Love and Other Consolation Prizes(15)

“And just like that…here you are,” she said, furrowing her brow and then smiling again. “I’m not imagining this, am I?”

Ernest shook his head.

She coughed and then tugged at a loose thread on her kimono, pulled the red string, then snapped it off. She dangled it and then dropped the loose bit into an overflowing ashtray, sighing. “Oh, dear…I’m so sorry that you’re seeing me like this.”

“It’s always good to see you, Gracious. You’re as beautiful as ever.” Ernest looked toward the kitchen, from where Juju was peeking, smiling. “And our daughters, they’re just like you. You must be so proud…”

“And there it goes,” Gracie said as she noticed the hummingbird fly away.

Ernest watched her eyes and saw the lucidity come and go, fading in and out like a television signal during a thunderstorm. He turned off the radio. Then sat back down.

“Do you remember us?” Ernest asked as he held her hand again.

“Oh, I remember you,” Gracie said with a nod, but her furrowed brow said otherwise. “You were my most…devoted friend. How could I ever forget…you?”

Ernest turned his attention to their matching wedding bands. “And you—you were the precocious girl who stole my heart.”

“Mmmm…” Gracie sat back and smiled. She seemed lost in wistful thought as she touched her lips. Then she laughed gently and asked, “Do you want it back?”

Ernest squeezed her hand. “No, my dear. That’s yours to keep, forever.”

He watched as she closed her eyes, seemingly content, patting his hand, comforted. He listened as her breathing slowed and she relaxed, pulling her lap blanket up toward her chin, resting her head on a pillow in Ernest’s direction. Then he turned to his daughter, whose smile had evaporated as she walked back into the living room. She shrugged an apology as if to say, We’ll try again some other time. But Ernest didn’t mind. He was happy to sit next to her, to watch Gracie sleep so peacefully. This was the best moment he’d had with her all year.

—

ERNEST SAT NEXT to Juju on her small, moss-covered patio and sipped a cup of tea. Her lawn hadn’t been mowed in forever, and weeds had taken over the plot that once belonged to a modest garden. He glanced over his shoulder toward the house and back to his daughter. “Your mother looks fabulous. More clearheaded than she’s been in…years. Tired, but still, she seems so…content. But now that she’s more present, she doesn’t ever leave on her own or wander off when you’re not home?”

“She never does,” Juju said as she tucked her hair behind her ear. “She’s always content with her game shows and happy with her radio and her bird-watching—a perfect roommate. We go for walks around Kerry Park. Or I’ll take her shopping at the market. She still gets confused when we run into someone who knows her and she can’t remember—she used to get really uncomfortable, agitated even. But lately she’s been more relaxed. As though she’s rediscovering things. I was thinking that maybe, just maybe, we could take her to the world’s fair. Maybe some of that excitement might unlock a few of those closed doors.”

Ernest blinked and mulled that over. Gracie seemed so happy, so peaceful. Would it be better to leave her in her bliss, rather than stir up the past and hope for more? There is good in the past, but there are things that should be left undisturbed.

Juju opened her reporter’s notebook, clicked a ballpoint pen.

“Well, my deadline isn’t getting any longer.”

Ernest nodded politely. He’d agreed to talk, to share the past.

“From what I’ve been able to find in newspaper archives and on microfiche at the library, you were what—a newborn, or a toddler?” Juju asked. “And yet nobody came forth with the winning ticket to claim you, correct?”

Ernest shook his head and looked down at his worn, wrinkled hands—old man’s hands. He touched his wedding ring and thought about Gracie sleeping so perfectly, dreaming of better days, as he cleared his throat and looked back at his daughter.

“No, although there was a baby that they tried to give away at the incubator exhibit. I wasn’t that baby, or even a toddler. I was quite a bit older. And yes, someone did claim me for their own.”





NATIVE TONGUES


(1909)



Seven years after arriving in America, Yung Kun-ai didn’t dream in Cantonese anymore. Though he did occasionally have nightmares about the U.S. Immigration Bureau’s decrepit holding facility at the northern corner of Elliott Bay. He’d been crammed into that warren for months with fifty or sixty people, Chinese and Japanese, all of them sharing three copper buckets for washing. He’d experienced his first Christmas, with ginger cookies and mince pies that volunteers must have made for the inmates. And there were the strange, festive moments when Japanese women would be married on the spot to migrant workers who came to claim them, with Immigration Bureau employees serving as witnesses. The women always cried, sometimes sobbed, and Ernest could never tell if the new brides were happy or sad, joyful or in a state of mourning.

Yung Kun-ai had grown into a boy whom everyone now called Ernest Young. Neither pure Oriental or Caucasian, nor fully American or Chinese, he left the holding facility and became a ward of the state, drifting through a series of reformatories and state-run boarding schools, where he played sports and studied American textbooks. He dreamed of baseball and hitting the game-winning home run (or at least getting on base). He dreamed about second helpings of tender roast beef with herbed gravy on Sundays. He dreamed of Saturday afternoon field trips to the Seattle Public Library. And he dreamed of wooing the tall, intelligent, adventurous Maud Brewster in Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf.