Mambo in Chinatown

—

A few days later, Lisa fell from a rope she was climbing in gym class. Although the school nurse could find no sign of an injury, Lisa had a lot of trouble walking after that. Aunt Monica picked her up and brought her to their office. I only heard about it when I got home from work.

Lisa’s legs started to fail at irregular intervals, and she sometimes needed a cane to go to school. She told the school she’d hurt herself in a fall. Her symptoms terrified me. She also didn’t want to work at Uncle’s office anymore. Uncle Henry and Aunt Monica asked her to go there after school anyway, just so they could make sure she was all right.

Lisa said, “I have so much homework now and the office is very busy. I’m sure my legs will get better at home. I’m just overtired.”

Pa said, “I don’t like you being in the apartment alone.”

“I’m almost twelve years old. And there are so many germs at the office. All of those patients. Maybe I caught something from them.”

I said, “You never know. She’s been working there the whole time she’s been having these problems.”

Pa considered. “All right, we’ll try letting Lisa come home after school.”

“Yippee!” Lisa hugged Pa, then came over and wrapped her arms around me too. “Thank you, Charlie.”

I held her tight. “Whatever is going on with you, we are going to figure it out and fix it. I promise.”

“However,” Pa said, as we both turned to him, “I want Uncle Henry to start working on a treatment plan for her.”

—

At the next tai chi lesson, I hung around Godmother’s qigong group, hoping to learn something. Pa was absolutely against letting anyone outside of our immediate family know about Lisa’s problems. He was afraid of how Chinatown gossip could destroy people’s reputations, but I trusted Godmother, and I knew that after Lisa’s incident at school, her symptoms would soon be public knowledge anyway.

Godmother beamed. “Are you finally going to join us for qigong work, Charlie?”

I shook my head. I’d come a long way but I still wasn’t ready. “I’d like to ask you about healing after the class if you have time.”

She nodded, then returned to her talk of meridians and organs.

After the other students had gone, Godmother approached me. “You seem worried.”

“I am.” I took a breath, then told her everything that had been happening with Lisa.

Godmother listened, her eyes intent. Then she put her hand on my arm and said simply, “Bring me to her.”

—

Both Pa and Lisa were home when Godmother and I entered our apartment. Pa came up to us with his hands outstretched. “Godmother Yuan, what an honor. I apologize, we were not expecting you. Our home is a mess.”

“Nonsense.” Godmother went up to Lisa, who had been reading a book. She took Lisa’s hands in both of hers.

“Godmother,” said Lisa in a small voice.

Godmother said to Pa, “May I?”

When he looked questioningly at me, I said, “I told her.” Pa frowned. To him, I had aired our dirty laundry in public, but he also knew Godmother was considered a great sifu. Slowly, he nodded.

“Just lie down and stretch out on the couch,” Godmother said to Lisa while she sat on the coffee table. “Relax. Do not worry about a thing. I am not even going to touch you. I am just going to try to understand what is happening.”

With a glance at me, Lisa lay down warily.

Godmother closed her eyes and suspended her right hand about a foot above Lisa’s face. Godmother’s fingers began to vibrate. Then she brought her left hand next to her right and allowed both to travel slowly above the length of Lisa’s body. Lisa shivered. Godmother’s hands reached Lisa’s toes, then circled upward again, drawing loop after loop over Lisa’s body.

Lisa sat up abruptly, coughing. “That felt so weird.”

“That’s a good sign,” Godmother said. “Negative energy usually leaves via the mouth.”

Pa said, “Sifu, what did you find?”

“There is a great deal of blockage in her body but I ca

I nodded. “Very little. But you can heal people who have never trained.”

“I can try. It’s harder.”

I was starting to feel desperate. “I think we should bring her to a western doctor.”

Godmother said, “The problem with western medicine is that they look only at the manifestation of the symptoms. For a western doctor, physical pain and emotion are unrelated. They require separate specialists, different treatments. But to the Chinese, physical pain and emotions are two sides of the same coin. You ca

Pa said, “Lisa is being treated by eastern medicine.”

Godmother raised her eyebrows. “But never forget that in eastern medicine, there can be a tremendous amount of bullshit.”

Lisa giggled.

“See, she is better already,” Godmother said. “I will return but I am not certain of how much I can do for her.”

—

In the course of the following week, news of Lisa’s fall had indeed spread. Neighbors, friends and acquaintances rallied to give us helpful advice on how to strengthen her legs. The hairdresser Mrs. Tam brought us packages of a tea she swore had cured her sister’s bad knees. Mrs. Lee told Pa that she’d recently sworn off carbohydrates and it had helped her general health tremendously. Pa was laughing when he told us this story because then he’d reminded her that she was going to put him, a noodle master, out of business with her low-carb talk, and she’d turned beet red. Mrs. Yuan, Grace’s mother, was convinced we needed to eliminate all sugar from Lisa’s diet. Meanwhile, Winston had started showing up at the apartment as well. He’d come by twice, ostensibly to ask about Lisa’s welfare. The first time, Pa was alone at home, and the second, I was just heading to the studio. I hoped he understood from the way I’d hurried off that there was no hope for the two of us.

—

I watched Julian coaching Simone and Keith in their routine together. It was May, so we still had a few months until the competition, but they were already fantastic. That number was romantic, fast-paced, technically and artistically demanding, and had been choreographed by Julian himself. Of course, it also didn’t hurt to have Julian so invested in them since he was the head judge for this scholarship. Ryan and I didn’t have the kind of money to hire him, but Keith did.

It didn’t seem fair to me to have the head adjudicator coach the people he’d be judging, but Katerina told me, “The ballroom world is so small at the top. Everyone is trained by the same handful of coaches, who are also the people asked to judge competitions. If they were not allowed to judge the people they’d coached, everybody would be out of work.”

Ryan and I were now painfully aware of what we’d been doing wrong, and I’d been throwing myself into my dancing, trying to forget everything that was happening at home. Ryan had improved tremendously as well.

As I was correcting Ryan’s arm position after a turn, Julian’s reflection appeared beside us in the mirror. “Ah, Charlie. My favorite dancer with potential.” Julian took my hand and held me at a distance to examine me. “Absolutely beautiful.” I flushed with pleasure, then he turned to Ryan. “So this is your competition student. Hmmm. Why don’t you show me what you’ve been doing?”

I knew what an honor it was for Julian to take an interest in us, and for free. Simone stared at us as we left for the small ballroom. When I glanced back at Ryan, he looked a bit a

“Lovely, Charlie.” Julian turned to Ryan. “You need some work.” But instead of giving Ryan any tips, he held out his arms to me.