Stealing Time

CHAPTER 34

It was almost one o'clock on Friday morning when April parked in her usual spot in front of the brick house in Astoria, Queens, that no longer felt like her home. Sharply etched in the sky just above the house was a crescent moon. As she glanced up and down the block, checking the lights in the neighbors' houses, the night air felt like warm breath on her face. She could almost feel the flowers in their neat little plots reaching up through the softening earth. All looked quiet and safe. But April knew this sense of peace was false. She touched the flip-down cell phone Mike had given her. It was small enough to live in her pocket. For the first time in her life she felt loved. She dawdled under the stars, taking her time getting into the house that had been big trouble for her from the very beginning.

Soon after she'd settled into her first precinct, in Bed-Stuy, her father had picked out this house without breathing a word. He was a great reader of Chinese newpapers but not much of a talker. After much silent consultation with himself, he decided that he'd been living in a Chinatown walk-up for twenty-five years, saving every spare penny. Now he was ready to move up. Also, he'd been waiting for his girl child, Siyue

Woo, to marry a rich man and or get a good job. The job had materialized before the rich man.

April had been summoned to the National Bank of New York without any idea what for. Judy Chen, one of her oldest friends, was there with her father, Ronald Chen of Chen Realty, along with April's parents, both in their best clothes. The four of them made a nice family picture around April when the mortgage agent from the bank handed her the papers to sign. They jabbered at her for a while in Chinese, and that was the first she heard of their expectation that she would hand over her life savings (from working since before she was fourteen, washing hair in a beauty shop, selling groceries in Ma Fat's supermarket, and teaching English to people who were too shy to go to real classes) for the down payment. Ronald Chen argued that April's old father might not be able to work much longer and needed his own life savings in case of war, famine, or possible retirement. On the other hand, anybody could see that April was young, not ugly, and had many chances to get ahead, with her whole life in front of her. Old Father, all of fifty-one, had nodded his agreement to all this. Old Mother had noddded, too.

The mortgage was another shocker. Ronald Chen spoke for the Woo parents. If the mortgage was in April's name, then the venerable old parents wouldn't ever have to worry about their future. This little meeting more than six years ago had doomed April to endless worry about getting ahead in the department and securing enough overtime to cover her expenses.

It wasn't until some weeks later, at the closing, that April found out the house wasn't in her name. For her parents, this, too, had made perfect sense. This way, if April were a bad daughter or disgraced them in any way, they could have their cake and eat it, too:

They could throw her out of their house and still have her pay off the mortgage.

With the facts of her life well in mind, April opened the front door and was immediately assaulted by a strange odor, hot and intense, as if something rotten were baking in the oven. The smell enveloped the house like a deep fog from which there was no escape. When April closed the door with a sharp clap, there was no response from her mother's poodle, Dim Sum. This worried her. She wrinkled her nose, fearing what Skinny Dragon was up to.

The living room was dark. Beyond it, the kitchen door was open. Flickering light in there suggested that Skinny Dragon had the TV on with the sound off. If April had felt like hiding, she would have been grateful for the chance to run upstairs unnoticed, but tonight she wasn't hiding.

"Hi, Ma," she called softly. "What's up?"

April found Skinny sitting at the kitchen table, an old linoleum number like the ones in the restaurant where she'd worked for so many years. She did not raise her eyes from the gruesome scene on the TV screen in front of her. April's mother was watching a body covered with green sheets. The chest cavity was open and something really terrible was going on. It appeared that Skinny was passing the time waiting for her daughter to come home by avidly watching a heart transplant. The combination of the smell of the steam rising from a pot on the front burner of the stove and the green tent over ribs cracked apart with several people huddled around the cutting away of a defective heart chilled April as much as anything she'd ever seen on the street.

She attempted a little smile. "What's going on Ma?"

Skinny Dragon refused to look away from the TV.

When April was little she used to amuse herself by counting the different meanings of her mother's silences. She'd calculated a hundred different kinds of silence, including Skinny's crowing satisfaction when she shoved something truly disgusting—that April

really

didn't want to chew up and swallow—into April's mouth when she was little and defenseless. The silence now was number 23 silence. Number 23 contained the message:

You've been gone too long, you've been up to no good, and whatever you tell me will be a big lie.

Although most silences were no-win silences, silence number 23 was particularly no-win.

"Where have you been? I must have called a dozen times in the last few days," April began.

"Where I, where you?" Sai demanded. Her first words were a battle cry already rising to a shriek. "I here."

April shook her head. "No, you weren't. Ma."

Sai's jaws clamped together as she remembered that she was supposed to be silent. Her eyes traveled to the steam rising from the roiling pot. April's eyes traveled there, too. The contents seemed to be some kind of thin stew, but the liquid was black and smelly beyond belief. She didn't know how her mother could sit in the same room with it. Skinny must be really angry. April had the disconcerting thought that her mother might have killed a rat, or a raccoon, or even Dim Sum because the dog had been April's gift to her. The thought of her mother killing the adorable puppy made her feel even sicker.

"I was worried about you," she said. "It's not like you to take off without telling me. Where's Dim Sum?"

Silence.

"Ma, where's the puppy?" April looked around the kitchen. No dog under the table. No dog in her father's chair.

Silence.

"Ma, what's in the pot?"

"Save your life, that's what." Now Skinny's eyes were sharp as she avidly studied her subject.

April had thought she looked pretty good when she left for work the morning before. But Thursday had started in Mike's bed, ended there, too, and April knew by her mother's expression that the poison in the pot was for her. She coughed and tasted bile, wishing she'd delayed her return another few days. With the cough. Skinny came alive.

"You very bad," Sai said ominously in Chinese.

"Yeah, well, whatever you're doing there is really making me sick. I better talk to you tomorrow, Ma." April backed out of the kitchen. She was now pretty sure there was decayed animal matter cooking in the kitchen. She decided that wherever her mother was headed with it, Skinny Dragon had to go there alone. April wasn't visiting this particular hell with her.

"No, no, no." Sai jumped out of the chair with amazing nimbleness for someone who did nothing all day but watch TV and brood. She grabbed her daughter, restraining her with an iron grip that transported April back to the time when her mother used to dig all ten fingernails into April's upper arms to break the skin, or her daughter's will, whichever came first. Skinny didn't dare do that now. But she held on, stopping April from escaping out the kitchen.

"No, Ma," April said firmly, prying off her mother's fingers. "Let go. We're not playing doctor tonight. I'm fine."

"You sick," Sai hissed. The top of her head with its crown of frizzy dyed-black hair came up to April's chin. April could have wrenched away, could have taken her mother down with the twist of her wrist. But she didn't. She let Skinny reach up a scrawny paw and clamp it on her forehead to prove she didn't have a fever.

Many times in her life April had longed for a hug, not a poke or a shove, but Skinny Dragon believed that the best mothering was achieved through tyranny, threats, and deprivation.

"Hot," Sai said with satisfaction.

"No." April moved out of range. No matter what, none of that stinking brew was going down her throat.

"Hot," Skinny insisted.

"I'm going to bed now, Ma."

"Liver very bad," Sai said knowingly.

"My liver's great."

Sai's face twisted with Chinese opera as the charges poured out. Worm daughter's face was a no-good color. Worm's pulse was racing. Pulse was elevated to ten times its normal rate. This was a sign of imminent death. Sai screamed that she personally didn't care if

boo hao

daughter bit the dust, but such a death was an insult to

her

father and mother, to their Han ancestors dating back to the beginning of time.

"My pulse is racing because I'm tired and you're screaming at me."

"No screaming!" Sai screamed.

"What's the matter with you, Ma? You've got to calm down. You're going to have a heart attack."

"No care about me. No care about your father. Only care about yourself." Still in Chinese. She gripped April's arms again.

"Oh, God." April detached herself a second time. "It's one o'clock in the morning. I have to go to work in a few hours." She stepped across the room and turned off the burner on the stove.

"Okay. Go to work. Never come back. But take medicine first."

"I'm not taking it," April told her. For the first time in her life April was absolutely determined not to take any smelly medicine.

"Yes." Sai was acting the peasant in her black pants and jacket, trying to deceive the gods about her prosperity. But the peasant guise was ruined by the natural disaster occurring on her face. Rage like a tornado, a hurricane, blasted her because she could manage any demon but her own daughter.

"No, I'm not taking it. I'm throwing it out." April reached for the pot handle.

"Nooooo!" Sai screamed. This sustained shriek was so loud it woke the dead. A loud protest came from the bedroom, and April's father shuffled out.

Ja Fa Woo was wearing shorts and a white T-shirt on his skinny body. His tongue was probing the place where two important gold teeth were missing from his lower jaw. His face was bleary with sleep. The top of his head was bald; the sides, where hair grew, were clipped down to the skin. He was even bonier than Skinny Dragon Mother, his head hardly better fleshed than a skull's. He fumbled with his black-rimmed glasses, got them on, and rubbed his flat nose, looking out at wife and daughter from eyes narrowed with pain and suspicion. He spoke with the powerful number 12 silence:

What is the meaning of this disturbance to my important sleeping self?

His wife replied with the non sequitur of silence number 42.

I told you so.

"Hi, Dad," April said.

Ja Fa Woo sniffed at the pot, scowling with silence number 3:

You did it wrong.

About the medicine.

Skinny's stony face replied:

I did not.

They fought on in this vein for a while.

"What's going on?" April was the first to speak.

"Your mother thinks you're not in harmony."

"I'm in perfect harmony," April said, touching the phone in her pocket.

Sai glared at her husband.

"Spanish boyfriend bad for liver," Ja Fa spat out

"Huh?" "Doctor said."

April shook her head. "No real doctor could have said my boyfriend is bad for my liver." She backed out of the kitchen. "If I had a boyfriend."

Which I do,

she didn't add. Both parents followed her into the other room. She felt on safer ground in the living room, turned on the light. Ah, normalcy.

Her father moved toward her suddenly, in slippered feet, and clamped his hand on her forehead as her mother had done. "Hot," he announced, as she had.

"That's because your hand is like ice. Sit down. I want to talk to you."

Sai sniffed at the air around her daughter. "Smell like monkey business."

"I'm thirty years old."

"Old maid," Sai muttered. "Double-stupid. Boyfriend no good."

"He's good."

"Why not captain?"

"He's almost the same as a captain."

"No-good Spanish," Sai spat at her.

"I won't hear that." April was ready to spit fire herself. Her mother was not even five feet tall. Her father was not more than five two. She suddenly realized they were not the giants she'd thought. She let her voice show her anger. "I will not hear that. I will not let you say that. Mike is a good man. He is a better man than anyone I've ever met. I love him."

"You marry?" Sai screamed.

April flushed, unsure. "Maybe."

"No marry you, not good man," her father said.

"He wants to marry me. I'm the one who's not sure," April clarified.

"Ayiee!" Sai screamed. Worse and worse.

April threw up her hands. What did they want? There was no pleasing them. "I'm going to bed now," she announced.

"You eat something." Sai tried a new tack.

"I ate."

"You take medicine for your heart." Skinny followed her to the stairs.

"I thought it was my liver."

"Heart," Sai insisted. "Heart fever."

Whatever. April had reached the first step when a high-pitched wail rose from outside. Sai charged out into the kitchen. "Sollie, sollie, sollie," she cried.

"What's that?"

Ja Fa Woo shook his head as Dim Sum charged into the living room barking excitedly, jumped on April, and hugged her leg with her front paws. Sai must have let her out and forgotten her. She continued to apologize to the dog in the dog's native language. "So sollie, so sollie."

April squatted down to let the beautiful apricot puppy cover her face with kisses. Her own heart beat as frantically as the dog's. There was no question that her parents' house was an insane asylum. And now she had to admit she

was

feeling a little hot, a little overwrought herself. Her parents were crazy; that point was not in doubt. But now it seemed, so was she. She'd actually thought Sai would kill her own beloved pet and make her eat it just to spite her. That proved she was as nuts as they were. "I love you," she murmured to the dog.

"Who love?" Skinny screamed.

"I love you, Ma," April said dutifully. Then she gave Skinny a smile that contained the hardest silence for a mother to bear, silence number 101, a brand-new silence and more powerful than all the others put together:

But don't push me, because I love my boyfriend more, and I'll marry him if I decide that's the best thing for me.

Skinny made a wise decision and backed off.

Half an hour later April's pulse was beginning to slow and her eyes were closing, when the phone by her bed began to ring.

Sleepily, she fumbled for it. "Sergeant Woo."

"Hey April, sorry to get you up."

"Alfie?" April's eyes popped open.

"Yeah."

"Jesus. What's up?"

"We got a suicide you might be interested in. Young woman. Chinese. Looks like she might be your little mother."

"Oh, God, where are you? I'm on my way."

"Too late for that. The body's already been removed. I'd like to see you tomorrow, first thing."

"You have a COD?"

"Looks like she went out of a window. Guess where."

"I'll bite. Where?"

"The Popescu building. Eight o'clock in my office, okay?"

"Oh, Jesus. I'll get there as soon as I can."

"You brought me this one, April, you better help me clear it."

"See you, Alfie."

April was sure she didn't close her eyes or sleep at all. She had bad dreams and was up before six, bothered by the horrid rotting smell, which had moved upstairs during the night. But she had slept and when she opened her eyes, she was stunned to see the electric kettle from the kitchen plugged in by her bed, steaming her mother's evil brew directly into her brain.