Read Online A Good Fall by Ha Jin - Free Book Online Page B

protect the stomach. She had such a quaint palate. I would have preferred a beer. But I liked the dishes a lot—especially the salad of julienned citron mixed with slivers of dried, spiced tofu—and I didn’t stop Eileen from serving me more. She was in a buoyant mood, though Sami looked a bit gloomy, as if her mind were elsewhere.
    Sami and I lit candles on a chocolate cake and sang “Happy Birthday.” Eileen blushed and smiled wordlessly. Then Sami brought out her present. At the sight of the watch, Eileen said to her, “Thank you, dear. But you shouldn’t have spent so much. This must be outrageously expensive.” She didn’t try it on, but instead put it aside and let it lie in the velveteen case with the lid open.
    I then handed her the tiny red envelope containing the earrings. “Please take this as a token of my gratitude,” I said.
    “You bought this for me?” Eileen exclaimed as she opened it. “You’re so kind. Thank you!” She dangled the earrings before her daughter. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
    “Sure they are.” The girl grimaced and ducked her head to avoid seeing Eileen’s happy face. She glanced at her own gift lying beyond her mother’s elbow. I was embarrassed.
    Color crept into Eileen’s cheeks and her neck turned pinkish. For a moment her eyes wavered, then blazed at me. Her fingers never stopped fondling the earrings. I guessed that if Sami had not been there, Eileen might have tried them on, though the holes in her earlobes might no longer accommodate the wires.
    “When’s your birthday, Dave?” she asked.
    “October twenty-third.”
    “Ah, just two months away. I’ll mark my calendar and we’ll celebrate.”
    Her words warmed me because they implied she would still employ me after Sami’s fall semester started. I needed the income. I noticed Sami observing me intently; she must have surmised my thoughts. I said to her, “So you’ll have to bear with me a little longer.”
    “I won’t give up on you,” she said, then grinned almost fiercely, her small eyeteeth sticking out.
    Not knowing what to make of that, I turned to Eileen. “Please don’t trouble yourself about my birthday.”
    “Come on, you’ll help Sami go through the college applications, won’t you?”
    “Sure, I’ll be happy to do that.”
    “Then you mustn’t abandon us.”
    Sami stood and turned away as if in a sulk. Eileen grasped her daughter’s wrist and asked, “Why are you leaving?”
    “I have a migraine and I need to be alone.” She shook off her mother’s grip and with a pout made for her room.
    Eileen said to me, “Don’t worry. She’ll be all right.”
    And then something—a cup or a bottle—shattered on the floor of Sami’s room. The thought of her late father hadn’t occurred to me until that moment.
    Sami began volunteering on Friday evenings at a nursing home on Forty-fifth Avenue, doing laundry, a service project that she could include on her college applications. She said the laundry room smelled like vomit. However, the old people liked her, because unlike some of the staff members, she didn’t yell at them. She often talked to me about the place and claimed she’d rather kill herself than go to a nursing home when she was old. Once, the night-shift supervisor asked her to help towel-bathe some bedridden old women. Her job was to hold their shoulders while a nurse rubbed and washed their backs, some of which were spotted with sores. One patient, shrunken like a skeleton, screamed in Cantonese, which Sami didn’t need to understand to know the crone was cursing her. Another one, who had a full head of white hair, sobbed the whole time and whined, “Such a nuisance. I better die soon!” Sami held her breath against their odors of sweat and urine.
    She told her mother of the same experiences. Eileen was worried, afraid that her daughter might be more upset than she acknowledged, and asked me if Sami should quit. I assured her that Sami would be all right as long as