I FICTION

Art By Mimi Palladino

The Gift Of
The Burmese Chemist

4 4

W

hat's going on up there,
Edie?" shouts my hus-
band, Stanley, in the mid-
dle of the night. He's com-
plaining about the noise in
the apartment above us.
"Forget about them," I tell him. "I'll
make you some warm milk."
"Make him the warm milk," he says.
"Boil it and pour it over him."
"You're getting yourself worked up,
Stanley. You know you can't sleep when
you're angry." But he's already angry and
neither one of us is going to sleep. "I got
some pills from my mother. She says they
help her sleep. Take one, even two."
Luckily it's not like this every night.
Sometimes the people upstairs go away. Or
by some miracle Stanley goes to sleep
early; he passes out and sleeps eight, nine
hours. Even I can't wake him. I have to
turn the clock-radio full blast and then he
moves. He knows what's up and he swings
his legs over and says, "Wish I could stay
home today?' But he gets up and takes the
bus to the market where he sells fish all
day, sometimes twelve hours on his feet. I

102 FRIDAY, APRIL 1 1988

Mr. Tam is Burmese. He
lives upstairs with his
wife and sister. My
husband says we should
leave them alone to solve
their own problems, but I
can't help myself

LEONARD GOODMAN

Special to The Jewish News

can understand that he wants peace and
quiet at home.
But I wish Stanley had more feeling for
the people upstairs. I say to him one day
when he's complaining about the noise,
"Have a little charity, Stanley. Don't be so
sour?'
"I used to eat sour balls when I was a
kid," he says. "Don't try to change me."
That's his idea of a joke.
The people upstairs are Burmese and
they are very different from us. I thought
Buddhists were quiet people, meditating
all the time. It's not just the landlord, Mr.
'Pam, living upstairs. There's Mr. Tam's
sister, who is plump and older than him
and doesn't wear American-style clothes,
and his new young wife whom he has
brought over from Burma. He made a spe-
cial trip there to get a wife. It was all ar-
ranged with the family. This is information
I got talking to the wife. Her name is Sue.
We meet in the front hallway or in the base-
ment washing clothes. One day I get the
courage to ask her what all the noise is
about. She looks away and keeps folding
laundry.