Paper Sons: A Memoir

by Dickson Lam

  Rob chuckled out the greeting, “Wa alaikum salam.”

  ’Dullah, without his father saying a word, went home, slipping underneath his father’s arm that was propped against the doorway.

  “’Dullah’s in for the night, my brothers,” Mansur said.

  “Sihk faahn!” My mother called me for dinner.

  “Aw, Dickson’s got curfew too,” Rob said and exchanged daps with Jim. He pulled a wave brush from his back pocket and brushed his hair.

  “Come here,” Mansur said to us.

  “Oh no, here we go,” Jim said.

  He straightened up and clasped his hands together. “Playing basketball doesn’t develop your most important tool, my brothers. And you know what your most important tool is?”

  “My most important tool?” Rob looked at Jim, and they laughed.

  “Your mind. That’s your biggest asset.” Mansur’s front door was adorned with bumper stickers. Stuff about pork, Islam, the Devil. The collage of headlines formed a father’s manifesto, one I could not grasp.

  the back

  We’d spit on the tourists below from our walkways. We’d tag in the project stairwells. We’d find elevators in nearby buildings to piss in. Anything worth doing required running away.

  We’d play baseball in The Back. A small dirt patch was first base, second was the lamppost, third was a crack in the ground, and the gutter was home plate. I’d been hanging out with the guys on my block for a couple of weeks when we were challenged to a game of baseball by the guys on the other project block. East versus West, they said, though we’d argue over which block was which. Their team outnumbered us two to one. I’d never seen so many dudes in North Beach together, thirty or so. Their side had fans, little kids sitting on the bench that wrapped around the tree, a dugout.

  One of the kids looked me up and down. “You weak, huh?” he said, exposing a missing tooth. The row of kids laughed.

  “Shut that shit up,” Rob said, pointing his aluminum bat at them. The kids were right, though. I struck out often, hit grounders, and couldn’t catch a pop fly.

  It took us so long to get organized, arguing about batting order, positioning, and which team would get to bat first that we didn’t play long before it got dark. No light from the lamppost. The bulb had been knocked out.

  In the final at-bat of the game, I was up. We were down by three, bases loaded, two outs, two strikes. The next pitch came, and I blasted the ball to the other end of the courtyard. If it landed past the grass in the outfield, it was an automatic homerun—we’d win. The outfielder, Moon Rock, whose name either referred to the bumps on his face or the crack rocks he sold, argued that the ball landed on the grass. I heard my teammates disputing this, but I didn’t. I ran and ran. I was the winning run. By the time Moon Rock reached the ball, I was on my way to third base. I turned the corner home, and saw Tiger, the catcher, a large Samoan kid, his hands extended, ready for the ball. Behind him, my team was waving me on, fearful faces, worried I wouldn’t beat the throw. The ball whizzed by, a couple of feet from me, and Tiger caught it. He leapt at me with the ball in hand. I contorted my body away from him and scored. My teammates piled on me, their hands rubbing my head, arms shaking me, and I couldn’t stop jumping, worried that if I did, I’d wake from this dream.

  The next week, we were playing baseball again, this time amongst ourselves without the kids from the other project block. I was crouched in a fielding position near the lamppost when I saw Jerome making a beeline toward me. He had a peanut head and was wearing a parka. He was Moon Rock’s younger brother.

  “What’s up,” I said. I didn’t know Jerome well. We used to have gym the same period, but I hadn’t seen him since he’d gotten locked up.

  Jerome grinned. “You got a dollar for me?” He patted my pockets.

  “Nah.” I smiled. I thought he was messing around.

  He cocked his fist back and jerked his body. “Motherfucker, I ain’t playing with you. Let me see that glove.”

  I put it behind my back. “It’s Rob’s.”

  “I don’t give a fuck whose it is. Give it here.”

  “You gotta ask him.” Rob was at home plate, the gutter. He looked in our direction and leaned on his bat as though it were a cane.

  Jerome lunged for the glove, but I used my arm to fend him off. Back and forth we went before he finally had a grip on it. We played tug of war.

  “Give it, or I’m gonna fuck you up,” he said. Jerome wasn’t physically imposing. About my size, but he had enough crazy in him to render his size moot. He could’ve let go and punched me, but giving up the glove wasn’t an option. I was just a few weeks into hanging out with these guys, a probationary period. I couldn’t give them a reason to kick me out of the crew.

  “It’s Rob’s,” I shouted. “It’s Rob’s!”

  I heard the bat drop, the clink of the aluminum.

  “That’s mine, blood,” Rob said.

  My grip relaxed. I was ready to step aside to watch the beat down. Rob was a giant next to Jerome.

  “It’s mine now,” Jerome said and snatched the glove.

  “’Rome, c’mon man,” Rob said. It almost sounded like he was pleading.

  Jerome stuck his hand in the glove and with his other hand punched the leathery palm.

  “Just give it back,” Rob said and made a half-ass attempt at grabbing it.

  “Nope. What you gonna do about it?”

  Rob reluctantly switched into a fighting stance.

  Jerome dropped the glove and did the same.

  We encircled them. They bobbed and weaved but neither was throwing any punches. “Hey!” someone yelled. “Y’all quit that. You boys get in this house right now.” It was Mansur from his apartment window.

  “Yeah, you boys better get on home,” Jerome said. He smirked at the glove on the ground and walked away, one hand holding up his sagging jeans, one arm swinging loosely.

  We gathered in ’Dullah’s apartment, around the kitchen table. His place was dim. They had the shades drawn up for light, but night was falling.

  “Sounds like he had the Devil in him,” Mansur said. “Next time a boy comes around starting trouble—I’m talking to all you brothers now—you need to give him a good beating. Send him back where he came from.”

  Mansur didn’t play. Once, we were hanging in the courtyard when we heard him scolding Sameerah for not doing her chores. Mansur left the apartment, calmly went into the garden and broke off a switch from a bush. He was from Louisiana, a Southern-style whupping. Sameerah made a valiant attempt to escape the blows. We could hear her pleas as he chased her throughout the house, but all that hollering and running probably made it worse when he caught up to her. ’Dullah might’ve had it rougher. He’d get his ass beat on New Year’s Day for all the shit he might do in the New Year—a preemptive whupping. Maybe this was the reason why ’Dullah stayed on the straight and narrow.

  Mansur was the first adult to give me the green light to kick someone’s ass. This made me feel grown—I had a duty to uphold.

  goh goh’s room/my room

  My sophomore English teacher, Ms. Porto, frequently had us write in class. Because she spoke to us through a microphone, we called her MC Porto. The room was no lecture hall. It was tiny, half the size of a normal classroom. She’d said she was tired of students always whining, “What did you say?” The mic was the kind you’d clip to your shirt, but she’d still raise it to her mouth.

  One day, she wrote on the board: Describe something memorable that occurred at home.

  “Don’t think about it,” MC Porto’s nasally voiced boomed from the large speaker in front of her desk. “Just write.”

  I wrote about the night I woke up and saw Bah Ba and my mother screaming in my room. I was six. They stood on Goh Goh’s bed, and my brother, who would’ve been nine, hid behind my mother, clutching her oversized
Mickey Mouse T-shirt at her waist. There was a satisfaction in seeing my older brother in trouble.

  Bah Ba pressed up against my mother. She backed up and told him to get out, her hand extended, fingertips almost touching his chest. She had her hair tied up in a bun with a pink jaw hair clip.

  My father knocked my mom’s arm away and shook his finger at her face. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. His words were barks. I’d heard of Bah Ba hitting my brother, but I’d never witnessed it, or if I had, I was too young to remember. Bah Ba would smack my brother, even in public, if Goh Goh dared to ask our father to buy a toy. Why my father wanted to beat my brother that night, I had no clue. Bah Ba might’ve just wandered into our room in a drunken stupor and decided to pick on my brother.

  My father lunged for Goh Goh, but my mom stepped aside like a matador, keeping my brother tight on her hip. It was the first time I saw Goh Goh shed a tear. I was the crybaby. He’d sock me in the shoulders in front of his friends to make me cry on demand.

  I threw off my covers. I’m not sure why. I didn’t plan to get up. Bah Ba and my mother turned to me.

  “Bei leih goh jai tai dou,” my mother said, pointing at me. You’ve let your son see you like this. She backed herself against the wall with Goh Goh still locked at her hip.

  “Yuhk hoi, diu!” Bah Ba said. Move, fuck! He reached for Goh Goh.

  My mother didn’t budge. She spread her arms wide, and Bah Ba slapped her. She fell on the bed, her hand still holding onto Goh Goh. My brother threw his body across hers, his back to Bah Ba. My father made a move toward them.

  “Why was I so stupid to marry you?” my mother said. “You don’t love your kids. You only love mahjong. Why do you even come home?”

  His shoulders slumped. He muttered something to himself and stepped off the bed.

  My mother held her cheek, and my brother couldn’t stop say- ing sorry to her. She rose and tucked us into bed.

  “Mouh gong yeh,” she said to us. “Fun gaau.” Don’t talk. Sleep. She turned the lights off and the room darkened, but she didn’t leave. She stood by the doorway, her silhouette still visible.

  kitchen

  I shoved a form at my mother while she was washing dishes. “You have to sign this at the bottom,” I said.

  “Yi goh meh yeh?” she asked.

  “This is where I’m going to school.” I pointed to the box labeled “First Choice.” I’d listed McAteer on the form for my preference of high school. Mac was across town. I knew little about it. I didn’t know about its selective arts program, a school within a school. I didn’t know that many of its students were coming from neighborhoods at war with each other, that all the dudes in the school claimed something: a turf, a dance crew, a graffiti crew, or that strange cult, ROTC. All I knew, and all I needed to know, was that practically no one from my middle school was going to Mac, which meant no more dealing with kids coming up to me in the hallway telling me how phony I was, reminding me and anyone else around that I had betrayed my best friend.

  He was a white kid named Max, skinny, big ears, dark greasy hair, always wore Chucks and baggy sweatpants. His friends became my friends. For every hour spent playing video games, we spent an hour playing sports. Didn’t matter which. None of us were particularly good at any, but that wasn’t the point. He brought me to my first baseball game. He had an allowance and would break me off some money when we went to the arcades or the comic store. He’d order pay-per-view fights, and his mom would order pizza. He had the latest video game systems, one setup in his room, another in a loft. One night, as I left his house, I snuck one of his game cartridges in my pocket. He phoned later that night and banned me from his house until I confessed.

  I can’t say for certain that stealing from Max had nothing to do with his racist jokes, how he’d pull the corner of his eyes back, or his cracks about how I was broke because I lived in the projects, how my house was probably cockroach-infested, how I wore the same jeans every day. But none of that feels as honest as what I’d actually told myself: the universe owes you. I had to beg for the few games I had. Max had stacks. Enough that some games went unplayed for months, the cartridges trapped inside a dusty case. I wasn’t stealing. I was liberating.

  A few weeks later, I caved and came clean, but Max and I were done. He still let me over his house, but he’d tell friends to keep an eye on me, not to leave me alone in any room. His mom wouldn’t speak to me, wouldn’t even look in my direction. Bye-bye pizza nights. His dog, a dachshund, would bark at me as she followed me to the bathroom.

  At school, I tried to switch cliques, but I’d been marked as a thief who couldn’t be trusted. Mac was my reset button. New school. New friends. New life. The challenge was my mother.

  She leaned into the form and squinted. “I never heard of this school. Why doesn’t it say Lowell?” Lowell was the only public high school in San Francisco that afforded her bragging rights, a feeder school to UC Berkeley and where my brother would be entering his senior year. If I were to get in as well, she’d do a victory lap in Chinatown, dragging me around the markets, the newsstand, the bakery, the herbal store, the bank, the takeout place with the fried chicken drumettes. She’d boast to whoever was behind the counter about her second Lowell son. Never mind the long line of grandmas behind us at the register, eyeing my mother like she was a freak for her long hair that ran down to her knees, for her heavy makeup, for her leopard-skin heels. This was a fish market not a runway! My mom would ignore these looks and chat with the cashier. She’d demonstrate her skills at Praising without Praising. “This son takes school too seriously. Just like his brother. They both go to Lowell. This one can’t stop reading. Even takes his books with him to the bathroom. So strange.”

  “Those are comic books,” I’d say, but she wouldn’t translate. She’d just pat my head like I was a silly kid.

  A splash of water fell on the form. My mother was stuffing plates into the dish rack. “I don’t have grades good enough for Lowell,” I said. “I’ve been telling you that for the longest.”

  “How do you know if you don’t apply? Cross that school out. Write Lowell.”

  “Lowell has a different form. And the deadline was last week.”

  “Mouh gong daaih wah.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Are you crazy!” She ripped off her dishwashing gloves and tossed them at the cheap wallpaper above the sink. The wallpaper, a grid of yellow and blue lines, functioned as a backsplash.

  “You don’t understand how Lowell works. I didn’t at first either, but the counselor broke it down for me. She showed me a table. No, not a physical table, like a chart. It tells you what kind of grades and test scores you need to get in.”

  In the beginning of middle school, I’d bring home As and Bs, but my mother would say, “How come not 4.0 like your Goh Goh?” Lowell became a dead-end, but I wasn’t brazen enough to blow off school completely.

  “I’m like a B student,” I said to my mother, “some Cs thrown in, so maybe more of a B-. I wouldn’t have had a shot.”

  “You get As.”

  “They don’t count sixth grade.” I decided to not make things more complicated by bringing up extracurricular activities, how I was lacking in this category as well. I played baritone in the school band, but it was hard to be proud of that. I’d started off on the trumpet like my brother but got demoted to the baritone. The music teacher grouped us with our fellow instrument players, arranging us in a row according to skill. She ranked me last among the baritones, fourth out of four. It was a comfortable position. Anything I did was a bonus.

  “Tomorrow,” my mother said and clapped her hands, “we’ll go down to the district office. Get this straightened out. Sure, sure.”

  “Mom, it’s over.” I tried to hand her a pen. “Here. Sign.”

  She grabbed the cordless phone and stabbed it towards my face, nearly poking my cheek with the
plastic antenna. “Call your Bah Ba,” she said. “Tell him you want to be a bum.”

  I placed the phone on the kitchen table. I couldn’t take her seriously. She knew I didn’t know my father’s number, though it wasn’t far from me, scribbled on the calendar above the washing machine. On occasion we did speak on the phone. He’d call and I’d play the role of my mother’s secretary: Yeah, she’s home. Hold on. No, she’s not. I’ll tell her you called. Did my mother really think my father would lecture me? We all understood Bah Ba was a simple man. Father: make money, send to wife. Mother: kids.

  I chalked up Bah Ba’s indifferent attitude to genetics, some absent-father gene that plagued Lams. I didn’t know his family, but I imagined his brothers, his dad, his uncles, all these men living apart from their families, the Lams—a clan of distant fathers. It wasn’t personal that Bah Ba was uninterested in me. He just wasn’t capable of it. He was a victim of the Lam gene. I didn’t follow my theory to its logical conclusion—I carried the gene myself.

  “Lowell is all hype,” I said to my mom. “Colleges don’t care what high school you went to.”

  “Lum Goon Saang,” she called for my brother.

  “What?” Goh Goh was sitting in the easy chair in the living room, next to the doorway.

  “Tell your brother how stupid he is.”

  “I’ve been trying to tell him his whole life.”

  “So stupid. Didn’t even apply.”

  “He’s not smart enough. He wouldn’t have gotten in anyway.”

  “Ga Jeh didn’t apply,” I said to my mother. “How come you didn’t make a fuss with her?” My sister was a sophomore at Lincoln High School, a distant second-best to Lowell.