immediately to their conversation. Neither of them acknowledged her parents at all. She shut the car door and followed her father and mother around the willow tree, up the short walk to the house. Such behavior was something she'd gotten used to over the years, and though she supposed she should be angry about it, she really didn't care. She accepted the situation as part of The Way Things Were.
The Way Things Were.
She told herself that The Way Things Were were that customers did not become overly friendly or overly familiar with shopkeepers, restaurant owners, or other individuals with whom they did business, that there was a wall automatically erected during the establishment of such a business relationship that discouraged more intimate contact. But she knew that wasn't really the case. Mike Fazio, who owned Mike Pizza Place in the Basha's shopping center, seemed to be good friends with many of his customers. Hank and Tara Farrel, who operated the video store, often sodalized with their patrons. It was because her family was Chinese.
She didn't like thinking about that. It made her uncomfortable, and she couldn't help feeling that she was being overly sensitive. On TV, when she saw Asian groups protesting showings of Charlie Chan movies or cartoons with Oriental stereotypes, she always felt uneasy, wanting to agree with the protestors--knowing she should agree with them--but not being able to fully take their side. She had a hard dine convincing herself that, in this day and age, race made any difference at all in the way people were viewed or in how others behaved toward them. After all, the sports heroes of some of the biggest rednecks in town were black football and basketball players. Their kids spent their music money on the tapes of black pop stars. Was it reasonable for her to think that her family was treated differently merely because they were Chinese? Yes. Because, after all these years, her family still did not fit in, were still treated more like outsiders than members of the community. Even the nicest customers, those who joked and laughed with her, who were friendly and respectful toward her parents, seemed awkward and standoffish outside the confines of the restaurant. They would nod, sometimes smile, at the most say a quick 'hi,' but the relaxed informality of their behavior as customers disappeared when the roles of waitress and patron were no longer in effect. Her family was not shunned, not even actively disliked, it was just that they were treated.. differently.
And it was because they were Chinese.
Sue had never had a problem with prejudice. She'd al ways had a group of close friends, had never been treated unfairly, had never been discriminated against, had always been accepted by her peers and by the kids she'd grown up with. Her parents, though, had no friends in town, had always been socially ostracized. More than the skin color, more than the Oriental eyes, more than any aspect of physical appearance, it was the language that seemed to separate them from everyone else. Their accents and broken English served to emphasize that they were from another country, an alien culture. And when they spoke Cantonese, it actu ally seemed to offend people.
But that was The Way Things Were. ,: The night was warm, without a breeze, and the moon less sky was dark, the stars like tiny prisms against their black backdrop. Sue glanced up as she followed her parents into the house. She noticed that the constellations had changed position since the last time she'd looked, shifting closer to their winter locales, and it made her realize how quickly time was speeding by. Summer had just ended, and soon it would be Christmas.
Then summer again. Then Christmas. Years were now moving by in the time it had once taken seasons to pass.
Inside the doorway, her father took off his shoes and carried the leftover food from the restaurant into the kitchen. John, without pausing, walked into the living room, turned on the television, and immediately draped himself over the couch. Her mother and grandmother took off their own shoes and followed her father into the kitchen. '
Sue stood for a moment in the entryway as she slipped off her sandals, staring at a pink-flowered fan hanging on the walls She was not sure whether she should go to her bedroom or help her parents and grandmother in the kitchen. Instinct told her to go to her room.
Something was not right tonight. She'd felt weird all evening, spooked--though not quite as badly as she had been the other night at the school--and she wanted to go to bed and forget about it. Wai.
Badness.
She heard her grandmother speaking quietly to her parents in the kitchen. All evening her grandmother had been uncharacteristically silent, not even listening to her tapes as she chopped vegetables in the rear of the restaurant. Several times, upon turning around, Sue had caught the old woman staring at her strangely, and she'd seen her grandmother bestow equally cryptic looks upon her brother. Her parents, too, had noticed the change in her grandmother's mood--she could tell by the way that they were polite to each other instead of bickering--but neither of them had said a word about it, and they'd continued about their business as usual.
She looked toward the kitchen, then decided against going there or to her bedroom, opting instead for the coward's way out. She walked over to where John lay sprawled on the couch, his head leaning against one arm rest, his feet pressing against the other. 'Move over,' she said.
'Let me sit down.'
'Mo cho,' he told her. ' ,
'Shut up yourself.'
'Hit the road. You're blocking my view.'
'Fine then.' She sat down on top of his legs.
'Heyt' he yelled, trying to wiggle out from under her.
'Knock it off!.'
'Tieu pay.'
'You're too fat. It hurts!'
'Then move your feet so I can sit down.'
'Get up so I can move my legs.'
She stood, and he gave her a quick kick in the buttocks before rolling off the couch and out of her way. He looked back over his shoulder to make sure she wasn't going to retaliate, then spread out on the floor in front of the television. He wrinkled his nose. 'I can't sit next to you. You reek.'
'You're the one who smells,' she said. 'Take a bath.' 'Susan.' Sue turned her head at the sound of her grandmother's voice. The old woman was standing in the doorway, framed by the light from the kitchen, her frazzled white hair forming a fuzzy penumbra around the silhouetted shape of her face. For a brief second, she looked to Sue like a witch, and an instinctive shiver passed down Sue's spine as the image imprinted itself on her brain. Then her grandmother walked all the way into the room and once again she looked like herself..:
Sue forced herself to smile. 'What is it, Grandmother?' she asked in Cantonese.
'Will you come with me to my room? I have something I want to give you.'
'Yes.' She was puzzled, but it would not be polite to question her grandmother, so she got up from the couch and followed the old woman down the hall. Behind her, John immediately jumped up from the floor to retake his seal
Her grandmother's room smelled, as always, of must and medicine and herbs, the odors of old age. On the small teak nightstand next to her bed were two bottles of ginseng, the source of the room's dominant scent. One of the bottles, the smaller of the two, was filled with dried chopped slivers of the root. In the other, a full root floated in clear liquid, looking like a little man trapped inside the glass with its branching offshoots at arm level and its downward growing rootlet legs.
Sue had always liked going into her grandmother's room. Slightly warmer than the rest of the house, it seemed to her exotic, like a little piece of China trans planted here to Arizona, in stark contrast to the Americanized Chinese decor of her parents. She liked the dark three-paneled screen that separated the sleeping area from the sitting area, the huge hand-painted vase in the corner, the ornately carved furniture. Tonight, though, that exotic, mysterious quality seemed a trifle disquieting, the dark room a little too dark.
Wincing as if in pain, her grandmother sat down awkwxdly on the edge of the bed. Her shoulders slumped as the bed settled beneath her weight, and for the first time she looked old to Sue. Really old. The deeply etched lines surrounding her mouth and eyes, which had remained unchanged for as long as Sue could remember and had always seemed a permanent part of her face, had altered, shifted course, moving downward into her chin, upward into her cheeks and forehead, and were now intersected by newer spiderweb wrinkles that gave her skin an almost mummified look.
