A Moon Day Memory
On Moon Days I studied my grandfather's unsteady shuffle to the backyard barbecue grill. In my mind's eye I still see him pacing slowly, with frozen sausages cradled in his venous arm as he achingly crouched to retrieve a link that slid onto the rough grass. It's a slow odyssey for us as well as him. Our mouths water in gustatory frustration. But this is Grandpa's pride and Father patiently smiles.
With trembling, gnarled fingers, Granddad is scarcely able to grill a sausage through. Fearful for our health, still we mimic pleasure in eating what is served with grandfatherly glee.
Grandfather died two years ago. Dad now owns grilling chores on Moon Day. He whirls from kitchen to garden; his strong fingers insure a safely cooked feast. But hygiene and efficiency can't replace Grandfather's slow senescent shuffle beneath an autumn moon on a still September night.
MOONSHINE
It was Moon Day. I wanted to celebrate the holiday in traditional fashion: eating fattening mooncakes and trying to locate the moon through all the pollution in Tainan County. But my friend, Cindy, was more sophisticated."Why waste time on superstitious things like moon watching?" she chastised. "Ch'ang-O doesn't exist anyway! Why not do something intelligent for a change?" She paused for dramatic effect. "Let's go to a fortune teller."
Cindy was one year ahead of me in university so she reasoned better than I did. She also drove faster.
Soon we were facing a tall, slender elderly man, with saucer eyes gazing at us intently who introduced himself simply as Mr. Wang. He then mumbled a few words in Taiwanese we could not exactly make out. Then he greeted us eagerly in Chinese, accented with a regional dialect that marked him as an immigrant from Mainland China. But the pasted smile on his face as he welcomed us quickly vanished as he assumed a more professional style with an abrupt dab of menace in his voice.
"You willing to risk the danger of having your fortune told?"
A shiver went down my spine, but Cindy, the rationalist, only nodded in agreement. Meanwhile I surveyed Mr. Wang's dimly-lit premises, which heightened the ghostly effect of an orange bulb dangling from the ceiling by an extension cord.
The aroma of incense almost stifled me and I noticed a partially-eaten box lunch on an antique mahogany desk, with two roaches nibbling from it. I tugged at Cindy's arm, silently pleading for us to leave. But, rationalist that she was, she was adamant, determined to learn her fortune—for better or worse.
Mr. Wang invited her to sit down in a wobbly folding chair with a tattered tea-stained cushion on it, then he grasped her right forearm and expectantly rotated her hand so the palm faced him. With exaggerated solemnity, he traced lines in her palm, grunting all the while, as if he were reading messages from another world—or a future time.
"Not to worry," he smiled. "These lines affect only ten percent of your life." He paused, as if deep in thought. "You have interesting lines—not all of which I can read fluently. I feel like an ESL student reading your palm—like I was reading a second language."
Mr. Wang continued to explore the geography of Cindy's palm as if he were trekking through darkest Africa.
"I suspect your future pertains to a foreign land—maybe England or America. Who knows for sure?
"Ah, yes. I see a marriage in the not-so-distant future, to a good-looking man. And this line here"—he traced a line in Cindy's palm with a long bony forefinger—"shows that you will bear children with this man."
Abruptly, Mr. Wang dropped Cindy's hand and seemed to totter on his feet.
"But I grow faint. The messages are too strong for me at the moment. I must rest. I'm an old man. I can't read as easily as I used to when I was your age. Please allow me to sit down. Luckily, with the money you pay me, I'll be able to visit the doctor down the block and he can restore my vitality, part of which I lost reading your palm."
He smiled a fatherly smile, not seeming menacing at all anymore—just a common and pitiful poseur. More out of sympathy than satisfaction, Cindy took a couple of NT dollars from her purse and handed them to the now weary reader of palms.
When he saw the money, Mr. Wang's eyes lit up and he reached for my forearm too—as if suddenly revitalized by a blood transfusion. But I had a foresight that Mr. Wang seemed to lack, and I kept both arms firmly buried in the pockets of my light evening jacket.
Realizing his profit margin that evening was not to grow much higher, Mr. Wang shot a glance at the wall clock—an ancient timepiece, with Roman numerals to mark the time.
It was clear he was impatient for us to leave. Taking the hint, we bid our farewells and gladly hastened out into the cool autumnal air.
After that painful experience, I pleaded with Cindy for us to observe the holiday in more traditional fashion, and for the two of us to watch the moon together—perhaps sharing a watermelon drink. But she frowned on such superstitious behavior.
"Besides," she added with a smile, "I've got to run home and figure out who's that handsome man Mr. Wang predicted I would bear children with. I've got several boyfriends at the moment, but none of them seem to fit the bill."
She smiled. I frowned, thinking of Cindy's many boyfriends and my lack of any. Feeling abandoned, I despondently planned to return to my monkish dorm and entertain myself with a box of Ramen noodles and the soundtrack from Titanic, jealously wondering what romance Cindy had in store for her.
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