Mambo in Chinatown

I didn’t know how De

He was considering me. “You’ve grown up, Charlie.”

“What do you mean?”

“The way you look, the way you carry yourself. You’re so confident.”

I lowered my eyes to the table. “Well, thank you.”

“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

I didn’t answer.

Winston bent in close to my ear and whispered, “I’m sorry. About everything.”

I carefully swallowed the dumpling in my mouth, then met his eyes. “It’s all right. I’m past that now.”

Half of his mouth pulled upward in that smile I’d loved. “I can see that. This new you is very attractive.”

“And that’s our problem right there.”

He looked puzzled. “What?”

“You like the new me but I liked the old you.” And with that, I turned away from him.

—

Pa caught up to me as I walked away from the restaurant. “Pa, you set me up!”

He spread his fingers. “You wouldn’t have gone otherwise. Anyway, it was Godmother’s idea. She came to the noodle restaurant to ask my permission.” Of course. Why hadn’t I realized that before? She couldn’t have me, an unmarried girl, present at a matchmaking session without Pa’s permission, whether or not I was the intended victim.

Pa continued, “So I said it was all right as long as they invited Winston too.”

“Pa!” Sometimes I could just strangle him. “Did you know De

“No, she didn’t tell me who the suitor would be. I recognized him at the restaurant, but I only got there a few minutes before you did. You seemed to like him better. He must come from a good family if the matchmaker recommended him. You pick.”

I breathed deeply to calm myself. “Pa, I want to be free to make my own choices.”

He blinked, confused. “But I’m letting you choose.”

“Between two guys that you know!” I wondered if a person could get arrested for yelling on the street in Chinatown. “Leave my love life alone. I don’t want anybody.”

Pa furrowed his eyebrows. “Are you sure?”

I couldn’t trust myself to answer and stalked off down the street, fuming.

—

The next weekend, Lisa and I were making up our beds as usual. She stumbled as she bumped into our old coffee table, which had been in the middle of our room for as long as I could remember.

“Come on, help me set up the mattresses, Lisa.” I hated it when she tried to get out of helping me. She staggered over to the sofa and sat down abruptly on the floor. She had missed the couch.

I sped over to her. “What’s wrong?” I tried to help her up but it was like she’d lost all co

“I can’t feel my feet,” she whispered.

“Pa!” I yelled. “Something’s wrong with Lisa!”

As Pa came ru

“She’s having a stroke.” I placed my fingers against my throat, hardly able to breathe. This was too similar to what had happened with Ma.

Lisa’s legs went limp. Gingerly, she lowered first one, then the other foot onto the ground. “No, I’m not. I’m just very tired.”

“You lost control of your legs.”

Pa was aghast, his skin ashen, the lines on his face deeper than I’d ever seen them.

“We need to call an ambulance.” I reached for the phone.

“No, do you remember what happened to Ma? My legs are fine now.” Even though Lisa was too young to remember Ma’s death herself, she was aware of all the bill collectors who had harassed us for years after Ma died.

I looked at Pa and he pressed his lips together. I understood. We wouldn’t be calling.

At the begi

Ma returned the next day, looking frail. They’d run tests on her but they were still inconclusive. However, the bills were clear. We were pursued by creditors and bill collectors for years, until long after Ma was dead. In the end, Uncle Henry paid the rest of them off for us and refused any repayment. That was partly why Lisa had to keep working at his office, to try to pay back a small part of that debt, which both brothers understood, although no one would speak of it.

After that, when Ma’s symptoms returned, Pa was afraid to call the medical authorities. He had Uncle help us and when Uncle couldn’t, Pa went to the temples and the witches. He returned to our own kind of medicine, which he understood and trusted. In his eyes, the western doctors had failed to discover anything with their tests and had charged us a fortune on top of that, only burdening us with a huge debt. When Uncle Henry fed Ma cool, yin energy foods like pears, lotus seeds and white gourd to help rebalance her energy, Pa believed it helped her headaches. It didn’t stop her miscarriages, though, which continued until she finally had Lisa. But then she died a few years after that. None of us really knew what the cause of death was. In the months before her death, she’d started losing feeling in her legs, just like Lisa now. She’d been disoriented and dizzy, until she’d hardly been able to walk any more. Then she died from what seemed to be a massive stroke one night.

Most of Uncle Henry’s patients weren’t covered by insurance and neither were we, which was normal in Chinatown. I was pretty sure that most of the dancers weren’t insured either. It was too expensive. They paid their own bills and desperately tried not to be injured. Most of them were young enough that they didn’t have many physical problems. It seemed so wrong to me, now, that we couldn’t bring Lisa to the hospital for fear of the costs. But Pa was right that we couldn’t control which tests they would do in an emergency room. Who knew how high the bill would be? If I was certain they could help cure Lisa, I would sell my soul in a second, but what if they sent her back to us with no answers and we were then up to our necks in debt with nothing to show for it? We’d be worse off than ever.

Still, we’d spent so much money on the Vision and traditional cures and Lisa was only getting worse. I was starting to doubt. What if she suffered from the same thing as Ma, whatever it was? “Pa, we need to bring her to a specialist who can figure out what’s wrong. Maybe a neurologist.”

“They won’t find anything. They’ll just take our money.” Pa ran his hands, coarse from all his manual labor, over his face.

—

That afternoon, Lisa and I sat on the couch in the apartment waiting for the Vision to come, while Pa set tea in the kitchen. This was supposed to be a major emergency ritual.

Lisa had panic in her eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with me. Maybe we could make a run for it.”

My eyes trailed to the door. I was afraid of that old witch messing around with Lisa, but I was willing to try it if she might help. “Pa’s already agreed to hire her, so if she comes and you’re not here, he’s going to pay her anyway. That’s the way he is.”

“Do you think she’s going to make me eat something?”

“Could be. But I think she’s more about spells and incense and that kind of thing.”

Lisa shivered and looked like she was going to cry. “I hope they don’t move on to Uncle Henry’s type of treatments next. I hate taking medicine or being poked with a needle.”

I hugged her. “Hey, I thought you wanted to be a doctor.”