Chen Shu Ang often said that in her next life she wanted three things—to be reborn tall, to be a man (so no one could tell her what to do!) and to never leave her homeland. It went unsaid that she would once again be born in her beloved Taiwan.
Shu Ang had always relished the appearance of busyness. She loved to say, “I’m very busy today. A lot of big business to take care of.” This could range from something as minor as grocery shopping to something as major as applying for a small business loan. Shu Ang adored busyness because it gave her an excuse to reward herself with her other favorite activity: relaxing in front of a Taiwanese television program.
In 2019, Shu Ang was seven years a widow and five years retired. Though she technically lived on the Lower East Side, she thought of it as greater Chinatown and after waking past ten am, and eating a light breakfast, Shu Ang always set out to do her daily shopping.
Before heading toward the markets in Chinatown proper, she walked past the side street where she once ran a modestly successful two-chair hair salon—Mei Hua, named for Taiwan’s national flower, the plum blossom, but also a pun on the character for America, and the word for beauty. There had never been signage in English. Just a neon sign with the two characters in red flanked by a comb and hair dryer in green, underscored by the salon telephone number in white.
Upon retirement, she sold the business for a nominal sum. What was attractive to any buyer were the remaining few years on an affordable lease the landlord was surprisingly willing to honor, but the burden of which Shu Ang had hoped to offload.
She ultimately sold to a young stylist from Hong Kong who called himself Atom and re-christened it the Galaxy Salon. He had done a gut renovation of the small space and added soft golden LED lights that flattered his customers and made them feel beautiful before the shampoo boy had even had a chance to run his fingers in their hair. The walls were white honed faux-marble accented with black tile. Gone were the bulky mint green hooded hair dryers under which many a Chinatown matron had her dye and body waves set. The leaky Pepto-Bismol pink sink Shu Ang had used both for mixing dyes and permanent solutions and washing client’s hair was replaced by two sleek black shampoo bowls. A third stainless steel sink lay behind a walled partition. This was where the chemicals were mixed. Tea and coffee came out of a futuristic machine near the receptionist’s stand, another addition she had not needed since she never had more clients than she could handle in a day. Atom didn’t mix his chemicals in the takeout soup containers she’d gathered from various restaurants. No, he bought graduated tempered glass vessels from wholesale beauty supply catalogs, like he was some kind of chemist. Atom even used a kitchen scale to weigh his ingredients while Shu Ang had always eyeballed the solutions in a Pyrex measuring cup. Also gone were the rows of mannequin heads displaying the various synthetic wigs she sold to unfortunate clients who suffered alopecia. Atom didn’t sell wigs, but applied extensions he claimed to be virgin human hair.
Shu Ang begrudgingly approved of all these changes because she considered herself a modern woman. She often sighed with awe and satisfaction for having lived long enough to experience all the technical marvels of what she called “century twenty-one,” because twenty-first century was too annoying to pronounce in English and didn’t the two basically mean the same things? Yet, when Shu Ang studied the prices for all the treatments, 125% higher than she ever dared to charge, she couldn’t help feel that the neighborhood had lost a valuable institution when she hung up her apron and sheathed her scissors in their protective leather case for the last time. There were fewer places for working women to have their hair cut and set by a sympathetic, if often judgmental and prescriptive, ear for under $25. Shu Ang had begun trimming her own bangs after her stylist retired to Malaysia.
Atom’s clientele were universally fifteen to twenty years younger than Shu Ang’s remaining customers (many of them weren’t even Chinese!). Most didn’t seem to live in the neighborhood. His wait list was so long he’d made a deal with a high end bubble tea shop down the block where his clients received 15% off orders as long as they ordered something for every ½ hour they occupied one of the shop’s seats waiting for their turn in Atom or his partner’s chairs.
Every day that Shu Ang stared into the window Atom was busy smiling down at his clients, exaggerating the British accent with which he’d learned to speak English. The receptionist, a young Chinese woman who refused to speak Chinese even though Shu Ang had once overheard her chattering on the phone in slangy Cantonese, always flipped her waist length hair dyed silvery gray over her shoulder and blinked her eyes with their blue contact lenses and double lid eye surgery at Shu Ang, but never otherwise acknowledged her. Not after the one time Shu Ang had burst into the shop with a chummy, “Dàjiā hǎo!,” ready to take up a chair and sit awhile and gawp at the goings on of the day. She’d seen the sale and transfer of the business as a mere formality that didn’t preclude her from continuing to treat her former shop as a clubhouse. Shu Ang was humble enough to admit she might learn a few new moves from watching Atom work, but mostly she hoped to correct his form and if he was amenable, take the scissors out of his hands and show him exactly how it was meant to be done, but first the receptionist asked in crisp English, “Do you have an appointment, Ma’am?”
Shu Ang answered her in Mandarin, “I don’t need an appointment. I’m just here to see how he’s doing.” She waved toward Atom who was eyeing her from the back of the salon while his partner, Christof, studiously avoided her gaze while he worked a client’s head.
“I can see if we have anything available next week if you’d like,” the receptionist continued.
Shu Ang leaned conspiratorially toward the desk but it towered annoyingly over her so that she had to look up into the receptionist’s icy blue eyes. “I used to own this place. I like what he’s done, except maybe I wouldn’t have chosen so much black. People like happy colors.”
Atom glided over and grasped Shu Ang’s hands and pumped them up and down. “Ayi, so good to see you. You honor us with a visit in our first month!” She appreciated that he didn’t address her as grandma, as some had annoyingly begun to do. She much preferred auntie, despite having been a grandmother for many years at that point.
Shu Ang was so bolstered by this warm welcome she didn’t at first realize that Atom’s firm grip on her hands was guiding her toward the door.
“I just wanted to see how you’re doing. Maybe learn something new.”
“Oh, I couldn’t teach you anything you don’t already know, but it’s so busy there isn’t a single chair available and I couldn’t let you stand around at your age. Why don’t you go to the tea shop down the block and get yourself a drink. If you give them my card they’ll give you 15% off.”
Fifteen percent off! Before the bubble tea shop had opened, promising organic hormone free milk, syrups made from fresh fruit in-house, tapioca pearls from scratch and whole leaf teas brewed to order, the storefront had housed a traditional Cantonese bakery that specialized in egg tarts, flaky taro puffs and cream filled Swiss rolls paired with milky tea or coffee, never iced. Shu Ang had a standing daily order of a taro puff and tea delivered by one of the owner’s three daughters who all worked in the shop the two hours it remained open after they returned home from school. Shu Ang in return gave the daughters all their haircuts and their mother her quarterly color and perm. Money had never changed hands once. Then none of the daughters wanted to take over the business after college and instead, the mother and father turned the keys over five years early to their grateful landlord, and went to live with the youngest daughter and her family in the Atlanta suburbs.
When Shu Ang entered the Galaxy Salon the following week clutching a bag with her favorite brand of Taiwanese pineapple cakes, the receptionist ignored her and Atom merely nodded and returned to his work. Christof leaned down to gaze over his client’s shoulder into the mirror to add his smile to hers as she beamed at his magnificent work.
When the space had been her own, Shu Ang had installed jangling bells above the door to alert her to potential customers and deliverymen when she was in the back using the bathroom or heating a snack on the hot plate, but Atom had removed her bells. Shu Ang’s deflated exit was silent and unannounced.
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Adalena Kavanagh is a writer and photographer living in Brooklyn, NY. She has published stories, essays and interviews in The Believer, Epoch, Air/Light, and Electric Literature, among others. She just completed a novel, Chen Tàitai’s Big Business.