Fresh Off the Boat

by Eddie Huang

  That Friday, Fat Mazza gave us an assignment. It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen a teacher do: “All right, class, this week, I want you all to design a weapon using the things we’ve learned in class about force.” We couldn’t believe it, this fool really gave us free rein to make weapons, test them at school, and present them in class. Mazza made it clear we weren’t allowed to make explosives or use materials like knives, BB guns, paintball guns, and so on. It had to be something that would represent the principles of physics, but not actually hurt people. For the rest of the day, all anyone could talk about was the weapons they were going to build. Some people wanted to make potato shooters, others catapults. Joey and I were trying to figure out what we could do that would really wreck shop, but we were blank.

  After school, his mom took us to the mall so we could get ideas. We went straight for the comics shop. Punisher always had the best weapons but they were all guns. The X-Men had wild mutant abilities that they clearly weren’t selling at K-B Toys. Comics weren’t very helpful, it turned out. We went to K-B, though, and found a Nerf slingshot. It was meant for shooting small toys or tennis balls but we wanted to move more heavy-duty objects. I’m pretty sure we went to Sports Authority, where we found a metal slingshot with a heavy, rugged sling. The joint could launch anything easily a hundred yards. But we decided that slingshots are boring. We still needed to figure out what we were going to shoot. All night at Joey’s we played Twisted Metal 2. The next morning we woke up for breakfast and of course it was eggs, toast, OJ, and Vienna sausage at Joey’s. But then it hit us, the answer was right in front of our noses, fucking up our sense of smell.

  SPAM.

  “Son, a SPAM launcher!”

  “Oh, no way, dude, that’s crazy.”

  “Naw, for real, a SPAM launcher. We would wet people.”

  FOR LUNCH, PEOPLE usually sat around in the grass, went to the cafeteria, or took lunch in class, but a few of us played basketball every day. In the winter, when it got a little cold, we all wore North Faces and played football in the grass by the parking lot. But that day, for once, there was no basketball.

  We had a motherfucking SPAM launcher.

  Everyone was mad excited. We set it up at the free-throw line, loaded a brick of SPAM in the tray we made, and shot the shit right at the backboard. SPLASH!

  “Damn! That shit is nasty!”

  “It’s stuck to the backboard, man.”

  “Again!”

  We shot free throws, three-pointers, and half-court shots with this funky-ass SPAM launcher. It was late May in Orlando so the weather was already ninety-plus degrees. As the SPAM fell to the blacktop, it started to sizzle. Everyone walking by started to cover their faces. It smelled like we were cooking dog food. At this point, I wasn’t on the football team anymore and a bunch of the guys were wearing their white home jerseys around school since it was a Friday. We saw this one kid we didn’t kick it with anymore walking with his girl like a punk-ass Friday night lights jock.

  “Yo, hit that motherfucker, man.”

  “Naw, naw, you gonna fuck up his jersey, son. That shit is crispy.”

  “Fuck that jersey, we don’t play on the team no more.”

  “All right, do you.”

  Blap! We meant to shoot the kid, but missed and it went down shawty’s shirt. The girl totally bugged out and ran to the office all crazy with high butt kicks like O-Dog in Menace. We couldn’t stop laughing ’cause this girl’s running around campus and a brick of SPAM just pops out the bottom of her dress like a newborn shitburger. We knew we were fucked, but it was definitely worth it. We were living our suburban version of Mobb Deep’s “G.O.D. pt. III” skit:† “Yea, yea, hit him out the window, son!”

  Before we knew it, Miss Lacey, the music teacher, came by in high heels. If there was ever one teacher that I felt bad for picking on it was her. She wasn’t mean; she just had no idea how to communicate with kids. She’d enforce rules to a T and didn’t understand when to just let kids be kids and look the other way. To her credit, the school never should have made people like Joey or me take music class and have us sing. They used to give us sheet music on stands. She was one of those people that thought kids didn’t know what sex was yet, so we would remix the songs, talk dirty to sheet music while girls would be singing, and hump the music stands. Everyone loved it, but Miss Lacey would go crazy screaming to stop. One day she got so upset, she just ran out of class in her high heels screaming, “I quit! I quit! I don’t know what to do with you anymore!” Poor woman slipped on the stairs and we all felt bad. We were like, “Yo, come back, Miss Lacey! We just playin’ with you!” Of course, on SPAM launcher day she was the first on the scene.

  “What is that smell?”

  “It’s nothing, Miss Lacey.”

  “Eddie! Joey! I know it’s you!”

  “Hi, Miss Lacey!”

  “What are you boys doing? What is that?”

  And of course, we just ripped a can of SPAM over her head.

  “Naw, it ain’t me, Miss Lacey!”

  There she went, running to the office to tell on us with a brick of SPAM just lying next to her. It was hilarious. Joey was usually pretty worried about getting in trouble, but that was the first time I remember seeing him really, really enjoy one of our dumb-ass stunts. He didn’t even care he was getting in trouble and I loved it. I was always telling Joey to just wild. Life fucking sucked anyway.

  I took my own advice in every phase of my life except girls. Annabelle Masterson looked like money. She had good hair, an ass, stellar middle school titties, and green eyes. Annabelle came correct with all that expensive Ralph Lauren. I mean, we had Polo or Sport, but this girl wore RALPH. Purple label. We had the joints with bright-ass colors and big logos on it. Annabelle had the leather boots, the jackets with embroidery, plaid, not the hood Polo we were coppin’. I swore she rode horses and shit.

  We had never even talked to this girl. We never even talked to any of her friends for that matter. The only person I knew that talked to her was my homie Chris Sullivan, because he ate lunch with her friends sometimes. I knew Chris from football and he was a knucklehead, so that was my mans. Chris and Joey decided to take my crush on Annabelle into their own hands. All I ever did was talk about what I’d do to her, but I was too scared to actually approach her.

  Three weeks before our last year of middle school, Joey and Chris wrote a letter to Annabelle with my name on it saying all the things that I had been saying plus some other killer bars. I believe my favorite was “I just want to get inside and eat your dingleberries.” After two years, the student had become the teacher. Joey went over the top, all-in. At first I was embarrassed that Annabelle knew I was fiendin’, but I couldn’t stop laughing. Not surprisingly, Annabelle didn’t like the letter at all and took it to the office. It was signed with my name, so at first people thought it was me—but eventually the truth came out and Joey and Chris ended up in the principal’s office. They were suspended for a few days.

  Joey’s mom lost her mind. She got so mad at Joey that she forced him to go to confession. Even though it was his idea, I was implicated. I understand. Joey was a good kid, never causing trouble, never talking back, and along came this wild-ass Chinaman with mental SARS that totally fucks his world up. If you’re Joey’s mom, you’re not going to like that kid very much. I guess she felt about me the way I felt about Robin Givens: the bird ruined Mike! My mom got a phone call about the situation, too, and I was under review by the school just because I kept getting involved in so many situations.

  They couldn’t expel me for the Annabelle letter because I didn’t write it, but I was near the stove enough that they wanted to speak with my parents about whether or not I’d be able to attend in ninth grade. They never had the talk because our report cards came the same week. For the first time in my life, I got a D. My mom didn’t even think twice and pulled me out of the school. She’d called ’nuff:

  “I’m not spending my money so you can go fuck around wit
h these rich kids. You’re going to public school.”

  I didn’t want to leave. Joey was my first really good Asian friend, my A-alike. I loved that motherfucker.

  THAT SUMMER I went to the Dennis Scott Basketball Camp and got kicked out after the third day. Everyone at the camp had Chinese jokes. I remember after one game, this blond-haired boy, Sean, came up to me with his brother and yelled at me, “Ching Chong Eddie Huang sitting on a jumbo gong!” During a game, another kid came down the floor and laid one up on me real nice. After he scored, he had something to say, too. I can’t remember what he said, but it was in the “ching chong” category of low-IQ slurs. It got me heated. So, the next time he was on a fast break, I ran his ass down and chucked him into the wall when he went for the layup. The kid started squirming and I knew I was done. I changed my clothes and just waited outside for my parents.

  People had jokes, but at this point I was meaner, so I didn’t even think twice. You said some shit, I threw you into a wall. Teachers, counselors, psychiatrists, family, and friends couldn’t understand. I was a nice kid, smiled a lot, had a genuine interest in books, culture, and anything that I could get my hands on to read. But there was this switch that would go off. Between getting hit at home and all the things people said about me, I just couldn’t take it. I couldn’t walk away. I was determined to get even. I wanted to hurt people like they hurt me.

  That summer, we moved to Bay Hill. In Orlando, there were two famous subdivisions. Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill had the best golf course in central Florida and hosted the Nestlé Invitational. On adjacent land, there was another subdivision called Isleworth, which had a shittier golf course, but almost all the houses were on the lake. Isleworth is the joint Tiger Woods lived in when his ho game got put on blast. We didn’t just move into Bay Hill. Pops built a house, on a peninsula, accessible only if you drove through a gate at the end of Bay Hill and then over a bridge. #Money Team. Emery and I were shocked. There were no warning signs. For our entire lives, my dad was a hardworking small business owner and my mom was clipping coupons. Neither of them spent much money on us. Realizing that they had money was like finding out I was adopted. Who were these people? By that time, Pops had two restaurants: Atlantic Bay Seafood and Cattleman’s Steakhouse on I-92. Both were doing well, but we had no idea they were balling for real.

  Southwest Orlando was full of athletes, Palestinian landlords, people like the Magnusons who blew up overnight for inventing PVC patio furniture. Pops fit the bill. For the most part, it was white people, but there was one token minority in each subdivision. The Lebanese Khatibs lived one division over, the Maalis were down the street, Barry Larkin lived in the cul-de-sac, and the Neilsons from New Orleans were across the street. Sixty percent of the families were Real Housewives of Southwest Orlando types with platinum blond hair, BCBG shoes, and Botox. MILFs ran down the street with those rhinestone Bebe shirts, the uniform for every over-the-hill gold digger desperate to make their shit shine.

  These families were twenty-first-century forty-niners digging for gold in the Orlandos, Phoenixes, and Dallases of the world. Carpetbaggers with no culture or moral compass, enabled and empowered with new money. The rush was real in those cities, all vying to be the next L.A. or Vegas. Disney, Exxon, and America West put cities on their backs. I didn’t understand why my pops went down to Orlando until he blew up. That summer, it was in plain view for us all to see. His plan worked: that chink fucking made it. I’d say I was proud of my dad, but the first night in the house he made it clear we had nothing to celebrate. My dad was watching Emery and me as we ran around from room to room in the new house, hooked up our PlayStation to the new TV, and toasted our new life with Capri Sun. We were hyped. He wasn’t smiling. With no advance warning he grabbed us both and kicked our asses. The money was his, not ours, and he made it clear.

  My dad built a room where he put punching bags, speed bags, a bench press, and sparring equipment, just so Emery, Evan, and I could work out and spar with each other. He never wanted us to stop fighting, even if it meant fighting each other. We were never going to get soft, never going to give in to the cupcake life. My dad was still a G at heart, but unlike the American gangsters whose dream is for their kids to never look in the rearview, Dad did everything he could to make sure the money didn’t change us. I’ll give him that.

  That fall I started my fifth school in seven years, Dr. Phillips. When I walked on to the school bus, I saw a bunch of preppy rich white kids, but there was also a Cuban girl; Neal, the big Jordanian; the Palestinians Maali and Muhrad; the Dominican Easy Eric; and me, “Chino.” From jump, I knew the diversity at Dr. Phillips would be good for me even if it came in the Sizzler Buffet one-of-each format. The other thing that came clear was that I wouldn’t be throwing kids into the ground like it was Dennis Scott summer camp; these motherfuckers were big. After my first day of school, I sat at the back of the bus. A few minutes after I sat down, this tall Palestinian dude, Maali Maali, came up to me and said, “That’s my seat.” I was literally a foot shorter than Maali and he had a full-on beard. I still hadn’t shaved in my life and I had a photo of Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan on my T-shirt. The Chinaman those days was in no position to fight grown-ass men. But of course, I couldn’t back down.

  “It’s my seat now.”

  “Oh shit, son! Little man steppin’ to you, kid!” screamed Neal. He was even bigger than Maali, but at least he smiled. Within seconds, there was a huge crowd at the back of the bus, ten deep with kids from my new neighborhood. “This n!gg@ got a Bugs Bunny shirt on, son. You gonna fuck him up?”

  FYI, Palestinians and Latinos in Orlando all called each other “n!gg@” and black people called us “n!gg@,” too. Palestinians ran shit so they could call you, your mom, your brother, your sister, and themselves whatever the fuck they wanted to. And apparently, everyone wanted to be “n!gg@s.”

  Then another Palestinian came on the bus with a tape deck in his backpack bumping Nas’s “If I Ruled the World.” We all used to buy tape decks, throw in a tape of music we recorded from 102 Jamz, and put them in our backpacks, which we’d wear on our chests to broadcast to whoever was unlucky enough to be in the vicinity. Most of us didn’t bother with Walkmans ’cause we wanted to play our shit loud. Muhrad was doing the worst Lauryn Hill I’ve ever heard in my life. Dude was singing at the top of his lungs with his Palestinian Ebonic accent “If ahhh Roooo-led the Wooorrld!!!!” Then he saw me.

  “The fuck is the deal, n!gg@, this kid is in your seat, Maali!”

  “N!gg@, I know, he fuckin’ deaf, b, I told him to get the fuck up but he ain’t movin’. I can’t fuckin’ fight kids.”

  There was one white girl that got to sit in the back, Emily Huyzak. Maali and Neal always kicked it to Emily, a tall blond girl, cute, always dressed well. For real, I got most of my game just listening to Neal rap to her. Dude would come across the aisle, try to touch her legs, throwin’ all kinds of wild-ass game at 6 A.M. Shit was better than the morning show on 102. On that first day, I recognized her. There were photos of her at my orthodontist’s office so I figured it was my orthodontist’s daughter. When she came on the bus, she screamed to Maali, “Oh my God, are you guys picking on kids? Ha, ha, what’s his name?”

  “I don’t know, the n!gg@ ain’t talkin’, he just stays in my seat!”

  Before anyone else could say anything, I shouted toward Emily, “Your dad is my orthodontist! Dr. Huyzak!” They all started laughing.

  Maali wasn’t a bad dude. He just ran the bus and the route. No one fucked with him and no one sat in his seat. My only out was if this white chick held me down.

  “A’ight, a’ight, little man. You can have the seat, but when the bus driver comes, you gotta throw this shit at her.” Maali pulled out a blue pen and broke it so that it leaked ink. The bus driver came, I hit her in the head, I got suspended from the bus for a week, and everything was cool. From that point on, those guys always looked out for me. When this fool Joe said he was gonna roll up to my crib with
a burner, they cornered him at school, beat his ass with a giant umbrella, and took care of it. No one believed the kid even had a ratchet, but Muhrad made sure if he did, it wasn’t comin’ out.

  LATER THAT WEEK, I was walking around the neighborhood to see if there were other kids out. No one was really around, but there was this big white house that looked like Colonel Sanders lived in the joint. For real, shit was country. It was all white with a rocking chair, benches that hung from the roof, a brick driveway, and them Southern window shutters. I saw this kid cleaning the pool so I walked toward the back. I just wanted to see if homie wanted to play basketball, but I was unsure if we’d even get along. I mean, his house looked like a fucking plantation. He saw me wandering around his backyard.

  “Hey!”

  “Wassup?”

  “You live here?”

  “Yeah, I just moved in.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Eddie, you?”

  “Warren …”

  There was a bit of silence. Neither of us knew what else to say. I looked at this kid and he looked like Tom Sawyer cleaning a pool in Orlando. He looked at me, sized me up, and then dropped a heat rock.

  “Eh, yo, this is weird … but do you listen to Wu-Tang?”

  It was one of those moments I’ll never forget. Motherfucker saw right through me and I loved it. We couldn’t have scripted that shit any better. I was all about the Wu, but at private school I had to beg people to listen to 36 Chambers. There was only this one Indian kid that would rock the black shirt with the yellow W. All of a sudden, I go to this new school, new neighborhood, and people are trying to tell me about it. I was excited; this kid Warren was real. He was supposed to clean the pool so I helped him out and as soon as we finished, he called his boy Romaen, this Persian kid that lived over the wall. He was in my PE class, too, so I knew who he was.