Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [272]
They stopped outside her grandfather’s house.
The day was hot and the crickets were chirping noisily. From a distance, Amy could see him sitting in the porch dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, one leg propped up on the other, cooling himself down with the aid of a large rush fan.
“For the love of God, put your leg down!” shouted Yin Ling.
She quickly let Amy out of the car, as if she was anxious to be rid of her. “I’ll pick her up tomorrow morning.”
And she drove off to the casino, without even stopping to step inside the house. Amy knew she did not need to go to work so early but wanted to avoid her grandfather’s endless questions.
“Amy, good girl, what you like your granddad cook you dinner tonight?”
Her grandfather’s English was even worse than her mother’s. When Amy first met him, she could not understand a word he was saying. But she was used to the way he spoke now, and mostly she could guess if she did not understand.
“Fried chicken,” Amy said.
She knew that if she did not make up her mind quickly, her grandfather would be sure to make her pickled egg porridge. She could not understand why he kept eating eggs that looked as if they had turned black from being buried in the earth for a thousand years. The first time she saw him putting one in his mouth, she expected him to fall down dead. But he did not. He even bared his stained teeth and grinned at her.
“OK, Granddad, cut up the chicken,” and he went indoors.
She had been secretly hoping he would go away quickly, because she often found coins which had dropped out of his pockets in the chair he sat in.
But today she was out of luck. She only found two cents, which she put carefully away in an inside pocket.
Bright sunlight glared down, bleaching the trees white. She heard the ice-cream van’s jingle but it did not stop at her street. It was hours till bedtime, too many to count properly. What was she going to do while they dragged by? Why could she not have a sister, or even a brother? Even a little brother would do in a pinch. Together they could have made the boring hours pass, made things a bit more fun. And why could she not live in one place, like other people did, so she could get to know the neighbours’ children and spend the long afternoons cycling up and down the street, skipping and running around?
“Amy, good girl, come and eat char siu dumplings,” her grandfather called.
Char siu dumplings again. He served them up every time she came. The sticky lumps of red meat always threatened to come back up the minute she had swallowed them down. She had asked her mother once: “Why does Granddad eat such funny food?” “Because he’s Chinese” was the answer. “Then if he’s Chinese, are we Chinese too?” To her surprise, her mother seemed stumped at that simple question. Finally she just said: “You’re not Chinese.” Amy wanted to ask if her mother was, but she did not dare because Yin Ling had an ugly look on her face.
Amy went indoors. Her grandfather was chopping the chicken up. Bang, bang went the cleaver, until the chopping board squealed in protest. Something wet spattered on Amy’s cheek. She wiped it off—it was a bloody bone fragment. Her grandfather wiped his hands on his T-shirt and pulled a char siu dumpling in two, giving half to Amy.
“To keep you going till the chicken’s ready,” he said.
Amy felt like she was going to gag. “I’m not hungry,” she said. He did not force the dumpling on her, just shovelled both halves into his own mouth and waved her away. “Go play,” he said. “I call you when it’s ready.”
Play? What with? Where? Amy looked outside at the blazing sunshine, and her heart sank.
Teddy.
Amy suddenly thought of her teddy bear. It was her only toy, given her one Christmas by one of the uncles. She had left it at her grandfather’s last time. She would go and search for it.
She searched every nook and cranny downstairs, without success.