by Dickson Lam
“Do you have to work when you go back to Minnesota?” Ga Jeh asked.
“I get back in the morning,” Bah Ba said, “then straight to work.”
“You’ll need some rest,” I said.
“Money.” Bah Ba rubbed his fingertips together.
My mother returned to her seat. “Why don’t you sit here next to Mommy,” she said to me. “Later, I’ll help you crack crab.” She patted the seat between her and Bah Ba.
I shook my head and rubbed my forehead. She always referred to herself as Mommy, so much so that I’d called her that much longer than I should have.
“I can crack my own crab,” I said.
She smiled at Ga Jeh and patted the seat next to her again.
“Don’t even think about it, woman,” Ga Jeh said.
“Bah Ba,” I said, “do you want to get some food?”
Bah Ba pointed at his mouth. Said he had a hard time chewing.
My mother sucked her teeth at me and left the table.
“Leih go Ma sau a,” Bah Ba said. Your mom is crazy.
“I know,” I said and sipped my tea. “I know.”
Ga Jeh nudged my shoulder, getting up from the table.
I followed her to the buffet. A member of the Hawaiian-shirt band crooned a Frank Sinatra song about a love that got away. We passed up the salad bar, the Chinese dishes, and went straight for the seafood. Mounds of crab legs, oysters, and shrimp sat on a bed of ice.
“Total drama queen,” Ga Jeh said. “She needs to get smacked. If she’s going to disrespect him, don’t do it in front of us. I don’t want any part of it.” My sister spoke to our mother everyday on the phone, even though many of these conversations left my sister frustrated enough that she’d have to vent to me.
“Divorce him already,” I said. I used a tong to grab a couple of crab legs and put them on my sister’s plate, then put a bunch on my plate, extra for my father.
A hand gripped my shoulder. “How’s Bah Ba doing?” Goh Goh asked. His hair was slicked back, and he was wearing a suede suit that he’d bought just for this occasion.
“All right, I guess.”
“Watching Mom act around him is so freaking annoying,” Ga Jeh said.
“Mom came back to the apartment,” Goh Goh said, “just so she could lock her door to keep Bah Ba from sleeping in her bed. He asked me, ‘Why does she act like this?’ I’m sick of lying to him.”
“Mom isn’t going to change,” Ga Jeh said. “She’s always talking about the past. Get over it, already.”
“I got to get back to the front,” Goh Goh said, “but we should talk about this later.”
We’d said that before. We each wanted our parents to divorce and had each expressed this to our mother, but she would only say, “I’ll tell him everything. Soon.” Our conversations about our parents never went much farther than discussing our need to discuss.
Two days later, Bah Ba would return to Minnesota, and for the next few months, he’d continue to send money home. I didn’t think much about him. All my energy went to the kids I taught. The gym teacher, who’d already been reprimanded, though not fired, for choking two students, got into another altercation with a pair of students, two brothers, and this time was canned. The younger brother had thrown something at the gym teacher’s head, maybe a chalkboard eraser, and the teacher snapped. Put the student in a headlock. That’s when the older brother jumped on top of the teacher. My goal was to not get fired, to not snap like the gym teacher. I was determined to live stress-free outside of work. Plopped down with my dinner in front of the TV, let my girlfriend win every argument, then slept. It was a recipe for survival.
Bah Ba would call the North Beach apartment, looking for my mother, and each time, my brother covered for our mom, like always. Through these phone calls, some brief, some much longer, Goh Goh and my father grew closer.
Five months after the Red Egg and Ginger Party, our father wrote us an email asking us to explain our mother’s, his wife’s, behavior.
Why? I want to know!
For so many years, I have been working out of state. That’s not what I want. Just imagine how sweet to close to home. But I was forced to part from the family according to some of the bad situations with my work. I felt I was betrayed at that time. I had the chance to come to Minnesota as head dim sum cook to show everybody I was a valued worker. So I thought why not, I could make twice as much for my family. Let them had a better life, as all of you were growing older. All expense in the family were growing too!
For so many years, I am the only one to support the family. Mom takes care of the family while I am not home, so I am glad both are doing our parts to support the family. This is a perfect family, everyone admires.
Gained one thing, but lost one thing!
For the first few years, everything was fine, everything were in the track. But the relationship with Mom changed slowly. At first I did not realize, after several times when I came home, I felt I was up set time after time. I came home with happiness, but I left with sadness. After my restaurant closes, we lost a lot of money for the attempt, we had to pay the debts, but I could not return to SF with empty hands. I tried to work seven days and more hours in order to make more money, still I failed. I sent money back less by less. I wrote if Mom could work to help my burden, to help support the family with me together. All I heard were nothing?!!!
Now, everything is clear, I need to save money when I retire; I need to plan for my future.
Don’t blame me, just compare!
Now I need to say something, as all of you are grown up, judge by yourself whose wrong, whose not, what to do next. Please don’t put hate in your mind, as we are one family.
I confess I did not communicate well with you, many things I don’t want to speak about, focus for the future, that’s not a good idea to talk about the past, after all, past was past!
If you blame me not to communicate well, I want to know how many messages, family news, cards and calls I received from you including Mom for so many years? How many minutes she talked with me when I called home? As a member of the family, why I had to sleep in the sofa when I came home? Why she didn’t talk with me before she bought Honda for Cindy? Why didn’t she tell me about Jackson’s marriage? Why she always talks about the past in Hong Kong? I know I was wrong, but what can I do now? Kill myself to pay back? All I know is working hard, hope all of you have a better life.
Me, member of the family, you, members of the family, try to solve the problems between everybody, let me know any idea, if you have conclusion.
Dad
* * * * * *
I was floored. My dad had personality, a range of emotions he’d been holding back, at least from me. His words in the email, his writing, created a new father for me, a complex man that I wanted to understand. The way he saw it, he was the one who’d been left behind.
He’d handled his responsibilities the way a husband and father should. Yet his wife had pushed him away for years. His children had never recognized the sacrifices he’d made for them. They’d been playing for the wrong team, siding with a mother who’d turned her back on a good man.
None of us responded to our father’s email. We also didn’t write to each other. We acted as if that bomb of an email would defuse itself. We ran from it.
The following week, Bah Ba called home and Goh Goh was tired of running. He finally confessed: Mom had a boyfriend.
My parents would exchange a couple of letters filled with gripes. My mother filed the paperwork for divorce; I paid for the lawyer. I wanted to be the one who freed my parents from their doomed bond.
* * * * * *
chapter 6
Hope You Solve
pattern recognition
I picked up chess in my late twenties. I had thought of chess books as a foreign language, the mystifying notation, but I discove
red some with detailed explanations, grandmasters expounding on strategy and tactics. I got hooked. Before long, I had shelves of chess books. Grandmasters were mentors I could hold in my hand or keep on my shelf.
Some chess books have no words. They’re just pages of puzzles. To solve, you have to find checkmate or a winning combination. Occasionally, the best move is something subtle like retreating a piece. I’ve been advised not to spend too long on each puzzle. If you don’t see the answer after a few minutes, take a guess, check the solution in the back of the book, and go on to the next position. You’re not seeking an answer so much as you are seeking to understand patterns. Tactical themes and motifs repeat. The more puzzles you attempt, the more patterns will emerge. To test your knowledge, after you finish the book, return to the beginning. See if you do better this time around.
I’m a low-ranking chess tournament player, but when I have time, I train by using this method, cycling through positions. Even when I don’t solve as many as I would like, I have faith that the patterns will become ingrained in my memory, so that when I play a live game, the traps I stumble upon won’t be unfamiliar.
visit
The summer after we lost Javon, I met Bah Ba at six in the morning in the lobby of his apartment building in a suburb just east of Minneapolis. The building suffered from peeling paint, and the hallways were dingy.
I took my shoes off as I entered his apartment, placing them on a yellowed newspaper, next to his black sneakers, speckled with flour. Stale smoke hung in the air. We walked through the small kitchen. The plastic dish rack was a faded red, filled with mildew. On the counter was a hair dryer, the same bulky orange one my father had when he lived with us. As a child, I’d use it on my action figures, imagining the hair dryer was a flamethrower that roared in my hand.
Bah Ba cleared the coffee table, sliding the ashtray to the side and picking up the red cups, the empty beer bottles, and a bottle of E&J, nestling them against his chest.
E&J had also been my liquor of choice in high school. I shared a locker with Rob and a few other guys, our designated hangout spot. In the locker, we’d keep a bottle of Coke mixed with Erk and Jerk. The first time I drank from the bottle, I gulped it down like I was in a drinking contest. Afterwards, on a whim, I jumped a flight of stairs. I landed on both feet but lost my balance and fell on my ass.
I toned down the drinking after I went over to a girl’s house drunk. Her parents were away. She had curly hair, was Black and white but looked Mexican. I was seventeen, she was fourteen. It didn’t seem like a big deal. We lay together in bed, my naked body next to hers. She was giving me a hickey on my neck when I knocked out, snoring away my opportunity.
Bah Ba took swigs from two cups before tossing them into the garbage. The beer bottles clinked as they landed. “Choh a.” He motioned for me to sit on the purple couch. It had cigarette holes, and when I sat, I could feel the couch springs. I shifted my weight and leaned on the neatly folded blanket and pillow, presumably meant for me.
He turned on the TV and handed me the remote. The buttons were sticky. I rubbed my fingers. “Leih choh.” I motioned him to sit.
“I have got to work.” He stammered as he pronounced each of those one-syllable words, his eyes blinking. His English was worse than I remembered.
“You have Internet?” I pointed to the computer on the kitchen table, the keyboard submerged under stacks of paper.
“It works, but ignore the woman pictures. Things pop up.” He opened the sliding door and turned on the AC, and it began humming. The smell of cigarette smoke was entrenched. It reminded me of a class at Dewey. Half the students would come in after lunch reeking of weed. The scent would cling to my clothes. Days later, I’d grab my jacket from the closest, and I could still smell the marijuana.
“Come to the restaurant for lunch,” Bah Ba said. “No food here. I forgot to ask Joe take me to grocery.” My father had no car, so Joe would help him run errands. He was Bah Ba’s former neighbor, back when my father had a house. He couldn’t keep up the payments. The name of that town: New Hope.
Bah Ba went in his room to change, and I fell asleep, tired from the red-eye flight. When I awoke an hour later, he was gone. I tried turning on the TV but the remote didn’t work. The batteries were dead.
At lunchtime, there were only three tables occupied at Bah Ba’s restaurant, all single diners. Not a complete hole-in-the-wall—they used linen tablecloth—but the tablecloths were stained. Brightening up the dull white walls was colored paper listing the specials. The waiter sat me at the largest table, a round table with a clear rotating tray.
“Leih houh chih leih goh Bah Ba,” he said.
I used to get that a lot, people saying that I looked like my dad. Less so since I’d shaved my head. We had the same eyes, the same thick lips, the same round head. Once as a teenager, I woke my mother up, and she pulled away from me like she was waking from a nightmare. She’d thought my father had returned.
Bah Ba came out of the kitchen wearing a white apron. “Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Starving,” I said.
He poured me tea out of the metal teapot. “Vivian’s coming too.”
I hadn’t noticed the third plate setting. Vivian was Bah Ba’s goddaughter. What that meant, I wasn’t exactly sure. I didn’t know anything about her, other than she existed. She was the one who’d contacted us when Bah Ba was kept in the hospital overnight. He’d passed out on the street a couple of days after my brother broke the news to him about Willie. Vivian called my brother to explain the situation and that had been the first time I’d heard of her. My dad had his own secrets.
I wondered if “goddaughter” was a Chinese euphemism for “young lover.” That I could handle. It would make him and my mother even. It would also absolve me of any wrongdoing, for the lies I’d told him. I couldn’t fathom a goddaughter in the usual sense, that my father had been playing daddy for someone else’s kid instead of us.
“She used to work here, a waitress,” Bah Ba said. “She came from China for school, by herself. I look out for her.”
“That’s nice of you,” I said.
He looked over my shoulder. It was Vivian. She was in her early twenties, not unattractive. She gave my father a hug and shook my hand. “So happy to meet you,” she said. She wouldn’t stop smiling. I thought something was wrong with her face.
The waiter dropped off a couple of dishes on our table, shrimp dumplings and rice noodle rolls.
“Start eating,” my father said. “I have to get back to kitchen.”
Vivian sat next to me. The rest of our round table was empty, the vacant chairs staring back at us.
“Your Bah Ba was so excited when he heard you were coming,” she said.
“How long have you known him?”
“Oh, a few years now. He thinks he takes care of me, but it’s the other way around. I bring him groceries, make sure he’s OK.”
“Does he always drink in the morning?”
Vivian laughed off my question. “He’s made some mistakes, I know, but he talks about you guys all the time. He’s really a sweet man.” She used her chopsticks to cut a noodle roll in half and placed it on my plate. “Eat before it gets cold. Try the ha gau.” She tapped her chopsticks on the metal rim of the bamboo steamer.
During my weeklong visit, Vivian would bring me out with two of her school friends, a couple. We went to a late-night bowling alley that served cocktails. Another day, we drove out to Great Adventure. I wore a throwback Warriors jersey and got sunburn from waiting in the long lines. Before I left, Vivian gave me a parting gift, a wallet.
She had a fiancée in California, and as far as I could tell, everything between her and my father was on the up and up. They filled a need for each other. She hadn’t seen her parents in years, so my dad became her father figure. For Bah Ba, having a goddaughter meant starting over, forming a new family, a cha
nce to redeem himself with another daughter.
On Bah Ba’s day off, he took me to the Mall of America.
We were on the fourth floor overlooking Camp Snoopy, an amusement park in the center of the mall. Trees and log cabins surrounded the rides. Kids posed for pictures with costumed characters. That was my mother’s sort of thing. She had a framed picture of herself and Pinocchio hung in the hallway of her home. In the photo, she has her arm and leg extended out to the side, as though she’s been waiting her whole life for this moment.
A rollercoaster zipped by with screaming passengers, circling the indoor park. “Do you want to go?” Bah Ba pointed below at the inflated Snoopy, two stories tall, holding up his paw as though he was waiting to be called on.
“Ga Jeh would love this,” I said. “Snoopy’s her favorite.”
Bah Ba’s eyes tracked the roller coaster as it zipped around the track. “I’ve worked thirty years in a restaurant,” he said and began to stare at his palms, as though angry at them. “I’m done. No more.”
“You’re retiring?”
“A father should be with his kids. And now there’s Jordan.”
“Better to be close to your children,” I said.
“I could live with your brother and take care of my grandson. No more drinking. No more smoking. I’m going to be the best grandpa.”
“It would save them money. Babysitters are expensive.” I leaned over the railing. Kids were playing tag below.
Bah Ba tilted his head up to the skylight. “My Bah Ba is gone,” he said. “My Ma too. And my Ga Jeh. I don’t want to die from my family. When my dad got old, we moved him from Hong Kong. Why should he die alone? We must forgive. That’s what Jesus says.”
