Beautiful as Yesterday Page 19

  Now, she can sense clearly each minute, each second, as if time were invisible animals sneaking about with unhurried steps. It is just so quiet! Seen through the living room window, the street remains still, like a scenic poster: the light gray asphalt road, the trees, the lawns, the flowers. Cars or people rarely invade this stillness.

  Where are the retired people? she wonders. Don’t they stroll in the neighborhood or gather to play chess or cards on their front porches as older people like to do in China? What a waste of such nice porches, occupied only by flowerpots and reclining chairs! On the other side of the street, two houses to the left, a thick-trunked orange tree laden with fruit resembles a burning torch in the sunlight. But she has never seen the tree’s owners pick the oranges: they just let them fall all over the lawn and, every Thursday evening, gather them, place them inside a plastic bag, and dump the bag into their garbage bin—garbage collecting day is Friday. She once mentioned this tree to her older daughter. “Those oranges must be very sweet and juicy. If sold at a store, they must cost good money. If this tree was in China—” Her daughter cut her short. “Ma, we aren’t in China.”

  Her daughter’s other neighbors puzzle Fenglan as well. Immediately to the right is a middle-aged white couple without children. A row of overgrown oleanders separates their front lawn from her daughter’s. This couple go to work at eight a.m. and come back home around six p.m. every weekday, both driving massive SUVs with big tires, one black, the other red. They don’t seem to worry about their gas bills. They have another car they keep in the garage and drive only on weekends. It’s a monstrous yellow convertible, like a sailboat, with images of black flames on both sides, making a loud noise like a tractor when its engine starts. Her daughter has told her that this car is an antique and worth a lot of money, but Fenglan thinks it’s ugly.

  This couple rarely come out of the house unless they are in their cars. In the evenings, they watch TV. Whenever she passes their house, Fenglan glances at their windows; sometimes, if the blinds are not completely closed, she can see a huge TV screen flickering in their living room.

  After dinner, she usually takes a stroll, from her daughter’s house to the pink house with an impressive succulent garden three blocks away, across a wide street to the community park, around the loop in the park, then circling back via a small road flanked with trees and turning onto the street where her daughter’s house sits. It is a pleasant route with even sidewalks, well-maintained lawns, and little through traffic. It surprises her that so few people here take a walk after dinner, something people do a lot in China, both the old and the young, believing that an after-dinner walk helps with digestion and is good for health and longevity. Occasionally during her stroll, she has come across several Indians and Chinese, but it doesn’t happen often. Neither her daughter nor her son-in-law has the habit of walking after dinner—her daughter accompanied her the first few days, then stopped. If Fenglan mentions the old saying “If you take a walk after a meal, you’ll live to be ninety-nine years old,” her daughter tells her that she takes vitamins and calcium pills every day. Bob does the same thing, taking those pills as if they were fruit or vegetables. Her daughter even bought her a big bottle of multiple vitamins for seniors and other supplements, such as fish oil and lecithin. Sometimes Fenglan thinks that her daughter is more like an American than a Chinese.

  On the far end of the street lives a white man who must be in his eighties. He’s tall and bald, humpbacked, neatly dressed. He has a blue Cadillac, which he still drives a few times a week. As he cruises by her daughter’s house, if he sees Fenglan in the front lawn, he slows down, lowers the window, leans out, and waves at her. She waves back and watches his car disappear around the corner, thinking that he is brave to drive on his own. Though she has never seen him out in the evenings, she has spotted him walking with a stick in his front yard a few times.

  Once, early in the morning, on her way to the community park to exercise, she saw him sitting on his vine-covered porch, watching hummingbirds drink from a hanging bottle under the awning. He wore a checkered flannel jacket, and his legs were wrapped loosely by a wool blanket that reached the ground. “Hello,” he said, waving. Fenglan said “Hello” back hastily—it was one of the few English words she understood. The man pointed at the hummingbirds, their wings flapping rapidly. He said a long word slowly, syllable by syllable, with a smile. Also smiling, she nodded and repeated after him—she was sure that her pronunciation was wrong—knowing that he was referring to the birds.

  They watched the birds silently for a while, then the man stood and invited her to sit in another chair on the porch so she could see the birds better. She couldn’t understand what he had said, yet knew that was what he had meant from his gestures. She felt awkward, accepting a stranger’s invitation, but the man looked friendly and sincere. Also, somehow, she felt obliged to talk to this old man, who didn’t seem to have visitors. So she walked to the porch and sat. “Mike.” He extended his hand. That must be his name, she figured. She took his hand and said her own name. It took quite a bit of practice before he could say her name correctly; even then his intonation was far off. They couldn’t converse further, so they watched the birds quietly, seeing them poke their long beaks into the bottle’s flower-shaped yellow openings and, after drinking, jerk their heads up alertly, then chatter as if communicating. One bird, probably a male, had brilliant iridescent feathers at its throat, reflecting the morning light.

  Fenglan felt uncomfortable sitting next to a stranger, a foreigner, a person with skin of a different hue and eyes of a different color from hers. She pictured the questions she would ask him if they could talk—if they spoke the same language, she imagined, they would have much in common. A person his age must have experienced a lot. She assumed that his wife had passed away and his children and grandchildren must be living far away or in a foreign country so that they couldn’t visit him often—or maybe he had no children. And what about his birthplace, the jobs he had held, his friends, his hobbies, his favorite dishes? It suddenly occurred to her that, despite the fact that he was a Caucasian and didn’t speak her language, he was a human being just like her. Or maybe there was a natural bond among the elderly, who have seen and experienced the world, have gone through ups and downs.

  The birds flew away after chasing each other for a while. She stood to say good-bye—another English word she had mastered. The man stood as well, nodding appreciatively, and said something, and she walked away across the paved path.

  Later she asked her older daughter about this man and was told that he was a retired veteran and had served in South Korea and Vietnam. But other than this, her daughter didn’t know anything about him.

  Fenglan walks to the kitchen to see if there are any dirty dishes in the sink. Of course, there aren’t—her older daughter always cleans the kitchen after each meal. The marble countertop shines, the plates and bowls are arranged by size and color behind the opaque glass cabinet doors. Her second daughter is unlike her older daughter when it comes to keeping things organized and tidy. Guo-Ying leaves a mess wherever she visits. She doesn’t even make the bed in the morning. She eats breakfast before brushing her teeth and takes a shower in the morning, rather than in the evening as the Chinese do.

  Thinking of Guo-Ying, Fenglan shakes her head. In her thirties, she still acts like a girl, sleeping with a pillow over her chest, talking in her sleep, just as she had done when she was little. A girl her age in China would have a child at least three or four years old, but she is still single and doesn’t even have a boyfriend. Fenglan also worries about her job—Guo-Ying told her that she had quit her government job in New York and was now working for a small company in San Francisco.

  “Government jobs are stable and provide good benefits. Why did you quit?” she asked.

  Guo-Ying shrugged. “But small companies offer more opportunity for career development.”

  Career or not, Fenglan doesn’t care; she just wants her daughters to be safe and w
ell.

  She takes the dirty dishes from the dishwasher and washes them with detergent herself. She dries them with a clean towel until she cannot see any water stains, then puts them in the cabinet according to her older daughter’s arrangement. If she was in her own apartment, she wouldn’t have been so careful with the dishes, but she is a guest here. After cleaning, she goes to the backyard and sits on the bench, watching two gray squirrels frolick on the trees and the power lines. After she is tired of watching them, she walks around the garden looking for weeds. She finds some and pulls them out. Just as she is debating whether she should take a walk or read the Sing Tao Daily that her older daughter has subscribed to for her, she hears a faint meowing behind her back. She turns and sees a green-eyed yellow tabby on the top of the fence between two camellias, her ears erect.

  Her daughter has told her about this cat and said that she belonged to the house’s first owner. When that family moved back to Japan, they gave her to a friend two blocks down the street. But the cat likes to visit the old house, then occupied by a family from Ireland, and would sometimes sleep in the backyard. The Irish family was allergic to cats but put food and water outside for her. A few years later, the Japanese family’s friend moved as well, so the tabby became a stray. When Guo-Mei and Bob bought the house, the Irish family offered to send the cat to the Santa Clara Humane Society. But Guo-Mei and Bob wanted to adopt her and even gave her a name, Niuniu, meaning “little girl” in Chinese. They put food and water in the yard as well, trying to befriend her. Whenever they saw her, they would call out Niuniu, and after a while, on hearing their call, the cat would roll on the ground and purr and, if she wasn’t in the yard already, would dart in from where she was hiding. However, she didn’t let them pat her and would run away if they got too close.

  This is the first time Fenglan has seen the cat. “Niuniu,” she calls.

  The cat swishes her tail, staring at her.

  Noticing that no food is left in the tin bowl near the back door, Fenglan takes the bowl and walks to the garage. She finds the cat food and fills the bowl. After putting the bowl back where it was, she returns to her bench and sits, watching the cat.

  Niuniu jumps down from the fence and walks to the food; as she eats, she looks up often to check on Fenglan, her hind legs poised as if ready to escape.

  After Niuniu has finished eating and drinking, she rambles along the fence, seemingly inspecting her territory, then lies next to a flowerpot a few steps from Fenglan. She meows, rolls, and stretches. Suddenly a sparrow shoots out from behind a camellia, flying low over the lawn. The cat runs after the bird and jumps a few times, her body twisting in the air. On her last jump, she lands clumsily, and as if angry at herself for failing to catch the bird, she begins to chase her tail madly, running in circles.

  Fenglan laughs. The cat stops chasing her tail and lies down on her side—this time, only a step away from Fenglan. She looks relaxed, licking herself all over and washing her face with her front paws. Fenglan closes her eyes, pretending that she has fallen asleep, her right arm dangling over one armrest. A few minutes later she feels something cold touch her fingertips—it’s Niuniu’s nose. Then the cat rubs her head against the back of her hand, her fur soft and warm. Fenglan opens one eye, but Niuniu jumps away immediately, across the lawn, onto the fence, and disappears.

  Fenglan waits for a while and even stands on the bench, looking over the fence at the neighbors’ backyard, where Niuniu disappeared. But the tabby is nowhere to be seen.

  At lunchtime, Fenglan doesn’t feel hungry. She turns on the TV and finds a children’s program, then walks to the kitchen to warm up some leftovers in the microwave, which her grandson has taught her how to use. Since she arrived, her daughter has stuffed the fridge with meat and her mother’s favorite vegetables and fruit, but Fenglan doesn’t feel like cooking just for herself and always eats leftovers.

  After lunch, she takes a nap on the sofa in the family room, where outside the window, a star jasmine hangs gracefully over the trellis. She dreams of her husband, who seems to have gained weight and whose facial wrinkles are less prominent than she remembers. In her dream, he walks with his hands locked behind his back and wears his warden’s uniform. She calls his name, and he nods and smiles at her, as if saying, “I’m doing well. Don’t worry.”

  After Fenglan wakes, her eyes meet the cross ornament on the wall facing her sofa, the white porcelain pieces trimmed with small purple flowers. There are half a dozen cross ornaments in the house. One used to hang on the wall in her room, made of peach wood and carved with the elegant-looking text “I love my lord” in Chinese on it. But she felt uncomfortable with it and put it in a drawer. Her older daughter must have noticed the missing cross, but she hasn’t said a word about it to her mother.

  Fenglan doesn’t understand her daughter’s religious belief. Who is Jesus? Who is God? Who is Lord? Why does a Chinese pray to a white god? These questions race through her mind whenever she sees the crosses in the house and when she hears Bob and her daughter pray before each meal. Bob usually leads the prayer. Eyes closed, head bowed, he thanks God for different things, then asks the loving father in Heaven to bless his family and his mother-in-law, while Guo-Mei and Dongdong hold the same posture, listening. At the end, they all say “Amen.” As they pray, Fenglan feels awkward, not knowing what to do, only wishing that the prayer will end so that they can start to eat. A few times, she left the table and waited in her room until Dongdong called out in Mandarin, “Wai po, we’re done!” The seriousness on her grandson’s face when he listens to his father’s prayer always amazes her. What does a six-year-old know about God? She decides that her daughter has taught him to believe in God just as China’s Communist Party teaches kids to love the Party. How strange that she and her Communist husband would have a daughter who is a Christian! If her husband were still alive, he would undoubtedly give her daughter a long lecture on atheism and tell her not to be swindled by a capitalist religion. He was such an atheist that he would get angry with Fenglan for going to the temple. He used to say that she had been contaminated by feudal superstition.

  Whenever Fenglan dreams of her husband, she lights a stick of incense and prays to Ru Lai, asking Him to look after her husband on his return to Heaven. Right before he died, his eyesight worsened severely. But he refused to wear glasses, with various excuses, for example, that prisoners wouldn’t respect a bespectacled warden. After she pointed out that quite a few of his colleagues wore glasses, he insisted that glasses hurt his nose. The real reason, she guessed, was that he didn’t want to admit he was aging. She gave up in the end, knowing how stubborn he was. She wished that he would stop going out alone for a walk after dinner, a habit he had kept for years. Those days, many buildings were under construction, and even people with good eyesight would trip over exposed pipes, pumps, or littered garbage. But he didn’t want her to come along, saying that she walked too slowly and only wanted to go to the park.

  She worried about him and would sometimes watch him from their balcony, seeing him cross a trench or a bump. In front of her or his colleagues and acquaintances, he always walked with his back straight, his steps firm, but when no one was around, he stooped and walked much more slowly, sometimes using a tree branch for aid when crossing potholed areas. He saw himself as so strong and capable that he refused to slow down at work and retained the habit of taking cold showers, even in winter.

  When they first got married, he was like that too. In 1967, he was accused of sympathizing with rightists and taken away by the Red Guards. A week later he was released, after having been beaten repeatedly with belts and sticks. That evening, she saw him through the window, bent over, limping, scuffing, but as soon as he entered the door, he pretended to be fine and, to prove it, did a few push-ups. He took a small parcel from his jacket pocket and handed it to their older daughter, who had been crying because she was hungry: it contained a few biscuits. As Fenglan cleaned and dressed his wounds, he kept saying that he didn’t feel
pain, though a layer of cold sweat had formed on his forehead. On that evening she began to fall in love with him.

  She has brought from China a picture of Ru Lai, which she purchased at You-Ming Temple right before her trip. She displays it on the windowsill, kneels in front of it, and bows deeply a few times.

  It is still an hour before she has to pick up Dongdong from his kindergarten, something she looks forward to from the moment he steps into his father’s or mother’s car every morning. Mostly Bob or Guo-Mei picks him up, but when they are busy and cannot get off work early, or get stuck in traffic, Fenglan does. She likes walking, and it is only half an hour’s walk from home to the kindergarten. Also, Dongdong likes walking with her, so he can catch bugs or pick flowers on their way back.

  There is more to look forward to: Guo-Ying will drive down this evening and stay for a few days. Though it is not a long drive from San Francisco to Sunnyvale, Fenglan hopes that her younger daughter will move to Sunnyvale, so that she and her sister can see each other more often, which, she surmises, might help Guo-Ying settle down and start a family.

  But Fenglan also dreads Guo-Ying’s visit, knowing that she will inquire again about the old family photos, which Fenglan had brought from China upon her request. Last weekend, Guo-Ying went through each photo and asked many questions. Guo-Mei didn’t show particular interest, though, only browsing through them before handing them back to her younger sister, then walking into the garden to fertilize her plants, as if she didn’t want to have anything to do with the past.