Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [64]
I clear my throat, and Z.G. looks up.
“When I was a little girl,” I begin, my voicing quavering, “we lived in an apartment.” He remains silent, which I take as a sign to continue. “We didn’t have a garden and I didn’t play with other children. Once I started kindergarten, I began going to other girls’ houses. This was Chinatown, so the gardens were small, but they were filled with cymbidiums, bamboo, and maybe a bodhi tree here or there. They were also filled with all kinds of junk: used electrical conduit, dustpans made from old soy sauce cans, and greasy motors. I thought this was how everyone lived.”
I think—I hope—Z.G. understands why I’m telling him these things. I want to know you. I want you to know me.
“Then my mom started taking me to the United Methodist Church for Chinese-language classes,” I continue. His eyes widen. Yes, I suppose it’s hard for him to believe that Aunt May sent her child to a mission school, but I know just what to say. “My mother and aunt were educated at the Methodist mission in Shanghai, remember? That’s why she sent me. Anyway, in order for me to take Chinese classes, I also had to go to Sunday services and Sunday school. One thing led to another, and pretty soon the churchwomen were inviting me and other kids to their houses in Hancock Park, Pasadena, and Beverly Hills …” When he looks at me quizzically, I explain, “Those are good places to live.”
“But why did you go to the houses?” he asks.
“To sing at gatherings, to be given presents—as poor children—during the holidays, or to attend piano recitals.”
“Rich people.” He sniffs. “America.”
“I saw gardens with wide lawns and roses. I thought they were peculiar, but then you never can underestimate the strangeness of lo fan.”
“I remember them from their days in Shanghai,” he agrees somberly.
“When I turned fourteen,” I go on, “we moved into a house. It had a dried-out garden, but my mom spent a lot of time there, clearing away the grass and replacing it with the kinds of things our neighbors had: cymbidiums, bamboo, vegetables, and a bunch of junk my parents and grandparents picked up by the side of the road.”
“When you’re poor, you never know when used electrical conduit or an old motor might come in handy,” Z.G. says.
I look at him in his dapper suit, his perfectly cleaned glasses, his neat manner. How would he know?
“By the time I went to the University of Chicago—”
“You went to university?” he asks. Pleasure, satisfaction, and maybe even pride fill his voice. How can it be that we’ve spent two months together and we still know so little about each other?
I nod. “By then I’d been to movie sets, all those houses for church excursions, and even a few homes of lo fan kids from high school whose parents were ‘progressive,’ meaning they didn’t mind having a Chinese girl in their living rooms. That’s when I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t those places with their manicured lawns that were strange; it was my family’s and our neighbors’ gardens that were strange.”
Z.G. looks out the train window to the little shacks that come right up to the train tracks. He points down at the tiny courtyards and gardens.
“Like these?” he asks. “They have the bamboo, the vegetables, the junk. No old motors or used electrical conduit though. No one here has access to that kind of gear, but people have salvaged other things.”
He’s right. Plenty of other stuff—broken earthenware jars, a bent bicycle wheel, burlap rice bags—has been collected and saved. I’d always thought people in Chinatown