Paper Sons: A Memoir

by Dickson Lam

  “I’m sorry I can’t remember every little detail,” I said sarcastically.

  “The only details you remember are the ones your mom wants you to remember. Your father was horrible; she was a hero.” L was being preemptive. She’d grown up witnessing her father take his mother’s side over his wife’s, and L swore she’d never marry into that same dynamic, but here she was, in a relationship with a mama’s boy. She needed me to convince her otherwise, to hear me speak with a little compassion for my father, utter some gratitude for his years of hard work, say something that didn’t sound like I was parroting my mother.

  How I wish I could’ve explained to L—if I’d had the words for this then—that the reason I couldn’t say one good thing about my father had nothing to do with my mom deluding me. I was trying to delude myself, trying to erase positive memories of my father because it was far easier to disown him if I saw him as a total villain. Acknowledging the truth—his sacrifices for me—would lead me to pity Bah Ba, one step closer to changing my mind about him, one step closer to betraying my sister again.

  I said none of this to L.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied. “My father was horrible. And no one asked for your fucking opinion about my family. Key words there—My. Family. Worry about your own.”

  L put on her jogging shoes and dashed out of the apartment. When I reached the front door—she’d left it open, maybe so I’d follow—she’d already turned the corner. I shut the door and lay back on the bed. I pulled the blanket over me. An image of a tiger at night spread across it, a gift from the mother of a student, a single mother, or was it a mother who’d remarried? I was bad at keeping track of those things.

  I picked up the tape. Why did I even have this damn thing? It had survived five moves in six years. Not once had I considered tossing it, and yet, I hadn’t watched it a single time either.

  I swung open the TV cabinet and stuck the tape in the VCR.

  Wherever we’re at is noisy and crowded. The camera struggles to remain steady as it trails me, my sister, and my mother. I have a stick of a body. That’s apparent, even with my white and red wide-striped polo. My mother’s hair flows down so low, I can hardly see her slim body. She has on tennis shoes, not the heels I would’ve expected. My sister is wearing jeans and a sweater, which seems out of place in LA. She stops at a vendor and laughs at something with my mom. I recognized the place. It’s the Alley, an area near downtown LA with tons of small shops selling designer knockoffs.

  Bah Ba mumbles, trying to direct us to make a left, but we don’t listen or are unable to hear him through the crowd. The camera held by my father pans around, but when it pans back to us, we’re gone, subsumed by shoppers. He calls for us, not angry or in desperation, but lackadaisically.

  chapter 3

  Apartment 171

  north beach posse

  What Bah Ba did to Ga Jeh colors my memories of my childhood apartment in the North Beach housing projects. I was five when we moved in, twenty-five when I moved out.

  On the day we moved in, we picked bedrooms. Ga Jeh chose the room that happened to face the most foot traffic. Goh Goh and I chose the room that faced a narrow strip of lawn. Our apartment was on the ground floor, and Bah Ba, worried about Peeping Toms, made me and my brother swap rooms with our sister. I guess my brother and I understood because I don’t remember us putting up a fight. We misplaced the fear, outside our home instead of inside it.

  The name of our housing project, North Beach, was mislead- ing. North Beach was up the hill. We were closer to Fisherman’s Wharf. Our backyard was Alcatraz, crab stands, and sea lions down at the pier sunbathing. A salty breeze wandered our streets. Right smack between the two blocks of our housing projects was a cable car terminal; its tracks humming nonstop. A horde of tourists would gather, cameras dangling from their necks. They’d stroll through the middle of our turf like it wasn’t shit. Our buildings didn’t intimidate, just three floors high. Across the street from the terminal were four-star hotels. Tourists were an occupying army, dressed in shorts and long socks, armed with maps and smiles. We’d launch water balloons at them from the walkways, aiming for the ones with a camera.

  Once in a while a tourist would get robbed. We’d stumble upon an empty suitcase near a stairwell. Pizza delivery guys, after getting stuck up, would refuse to deliver to our doors; we had to meet them at the corner. They’d keep their engine running, windows rolled up. When I’d walk up to the car, they’d scan around to make sure it wasn’t a setup. Not because I was imposing, but because I wasn’t. Sending the innocent-looking one was the oldest trick in the book. They’d lower their window, and I’d slip them bills like a drug deal.

  Each project building had a similar layout, comprised of three sections that surrounded a courtyard and a parking lot that opened up to Francisco Street. All the windows on the first floor had burglar bars that formed concentric diamonds. On the raised curbs that led into the parking lots, old men would sit and drink out of a paper bag. Or sometimes they’d sit out there just to sit. It was their porch. One with a graying beard, who’d limp around with his cane, had a dog, a Jack Russell mix who’d bark at me from a block away. Hanging out on the sidewalk would be younger guys, at the same spots day in and day out, spitting on the ground to pass the time. Sometimes it might be one dude by himself, lingering for hours, as though he had a phobia of home.

  My project building was on the far end, the only one without a parking lot, a larger courtyard in its place. Unlike the other project buildings, none of our front doors faced the courtyard. We all had our back to it. And that’s what we called the courtyard: The Back. My apartment faced Columbus Avenue. Across the street were Tower Records and the Consulate of Indonesia. A few feet from my doorstep was a community garden, and in that small space in between, that’s what we called the courtyard.

  In elementary school, I’d walk from my house down Francisco Street to the school bus stop and back after school. In third grade, I’d begun doing this alone. My brother was in middle school, and sometimes my sister preferred to travel on her own from school with her friends.

  One day I was walking home by myself from the bus stop when some kid about my age with shiny curly hair came straight up to me and punched me. I pushed him away but not with much strength. He laughed and raised his arms in victory, strutting over to his friend standing nearby. Another time, a teenage boy grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me towards a girl, pretending I was a stuffed animal that he wanted to give her. The day the basketball court opened after months of renovation to the playground, I was the first to show up but was soon crowded off by a large group of kids. One of them punted my ball over the chain-link fence. He didn’t take pleasure in it. More like he was doing me a favor. Better the ball than me.

  There were as many Asians as Blacks in our housing projects, but it hadn’t seemed that way growing up. If you had driven by, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone hanging out who wasn’t Black.

  I began to act like a tourist, wary of Black kids. I swore that I wouldn’t be caught off guard again, but this was no solution. Say the next time a kid tried to bully me, and I was ready for it, what was I really going to do? I was too proud to run, too cowardly to fight.

  One afternoon, I was coming home with Ga Jeh. As she was opening the door to our apartment, we heard kids singsonging our names—“Dick-son and Cin-dy, Cin-dy and Dick-son.” I saw the tops of two heads on the second floor walkway hiding behind the concrete railing. They reminded me of dark roasted coffee beans. It was Abdullah and Sameerah. They lived two doors down from us. They were much smaller. Ga Jeh was in the fifth grade, and I was in the third, but ’Dullah was only in kindergarten, and his sister was a year younger, though she was much taller than him.

  We went inside, and I sat down to take my shoes off. No one else was home. Our dad was at work, our mother was probably doing some grocery shopping, and Goh
Goh was just now getting off from school.

  My sister leaned back against the front door, her hand on the doorknob, her lips pressed tight. She wore overalls, and her bangs fell below her eyebrows. ’Dullah and Sameerah were still singsonging our names. Ga Jeh didn’t lock the door. We had four locks, including two chain locks, which Bah Ba had installed, one high, one low. It was also Bah Ba who’d installed the wire mesh that guarded all our windows, as if the thick steel bars weren’t enough protection. “A burglar will need weeks to cut through,” he’d told me. I wondered how we’d escape in a fire.

  Ga Jeh opened the door and stepped out into the courtyard. “Sa-meer-ah and ’Dul-lah, ’Dul-lah and Sa-meer-ah!”

  The two of them upstairs erupted in laughter, and my sister slammed the door.

  “Let’s go in the living room,” I told her. I figured the best thing to do was ignore them.

  Ga Jeh stomped past me to the sink and reached behind the cutting board, thick and circular, a piece of wood that seemed sliced directly from a tree trunk. My sister held my mother’s cleaver.

  “Grab a knife!” she said, raising the cleaver in the air as if it were Excalibur.

  She was nuts. My mother wouldn’t let me handle a steak knife.

  “You’re going to be a scaredy-cat your whole life?” she said. She got in my face and gave me an eye-level glare.

  I saw myself in her dark brown pupils, trapped in their spheres.

  “Pick. One. Up. Now.”

  I proceeded to the dish rack—my mom always told me to listen to my Ga Jeh—and found the chef’s knife in the back. My image was distorted in the blade as I flipped it back and forth.

  Ga Jeh shook the cleaver at me. “After this, they won’t bug us.” She was too small for the knife, which only made her appear more menacing. She wasn’t unfamiliar with knives. My mother let her help in the kitchen, chopping garlic or vegetables.

  “They’ll run,” Ga Jeh said. “Watch.”

  I tilted my knife up.

  “Look crazy. Like you’ll really do it.” She stuck her tongue out and made an ugly face.

  I narrowed my eyebrows, trying to slant them like the angry faces I doodled in class.

  She looked confused. “Just stay behind me.”

  It was hard to act wild carrying the knife. My clumsy hands would knock over glasses of soda onto the living room carpet. I didn’t want to slip with a knife while I was pretending to slash someone.

  Ga Jeh put her hand on the doorknob and turned back to me.

  I nodded, tightening my grip on the knife.

  She yanked the door open, and it banged against the wall. She burst out of the kitchen onto the courtyard. Her ponytail flapped behind her. I leaped through the door, stumbling forward when I landed.

  Ga Jeh waved the cleaver toward the patchy sky. Sunlight gleamed off the knife. ’Dullah and Sameerah leaned over the railing on the second floor, but they didn’t flee. They observed us from above like we were animals in a zoo, so focused on us that they hadn’t realized we were racing to the staircase at the end of the floor to confront them. From their vantage point, it might’ve appeared we were about to run past them.

  My sister let out a high-pitched shriek. The force of it sent them running. I screamed, trying to match my sister’s intensity. She was sprinting, but the point was to frighten them, not catch them. I didn’t recognize this volatile Ga Jeh. I thought of her as more Hello Kitty than anything else.

  I realize now that this took place after the abuse began. It could have been my father that sent my sister charging, knife raised.

  We skipped steps up the staircase. The plastic beads in Sameerah’s hair clicked as she ran. She trailed behind ’Dullah. Years later, me and ’Dullah would run after buses we’d just missed. His face would harden and nothing seemed more important than his next step. We’d catch up with the bus, and tourists would clap when we got on.

  They jumped into the stairwell that led to the third floor. We followed, though our mother had warned us not to wander around in our building. I smelled urine trapped inside the stairwell. A dried-up stream snaked down the steps. The words North Beach Posse were written in a block font on the wall.

  The third floor presented three choices. North Beach was a labyrinth. One path led to a walkway wrapping around our side of the projects, another to the next project complex, and the last walkway led to a dead-end around the corner.

  “Which way?” I asked.

  Ga Jeh ran toward the next project building, and I tried to keep pace. Shards of glass peppered the floor, broken bottles. My sister peeked over the railing when we reached the next building. A steady stream of cars flowed below. I looked into the stairwell. No sign of our prey. Mission accomplished.

  When we came home and returned the knives to the kitchen, I remember thinking that my sister had discovered the secret of life. When you get picked on, grab a knife. Charge after your tormentors, and they won’t do it again. It was a simple recipe, except we didn’t count on their mother.

  Cassandra pounded on our front door. “Open up!” The walls shook with each thump. I felt the vibrations against my chest. We hid in our parents’ room. Lights off. Door locked. The knocking would cease for a minute or two only to begin again. “I know you’re in there!”

  When the knocking eventually stopped, Ga Jeh and I remained still, worried it was a trap. Silence offered no comfort.

  courtyard

  I was fourteen when I started hanging out with the neighborhood kids. I concocted a scheme to get them to invite me to play basketball.

  One afternoon, I heard what sounded like a basketball game in the courtyard—strange because there was no basketball court there. I moved to the kitchen to get a better listen. I turned on the television in the kitchen and lowered the volume.

  “Don’t sit so close to the TV,” my mother said. She picked up the plastic-wrapped remote and raised the volume.

  I slid open the window and heard the dribbling of the ball, then a clank. The voices I recognized. Jim, Rob, and ’Dullah. I’d gone to middle school with Jim and Rob. They were a year younger, still in middle school. We’d say, “what’s up” to each other, but that was it. These three were among the few kids in North Beach I knew on a first-name basis. I’d gone to a mostly Asian and white elementary school, and although my middle school had been more diverse, I’d arrived scared of Black kids. Ga Jeh, who was going into her last year at that middle school, had warned me that Black kids were bullies. I opened her yearbook and searched for Black faces. “Is he a bully? How about him?”

  “Stop being dumb,” she said. “I don’t know all of them.”

  Three years of middle school, and I had few friends, of any color, to show for it.

  I eavesdropped on Jim, Rob, and ’Dullah for the length of two cartoon episodes. If I was another type of kid, I would’ve just sauntered over and joined their game, but I was a freshman in high school who ate lunch by himself, out in the bleachers by the track. I’d hide in the bathroom during passing periods because I didn’t want to be seen roaming around alone. Living a loser life was one thing—coming straight home from school because I didn’t have shit else to do—but I liked to think that I still had scruples. I was not about to make a fool of myself and beg to be down. No thanks.

  I opened the fridge and moved the milk to the back behind the jug of OJ. “Look,” I said to my mom, “we’re out of milk. I need to go to Safeway.”

  She went to her purse for money.

  I stepped out into the courtyard and counted the coins, though I knew my mother had given me exact change. I kept my head down until I got close.

  “What’s up,” I said. There were three of them, and I thought they might need an extra player to make teams.

  “Hey,” they said but continued with their game.

  Rob was already six foot. I’d heard him claim he was par
t-Asian, that his uncle was Bruce Lee. Jim’s real name was Jesús—he was Filipino—but to avoid being made fun of, he went by Jim. He was puny. Could’ve passed for an elementary school kid. Definitely had the squeaky voice of one. ’Dullah wasn’t any taller, still in the sixth grade.

  Hung over the railing of the staircase landing between the first and second floor was a shopping cart pointed downward. The back side of the cart dangled, and they had a hoop, one short enough to dunk on. I climbed the staircase watching their game as though it was the final play.

  “If Dickson plays, we can get a game going,” Jim said.

  Rob and ’Dullah turned to me for a response.

  “I’ll be back in ten.” I still had to buy the milk we didn’t need.

  “Hurry up, blood,” Rob said, dribbling the mini-basketball between his legs.

  I turned the corner on the walkway and sprinted to Safeway and back. I slowed as I returned with the gallon of milk in a plastic bag over my shoulder. I had to stop panting.

  “About time,” Rob said.

  I dropped the milk off at home and told my mom I was about to play basketball in the courtyard.

  “Me and you versus Rob and Jim,” ’Dullah said with a light stutter.

  “Shoot for takeout.” Rob shot the basketball, but it clanged off the shopping cart.

  I grabbed the ball and inbounded it to ’Dullah. They double-teamed him, and he lobbed it back to me. I dunked the ball through the metal cart, picked it up, and jogged back to the spot that was the top of the key.

  I’d learn later the correct etiquette for dunking. Scream after a dunk, preferably in the face of your opponent. Call them a “punk” or a “bitch.” Or you could play it nonchalant. Pretend to autograph the ball, then hand it to the dude you dunked on as a charitable souvenir.

  We played until dark. ’Dullah’s father, Mansur, emerged from their apartment in front of the staircase. He wore a kufi on his shaved head and had a thick moustache. He’d come home dressed in a security guard uniform. My mom had told me he was also a minister. (She didn’t have a problem making friends with the neighbors. Whatever social awkwardness I had, I didn’t seem to get it from her.) Mansur was the only father of ours who lived with his kids. “As salaam alaikum, my brothers,” he said.