Loving Time

thirty-four

“Aeiiiiii!” Sai Woo stood in the doorway of her daughter’s apartment, screaming. The sound was shrill and piercing like the radio signal for disaster.

Startled, April swung around to face her, the dangerous new Glock 9mm automatic that could fire off sixteen rounds without reloading still level in her hand.

Skinny Dragon Mother clapped both hands to her head. “I mother,” she shrieked. “No kirr me.”

Disgusted, April lowered the gun. “Maaa, haven’t you ever heard of knocking? I could have shot you.”

“Go ahead, shoot me. I dead awleady.” Sai’s screams brought Dim Sum scampering up the stairs. When the dog saw her mistress, she crouched like a panther and jumped several feet straight up into Sai’s arms, trembling all over.

“Oh, come on, Ma, give me a break.”

“Rook,” Sai said accusingly, “you scare ying’er.”

“Ma, I hate to tell you this. That thing is not a baby, it’s a dog.”

“Onny baby I eva see,” Sai muttered angrily, hugging the puppy to her chest. “You no have baby. Boo hao, ni.”

“Oh, come on, Ma, don’t start that.” April swung around and put the gun on the table beside the couch in her living room, then hunkered down to unstrap the weights on her ankles.

She’d been exercising with the gun and the weights, trying to keep her forearms strong and develop some perceivable curvature in her butt. The last thing she needed at the moment was Chinese torture. Skinny Dragon Mother seemed to have other ideas.

“What kind dautta prays with gun?” She answered her own question. “Long kind dautta. Boo hao dautta. You hear me, ni? No good dautta.”

Her mother sounded ready for a good long fight. Never mind that they lived in a free country, never mind that her U.S. citizenship papers said she was American now. Skinny Dragon Mother was old, old Chinese to the core. She believed giving birth to April made April hers forever. She also believed the path to heaven was paved with abuse and terror. She had crowded April’s dreams with demons and ghosts and monsters so terrible April had to become a cop to defend herself. Out there she felt relatively safe; it was at home that she couldn’t defend herself against the breaking and entering of her own mother.

This had not been the deal she had struck with her parents when they bought the house. The deal was April had the top floor, it was hers and she was supposed to be able to live as she wanted, come and go as she pleased. That was the deal. But not for a single day had it worked out that way. Although the second floor had a door and a lock, the two apartments shared the downstairs front door and front hallway. Sai not only knew the exact timing of her worm daughter’s coming and going, she also had a key to worm daughter’s apartment and dropped in whenever she felt like it. Now, as she studied April’s living room with an expression of extreme disapproval on her suspicious, Skinny Dragon Mother face, she dangled the keys she had used to get in.

“I thought you had a date,” she said in Chinese. “I came to help you get dressed.”

April was clearly not getting dressed for a date. She was sweating freely in a ratty Police Academy tee shirt and shorts. She did not look her mother in the face as she went into the kitchen for some water.

“It was canceled,” she answered in English.

Her kitchen was decorated with the same pea-green tiles as the bathroom. April had added many open shelves on which her collection of colorful ginger and pickle jars was displayed all the way up to the ceiling. Hung on hooks were two frying pans and two woks, many plastic bags of dried tree ear, dried mushrooms, dried lichees, tiny dried shrimp, gingko nuts, pickled radishes, and a dozen other items, all gifts from her father. Her collection of boning, hacking, carving, and chopping knives (and cleaver) was stuck on a magnet rack by the side of the door. They were the old-fashioned kind that rusted if they were not properly dried after each washing and had to be sharpened endlessly. These staining steel knives, too, were a gift from her father. April had known how to use her father’s set by the time she was seven.

“Cancered? Why cancered?” her mother demanded.

April’s favorite glass was sitting in the sink. It had the characters Good Luck and Long Life painted on the side. They were two of the five blessings the Chinese prayed for most. April filled the glass with tap water and swallowed half of it down. Please give me some good luck, she prayed silently.

“Ma, these things happen,” she told Sai.

Grimacing at the decadent plushness of it, Sai sank into the soft pink satin sofa April had bought for even less than half price in Little Italy. The sofa was opposite two windows that looked out over the backyard, where the garden, invisible in the dark, was already mulched for the winter. It was around six in the evening.

“What happened? He no rike no more?”

April swigged down the rest of the water. In front of the sofa were two good-size Chinese stools that also served as tables. She sat on one. Her mother was talking about George Dong, her great Chinese Doctor hope for a son-in-law. And the probrem wasn’t he no rike her. Probrem was she no rike him. April shrugged guiltily. It wasn’t something she could easily explain.

“Ma. He wanted me to meet him in Chinatown.”

“So?”

“So, it makes me lose face. He should pick me up. He should come here.” She put the glass down on the other table.

Sai thought it over. Since when was her daughter so correct, her face said. “Na bú shi gùyi de,” she said finally.

“Well, I’m not so sure it’s not an intentional thing,” April said slowly. “You stick up for him without even knowing whether it’s intentional or not. If he likes me, he should want to meet my parents.” Touché.

Dead silence for a long time.

Ha, got her. April suppressed a smile. There was nothing her mother could say to that. She had drawn blood on the first parry and her mother was stopped cold. Should have been a Japanese samurai.

Finally, Skinny Dragon Mother’s eyes narrowed to nothingness, and a clicking sound began at the back of her throat. This was a sound of pure rage that indicated soon Sai would spit out her true reason for being there.

“Why go to Mei Mei Chen?” Her voice got so cold and angry, the dog growled.

“Huh?” April was taken aback.

“You hear me, ni.”

“Oh, that, that’s nothing.”

“No nothing. Sunsing.”

April sighed.

“Terr.”

April sighed again. She couldn’t get out of it, had to tell. Damn Judy. “It’s nothing, Ma. You know Sergeant Sanchez who was here yesterday.”

“I know.”

“He said you are very beautiful, Ma. He wants to take your advice.”

Sai made another noise, something like a grunt that said “So?”

“So, he’s looking for a better place to live. He couldn’t find what he wanted, so I put him in touch with Judy.”

“Hmmmmph. I cousin with Judy mother.”

“I know that, Ma.”

“Judy terr mother. Judy mother call me.”

April shrugged. “So?”

“So she say mebbe you no mellee George. Mellee Spanish.”

Furious, April scooped up the glass and headed for the kitchen for a refill. “Ma, Judy is a real estate agent. She finds places for people. I gave her some business. That’s the beginning and end of the story.”

“No berieve. Yestidday, no rook for monkey business with Spanish, have date with docta. Today monkey business with Spanish, no date with docta. Boo hao ni.”

April thought she was pretty no good herself. She came back to the living room, the blood hot in her face. “Don’t call him Spanish. His name is Mike.”

“He no Spanish?”

“He’s American, like me.”

“You Chinese.”

“We’re both American, Ma. Both our fathers cooked in restaurants for a living. We’re both cops. Just the same.”

“Cook Chinese?”

“Mike’s father? No, Ma.”

“Cook what?”

“Mexican,” April admitted reluctantly.

“Ha,” Sai said.

“Ha, what?” April demanded. She was furious at the way her mother sat on the beautiful pink sofa in her black pants and padded black jacket just like a mean old peasant woman about to deliver a curse. She wasn’t going to choose a man to please her mother. It wasn’t love. And it wasn’t the American way.

“Ha Spanish,” Sai said, triumphant. “He Spanish.”

“Ethnically, Ma, he may be Spanish. He may even have some Indian in him.”

“Aeiiiii. Indian?” Now Sai was really upset.

“Mayan Indian. They lived in Mexico thousands of years ago, intermarried with the Spanish. I think they drank the blood of their enemies.”

“Aeiiiiiii.” Worse and worse.

“They cut out their hearts, and they have ghosts, just as old as Chinese ghosts. You don’t want to mess with these ghosts, you hear me? They’re a mean set of ghosts. And you know what else? These people may still drink the blood of their enemies. So call him Mike, Ma, and treat him with the respect he deserves.”

Sai glared at the gun, then away. April could see that her mother was fighting the urge to say something truly terrible, but for once she didn’t dare. Watching the wrinkles in Sai’s face close in around her rage, April realized that Skinny Dragon Mother was actually afraid of Mike Sanchez. She was afraid to say anything bad about him and push April into liking him even more. The thought that her mother was afraid of a friend of hers cheered April up quite a bit. “Come on, Ma. I’ll get you some dinner,” she offered. “You want to try some take-out chicken mole?”