by Dickson Lam
After that first report card, transferring to a big-time college was possible. Universities wouldn’t factor my high school grades into admission, an offer to expunge the past.
My brother had quit City, and now he’d quit his job stocking shelves at Toys “R” Us. His new goal: become a millionaire. His path to riches—peddling water filters. Boxes of them sat neatly stacked in our room. The blue gadgets were also installed under our kitchen and bathroom sinks. They stood a foot tall, shaped like a torpedo head.
“Equinox is nothing like a pyramid scheme,” my brother said. He didn’t sound defensive about my accusation. Far from it, he acted like I’d lobbed him an alley-oop, an excuse to yap on about his company, how they made $200 million in revenue, how his friends were raking in six-digits, how I had to get in on the action. Quit college. It wasn’t like I went to a real one anyhow. Quit working at a video store. Make some real dough.
We were in his beat-up Celica, driving back from San Jose, from a seminar starring his company’s founder, Bill Gouldd. The guy had given himself an extra d based on the advice of a spiritual guru who had deemed his name to be “out of balance.”
When this Bill character had appeared on the stage of the auditorium, the crowd went apeshit, hollering and hooting. Gave him a standing ovation before he even said a word. I might’ve been the only one not on their feet. Double D’s face looked meaty, like he could’ve been a baseball catcher. He began pointing at audience members as if he was at a school rally. He wore two Rolexes, one on each wrist.
I tried not to listen too carefully to what the guy was saying, scared he was some sort of hypnotist. “Who believes they deserve to be happier?” he asked the crowd, and these fools shot their hands up with the quickness, practically leapt out of their seats with the enthusiasm of kindergarteners. Double D had them trained, Pavlovian-style. My brother was sitting on the edge of his seat ready for the next dumbass question.
I’d been suckered here, at least that’s what I wanted my brother to think. He’d offered to pick me up from my girlfriend’s apartment if I came with him to the Equinox meeting. She lived in the Tenderloin, overrun with addicts, and that night Goh Goh might’ve thought I was trying to avoid TL’s pissy sidewalks, but that’s not why I took him up on his offer. I wanted to see his operation, wanted him to attempt to recruit me. I was the type to open the door for Jehovah Witnesses. I liked the attention.
“You can be a manager,” Goh Goh said on the way back home.
“Get your friends on board. Everybody needs water.”
“When you start actually getting paid, I’ll think about it.”
My brother had spent weeks working for Equinox but had yet to turn a profit, though he was flying around the country for seminars that charged fees in the hundreds. He subscribed to magazines for the first time: Men’s Journal, Esquire, GQ. When I asked him what was the point if he never bothered to read them, he explained, “It’s not about reading them. It’s about believing you are the kind of guy who would read them.” During the seminar, I heard this attitude summed up in the Equinox expression: “Fake it till you make it.”
My brother had an office, but he had to rent it from the company. Had to pay for the landline too. And to attain the title of manager, he had to fork over five grand. In return, he received a cut of the commissions earned by his recruits, kind of like a pimp. But in that sense, Goh Goh, who had himself been recruited, was also a hoe. The one at the top pimping them all was Double D.
Besides a smart aleck remark now and then, I didn’t push my pyramid scheme theory on my brother. I told my sister, though. We’d scoff at our brother in private, but we were reluctant to discourage him. Our asshole brother was now Mr. Enthusiastic. He dressed in suits and ties, carried around a leather clipboard, smiling all the damn time, even when he was talking about the poisons in tap water. How could I be mad at my brother for smiling? The dude believed he was on the brink of a fortune. He promised he’d buy our mom her own house. That kind of positivity couldn’t be all bad.
Boxes of products began to pile up in the hallway. Not just water filters, but other Equinox goodies including various bottles of pills, the labels of which all featured an image of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Some pills were for sleeping. Others were diet pills. Then there were a few that seemed to have the same purpose: “Stress,” “Balance,” “Serenity.” One box was filled with bottles of an herbal tonic, and the picture on the bottle was a goofy-looking dragon, the first cross-eyed one I’d ever seen. The name of the tonic, printed in chop-suey font: Emperor’s Chi. I was surprised they didn’t slap on the label some Chinese guy in a rice hat for the full Oriental effect.
Goh Goh had someone lined up to buy a bulk of these products, perhaps one of his recruits, but when the woman balked at the purchase, and he was unable to dump the products on anyone else, my brother finally accepted defeat and put down the clipboard. He tried to sleep away the ensuing months. Moped around in his pj’s twenty-four seven.
I couldn’t stop clowning my brother about his failure. The junk in the hallway made it impossible to forget. My mom was the only one to use anything from the boxes. She’d drink the Emperor’s Chi. Said we all should. She and my brother had in their own way patched things up, which is to say they (we) pretended like nothing had ever happened between them, that I had not called the cops on my brother for punching my mother. I saw the changes, though, at least in my mother. She didn’t put her hands on Goh Goh anymore, not even for a hug.
The only time I remember Goh Goh leaving the house during that time was for me. I’d started taking kung fu classes way out in the avenues, not far from Ocean Beach, and since my brother wasn’t doing shit, my mom would make him pick me up at night.
Martial arts wasn’t something I would’ve done in high school. Neither was track, but my first semester at City, I tried out for it. Only lasted a few practices. The stair workouts on the bleachers kicked my ass. The sports I did play in high school were team sports, park and rec basketball teams. I was a benchwarmer, but I didn’t care. It was good to be part of a winning team. Maybe that’s why I’d never tried individual sports—I couldn’t hide.
Kung fu was part of the makeover I was giving myself. I’d set goals: a black belt and a bachelor degree, things nobody in my immediate family had. I’d seen Bruce Lee movies, but that never made me want to learn kung fu. Probably the opposite. I didn’t want to fit someone’s stereotype.
It took the Wu-Tang Clan to turn me on to kung fu. The rap crew was from Staten Island but claimed Shaolin. I didn’t get the metaphor, but it sounded like some deep shit. They’d sample kung fu flicks, Chinese guys getting philosophical: “The game of chess is like a sword fight. You must think first before you move.” I’d dwell on these sampled lines like they were proverbs from my forefathers. I didn’t consider that the original lines had been dubbed over in English by voice actors, most likely white guys, channeling their inner Confucius.
The sifu of my kung fu school didn’t teach beginners, only his most trusted pupils. I’d have to put in years of training to be able to learn directly from him or fork over a hundred bucks for one of his special seminars. Everybody had a hustle.
Goh Goh would wait for me outside the kung fu studio with the Celica running. I’d jump in the car, slamming the door behind me. “Roll down the window,” he’d say. “You stink.” In the cup holder of his car, there’d be a plastic bottle filled with cigarette butts floating in dark liquid, a mixture of water and leftover coffee, his ashtray.
We’d head through the Presidio, a former military base that had been converted into a huge park. Empty roads, winding and dark. Goh Goh would put on his high beams. No oncoming cars, only trees lit up in front of us, a white light that tempted us to believe everything could be made visible.
boss
The crumbling of my brother’s water filter empire coincided with my father opening up his own restaurant. Bah Ba had co
nvinced his youngest brother to partner with him. All his brothers were businessmen, groomed by their father, my Yeh Yeh. One brother owned a motel in Montreal, one a restaurant in Toronto, another had run Yeh Yeh’s shops in Hong Kong.
If Bah Ba hadn’t succeeded like his brothers, he also hadn’t succeeded like his sisters. Though they were told the family business could not be theirs—daughters were temporary Lams who’d one day marry into another family—Bah Ba’s sisters were encouraged to pursue studies abroad. One in London, the others in Canada. My father, the oldest son of ten siblings, a year shy of fifty, had no college degree and owned no business, the only son who wasn’t his own boss.
I learned about Bah Ba’s siblings through constructing a family tree, with the help of my mother, an assignment for a cultural anthropology course. I used a pencil to draw circles and triangles, women and men who shared my blood, a ruler to make lines that connected one generation to the next.
Bah Ba bragged to my mom that “two thousand people” had applied for employment at his buffet-style restaurant, that a line of applicants stretched from his office to the parking lot, men and women awaiting my father’s word.
To lure customers to his grand opening, Bah Ba devised a raffle. Every customer would automatically be entered. My father didn’t play it safe with the prize. He gave away a brand new car, a Camry. Loyalty could be bought.
boys
My father’s restaurant did not arrive as good news. It’d be awhile before he’d turn a profit. No more checks home. My mom circled job listings in the Chinese newspaper, one for a jewelry store in Chinatown, but Willie talked her out of it, worried she’d get harassed coming home at night. So with my sister living on her own, and my brother locking himself in his room, rent fell on me.
I had a new job, my first full-time gig. I bused tables at a fancy restaurant on the top floor of the downtown Nordstrom. My uniform was a pinstripe shirt, black khakis, a black apron, and a clip-on bowtie. My girlfriend hooked me up with the job. M worked at the same Nordstrom, in a department specializing in clothes for middle-age women. M and my sister were alike in that they were both naturals when it came to customer service. I didn’t see how you could get so happy making small talk with strangers. Being a buser suited me. I’d pour customers water, place a plate of focaccia bread on their table, clean up after they were gone, and besides saying “You’re welcome,” I never had to say shit. Trying to connect with diners, that was the waiter’s job. Busers were to remain silent. We were the help. It was my kind of job.
I was nineteen at the time, M was twenty-two and she also had a three-year-old daughter, A. We’d sleep together with her daughter between us. I’d hold A’s hand as we trucked up the hill to their apartment. I’d play a game with her where I’d squat and walk around pretending my hands were tied behind my back, and only she could liberate me. A would wave her hand and proclaim, “You’re free!” I’d rise in disbelief that my shackles had vanished. I’d pick her up, dig my face in her belly, and blow a raspberry.
When I first began talking to M, she had a boyfriend, but it was obvious their relationship was falling apart. If it wasn’t, the weak game I spit at her wouldn’t have worked, some version of what’s-a-girl-like-you-doing-in-a-place-like-this. We were at Mickey D’s. M had high cheekbones, and I threw in that she looked like Spinderella from Salt-n-Pepa. She wrote down her number but told me she had a boyfriend. I found out what kind of guy he was weeks later when she asked me, “If a boyfriend forces himself on his girlfriend, is that still rape?”
M had moved to Cali from DC looking for a new start. She left behind A’s father who was now in prison, another case of Good Girl Falls for Bad Boy. M was a square bear. Didn’t drink or smoke. Wouldn’t even cuss. I liked that she was a grown woman. She wore business suits and had her own place, my sugar mamma. Paid for our meals. Broke me off when she cashed her checks. But what made me stay was how she made me feel. She’d tell me about her absent father, past asshole exes, how her grandfather had molested her. When I’d hear about the failings of men—this seemed an inescapable part of life—somehow I’d feel responsible, as if I shared in the blame, as if these men were me. By listening to M and comforting her, it was like I had found a way to redeem myself.
I began to consider the possibility that I might raise A as my own daughter, if things kept going the way they were. I was getting used to the provider role within my family. On top of the buser job, I was also a tutor at City. I was working fifty, sometimes sixty hours a week to pay the rent, also giving my mom money for our groceries. I was the man of the house, but I wasn’t good at playing daddy. I’d weasel out of doing anything with A that a dad might do. Never took her to the park or pushed her on a swing. Wouldn’t even take her to the movies. I was full of excuses: I had a paper to write. I was behind in my readings. My homie’s going through a bad breakup. Next week.
I’d stall until A went back to DC. She’d stay there for months at a time, cared for by M’s mom, some arrangement they had. M would get on me about my lack of interest in doing anything public with her daughter. Maybe it had to do with her skin color.
A was several shades lighter than M, and when people would see the three of us together, some would think, at least at first glance, that A might be my daughter. Women would smile at me as if I’d done something noble for racial harmony. Or maybe it was the rare sight of a teenage dad handling his business. The thought of this made me feel like a fraud. I wasn’t up for fatherhood. My biggest fear in life was turning out like my old man, a cold-hearted and unloved father. The only sure way to avoid that—don’t become a dad.
Yet, I kept getting M pregnant. Abortion. Miscarriage. Abortion.
She told me about the first abortion at Wendy’s. I was in the middle of eating a cheeseburger. “I wasn’t planning on telling you,” she said, “but now that it’s done, I thought you should know.”
I put the burger down. I had ketchup on my fingers. We were sitting in a nook, empty except for us. “You don’t keep something like that secret.”
“That’s why I’m telling you.”
“I should’ve had a say.”
“I knew what you would’ve said.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I was trying to be discreet.”
“Then you should’ve kept it to yourself.”
The next time she did. I visited her in the ER. She made up some excuse for why she was there. I wouldn’t discover for another year that she’d had a miscarriage. I acted mad that she’d hidden another pregnancy, but truth be told, I was relieved I’d dodged another bullet.
The third pregnancy, she was upfront, asked me what I wanted to do. I was getting As at City, setting myself up to transfer to a university. I wasn’t trying to tie myself down. Plus, what the hell did I
know about commitment? I was cheating on M every chance I got.
On the weekends, me and Rob—himself a recent father—would roam the malls for girls. My favorite way to get numbers was to approach a girl at work. They were required to talk to you. Hooking up with other women always sounded better than spending time with M. All she’d want to talk about was what should happen with our unborn child.
“Whatever you decide,” I’d say, “I’ll support you.” It was another way of saying, “You figure it out.”
Sometimes, I’d put the phone down while she was talking. When I’d come back to the phone she’d still be yapping to herself. Then finally, I’d have a call on the other line. I’d tell M I had to go, it was for my mom, but it was really another chick, a girl who sang me love songs.
M entered her second trimester, still undecided.
On a visit to DC to get A, M had the abortion. I wasn’t sure why there instead of here. Maybe she knew having it done here was doubling down on the hurt. I’d worm my way out of taking her to the clinic.
We would manage to stay together for another year until
we broke up a month after I received my acceptance letter from UC Berkeley.
The night of the operation, M called me and told me we would’ve had twins, a pair of boys.
If M had kept the twins, they would’ve been two years old when I graduated Berkeley. I might’ve carried them across the stage as I received my diploma.
They would’ve been six when I became a founding teacher at June Jordan School for Equity.
They would’ve been eight when I visited my father in Minnesota after Javon’s death. I might’ve brought them to see Bah Ba, their grandfather. This is the way I’d remember the twins, each year another birthday lost.
lost generation
The act that Mao is perhaps most vilified for is the Cultural Revolution. If we were to only examine his life up until the first few years of his rule, when Mao was in his fifties, most scholars would accept Mao as a savior of China. He unified a nation that had been engulfed in a civil war. He fended off the invasion of the Japanese by combining forces with his rivals, the Nationalists. His early reforms transformed China from a semi-feudal society to a modern nation, a country to be reckoned with, practically overnight. But characters in history are judged by the totality of their deeds.
Mao launched the Cultural Revolution to target the very party that he’d helped birth. He’d been a founding delegate at the first official meeting of the Chinese Communist Party. Now, at seventy-two, he was no longer the top dog, forced to relinquish his position as the chairman of the country, but he wasn’t ready to pass on his revolutionary torch. Not to these dudes. “These days,” Mao said, “a Party branch secretary can be bribed with a few packs of cigarettes.” Party officials had taken the place of landlords as the country’s new ruling class, but Mao stopped short of calling for a complete overthrow of the Party. Ninety-five percent of cadres, he said, could be redeemed. This revolution post-revolution was not going to be based on land or economics, but it would be a war of ideas, a cultural revolution that Mao said would “touch men’s very souls.” To wage this new revolution, he pinned his hopes on the youth.
