Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune(11)

It was a larger affair than I had expected. Everyone in the neighborhood showed up: Mr. and Mrs. Chiu, the twin Shen brothers, Celia, Miss Yu, and even Old Wu. Someone must have told him about the funeral. The incident at his restaurant emphasized our strained relationship.

“Mr. Wu, I wasn’t expecting you,” I said.

“I have my reasons for coming.” His lips formed a thin, harsh line. “Your mother may have died alone, but she should not be interred alone.”

I stemmed my rising anger. “She had me. I loved her more than anyone else in this world.”

He made a hoarse sound with his throat and stepped aside.

I turned my attention to the rest of the neighbors. With each embrace, they welcomed me back and shared in my sorrow. This was more interaction than I was comfortable with. Cultivating my habit of avoidance was easier from a distance.

While I was dressed in black, everyone else wore white, the customary funerary color for non-family-members. We lit the joss sticks and sent our prayers. Mrs. Chiu arranged for a pair of Buddhist monks to conduct the funerary rites so that Ma-ma’s spirit would be ushered into the afterlife. When the ceremony ended, only Celia and I stayed. All that remained was a lingering emptiness inside me.

At the crematorium, I took my place at the side of the coffin as the honored daughter and sole blood relative. The flames devoured the casket and body. When the ashes cooled, they were spilled onto a tray. Celia watched while I used chopsticks to pick out the bones for her urn, which would be interred at the local Chinese mausoleum.

Celia’s patient guidance lessened my mounting grief, yet I was still like a leaf in a river, moving chaotically through the unfamiliar ceremonies and rituals while trying to understand and absorb all the meaning behind each one.

When it came time to prepare the ancestral altar, I regained my balance. My task was to find pictures of my family. I searched the apartment, but couldn’t find any of my grandmother. If my mother had still been alive, I could have asked her. If only.

Beside a vase full of pink roses and peonies I placed a framed picture of Ma-ma in her early forties, a snapshot taken with my 35 mm camera ten years ago. A chin-length bob framed her pale oval face, and a tentative smile teased the corners of her lips. I’d captured the moment right before she smiled. She had been so beautiful.

In the kitchen I made crispy scallion pancakes, fried golden, as an offering to Ma-ma’s spirit. They had been her favorite. We spent so many wonderful afternoons kneading dough dotted with verdant rings of scallions. Now, the kitchen came to life with the sting of my palms slapping the dough into pancakes, the roar of the oil from the submerged golden disks, and the delicious aroma of fried flour and scallions. I split one in half to sample, the delicate layers revealing themselves as I dipped the pieces into a sauce made from soy, vinegar, and smashed garlic. Perfect. I stacked three on a plate and offered them to Ma-ma’s spirit along with another prayer. We Chinese believed that the dead still ate and drank in the afterlife. This concept brought me comfort knowing that I could still feed my mother’s spirit her favorite treats.

I was to pray once every seven days for the next seven weeks. I had also decided to wear white for the next year, more out of love than filial piety. There was a beauty in the rituals, a comfort to be found in the thousands of years of tradition that endured.

With the shrine complete, a genuine smile graced my lips.

Now the decision about opening the restaurant stood before me, unobstructed, like a stack of overdue bills. I needed to take a walk around the block and reorient myself. Had things really gotten as bad as Celia said? This was where I would set up shop. I had to make sure I knew what I was getting into before tethering my dreams to a sinking ship.

I bade the kitten farewell before I went outside for an afternoon stroll.

A thick layer of dust settled on the storefronts of the neighborhood, obscuring the architectural details from the twenties. In a city of grays, Chinatown once stood as a landmark of color and life: beautiful vibrant signs and extravagant chinoiserie. While as a whole this still rang true, my corner of it had become more diminished, as if the buildings on the block were now forgotten relics languishing in someone’s attic. Drab, gray, and old. The weariness showed on the crumbling brick and smudged storefront glass windows. With the Dragon’s Gate at the base, shops lined a hill with a narrow road between them. The parallel parking spots on one side of the street were empty. As a child, the decline was evident. Now all these years later it was even worse.

The other streets were packed with tourists strolling on the pristine sidewalks while ours remained empty. Books, teas, gifts, and traditional medicines should have drawn them to our threshold. In other parts of Chinatown, the bright signage in both English and Chinese contained a liveliness that mimicked a bouquet of lollipops. Not here. I lifted my eyes toward the store signs. The letters now appeared rubbed out by time or neglect. Everything about the neighborhood was leeched of life like a plant deprived of sunlight or a faded black-and-white photograph. Any stranger unfortunate enough to wander here would hurry through lest they, too, become infected by the malaise.

A glimmer of color attracted my eye. Melody Minnows’s beautiful face greeted me from a large real estate sign, hanging over the vacant space that had been a takeout window. She was stunning in her bright pink plumage. How could this sign be the only thing on the street that still retained vibrancy?

Intricate streetlights, imitating golden dragons, still marked the way, the same beacons I had followed in the past. I remembered that sometimes a handful of tourists, cameras flashing, would make their way to the Dengs’ gift shop. They would linger for a moment, murmur a few pleasantries, before returning to the empty tour bus, usually without purchasing anything. But these were ghosts of the past. Even that dwindling stream of visitors was now a dry lake bed.