Buddha Baby (39 page)

Smashed his leg up in a crash

His friend, Rob, was not so lucky

Died young, cremated into ash

May was a social butterfly

Her Call Waiting beeped, said goodbye

Jackson said he'd try to come

If only time would heal his sty

Vincent was a rich film mogul

Tried to call back from his plane

Lincoln was an edgy artist

Thought reunions were mundane

Jasmine's voice was a monotone

Just like talking to a wall

Had no time for this crap

Oi's name was always mispronounced

Was half Chinese, and also Hmong

Dan was a couch potato

Heard him sucking from a bong

Nathan moved to O-hi-o

Sourdough bread was what he missed .

Dustin Lee, where's that kiss?

You're the last to end this list

Lines about 44 Chinese Kids

I think of the City of San Francisco as one of the main characters in the book. I was always thinking of specific places and also certain times in the city's history, and tried to weave them together with the past and present stories of Lindsey and her family.

Golden Gate Park: Anyone who grew up in San Francisco probably has great memories of Steinhart Aquarium and the African Hall, and Lindsey is no exception. She would have gone to these places at least once a year on school field trips, so when she chaperones the third grade, it's another trip down memory lane. As for those places now, they've been demolished. After writing the scenes that took place there, I trekked over to the park on a fact-checking mission and found the places were gone, and won't be the same ever again, even though they were unchanged for, like, fifty years. (Anyone who wants to take a peek at how these places looked in the past can catch glimpses of them in two disparate movies,
The Lady from Shanghai
and
Howard the Duck.)

The stalactites in the underground walkways had been around since the 1894 Midwinter Fair, but I think they are mostly gone now, too. Thankfully, those sphinxes with the huge boobs near the DeYoung Museum are still there. Where did they come from, and how did they survive while so many other parts of the park got the wrecking ball? I'm convinced it's all about the boobs. If those sphinxes didn't have those mysterious D-cups, I'm sure they'd have been demolished long ago.

Lastly, there really was a crazy heat wave a few years back, and there was this one week when you could simultaneously smell the ocean, peppery freesia, jasmine, and gasoline. And ugly people were having sex. I'm sure of it.

Mrs. Clemens's House: With Mrs. Clemens, I wanted to create a link between Old San Francisco and the present.

When I was in high school, I actually did meet an old woman who lived in a crazy house like hers, and I found out many years later that she supposedly had run a brothel. I have no idea if this woman is still around, but the memory of her has always fascinated me.

The Western Addition is a great setting because it's a moody neighborhood where there are hardly any shoppers, just old houses and empty sidewalks. In 1906 the city took great pains to save it from the fire that accompanied the earthquake, so there's a high concentration of old mansions with really ornate facades and architectural embellishments. To help me conjure the look of her house, I walked the neighborhood and took pictures of an angel with a third eye, flowery plasterwork, and twisted, cast-iron gates. The end result was that the outside of Mrs. Clemens's house is a mishmash of parts from actual places. For anyone, including myself, who's ever wished they could be invited into one of these old places to have a look around, we can all live vicariously through Lindsey as she wanders through Mrs. Clemens's crumbling Victorian, which is like a closed museum that nobody gets to see.

I mentioned that Mrs. Clemens was related to a lady named Ella. Not long ago I saw a postcard from the early 1900s of a Caucasian woman posing with her Chinese husband in front of their Grant Avenue shop. They sold "earthquake relics," which was basically broken stuff they'd saved after the 1906 disaster. Old San Francisco wasn't even that old yet, but they already had an inkling that nostalgia and memories were alluring. There was another postcard, too, that displayed their mixed-race daughter, Ah-Yoko, in the shop window. The fact that they were semi-famous in their day and that someone had made souvenir postcards of them proved to me that even at the turn of that century, the Asian-American combo was fascinating and compelling to people.

Chinatown: In describing the Chinatown of Lindsey's childhood I rely heavily on my own memories. Some readers are very familiar with the streets, stores, and restaurants I describe, but some know just a little, and it's hard to balance writing for both audiences. Some people might say, "Oh yeah, that old man with the goiter. I used to see him in Portsmouth Square every day." Others have no idea why I'm going on about this guy, but he really was a fixture for years.

Where would Lindsey go in Chinatown? She and Michael would probably eat at this hole-in-the-wall restaurant on Washington Street called Lucky Creation, and she'd shop at Suey Chong, which is a deluxe shop that's every Hoarder Lady's dream come true. Farther down Grant Avenue is Eastern Bakery, where they sell all sorts of Chinese pastries, but I imagine Lindsey is addicted to the glazed donuts there.

People ask me a lot what's real and what's made up. They want to know if this story is about my life. I tell them it's not necessarily my family, but somewhere, sometime, these feelings and situations were true for someone. And sometimes, yes, true for me.

Was my grandmother born in a basement on Waverly Place? No, but someone's grandmother was. I don't know how, but their story is in my brain… or maybe it's a Chinese thing, and these details are just slightly different for all of us, but we all carry around the blood-soaked feelings and memories of hardship that our families share.

I see many Lindseys walking around San Francisco. Sometimes she is across the street, or sometimes wearing my shoes. Sometimes I recognize her in a thirteen-year-old girl walking home from school, other times she is the actual age she is in the book, but driving a different car from what I might expect. I see her at the movies with her friends, or sometimes waiting at the bus stop. Sometimes she's me, but other times I just see her around, living her San Francisco life, and I wish her well.

When KIM WOMG KELTNER isn't writing, she collects Chinese porcelain and plays Whack-a-Mole. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter, whose first words were "capybara" and "museum quality."