After toweling off Mr. Sheng, I helped him on with clean clothes and then combed his gray hair, which was still thick and hadn’t lost its sheen. I noticed that his fingernails were quite long, with dirt beneath them, but the company’s regulations didn’t allow me to clip them, for fear of a lawsuit if they got infected. I told him, “Be a good boy. I’m gonna make you a fish soup.”
“Yummy.” He clucked, showing two gold-capped teeth.
I couldn’t drive, so whenever Mr. Sheng went to see the doctor in the hospital, Minna would take both of us there in her minivan. She already had her hands full with her four-year-old twin boys and her job in a bank, and had to use a babysitter. Her father didn’t believe in Western medicine and became unhappy whenever we visited the hospital. He might have his reasons — according to the young nurse who came every other day, acupuncture and medicinal herbs might be more effective in treating his illness. But he would have to pay for the herbs since Medicare didn’t cover them. Even so, he’d make me push him from one herbal store to another, and sometimes he went there just to see how those doctors, unlicensed here because of their poor English, treated patients — feeling their pulses, performing cupping, giving therapeutic massages, setting bones. He couldn’t afford a whole set of herbs prescribed by a doctor, usually more than a dozen per prescription, but he’d buy something from time to time, a couple of scorpions or centipedes, or a pack of ginseng beard, which is at least ten times cheaper than the roots and which he asked me to steep in piping-hot water to make a tea for him. He would also have me bake and grind the insects and promise him never to disclose his taking them to Minna, who regarded Chinese medicine as quackery. I had no idea if centipedes and scorpions could help him, but whenever he ate a few, he would grow animated for hours, his eyes shedding a tender light while color came to his face. He’d sing folk songs, one after another. He always got the lines garbled, but the melodies were there. Familiar with those songs, I often hummed along with him.
Together we’d sing: “As the limpid brook is babbling east, / I shall keep your words secret and sweet.” Or, “A little pouch with a golden string, / Made for me by the village girl / Who smiles like a blooming spring.”
But often I wasn’t so happy with him. Most of the time he was difficult and grouchy and would throw a tantrum out of the blue. Because Medicare covered acupuncture, he went to a clinic for the treatment regularly. The only acupuncturist within walking distance and listed by the program was Dr. Li, who practiced in one of the tenements on Forty-sixth Avenue. I often missed his office when I took Mr. Sheng there because those brick buildings appeared identical. One afternoon as I was pushing him along the sidewalk shaded by maples with purple leaves, he stopped me, saying we had just passed Dr. Li’s clinic. I looked around and figured that he might be correct, so we turned and headed for the right entrance.
Excited about my mistake, he told the doctor I was “a dope.” Lying on a sloping bed with needles in his feet, he pointed at his head and said, “My memory’s better now.”
“Indeed,” Dr. Li echoed, “you’ve improved a lot.”
I hated that donkey-faced man, who lied to him. Mr. Sheng couldn’t even remember what he’d eaten for lunch. How could anyone in his right mind say his memory had gotten better? He smiled like an idiot, his face showing smugness. I was pretty sure that he had identified the right entrance only by a fluke. Outraged, I flopped down into his wheelchair and pretended to be trembling like him. I groaned, “Oh, help me! Take me to Dr. Li. I need him to stick his magic needles into my neck.”
Li laughed, quacking like a duck, while Mr. Sheng fixed his eyes on me like a pair of tiny arrowheads. Red patches were appearing on his cheeks and a tuft of hair suddenly stood up on his crown. That frightened me and I got out of the chair. Even so, I couldn’t help but add, “Take me back. I can’t walk by myself.”
I shouldn’t have aped him, speaking out of turn. For the rest of the day he went on jerking his head away from me, even though I cooked his favorite food — chicken porridge with chestnuts in it. I thought he must hate me and would make endless trouble for me. But the next morning he was himself again and even gave me a smile of recognition when I stepped into his quarters in the basement.
Mr. Sheng developed a strange habit — he would prevent me from leaving him alone and want me to sit by him all the time. Even when I went upstairs to launder his clothes, he’d get impatient, making terrible noises. He just needed my attention, I guessed. When I walked out of his room, I could feel his eyes following me. And he had become more obedient at mealtimes and would swallow whatever I fed him. One morning I asked him teasingly, pointing at my nose, “What’s my name?”
He managed to say, “Jufen.”
I gave him a one-armed hug, thrilled that he’d remembered my name. To be honest, I liked to stay with him, not only because I got paid eight dollars an hour but also because his fondness for me made my work easier. It took less time to feed and bathe him now. He was so happy and mild these days that even his grandchildren would come down to see him. He also went up to visit them when his son-in-law wasn’t home. Somehow he seemed afraid of Harry, a white man with thick shoulders, shortish legs, and intense blue eyes. Minna told me that her husband feared that Mr. Sheng might hurt their children and that, besides, Harry didn’t like the old man’s smell. But honest to God, in my care, my patient didn’t stink anymore.
He had quite a number of friends in the neighborhood, and we often went to a small park on Bowne Street to meet them. They were all in their sixties or seventies, three or four women while the other seven or eight were men. But unlike my charge, they weren’t ill; they were more clearheaded. Though Mr. Sheng could no longer chat with them, I could see that they used to be quite chummy. They’d tease him good-naturedly, but he never said anything and just smiled at them. One afternoon, Old Peng, a chunky man with a bullet-shaped head, asked him loudly, “Who’s this? Your girlfriend?” He pointed his thumb at me, its nail ringwormed like a tiny hoof.
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.”