for the upcoming 3-day workshop out of town when her cell phone rang.
"Mommy! Mommy!" her 2nd-grader son shouted with excitement on the
other end of the phone, "Come home now, Mommy! It's raining in your
room!!"
Mrs. Lin thought about the leaks in her apartment. It started on the
cracks on the ceilings in the bathroom. Everytimr it rained, drops of
water would seep out from the cracks, making it look as if the wall
was sweating. One day, their live-in housemaid saw that the light
fixture in the bathroom had water inside. They thought it was
humidity. They dumped the water out, screwed the fixture back on, and
never thought more about it until, one day, the light fixture could
not withhold the weight of the water it had collected and fell off.
Mrs. Lin and her family looked on as water dripped down from the light
bulb. "It could happen when one of us is in the shower," Mrs. Lin
shuddered at the thought of it happening, "we could be toasted like
Beijing ducks."
Before long, "flowers" of water marks started blossoming on the
ceiling and what used to "sweat" out of the cracks was now steady
streams of water running down the wall. By now, Mrs. Lin had talked
about it to her landlord three times. Judging from her landlord's tone
of voice, Mrs. Lin knew this time she'd have to physically show the
landlord the severity of the situation. She took pictures of the
flowers of water marks on the bathroom ceiling and the small
waterfalls on the bathroom wall with her cell phone and sent them to
the landlord. "I'll send someone over to fix it," the landlord said.
Two workers came the next day, splattered some waterproff paint along
the walls of the 7th floor patio, and called it the day. In the next
few days, afternoon thunderstorms showed up like clockwork and it
rained so hard it hindered visibility for everyone on the road. "It
didn't work," Mrs. Lin was again on the phone with the landlord during
the afternoon thunderstorm last Saturday "Now so much water is coming
down from the ceiling, we can't even use that bathroom anymore." At
her son's request, Mrs. Lin took a picture of him holding an umbrella
in the bathroom.
The next day, the landlord finally came to look at the what is now a
wall of water in Mrs. Lin's bathroom. "Why didn't you tell me it was
this bad from the beginning?" the landlord complained. Mrs. Lin
chuckled, "I tried. I sent you pictures, remember?"
Then bright and early Monday morning, workers began working upstairs.
"Ma'am, they're jackhammering the patio," their Philipino housemaid
reported to her on the phone, "it's like an earthquake. Everything was
shaking." Jackhammering? Wouldn't that leave everything exposed? What
if it rained again? Mrs. Lin called the landlord again and suggested
that she put up some kind of a canopy or cover before the workers tear
the entire patio up. "Don't worry," the landlord said cheerfully, "it
won't rain."
Mrs. Lin had to bite her tongue so that she wouldn't say what she
really wanted to say, which was "The Central Weather Bereau can't make
that kind of promise. What do YOU know?"
Sure enough, bead-sized raindropped fell from the sky at exactly 2
o'clock that afternoon. The workers had put up a tarp covering the
side of the patio they had dug out, leaving the rest uncovered.
Monsoon rain poured down for three hours that afternoon.
Back in her office, Mrs. Lin was still pondering what her 8-year-old
just told her. She had a bad feeling about this, but she had to be
sure. "Put daddy on the phone," she said. Mr. Lin came on the phone.
"What did he mean that it's raining in our room?" she asked her
husband. "Well..." Mr. Lin answered slowly. "I'm lying on my side of
the bed right now, and water is dripping down right on my belly."
Mrs. Lin dropped what she was doing and rushed home. She came knocking
on our door around 9:30 because she wanted to see exactly what the
workers had done. We exchanged stories dealing with the landlord and
laughed about how incompetent she has been handling the whole situation.
Mrs. Lin: "I can't believe she didn't tell you. I mean, you have a
baby in the house. She can't expect that you or your baby be okay with
workers jackhammering right outside your door."
Me: "At least I can take Kai somewhere else. Where are you guys gonna
sleep tonight?"
Mrs. Lin: "We haven't figured that out yet. I gotta get my kids out of
the apartment and finish this 3-day workshop first. I've already told
my boss that I'm taking next week off..." I admired her for being able
to say all this with a smile on. "I really feel bad for our maid," she
giggled a bit, "I found her looking very uncomfortable outside our
bedroom this morning. The poor thing had to go to the bathroom so
badly, but she wasn't sure if she could ask to use the one in our
bedroom. Maybe this is what I should tell the landload: get this thing
fix or you'll have some hospital bills to pay."
"Hospital bills?" I didn't get it.
"Yeah! For our maid's urinary track infection! Hahahahaha!!"
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