

  “I know just how they feel.”

  We walked on without speaking, but I sensed him mentally weighing my words and regretted this slip of self-pity.

  “When you lived here, Maibelle, only the old people were Chinese-born. Rest of us, if we were honest, were as American as you. Now hardly any ABCs live here anymore, and nobody feels like they belong.”

  “You do.”

  “Do I?” He watched two young boys across the street crouching over bamboo cages.

  “You were born here.”

  “So were you.”

  “But you—” I hunched my shoulders against the crickets’ chilling screech.

  “A person’s geography is both outward and inward. Zhu xin. Bamboo heart. Traitor’s heart, that’s what my father called the ABCs who break tradition and cause their families to lose face.”

  “He didn’t call you that!”

  “Chinese lose face for so many reasons. I told my parents I wouldn’t take over the store, I wanted a different life.”

  “You said they wanted you to make something of your life.”

  “But I wanted a different life.”

  “You rebelled. That’s good. I’m still trying to figure out how to do that.”

  “I’m still trying to figure out how to undo it.” He frowned. “Lunch?”

  Noodle shops and tea rooms huddled like expectant children all along these converted streets, but instead Tommy stopped at a sidewalk vegetable vendor. He scrutinized the brightly colored flats, exchanged a few words with the grocer, and began to pluck Chinese long beans, green onions, taro root. Pretty soon, his arms were full.

  “My mother had no daughters,” he explained. “So I cook.”

  I thought of our meal together uptown, his refusal to sit with his back to the door, but banished the prickle of anxiety that followed. He nodded vigorously at something the grocer was saying. We were partners. I should trust him.

  Tommy’s building stood farther down toward the water, on Pearl Street. It had a small antiseptic lobby and empty white hallways. The flooring throughout, including the elevator, was a pink and tan vinyl flecked with chunks of silver and gold that looked like the crushed remnants of a little girl’s birthday party. We rode up nine stories without encountering another person.

  “Where is everybody?”

  He grinned. “Maybe your giant ate them for lunch.”

  “Good. Then he won’t be hungry for us.”

  “That’s the Chinese in you, you know.”

  “What is?”

  He turned the key and pushed open his door. “Man-eating giants.”

  “No. It’s Li.” I reconsidered. “At least partly it is.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  The apartment was one room, plain and small and filled with light from a sliding glass door that opened onto a balcony overlooking the East River. It was a magnetic view encompassing both the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, all the way up to Queens. Scudding clouds. Toy boats. The chop of the waves like pinpricks against the water’s glossy darkness. But all that separated the concrete platform from the plunge beyond was a few metal bars and a two-inch railing.

  I turned back to the room. There was no bed, just a couch that I assumed folded out and a couple of overstuffed armchairs. A kitchenette with a counter and stools. In the center of the room, covering the party leavings, was a reddish-brown Tibetan prayer rug. I began to relax. Tommy’s life and passion, judging by the physical evidence, were his work.

  A sawhorse table held a typewriter and stacks of books and papers, two tall file cabinets with more folders piled on top. The walls were solid with old photographs, prints, and drawings. Grinning men in bowler hats held up deer antlers. Women hid behind wedding veils. A smoke-filled opium parlor and a steaming laundry looked equally like scenes from Dante’s Inferno. I thought of Tommy’s comment about personal geography extending outward and inward. Though these people were strangers, I’d lived on their street, gone to school with their great-grandchildren, bought candy and toys at the same shops they’d built generations earlier. Somewhere back in Old China, our ancestors had been neighbors. These pictures, unlike my father’s, made no demands. Instead they seemed like an offering.

  I pointed. “These remind me of Li.”

  Tommy looked over from the kitchenette, where he was unpacking the groceries. “How so?”

  “They make me feel like a kindred spirit.”

  “The way he did?”

  I nodded.

  “He once asked me, if you forget where you come from, how can you know where you’re going?”

  “But you wouldn’t take over the store.”

  “My father thought that’s where I came from. It wasn’t what Li meant.”

  I came over to the kitchenette. “How did you get to be friends with Lao Li?”

  “His grandparents and some of my great-grandparents came from the same village, so my father and he were in the same fong. Dad used to say he was sharing me because Li had no sons of his own. That meant I could run errands for both of them. But I liked Uncle Li, he told good stories.”

  He handed me a small triangular knife. “If you’re going to eat, you have to work.”

  My relationships with men rarely venture into the kitchen, and I was so unsettled by the combination of a sharp blade and the sudden physical proximity between us that all further thought of Li fled my mind. Fortunately Tommy seemed to know without asking that I rarely ate or prepared anything more complicated than salad, and set me to work slicing vegetables while he tended the noodles and pork on the stove. After tacitly establishing our separate body zones within the limited space, we worked in companionable silence, and soon the room filled with the smells of garlic, ginger, and peanut oil.

  I completed my assigned task and cleared the counter. He filled two glasses with water, placed them with chopsticks side by side in front of me.

  “Do you have the life you wanted?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “You said your parents lost face because you wanted a different life. Did you get it?”

  He sprinkled the noodles with sesame seed and poked them with long cooking sticks. “My rebellion went too far. I had to leave Chinatown for some time. A c
ousin of mine in Hong Kong owns this building. At first, that was the only reason I came back. Then I realized I never wanted to leave.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Oh, far, far away.” He handed me two bowls of noodles, pale yellow with bits of meat and jewel-bright vegetables. “Hungry?”

  “Where?”

  “Hundred Thirty-fifth Street.”

  “Exile.”

  “You could call it that.” He smiled, came around beside me, and lifted his glass. “Gan bei!”

  “Gan bei. ‘Bottoms up,’ right?” The toast with which my father always launched lunch at the Ming Yu. “I haven’t heard that in years.”

  “Welcome home, Mei-bi.” He clinked my glass and drank.

  “You’re trying to distract me. Why? What do you mean, you had to leave?”

  He ran a hand through his hair as if it was suddenly bothering him, then picked up his chopsticks and rolled them between his fingers. The pointed tips hovered over his bowl like a dragonfly over a pond. He leaned forward without another word and attacked his food.

  Part IV

  The Fairy’s Rescue

  11

  Tommy and I have been meeting every three or four days, early mornings primarily, before the tourists invade. It is the time of day I remember best, when I used to feel most at home. The scratch and roll of metal grates going up. The bustle of vendors receiving their goods. Mothers and grandmothers calling, answering as early sun warmed the bricks of the buildings across the street. I had no idea as a child how little I knew of the world in which I lived.

  The seniors’ center was an equally benign reintroduction. I’ve accused Tommy of luring me with the most approachable faces in Chinatown. He doesn’t deny it.

  “But who said you can only photograph faces?”

  So now, in back rooms and street stalls, I frame swollen hands underwater swimming with fat white noodles, chopping colorless squares of bean curd, or wielding guillotine cleavers over the heads of squawking ducks. Some of the fingers are gnarled with arthritis. Others are missing digits. Regardless, they work continuously, automatic as machir