Lisa
Lisa
watches her name get crossed off the payroll list. “Last one hired,
first one fired,” her boss says, adjusting the tortoiseshell
glasses sliding down her nose. “Budget cuts.”
Lisa
holds back the tears, staring instead at the carrot orange stains
covering her hands. How would she tell her daughter? Will Ma have to
bail her out?
Her
boss glances up. “What are you waiting for?”
“I
was just leaving, ma’am.” Lisa lowers her eyes as she backs out
the door.
She
makes her way down the dingy hall to the “employees’ quarters,”
a tiny cubicle of a room adjacent to the kitchen. Gleaming metal
lockers line one wall, but Monroe Senior Home didn’t provide a unit
for her belongings. Her battered brown purse lies in the corner,
hidden by a hamper of dirty linens. She pulls off her own
food-splattered emerald apron and drops it into the bin, feeling a
twinge of regret; the fabric boasts one of the few colors that
complement her yellow Asian skin.
As
the apron lands there for the last time, she notices her nametag
pinned to the fabric. It’s a hideous beige plastic chunk with her
name embossed in 40-point font, the letters already fading from a
year’s worth of service. Still, it’s hers, so she yanks it off.
She can add it to the collection of souvenirs from her other failed
jobs: the parking attendant’s neon orange vest, the grocer’s puce
uniform, and the frayed poodle skirt from the 1950’s diner.
She
passes through the dining room one more time before leaving. She
hears the usual complaints from the grumpy residents about the filet
mignon lunch: the bloody lump of meat, its rubber taste, and the
home’s lack of vegetarian options. Nobody seems to enjoy their meal
at Monroe Senior Home. Instead, diners feel obligated to gripe about
their entrees and demand customized food. For the amount their
families pay for the private housing, she supposes that the residents
have the right to alter their menus. As their grumblings fill up her
head, she’s glad she’s no longer a kitchen helper.
She
pauses at the receptionist’s desk. Tina, a pert blonde, has always
been nice to Lisa. Plus, the receptionist keeps an excellent stash of
chocolate mints in her desk drawer which she’s invited Lisa to
share in. Tina’s not around, and Lisa assumes that she’s busy
escorting a rich family for a tour of the grounds. It’ll take a
while because the two-story mansion boasts multiple private suites
and an elaborate French garden.
Lisa grabs a handful of
mints from the drawer. Since
they won’t be giving me a good-bye gift, I’ll get my own.
She spies two blank memo pads with the elegant Monroe Senior Home
insignia and swipes them. She spots a couple of file folders
underneath and takes those as well. She’s always liked the client
file folders with their creamy vanilla exterior and their multiple
interior flaps. Maybe she could use one as a career portfolio. At
thirty-two, she still has time to excel at something. In fact, she
plans to polish her résumé at once. With the new elegant carrier,
she’s bound to secure a dozen job offers in no time. She smiles all
the way back home, through the twenty-minute bus ride on the
sputtering Fairview Express, the sole public transportation in town.
Her
optimism diminishes as she enters her studio apartment. Tomato
sauce-stained napkins from last night’s dinner drown the coffee
table. The nearby ratty black sofa that her daughter sleeps on
remains clear and unsoiled, though. Lisa’s own full-sized bed in
the corner unveils rumpled bed sheets and a heap of old, unwashed
clothes.
She
walks over to the neglected (and therefore) gleaming kitchen.
Perching on one of the barstools, she runs her hand down the cool,
clean white-tiled countertop. Maybe
I’ll use one of the creamy folders to store gourmet recipes. Abbey
could use a decent home-cooked meal for a change.
When
she picks up one of the folders to start her recipe list, she’s
surprised to see the neat typewriting. “The Chens” covers the
upper-right hand corner. Under the label, a large sticky note dated
3/18/80, from three days ago, reads, “Tina, Jack is missing. Please
locate him.”
The
file contains information on Jack and Fei Chen, one of the few
couples who live at Monroe Senior Home. Now that she thinks about it,
Lisa hasn’t seen Mr. Chen in awhile, but she remembers his yellowed
tea drinker’s smile. He was one of the few seniors who actually
thanked Lisa for her efforts. She wonders if his gratitude had
anything to do with her ethnicity, since Fairview contains few
Asians. No, she’s seen Mr. Chen complimenting the other kitchen
helpers and staff around Monroe Senior Home, too.
She
scrunches her eyes as she attempts to picture Fei Chen. She recalls
an impression of a flighty woman with near-translucent skin stretched
across her bony figure. She didn’t see Mrs. Chen in the dining room
often. Lisa asked Mr. Chen about it once, and he had shrugged his
shoulders. “She doesn’t like to sit still for very long,” he’d
said. Without fail, though, Mr. Chen always asked for a second
portion of lunch to bring back to his wife.
She
taps the closed file with her fingertips. I’ll
need to let Tina know. She’ll understand that it was all a mistake.
I didn’t take sensitive information on purpose. Besides, she
shouldn’t keep client info lying around in her drawer anyway. She
picks up the phone to call but stops when she hears the key turn in
the lock. Her daughter enters with her shiny obsidian hair and high
cheekbones, looking like a younger and more famished version of Lisa.
“Mom, I’m starving,” Abbey says.
Lisa
peeks at the clock. It’s six, and Abbey’s spent the last three
hours studying and completing homework after school was dismissed.
She gives her daughter a guilt-stricken look and studies the
refrigerator’s contents. Nothing in there except a half-gallon of
questionable milk. She opens the freezer to check its supplies and
sees a package of fish sticks. She grimaces but turns to face Abbey
with a fake grin, showing her the ice-covered box. “I can heat
these up in the microwave real quick, dear.”
Abbey
tries to hide her sigh. “That’s okay, Mom. I’ll dial.” Her
daughter picks up the phone and proceeds to place their usual order
with Antonio’s Pizzeria. I
guess the gourmet meals will have to wait until tomorrow.
About the Book:
Martin Sisters Publishing (7/25/2013)
Three
generations in an all-female Taiwanese family living near Los Angeles
in 1980 are each guarding personal secrets. Grandmother Silk finds
out that she has breast cancer, as daughter Lisa loses her job, while
pre-teen granddaughter Abbey struggles with a school bully. When
Silk’s mysterious past comes out—revealing a shocking historical
event that left her widowed—the truth forces the family to
reconnect emotionally and battle their problems together.
A
novel of cultural identity and long-standing secrets, The
228 Legacy weaves
together multigenerational viewpoints, showing how heritage and
history can influence individual behavior and family bonds.
(ISBN#9781625530394,
322pp, $16.95 Paperback, $6.99 eBook)
About the Author: Jennifer J. Chow, an Asian-American writer, holds a Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a Master’s in Social Welfare from UCLA. Her geriatric work experience has informed her stories. She lives near Los Angeles, California.
Her
fiction has appeared in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, IdeaGems
Magazine, and Mouse Tales Press. Her Taiwanese-American novel,
The 228 Legacy, made it to the second round of the 2013 Amazon
Breakthrough Novel Award contest and was published by Martin Sisters
Publishing in August 2013.
Find Jennifer:
Buy the Book:
$16.95 Paperback, $6.99 eBook
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