Beautiful as Yesterday

by Fan Wu

  Mary finds herself watching these two strange women with admiration, even jealousy. Their intimacy looks so natural that she imagines the daughter must have been doted on by her mother when she was growing up. Walking next to her own mother, Mary seems to have returned to China, to the time when they went grocery shopping together, but instead of the resentment and disdain she felt toward her mother back then, she now has only a sense of responsibility and pity.

  Why can’t she be as close to her mother as that pregnant woman is to hers? Why can’t she hold her mother’s arm as she does? Mary wonders. Was it merely to satisfy her conscience that she had decided to bring her mother to the United States to live with her? Is she doing all this to show her church friends that she is a good Christian who takes care of her elderly mother? Or is it her cultural duty, her heritage?

  She wishes there were such a thing as a memory eraser that could help her forget the unpleasant past, make her love her mother sincerely, but it is not as simple as that. She has too many memories that keep her from giving her arm to her mother to hold on this windy day. She remembers an American bishop in the nineteenth century said: “Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.” So all she has done so far—visiting her mother once a year, sending her money regularly, inviting her to the United States to live with her—is just fulfilling her duty as a daughter, with little love involved.

  But if she didn’t love her mother before, how can she love her now? Mary now defends herself. You don’t expect a plant will still grow when its leaves and roots have already died from lack of water and sunlight.

  Mary longs to become a good Christian, to be loyal to God, to follow the gospel, to enjoy the peace her belief can bring her. But as time passes, she senses increasingly her failure as a wife, a daughter, and a sister. Her lack of intimacy with Bob, with her mother, and with Ingrid bothers her, yet she cannot imagine what to do to change the situation. No matter how hard she tries, the result seems miles away from her hopes and expectations.

  She recalls her baptism ceremony in Half Moon Bay. She had expressed to her pastor her desire to be baptized in the ocean. Having grown up in an inland province and not seeing the ocean until she was in the States, she had always had a fascination with the ocean, its mystery, hugeness, and depth. That day, she wore a white blouse and an ankle-length white skirt; besides the pastor, Bob and a few other church brothers and sisters were her witnesses. Standing in the shallows, facing the sweep of blueness and the gliding seagulls, she felt elation and peace. She’d have a new life, she said to herself as the pastor plunged her head into the cold and salty water. That day and many days after she lived in a state of idyllic happiness, until family and work and other mundane routines consumed her.

  In one of her confessions to Pastor Zhang, she mentioned her resentment toward her parents, and he told her that she should let God lead the way, then everything would be like a stream running down into a river and the river into the ocean. He also said that forgiveness was the biggest virtue one could possess. It was after one such confession that she had decided to apply for her mother’s permanent residence in the United States, to take good care of her in her old age.

  In the days following her decision, Mary was filled with the hope of reconciling with her mother. She kept telling herself that her resentment toward her mother would vanish once they lived together. Now, walking beside her mother without feeling intimacy toward her, Mary realizes that if her motive for inviting her mother to live with her was selfish to begin with, she won’t be able to reach the harmony she desires in their relationship.

  Her mother rubs her nose, reddened by the wind, and coughs slightly. Mary turns to look at her, noticing that her mother is also watching the mother and daughter ahead of them, so attentively that she has slowed her pace.

  Halfway home, her mother trips over a fallen tree branch. Instinctively, Mary reaches to grab her arm. After her mother regains her balance, Mary lets go of her hand, but her mother thrusts her arm underneath Mary’s and holds it. Mary allows her, feeling the warmth of her mother’s arm inside hers. She also tightens her grip, though she feels awkward walking with her mother like this. Her mother begins to stride like a young person, as if her daughter’s arm has given her extra strength.

  They walk home with their arms linked.

  Alex is playing with a Lego fire truck in the hallway outside the guest room. He pushes the truck forward on the hardwood floor, mimicking its piercing siren.

  “Why don’t you go to your room to play for a little while? You don’t want to wake up wai po, do you?” Mary says to him and gathers the truck and its scattered pieces into a box.

  “My room has a carpet and the truck doesn’t run on it.” Alex purses his lips, following his mother to his room. “Why did wai po go to bed so early? It’s not even eight. I was waiting for her to continue the story of San Mao’s Adventure! Yesterday she stopped at the place when San Mao became homeless and had to sell newspapers on the street to make a living.”

  “Wai po still has jet lag. She needs more rest.”

  “Mom, maybe wai po doesn’t like Chinese food. Let’s order pizza tomorrow. I bet she’d like the kind of pizza with pineapples and chicken on top. She said she has bad teeth and likes soft food. She can eat the pineapples and chicken and give the dough to Dad. Dad likes pizza dough. He always eats mine. I think wai po will like Coke too. It goes well with pizza.”

  “Look who’s talking, my pizza lover! Just tell me if you want to eat pizza and drink Coke yourself.”

  Alex sticks out his tongue and makes a face at his mother.

  It surprises Mary to see how fast Alex has made friends with his grandmother. The first three days Alex refused to call her “wai po” other than the single time he was forced, and he ran to hide in his room when his grandma tried to talk with him. On the fourth day, he began to tell her in Mandarin what he had learned in school that day. On the fifth day he played with her in the garden, asking her to push the swing for him. He even taught her some English words.

  “Lu in English is green. You repeat after me, g-reen…,” Mary heard her son say to his grandma. His grandma pronounced green cautiously, sounding like a pigeon cooing, which made Alex laugh wildly. He then asked his grandmother to say yellow and purple after him. She tried. He laughed again.

  Whatever Alex asked his grandma to do, she obeyed eagerly. Mary has never seen her mother so happy, almost like a child. To please her grandson, she had tried all kinds of tricks, like using her handkerchief to make a rat or a rabbit, mimicking the sounds animals make, or paper cutting, which she had learned from her seniors’ college back home after she retired. If she didn’t have a weak neck and back, she would have let Alex ride her like a horse. When she started to tell Alex the story of San Mao’s Adventure, Mary thought Alex wouldn’t be interested. How could a child born in the United States relate to a homeless child’s journey in old Shanghai in the thirties? But Alex got hooked completely and nagged his grandma every evening for more. When he heard that San Mao was beaten and had no place to sleep in the winter, tears streamed down his cheeks.

  Grandma and grandson had developed a creative way to communicate. If Alex didn’t know how to say something in Mandarin, he wrote down the English words, then looked them up in an English-Chinese dictionary and showed the Chinese translation to his grandma. His grandma did the same thing, using a Chinese-English dictionary. If Alex was too impatient to use the dictionary, he gestured and drew to express himself, which his grandma also did. Because he had to speak the language with his grandmother, Alex’s Mandarin had improved quickly. He sometimes even spoke it with Mary, which he had seldom done before. As for his grandma, she had managed to remember a few English words, such as this, that, good, and bad, words she sometimes used.

  Mary is both happy and sad seeing Alex play with his grandma. Before her mother arrived, she worried that her son would treat her like a stranger, ignoring her. Now her worry has proved groundless. May
be she has been too strict with Alex, rarely playing with him so intimately, while Bob has been busy at work all these months, having little time for Alex. Work has taken a toll on Bob, Mary has to admit. He has become more preoccupied and easily irritated. Once, working at home under a deadline, he shouted when Alex kept pestering him to put together a jigsaw puzzle. He regretted it profoundly afterward, swearing to Mary that he would spend more time with their son, but it was a promise that he hasn’t been able to keep because of all the deadlines at work, with the IPO date approaching.

  Now Alex has his grandma, who doesn’t force him to play the piano and doesn’t tell him that she is too busy to play with him.

  As far as Mary can remember, her mother never played with her when she was a child, and she always looked tired and worried. When Mary was Alex’s age, she played alone with sand and mud every day in the countryside, far from her parents.

  Alex’s room is crowded with toys, some from his grandma, others from Bob, who has bought a lot for him in the past few months, as if to make up for the time that he couldn’t be with him. “When will Dad be home?” Alex asks, hugging a panda his grandma gave him to his cheek. He puts the panda beside his pillow every night when he goes to bed.

  “Dad will be back soon. Now it’s time to brush your teeth and change into your pajamas.” Mary sits on the floor to sort out his toys. “I’ll read you a story when you’re done.”

  Alex falls asleep before Mary finishes the story.

  EIGHT

  December

  RAIN STARTS IN SAN Francisco. The weather forecast has predicted a steep temperature drop in the next few days because of a cold front from the Gulf of Alaska. Last night there was even a thunderstorm, a rare phenomenon in this part of California.

  Before Ingrid left New York, she had contacted a few motels and apartments offering short-term housing in San Francisco. After comparing prices and locations, she had picked a bed-and-breakfast on Russian Hill. The price is higher than she’d like to pay even after a discount she was able to negotiate, but she has always wanted to live in this neighborhood, home to a lot of Victorian mansions, and with a spectacular view of North Beach, Telegraph Hill, Alcatraz, and the Bay Bridge. It’s fun to watch cars lining up every day, waiting to drive down the block on Lombard Street, famous for its extreme corners, between Hyde and Leavenworth, which has earned it the name “the crookedest street in the world.” She has planned to stay here for only one week—it’ll be her well-deserved vacation—then she’ll move to a cheaper place and stay there until her mother goes back to China. As for her shared apartment with Angelina in New York, her landlord has allowed her to sublease it to an art student from Italy during her absence.

  Standing on the top of Coit Tower, Ingrid can see colorful Victorian row houses in many neighborhoods and steep streets meandering between skyscrapers and low-level apartment buildings, as Telegraph Hill blends with the downtown area. Somehow she always imagined that San Francisco was bigger and more populated, but in fact, it’s a city with fewer than eight hundred thousand residents, one fifth the population of her home town in China.

  Having returned to the Bay Area from New York, Ingrid realizes how much she loves San Francisco. It’s energetic and dynamic, not quite as busy as New York but with its own special character. Wherever she looks there are always more vistas, more greenery, more flowers, and more people walking at an unhurried pace. Every morning, even when it rains, she jogs in Golden Gate Park or visits a museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the De Young Museum, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, with Rodin’s Thinker in the courtyard, or one of the many galleries on the streets around Union Square. She once biked along the Great Highway, watching surfers ride the Pacific waves, seeing the hang gliders floating on the air currents on the escarpments to the south.

  Of course, she could have lived with Mary—her sister asked her in their last phone conversation. It would have helped her save money. But Ingrid likes her freedom: she can eat or sleep whenever she wants and lie on the sofa reading a book over tea or coffee for hours without being disturbed. More important, she likes to live in the city, close to activities and attractions—what could she do in the suburbs anyway?

  She needs a few days to herself before she sees Mary. Just imagine how many questions her older sister will have for her! It will be like an interrogation.

  On a Sunday afternoon, Ingrid saunters in the Mission District. She has been invited to an ex-classmate’s housewarming party at six p.m. Violet Wilson lives on Valencia Street, not far from where Ingrid is. So Ingrid decides to walk there. She hasn’t seen any of her classmates from San Jose State University for more than three years, and it will be nice to catch up with them, especially Violet, who had let Ingrid copy her homework and driven her around when Ingrid didn’t have a car. In Ingrid’s memory, Violet was loud, talkative, rowdy, a partygoer, a cheerleader, but she was also warm and helpful. Violet had taught Ingrid how to put on makeup, how to smoke, how to dance. It was also Violet who took her to underground bars in San Francisco and Oakland, advised her on sex, and told her about the Playboys in the school library.

  Two days ago, Ingrid went with an agent to look at a studio apartment on Eighteenth Street in this neighborhood. It was on the second floor, a little over four hundred square feet, with a cherrywood floor and cabinets. It looked dark even with the lights on. As Ingrid walked into the bathroom, she spotted mildew and soap scum around the tub. The whole place had been cleaned only casually.

  “It’s near the Muni bus lines, the BART station, and the 101 freeway,” said the agent matter-of-factly. He was a young man with a crew cut and a feminine voice, and played with the skeleton-patterned silver ring on his right index finger. “In this city, transportation convenience is very important.” He was treating her as if she were a stranger to San Francisco, which she was forced to admit was somewhat true: clearly she had missed the tech boom.

  San Francisco’s high rents surprised Ingrid. Three years ago, apartments were much cheaper. She wondered where the artists who used to swarm the Mission District lived now. “Eighteen hundred a month for this?” she asked. “I thought renting had come down after the dot-com bubble burst. There aren’t so many millionaires around anymore.”

  “Well, it’s lower than the market price, believe it or not. You’re renting month by month, you know.” His deadpan expression seemed to say, “If you don’t take it right now, someone else will.”

  It was the fifth apartment Ingrid had looked that day. When she walked out the door, she decided that if she couldn’t find a better one under $1,800 the next day, she would have to take this studio. What a downgrade from the Russian Hill neighborhood to this ghetto-looking studio! But she must start living on a budget—since she left New York, she hasn’t worked. Also, a week earlier, she leased a ’98 Volkswagen. She didn’t need a car in the city, but visiting her sister and mother in Sunnyvale every weekend could be troublesome without a car: public transportation in the South Bay suburban area is underdeveloped.

  Ingrid likes the Mission District, its large Latino population and the overall vivacious and laid-back atmosphere. Of course, the neighborhood is also packed with restaurants serving the cuisines of Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Just now, she passes two Mexican delis with banners above their doors advertising their family-recipe meals and various burritos and tacos. She can live on burritos and tacos alone.

  It’s only four p.m. The rain has dwindled to a mist. The morning fog has burned off, and the sky is clear. Maybe in another hour or so the sun will come out. The weather here can change so quickly at this time of year, and a crisp, warm morning can be followed by a chilly and overcast afternoon. Rather than use her umbrella, Ingrid puts up the hood of her black Burberry trench coat, which she bought in London last year. Roaming in the mist with a map in her pocket, passing blank-faced pedestrians and half-filled buses, she feels the leisure of being aimless. Half an hour later, she stands in front of the murals painted on the walls,
fences, and garage doors in Balmy Alley, said to have been inspired by the work of Diego Rivera.

  All the murals have vivid colors, and many are political. One shows a colored, bespectacled man against a red background, where block letters declaim: “No one should comply with an immoral law.” Another mural, two yards long, has surreal, beautiful plants, flowers, and birds on one side and metallic monsters on the other, a protest against oil companies drilling in the Amazon area. One mural, titled A Past That Still Lives, catches her eye. A mother sits in a truck bed, her sleeping baby on her thighs, and looks skyward defiantly. Behind the truck the artist has depicted a winding road, huts, and people going about their daily chores peacefully. Across the road, in the other half of the painting, the mother’s face is full of dread: she is surrounded by fire and soldiers with guns, apparently an image from her memory.

  Ingrid stands in front of this painting for a long time. Later, as she walks onto a busy street, she thinks that most people’s lives are mediocre, filled with small incidents and trivial emotional twists. That’s what real life is about, anyway. It’s with this thought that she heads toward Valencia Street.

  “Ingrid!” Violet gives her a big hug at the door. It’s not the same Violet that Ingrid remembers: the woman in front of her has gained at least sixty pounds, and her plump body looks like a sausage wrapped inside her tight print dress. Her black mascara is too thick, gluing her eyelashes together and making her look old and tired. “I was so happy when you called. Welcome back!”