by Dickson Lam
I dropped to the floor and leaned against the toilet, my arms outstretched to keep her at bay.
“Fong sau,” she yelled, or maybe it was more of a cry. “Your brother and sister always say you’re up to no good, but I don’t listen to them. I say ‘Sai Lo’s a good boy.’” The hanger whooshed and smacked me on the arm, on my thigh, on my shin. Compared to the earlier beating, none of this hurt, but I began to sob. I tried to say something, but it was hard to form a coherent sentence.
“Talking back?” She threw the hanger at me. Said I’d never leave the house again, then stormed off.
I used my foot to swing the door closed. I rested my head on the toilet. I sat there long enough that the tall mirror I was facing fogged up once again from the shower. I used my fingers to draw my tag, but within seconds the steam covered my name, its outline slowly vanishing.
parents’ room/mom’s room/my room
Even when Bah Ba was living with us, we never called it my parents ’ room, just Mom’s room. The shag carpet was red. The bed cover was red. Everything on the dresser was hers, a nail polish rack, jewelry boxes, the childhood pictures of us. Hanging on the wall was a framed photo of her in a wedding gown. On top of the radiator sat three Snoopy stuffed animals, each one with one of our initials sewn onto its ear by our mother. All Bah Ba had in the room was a two-drawer nightstand where the boom box sat, and a roll-top desk piled with bills. Inside the desk was a harmonica. I never heard him play it, the box worn and dusty, a holdover from Hong Kong. There was also, above the bed, a black and white picture of Bah Ba and my mother, side by side on their wedding day, my father youthful, my mother without makeup.
Also in this room was my desk, made of particle board, some flimsy shit you had to assemble. There was no accompanying chair. To sit at the desk, I had to sit at the end of the bed, but at least the desk could fit in their room. It didn’t fit in mine. Goh Goh already had two there, one made of maple wood, the other a computer desk big enough that included a shelf for his encyclopedia set and a shelf for his printer. His computer was off-limits to me, but when I was younger, I’d cheer for him as he played games, RPGs, Impossible Mission, and strip poker. Like Bah Ba, my room wasn’t my room.
When Bah Ba moved out, I began to treat Mom’s room like it was mine. She’d be in the kitchen the whole day. The only time she used her room was to sleep or when Willie came over. I’d lock the door and get on the phone, using three-way to make prank calls with friends.
My mother began to stay over at Willie’s on the weekends. I’d sleep in her room, in her bed. It was better than sleeping in a bed next to my brother. Our two beds were lined against the wall, perpendicular to each other, so that if I snored, his feet didn’t have to reach far to kick my head.
Sleeping in my mother’s room also meant it was easier to sneak out. I’d pull all-nighters, roaming the streets with a spray can in the kangaroo pocket of my hoodie. By this point, Rob had already quit tagging. If you asked him what he was now, now that he wasn’t a writer, he’d say he was a pimp. He broke girls’ hearts. I’d listen in on the conversations on three-way, the silent witness.
A few times, I snuck a girl into my mother’s room, but that was weird, fooling around in her bed with that wedding photo of her and Bah Ba above it, looking straight at the camera, straight at me. My mother left the photo up, I guess, for future visits from Bah Ba. She didn’t want to rock the boat. He was still paying our bills.
Most of the time, I’d just chill in that room and turn on Bah Ba’s stereo. I didn’t have my own, so it was the only time I could blast my music, Bay Area gangsta rap and East Coast boom bap. Some nights when I had the room to myself, I’d wake up in the middle of the night and peer out the window. The Back would be pitch-dark. Someone was always knocking out the bulbs. The windows across the yard would have their blinds down. Blank faces staring back at me. I’d open the window and smoke a beedi. My elbows on the windowsill, I’d blow smoke through the wire mesh.
living room
The summer after I’d graduated high school, my brother brought home a new girl he was dating. She lay on the floral print couch, her head on his lap. We were watching television together. Or maybe I was the only one watching. I was sitting on the red beanbag in front of them, so for all I knew, they weren’t paying any mind to the screen, just goo-goo eyeing each other.
The girl wore dark lipstick and had blonde highlights in her hair. My brother had a blue streak in his hair. That was the thing—Asians coloring their hair. Ga Jeh had dyed hers chestnut. I used to style my hair, gel it, spray it, but now I’d just slap on a hat. It made it so much easier leaving the house. In the morning, I’d wake up with hair that had puffed up overnight, as if it had risen like a sad soufflé. And that’s pretty much how my hair was that night. Plus, I was looking bummy in a faded black shirt and sweatpants with a hole at the knee. I didn’t know Caroline was coming over. I didn’t even know my brother was seeing her.
I used to say hi to Caroline at the bus stop. The first time I noticed her, I was with Rob, and he said, “That’s you, dog.” He said that every time there was a cute Asian girl. He nudged me to say something, which I refused on principle. Even when he was encouraging, Rob was bossy. He still saw himself as my mentor, and I didn’t know how to opt out of that contract.
My brother wasn’t doing much with his life. He’d gone to the top high school in the city, had good enough grades for a university but settled for the local community college. He’d said he was saving money. Cheap bastard. We called him the Rebate King. He’d combine rebates so stuff was practically free. A case of Snapple, which he wasn’t even a fan of. A printer stand though he didn’t have a printer. He was always trying to get over. Goh Goh was a gambler, betting on Sundays. Once, he had to beg my mom for a couple grand. It was that or have his legs broken. I’d thought that was only in movies.
Instead of entering into his fourth year at City, a “two-year college,” my brother planned to drop out, or take a break, the answer fluctuating. He was going to work full-time, make more money, his job a stock boy at Toys “R” Us.
“Lum Goon Saang,” my mother said. She stood at the doorway of the living room, wearing yellow leggings with black polka dots, pissed as hell.
My brother got up but tried to play it off, like he wasn’t about to get chewed out for letting this girl put her feet up on the couch. “Do you want anything to drink?” He turned back to ask Caroline.
“No, I’m fine,” she said.
I leaned back in the beanbag like I was reclining in a seat of a car. I stretched my legs out on the red and black zebra-striped commercial carpet. I flipped channels with the remote, still in its original case, cellophane over the buttons. It’d been my mother’s idea, but it was my brother who had applied the masking tape that kept the case from falling apart. This was the same guy who had let his Transformers sit on the top shelf of his desk, posed for war, covered by a dusty veil of Saran Wrap. Never once played with them. “One day, they’re going to be worth a lot of money,” he’d said. He’d let me read his comics but only if I followed his rules. I had to place the comic on a pillow. It prevented creases on the spine, he’d said. To turn the page, I was to only use the tips of my thumb and index finger. He’d stand over me, ready to sock me if I messed up.
My mother and Goh Goh began arguing in the kitchen, so I turned up the television to drown them out.
“What do you got planned for next year?” Caroline asked me. By next year, she meant at the end of the summer.
“City. Maybe a job.” Community college was my only choice, my grades too low for a CSU or a UC. When the counselor explained this to me in her office, as we reviewed my transcript together, she was shocked. I’d scored a 1080 on my SAT, close to the national average, but at Galileo, it’d been among the top scores. She wanted me to explain the discrepancy. She hardly knew me. The entire senior class was her caseload, several hundred students.
I shrugged, and she let me slip out of her office.
It wasn’t a surprise I had few options for college. My mother received a letter in the mail saying I was in danger of not graduating because I was on the verge of failing a required course. I had a C average, a 2.1 GPA, but it was a miracle my GPA was even that high. I’d lucked out on some easy classes.
I had two years of Spanish with the same teacher, a jolly guy, a student favorite. He was a dark-skinned Mexican who’d refer to Spain as the motherland. At the end of each semester, he’d have us put all our work into a folder, write our name on the front of it, and below our name, write what grade we thought we deserved. I’d have just a few completed worksheets to show for the semester. I’d take whatever paper was in my bag, blank, scratch, or even work from another class, and I’d stuff the two pockets of the folder with these sheets, being sure to place a Spanish assignment at the front of each stack. I’d write “A” under my name, and he’d always give me a B. I assumed we had an understanding.
I took a journalism class and in two years had only one article in the school paper to show for it: “Graffiti, Art, or Crime.” It made the front page, though apparently from the title, it hadn’t been proofread. The journalism teacher, a guy whose face stayed constantly flushed, would often leave us alone in the class. We’d play Connect Four or dominoes. I’d walk to the store to grab some chips. We’d use the phone in the room to page our friends. We’d watch March Madness on a television locked to a cart. “If anyone comes by,” the teacher would say, “tell them I’m in the computer lab, and I’ll be right back.” It wasn’t a total lie. He was in the lab, working with students on writing the school paper. We were the other students in his journalism class. I was the envy of friends. I got Cs for hanging out in a rec room.
Community college was the only option I could expect. They admitted any idiot who was eighteen. That’s where my brother and sister went.
Caroline sat up against a pillow on the armrest. “You should work with your brother.”
“It’s bad enough I have to live with him.” I handed her the remote and left the room. I didn’t want to be stuck entertaining my brother’s girlfriend. In the kitchen, my mother and brother were arguing, my mom standing tall trying to make herself bigger. Goh Goh had his hairy arms folded.
“It’s none of your business,” my brother said. “I can talk to whoever I want.”
I closed the living room door behind me.
“Listen to how stupid you sound. I’m your mom—everything is my business! First time over and she lies on my couch. And she’s younger than Sai Lo.”
I went into my mother’s room to use the phone. I left the door ajar. I couldn’t resist hearing my big brother put in check.
In the next room, my sister had her door closed, but I could hear her techno music. She had her boyfriend over. He was the guy that turned her Civic into a rice rocket. He didn’t look like a bad boy, though. Quite the opposite. He wore long sleeve shirts and talked like he’d gone to a private school. My mother liked him. It was only months later when Ga Jeh broke up with him that she realized he was a nut job. Wouldn’t stop calling the house. Then he began stalking her. Keyed the Civic. She’d never refer to him by name again, only as the Crazy Guy.
I called Summer. She lived in a suburb south of the city. We’d spoken on the phone for hours but had only met once at a bus stop in front of Wendy’s. She was a white girl with gray eyes. When we kissed I felt her peach fuzz moustache. It was the kind of thing you could overlook; she had a chest that made heads turn. The problem was she had a boyfriend, but in my experience, it was just a matter of time before a guy fucked over his girl. She had a soothing voice, like she could’ve been on the radio.
“You’re not even listening to me,” Summer said. “Stop eavesdropping on them.”
“But it’s getting good.”
The living room door opened. The only sound in the kitchen was that of shoes being put on. Then the front door shut.
“Let me call you back,” I said.
I crossed the kitchen back into the living room. Caroline was gone. I sat in the easy chair, the seat closest to the kitchen.
Two poster-size photos of my mother hung in the living room. One of her drinking a Coke can, tilting her head back, her hair nearly touching the ground. It looked like it could’ve been an ad. The other picture, on the opposite wall, was my mom near a tree, a rare photo of her with a tentative smile, not posing for the camera, not posing for Willie. He’d taken both pictures, and it’d been his idea to blow them up. The only picture hung in the living room that didn’t feature my mother was Jesus.
“This is my house too,” Goh Goh said to my mother.
“Are you the one paying the rent?” she said.
“Are you the one paying rent?” Say what you want about Bah Ba, but he wasn’t a deadbeat dad.
Goh Goh stormed off to our room, his head lowered as if he was preparing to ram it. My mother followed behind waving her arms and shouting.
I closed the door and called Summer back. I heard what sounded like a scuffle in the hallway. “My moms must be smacking my brother pretty good,” I told Summer.
“Shouldn’t you check on them?” she said.
There was a thud, then a shriek.
“I gotta go.” I dropped the phone and opened the door. My mother was on the floor holding her head, her face wincing in pain. My brother loomed over her.
“I told you, I’m too old for that shit.”
Leaning against the edge of the doorway for support, my mom rose. Goh Goh stepped toward her, his fists two rocks.
I leapt at him, tackling him onto my bed.
He pushed me aside. I pulled his shirt to drag him back onto the bed, but he shook me off. He walked past our mother and straight out of the house.
Ga Jeh and her boyfriend came out into the hallway, and we took my mother into her room, laying her down on her bed. “Just like his father,” she screamed. Her body started twitching, so we had to hold her down. She kept yelling, words not sentences, fragments. I couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. She wasn’t shouting to us but to God.
“Mom,” my sister said, “it’s Cindy. Mommy?” She stroked our mother’s hand, but my mom only wiggled her head. Her shouts had calmed to mutters, but her eyes remained elsewhere.
“Just give her some space,” the boyfriend said. He said it with the authority of a doctor.
“Where’s Goh Goh?” Ga Jeh asked.
“I’ll go outside to talk to him,” I said.
“What are you going to say?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s probably not a good idea for him to come back,” the Crazy Guy said.
Goh Goh was at the bus stop puffing on a cigarette, a hand in his pocket, shivering. It was chilly. He only had on a T-shirt.
“What the fuck do you want?” he said.
“You can’t come back tonight.”
“Whatever.” He chuckled.
“I’m serious,” I said. “Mom can’t see you. Stay at a friend’s or something.” I tried to sound like an adult, but I think I came off more like a whining little brother. I didn’t wait for Goh Goh’s response.
I closed the front door behind me, sliding the top chain lock. The screws of the bottom lock’s mount had loosened and fallen off. Mom was still muttering to herself. Ga Jeh and the boyfriend sat with her.
“How’d it go?” Ga Jeh asked.
“We’ll see.”
I lay on my bed. On the ceiling was a slight crack. This is where water would leak. Upstairs was a Chinese family. Sometimes the grandma would leave the water on in the kitchen and fall asleep. Water would drip, closer to my bed than my brother’s. I’d grab a bucket and have my mom call maintenance. The grandma would apologize, then do the same thing the next month.
Goh Goh was trying to get in. He turned
the key and unlocked the front door. The chain was yanked. My brother began shoving the door, probably with his shoulder. After a few tries, the screws on the mount gave way. The door flung open, the knob punching the wall.
He came into my room, changed into his pajamas, and lay in his bed. I turned over so I was facing the wall. I had a roll of toilet paper next to my pillow. I had allergies. There was also an empty Kleenex box, a makeshift garbage can. When I was a child, I used to pick my nose at night and smear my boogers on the wall. They stuck like spitballs. I’d imagined them as my constellation of stars. One night, Goh Goh snitched to our father, and Bah Ba woke me up and made me wipe down the wall. “If I see this again—” he said. He left the ending to my imagination. The toilet paper and garbage can were my mother’s solution.
It was clear what had to be done: my brother had to go. I went to the bathroom. I needed a place to think. I locked the door and sat on the lid of the toilet. Next to me hanging on the wall was a phone. It was mainly used by my mother. She’d take calls from Willie when she was doing her makeup or getting out of the shower. I picked up the phone and called the only authority my brother would respect.
Half an hour or so later they came. There were two cops, one Asian, one white. After I explained the situation to them, I told my brother someone was at the door for him.
He sat up on his bed. “Who is it?”
“Mr. Lam. Jackson Lam,” one of the cops said from our doorstep. “Please come to the door.”
“What the hell did you do?” my brother said, throwing the covers off.
“Better hurry up,” I said and followed him to the door.
“You got two options,” the Asian cop said, “spend the night in jail or find another place tonight to sleep.”
My brother didn’t argue. Didn’t even shoot me a dirty look. He made a phone call to a friend and packed his stuff. I waited at the front door with the cops. I held the door open as Goh Goh left, his duffle bag slung over his shoulder.
