"Oh, my God. What happened?"

"He's got an infection, and it's been bad Drew, it's been bad." I hear some muffled voices in the background. "But hey Drew, I gotta go now. I need your prayers."

--

Truth of the matter is that when I graduated and moved away, I lost touch with Mike. It wasn't a sudden break, but gradual and subtle. I graduated. I went to Africa. I came back and started working. Mike stayed around.

Every once in awhile, I get a phone call from him. "Hey Drew, how ya doin?" Mike will ask. And I will tell him that I'm at work, and I'll call him back. I try to remember to call him back. I really do.

--

"He's gone."

"Mike, I'm so sorry."

"He passed at 7:07."

"I'm so sorry man."

"Wayne just gave up man. Drew, I'm tired."

I can say nothing.

"I can't cry no more."

--

Sarah and I show up at Alta Bates later that evening with some coffee and La Burrita. We wait for Mike in the waiting room. Soon he comes in a bit unsteadily, a boombox clutched in one hand, a thick wool beanie covering his head and ears. Slumping into the seat across from us, he leans forward and puts his head in his hands. "He's gone"--and exhales.

The details make their way out. "I was out in Berkeley doing my thang. They had to come find me, tell me 'Mike, your brother Wayne's in the hospital. You gotta get over now.' Can you believe that? They had to come find me.

Sarah offers Mike some coffee. Mike looks up and over--you brought that? Bless you. A deep sip.

"Wayne had an infection"--Mike says the name of some medical term, but I can't quite catch it. "There was an infection on his insides. He was in so much pain. They say he couldn't hear nobody, but I was there at his side talking to him and I know he can hear me. You know? He twitch."

--

"I gotta tell everyone on his street that he gone now."

Mike chuckles a bit.

"Listen, I tell you, Wayne used to always walk by this woman's house in the morning. She used to ask me, 'Why does Wayne always do that?' I say 'It's because he likes you!' She says 'But I'm married!' and I say 'Well that's why Wayne always coming around when your man's gone!'

Mike laughs as he relives the memory.

"I was prepared for Moms, but nothing prepared me for Wayne, you know? You're ready to see your momma pass, but not your own brother. Drew, I can't cry no more."

--

Last I heard from Mike, he was about to go in to court for his Social Security hearing. "You gonna come, Drew?" he asked me. I told him I'd be there, and just to give him a call. "Good. I just need you to say to the judge that you seen me have heart problems and take me to the hospital once." I tell him to have his lawyer call me. She never does.

Mike called the afternoon before his court date. I'm at work, so I let the call go straight to voice mail. "Hey Drew, it's Mike. Court hearing's tomorrow. Can you come?" I call him right back, but alas, it's disconnected. All through the evening and into the next day, his number's still disconnected, and I wonder how his case turns out.

--

"God got his purpose, Drew. I know that. Last night I was walking the neighborhood and I saw this shooting star. Just... shoom"--Mike makes this flying hand motion--"I saw a shooting star and it fly right over Wayne's house. And I knew, I just knew.

"Wayne was a grumpy guy, you know? Every time I come over he kick me right out after fifteen minutes. Say he don't want to see nobody. He was a hard man, but he was family ya know?"

Mike's expression changes, and he puts his head down in his hands again. "When my Moms passed, we all came together again. That was her last wish. We usually fighting and everything and sure enough, we came together. But we was fighting all over her things.

"My big sister give me a call one day and she says 'Mike, come down here and take some of Mom's stuff.' I say, 'I don't want nothing to do with it.' Everybody's over there taking and taking. I finally go down and you know what's left? A vacuum cleaner." Mike's face registers disgust. "They take everything but her vacuum cleaner."

Sarah and I don't know what to say, but to look intently at him.

--

I've heard from Mike time and time again. He'll call me once in awhile and leave a voice mail message. "Hey Drew, just thinking of you. Call me back all right? Say hi to Sarah for me."

"We don't deserve a friend like Mike," Sarah told me last night. "You know? Like we're not nearly as good as friends to him as he is to us. He has every right to disregard us as do-gooder students, but we really are his friends."

I try to remember to call, I swear I do.

Since Mike doesn't have a working cell phone any more, he calls me from several phone numbers, all of which I judge to be his family. One number is his sister's, another is Belinda's. "How's he doing?" I ask Belinda. "He's not doing too well," she replies.

"Can you talk to him?" his sister asks, her voice cracking too, "He really needs someone to talk to."

--

I met Mike on a starry evening five years ago on Telegraph and Durant. Was it March, or was it April? He was sitting on a milk carton at the time; I was a big-eyed freshman willing to talk to anybody. I met a Mike who was lost in his thoughts. "You know what man," he tells me that evening, "I miss my Moms. She passed five years ago today."

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I have never felt so small, standing under the African sky. I wish you could be here to see it; sprawling diamonds falling out of the Milky Way, meteors arcing overhead over staccato lightning beats. Bolts. This moment feels like a memory, déjà vu reversed again. Tomorrow, I will wake early and have coffee. Tonight, I cut circles in the sand as thunder sends me to a heavy sleep.

I am at the clothes market on Christmas Eve, trying hard not to feel foolish. It is difficult because 1) I have terrible Mandarin abilities and 2) I'm really not that interested in buying anything. The vendors believe otherwise, convinced I'm playing games with them. "Come on," one of them whines, playfully jabbing me in the arm, "the leather on these shoes are high quality! These are totally in fashion! Why won't you buy it?"

One of them, upon discovering I'm from America, grabs me by the arm, "Look, it's Christmas Eve! It's your holiday! Let me give you a present." She proceeds to name a price. Ouch, it's ridiculous.

--

Shanghai, my Dad decides, is a colorless city. "It's nothing like Spain or France," he remarks. "Look, it's all black and grey!" Really, all we can see are winter's clouds and pollution's haze. Dad, toting a big digital camera and photographic aspirations to proportion, comes away a bit disappointed. The city compensates at night by wearing a neon quilt for us; its dizzying arrays of lights and colors keeping us warm.

--

Christmas morning enters with a shattering roar; I hear car alarms herald the intruder's song. Hark! The doormen shiver in their long, trench coats.

It is business as usual. People walk to and fro. Lights, signs, and brands assault the landscape and the senses. 可口可乐! NOKIA! Somebody, everybody, is shouting something, selling you something, pushing cards and flyers into your face. You learn to find shelter in a steely, forward gaze.

Somebody has broken into our neighbor's car; we see the shattered glass as we walk out into the bitter cold. The thief has, however, overlooked a stuffed animal in the back seat.

--

You should see all the plastic Santa figurines, far skinnier than the canonical Coca-Cola Santa, pale-skinned and decked out in red outerwear, on sale at the tourist markets. They wear eerie gazes, plasticky smiles, unnaturally wide grins. I'm not sure how to think about it: is Santa a jolly good fellow, spreading Christmas cheer to the East as an American ambassador?  Or perhaps he's a cultural hostage, created, altered and marketed in the image of the Chinese? Perhaps he's the love child of globalization and free trade--born in the West, manufactured in the East and sold to both.

Whatever. All I know is I can't look at him. He's creepy.

--

Xintiandi (新天地) means "New Heaven and Earth" in Chinese, and by the looks of it, Heaven looks like an upscale shopping mall.

Christmas, my mom says, is largely a Western holiday. "They see it as a time to go shopping." Sounds like the West.

But what does Christmas mean to them?

Salespeople in Santa hats beckon me from tables brimming with scarves and gloves. I wonder if China's Christmas is a caricature of Christmas in the West, or the other way around.

--

She clenches her teeth and wrests her baby away from the wind's icy clutches. She's trapped by construction cranes and chain-link gates. The cold, the cold, she cannot escape. It bleeds through her tattered clothes, her pants are stained with soot. She cannot make eye contact, but bows even lower. Her baby, swathed in a thin jacket, is peacefully asleep.

What is this place? I cannot sleep. Maranatha.

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A few months ago, Mike's lawyer in San Jose abruptly terminated their relationship after hearing about his purchase of a stolen bike. It made her jittery enough to dump him from her caseload. Mike's switched over to a new lawyer in Berkeley since, but the transition process has slowed down his application for Social Security assistance.

It's a chilly evening, and I'd like nothing better than to get to get back to my apartment and get some work done on my projects. I do a little hop and watch wisps of hot breath fall upwards into the night.

Mike's somewhat changed the subject. "You know my cousin? He left me in Sacramento that one time. He said, 'Hey Mike, I'm gonna be staying up here a little longer.' Well I got to get back to Oakland and I tell him that. But he refused and he lock me out of his girlfriend's place. Well I had nowhere to stay and no choice but to leave without him. I got on an Amtrak back to Oakland."

Mike's waiting for me to say something, and I'm honestly in no mood to wait around. "You want me to pay your bill, Mike?" It comes out a little harsher than I meant it to.

Mike stops and gives me a sidelong glance. "You would do that, Drew? It's fifty dollars."

Inside, I gasp at the figure, but figure this is as good a chance as ever to figure out a cheaper plan for Mike. "Yeah, man. Do you have a phone bill?"

Mike looks at me quizzically. "What's that?"

"You know. A paper statement telling you how much you've got to pay and a list of everybody that you call and how long you call them for."

"No, I don't got that. I pay my bill on my phone."

I take Mike's phone, a MetroPCS model, into my hands and poke around at the options. Sure enough, there's an option for on-phone bill payment. Fifty dollars? I think to myself. Ridiculous.

I look up at Mike. "You gonna be out here tomorrow?" Mike nods affirmatively. "Meet me out here tomorrow at 10AM."

--

Mike's old bike was stolen in September. He had walked in to Kingpin Donuts for a cup of coffee, and when he walked out, it was gone. He claims he knows who did it; a shady figure from Oakland was seen riding his bike up the street shortly after. "I know who he is. Don't he dare to ever show his face around here again," Mike growls. I imagine the shady man's eyes to be thin slits, venom pouring out his fingers.

Mike tells me later that the very same shady figure from Oakland ambled up to him a couple of weeks later, a brand-new Trek bike in his hands. "That's a nice bike," Mike tells the snake man, and I'm surprised that Mike doesn't clobber him right then and there. The man smiles an enigmatic smile, and offers it to Mike for twenty dollars. Mike only has fifteen, and that's just enough.

Nobody can prove that the new bike was a stolen, but it makes Mike's attorney nervous enough to dump him. I wonder if it bothers Mike at all: a stolen bike for a stolen bike (it appears the same in the grand calculus of things).

--

These days Mike doesn't have cell phone service, and he has no means for his attorney to contact him. I go home and research cell phone plans. Monthly or prepaid plans? AT&T, Alltel, Virgin, MetroPCS, Sprint, Verizon? Does he need long distance, voice mail, text messaging? Argh, if I only had Mike's bill and could figure out the best plan for his usage patterns.

I'm internally conflicted as to how I should present this to Mike. I want to tell him to ditch his cell phone, let him know that he doesn't need one. Why can't he just use a calling card? Sarah puts some sense into me: "He lives in a world where he depends on his connection to others. In some ways, it could almost be necessary." I don't fully understand the truth of that statement. I suppose the least I could do is find him a cheaper plan.

I am appalled to find that single-line monthly cell plans all seem to begin at $40; and knowing the way Mike uses his phone, a pay-as-you-go plan wouldn't be that much cheaper (edit: Virgin Mobile just might be). I don't have enough information to go on: I know Mike calls San Jose often to contact his old attorney, and I know he splits his time between Oakland, Berkeley and Sacramento. I don't know if he makes more long calls, short calls, daytime calls or nighttime calls. In short, I just really don't know.

I decide to just advise Mike to downgrade his MetroPCS plan to the $40 basic plan with voice mail, a step down from his $50 bill.

--

I meet him the next day at 10 at the food court. Aaliyah purrs through his boombox. He waves to me, bends over to shut off the stereo and slings it into the back seat. It's a silent drive to the phone store on Ashby, so I turn up Miles Davis on the car radio. We pass restaurants and car dealerships and thrift stores.

"You got class today, Drew?"

"Naw, but I gotta get back to school by 12."

Mike's boombox suddenly sputters to life, Aaliyah's smooth coos chopped up by a jammed tape deck: It's been too long- STOP and I'm lo- STOP -st without- STOP -you. "What the--" Mike cries, turning around to finger with knobs and switches and buttons before he finally puts Aaliyah to rest. "My cousin sold me this busted boombox last month."

"How much was it?"

"Fifteen dollars. I took it home and tried it out and the CD player was broken. Took it back to him and complained. He did something to fix it, but it busted itself up again when I got home."

We pull up to the curb and walk into the battered phone store. Various customers are impatiently waiting around as the cashier up front fumbles with a pack of phones. Mike finds a seat near the door and we wait. And wait.

Fifteen minutes later, the cashier finally figures out how to activate the phones. A woman walks up to the front counter, examines the phones, and asks to see the faceplates.

Mike looks a bit agitated. "You okay, Drew? We should go to Emeryville. They got a store there. Line's probably shorter."

But it's just a little longer, and soon enough it's our turn. We walk up to the counter, where we ask to downgrade Mike's plan.

The cashier gives us a quizzical look. "You're already on the $40 plan," he says.

"Then why's he getting charged fifty bucks?"

"Taxes and fees," the cashier replies, and swivels the computer monitor to show us the damning evidence.

Well that goes all out the window. I pay his month's bill and we walk out of the store. "Thanks Drew," Mike tells me as we get back into the car. I give him a grin, but don't let him know I'm silently fuming.

Later, I relate the story to Sarah. "Welcome to the world of institutional discrimination," she says. I wish it weren't so true.

--

Mike and I are eating lunch at Smart Alec's down the corner from the food court. The lunchtime crowd presses in on us like hot steam against a winter window. Mike cradles Aaliyah and his boombox in his lap. Two officers pass us by, and I notice Mike's eyes flicker and move downward, knowing he's out of place in the restaurant.

"You see them?" Mike gestures over at the officers, now mounting their bikes. "They like me. They know me." We still feel nervous, sitting there in the corner of Smart Alec's, chowing on burgers and garlic fries and sharing a Coke and sticking out like sore thumbs.

I ask him about how Belinda's doing. "She's doing okay" he tells me, and spends five minutes telling me a hair-raising story about how Belinda nearly got in a fight with her son's girlfriend's mother after the girlfriend had stolen Belinda's food stamps--or something like that. I can only loosely follow the story between Mike's mouthfuls of food.

Mike stops suddenly, a smile passing over his face. He dials a number. "Hey Belinda," he speaks to the voice on the other side, "how you doing? ... I'm here in Berkeley now just eating with Andrew ... yeah I'll tell him you say hi ... Hey, remember last week, how nice it was? I was just telling you how nice it would be if we got married." The voice on the line is speaking now, and Mike deep in his thoughts, smiling at an unknown stranger just past me. "Yeah, wouldn't that be nice, ha! Wouldn't that be something."

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--

Hungry eyes follow you over concrete bridges. To look away from them is to acknowledge their power over you. To gaze back into them is to compel you into backbreaking compassion. Apathy, it seems, tries to do both and none at all.

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We dare do what mere men dare not! We linger in the rain when mothers worldwide would frown, wagging their fingers at us children lollydallying in the puddles, stomping on muddy daisies, the rain soaking our pores. We run exclusively when it's wet, through throngs of umbrellaed passerbys who cluck their tongues and shake their heads. And when it grows dark, we swim and splash through rivers running in the streets, if only because we can, because we could, because we can. The restlessness enters my legs when the sky begins to pour. We must rebel, we must run.

II. On the sensation of rain

You can't do anything to rain. It can only mess you up; it can only soak you. Have you ever heard the trees fight the rain? They try to hold the drops in their leaves; at night you can hear the cacophony of each drop. The torrents will never cease, but the trees hold out their arms and try to drink the sky. It is the same with us (we can bat at one drop but ten more take its place). We can do nothing but steel our gaze, brace our bodies and drink the sky.

(There is a valiant eucalyptus grove the length of Dwinelle.)

III. On fighting

Keep your heart rate up. Left foot, right foot, left. When you reach intersections, jog in place. Blink often.

IV. The sender

10 As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

V. Its effects

I return home, feeling unnaturally lucid and completely alive.

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Let’s love when we’re old, and let our wrinkles count our bottled years. Let’s love with the strength of a stout dam over steady waters, unmoved and unscathed. This is our reward, paid in the currency of regret, for we are no friends of time.

–8/28/2004

One corner of the room is a cafe in a half-constructed state with orange walls, orange booths and orange tables whose similarity to a '50s diner is uncanny, down to the sticky vinyl seats and fading chrome accents around the seat bases.

A Latino man and his wife, renowned prayer intercessors (or so I am
told when they enter the room an hour earlier) are silently kneeling
in the center of the room, their lips moving and eyebrows furrowed in
intense concentration (I try to search for words to describe their expressions, and come up with nothing better than "pleading").

The other end of the room is a wall of clear glass cubes affording a view at an empty concrete courtyard which previously saw life as a swimming pool, no doubt among the young, glitzy and the glamourous (tonight, it is barren).

My friend Andy, tall, bronzed and lanky in torn jeans and a "Trust Me I'm a Doctor" tee shirt is walking about in a meandering circle, hands stuffed in his pockets and whispering confident words I cannot decipher as I only hear the escaping hisses of the "s" consonant.

sss (silence) ss tss (silence)

Three walls and the ceiling of the club are painted black (ironically), and I, sprawled out and lying on my back, imagine I am staring into a nighttime sky and not knowing what to pray, faced with the immense loneliness of stars and sky, wondering who am I (who I am) and what exactly I am praying for (for in two weeks I leave for college, releasing behind me a mess of unrealized hopes and hearsay)--little less sure if anything lies between the stars I see in dark ceilings.

(I remember watching a video in fifth grade--an array of numbers spins
up to 4.39 years--for the time light from our closest star, Alpha
Centauri, takes to reach the outer edges of our Solar System. The
thought of waiting four years for light had boggled my mind. What
happened in the meantime? Did darkness just wait? And who was counting?)

I still can't remember to this day how Andy and I met, but for meeting up with him after we had corresponded a couple of times via email and talking about his crazy idea of starting a student prayer vigil, 24s of hours continually (24 soon bloomed to 48 bloomed to 72) and every time we were unsure about going through with another one I just remember his confident yeah man, let's do it (there was no doubt).

Andy was one of the cool kids, but I suspect this was less because he was handsome or rode a Kawasaki motorbike (comparisons were drawn to Korean pop stars and helped his case with the ladies), but because he had this cool confidence about him that had his friends wonder where he got it, and they quickly wished he didn't have it when he got up on lunch tables during senior year at 12PM and started talking about Jesus-following (the faculty had asked him to stop but he couldn't).

The man motions to Andy and me to join them in the middle of the room; we gather and he begins to speak of the burden for the city and for the church, big things and beautiful things and humbling things and sorrowful things, and I see in this man the brokenness of a man whose heart is chained to the people his God loves (I change my mind, the correct word for his expression is "mournful").

Then he begins to share God-inspired things to Andy, speaking out the Father's love for his son, speaking beautiful words into his future, beautiful words really, of leadership, of preparedness, of assurance, of confidence and of commissioning to Andy, who breathes deeply and keeps his eyes closed.

Then it's my turn, and I look up and wait for the stars on the ceiling to come down, for my pinpricks of faith amidst dashed hopes to suddenly fall ablaze from the sky and for this I will let him speak.

And the man, in a steady measured voice full of compassion, simply tells me God wants you to wait--and listen. So much. Keep waiting for him.

I brush aside those words and hastily suppress disappointment that they were not large-words, not even close! but words that demanded that I not have any (oh God, I know it is true.) Andy's hand is on my shoulder and we utter soundless words.

7/28/2004

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