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Chapter One

The Meanest Man in Chinatown

My teacher, Ms. Mason, told my class to write about our grandparents. I put up my hand. "My grandmother is dead," I said.

"Is your grandfather alive, Jim?" she asked me. Reluctantly I nodded my head. "Then you could interview him," she suggested.

I was afraid she would say that. Half of the class lived in Chinatown. They looked at me sympathetically. They knew my grandfather. They knew it would be hard to write about him.

Nobody liked Grandpop much. He spoke his mind and had a sharp tongue too. So he was always getting into a fight with someone. On any given day, he feuded with half of Chinatown.

Sometimes it was his roommates. Sometimes it was the people in Portsmouth Square. Or it was some new waiter at his favorite restaurant. Or it was some tourist who had photographed Grandpop without asking his permission.

Dad said there were ten thousand ways to pick a fight, and Grandpop knew them all. By now people knew to find Dad or Mom, and they would calm Grandpop down.

Last month a tourist's car had almost run over him in the crosswalk as he tried to cross Grant Avenue, the busiest street in Chinatown. Grandpop hammered on the car hood with his cane. Then he started smashing the headlights. When he got tired, he stood in front of the car so it could not drive away. He halted cars for half an hour. The big traffic jam spread into downtown San Francisco.

It had taken both my parents to make him leave. They had had to pay for all the damages. They had also had to explain to a lot of doctors that Grandpop wasn't really violent. He just didn't like fools, andthat included careless drivers.

Grandpop and his bad temper had always made me feel uncomfortable, but after that I was really scared of him. And everyone began to call him the meanest man in Chinatown.

I knew I couldn't write about any of that for my essay. My parents would have died of shame.

That night I cooked the rice. Dad brought home half a roast duck from the butcher shop where he worked.

Mom got home a little after him. Then she fried the vegetables quickly for dinner.

When we had sat down at the table, I said, "I have to write about Grandpop for school. Is there anything nice to say about him?"

Dad defended Grandpop right away. "He's the most honest person I know. He always speaks the truth. And he gets mad at people who don't."

"Is that why he picks fights with everyone?" I asked.

Dad fished around the plate. "He never fought with your grandmom."

Grandmom had died long before I was born. "I wish I could have met her."

Mom put the drumstick on my plate. Dad never let them cut the drumsticks up even if Grandpop said it was wasteful to give such a large serving of meat to one person. "Everyone liked her. She was such a sweet woman."

The door to our apartment slammed open and then shut. Dad never bothered to lock the door when Grandpop was due for dinner.

"Just in time," Mom said in Chinese, and she got up to get him a bowl of rice.

Grandpop limped over on his cane toward the table. "I've lost my appetite."

Dad sighed as he drew back Grandpop's chair. "Who is it this time?"

"That idiot Yang," Grandpop grumbled as he sat down.

Mr. Yang was one of Grandpop's roommates. We were trying to get Grandpop an apartment in our projects, but there was a long waiting list. Right now, he shared a tiny room with Mr. Yang and another man. Grandpop was always moving from place to place, though. His outspokenness got him into trouble with one set of roommates after another.

Mom set the bowl of rice in front of him. "Just try to relax now," she soothed him. "A good meal will take your mind off things."

Grandpop stared at the bowl. "Rice should be fluffy, but look at that stuff. It's all mushy and soggy. Why do you keep using a rice cooker?"

"Because it saves time," Dad said patiently.

Grandpop, though, knew the real source of the trouble. He glared at me. "How come you don't wash and cook the rice in a pot? I showed you how to do it the old way. You're Chinese. Why don't you act like it?"

Grandpop was always scolding me. I was pretty tired of it.

Grandpop added, "Native-born, no brains." Unlike Grandpop, I was born here, which made me native-born. He made it sound like it was all my fault.

"If you clean the rice the Chinese way, you'll wash all the vitamins away," Mom explained, defending me. With her own chopsticks, she picked up the duck's head and deposited it on Grandpop's plate. The head had been cut neatly in half so you could see everything in it. "There, your favorite."

"Do you need to sleep on our couch tonight?" Dad asked.

"No, I'll sleep at home. I didn't say anything too bad this time," Grandpop said.

"Ms. Mason never lets us fight, Grandpop," I said.

Grandpop leaned forward toward me. "What do you see in my face, boy?"

I was so startled, I almost fell out of my chair. I gripped the table while I studied his face. I saw his wide, crooked, flattened nose. Grandpop's forehead was thick and bony, and he had the bushiest eyebrows I had ever seen. He looked ugly, but I didn't say so. I didn't want him to scold me.

"You look like you," I said carefully.

He scowled. I'd lost points with him. I would not get my interview this way. "You're looking at the ugliest face in Chinatown. And you want to know how it got that way?" Grandpop asked. Without waiting for me to answer, he pointed to a scar on his forehead. "See that?"

I nodded. The scar was too big to ignore.