This is an excerpt from the third chapter of a novel I hope to finish before I drop dead. I am still working on the first and second and sixth chapter. I don't know what I'm doing. Wish me luck with the project.
Chapt. III Visit to the Herbalist
After that pronouncement by my lesbian doctor, I was sent to my uncle who was share cropping an orchard in Winters, California. I was already a fat kid and I had a serious case of asthma. On bad days I had to struggle to suck in enough air so I could remain conscious. On good days I remain unconscious. I was fat because my appetite was the same as any kid my age but I couldn't move around as much without wheezing and choking, thus, a huge gain in weight. I just couldn't burn up the calories. It wasn't my fault that I was born sickly. It certainly wasn't written in the scroll. With that in mind, I never felt guilty about being what I was, a fat , lazy kid with plenty of reasons for over indulgencies, and for avoiding anything or anybody unpleasant. My mother was a saint, and I avoided her too.
My exodus from urban to rural began with a trip to the local Chinese herbalist when I was just approaching my twelfth birthday. Up to that point I had been seen by many Anglo doctors whose only response toward a cure for my asthma was to test me for allergies and charge my father five dollars. The average hourly wage at that time was eighty cents. This was at the end of the Depression and the beginning of the Second World War. The general medical establishment, at the time, was prescribing Alka-Seltzer for stomach cancer (and from my understanding, still is). The herbalist, a chain smoking, antiquated old man, who smelled of mothballs, had his office on the second story of an old brick building in the middle of Chinatown.
The old building was built right after the 1907 earthquake and was designed to be dark and dreary. The stairs leading to his second story office was a long climb since the store fronts on the street floor had very high ceilings. I wheezed all the way. All the floors were covered with this very shiny orange brown linoleum. Across the hallway from his office was a barbershop that charged ten cents a haircut. It wasn't much of a barbershop. The doorway consisted of a ratty bed sheet hung rather badly. The barber's chair was a tall wooden stool, and if you weren't careful, you could get splinters by just running your fingers around the edges. When the chair was occupied, the rest of the customers had to stand in the hallway and wait in line. There was no other place to sit. The only amusement, while standing and waiting, was watching flies buzzing around strips of fly paper hanging from the ceiling. The anxiety level was raised when calculating which fly would land on the paper and which fly wouldn't, the beginnings of an evolution of a fly's brain.
The middle- aged barber, I remembered, was equipped with one pair of scissors, a comb, and a tragic demeanor due to thwarted ambitions. At the time, the bowl cut hair style was what all cheap Chinese barbers gave to everyone regardless of age. That is why we all look so much alike. No one complained. Being very young, I postulated that every person working in menial jobs (like a barber), and showing no interest nor feelings in their vocation, as having a tragic demeanor. As I grew older, I found this to be true.
I entered the herbalist office with my father, the herbalist motioned me to take off my jacket and shirt and to pull up my undershirt. He leaned over and, with his eyes rolled toward the ceiling, examined me by squeezing parts of my body for half a minute. As he straightened up, he shook his head and proclaimed to my father in a dry voice, "They are doing less than nothing for your son. He will not get better. All the white ghost doctors have done is to make a pin cushion of your little boy." The herbalist began pointing at my back with his slender fingers, stained yellow with nicotine. "See, see. Look at those little red dots. Your poor boy is being assaulted, and for what? White thieves, white thieves are what they are! They blind you with their subtle arrogance, with their medical theatrics, and have you believing that some miraculously unseen thing is being done to cure your son. In truth, they are charlatans, vultures swooping out of the bright sun to peck away at your dignity, your common sense, and most especially, your purse. Now, I'm not saying that I can do more than they can, but do I charge you a whole day's pay for ten minutes of worthless consultation? And this notion that pricking your son's back to find out what food he can or cannot eat is...is...barbaric nonsense."
I silently agreed. He lifted my tiny wrist and laid it on a miniature red velvet pillow and began taking my pulse. His white porcelain hand was that of a corpse, and from his vest pocket, he stealthily took out a shiny brass pocket watch and began scrutinizing the face, counting the seconds. After a moment, the herbalist, with studied dignity, removed his fingers from my wrist, snapped shut the lid of his watch, and slipped it back into his vest pocket that was fraying at the edges from constant usage. He hunched over, turned to my father, and uttered a sigh of resignation. "You must face the facts, this port city is not good for him. It is too close to the ocean. The fog sweeps in nearly every day and does not wear out it's welcome until the noonday sun, and even then, it might decide to stay. It never dries here; it is always cold and damp. It would be better that your son goes away from here, some drier climate, like a desert or someplace with lot of dry heat. This is what I prescribe."
My father studied the old herbalist for a moment. "You are right, of course, and I would follow this advice if I had the means to do so. But things are difficult right now. Is there not another option?"
"Well, you could leave matters as they stand," grunted the herbalist, "and he may perhaps become stunted and develop into a dwarf. His constant fighting for breath will leave him with little energy to grow. But on the other hand, I have never known this illness to be fatal to one so young. He may just grow out of it completely with no serious consequences...and then again he may not. I have heard from reliable sources that children afflicted with this lung disease sometimes develop peculiarities, like mental dullness, or a small penis, or idiosyncrasies inappropriate to good social behavior. I really do not know."
I began to shiver at the herbalist prognosis. The more I listened, the more I shivered and kept shivering, even after putting on my sweater and jacket. I might never grow beyond my present height! I was doomed to be a midget! Always on eye level with the kitchen sink, always on eye level with adult bellybuttons, a gruesome prospect. The achievements of Toulouse-Lautrec would have been a consolation but he was dead and I was too young to have known of his existence. I was already too short for my age. I became painfully aware of the fact when one day I was informed by my friends that they were not exceptionally tall. Years later, when my height seemed to me as still being stunted, my evil Cousin Clyde, whose family was much wealthier than mine, and therefore wiser than mine, claimed that he grew over six inches during his vacation at the YMCA summer boy's camp. The secret. he said, was to refrain from masturbating. "No jacking off if you don't want to be a little runt all your life." And for the next three years I practiced absolute celibacy. I grew three inches. My Cousin Clyde was so believable.
The old herbalist looked at me sadly, shrugged his shoulders, and continued. "But I do know that this damp, foggy climate is not good for what he has. It is the damp sickness glued to his lungs that must be cleansed and dried, and it will not dry while living in this city. Didn't you say that you have a brother-in-law sharecropping a farm in the valley? It is hot and dry there and your son could not eat that much. Why not send him there? He could work for his keep."
It was called the Hellman Ranch and I thought that Ranch meant horses. It didn't. It was a fruit farm populated by two, really beat up, red McCormick tractors, and the longest chicken coop I ever saw. Well, it was the first chicken coop I ever saw and it happened to be very long. I arrived by bus and was picked up at the station by my Uncle Sam (that was is first name) who was my mother's older brother by about eighteen years. It was not uncommon for siblings to be that many years apart. He had no sympathy, he was a farmer. This I perceive by my first impression in the form of a general osmosis of his smell and body language . His face was very old China: it was wrinkled and very brown. The kaki shirt and pants he was wearing was wet from the heat, and he wore an old gray Stetson that was stained black around the hat band. He had a wiry frame and his manner was brusque. He showed no signs of affection. What was I to do? He was my blood uncle and I guess that's what blood uncles behave like when they take on an unwanted relative who plans to board on his farm.
My evil Cousin Clyde is on the left looking at me and thinking how gullible I was.
