Paper Sons: A Memoir

by Dickson Lam

  “So sad,” my mother said, but she didn’t skip a beat as she washed dishes, her back to us. “What do you two want for dinner?”

  I sat hunched over the kitchen table. You’d never know it was designed in the mold of a Chinese antique, a dragon pattern hand carved on the sides of the rosewood table. My mother had the table draped with three layers of tablecloth, her reason having something to do with making it easier to clean. The design of the top tablecloth was rows of circles, each row a different color. It was a strain on the eyes when combined with the objects on the table: Hello Kitty place mats, crystal necklaces, gold purses, and a red sequin clutch. Also on the table was a boom box, the same one that had rested on my father’s nightstand in our old apartment, the same one he had carried onto the airplane when we immigrated to the States. My mother would use the radio to listen to the Chinese station. Sitting on top of the stereo was a small pillow in the shape of a pair of lips. “Kiss Me,” it read. I covered my face with my hands.

  “You can’t control these things,” Ga Jeh said. “It’s not your fault.”

  I pulled my hands away. My lips were salty. My sister grabbed my hand. She had a tattoo on her forearm, a tiger emerging from a lush jungle. I took the tissue she handed me.

  how should we view mao?

  The week after Javon was struck down I had to grade a stack of papers evaluating the life of Mao Zedong. Ruling China for nearly thirty years, Mao was more than a father figure; he was the “Sun in the Sky.”

  We’d been studying him for the last month, and the students had written essays responding to the essential question of our unit: How Should We View Mao? The question was mine, but it wasn’t original. I’d stolen it from my mentor teacher at a school in New York. His versions: How Should We View Lincoln? How Should We View Columbus? The question could be recycled and used for any controversial figure.

  I’d proposed the Mao unit to the other Humanities teachers. We worked on a consensus model, having to agree on all units and assessments. Two hundred students focused on the same topics, the same questions. One teacher had objected to my proposal. “The question isn’t controversial enough,” he said. “Mao was an Asian Hitler. What’s there left to say?” We aimed for questions that provoked a range of perspectives, that made students wrestle with moral ambiguity.

  “Not everyone sees Mao that way,” I said.

  “I highly doubt we can find legitimate scholars who’d argue otherwise.”

  At our next Humanities meeting, I brought a pile of books, some condemning Mao, some defending him, one arguing there was a good Mao and a bad Mao, supporting the standpoint of Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping, who declared Mao was seventy percent right and thirty percent wrong, as if the character of a man could be determined by neat percentages.

  I’d grown up thinking Mao was a vile tyrant. That’s the way my mother saw him. Both of my parents’ families had fled from China to Hong Kong before the communists took over. My mom’s family had immigrated seeking work. Bah Ba’s family had sought refuge. They were landlords, the wealthiest in their village, and they wanted no part of land redistribution, which the communists had promised upon victory. The problem was that Bah Ba’s grandma, my Tai Mah, wasn’t allowed to leave the mainland with the rest of the family due to immigration restrictions. Her opportunity to flee wouldn’t come until several years later. She had to remain in the village, the last Lam.

  When Mao came into power, as expected, he targeted landlords. They’d exploited peasants for thousands of years, charging exorbitant rents. Peasants had little left to feed their families. In desperate times, many would sell a child into slavery to stave off the entire family dying of hunger. In the new China, landlords were to be stripped of their power and riches.

  Anytime I’d bring up Mao, my mother would never fail to mention my Tai Mah. The communists tied her up, a rope around her chest. They led her through the village while peasants hurled insults and spat on her. She stood trial on her knees. The verdict: guilty. As punishment, she was made to stand in the brutal sun with a humiliating sign hung around her neck, her fingers forced into a medieval contraption. Sticks tightened around each digit, slowly crushing them. Her nails snapped off one by one. My Tai Mah screamed in agony as villagers threw stones and shouted epithets.

  I showed my students a dramatization of this. It was an old propaganda film from Communist China, but its depiction of a landlord being tied up and having rocks thrown at him was similar to my Tai Mah’s story, if less sadistic. To complicate this portrayal, I passed around a book that depicted sculpted scenes comparing the life of peasants with the life of their landlords. In one scene, a mother who could not pay her rent is dragged from her baby to the landlord’s house. He’d take the baby’s milk for himself.

  I asked the students: How should we respond to abuse? Do victimizers deserve compassion?

  a man of few words

  I called my father in Minnesota. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d phoned him in my life. I called him at work. I didn’t want to wait until he got home, scared I’d change my mind.

  It was summer break, and death was on my mind. My aunt had passed away a month after Javon. I’d stood with my father next to his Ga Jeh’s casket. Bah Ba wore a suit a size too big. Each time I saw him he’d grown frailer. He had shaved off his moustache, and he’d dyed his graying hair a not-subtle jet black. Funerals were the only times we got together. In the last year, he had lost his father, mother, and now his sister. He was the new elder of his family, and Bah Ba swore he’d be the next to go.

  He sent us an email after my aunt’s funeral:

  Hello,

  Thanks very much for the Father’s Day gift. It’s a precious memory for me since we do not meet each other very often.

  Since your mother and me divorced, I felt hopeless, but I am happy now, because you are closer with me, at least I feel some hope, I still have my children around me, cheer me, encourage me which make me so comfort, and all my dirty mind was gone.

  From my bottom of heart, I wish you all well, finally, I am proud because all my children were in the funeral of your Aunt. I think she is proud too!

  Dad, thanks very much and may God bless you and family!

  * * * * * *

  Bah Ba hadn’t spoken much English to us growing up, and even in Cantonese, he was a man of few words. His only communication with me: curt replies or grunts. Bah Ba had few reasons to use English, the bulk of his days confined to the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant, yet he could compose an email in English that expressed feelings he shied away from in Chinese.

  My mother notes that Bah Ba was not uneducated. He completed high school in Hong Kong, studying English three hours every afternoon. A couple of years after immigrating to the States, Bah Ba went to the Chinatown campus of the local community college and took an ESL placement test. Based on his results, he was told he couldn’t register. His score was too high. A perfect hundred. All of the ESL classes offered would be too easy. Bah Ba’s writing was strong enough that when my mother showed Willie a postcard that my father had sent from a trip back to Hong Kong, Willie said, “Your husband’s a good writer.” Willie was himself an immigrant, but he’d arrived as a teenager, his Filipino accent hardly noticeable.

  Bah Ba’s postcard was written in English, presumably not for the sake of my mother, who he’d always speak to in Cantonese, but for me, my brother, and my sister. Goh Goh and Ga Jeh would’ve only been able to comprehend some of the Chinese characters, and I none of them. I don’t remember the postcard, reading it or ever seeing it. Perhaps even as a child I wasn’t able to reconcile an articulate or heartfelt Bah Ba with the father I knew.

  I could’ve replied to Bah Ba’s email. Said something supportive but measured. That would’ve been my predictable response, but at the rate Bah Ba and I were going, our relationship would remain stagnant forever. I’d bury him as a stranger. I didn’t
want to chicken out from another challenge.

  “On Wah, haih mh haih goh dou?” I asked the guy at the restaurant for my father. It might have been the first time I spoke his Chinese name.

  Bah Ba came to the phone. “Wei?”

  “It’s Dickson.”

  “Meh yeh sih?”

  “I was thinking about visiting.”

  “You have time?”

  “I got the whole summer.”

  “Houh a.” And then as though I didn’t understand, he added, “Good.”

  * * * * * *

  chapter 2

  An Unreliable Narrator

  alley

  My first memory of my father: he slammed the front door on me, leaving my three-year-old ass out in the dark alleyway. I had nothing on but tighty-whities. My mom had just put them on me when Bah Ba burst into the bathroom. He’d grabbed me by my wrist and pushed me into the alley, then shut the door. Maybe he was pissed because he’d stepped on one of my toys, who knows.

  I could hear my mother pleading with my father while I stood silent in front of our apartment on the edge of Chinatown, our first home in the States. We lived at the dead end of the alley, near the dumpster, far from the streetlamp.

  At some point, my mother opened the door and swept me into her arms. She brushed off my feet and gave them a warm squeeze. She turned around, but my father was nowhere to be seen.

  toilet

  Or maybe my first memory of Bah Ba was when he dropped me into a toilet. We were in the bathroom of Tea House. Bah Ba was on one knee and held me over the toilet by my armpits.

  His face began to twitch, his grip softened. He sneezed. You wouldn’t expect my father to instinctively cover his mouth. He wasn’t big on etiquette. My father liked to hock a loogie the way some men like to grab their balls, habitually and unabashedly. But on this occasion, he had manners. What befuddles me is not that he covered his mouth but that he had to use both hands.

  My butt splashed into the murky pool, my arms and legs flailing about. Bah Ba pulled me up and wiped me off with toilet paper. Before we left the bathroom, he said, “Mouh wah bei leih Ma tang.” Don’t tell your mother.

  drunk

  Bah Ba was sitting on the linoleum floor in the hallway, jubilant, singing Cantonese songs, and laughing to himself. I sat next to him. His head swayed from side to side, his beard stubble brushing against my cheek. I put his head on my bony shoulder. We looked at the mirror and laughed. He staggered toward my mother in the kitchen, but she scowled and pushed him away. She left him laid out on the kitchen floor, singing himself to sleep.

  The next morning, he told me he didn’t remember a thing.

  ear picker

  My most cherished father-son moments were when my father cleaned out my earwax. It was Bah Ba’s only duty at home. I’d tell him when it was time, tugging my ear. He’d rinse the metal ear pick, and I’d pull a napkin from the tin dispenser, a freebie from his restaurant. I’d unfold the napkin on the kitchen table, then lay my head next to the napkin, ear to the table, listening to the wood. Bah Ba would place his hand firmly on my head as he used the cold pick to scrape and dig. He never rushed. Whatever he scooped out, he placed on the napkin. The higher the mound of wax, the better—a marker of time spent with my father. But to get a large pile, I had to wait for the buildup. As a result, these sessions were few and far between.

  Once, I waited too long. A ball of earwax had formed, and Bah Ba was unable to dig it out. My mom had to take me to the doctor. What the doc pulled out was the size of a marble.

  red bean soup

  I was turning six, and for my school birthday party, Bah Ba told me he planned something special: red bean soup. I never liked that concoction. Who wants soup served cold? I didn’t protest, however. I had never had his red bean soup. I assumed my father had a natural gift for the culinary arts. Perhaps he’d developed his craft at a young age, a prodigy.

  I’d discover later that when Bah Ba arrived in the States from Hong Kong at the age of thirty-one, four years before the party, he had no kitchen experience, but he lied about this to the owner of Tea House. It was my grandfather’s idea. He told his son-in-law not to worry, he would train him. Gung Gung was the head chef at the popular dim sum restaurant in San Francisco. His wife, my Poh Poh, also worked alongside him in the kitchen. All the workers, the cooks, the women pushing metal carts with stacks of bamboo steamers, the hosts and hostesses dressed in suits, they all addressed my grandfather as Sifu.

  A couple of months after my aforementioned birthday party, Gung Gung appeared in the New York Times. In the Travel section, there was a food guide of San Francisco’s Chinatown, and Tea House was described as “arguably the best dim sum restaurant in the country.” The article credits my grandfather by name, since he was the head chef. Not surprisingly, no mention of Bah Ba. Eventually, my father would leave Tea House for a restaurant in Minnesota, enticed by the opportunity to become a head dim sum chef himself, a sifu, like his father-in-law.

  Another kid in my class also had the same birthday as me. I’d have my celebration first, then he’d have his. The kid’s name was Irvin, a Hong Kongnese-sounding name. Hong Kong parents often chose uncommon English names, selecting first names that sounded like last names, and they loved picking names with “-son” as a suffix: Anson, Carson, Eason, Hanson, Henson, Wenson. My parents named my brother Jackson. Girls got off lucky. My sister was named Cindy. Bah Ba chose Dickson for me in the hopes I’d become rich like the owner of a shop called Dickson Watch and Jewellery.

  Other kids had a field day with my name. Dickson. Dick. Son. Son of a dick. Dickey Boy. Substitute teachers unknowingly added to the list when they read my name on the attendance sheet as Dickinson or Dickerson. They’d add letters for some inexplicable reason as though Dickson was not a legitimate name.

  The night before the party, I snuck a peek at the soup in the fridge. I lifted the lid of the large pot. A cloudy brown pool. Under the surface, dark beans, not red but almost purple. It looked like the surface of an alien planet. I closed the lid, scared to dip my finger in for a taste. I went to bed and wrapped the blankets tight around my body like a cocoon.

  At school, I returned from recess and saw my mother and father chatting with Ms. Hong. Bah Ba was dressed in jeans and a casual shirt, the same thing every day. It was strange seeing him here. The only place I’d see him outside of home was at a Chinese restaurant. My mom, on the other hand, was a regular at the school, though not in my class. She’d volunteer in the morning to stamp the hands of kids who, like me, qualified for free lunch.

  “Sit down,” Ms. Hong said to the class. “You are in for a treat. Dickson’s dad brought something he made himself.”

  “Dickey Boy, what’s in the pot?” Melvin whispered. He was a pudgy Chinese kid with a deep tan.

  “Red bean soup,” I said.

  “I hate that stuff.”

  Bah Ba poured the soup into a row of paper cups. Kids rose and squinted. They recognized the soup, the class being predominately Chinese. Ms. Hong, anticipating the grumbles, pointed out that the red in the soup symbolized good luck and happiness. Two volunteers handed out the cups. Bah Ba had his arm around my mother’s shoulder. The picture struck me as odd, my mother leaning into him.

  I stared at a bean floating in my cup. I scooped it out and chewed it. I pushed the cup aside. Only a few kids were still dipping their spoons into their cups.

  “OK class,” Ms. Hong said, “say thank you to Mr. and Mrs. Lam.”

  “Thank you,” the class said in unison.

  My mother and Bah Ba slightly bowed their heads in appreciation and came over to me. “Happy Birthday,” my mother said, using her kiddy voice that she loved to use in public. “We both go to work.”

  “What do you do, Mrs. Lam?” Ms. Hong said.

  “Call me Ms. Lee.” My mother’s body straightened up. “I take care
of three kids. Some people say, ‘you’re so beautiful, you don’t know how to clean house,’ but I sweep, I mop, I cook, I wash dishes. I give him a bath. Yeah, sure.” My mother rubbed the top of my head and hugged me. Bah Ba grabbed my shoulder and pulled me in for a light squeeze. He took my mother’s hand and with his other arm carried the empty pot.

  Out they went, and in came Irvin’s mother. His mother’s hair was permed, and she wore a business outfit. She looked like someone’s boss. As she placed Irvin’s cake on the table, some of the boys oohed and aahed. A Superman cake. The Man of Steel had his left fist raised, his red cape flapping behind him. He was the real deal, even had the cowlick. Above him read “Happy Birthday Irvin!” as though Irvin and Supes were homies.

  The students rushed to get their plates. I didn’t understand the hurry. I grabbed a slice and sat down. I took a small bite. Nothing super about the cake, but my classmates scarfed it down. They became animated, laughing, almost dancing in their chairs. I stuck my fork in the middle of my slice and twirled it until a crater formed, as if a meteor had struck it. To others, it would appear I’d tried to devour the cake.

  red bean soup story

  In middle school, by which point Bah Ba had moved out, I used the Red Bean Soup story to paint my father as the clueless immigrant, to distance myself from him and really from all Chinese immigrants. They were FOBs, dressed in knockoff clothes from Chinatown, fluent in “broken” English, an ugly reflection.

  I broke from my backward views in high school after I got into Malcolm X. Saw the Spike Lee flick on opening weekend with Rob, then read Malcolm’s autobiography and all his speeches I could find. Sometimes, if I couldn’t get anyone to cut school with me, I’d play hooky to read in the main library. Sitting next to old men and homeless dudes reading newspapers on rods, I’d pour through a stack of books, J.A. Rogers’ World’s Great Men of Color, autobiographies from Black Panthers, heirs to Malcolm X. The Panthers were how I got interested in Mao, his “Little Red Book” required reading for members. Malcolm preached pride, loving yourself and where you came from. It was hard to mock my father after that.