When my brother and I were little we loved watching a [tag]Lucille Ball[/tag] movie called “The Fuller Brush Girl”. I don’t remember much about the movie, but the premise was Lucy is a door-to-door brush saleswoman who gets mixed up in a murder which results in her and fiancé Eddie Albert having a series of silly misadventures.
Anyway, I’d always assumed that [tag]brush girls[/tag] were as much of relics as, well, Lucille Ball (or, to be cruel, as forgotten as Eddie Albert). Not so–brush girls are still thriving here in [tag]China[/tag]. In fact, one has been coming around and thriving on my front stoop every afternoon.
I usually don’t answer the door when I see someone I don’t know through the peephole. Most of the residents of the building are retirees, and their aged friends with aged memories are forever knocking on my door to ask if I know where so-and-so lives and getting irritated when I tell them I don’t. (I’d started saying, “Maybe you’d like to ask a Chinese person,” but quite a few of them replied with something to the effect of “I’ve already asked you, jerk.” At that point I knew they won’t let me play the “I don’t speak Chinese” card.)
A few days ago there was a knock on the door and thought I recognized the head of curly hair I saw through the peep hole, so I opened the door and would up face to face with a stranger.
“Hello. Do you speak Chinese?”
“I do, some.”
“Great. Well,” she put down her shopping bag full of brushes and pulled one out. “Would you like to buy a brush? They’re fantastic…”
“No, I don’t want one.” At this point I felt like a schmuck but was glad I hadn’t opened the door for a Chinese Jehovah’s Witness.
“Really? But, <something in Chinese I didn’t understand>.”
“Sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Do you really not understand, or are you just saying that so you won’t have to buy a brush?”
“No, really, I speak horrible Chinese and don’t understand.”
“Oh, OK. So do you want to buy a brush?”
“No, thanks though.”
I thought that was the last of her. But she showed up again the next day. We had another conversation about brushes:
“Hi, are you still selling brushes?”
“Yep.”
“Yeah, I still don’t want one.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m really sure.”
“OK.”
The next day she came back again. This time I decided not to answer, but she kept coming back and knocking. Finally I gave in.
“Why didn’t you answer the door?”
“I was sleeping,” I lied, taken aback that in this situation somehow I’d wound up on the defensive.
“Brush?”
“No.”
(long, uncomfortable pause)
“So,” she asked in English, “where are you a teacher?”
Turns out she’d been trying to work up the courage to practice her English. Since our English conversation she’s not come back again, much to my relief. I hope she’s found someone who wants to buy her brushes.
Like anyone that grew up on black-and-white movies, I too thought brush girls went out with food rationing. Does China have soda jerks too?
No soda jerks, but in Changchun they do have gas station attendants that wear spotless matching red jump suits and run everywhere.
Also, people smoke in public toilets. They don’t really show that in the black and white pictures, but I’d always assumed Bogey didn’t put his cigarette out just because he was in the latrine.