A Good Fall (16 page)

To my surprise, Mr. Sheng nodded yes.

“When are you gonna marry her?” a toothless man asked.

“Next month?” a small woman butted in, holding a fistful of pistachios.

Mr. Sheng looked muddled while his friends kept rolling, some waving at me. My face burning, I told them, “Don’t make fun of him. Shame on you!”

“She’s fierce,” said Old Peng.

“Like a little hot pepper,” another man echoed.

“She’s real good at protecting her man,” added the same woman.

I realized there was no way to stop them, so I told Mr. Sheng, “Come, let’s go home.”

As I was pushing him away, more jesting voices rose behind us. I began to take him to the park less often; instead we’d go to the Flushing Library. He liked to thumb through the magazines there, especially those with photographs.

One morning, as I was scrubbing him in the bathtub, he grasped my hand and pulled it toward him slowly but firmly. I thought he needed me to check a spot bothering him, but to my astonishment, he pressed my hand on his hairy belly, then down to his genitals. Before I could pull it back, he began mumbling. I looked up and saw his eyes giving out a strange light, some sparks flitting in them. Wordlessly I withdrew my hand and went on spraying water on his back. He kept saying, “I love you, I love you, you know.”

Hurriedly I toweled him and helped him into a change of clean clothes. I didn’t say a word the whole time, but my mind was in turmoil. How should I handle this? Should I talk to his daughter about this turn of events? He wasn’t a bad man, but I didn’t love him. Besides our age difference, twenty-one years, I simply couldn’t imagine having an intimate relationship with a man again. My ex-husband had left me eight years ago for an old flame of his, a woman entrepreneur in the porcelain business in the Bay Area, and I was accustomed to living alone and never considered remarrying. I’d been treating Mr. Sheng well mainly with an eye to making him like and trust me so my work would be easier, but now how should I cope with this madness?

Having no clue what to do, I pretended I didn’t understand him. I began to distance myself from him and stay out of his way. Still, I had to take him outdoors and I had to coax him like a child at mealtimes. Also, he’d break into a cry and let loose a flood of tears if I said something harsh to him. He’d murmur my name in a soft voice—“Jufen … Jufen …,” as if chewing the word. He could have been interesting and charming if he weren’t so sick. I felt sorry for him, so I tried to be patient.

About a week later, he began to touch me whenever he could. He’d pat my behind when I stood up to get something for him. He’d also rest his fingers on my forearm as if to prevent me from going away and as if I enjoyed this intimacy. Finally, one afternoon I removed his hand from the top of my thigh and said, “Take your paw off of me. I don’t like it.”

He was stunned, then burst out wailing. “No fun! No fun!” he cried, pushing the air with his open hand while his face twisted, his eyes shut.

Minna heard the commotion and came down, a huge bun of hair on top of her head. At the sight of her heartbroken father, she asked sharply, “Aunt Niu, what have you done to him?”

“He—he kept harassing me, making advances, so I just told him to stop.”

“What? You’re a liar. He can hardly know who you are, how could he do anything like that?” Her fleshy face scrunched up, showing that she resolved to defend her father’s honor.

“He likes me—that’s the truth.”

“He’s not himself anymore. How could he have normal feelings for you?”

“He said he loved me. Ask him.”

She placed her hand, dimpled at the knuckles, on his bony shoulder and shook him. “Dad, tell me, do you love Jufen?”

He looked at her blankly, as if in confusion. I hated him for keeping mute and humiliating me like this.

Minna straightened up and said to me, “Obviously you are lying. You hurt him, but you pinned the blame on him.”

“Damn it, I told you the truth!”

“How can you prove that?”

“If you don’t believe me, all right, I quit.” I was surprised by what I said; this job was precious to me, but it was too late to retract my words.

She smirked, fluttering her mascaraed eyelashes. “Who are you? You think you’re so indispensable that the Earth will stop spinning without you?”

Speechless, I walked into the doorway to collect my things. It was late afternoon, almost time to call it a day. I knew Minna had befriended Ning Zhang, the owner of my agency; they both came from Nanjing. The bitch would definitely bad-mouth me to that man to make it hard for me to land another job. Even so, I had to keep up appearances and would never beg her to take me back.

I didn’t eat dinner, and I wept for hours that night. Yet I didn’t regret having given Minna a piece of my mind. As I anticipated, my boss, Ning Zhang, called early the next morning and told me not to go to work anymore.

For several days I stayed home watching TV. I liked Korean and Taiwanese shows, but I wanted to learn some English, so I watched soaps,
All My Children
and
General Hospital
, which I could hardly understand. Using a friend as an interpreter, I talked to Father Lorenzo of our church about my job loss; he said I shouldn’t lose heart. “God will provide, and you’ll find work soon,” he assured me. “At the moment you should use the free time to attend an English class here.”

I didn’t reply and thought, Easier said than done. At my age, how can I learn another language from scratch? I couldn’t even remember the order of the alphabet. If only I were thirty years younger!

Then one evening Ning Zhang called, saying he’d like to have me take care of Mr. Sheng again. Why? I wondered to myself. Didn’t they send over another health aide? I asked him, “What happened? Minna’s not angry with me anymore?”

“No. She just has a short temper, you know that. Truth be told, since you left, her dad often refuses to eat, sulking like a child, so we want you to go back.”

“What makes you think I’ll do that?”

“I know you. You’re kindhearted and will never see an old man suffer and starve because of your self-pride.”

That was true, so I agreed to restart the next morning. Ning Zhang thanked me and said he’d give me a raise at the end of the year.

Minna was quite friendly when I returned to work. Her father resumed eating normally, though he still wouldn’t stop saying he loved me and he would touch me whenever he could. I didn’t reproach him—I just avoided body contact so I might not hurt his feelings again. To be fair, he was obsessed but innocuous. It was the incurable illness that had reduced him to such a wreck; otherwise, some older woman might have married him willingly. Whenever we ran into a friend of his on the street or in the library, Mr. Sheng would say I was his girlfriend. I was embarrassed but didn’t bother to correct him. There’re things that the more you try to explain, the more complicated they become. I kept mum, telling myself I was only doing my job.

Once in a while he would get assertive, attempting to make me touch his genitals when I bathed him, or trying to fondle my breasts. He even began calling me “my old woman.” Irritated, I griped to Minna in private, “We have to find a way to stop him or I can’t continue to work like this.”

“Aunt Niu,” she sighed, “let us be honest with each other. I’m terribly worried too. Tell me, do you have feelings for my dad?”

“What do you mean?” I was puzzled.

“I mean, do you love him?”

“No, I don’t.”

She gave me a faint smile as if to say no woman would openly admit her affection for a man. I wanted to stress that at most I might like him a little, but she spoke before I could. “How about marrying him? I mean just in appearance.”

“What a silly thing to say. How could I support myself if I don’t hold a job?”

“That’s why I said just in appearance.”

I was more baffled. “I don’t get it.”

“I mean, you can keep your job but live in this apartment, pretending to be his wife. Just to make him content and peaceful. I’ll pay you four hundred dollars a month. Besides, you’ll keep your wages.”

“Well, I’m not sure.” I couldn’t see what she was really driving at.

She pressed on. “It will work like this—legally you’re not his spouse at all. Nothing will change except that you’ll spend more time with him in here.”

“I don’t have to share his bed?”

“Absolutely not. You can set up your own quarters in there.” She pointed at the storage room, which was poky but could be turned into a cozy nest.

“So the marriage will be just in name?”

“Exactly.”

“Let me think about it, okay?”

“Sure, no need to rush.”

It took me two days to decide to accept the offer. I had remembered my aunt, who in her early forties had married a paraplegic nineteen years older and nursed him to his grave. She wasn’t even fond of the man but took pity on him. In a way, she sacrificed herself so that her family wouldn’t starve. When her husband died, she didn’t inherit anything from him—he left his house to his nephew. Later she went to join her daughter from her first marriage and is still staying with my cousin in a small town on the Yellow River. Compared with my aunt, I was in a much better position, earning wages for myself. Eventually if I moved into Mr. Sheng’s place, I might not have to rent my apartment anymore and plus could save eighty-one dollars a month on the subway pass. When I told Minna of my acceptance, she was delighted and said I was kindness itself.

To my surprise, she came again in the afternoon with a sheet of paper and asked me to sign it, saying this was just a statement of the terms we’d agreed on. I couldn’t read English, so I wanted to see a Chinese version. I had to be careful about signing anything; four years ago I’d lost my deposit when I left Elmhurst for Corona to share an apartment with a friend—my former landlord wouldn’t refund me the seven hundred dollars and showed me the cosigned agreement that stated I would give up the money if I moved out before the lease expired.

Minna said she’d rewrite the thing in Chinese. The next morning, as I was seated beside Mr. Sheng and reading a newspaper article to him, Minna stepped in and motioned for me to come into the kitchen. I went over, and she handed me the agreement. I read through it and felt outraged. It sounded like I was planning to swindle her father out of his property. The last paragraph stated: “To sum up, Jufen Niu agrees that she shall never enter into matrimony with Jinping Sheng or accept any inheritance from him. Their ‘union’ shall remain nominal forever.”

I asked Minna, “So you think I’m a gold digger, huh? If you don’t trust me, why bother about this fake marriage in the first place?”

“I do trust you, Aunt Niu, but we’re in America now, where even the air can make people change. We’d better spell out everything on paper beforehand. To tell the truth, my dad owns two apartments, which he bought many years ago when real estate was cheap in this area, so we ought to prevent any trouble down the road.”

“I never thought he was rich, but I won’t ‘marry’ him, period.”

She fixed her cat eyes on me and said, “Then how can you continue working here?”

“I won’t.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you, Aunt Niu. Can’t we leave this open and talk about it later when we both calm down?”

“I just don’t feel I can sell myself this way. I don’t love him. You know how hard it is for a woman to marry a man she doesn’t love.”

She smirked. I knew what she was thinking—for a woman my age, it was foolish to take love into account when offered a marriage. Indeed, love gets scarcer as we grow older. All the same, I nerved myself and said, “This is my last day.”

“Well, maybe not.” She turned and made for the door, her hips jiggling a little. She shouldn’t have worn jeans, which made her appear more rotund.

•    •    •

Ning Zhang called the next day and asked me to come to his office downtown for “a heart-to-heart talk.” I told him I wouldn’t feel comfortable confiding anything to a thirtysomething like him. In fact, he was pushing forty and already looked middle-aged, stout in the midriff and with a shiny bald spot like a lake in the mouth of an extinct volcano. Still, he insisted that I come over, so I agreed to see him the next morning.

For a whole day I thought about what to say to him. Should I refuse to look after Mr. Sheng no matter what? I wasn’t sure, because I was in Ning Zhang’s clutches. He could keep me out of work for months or even for years. Should I sign the humiliating agreement with Minna? Perhaps I had no choice but to accept it. How about asking for a raise? That might be the only possible gain I could get. So I decided to bargain with my boss for a one-dollar-an-hour raise.

Before setting out the next morning, I combed my hair, which was mostly black, and I also made up my face a little. I was amazed to see myself in the mirror: jutting cheekbones, bright eyes, and a water-chestnut-shaped mouth. If twenty years younger, I could have been a looker. Better yet, I still had a small waistline and a bulging chest. I left home, determined to confront my boss.

At the subway station I chanced on a little scarecrow of a woman who pulled a baby carriage loaded with sacks of plastic bottles and aluminum cans. No doubt she was Chinese and over seventy, in brown slacks and a black short-sleeved shirt printed with yellow hibiscuses. The cloth sacks holding the containers were clean and colored like pieces of baggage. A rusty folding stool was bound to the top of the huge load. On the side of the tiny buggy hung a string pouch holding a bottle of water and a little blue bag with a red tassel, obviously containing her lunch. There were also three large sacks, trussed together, separated from the buggy-load, and holding two-liter Coke bottles. All the people on the platform kept a distance from this white-haired woman. She looked neat and gentle but restless, and went on tightening the ropes wrapped around the load. A fiftyish man passed by with two little girls sporting loopy honey-colored curls, and the kids turned to gawk at the sacks of containers and at the old woman, who waved her small hand and said to them with a timid smile, “Bye-bye.” Neither of the wide-eyed girls responded.

The train came and discharged passengers. I helped the crone pull her stuff into the car. She was so desperate to get her things aboard that she didn’t even thank me after the door slid shut. She was panting hard. How many bottles and cans has she here? I wondered. Probably about two hundred. She stood by the door, afraid she wouldn’t be able to get all her stuff off at her destination. Time and again I glanced at her, though no one else seemed to notice her at all. She must have been a daily passenger with a similar load.