by Kelly Yang
Unlike Hank, José was a man of few words. So when he had something to say, you knew it was important. I sat up straighter in the moonlight.
“Eight years ago,” José began, “when we first came over from Mexico, my wife and I worked in the fields, picking grapes. It was very, very hard. I was always coughing, because, you know, the grapes, there were many, many bugs, and they had to spray that … that … what you call that?” He paused, trying to describe with his hands.
“Pesticide?” I guessed.
“Sí, pesticide,” José said, shuddering at the memory. “It was very bad for people. I wanted to find a better job, but my wife, she wanted to stay. She was scared. Lupe was very young then. Only three or four. My wife carried her on her back when she worked.”
I smiled at the thought of little Lupe. She had never told me the story of her parents working in the fields when they first came.
“I didn’t want Lupe smelling the pesticide, so I convinced my wife to quit and go to the city. Everybody said, ‘José, you crazy. You not gonna find a job. You dreamin’.’ But you know what?” José asked with a grin. “I found a job.”
“Fixing the cable?” I asked.
“No, that was later. First, I found a job as a pizza boy,” he said.
I smiled, thinking that sounded like a marvelous job, kneading the dough, throwing it in the air. But José said it wasn’t fun at all, it was dangerous.
“Dangerous?” I asked.
“The pizza delivery place had a twenty-minute guarantee,” he explained. “We will get your pizza to your house in twenty minutes, still hot, or your money back.”
My eyes widened. That wasn’t a lot of time.
“The white guys, they took the addresses that were close by,” he said. “But I got the ones far away, super far away, way on the other side of town. No one can do it in twenty minutes.”
“So what’d you do?”
“I tried,” he said. I pictured José speeding down the city streets in his shaky truck with a piping hot pizza next to him. “Only thing we can do as immigrants is try, right?” he asked.
I nodded. “Right,” I said. “And what happened if you didn’t make it?”
“Then free pizza for the customer, and I must pay,” he said. “I paid for many, many pizzas because I was five minutes late. One time, it was raining and I was driving very fast, and I nearly crashed.”
I put my hands to my mouth and gasped.
“So I decided to get a better job. But it was not easy. Again, everybody told me, ‘José, you not goin’ get better job. You no skills,’ ” José said. He looked down at his tools and took a deep breath. “So I learned skills. I learned to fix the cable.”
“Was that hard?” I asked him.
José nodded. “Oh, yeah. My first customer, I screwed up. I had to buy the guy a brand-new TV and pay for a professional to come fix it.”
José winced, like even now, years later, it hurt. I thought of all the refunds I had to give our customers last year. They still hurt too.
Then his face brightened. “But I didn’t give up. I kept practicing till I got it. And now I can fix any cable. And nobody can deny it, not even Yao.”
I giggled, wishing an essay was like the cable, undeniable if it was good and working.
“I’ve known Yao a long time. Don’t let his words get you down. You just have to keep proving him wrong.”
“Thanks,” I said. As he gathered up his tools, I looked over at him curiously and asked him a question that had been on my mind even before Lupe told me her secret. “Hey, José, why did you and your family decide to come here in the first place?”
José put a hand to his beard and gazed up at the stars. “I came here to give a better life for my daughter. A better education. Opportunities. Freedom.”
I smiled. They were the same exact reasons my parents came here.
That night, I went to bed thinking about José and all the things he was willing to do to achieve his dreams, including racing across town with a pizza, and all the things I was going to do to achieve mine. I was determined to prove Mrs. Welch and Mr. Yao wrong.
On Saturday, my dad and I drove up the 5 Freeway toward the San Gabriel Valley in search of the shaved ice place that my dad said would bring me straight back to China. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go straight back to China. I hadn’t thought about my cousin Shen in months, which made me a little sad but mostly puzzled. He was like a brother to me growing up. Why didn’t I miss Shen as much? Maybe because now I had Lupe.
“Wait till you see it! They have everything in Monterey Park,” Dad gushed as he drove, practically giddy. “It’s full of Chinese restaurants and grocery stores—even bigger than 99 Ranch!”
My dad loved the big Chinese grocery store near the motel. It kind of smelled like roasted char siu and spring onions, but I liked it. My parents insisted 99 Ranch was cheaper than the American grocery stores, but I think they just liked chatting with the butcher in Chinese.
“Tell me more about this shaved ice,” I said. “What flavor are we going to get?”
“Red bean, of course.”
Red bean? I wasn’t sure I wanted any beans in my dessert.
“Don’t you remember?” he asked. “I used to get it for you when you were a kid, and you’d eat it sitting up on my shoulders?” I shook my head, and he chuckled. “Well I remember. The ice would drip on my head! Your mother thought it was so funny.”
I laughed, even though I didn’t entirely remember. “Speaking of Mom, did she return her dress?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, thank God they let her return it.” He grinned. “Gotta love America!”
It took us forty minutes to get to Monterey Park, and when we did, my eyes boggled at the sight. There were so many Chinese people, all up and down the streets. I’d never seen that many people who looked like me, not even in Mrs. T’s Wednesday classes. And what’s more, all the restaurants were Chinese and even the signs were in Chinese!
“What is this place?” I asked my dad.
“You’ll see.” He smiled, getting out of the car. I scrambled after him, not wanting to get lost in this China outside China.
We went inside a shaved ice place called Lucky Desserts. It had one of those small cat figurines with the waving paw right by the entrance and a large poster of Buddha behind the cash register. I felt like I was stepping into my grandmother’s kitchen or … my imagined version of my grandmother’s kitchen. We left China almost four years ago, I realized. My memories were starting to get as cloudy as the shower doors in the Calivista guest rooms.
“We’ll have two red bean ones!” Dad told the server in Chinese. As the server went to prepare the ices, my dad beamed at me. “You’re gonna love this.”
He drummed his fingers excitedly on the counter. I hadn’t seen him this excited since the time we found a 1972 double-die penny worth $150!
The server presented us with two giant mountains of snow. Wild swirls of red and purple mounds, shaped like little Tic Tacs, rested on top. Excited to dig in, I grabbed a spoon, closed my eyes, and went for it.
The red bean tasted … like mashed potato. Mashed potato in ice. The tiny mounds sat on my tongue like little ladybugs. I made a face as I pushed them around in my mouth.
“What’s the matter? You don’t like it?” my dad asked, shoveling spoonfuls into his own mouth.
I willed myself to take another bite, for his sake, but it went down even worse, and almost came back up. Hesitantly, I shook my head.
“I’m sorry,” I said, putting the shaved ice back on the counter. Gently, I told my dad, “I … I eat ice cream now.”
I gazed up at his face, and the look that stared back made me want to grab the ice and jam it down my throat. But it was too late. He had already seen my true feelings.
“You eat ice cream now,” my dad repeated.
“And chocolate chip cookies,” I added in a small voice.
He nodded and put his own spoon down, as if suddenly, he didn’t feel li
ke eating anymore. As we stared at our two melting ices sitting on the counter, my dad shook his head and said with a sigh, “You and your mom are becoming so Americanized.”
“No …” I started to say, and then stopped. What was wrong with becoming Americanized? “Isn’t that what you wanted?” I asked my dad, looking into his eyes. “I mean, isn’t that why you brought me here?”
My dad gave me a bittersweet smile. “I guess so.… I just hoped …” He sighed again. “I just hoped it would take a little while longer.”
With that, he took the shaved ices and put them in the trash. It was the first time I’d ever seen him throw away food.
On Sunday, I woke up to a crinkly noise beside me. I fluttered my eyelashes open to find a brown-and-silver bag next to my pillow and a note from my dad.
Got you these. Maybe you can bake some cookies with Hank.
Love,
Dad
I grinned. They were semisweet chocolate chips for baking—and not the generic kind, the Hershey’s ones! My dad must have gone out and gotten them after we got back from Monterey Park. I was so glad he wasn’t still mad at me for not liking the red bean shaved ice and even more excited to make cookies for the very first time! I hugged the chocolate chips to my chest.
I’d never baked chocolate chip cookies before, but watching Jason had inspired my own culinary senses. I jumped out of bed and headed to the kitchen. I knew we had an oven, but we barely ever used it. Chinese cooking is usually just done on the stovetop. I opened up the dusty oven door and, sure enough, my mom was using it as an extra cabinet. There were cans of water chestnuts, baby corn, a bottle of soy sauce, and two extra TV remotes from the guest rooms all stashed in there. If anyone had turned the oven on, we would have had melted remote with a side of corn.
I was cleaning everything out when Hank walked into the kitchen. It was Sunday, his day off, and I knew he’d been planning to watch the Star Wars trilogy in his room, but maybe he’d be interested in some cookies to go along with that.
“Hey, Hank! Wanna help me make some cookies?” I held up the bag of chocolate chips.
“Sure!” Hank smiled. He started opening up all the cabinets looking for baking soda, brown sugar, and vanilla—none of which my mom had. We decided to go to the grocery store.
When I followed Hank out to his car in the parking lot, I noticed a sticker on the bumper: Marketing Director of the Calivista Motel.
“Nice!” I said to Hank, smiling and pointing at the sticker.
“Isn’t it great?” Hank asked. “That way I can advertise the motel wherever I go!”
I grinned. Hank really was a marketing genius.
As he drove, we chatted about the customers that had checked in that week. Then he asked me how it went over at Mr. Yao’s on Friday, and I made a face.
“That bad, huh?” he asked as we pulled into the grocery store parking lot.
I gave Hank the play-by-play as he pushed a shopping cart.
“I’m sorry,” Hank said when I’d finished. “He always was a miserable grouch, that guy.” He looked around the store. “All right, what do we need to get here?”
I read the ingredients from the recipe one by one as Hank loaded up the cart. When we were done, we walked back out to the parking lot. That’s when I noticed it. The word IMMIGRANTS was spray-painted along the side of the grocery store, with a thick line through it. Underneath, someone had scribbled the words Go back to your country.
Hank dropped the plastic bag of groceries on the ground and immediately reached over to cover my eyes with his hand. But it was too late; I’d already seen. We walked toward Hank’s car with our groceries trying to remain as calm as we could. The whole time, my heart hammered in my chest. I thought of the words Go back to your country. This was my country!
The sign, however, broadcasted loud and clear that a lot of people didn’t feel that way.
We were too shaken up to go straight home, so we headed to the park—the one we’d discovered over the summer, which sat on a hill right above Disneyland. If you looked closely, you could see the tip of Space Mountain, which Lupe and I still hadn’t been to. We’d been hoping to go over the summer, but things were always too busy back at the motel.
Hank led me to a spot in the shade. “You okay?” he asked as we sat down underneath a tall oak tree.
“It’s so mean.” I shook my head, kicking the grass with my flip-flops.
“Things are at a fever pitch right now with the election.”
I looked over at him. “But it’s going to be okay, right?” I asked. “They’re not really going to pass that law?”
“I hope not,” Hank said, gazing into the horizon. A gentle breeze swept by us.
I fell quiet. He still didn’t know about Lupe.
“What’s the matter?” Hank asked. “Is it school?”
I groaned and started telling him about Mrs. Welch and my bad grade. When Hank heard what Mrs. Welch said about race not being real, he snorted.
“Race might be a social construct, but racism’s as real as the clouds,” he said, pointing at the sky. “You can see it, and you can feel it when it pours.”
I thought about how true that was. We could see it plain as day. It was right there on the grocery store wall.
“Want to hear how my first week as Marketing Director went?” Hank asked. I nodded. “Well, I went to the bank. I wanted to try to get a line of credit for the motel, so if we ever need money, we can borrow it from the bank instead of turning to loan sharks.”
“And?” I asked.
“And they turned me down.” Hank sighed.
“Why?” I asked.
The leaves above rattled in the wind. Hank shook his head. “They didn’t think they could trust someone like me to pay it back. I thought that if I got some nice clothes and dressed real smart, they’d treat me like everyone else … but it’s not easy being a Black professional.”
Hank frowned into his hands. It hurt me so much to see him like this, and I wanted to run over to the bank and speak to the manager. Let ’em have a piece of my mind. And then take all their deposit slips and draw on them. Why did everything have to be so hard, even for Hank, who was born here?
Tears fell down my cheeks. Hank lifted his brown hand to rub them away. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said with a smile. “There are other banks.”
I nodded.
“The point is, there are racist people everywhere. You can’t avoid them, and you certainly can’t let them stop you,” he said. “You just have to hope that through your small interactions with them, eventually you’ll change their minds.”
I looked out at the clouds hovering above the Happiest Place on Earth. They were so thick and heavy in the sky, we could see them and feel them, even if we couldn’t reach out and touch them.
Hank got up and reached out a hand. “Now how about we go home and make some chocolate chip cookies?”
I smiled.
The cookies turned out great. I brought some to school to share the next day, but Lupe wasn’t there. During art class, I snuck little bites when Mrs. Welch wasn’t looking. We were talking about stylized art. One of the other kids raised a hand.
“Speaking of graffiti, is there a punishment for spraying stuff on a wall?” Jorge asked.
I put my cookie down and turned to him. Did he see it too?
“Are you talking about the graffiti outside Ralphs?” Tomás, or Thomas, asked.
“Wasn’t it awful?” I asked.
“My mom says there was another one last month outside the Misión del Sagrado Corazón,” Kareña chimed in, looking sadly down at her desk as she uttered the name of the local church.
My eyes bulged. “What did it say?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Jorge said, shaking his head.
Mrs. Welch cleared her throat. “We’re getting off topic,” she said. “We’re not talking about graffiti today; we’re doing self-portraits. Now I need you to all get out a blank piece of paper and a pencil.”
As we all dug out our pencil cases, I scribbled a note to Tomás, Kareña, and Jorge.
Meet me by the tree at recess.
–Mia
Mrs. Welch might not feel like talking about it, but I did.
Under the green canopy of the tall oak tree, Kareña, Tomás, Jorge, and I sat exchanging info about the hateful words that’d been popping up all around town—not just on walls, but from people’s mouths too—ever since Governor Wilson started airing his ads.
“My mom and I were in the laundromat, trying to do the wash,” Kareña said. “This guy came in, told us to leave, and when we didn’t, he opened up our machine and all the water came pouring out at us.”
Tomás’s hands clenched up tight.
“We had to grab our soaking wet clothes and run out!” Her chin quivered at the memory. “I nearly fell on the water.”
“I’d like to wring that guy in the dryer,” I fumed. “Was there anybody else there?”
“Yeah. There was a white family. But they just pulled their kids behind them and pretended not to see,” Kareña said.
“That’s the worst.” Jorge shook his head. “The people who just watch and don’t do anything.”
I thought about all the times last year when Jason made fun of my clothes and nobody stepped in, not even Lupe. At the time I was really hurt that Lupe didn’t stand up for me. Now I understood a little more why she might have been scared.
“Are you guys worried about Prop 187?” I asked them gingerly.
They jerked backward a little at the question. “We’re not illegals, you know,” Kareña said.
I waved my hands—that hadn’t been what I meant. “I’m just saying, it affects, you know, all of us.”
Kareña nodded. “Yeah, it does. Even if my family is safe, my aunts and uncles might not be.” She sat cross-legged on the grass, with her chin in her hands. “I just think it’s wrong, you know? That my little cousins won’t be able to go to school.”
“Or my auntie Ling’s cousin’s kid,” I added.
Jorge nodded. “It’s so wrong. And who’s next? What if one day all immigrants aren’t allowed to go to school?”
