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Rachel

Kim Idol









She appeared at my front door like a sprite landing on the front porch. The knock on the door was a spare slight sound of a small fist being polite. I opened the door and saw a beautiful girl through the security screen. A long-haired Chinese princess who smiled at me as if we'd met before. The theme of Disney's Sleeping Beauty actually ran through my head. She held her phone horizontally and spoke into it. It translated her words. "My phone needs a charge. I don't have my house key and need to call my father."


I let her in so she could charge the phone and make the call. Then she stayed and talked on the phone with a Chinese woman. The dogs scared her, but she remained calm while Jesse tried to sniff her, and Finn barked and barked and barked. When her father drove up, she stood, collected her things, thanked me, and left. She appeared on my doorstep two weeks later. She'd lost her house key again, and her father would be home at 5. As it was 3:30, could she wait at my house?


She understands that there is no way I can pronounce her Chinese name in hell, so I call her Rachel, her American name. She is learning English and Chinese and tells me when she gets A's in school and what she does in class. She walks the two miles to school and back. She says the rest of her family is still in China and that she has no religion, and in fact, she is unsure what the word religion means. I am hesitant to ask where her mother is.


I live across the street from Rachel and her father. I've seen him, a tan, nondescript figure wearing big round glasses who waved at me once the day he moved in. They live in a house owned by a Chinese slumlord. Is there a term for a female slumlord? She historically rents to lowlifes. Over the years, I have had to call animal control more than once, and the landlord had to hire hazmat cleaning firms after tenants disappeared in the middle of the night. Sometimes, when I visited, the waft of pot blowing outward preceded some super frustrating conversations. When I had to call the police, the residents often refused to answer the door. I imagine them squatting behind a living room sofa just waiting for the police to go away.


Whenever tenants vacate the house, this female slumlord unloads their refuse including the mattresses, onto the sidewalk until we call the city to force her to clean up her mess. The tenants, two groups back, were from a Hispanic gangster legacy. They left pretty fast. I imagined two dark forces agreeing to call it a day before things got vicious. This group informed me that she refuses to fix anything broken in the house.


This time, all I saw of the new tenants was a man and a teenage Chinese boy working on motorcycles and revving car engines. Then the boy vanished, and I only see the man now and again standing in his empty garage with the door open and staring out at the street, looking more like a statue than a watcher.


Rachel came again last week. "My father has gone away for a few days. I do not know how many. Could I stay here until 7:30?" The conversation was more complicated but that was the gist. We agreed she could come to my house after school and stay until 7:30. We talked via GoogleTranslate. She is intelligent and curious and an excellent conversationalist. She was now curls up against my dogs on the couch. She also brings me grapes now and again. We talk, walk dogs, and watch Disney films in Chinese until it is time for her to go.


We arrange our schedule every week. I haven't met her father, although she assures me she has told him who I am. He texted her once while she was at my house, warning her to "be sensible."


One friend told me to be wary of Rachel casing the house. I have thought of that. Another says I should be aware that her "father" is not her father." I have thought of that. I just can't see what she could take from me. She says she has never celebrated Halloween but would select a pretty and scary costume if she did. At 13, she only has one or two years before she will be too old to trick or treat. I suggest taking her to a place where she can trick or treat with other kids and enjoy a Halloween parade if she wants.

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