Henry Chang - Chinatown Beat

By Thanksgiving, Widow Tam ceased to wear all black when she appeared in public, but kept the mask of grief on her face. At home, alone in the dark living room overlooking Chinatown, she wore her red embroidered nightgown every night to bed, her head nestling into downy pillows, wrapped in the blood color of new luck.

She felt thankful.

Her happiness had been completed when the police arrested Jun Yee Wong for her husband's murder and she received the Full Benefit, US $200,000, from Universal Life. Opening the windows, she felt the bite of frost tumbling out of the north, and began to think of sunny places where she could escape the New York City winter.

Jack celebrated alone, chasing a line of boilermakers at the Golden Star. When he'd had enough, he returned to the park. He'd finally tracked down Ali Por to the free clinic at the Old Age Center. She was strapped to a gurney and connected to an intravenous line, dehydrated and delirious. The nurse said she'd been there almost a week and that, although the fever was breaking, nothing the old woman said made any sense.

Jack reached out from his alcoholic haze and placed the bak baan, mahjong tile, in her veiny clutch.

Ali Por rolled her eyes at him, called him jai, son, and passed the tile from palm to palm. She said what sounded to Jack like panda sun, diamond sky, wind of salt water, and began to tremble.

The nurse took the tile, returned it to Jack, and told him to leave as Ali Por lapsed into unconsciousness.

In the street, Jack repeated Ah Por's phrases but could not squeeze any clarity from them. He wandered down Mott Street, spinning from the boilermakers, clueless.

Sleep came in snatches of blinking REMs, fitful tiny periods of rest in a night of tossing and disconnected dreams.

When Jack awoke, he found himself on the floor in the daylight of Pa's apartment.

The sun was high and bright, unusual for a day in late October. Sunlight streamed into the apartment, throwing thick slatshadows across the floor, along the walls.

Family, he thought, this is how it ends.

He saw the Hennessy carton on top of the green vinyl upholstered chair, the only item of furniture still remaining. He crossed the empty room and took the mao-tai gourd out of the carton.

Sanitation had come for the mattress and the broken wooden chairs. The bed frame and boxspring were still good, and he had given them to the Old Age Center, along with the wok and the table lamp. The leftover clothes he'd taken to the Goodwill guys down on Houston near the Bowery. He'd given the rest of the books and magazines to the Chinatown History Project.

He took a deep drink, felt the heat as it went down. The super had taken out the garbage thatJack had piled into one corner. And that was that. The new family was moving in next week and they needed to get the place painted. Jack took the last hit from the gourd, surprised by its bittersweet taste, the sudden sticky ooze around the opening against his lips. He held the gourd upside down, watching as dark tarlike mud dripped out. He rubbed some of the sediment between his fingers, took a sniff. Opium, he realized instantly. No wonder he had had troubled memories, flashbacks with the photographs, been tormented by fragmented pieces of living left behind. Was it Pa's opium? Or had it been left on purpose for hinl? He'd never know, but wasn't sure that it mattered.

He set the gourd down.

Only the Hennessy carton was left. Fifty years of a man's life in a cardboard box. There were photographs, many of people Jack didn't recognize. Canceled bankbooks, a passport, eyeglasses, a flashlight. A black beaver fedora labeled Bianchi icappelli di qualita.

Jack was keeping all these, his memorabilia. There was the porcelain Kwan Gung, an idol before which Jack could burn incense, bow, offer greetings, feel sorrow, hope. He'd miss Pa. Miss all the old ways he'd finally come to understand and respect.

Deeper in the box, a Social Security card, and Ma's Death Certificate, twenty years old. He tested the flashlight. It still worked.

He took the Hennessy carton and carried it out of the apartment. He carried it down the five flights of stairs, thinking how light it was, this box holding fifty years of living.

He stepped out into the bright sun and squinted down Mott Street. He paused for a long moment, let his eyes sweep over the streets, the neighborhood he'd grown up in, and was now leaving, yet again. Having been born into it, he'd been too close, and hadn't been able to see it clearly. Now, at long last, he did. Chinatown symbolized a bygone era, when the old Chinese bachelors were hemmed in by racist hate, denied their families, forced into doing women's work, to clean, to cook. The hate was still around, but the Chinese, no longer hemmed in, were free now to find their place in America.

Jack saw it clearly now: why Pa came-for opportunity, for himself, but more important, for his descendants, why he'd stayed until the day he died. And why all the tattered shreds of China that remained had been so dear to him. He'd lost so much of it that he couldn't bear to see it disappear from the single most important part of himself he had left, his only son. Jack had mistaken it for narrow-mindedness, but realized now it had been love.

Chinatown was a paradox, a Chinese puzzle he'd never been able to figure out.

Perhaps it's true, he thought, that one can never go back home, but then it was also true that a part of oneself always remains there, memories always with us in our hearts and minds.

The wind came up, blowing through his reverie.

So long, Pa, he was thinking, as he shifted the box up to his shoulder. He took a last look and made his way down the narrow winding street.

It was early afternoon and the gambling basement was empty. Lucky went to the cheap card table by the rear wall and searched through the pile of newspapers stacked there. He was looking for news about Uncle Four's murder case, but found nothing except two tea-stained newspapers that were already weeks old. Lucky read the accounts in the Post and the Daily News and laughed. How The Chinese Cop Broke The Big Uncle Murder. And Love Triangle In Chinatown Murder. Jack, the hero cop.

Lucky toasted up some chiba and found an article in the New China Times: Officials of the On Yee Merchants Association decried the recent violence in the community and proposed that civic leaders, tong leaders, and social workers cooperate with Fifth Precinct officers in a new Community Liaison arrangement designed to alleviate tensions between the various groups. Lucky sucked in smoke, cracking a smile.

He had placed the blame for Gee Man's death on a renegade crew that had since been washed. In a generous gesture, he had called for a new peace between the Ghosts, the Dragons, and the Fuk Ching. Now he was the peacemaker. The new dealmaker on the block. The Merchants Association had nominated him to work with the police. The streets were profitable again. He went partners on a new gambling basement on Bayard Street.

He was looking forward to Christmas, when the next rush of gamblers would line his pockets. And when he hooked Jack and the other undercover dogs, he'd finally be truly untouchable.

Jack bought two packs of Red Rockets from the Lee Bao grocery, where fireworks were quietly available to the locals for ceremonial purposes. Now, thirty days after Pa's burial, Jack would be returning to the cemetery to set off the fireworks and to plant Flame Azalea bushes by his tombstone, Rhododendron calendulaceum, that would bloom full with red flowers in the spring.

The Lee Bao was on a small side street where Alexandra's grandparents had lived, and Jack thought about her as he made his way to the corner flower shop. He'd figured Alexandra wrong. Beneath her tough, pushy lawyer exterior, there was a woman who cared deeply for her people. He had called Alexandra about the handkerchief, and since her grandfather was buried at Evergreen, they had agreed to drive out there together that Sunday.