Buddha Baby (36 page)

"Hey everybody," she said. She touched Michael's arm as he helped Yun Yun move from her walker to a chair. Yun Yun was wearing a polyester leisure outfit, an extra-long visor strapped to her head, and wraparound shades. Lindsey kissed her grandmother's cheek and received an acknowledging grunt for her effort, which was a better reaction than she usually got.

Yeh Yeh, as usual, was dressed for a
blizzard
. He sat stock-still in his plastic chair, so different from the fairly animated person Lindsey had visited in the Jackson Street grocery store. She stared at him for a moment, and just as she was about to look away, he gave her a little wink and she smiled.

"Save some chairs for Elmore and Geraldine," her dad said. "I invited them, and they should be here pretty soon."

As Lindsey placed some extra napkins on the table, her mom reached out and grabbed her wrist, admiring the ruby engagement ring for the fifth time that morning. She said, "Hey Lindsey, are they going to make an announcement about you getting married? Wouldn't that be nice?"

Kevin cracked, "There won't be time after the extensive lecture about the missionary position."

A while later at the buffet table, everyone was pleased to find an array of food choices, some provided by caterers and others potluck items brought by alumni with their names and years of graduation proudly affixed to the dishes. Platters of eggplant parmesan sat next to trays of tomato-beef chow mein, homemade chow fun, and fried chicken. There was Greek salad, olives, and moussaka, and a whole section of Mexican food with a placard that read, HELENA IBARRA (CLASS OF 1977) GUARANTEES NO FAT! ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT LARD. Directing people toward the dessert table, Lindsey's mouth watered when she saw that a classmate had brought his mother's famous shortbread cookies shaped like Jesus heads with halos.

Halfway through the meal, music began to play and some people got up to dance. While the speakers blared "Achy, Breaky Heart," Lindsey looked over at the makeshift dance floor and her eyes rested on the surreal image of Uncle Elmore and Ms. Abilene dancing the Electric Slide. Leaning over, Lindsey pointed out the bizarre coupling to Michael.

"It's best not to think about anything too disturbing," he advised.

Kevin sauntered over with two buddies from his class whom Lindsey recognized as Scott Fukuda and Scott Kuriyama. Kevin reached into his jacket pocket and handed Lindsey his silver flask, saying, "Hold this for me. Actually you look like you might need it."

"Where are you going?"

"Basketball. Hey Michael, come over when you're done. We play China versus Japan, and I need you to help me take down Fukuda and Furry Mama."

"Okay," Michael said as he and Lindsey scooted over to make room for Auntie Geraldine. She plopped down with two plates stacked with food, removed an entire roll of foil from her gigantic purse, and proceeded to wrap up several items.

Although Lindsey couldn't see Yun Yun's eyes behind her shades, she saw her lip curl into a tiny sneer as she looked Geraldine's way.

"
Gum Fay
!" her grandmother chided, calling her a fatso. Lindsey watched Auntie Geraldine crumple slightly before sitting up defiantly and proceeding to inhale several deviled eggs.

"Lindsey," her dad called across the table. "Do you have an extra sweater? I think Yun Yun is getting a little chilly."

Yeh Yeh piped up, "I told you might rain!"

Lindsey thought for a second, and said she might have something in the office cloakroom upstairs. She sprang up from her seat and headed for the main building. Halfway across the schoolyard she ran into Jilan, or rather, Jilan smashed into her on purpose.

"Boo!" she screeched.

"Hi. Is your grandmother here with you?" Lindsey asked, patting down the girl's tousled bangs.

"No, I came with my mom."

"I see you have on your Gene Kelly outfit again."

"Huh?"

"Never mind. See you later, okay?"

Lindsey continued on her way, and Jilan ran off. When she finally reached the double doors that led up to the mezzanine, she lurched back before colliding with Dustin.

"Hey, do you know if they have 'updog' here?" he asked.

"What's 'updog'?"

Dustin slapped her on the shoulder. "Nothing, Dog! What's up with you?"

She had to smile, and after a moment of awkward hesitation, hugged him in the most sexless way she could muster.

Dustin said, "To heal my psyche, I figured I had to come back to the scene of the crime."

Sitting down on one of the benches where she used to eat her Del Monte chocolate pudding cup every day at recess, she said, "Which crime are you talking about, the rat-eater incident or the death of Mork?"

Dustin sat down next to her and stretched out his legs. "Both, I guess. I don't necessarily feel better being here, though. I didn't come here to relive the horrors of sixth grade in 3-D Technicolor."

"Why are you here then?"

"I guess I wanted to make sure you're not mad at me. Are you?"

She shook her head.

They looked at each other for a moment. There was nothing between them except what could have been, and that sure was a lot. But for now they seemed to have reached some kind of truce. It was as if they had each imagined doing it with the other person so many times that they may as well have dated, and now they were in the imaginary break-up phase which was much more painless than the real thing since, after all, nothing had physically happened. As an acknowledging gesture of their just-friends status, Dustin reached over and lightly punched Lindsey in the shoulder as if she were his cousin. He said, "Oh, by the way, I wanted to tell you that… I met someone. A Chinese someone."

"Really? Where?"

"She crashed into my shopping cart at Ranch 99—"

"That's
so
Asian!"

"Yeah, isn't it?"

Just then, Sister Constance burst from the double doors and stopped dead in her tracks. She spotted them sitting there and seemed to recognize Dustin immediately. Blinking a couple of times, she trained her gaze at him with her beady, Doggie Diner eyeballs. After a discombobulated moment she looked like she thought she was dreaming, but then, with a gooselike honk she called out, "Boy, is that you?"

Lindsey and Dustin both stood up as Sister Constance approached. Lindsey watched as Dustin braced himself for an attack, but it was Lindsey's arm that the gray-haired woman grabbed. The withered nun turned to Lindsey and said, "If I may say so, I do remember what a schoolboy's crush your young friend had on me!"

Turning to Dustin she released Lindsey's arm and pinched his face. "I tell you! Such a cheeky, cheeky boy!"

With a light slap to his face, the nun pivoted on her low heel, but then stopped and swiftly cupped Dustin's ass before walking off.

Lindsey laughed out loud. "Did she just…"

"I'm going to pretend that didn't just happen. And now… I'm leaving. Before I really need therapy."

Lindsey began to protest, "Wait, you have to meet—"

A hand came out of nowhere and offered Dustin a handshake.

"Michael Cartier."

Dustin introduced himself and the two shook hands. Michael smiled warmly, but Dustin gave him that half-second, sizing-up thing that guys often did.

Lindsey felt like shrinking into nothingness, but she held her ground. Reaching down, she interlocked her fingers with Michael's and squeezed his hand. Dustin flashed his killer smile that struck Lindsey as slightly less dazzling now, and she listened as he told Michael how smart he always thought she was in school. The way he said it, he ambiguously implied something negative, like she was a know-it-all or stuck up, but Michael took the comment in the best way possible and proceeded to enumerate a handful of Lindsey's good qualities. Affectionately pulling her closer to him, he said, "Thanks for looking out for my girl while I was gone."

Michael seemed unaware that Lindsey and Dustin had come close to doing the bone dance. She didn't know if he was suppressing his suspicions or just being his gracious self, but it was probably the latter. Relaxed, yet animated, he curiously asked

Dustin questions about himself, all the while continuing to treat him like a friend instead of an interloper.

Lindsey leaned in to Michael and admired his aplomb. Although the three of them were only engaged in small talk, she soaked in Michael's chocolate-voiced kindness and marveled at his open-hearted nature. She was relieved to have never marred that elusive and rare quality. Standing there a few feet from the dodgeball court, she felt she truly had dodged a bullet by not allowing her infatuation with Dustin to get the better of her.
May I always deserve Michael's trust
, she thought.

Whatever potential for tension that may have existed never materialized as Michael and Dustin displayed a spontaneous semblance of male friendship. Over the ensuing minutes, they all exchanged pleasantries, which dissolved any outline of a love triangle among the three and simultaneously reset the spatial parameters between them. Lindsey's hand in Michael's suggested their positions were fixed closely together on the same axis, while the distance she stood from Dustin signified that her relationship to him would henceforth never exist in the same quadrant. As they continued to talk, their designated positions, marked in invisible space, seemed to crystallize into a shape they could all agree with, and by the end of the conversation, Michael again thanked Dustin for being such a good friend to Lindsey.

Lindsey knew then that everything would be fine. When guys were mad, they just brawled and got their shit out of the way instead of stewing for years like girls, so she figured that if Michael wasn't pummeling Dustin by now, things were okay.

She said goodbye to Dustin, kissed Michael, and bounded up the stairwell to retrieve the sweater for Yun Yun. Before ducking into the office, she looked out the mezzanine window and watched her fiance and her old school friend as they headed toward Kevin's basketball game. She felt someone's gaze on her and she looked over her shoulder. She saw the portrait of Mary, and smiled.

Walking over to the painting, she stared at Mary's sapphire blue cloak and wondered how many students over the years had also found solace and comfort standing in this same spot. She thought about Yun Yun and wondered if her grandmother ever prayed—to Mary, or Buddha, or anyone.

Standing there, Lindsey's mind conjured the past:

Before Yun Yun was ever called "grandmother," she was a baby girl born crying to a midwife down two flights of stairs on Pike Street, now Waverly Place in San Francisco. Directly before or after she entered the world, her twin had arrived, perhaps more robust, heavier, and with a happier disposition. Had her family decided right then and there to give her away? Maybe they reasoned that no one needed two infant girls. Perhaps her parents saw her as another mouth to feed instead of a tiny person who needed the sense of touch and the scent of her mother's breath to know that love was nearby.

Lindsey wondered if Yun Yun remembered anything of her family—their faces, their personalities, or the fact that they always loved her sister, Opal, more. Maybe the girls cried and held each other before she left her home for good.

Arriving at St. Maude's, perhaps there were no friends. Yun Yun probably learned the Bible, did her chores, went to sleep, and started the next day all over again exactly the same. Lindsey couldn't begin to imagine how the girl who was her grandmother must have felt. Desolate and angry, Yun Yun most likely had to steel herself against her own emotions just to make it past her loneliness. Lindsey was finally beginning to understand why her grandmother might want to forget. Perhaps the burden of memory was too heavy to bear.

Still standing in front of the portrait of Mary, Lindsey re-fleeted on the past few weeks. She had found out more than she expected about both her grandparents. Although there was still a lot she didn't know, looking now into Mary's compassionate eyes, she wondered if she would ever know the whole truth, or even if she had the right to.

Her grandparents were living people, and to dig up what did not want digging up now struck her as disrespectful. "Why stir up trouble?" so many Chinese people always seemed to say, and now Lindsey, too, began to wonder why she should. Was compelling curiosity reason enough to further discomfit those who had already experienced so much hardship? She was no longer certain her own needs superseded others'.

She walked to the office and retrieved the blue sweater she had left behind last week. Although the weather had been warm for a while now, in terms of days and months, spring was finally just now giving way to summer. Leave it to Yun Yun to need a sweater even though it was seventy-five degrees outside. However, Lindsey did think she detected a slight thawing in Yun Yun's behavior. And in turn, she,
too
, felt the iceberg between them melting. She bounded down the stairs and back to the table where her family all sat in the breezy sunshine.

She approached Yun Yun, who had temporarily taken off her wraparound shades. Lindsey noticed the prominent puffi-ness beneath Yun Yun's eye sockets, and the dour mouth that kept so much unspoken. She could see haunted disappointment etched in her grandmother's worn-out face.

Lindsey stepped close and draped the blue sweater around Yun Yun's weary shoulders. She noticed the beginnings of a wan smile on her grandmother's lips, but it disappeared before it had a chance to fully form. Lindsey pulled the ends of the sweater's collar together to warm her grandmother's neck, and as she fastened the pearl button, a bony hand reached up and touched hers. Yun Yun pressed the flesh of Lindsey's hand with her soft, raisinlike fingertips.

A creaky voice like the noise from an un-oiled hinge caught Lindsey unaware. "I'm glad you're here," Yun Yun said.

Taking a seat between her grandmother and Michael, Lindsey stared across the table at the faces of her parents, brother, aunt, uncle, and Yeh Yeh. She contemplated the words her grandmother had finally said to her, words she had never heard before from the matriarch. It was a simple, straightforward statement that belied the complicated relationship she and Yun Yun had always shared. Lindsey realized it might be the best that she was ever going to get from her. Over the years she had waited for an eloquent pronouncement of grandmotherly affection, but this sentence, uttered softly and without pretense, was fine for now. Lindsey realized she had, in fact, waited a long time to hear it, and today it was finally enough.