He breathed deeply, feeling good. This was going to be a special day.
" =
A very special day.
Even with the help of the ACCC workers, the church volunteers, and the men from Worthy Construction, it took all morning and most of the afternoon to attach the two sectional halves of the building and get the shell set fled in place. There were a few minor mishapsa window broke when the crane dropped the first sec don too jarringly on the ground, and a small portion of the lower east wall was accidentally damaged when a corner of the flatbed bumped against it--but for the most part things went very smoothly, and by nightfall the reconstructed church, on the outside at least, looked almost the same as it had when he'd viewed it back in Phoenix.
It was after dark before Pastor Wheeler finally told everyone to call it quits. The bulk of the fxtures still remained in the third truck, but the two flatbeds were empty. The first phase of the work would be completed tomorrow. , The ACCC workers were put up in the homes of willing parishioners for the night, and Wheeler saw them to their hosts' houses, giving each his hearty thanks. Afterward, he returned to the church. He picked up his plastic iced tea cup from the hood of one of the trucks and walked into the empty husk of the new addition.
The wooden floor had been placed directly atop the dirt, and while he had been lectured on the disadvantages of such a move by all of the construction workers and ACCC men, it looked good. In the next few weeks, they would tear out a portion of one wall and connect it to the existing church. In his mind, he saw the completed project, the finished Church of the Living Christ, a house of worship so large and unique that it would appear on the desert horizon taller than Apache Peak, more substantial than the surrounding bluffs, acting as a beacon to the multitudes who would come to praise God.
He felt a tingle of excited anticipation course through his body. On Sunday he was going to tell his flock that the Lord Jesus Christ had returned. He was going to tell them what he had seen, what he had been told. He did not know how they would take the good news, but that only contributed to his excitement.
This would separate the wheat from the chaff in his congregation. This would determine the future of his flock.
He took a sip of his iced tea and grimaced as something grainy and foul-tasting rode the wave of liquid over his tongue and down his throat. He pulled off the plastic lid and held the cup toward the refracted light that streamed through the door and windows. On the single floating slice of brown lemon were dozens of small furiously crawling flies, each about the size of a pinhead. More small specks floated in the dark tea between the ice cubes. Some sort of fruit fly, he assumed. He was about to walk outside and toss the contents of the cup on the ground when he realized that, like everything else, this too was part of God's plan.
If Jesus hadn't wanted him to drink the flies, he wouldn't have allowed them into his tea.
Wheeler thought for a moment, then gave a short prayer of thanks, replaced the lid, put the straw to his lips, and drank.
The last hour at the restaurant had been slow, so they'd eaten pork fried rice and an order of chicken chow fun that had been phoned in but not picked up, and had cleaned up early. Sue and John wiped the tables and swept the floor in the dining area, while their mother and grandmother washed dishes. Their father took care of the woks and the cooking area. They left on time for once, and it was only a few minutes after nine when they pulled into their driveway.
Although it was dark out, Chris Chapman and Rod Malvern were standing on the strip of brown grass that separated their properties, talking, and Sue waved at them as she got out of the car. They waved back and returned immediately to their conversation. Neither of them acknowledged her parents at all. She shut the car door and followed her father and mother around the willow tree, up the short walk to the house. Such behavior was something she'd gotten used to over the years, and though she supposed she should be angry about it, she really didn't care. She accepted the situation as part of The Way Things Were.
The Way Things Were.
She told herself that The Way Things Were were that customers did not become overly friendly or overly familiar with shopkeepers, restaurant owners, or other individuals with whom they did business, that there was a wall automatically erected during the establishment of such a business relationship that discouraged more intimate contact. But she knew that wasn't really the case. Mike Fazio, who owned Mike Pizza Place in the Basha's shopping center, seemed to be good friends with many of his customers. Hank and Tara Farrel, who operated the video store, often sodalized with their patrons. It was because her family was Chinese.
She didn't like thinking about that. It made her uncomfortable, and she couldn't help feeling that she was being overly sensitive. On TV, when she saw Asian groups protesting showings of Charlie Chan movies or cartoons with Oriental stereotypes, she always felt uneasy, wanting to agree with the protestors--knowing she should agree with them--but not being able to fully take their side. She had a hard dine convincing herself that, in this day and age, race made any difference at all in the way people were viewed or in how others behaved toward them. After all, the sports heroes of some of the biggest rednecks in town were black football and basketball players. Their kids spent their music money on the tapes of black pop stars. Was it reasonable for her to think that her family was treated differently merely because they were Chinese? Yes. Because, after all these years, her family still did not fit in, were still treated more like outsiders than members of the community. Even the nicest customers, those who joked and laughed with her, who were friendly and respectful toward her parents, seemed awkward and standoffish outside the confines of the restaurant. They would nod, sometimes smile, at the most say a quick "hi," but the relaxed informality of their behavior as customers disappeared when the roles of waitress and patron were no longer in effect. Her family was not shunned, not even actively disliked, it was just that they were treated.. differently.
And it was because they were Chinese.
Sue had never had a problem with prejudice. She'd al ways had a group of close friends, had never been treated unfairly, had never been discriminated against, had always been accepted by her peers and by the kids she'd grown up with. Her parents, though, had no friends in town, had always been socially ostracized. More than the skin color, more than the Oriental eyes, more than any aspect of physical appearance, it was the language that seemed to separate them from everyone else. Their accents and broken English served to emphasize that they were from another country, an alien culture. And when they spoke Cantonese, it actu ally seemed to offend people.
But that was The Way Things Were. ,: The night was warm, without a breeze, and the moon less sky was dark, the stars like tiny prisms against their black backdrop. Sue glanced up as she followed her parents into the house. She noticed that the constellations had changed position since the last time she'd looked, shifting closer to their winter locales, and it made her realize how quickly time was speeding by. Summer had just ended, and soon it would be Christmas.
Then summer again. Then Christmas. Years were now moving by in the time it had once taken seasons to pass.
Inside the doorway, her father took off his shoes and carried the leftover food from the restaurant into the kitchen. John, without pausing, walked into the living room, turned on the television, and immediately draped himself over the couch. Her mother and grandmother took off their own shoes and followed her father into the kitchen. "
Sue stood for a moment in the entryway as she slipped off her sandals, staring at a pink-flowered fan hanging on the walls She was not sure whether she should go to her bedroom or help her parents and grandmother in the kitchen. Instinct told her to go to her room.
Something was not right tonight. She'd felt weird all evening, spooked--though not quite as badly as she had been the other night at the school--and she wanted to go to bed and forget about it. Wai.
Badness.
She heard her grandmother speaking quietly to her
parents in the kitchen. All evening her grandmother had been uncharacteristically silent, not even listening to her tapes as she chopped vegetables in the rear of the restaurant. Several times, upon turning around, Sue had caught the old woman staring at her strangely, and she'd seen her grandmother bestow equally cryptic looks upon her brother. Her parents, too, had noticed the change in her grandmother's mood--she could tell by the way that they were polite to each other instead of bickering--but neither of them had said a word about it, and they'd continued about their business as usual.
She looked toward the kitchen, then decided against going there or to her bedroom, opting instead for the coward's way out. She walked over to where John lay sprawled on the couch, his head leaning against one arm rest, his feet pressing against the other. "Move over," she said.
"Let me sit down."
"Mo cho," he told her. ' ,
"Shut up yourself."
"Hit the road. You're blocking my view."
"Fine then." She sat down on top of his legs.
"Heyt" he yelled, trying to wiggle out from under her.
"Knock it off!."
"Tieu pay."
"You're too fat. It hurts!"
"Then move your feet so I can sit down."
"Get up so I can move my legs."
She stood, and he gave her a quick kick in the buttocks before rolling off the couch and out of her way. He looked back over his shoulder to make sure she wasn't going to retaliate, then spread out on the floor in front of the television. He wrinkled his nose. "I can't sit next to you. You reek."
"You're the one who smells," she said. "Take a bath." "Susan." Sue turned her head at the sound of her grandmother's voice. The old woman was standing in the doorway, framed by the light from the kitchen, her frazzled white hair forming a fuzzy penumbra around the silhouetted shape of her face. For a brief second, she looked to Sue like a witch, and an instinctive shiver passed down Sue's spine as the image imprinted itself on her brain. Then her grandmother walked all the way into the room and once again she looked like herself..:
Sue forced herself to smile. "What is it, Grandmother?" she asked in Cantonese.
"Will you come with me to my room? I have something I want to give you."
"Yes." She was puzzled, but it would not be polite to question her grandmother, so she got up from the couch and followed the old woman down the hall. Behind her, John immediately jumped up from the floor to retake his seal
Her grandmother's room smelled, as always, of must and medicine and herbs, the odors of old age. On the small teak nightstand next to her bed were two bottles of ginseng, the source of the room's dominant scent. One of the bottles, the smaller of the two, was filled with dried chopped slivers of the root. In the other, a full root floated in clear liquid, looking like a little man trapped inside the glass with its branching offshoots at arm level and its downward growing rootlet legs.
Sue had always liked going into her grandmother's room. Slightly warmer than the rest of the house, it seemed to her exotic, like a little piece of China trans planted here to Arizona, in stark contrast to the Americanized Chinese decor of her parents. She liked the dark three-paneled screen that separated the sleeping area from the sitting area, the huge hand-painted vase in the corner, the ornately carved furniture. Tonight, though, that exotic, mysterious quality seemed a trifle disquieting, the dark room a little too dark.
Wincing as if in pain, her grandmother sat down awkwxdly on the edge of the bed. Her shoulders slumped as the bed settled beneath her weight, and for the first time she looked old to Sue. Really old. The deeply etched lines surrounding her mouth and eyes, which had remained unchanged for as long as Sue could remember and had always seemed a permanent part of her face, had altered, shifted course, moving downward into her chin, upward into her cheeks and forehead, and were now intersected by newer spiderweb wrinkles that gave her skin an almost mummified look.
Sue looked away, not wanting to see her grandmother in this light, and instead concentrated her attention on the old photographs from Hong Kong that were aligned on the dresser between newer photographs of herself and John. There was a picture of her grandmother and her mother standing in front of a junk in Hong Kong harbor, a picture of her grandfather holding up a live chicken purchased from one of the vendors on the street, a picture of her grandmother and two friends clowning in front of the black steam engine of a train. Hundreds of times over the years, on boring nights, on rainy days, her grandmother had told her the stories behind each of those photos, promising that one day the two of them would visit Hong Kong together, but Sue realized now that the two of them would not be taking any such trips.
The thought depressed her, filling her with a bleak hopelessness and making her feel sadder and more empty than she'd ever felt in her life.
She wished that she'd gone to her bedroom as soon as they'd come home and pretended to be asleep when her grandmother came looking for her.
"Susan."
She looked back toward the bed.
"I want you to have this." Her grandmother withdrew a necklace from the top drawer of her nightstand. She held it forth with two slightly trembling hands. In the stillopen drawer were wads of tissue and small empty bottles of old medicine.
The necklace, with its thin gold chain and small white jade pendant, looked vaguely familiar, and Sue turned it over gingerly in her hands as she took it. She examined the jade. "Is it real?"
Her grandmother nodded. "It is from the K'un Lun Mountains in Khotan.
It was given to me as a wedding present." Sue recognized the necklace now, from the pictures. "I wore it as long as your grandfather was alive, but when he died, I took it off. I was planning to save it, to give it to you as a wedding present, but I have decided to give it to you today."
Sue tried to hand the necklace back. "I'll get married eventually.
Give it to me then."
"No." Her grandmother held up her hands in refusal.
"I want you to have it now."
Sue looked more carefully at the object in her hand.
The jade was white, milky, of the rarest variety. In the shape of a circle, it contained two carved figures, the dragon and the phoenix, joined together, symbolizing the male and female joined together in marriage. "I can't accept this," she said.
"You must. I will not take it back."
:"I'm not getting married yet." .... "I may not be alive when you are married."
Sue stared at her grandmother, realization slowly dawning on her. She felt an unpleasant churning in her store ach. "You're not going to die, are you? You're not giving away all of your stuff because you're--"
Her grandmother smiled. "I'm not dying."
"Then why are you--"
"But I will die one day. I may even die soon." "Grandmother .. ."
The old woman sighed. "I am giving you this necklace for protection. I know you do not hold the same beliefs I do, but I beg you to do me this one small favor. Wear the necklace. It will protect you against evil.
You may not understand now, you may think I am being foolish, but I think one day you will understand and you will be grateful
Evil.
Sue looked at the necklace in a new light. Her eyes saw not the beauty of the intertwined figures but the teeth of the dragon, the claws of the phoenix. Instead of making her feel safe and secure, instead of reassuring her the way it was supposed to, the necklace caused the hair on the back of her neck to prickle, sent a shiver of coldness through her. She might not hold the same beliefs as her grandmother, but she was not the skeptic she aspired to be, and the idea of wearing something that was supposed to have supernatural powers frightened her.
She thought of the strange shadow in the dark hallway of the high school.
Evil.
"Did you put a... spell on this?"
Her grandmother laughed, a tinkling, musical sound. Her eyes were laughing too, and for the first time since entering the room, Sue relaxed a little. Maybe she was overreacting.
/>
"I know no spells. I am not a witch." Her grandmother grinned. "Do you think I am?"
"No," Sue admitted, embarrassed.
"The necklace will protect you because it is jade. Not because of any spell that has been put on it or because it has been treated with herbs or because the carving has symbolic meaning. Anything made from jade will protect you.
"Oh."
"I am giving you this necklace because I was going to give it to you anyway. I have simply decided to give it to you early." Her smile faded. "gut I don't want you to mention this to John or your parents.
This is between you and me. Do you understand?"
Sue nodded.
"Good. And you will wear the necklace?"
"Yes."
"All the time?"
"Even when I'm asleep or taking a shower?"
"All the time."
"For the rest of my life?"
"Until it is safe to take it off." . Sue looked at her grandmother, saw again how old she looked, saw the thinness of her hair, the boniness of her frame. "Yes, Grandmother," she said.
"Good." The old woman smiled. "You are my favorite granddaughter."
Sue smiled. "I'm your only granddaughter."
"Even if you weren't, you would be my favorite." She rubbed her eyes and yawned, realistically, but with more dramatic flair than usual.
"It's getting late now. Go to bed. I will see you tomorrow. We will talk more about this later."
Sue understood that she was being dismissed, and she gave her grandmother a quick hug, noticing as she did so that the old woman was wearing a jade bracelet around her skinny wrinkled wrist. "Thank you," she said, holding forth the necklace. "I will treasure this always."
She said good night and left the bedroom, filled with conflicting feelings, not sure if she was scared or sad, relieved or worried. She was definitely tired, and she wanted to go to bed, but instead she returned to the living room, where John was on the floor again, her parents on the couch.
The Summoning Page 9
