by Bo Caldwell
After a porter had loaded our luggage into the trunk of my grandmother’s blue Plymouth, she drove us home, across the vastness of Los Angeles. She and my mother sat in the front seat and talked about how the city had changed. I sat in the backseat, looking out at Spanish homes with red tile roofs and wrought-iron balconies; groves of orange trees that stood like soldiers in rows that seemed to go on forever; spacious streets lined with tall palm trees that swayed softly overhead; and far away, in the background, purplish mountains like something I would draw. Everything was bright: red geraniums, crayon-green lawns, bougainvillea of a deep pink, and above us, the sky a startling blue. There was no garbage in the streets, there were no beggars in the doorways. The air smelled of oranges and jasmine, and it was so clean that I thought it should have a different name from what we breathed in Shanghai. The whole place seemed enchanted. “Is this real?” I whispered once. My mother, sitting in the front seat with my grandmother, only laughed.
My grandmother talked as she drove, telling me things I tried to remember so that I could tell my father when he joined us. We were headed to South Pasadena, she said, about ten miles to the east of downtown Los Angeles. It was where my mother had grown up, where my grandmother still lived, and where we would live now. My grandmother said it was just right: big enough and small enough. None of that mattered much to me, but when we turned off of Monterey Road and onto Chelten, my grandmother’s street, I caught my breath, for in the middle of the street grew three huge oak trees, each of their trunks as wide as a door. I felt my grandmother watching me in her rearview mirror, and she smiled and explained that rather than remove the trees, the city had simply paved the street around them.
“Those are quercus,” she said. “Native oaks. They’ve been here since this whole place was wild.”
I met her eyes in the mirror and nodded, as in awe of her as I was of everything else. She turned into a driveway across from one of the oak trees in the street and said, “Here we are.”
My grandmother’s home was a two-storey, Spanish-style house with a red tile roof. It was U-shaped, with the patio at its center and all of the rooms opening out onto it. Colored tiles were set around the doors, and bright woven rugs covered the floors. The guest room—“Your room for now,” my grandmother said as she led me to it—had doors that opened out onto the garden. My bed was an old oak trundle bed covered with a white comforter embroidered with dragonflies. An antique, the bed had been my mother’s when she was small, and before that my grandmother’s. It was so low to the ground that when I sat on its edge, my knees came to my chest, as though I were Alice in Wonderland, a fact that I took as an omen: nothing was going to fit here, everything would feel odd. I certainly did, sitting in that small room on that strange bed, still in my navy wool cardigan and tartan skirt and shiny black shoes.
When my grandmother left the room, I just sat there for a while, too nervous to explore the house, too unsure of myself to do anything at all. Finally, shortly before dinner, there was a knock at my door, and when I murmured, “Come in,” my grandmother pushed the door open and stood just inside the room. The ceiling was low, and she, too, looked like the wrong size, which was somehow comforting. She wore a dark green suit that set off her blue-green eyes, and her brown hair was brushed back, framing her suntanned face. I thought she was beautiful.
“You’re wondering what to call me,” she said.
I felt found out. I had been wondering that, and though it wasn’t my major worry, it was on my list.
She smiled easily. “Thought so. How about Gran?”
I nodded stupidly, and wished I could say something to show her how smart I was. I considered blurting out everything I knew about the Bund as an attempt at impressing her, but I dismissed the idea as inappropriate. “Gran sounds nice,” I said.
“Then Gran it is,” she said. “Though you’ll have to help me get used to it. I’m new at grandmothering.”
“I’m new at granddaughtering,” I said.
She laughed a wonderful laugh, deep and easy, one that didn’t make me feel laughed at. “You’ll learn,” she said. “We both will.” And then she turned to leave, waving good-bye absently. “Wash your hands and come down to dinner, Anna. We don’t want you starving yourself up here.”
I did as I was told and went downstairs to find my mother and grandmother—Gran, I practiced under my breath—at the large oak dining-room table, my grandmother looking stately and official at the head of the table, my mother a little disheveled. She’d loosened the top buttons of her blouse and her hair was mussed from traveling, but she looked happy and relaxed, and the sight of her gave me hope. We were served hamburgers and fresh fruit by my grandmother’s cook and housekeeper, a woman named Ella. But although I was starved, I didn’t touch my food. I had been taught since I was small not to eat until I’d been given permission, and I knew that fresh fruit had to be boiled before you ate it. My mother had started eating without hesitating, and it was only after she’d taken several bites that I was able to catch her eye and communicate my question to her: Was the food safe?
She did the worst thing she could have done; she laughed. “Oh, Anna, it’s all right. Eat everything, eat all you want. Everything’s safe and wonderful and good here. You don’t have to worry about food anymore.” She stared at me for a moment, then added, “Actually, you don’t have to worry about anything.”
I looked at my grandmother, expecting to see more amusement. Instead I found her gazing at me somberly. “The girl is conscientious,” she said matter-of-factly. “Quite admirable.” She nodded and I began to eat.
That night when I got into my funny bed and slipped between pale blue cotton sheets, I could hear my mother and my grandmother talking downstairs. The radio was on, and they were listening to the Palmolive Beauty Box Theater with Jessica Dragonette and Benny Fields, one of my grandmother’s favorite shows, she’d said. It sounded like home: grown-ups talking into the night, the radio on in the background, and outside, the breeze ruffling the leaves of the plane trees—no, I thought, they were called sycamores here.
I got out of bed and went to the window and pushed it open a few inches. It was just starting to sprinkle, and the air smelled of eucalyptus and rainwater and earth, almost like Shanghai. I breathed in the scent to make things better. I could see the oak trees in the road, tall and stately in the nighttime shadows, and they somehow reminded me of my father, maybe because they looked so strong, or maybe because they seemed far away, though they were only in the middle of the street. I hadn’t thought of him very much that day, a first since we’d left Shanghai; there had been too many new things to think about. But in that instant I could see him and hear his voice, and I was stricken with guilt. On the voyage over, I’d planned on missing him constantly. I’d imagined myself as long-suffering and noble, similar to the characters in some of the soap operas I’d heard on the radio, a somber girl who never stopped thinking of her beloved father.
But already I’d betrayed him. I’d forgotten him on my very first day here, and I saw that I was a traitor, the most disloyal daughter a person could imagine.
A few days after our arrival, my grandmother woke me early in the morning and told me to get up, that my mother and I were moving into our house. I sat up in bed and watched as she gathered the few things my mother had unpacked for me—shoes, a few dresses, a sweater, toothbrush, hairbrush, underwear, pajamas. Then she told me to get dressed and come downstairs.
When I came into the kitchen, I saw my mother in the driveway, loading our things into the trunk of my grandmother’s Plymouth.
“She’s in a hurry,” my grandmother said.
I turned and found my grandmother standing behind me, and I looked up at her.
“But she’ll calm down. Don’t worry. She’s just a little unsure of things for the moment.”
She took my hand and squeezed it once, and I smiled gratefully. Her hand around mine was warm and strong and soft. I hadn’t realized that I was anxious about my mother,
but I was.
We joined her outside then, and my grandmother drove us to our new home, a California bungalow that my grandfather had bought as an investment shortly before his death. We didn’t have far to go. Our house was only a few blocks away, on Bucknell. My grandmother had had the place cleaned and repainted, and she’d furnished it with odds and ends she’d had in storage.
“You can walk to my house any time you like, Anna.” As she pulled into the driveway of our house, she pointed to a huge old oak tree on the corner. “Kids call that the Tarzan tree,” she said. “That’s your landmark,” and she looked at me in the rearview mirror. I nodded, grateful for any landmark at all.
The house looked as though it had just grown from the lot. Trees surrounded it, eucalyptus and oaks and Chinese junipers, and a broad porch spanned the front of the house. The house’s foundation was made of round stones, which, my grandmother said, had been gathered in the Arroyo Seco, a canyon that ran through the northwest part of Pasadena. The stones had been worn smooth by weather and time, and the chimney was made of the same stones. Where they stopped, the house was made of redwood, and the roof was pitched and so shallow that it was almost horizontal. The eaves curved up a bit, making the house appear as if it might fly. Over the gable was a weather vane, topped by a wrought-iron squirrel that stared intently in the direction of the wind.
My grandmother unlocked the front door and pushed it open, and I followed her and my mother inside. The interior of the house was all wood. Redwood bookshelves lined the living-room walls, which were also redwood, as were the exposed ceiling beams overhead. The wall nearest to the front door had a window seat, where the leaded glass window looked out on the small front yard, and covering the wooden plank floor was an Oriental rug. The room was sparsely furnished, just a pair of Morris chairs and a small table between them. The fireplace was what I liked most. It was bordered with dark red tiles, each with a small scene on it, and it reminded me of the scenes of coolies and sedan chairs on the carved desk in my father’s office, a good sign, I thought. Over the center of the mantel, two larger tiles portrayed facing peacocks, another piece of luck. Chu Shih had told me since I was small that birds brought good fortune.
The far end of the living room opened onto the dining room, where a wrought-iron chandelier whose lamp bulbs were shaped like candle flames hung above an oval oak table and chairs. A built-in sideboard and buffet with leaded glass cabinets covered one wall, and French doors opened out onto a small garden filled with wisteria and jasmine and climbing roses. The kitchen was next to the dining room, and there everything seemed to be built in: the wooden table, which folded up against the wall; bins for flour and sugar; the bread board, the cupboards, spice racks, even the ironing board. The kitchen walls were bright white, and the room smelled of fresh paint.
My grandmother opened windows as she led us from room to room, and a cool breeze let itself in. From the kitchen, we walked down a short hallway to the bedrooms, which were painted white. In my room were a wrought-iron scroll bed, a dresser, and a cheval mirror. White lace curtains framed my window, and next to the bed was a small bookcase, already filled with books.
“Those are mine,” my mother said when she saw me eyeing them. “Or they were. They’re yours now.”
When we had walked through the small house and stood in the living room again, I felt my mother and my grandmother watching me.
“Well,” my mother said, “what do you think?”
“It’s nice,” I said, the only thing I could, for it was all too much to take in. I stared hard at my leather Oxfords and remembered my mother buying them for me in Shanghai, and suddenly I just wanted to be away from here, where everything was new. I wanted to go home, to Shanghai, where everything was familiar, even if it was dirty and crowded and freezing right now. I wanted to be where my father was. Just say something nice, I thought, but I couldn’t, and as my mother and grandmother waited for me to say more, I burst into tears.
During the next week, my mother worked at getting us settled. She enrolled me in school, she introduced us to the neighbors, she cabled my father’s business agent in New York in order to obtain funds, and she relearned her way around the town she’d grown up in. She didn’t drive, but there really wasn’t much need to. The Big Red Cars were electric streetcars that ran right along Huntington Drive only two blocks south of our house. From the Oneonta Park station, we could go just about anywhere in Los Angeles, from Santa Monica beach to downtown, to Colorado Street and Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena.
I started school at Oneonta Grammar School, where I was stared at for a week by the children in my first-grade class—California kids, my grandmother called them, who were rough-and-tumble and adept at things like the Pledge of Allegiance and roller skating. On my first day, the teacher, Miss McGrath, explained to everyone that they were very lucky to have me in Room 3, because I had lived far, far away, and could tell them firsthand what China was like. I froze inside as twenty-three strange children stared hard and evaluated me from head to toe. Word spread quickly. At recess, a boy named Tom Crosby asked me what language they spoke in Africa, and on my way home from school, a girl whose name I didn’t know because she wasn’t even in my class asked me if it was always hot in India. She spoke slowly, with exaggerated enunciation, and it was clear that she did not think I spoke English. I was tired and unhappy and I snapped, “How would I know?,” then walked quickly ahead of her, my nose in the air.
But within a few weeks, I was more or less forgotten, which was fine by me. I felt as though I’d come from a secret land, and when Miss McGrath took the globe from the highest shelf and showed me that Los Angeles was on the same parallel as Shanghai, I stared in disbelief. It was not possible, I thought; the places were too different to have anything in common.
In the afternoons, if my mother was going to be busy, I was told to walk to my grandmother’s house after school, rather than home. On those days, my grandmother always greeted me in the same way—“There she is!”—and seemed so genuinely glad to see me that I felt better as soon as I saw her open the front door. As I ate a snack, she would ask me about my day, and if I was making friends, and whether I liked school. Because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, I said as little as I could and didn’t tell her the truth, which was that I wasn’t making friends, that no one talked to me, that school was the loneliest place in the world. She only nodded, but the way that she looked at me made me think she knew how unhappy I was. “Things will get better,” she said when I’d finished, and she squeezed my hand across the kitchen table. “Just give it time, Anna. All will be well.” I nodded, and although I wasn’t completely convinced, her words made me feel hopeful, and the next day wouldn’t seem so bad. And I did know that things would get better eventually. Everything would be fine once my father arrived. It was only a matter of time.
My grandmother had not known much about me when we lived in Shanghai. My mother was a faithful correspondent but not a frequent one, and my grandmother heard news of me only a few times a year at best, especially since the Japanese occupation, when the mail to and from Shanghai had slowed to a near halt. At the start, I could see from her expression when she looked at me that I was not what she had expected. Maybe she’d wanted someone taller, or prettier, or smarter. But before long, she seemed to decide that I was all right, and she set out to claim me as her own.
I liked her immediately. She was the most down-to-earth, matter-of-fact person I’d ever been around, but she was also elegant, even formal. She was never in a hurry, never raised her voice, never short with anyone. She always looked me in the eye, and she wore practical clothes and comfortable shoes made of soft leather or even suede. She smelled of peppermint and Yardley English Lavender, which she had worn all of her married and widowed life.
She rose at six each morning and walked from her house on Chelten to early Mass at Holy Family Church a mile away. She came home and ate fresh fruit for breakfast—half a grapefruit sprinkled with brown sugar and put un
der the broiler for half a minute, sliced peaches or berries in cream, oranges in sections, whatever was in season. During the morning she answered letters. She maintained a huge correspondence with old friends and business associates of my grandfather’s, and was always prompt in her replies.
In the afternoon she worked. After my grandfather’s death, she had taken a correspondence course in bookkeeping, and now she kept the books for two small businesses in downtown Los Angeles, the Typewriter Shop and Foreman & Clark Men’s Store. When she finished work, she gardened, and at five o’clock, she sat in an old wicker chair under the eaves on her patio, rain or shine, warm weather or cold, and watched the light begin to fade. A sky-blue tile set into the outside stucco wall of her patio said, The lands of the sun expand the soul. It was an old Spanish proverb, she told me, and she added that it was true, and that this place would do me good. If there was a chill in the air, she draped a red wool Pendleton shirt over her shoulders. It had been my grandfather’s, one of the few articles of his clothing she hadn’t given to the poor, because, she said, it still harbored his scent of Blackstone cigars, and she could not part with that remnant of him. It hung by the door to the patio. The only other obvious trace of him was his Gruen watch, which she was never without.
Each night with dinner she drank one glass of red wine, and after dinner she listened to opera or to one of the musical variety radio shows she liked, usually The Bob Hope Show or The Chase and Sanborn Hour, hosted by Edgar Bergen. Before she went to sleep, she read. Her favorite magazines were Westways and Sunset and Life. As for books, she read everything: biographies, novels, gardening books, the lives of the saints and the early fathers of the Church. By the end of each week, she always finished her book, and the pine bookshelves that lined the walls of her house were filled. On her bedside table were her missal, whatever book she was reading that week, and books that dealt with the soul, she said. Her favorites were Revelation of Love by Julian of Norwich and Introduction to the Devout Life by Francis de Sales. When she went to bed, usually around ten, she read until she was certain she could sleep, and then put out the light. She hated lying awake in the dark. She said it prompted bad thoughts.
