by Kat Chow
Love you as high as the sky, Daddy, Caroline begins.
Love you as deep as the ocean, Steph says.
And as tall as the tallest tree and as far as space can go! I call out.
Mmm, he says. OK.
* * *
Earlier that day, Steph had confided in him that she was struggling to get pregnant.
Did Mommy have trouble? she asked our father.
No, he said. It was fine.
No? She didn’t have any trouble getting pregnant, or with her pregnancies?
No, he said again. No troubles. This, I’m certain, perplexed Steph. There was, after all, Jonathan’s premature birth.
At the end of the night, as Steph and I brushed our teeth, our father greeted us from the hall.
Stephanie, I’m sorry, he said. I shouldn’t say something like that.
Her face tightened. She spit into the sink. I did the same and pretended I wasn’t listening. I turned on the tap and pushed our leftover toothpaste foam toward the drain with my fingers.
Thank you for your apology, she said.
OK, he said. Good night. Unsure what to do, he nodded and turned to his bedroom.
A mystified look slid onto Steph’s face.
Huh, she said. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him apologize like that.
Over the years, Steph was the most attentive and patient with our father. She had found a way to debate him that acknowledged his need for the hierarchy of I’m-the-father-you’re-the-daughter to be maintained. Caroline and I had trouble with this. When disagreeing with our father, Caroline withdrew into a bemused or frustrated silence, and I tended to match my father’s irritation with my own, immediately escalating our argument. As a geriatrician, Steph had developed a bedside manner—and subsequent boundaries—that proved effective on him. I was not sure our father completely understood why what he’d said had been so offensive, but I knew he felt he needed Steph, and that he understood that to turn her away would be a mistake. This apology felt unique to her.
You never forget anything, Sticky, Steph had told me multiple times over the years, when I had relayed to her and Caroline the most recent fight with our father. Sometimes you hold on to things for too long.
I had rolled my eyes, though she wasn’t wrong. Wanting to defuse the sting of what she’d said, I pulled on my father’s voice. Boo-ooy, I’d said, It’s fact. Why should I let it go when I’m right?
We had laughed at the time. I had mumbled something about our histories with our father being different and how he hadn’t raised her or Caroline the way he’d been required to parent me. Of course, the difference in our childhoods was our mother’s presence.
* * *
I wish I could ask Mommy all these questions, Steph said the following morning when she and I were in her car and on our way to Providence.
I know, I said.
I wish I could ask her for advice.
She was such a good mother, Steph said.
You will be, too. My voice contracted.
She sucked in a breath and reached for my hands.
I love you, she said, barely audible. This would later become a shared phrase that we’d pass between us. In our most earnest moments, we text one another: *small voice* I love you!!!!! We never forget the context.
I love you, I said. She was already a good mother, had always been one.
* * *
A couple of winters later, when I had first moved to Washington, D.C., Steph visited for a conference. I noticed as we walked along the National Mall that under her down jacket and beneath her shirt, her stomach gently curved.
Your stomach is looking round. I blundered in my eagerness to be right.
Oh, really? She rubbed her stomach. Or maybe I’ve just got a belly.
Weeks later, Steph called me and Caroline in tears. As soon as she’d returned from D.C., she’d taken a test that revealed her first pregnancy, and for days, she’d allowed herself a small hope that she’d get to have a baby. But the fibroids in her uterus were growing too rapidly, and she’d need surgery to remove them in order to get pregnant.
That’s OK though, right? I tried to reassure her.
A lot of women have fibroids and still get pregnant, right? Caroline said.
Right, Steph, said, still sounding scared. Just because something was common, didn’t make it any less terrifying. Right.
A month later, I was in my room in D.C. folding laundry when Steph sent me a text.
Her surgery had gone well, she said, and she was recuperating at the hospital in Providence. The doctors were able to take out most of the fibroids.
STEPH: 18 of them. The biggest was the size of a baseball. 10 cm
ME: wow
STEPH: do you want to see them?
STEPH: I took a picture so I wouldn’t forget
ME: they let you take a photo???
ME: sure, send it
Her fibroids were lined on a metal tray, each of the bloodied bunches of skin arranged neatly in order of size. The orderliness, seeing a part of my sister laid out this way, made me recall the Body Worlds exhibit that she once brought me, Caroline, and Daddy to see. She’d found a coupon online and we’d spent the afternoon gawking at the bodies that had been plastinated to reveal and preserve all of their imperfections. I imagined Steph’s fibroids that way: Here, in size ascending order, are a dozen and a half uterine fibroids from a thirtysomething female of Chinese descent. They resembled little brains, and I couldn’t look away.
STEPH: There were so many
ME: oh my god Steph
I crawled over my piles of clothes to lie under the covers. Jonathan’s death came to mind, as did my mother’s fibroids, her hysterectomy, and eventually, her cyst. Her body had always seemed fragile; her ailments appearing so inextricably linked to her ability to bear children. She had died of cancer, yes, but long before then, her body was glass. I worried that this might be the same for Steph, or Caroline. Or myself.
In six months, Steph would call Caroline and me again.
They’re back, she said. I have to have another surgery. She steered us through a conversation about how much time she needed to take off from work, and how this surgery would be straightforward. There were thirty-seven of them now. Afterward, she didn’t text me photos. I didn’t ask to see.
* * *
Later, in my late twenties and at the gynecologist, the doctor presses her fingers into me.
I think it might be my first time seeing a gynecologist, I blurt out.
Oh, she says, trying not to appear taken aback. Why?
I don’t know. I’d always directed any questions and needs for prescriptions to my general practitioner. I blush, suddenly embarrassed by my own inertia. I have health insurance through work, so I have no excuse. Scared, maybe?
The doctor incorrectly thinks I mean that I am afraid of the examination.
Oh, don’t worry, she says. This doesn’t hurt, does it?
It’s fine, I say, trying to keep my voice light.
You might have fibroids, she says breezily. Not uncommon, but just something to keep an eye on.
OK, I say.
Not a big deal, I tell myself. But frantically, I recall Lai Yi Ma’s story about our family’s curse.
That is just folklore, I insist to myself. Still, old superstitions like that are spun from some threads of truth.
9.
There is a twelve-minute video that I’ve had saved in the cloud for nearly a decade. Every time I set up a new phone, it’s the first item to appear in my photo album.
It’s 2012, two days before Christmas, 12:25 p.m. My father and I are driving to Steph’s apartment in Providence, which is only ninety minutes away.
We are in the middle of a conversation. I don’t remember how it began, but since it’s right after college when I am parsing through identity, I’m not surprised it develops into this:
ME: Do you identify as American or Chinese?
DADDY: I think of myself as American Chinese.
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ME: What do you think other people see you as?
DADDY: Well, depending on who that person is, why would I care about what he feel? I am my own person, that is OK for me…
ME: One question I never asked you was, did you ever want to go back to China or was the goal to always stay in America?
DADDY: No, no. China has nothing for me.
ME: What do you mean?
DADDY: Well. That’s what it is, you know. We came to Hong Kong, run away, and then it’s a Communist, and Communists are against people they call land owners, capitalists, or whatever they call it. See, Communists is a very ideal concept when people have no money—
I know then how the conversation might unfold.
He’s driving, and my phone catches his profile: He is wearing his clip-on sunglasses and zipped into his oversized L.L.Bean jacket with the rip in the sleeve that over the past decade has grown larger each winter.
I gently try to prod him back to my question.
ME: Back to how you consider yourself American Chinese, or Chinese American. What does that even mean? What does that mean to you?
DADDY: Well, in America…as long as you make enough money to survive, you can do whatever you like. If you think that you have enough money, you don’t have to work if you don’t want to. You can live anywhere you like, talk whatever you like, and things like that. Those are the freedom that America offer people. Other countries does not have this type of freedom.
This is not unfamiliar territory.
ME: What do you think of the American Dream? What is that to you? Is that it?
DADDY: Well, depending on how you define as the American Dream.
ME: What do you define as the American Dream?
DADDY: I think some people define it as, you get a house and you get the freedom, you get enough to eat, things like that.
ME: I’m asking about you personally. Do you think there is an American Dream, and if so, what is it to you?
DADDY: Well. My dream is just, have enough freedoms and be happy and enough things to eat, or I can do whatever I like. Travel wherever I want to go and stay wherever I want to stay.
ME: So right now at…age sixty-four? How old are you? You’re turning sixty-four, right?
He laughs in response. When I ask his age again, insisting that he answer at least this question, he makes a clicking sound and lets out a dramatic huff so his bewilderment is unmistakable.
DADDY: Oh, you cannot calculate?
ME: You were born in 1949. You’re sixty-three turning sixty-four. At almost sixty-four, do you feel that you’ve accomplished that, your sense of the American Dream?
DADDY: It’s alright. You know, there is always something you’re looking for all the time. That’s how we keep going.
ME: Do you think there is ever a point where you’re going to wonder whether or not you’ve made it? What is “making it”? Are you always pushing forward?
But doesn’t it imply that we’re working toward something? At what point do we stop and say “I’m satisfied”? Do you ever expect you’ll reach a point where you’ll think you’re satisfied?
DADDY: Well, I think in order for people to keep on going they have to have a target, they are shooting toward it.
If there is no hope, then there’s no motivation to go forward.
There is always something you’re looking forward to for you to achieve in order to get motivated to achieve that goal.
ME: So what are you looking forward to? What’s moving you forward personally?
The GPS cuts in. Drive 9.4 miles on U.S. route 6. He is quiet. The gloves he bought on extra sale from Big Lots are a couple of sizes too large and turn his hands into paws on the steering wheel.
ME: Do you know what’s moving you forward?
DADDY: Oh, yeah, sure. Sure. One step at a time.
ME: What are your steps?
DADDY: Doing whatever I feel like I can enjoy doing.
ME: Do you have a goal?
DADDY: No, not a specific goal.
ME: Are you happy?
Silence.
My father looks down. He glances out his window. His jaw twitches.
For some reason, I stop filming and put down my phone.
10.
Years later, a friend and I were in her car on our way from D.C. to Baltimore when I noticed a string of missed calls from Caroline. This was unusual. When she didn’t respond to my texts, I called her.
Daddy is in jail, she said, relaying that our father had called her husband, the only lawyer whose phone number he knew. He asked us to bail him out.
What? What happened?
That’s all he said. His voice mail was so vague.
We only knew this: He was in a jail somewhere. We did not know which one, or why he was there. Just that he would like us to bail him out.
There were many logistical questions that made me suddenly aware of how unprepared we were to navigate this. Caroline was with friends somewhere in the mountains and without much access to cell service. Steph was at a conference in California. I had arrived at a friend’s apartment and was standing in her back stairwell.
Was he OK? Would he be OK? My sisters and I texted one another all night, our group chat filled with links to bail bond services as we tried to minimize our fears with action.
Later, we learned our father’s side of the story. As he told it, he’d had a disagreement with the tenant who leased the garage space he owned in Hartford. The tenant was a smooth talker, my father kept saying, and always promised to pay rent. But the business—a car wash—was not doing well, and the tenant fell behind in rent for months. My father, being a nice guy—his words—didn’t want to go through the formal process of evicting the tenant. He offered a deal: Leave by the end of the month and all the missed rent would be forgiven.
My father claimed his tenant announced he had vacated the space. After my father changed the locks, the tenant said he had forgotten tire rims from a Porsche that he wanted to retrieve. They met at the property to discuss. No. What you’ve left is mine, my father insisted. It’s my property now. Pay me a little bit of your rent money, and I’ll let you get it.
The tenant called the cops on my father.
Three officers arrived and insisted that my father let the tenant into the garage to retrieve his belongings.
It’s my property, though, my father kept saying. Private property.
They asked to see my father’s identification.
No, my father said. Show me a warrant. You need a warrant.
He was probably shouting now—no, not shouting—just talking in his normal speaking voice. He’d watched enough TV to know that warrants were required; he’d watched enough news to know how badly this could have gone.
This guy, he’s such an asshole, my father claims one of the cops said, as if he wasn’t there or could not understand. They grabbed his arms and shoved him against a metal gate that covered the garage doors. They latched cuffs around his wrists.
In the process, the cops knocked my father’s hearing aid and glasses from his head. The lenses shattered and the frame bent. His jade pendant of Guan Yin—which he and Steph had spent hours searching for in Flushing and Manhattan—snapped. I can only describe this in passive voice; it is less painful for these small acts of violence to have just happened. If I make myself imagine, though: A cop pushes my father’s face into the grate and the jade splits; a cop steps on my father’s fallen glasses and the lenses crack.
Later, my father told my sisters and me that someone stole his debit card, and while he sat in jail, they tried to drain his checking account. He discovered $800 in mysterious charges to Western Union and other local businesses from the time he’d been arrested. He was so certain the police were behind this: They’re bad guys. So corrupt.
When my father recounted the story of his arrest to me, I hesitated.
Daddy, I said. You need to be careful. You can’t yell at the police like that. Or your tenants.
Hey, my
father said. His eyes narrowed. It is what it is.
That guy owed me $15,000, he continued to deflect, unable to hold on to the thread of our conversation in his fury. If you don’t pay for rent, you shouldn’t get to stay.
I wanted to dismantle his anger, to demand that he talk to me, instead of around me, but I had rarely been able to do so in the past. I shared in the same problem with him, never certain that my words had sufficiently reached him. I wondered then—maybe unfairly—if my father always had this coming. If his general belligerence, his agitation, his inability to maintain his properties had caught up with him.
Mommy, what did you think about this? I cannot tell if my questions stemmed from my own resentments about how he had parented me, or the transitive shame I’d harbored for how he had kept those buildings and treated his tenants. For the first time in my adult life, I was unable to look away. Certainly, all of this had existed before. But it was never my problem; it was his, and, by extension, my mother’s.
* * *
The cops set the bail at $75,000. We would discover later from a lawyer that the cops charged my father with disorderly conduct, for interfering with a police officer, and criminal attempt to assault a police officer. My sisters and I did not have $75,000 between us. It felt so ridiculous to Google How to bail someone out of jail in Connecticut, but I was a dozen entries deep into bail bonds services, sifting through customer comments, wondering if it mattered if a bondsperson was polite or not. Caroline hired the best-reviewed one on Google—4.6 stars, eight reviews, “Great service!”—and paid the bill on her credit card.
The following Monday morning, my father was released from jail. Without his glasses, he squinted as he walked into the early sunlight. His face was swollen and his cheeks were lined with scratches.
