Read Online This Old Man by Lois Ruby - Free Book Online

promised to him in China. But in those days there were laws that prevented Chinese from immigrating, and most of those who came, came illegally, even the way Old Man himself did. Finally, his bride arrived, a tiny, frail woman who had been a healthy girl when he’d last seen her. She had been ravaged by the long, hungry voyage across the sea, having had no one to care for her broken, bound feet. In China she had always been like a child, attended by doting women. In the dismal, poor, brick-walled streets in Chinatown, life was so much coarser. She withered and died with the first son still unborn. She had given birth to a daughter, but what was a daughter in those days? The mother’s body was sent back to China to be buried in Old Man’s ancestral ground, and the little girl went back to be raised by old aunts.
    Many years later another wife was sent for Old Man, and she was Wing’s grandmother. She had been toughened by the chaos in China in the early 1920s, and she was ready for the grim reality of San Francisco’s Chinatown. She hit the California shore like a hurricane, and put a stormy end to Old Man’s loneliness. But she was not a very fertile woman, and eight years passed before their first son was born. Wing’s father came in the middle of the depression, which the poor people of Chinatown hardly noticed. There were two girls born quickly after Wing’s father, as though the woman had finally caught on. And then, having been a dutiful wife to Old Man, for forty years, she requested permission to go back to China to enjoy her old age. Old Man was alone again, except for his son, his two daughters, a few worthless grandchildren, and Wing.
    I liked this story. I would go over it and over it at odd times, like at night when I was falling asleep. I’d imagine Old Man’s pleasure when a fiery wife finally came for him, when his son was born, and then his grandson. I wondered if he had missed his wife terribly when she went back to China. I’d forgotten to ask Wing if she was still alive. Although I knew she’d be close to ninety, I decided to believe she was still living, that there were still letters that came by boat from her to her husband. I wondered if she would come back to San Francisco when he died. No, that’s right, his body would be sent to her in China.
    â€œIs Friday all right?” Mr. Saxe was saying. “Greta, I get the feeling you’re paying no attention to me.”
    â€œNo, I’ve been paying attention, honestly.” Friday? “That’s fine.” For what?
    â€œYou have the address.”
    â€œWhere did you say?”
    â€œIt’s written down on that piece of paper, see? On Sutter Street.” To my surprise, I found a slip of paper in my hand.
    â€œNow tell me what you were thinking about while I was talking.”
    â€œI was thinking about Old Man, Wing’s grandfather. He’s had a very lonely life, you know.”
    â€œI didn’t know,” Mr. Saxe said dryly. He wasn’t interested in Old Man that day, and I could see by the way he was stacking papers that he was ready for our forty-five minutes to grind to an end. But I wasn’t. Suddenly I was in high gear.
    â€œDid I tell you that Pammy and I have gotten to be great friends now that she doesn’t go to her boyfriend’s house every weekend? She’s a lot of fun. The doctor said she should get some exercise, so we took the bus to Golden Gate Bridge and started walking across it one night last week. A cop stopped us and said it was illegal. I told him the doctor at Kaiser prescribed it, but Pammy was giggling so much that I didn’t sound too convincing. The cop ended up driving us home. Can’t you just see us, pulling up outside Anza House in a genuine paddy wagon? Elizabeth nearly fell out the window watching to see just who’d get out of the car. And you should have seen the policeman’s face when he caught a