The Gift

Any pair you want, my goldsmith grandfather says.

I am his oldest grand girl, the spitting image of his oldest girl, who is a spitting image of himself. My fingers smudge his sparkling glass countertops. As my grandfather sets up shop for the day, I peer greedily at pairs of gold earrings – hearts, stars and tiny balls, the size of peppercorns – like the ones his other grand girls wear, gold shimmering in their black hair. Unlike me, they grew up near him, their ear lobes pierced by his steady fingers in his younger days. I spot a pair of pearl studs with gold posts, quiet and small like lady bugs. None of the other grand girls have these earrings.

When I point them out to my grandfather, he nods briefly, still busy setting up. I watch him take out pieces of jewelry from a locked chest. He bounces a necklace in his right palm four times. He thinks for a moment and writes the weight and price on a small white tag tied to the necklace by a red string. He does this for a child’s bracelet and an anklet, bouncing each piece in his right palm quickly twice, then twice again more slowly. When he takes out a man’s ring, he pauses. As he turns it around, studying its different angles, I notice the thick gold band, the ancient Chinese characters etched on its surface, and the shape of a dragon head at its crest.

That looks valuable, my grandmother says, coming from the living quarters in the back of the jewelry shop.

Will you charge a lot for it? she asks, handing me a steaming red bean bun.

My grandfather smiles mysteriously and shakes his head. It’s not worth much, he says.

How do you know just by bouncing it? I ask.

Your grandfather can capture the weight in his hand, especially with the most valuable ones, my grandmother answers for him.

My grandfather bounces the ring in his right palm, but this time he doesn’t stop shaking it after four times. At first I think he is being facetious, because his hand looks so comically clumsy. But after his hand jerks unnaturally ten, twenty, then too many times to count, I know it is his Parkinson’s disease acting up. My grandfather fights to gain control of his hand, but he can’t stop it from trembling.