The Woman Warrior_ Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts - Maxine Hong Kingston [65]
Brave Orchid rushed along beside her reflection in the glass. She used to be young and fast; she was still fast and felt young. It was mirrors, not aches and pains, that turned a person old, everywhere white hairs and wrinkles. Young people felt pain.
The building was a fine one; the lobby was chrome and glass, with ashtray stands and plastic couches arranged in semicircles. She waited for the elevator to fill before she got in, not wanting to operate a new machine by herself. Once on the sixth floor she searched alertly for the number in her address book.
How clean his building was. The rest rooms were locked, and there were square overhead lights. No windows, though. She did not like the quiet corridors with carpets but no windows. They felt like tunnels. He must be very wealthy. Good. It would serve a rich man right to be humbled. She found the door with his number on it; there was also American lettering on the glass. Apparently this was his business office. She hadn’t thought of the possibility of catching him at his job. Good thing she had decided to scout. If they had arrived at his house, they would not have found him. Then they would have had to deal with her. And she would have phoned him, spoiled the surprise, and gotten him on her side. Brave Orchid knew how the little wives maneuvered; her father had had two little wives.
She entered the office, glad that it was a public place and she needn’t knock. A roomful of men and women looked up from their magazines. She could tell by their eagerness for change that this was a waiting room. Behind a sliding glass partition sat a young woman in a modern nurse’s uniform, not a white one, but a light blue pantsuit with white trim. She sat before an elegant telephone and an electric typewriter. The wallpaper in her cubicle was like aluminum foil, a metallic background for a tall black frame around white paint with dashes of red. The wall of the waiting room was covered with burlap, and there were plants in wooden tubs. It was an expensive waiting room. Brave Orchid approved. The patients looked well dressed, not sickly and poor.
“Hello. May I help you?” said the receptionist, parting the glass. Brave Orchid hesitated, and the receptionist took this to mean that she could not speak English. “Just a moment,” she said, and went into an inner room. She brought back another woman, who wore a similar uniform except that it was pink trimmed in white. This woman’s hair was gathered up into a bunch of curls at the back of her head; some of the curls were fake. She wore round glasses and false eyelashes, which gave her an American look. “Have you an appointment?” she asked in poor Chinese; she spoke less like a Chinese than Brave Orchid’s children. “My husband, the doctor, usually does not take drop-in patients,” she said. “We’re booked up for about a month.” Brave Orchid stared at her pink-painted fingernails gesticulating, and thought she probably would not have given out so much information if she weren’t so clumsy with language.
“I have the flu,” Brave Orchid said.
“Perhaps we can give you the name of another doctor,” said this woman, who was her sister-in-law. “This doctor is a brain surgeon and doesn’t work with flu.” Actually she said, “This doctor cuts brains,” a child making up the words as she went along. She wore pink lipstick and had blue eyelids like the ghosts.
Brave Orchid, who had been a surgeon too, thought that her brother-in-law must be a clever man. She herself could not practice openly in the United States because the training here was so different and because she could never learn English. He was smart enough to learn ghost ways. She would have to be clever to outwit him. She needed to retreat and plan some more. “Oh, well, I’ll go to another doctor, then,” she said, and left.
She needed a new plan to get her sister and brother-in-law together. This