"NUMBER SEVEN"
A true story by jhwoodar@well.com


                        - I -

Yun sits at  a  gray  formica-covered  table in the visiting
room.  She wears her dark slacks, a short-sleeved, pale blue
silk blouse, and thin red slippers embroidered  with  yellow
and  green spirals.  Tendons and veins under the skin of her
thin forearms  extend  to  her  long  fingers.   All  of her
fingernails are chipped or broken.  She tries  to  comb  her
page-boy hair with those fingers, then lays her hands on the
table.   On  Sunday  visitors are allowed to see patients in
the psychiatric wing  at  Alta  Bates  hospital in Berkeley,
California.  Patients sit at other tables or  stand  by  the
large  windows  talking  to  their  visitors in semi-private
tones, long past  embarrassment.   Words  mix with sunlight.
Yun presses her hands together and  plays  the  fingers  off
against  each  other.   She  stares  at  them  and tells her
visitor why everything is  so  hard.  The social worker made
her stay in the  hospital.   She  had  bad  thoughts.   They
frightened the social worker.

Yun  refers  to Canton Province as Main China, the scattered
inseminations of Chinese  outside  its borders being somehow
lesser children, like Yun herself.  Her real name in Chinese
actually means Number Seven, as if she  were  an  accounting
entry, not a person.

Yun  Lee  was  born the seventh daughter of a businessman in
Canton.  He  was  wealthier  than  most,  wealthy  enough to
afford a wife in China and another in Hong Kong.  The mother
in Main China failed to produce a son.  Too  many  daughters
were  a liability.  Yun was Number Seven, only another cheap
little girl.  Number Seven,  and  seven were too many girls.
The father would have to put Yun to work if she  was  to  be
worth anything.  The wife in Hong Kong produced boys.  Yun's
father  moved there.  Better to reign over children who were
worth something.  He took  Yun.  His happier household could
save money by not hiring another maid.  Yun  would  do  that
work.   She  was  small, but wiry, determined.  She kept her
anger in check when the step mother beat her.

Number Seven, come here.   Number Seven, clean these floors.
Number Seven, you are always  sleepy.   What  a  lazy  girl.
You'd better work harder.

Yun worked on her knees to clean steps with a brush and lye.
She  struck at pavement with her brush until she scraped the
bristles loose from the wooden handle.

Number Seven, hurry up.  Lazy  girl.  Hurry.  Carry the rice
into the kitchen.  Lazy Number Seven.  You  are  ugly.   You
must  work  if you want to eat.  You are lucky we don't sell
you.

Yun was lucky.  Her father survived the revolution with most
of his fortune  safely  stashed  in  Hong Kong.  He remained
shrewd.  When he had to pay a debt to a business partner, he
convinced the partner's son to take Number Seven as payment.

I am in love with a beautiful young woman, pleaded the  son.
She doesn't want to marry me yet, but I will wait.

You  are  idealistic and foolish, his father explained.  How
long will she love you  if  you  don't prosper?  You have to
make money.

Yun's father counseled the son,  She  will  bring  you  good
luck,  my  Number Seven.  She will do whatever you tell her.
Look how obedient.  See how  clean the floors of the kitchen
and the terrace and all the stairs coming up  the  hillside.
She will make you a meal tonight.  How lucky you are already
in  getting  lucky  Seven.   When you go to America she will
work hard for you.

The son was an  engineer.   Hong Kong didn't need engineers,
but the land of milk  and  honey  made  room  for  everyone.
America  was  the  gold  mountain.  All anyone had to do was
dig.

So Yun was not sold but married.  Her father-in-law told her
new husband  about  opportunities  in  America,  in Arizona.
They make Mexican food there but not  Chinese.   The  family
advised,  Start  a  Chinese  restaurant.   You will be rich.
They sold him on the idea.   He invested his life savings in
a Phoenix fast food place.  He brought Yun to work it.  They
rebuilt it, sweated over it, worried the prices  would  ruin
them.   For  fifteen  more  years  Number  Seven cleaned and
cooked.  And she  had  babies,  one  girl,  two girls, three
girls, no boys.  What bad luck for Number  Seven,  no  boys,
just  cheap  little girls.  She beat them when they wouldn't
work,  when  they  wouldn't  read  their  books  for school,
whenever they disobeyed.  Cheap little girls.  Why  couldn't
she  have  baby  boys?  She worked harder.  After she closed
the restaurant, and  cleaned  the  floors,  and scrubbed the
pots and pans, and stocked the food and placed it ready  for
the  next  day;  after she tallied the accounts, and ordered
all the necessary supplies, Yun  sat  by herself in the cold
night hours.  When Arizona slept, when children dreamed  and
husbands gave up, when no one went anywhere, she sewed.  She
made  cloth  hand  puppets  for  children.  Number Seven got
money for the puppets, clever  donkeys with ears, or parrots
with beaks that opened, or bears with  moving  eyes.   Fifty
cents apiece.  Lucky Seven could work.

But  work  wasn't  enough.   The  restaurant  failed.   With
borrowed  money the husband paid too much for a small coffee
bar in a California suburb,  not far from San Francisco.  No
more Chinese food to cook for  customers,  just  coffee  and
pastry for business people in the morning, frozen yogurt for
children  after  school, snacks for people in a hurry.  Just
scrub and sell, and sell  and  scrub.  Eight more years.  No
luck without hard work.  You must dig if you want to be rich
on Gold Mountain, Number Seven.  Hurry up.  Lazy girl.

The husband's old girl friend from Hong Kong moved  to  Gold
Mountain  near San Francisco.  His family mentioned her in a
letter.  He found her phone  number and called her.  He went
to see her.  She was  lucky,  someone  with  money,  someone
pretty,  not tired all the time.  He visited her many times.
He introduced his  daughters  to  her.   They  loved her, so
wonderful, she gave them money,  not  beatings.   They  told
Yun.  Daddy's going away with our new mother, you'll see.

He  tried  to convince his old girl friend they could regain
their youthful dreams.   But  she  had married someone else.
Daddy was number two.  You want to  be  number  one  without
money?   she  complained.   How  much  money do you have?  I
can't marry a poor man.  Do  you  think I'm a fool?  I won't
leave my husband for you.

Daddy took a gun to his girl friend's house to show her  how
much  he  loved  a pretty girl friend more than an exhausted
wife.  He threatened to  kill  himself if she didn't divorce
her husband.  No, she said.  He left.  Standing outside  her
front  door  he  put  the  gun  in his mouth and painted the
exterior  white  woodwork  with  his  brains.   Number Seven
suddenly lived alone in a foreign world with three daughters
who wanted money for school and fast cars.  One by one  they
moved  out.  They only called her when they were broke.  She
sent checks.  Yun worked  day  and night.  Money.  She would
never make enough.

The youngest daughter Bernice asked to come  home  when  she
had  no other place to live.  Mommy, I'm broke, she said.  I
couldn't pay my rent.  Please help me.

Yun couldn't  say  no.   She  wanted  all  her back-breaking
efforts to mean something.  Bernice  looked  like  her  dead
father,  square-faced,  black  hair, solid, strong.  She was
bright, an answer for every  question about what happened to
all her money.  I gave it to friends, she said.  I fed them.
They slept in my living room.  My boy friend  needed  money.
His car was broken.  I paid for repairs.

Boy friend?  Yun asked.  What boy friend?

The man who stays with me, Bernice answered.  He has to eat,
too.   But  he  can't find a job.  He wants to be a baseball
player.  He's  good.   You  should  see  him  play.  He's an
incredible pitcher.  But he has a hard  time.   I  help.   I
gave  him  money.   What could I do?  No one wants to give a
Black man a job.  You will  meet him.  He's coming home with
me.

Bernice and her boy friend moved into Yun's apartment.   The
boy friend sat on the couch and watch TV, or he exercised at
a  gym.   Bernice  said he pitched for a Triple-A ball club.
Sometimes she worked in Yun's  store.  Sometimes she and her
lover disappeared for days.  Yun wouldn't know where  they'd
gone.   When Bernice came home after her last disappearance,
Yun stood in the center  of their apartment's front room and
yelled, I can't count on you.  Why you don't work?   I  have
to do everything?  I never know when you're here.  Why don't
he work?  He don't do nothing.

Bernice  stood  facing  her mother.  We have friends, Mommy,
answered Bernice.  What  should  we  do?   Tell them to drop
dead?  We took them home after a party.  They needed a ride.
They live in Los Angeles.  She tried to smile.   I'll  work.
I'll  help  you  today.  I love you, Mommy.  Can I have some
money?

He's got to  leave,  Yun  yelled.   She  pointed  at the boy
friend.  He sat on the coach without a word.  He  looked  at
them  both  standing face-to-face in the middle of the room.
Without expression his eyes  passed  from  one to the other.
He waited for them to decide.  He was strong,  even  sitting
down  he  carried  himself  straight and tall, but he had no
job.  He hadn't shaved for two days.  The new beard made his
black face darker.  Bernice  spoke  for them both.  He stays
with me, Mommy.  I'm not going to put  him  on  the  street.
He's the father of my child, Bernice announced.

What!  You going to marry him?  Yun exploded.

No,  I  don't  want to get married.  He doesn't make enough,
yet.  We'll get by.  I want  to have a baby now.  Yun stared
in fury and bit her lower lip.  Bernice turned  to  him  and
said over her shoulder, Mommy, you can't tell me what to do,
not anymore.  I'm a woman now.

Sitting at the table in the hospital, Yun has not moved from
her  chair.   She  has never talked so much to anyone as she
has in telling her story.  She continues to work the fingers
of her hands, left against right, right against left.


                        - II -

One year is a long  time  in fate's hands.  Indifferent, she
can turn her  attention  away  and  leave  people  with  the
illusion  they  control every aspect of their lives.  Angry,
she can slide a house into a sink hole or drop a bridge on a
car.  Benevolent, she can invent  the  one gift no one could
foresee.  She did that and retrieved Yun Lee from despair.

Seymour Goldman is the first therapist Yun talked  to  after
her  husband's  suicide when muscle spasms tied her in knots
and she could  no  longer  sleep.   An acquaintance of Yun's
recommended Seymour to her as helpful, someone who  wouldn't
ask  for  money.   He's retired, nearly eighty.  Money isn't
important to him.  He's always  hated  how the pursuit of it
distorts people.

Seymour talked with Yun and referred her to social  services
at  Alta  Bates.   He saw her occasionally after her release
from the  hospital.   She  continued  to  see a psychiatrist
there in a group therapy program.  That doctor prescribed  a
one year program of a mild anti-depressant.

"Maybe  it work," Yun told Seymour.  "Don't feel so nervous.
I'm not running around sweating  like Rexall girl," by which
she means not as fearful as a rickshaw girl.

Sitting in his small living room, Seymour  cautiously  hopes
Yun  will  do  well  enough.  He explains his view of life's
fortunes and how they've affected  her.  He says the hardest
part of living may be overcoming the youthful illusion  that
we  control  our  destiny.   Certainly  we should take every
advantage of the best aspects  of  ourselves to find a sense
of comfort and fulfillment, he says, though people with  the
means  frequently  come  face  to  face  with  the  American
dilemma,   meaninglessness.    Seymour  faces  destiny  more
squarely than most younger people.   He mentions he has only
a little time left in his life.  Fate and he sit together.

He goes on, Our best efforts may only  be  employed  in  the
most suitable circumstances.  Sometimes we never get such an
opportunity.

He  offers  his  interviewer  coffee and Almond cookies.  He
sips and rests his cup  on  the  low  table in front of him,
then spreads his arms wide on the couch where many  visitors
have  often  sat  and cried their troubles.  He's a man with
something of an old  man's  belly,  thinning gray hair and a
face of blue circles underlining blue eyes.  His two-bedroom
apartment is filled with books on psychology, social theory,
and art.  Some pictures of Asia brighten the  walls.   These
few  treasures  and his car are all he owns.  In retirement,
he has given away everything  else  and lives now in a mixed
ethnic,  working  class  area  just   north   of   Berkeley,
California.

As  he  talks about fate and its impact on Yun, he sometimes
looks at an audience floating  in  the air on the other side
of the room.  Many  of  his  companions  are  memories.   He
smiles  as  he  remembers  a Jewish anecdote; If you want to
make God laugh, tell him your plans.  The vagaries of nature
make it impossible for  us  to  predict what will happen, he
says.  Even with the capabilities and depth of  science  and
the  force of will, it's a matter of timing.  Perhaps we can
be certain of some things.  In  spite of that, we can't know
when they will happen.  Timing is critical because we  don't
live  forever.   Will  the  hand  of  luck  intervene in our
lifetime?  It seems a miracle if it does.

He tells what has happened to Yun.

When she visits,  as  she  sometimes  does,  she is playful,
almost girlish.  If Seymour teases her about  continuing  to
work too hard she will walk straight up to him and pantomime
passing  her  hand  up  and  down  in  front  of  his  face,
forefinger  and  thumb  together.   "I  sew your mouth," she
yells at him, grinning.   Now  she  wants to work.  She will
tolerate no protests from  Seymour.   She  knows  best.   In
spite  of  the fact that she labors eighteen hours a day and
is in  her  mid-fifties,  she  barrels  through  each day as
vigorously as she once slaved in Arizona.

Often she will work late at her store.  After nine at night,
after she closes, she disassembles  all  the  Yogurt  making
equipment,  pulls  out  refrigerator  trays,  and  opens the
espresso  machine.   She  cleans  all  the  metal  parts and
filters and so forth.  Then she reassembles everything—loads
the yogurt machines  with  starters,  flavoring,  sugar  and
water—charges the steam reservoirs in the coffee makers with
filtered   water.    She   cleans   and  reinserts  all  the
refrigerator shelves.   After  that  she  scrubs  the entire
store, shelves, counters, tables and floor, to  be  sure  no
smell  of rancid milk or coffee ruin the air.  Only when the
store is spotless and ready for  the next day does she empty
the register and tally the accounts.  She records  the  days
expenses  and  income  and  often brings her ledgers home to
combine them with accounting of small investments she makes.
She's building  a  fund.   With  some  advice  from a Schwab
broker she's has already invested enough of her savings  and
a  small insurance settlement from her dead husband's policy
to stop working, if  she  lives  carefully.  But she doesn't
stop.  She has something in mind.

Her youngest daughter Bernice helps in the store nearly  all
the  time  now.  Yun sacrifices to make sure Bernice is paid
enough so she can afford the rent on a small apartment where
she lives with her baby's father.  Often she brings the baby
to the store.   The  father  is  handsome  and the child has
inherited his dark, good looks.  Yun will  stop  what  she's
doing  and  sit  with  the  baby,  showing off to customers.
Regulars look for her sitting at a table in her coffee shop,
a newborn in her lap  or  parked on her shoulder staring out
the window at sidewalk traffic.   The  baby  is  remarkable,
yes?   The  baby  is  bright,  watches  everything.   What a
beautiful baby, certainly.   Six  months  after giving birth
Bernice entered the baby in a modeling contest and won.  The
baby  makes  money  posing  for  pictures   selling   infant
clothing.

Yun teaches her daughter.  Bernice is learning how to  clean
and  repair  the  machines in the store.  She calls frequent
customers by name and knows their favorite tastes.  When she
doesn't come to work, a rare failure these days, or when she
makes mistakes with  money,  or  dares  to day-dream about a
second child, Yun  doesn't  yell.   She  holds  her  temper.
Things work out.  No worry.  The baby is a boy.
   
 The author would be pleased to hear from you. 
 

  <jhwoodar@well.com>