Ruth felt a twinge in her chest. It quickly grew into an ache. She wanted to embrace her mother, shield her, and at the same time wanted her mother to cradle her, to assure her that she was okay, that she had not had a stroke or worse. That was how her mother had always been, difficult, oppressive, and odd. And in exactly that way, LuLing had loved her. Ruth knew that, felt it. No one could have loved her more. Better perhaps, but not more.

"Thanks, Ma. It's wonderful. We'll talk about it later, what to do with the money. But now we have to go. The doctor said we could still come at four, and we shouldn't be late."

LuLing turned crabby again. "You fault we late."

Ruth had to remind her to take her newly found purse, then her coat, finally her keys. She felt ten years old again, translating for her mother how the world worked, explaining the rules, the restrictions, the time limits on money-back guarantees. Back then she had been resentful. Now she was terrified.

In the hospital waiting room, Ruth saw that all the patients, except one pale balding man, were Asian. She read the blackboard listing of doctors' names: Fong, Wong, Wang, Tang, Chin, Pon, Kwak, Koo. The receptionist looked Chinese; so did the nurses.

In the sixties, mused Ruth, people railed against race-differentiated services as ghettoization. Now they demanded them as culturally sensitive. Then again, San Francisco was about a third Asian, so Chinese-targeted medicine could also be a marketing strategy. The balding man was glancing about, as if seeking an escape route. Did he have a last name like Young that had been mistakenly identified as Chinese by a race-blind computer? Did he also get calls from Chinese-speaking telemarketers trying to sign him up for long-distance calling plans for Hong Kong and Taiwan? Ruth knew what it meant to feel like an outsider, because she had often been one as a child. Moving to a new home eight times made her aware of how she didn't fit in.

"Fia start six grade?" LuLing was now asking.

"You're thinking of Dory," Ruth answered. Dory had been held back a year because of attention deficit disorder. She now received special tutoring.

"How can be Dory?"

"Fia's the older one, she's going into tenth. Dory's thirteen. She'll be in seventh."

"I know who who!" LuLing grumbled. She counted, flipping her fingers down as she listed: "Dory, Fia, oldest one Fu-Fu, seventeen." Ruth used to joke that Fu-Fu, her feral cat, born with a nasty disposition, was the grandchild LuLing never had. "How Fu-Fu do?" LuLing asked.

Hadn't she told her mother Fu-Fu had died? She must have. Or Art had. Everyone knew that Ruth had been depressed for weeks after it happened.

"Fu-Fu's dead," she reminded her mother.

"Ai-ya!" LuLing's face twisted with agony. "How this can be! What happen?"

"I told you-"

"No, you never!"

"Oh… Well, a few months ago, she went over the fence. A dog chased her. She couldn't climb back up fast enough."

"Why you have dog?"

"It was a neighbor's dog."

"Then why you let neighbor's dog come your backyard? Now see what happen! Ai-ya, die no reason!"

Her mother was speaking far too loudly. People were looking up from their knitting and reading, even the balding man. Ruth was pained. That cat had been her baby. She had held her the day she was born, a tiny wild ball of fur, found in Wendy's garage on a rainy day. Ruth had also held her as the vet gave the lethal shot to end her misery. Thinking about this nearly put Ruth over the edge, and she did not want to burst into tears in a waiting room full of strangers.

At that moment, luckily, the receptionist called out, "LuLing Young!" As Ruth helped her mother gather her purse and coat, she saw the balding man leap up and walk quickly toward an elderly Chinese woman. "Hey, Mom," Ruth heard him say. "How'd everything check out? Ready to go home?" The woman gruffly handed him a prescription note. He must be her son-in-law, Ruth surmised. Would Art ever take her mother to the doctor's? She doubted it. How about in the case of an emergency, a heart attack, a stroke?

The nurse spoke to LuLing in Cantonese and she answered in Mandarin. They settled on accented English as their common ground. LuLing quietly submitted to the preliminaries. Step on the scale. Eighty-five pounds. Blood pressure. One hundred over seventy. Roll up your sleeve and make a fist. LuLing did not flinch. She had taught Ruth to do the same, to look straight at the needle and not cry out. In the examination room, Ruth turned away as her mother slipped out of her cotton camisole and stood in her waist-high flowered panties.

LuLing put on a paper gown, climbed onto the examining table, and dangled her feet. She looked childlike and breakable. Ruth sank into a nearby chair. When the doctor arrived, they both sat up straight. LuLing had always had great respect for doctors.

"Mrs. Young!" the doctor greeted her jovially. "I'm Dr. Huey." He glanced at Ruth.

"I'm her daughter. I called your office earlier."

He nodded knowingly. Dr. Huey was a pleasant-looking man, younger than Ruth. He started asking LuLing questions in Cantonese, and her mother pretended to understand, until Ruth explained, "She speaks Mandarin, not Cantonese."

The doctor looked at her mother. "Guoyu?"

LuLing nodded, and Dr. Huey shrugged apologetically. "My Mandarin is pretty terrible. How's your English?"

"Good. No problem."

At the end of the examination, Dr. Huey smiled and announced, "Well, you are one very strong lady. Heart and lungs are great. Blood pressure excellent. Especially for someone your age. Let's see, what year were you born?" He scanned the chart, then looked up at LuLing. "Can you tell me?"

"Year?" LuLing's eyes darted upward as if the answer were on the ceiling. "This not so easy say."

"I want the truth, now," the doctor joked. "Not what you tell your friends."

"Truth is 1916," LuLing said.

Ruth interrupted. "What she means is-" and she was about to say 1921, but the doctor put up his hand to stop her from speaking. He glanced at the medical chart again, then said to LuLing, "So that makes you… how old?"

"Eighty-two this month!" she said.

Ruth bit her lip and looked at the doctor.

"Eighty-two." He wrote this down. "So tell me, were you born in China? Yes? What city?"

"Ah, this also not so easy say," LuLing began shyly. "Not really city, more like little place we call so many different name. Forty-six kilometer from bridge to Peking."

"Ah, Beijing," the doctor said. "I went there on a tour a couple of years ago. My wife and I saw the Forbidden City."

LuLing warmed up. "In those day, so many thing forbidden, can't see. Now everyone pay money see forbidden thing. You say this forbidden that forbidden, charge extra."

Ruth was about to burst. Her mother must sound garbled to Dr. Huey. She had had concerns about her, but she didn't want her concerns to be fully justified. Her worries were supposed to preclude any real problem. They always had.

"Did you go to school there as well?" Dr. Huey asked.

LuLing nodded. "Also my nursemaid teach me many things. Painting, reading, writing-"

"Very good. I was wondering if you could do a little math for me. I want you to count down from a hundred, subtracting seven each time."

LuLing went blank.

"Start at a hundred."

"Hundred!" LuLing said confidently, then nothing more.

Dr. Huey waited, and finally said, "Now count down by seven."

LuLing hesitated. "Ninety-two, ah, ninety-three. Ninety-three!"

This is not fair, Ruth wanted to shout. She has to convert the numbers into Chinese to do the calculations, then remember that, and put the answer back into English. Ruth's mind raced ahead. She wished she could lay out the answers for her mother telephatically. Eighty-six! Seventy-nine!