Last Of Her Name

 I read another collection of short stories. This one is Last Of Her Name by Mimi Lok. These stories take place all over the world. All the stories involve women of Asia or Asian heritage. In every story someone has moved and is looking to find comfort or belonging in a new place.  Some of the characters are young. The last story in the book is more of a novella than a short story. The story involves Grandma Ng. Grandma lives in her Tokyo home with her son and his wife. She hears them talking about putting her in a home so one day she moves to a local homeless encampment. The homeless community takes her in and she feels more comfortable in her tent with the homeless people than she did in her own home. One day the homeless are asked to leave the park so she goes to a different park. When asked to leave there she boards a bus that takes her out of town. When she realizes she will be moving so far from Tokyo she impulsively gets off the bus. She finds a little park by a highway and sets up her tent. Rain falls that night. She notices a home across from the park. She watches closely and comes to learn that a single man lives there and he has a cleaning lady come in once a week. One day when she knows he is at work, she climbs into the house from the kitchen window to use his bathroom to take a shower and wash her clothes. When she returns to her tent, someone has taken all of her stuff. So she goes back into the man's house and hides behind some boxes in a spare closet. During the day when he is gone she cleans his house and mends his clothes. Sometimes she cooks food for him and she pretends the cleaning lady left the food. She comes to like the man who lives there even though he practices his clarinet (badly) for twenty minutes first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. After a time the man becomes suspicious because of the missing food. He sets up security cameras. When he sees a tiny woman walking around his house he calls the police. When the police come they find the woman in the closet. She answers all the questions honestly. The man is shocked to learn she has been with him for over a year. She is taken to the police station. After thinking about it for a few hours the man decides not to press charges. Her son comes to pick her up from the police station. A month passes and the man realizes his cleaning lady is terrible and he lets her go. He decided to find Grandma Ng and ask her to move back with him. He tracks her down. Her son has already placed her in a less than reputable nursing home where visitors have to make appointments 48 hours in advance. That story about Grandma Ng had me thinking about her all day long. That is what a good book is - a story that stays in your head long after you put it down.