Fresh Off the Boat Page 2

  Grandpa would bring the whole family out to do business together every day. The youngest daughters were charged with selling the mantou because pretty girls represented the best chance to close. There was a man from Hunan that would come by like clockwork. One day, he lingered and asked to speak to my grandpa. Turned out that he owned the only textile factory in Taipei at the time and he really liked our family. They were there on time, rain or shine, and the mantou were always hot. He respected the family hustle.

  The family that was working for him at the textile factory hadn’t shown up for an entire week. He needed new workers, so he offered to have my grandpa bring over the whole family and get to work. This was one call my grandpa didn’t need the abacus for. As my family likes to tell it, they dropped the mantou on the street and went straight to the factory. They busted ass, learned the trade, and a few years later my grandpa opened his own factory. Eventually, he became one of the first Taiwanese millionaires. They ended up staying in Taiwan about seventeen years, then came to America and opened a furniture store, Better Homes, in northern Virginia. Why leave a country when you’re on top? Whether it was another communist scare or the even greener pastures in America, no one ever gives me a straight answer. (The only thing anyone can agree on is that they still miss the island.)

  WHEN I WASN’T in school, I was at Better Homes, in the office where all the aunts worked. Better Homes was a quintessential eighties mini-mall white box with a square glass front. Built to sell. I spent the first five years of my life handcuffed to a playpen in the middle of this mini-mall furniture-store office. Before I even knew about guns, I was trying to shoot myself.

  Outside the office was the showroom, which is where the action was. I liked it. My mom was the only one of her sisters to go to college, where she trained as an interior designer. She had a big part in laying out the store and I thought she did a pretty good job as I toddled through the aisles. When business was slow, I’d go around and test out the couches, poke the mattresses, and shake hands with customers. I was working. My mom would lose track of me most days so she’d come out to the showroom and shout my name.

  “Eddie! Where are you?”

  “Mom, I’m over here! Come sit in this chair.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Please, relax, sit in this chair.”

  “Eddie, I’m busy, why do you want me to sit in this chair?”

  “Just sit in the chair, Mom! I want to sell you something.”

  “You’re crazy!” she’d say, laughing. “Why do you want to sell me something?”

  “Because I’m a businessman!”

  All day, I saw my dad or my grandpa sit with customers on couches or chairs, and within twenty minutes, cash was exchanging hands and furniture started moving. I wanted to be like them. They got to wear suits, customers loved them, and they didn’t have to work in the white box. Grandpa had a big office separate from the aunts and so did my dad. I figured, if I could sell, I could escape.

  I was too young to be a businessman, but Uncle Tai had a way out for me. One day, I was wandering around the sales floor looking for my dad, when I ran into Uncle Tai.

  “Hey! What are you doing on the floor!”

  Uncle Tai was always yelling at the kids.

  “Looking for my dad.”

  “He’s busy! Go back to the office.”

  “I don’t want to go to the office, it’s boring.”

  Most of the cousins didn’t talk back to Uncle Tai. He was notorious for disciplining kids, but he knew not to touch my brother, Emery, and me. We were Louis Huang’s kids, not his.

  “Hmmm. Do me a favor, then. I need a pack of cigarettes, Marlboro Red.”

  I’d seen people get cigarettes before at the Sunoco next to Better Homes, and thought nothing about it.

  “Cool. Can I get a grape soda, too?”

  “Yeah, if you get me the cigarettes, you can get a grape soda.”

  I was dumb excited. Grape soda was my shit! My favorite part was that you got Grimace lips after drinking a can of it. It was a sunny day outside and it must have been the summer. As soon as I opened the door, DMV* humidity just hit me in the face. I walked the 150 feet to Sunoco, got on my tippy-toes, knocked on the window, and waited for the attendant to get on the microphone.

  Brrr. “Can I help you?”

  I was barely tall enough to talk into the microphone, but I reached up, pressed the button, and just leaned toward it as I spoke.

  “One pack of Marlboro Reds and a grape soda, please!”

  Usually, the attendant would just grab your stuff and put it through the window, but he opened the door and came outside.

  “Who asked you to get them cigarettes?”

  I could tell something was wrong.

  “No one. I like Marlboro Reds.”

  “You don’t like Marlboro Reds. Who told you to get them?”

  “No one.”

  He looked away and thought to himself. After a few seconds, he went back in the Sunoco, grabbed me a grape soda, held my hand, and walked me back to Better Homes. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that the seven-year-old Chinese kid had wandered over from Better Homes and that it was Uncle Tai, the pack-a-day smoker, who sent me. We walked in the main doors of Better Homes hand in hand. I was nervous. I started drinking the soda. I knew I’d done something wrong, but he gave me a grape soda so I was a bit confused. Was it my last meal? Was I being poisoned? I stopped drinking the soda.

  That’s when he found Uncle Tai.

  “You sent this kid to buy you fucking cigarettes!”

  I remembered that word. My parents said it all the time right before someone would start throwing chopsticks.

  “So what? It’s right next door, no big deal!”

  “No big deal? This kid can’t be seven years old and you want him buying cigarettes? The hell is wrong with you!”

  After that, I stayed away from Uncle Tai. My dad never got along with him anyway. He was Grandpa’s only son, but there was always an uneasiness because Pops worked more closely with Grandpa. In a lot of ways, Uncle Tai was Sonny to my father’s Michael. (Still trying to figure out who Fredo was.)

  One day at Better Homes, Grandma was coming to eat with us after work. I was really excited: we were going to this Vietnamese shack down the road. We rarely ate anything besides Chinese, Mexican, and Chesapeake Bay seafood. When we craved it, my mom would take us to Roy Rogers, but Grandpa had high cholesterol, so we tried to keep him away. This Vietnamese place was unstoppable. They did a lot of things well: spring rolls, summer rolls, pork chops, and crab patties.

  From the outside, it looked like a crane literally had picked up this wooden shack from Hanoi and dropped it into the DMV. The front door was hanging by one hinge and the wood was weathered and cracking. As soon as you opened the door, you got hit by the smell of caramelized meat sizzling on the grill. Even at seven years old, I was obsessed with Vietnamese pork chops and quail. The combination of white meat, sugar, and fish sauce on the grill gave me the screw face every time. It was just fuckin’ mean. Good food makes me want to hit a punching bag like, Dat’s right motherfucker. You done did it there.

  I liked this place because, even if I couldn’t exactly describe it at the time, they clearly brined their meat. It was juicy, bursting, and flavorful, without being overly salty.

  The temperature of the grill is also important. Some people think you should barbecue slow and low on a grill. I disagree. If you’re going to do slow and low, do it with indirect heat in a smoker. The only time I like a grill is for high heat searing with brined meat: half-inch pork chop, get a nice seared crust, three minutes on each side, and serve it ready to burst. As soon as your fork touches the meat, it just gives.

  Not only did this place have amazing pork chops, but they did quail, which most restaurants don’t bother with anymore. It’s not easy to do. Quail is a small, tender cut of meat and if not done right, it can get dry and sinewy very quickly. There’s also a slight gam
iness, but that’s what I really loved about it. That, and picking the meat out of the bone crevices. Their quail had a very light marinade; they let the meat speak. Of course, there was lemongrass, sugar, and fish sauce, but little else. Maybe some garlic, but not enough to overpower anything. The flavor really came from the sugar caramelizing on the grill, the hint of lemongrass, and the essence of the fish sauce. I wish I could remember the name of the joint. Best Vietnamese I ever had.

  My brothers liked the place, too. I have two brothers: Evan and Emery. Emery was born three years, six days after I was and Evan was born two years and seven months after Emery. Until the age of eight or nine, I really saw my brothers as having a single purpose: ordering things I’d like to try but didn’t want to order for my main dish. They hated me at dinnertime. I’d tell them what to order, eat their food before I ate mine, and if I liked theirs better, I’d try to trade. My mom was the one who always complained.

  “You are always eating Evan’s food! Eat your own, Eddie.”

  “Yeah, he eats mine, too, Mom!”

  “I know, Emery, everyone can see he’s eating everyone else’s food! His knees look like grapefruits.”

  “Whatever! You are cheap and don’t order enough food, so I have to eat everyone else’s.”

  My brothers both developed techniques to prevent me from bumming off their plates. Emery would poke me when I was trying to eat, or he would touch all his food with his hands so that I wouldn’t want to eat it anymore. Evan, on the other hand, was a fucking momma’s boy. He’d cry to my mom.

  “Mooommm, this is my favorite food and Eddie keeps eating it!”

  “Eddie! Stop eating his food, pi par tofu is his favorite!”

  It worked every time. This asshole had so many favorites we lost track: pi par tofu, radish cake at dim sum, Yan Yan chocolate sticks. He was a genius and a snitch. But we still got him back.

  One time my mom bought us Nickelodeon Gack and then left us alone for five hours. Bad idea. Gack was this nasty, goopy, dense, sticky green slime that had a consistency like warm Laffy Taffy. Emery and I would put little pieces of it in the carpet just to see if we could get it out, but we were left with polka-dot green carpet. After realizing the power of Gack, we decided to fuck Evan up. We wrestled him to the ground and put all the Gack in his hair. He started crying hysterically trying to get it out and pulled out mad hair in the process. This was before cellphones, so he couldn’t call my mom. He thought he was going to die. It was great. But Mom did eventually come home.

  “WHAT ARE YOU BOYS DOING?”

  “Mom, they said they were going to ‘fuck me up’!”

  “No, we didn’t, he fucked himself up.”

  “No one is fucking anyone! Who taught you to fuck people up? Did you put all this Gack in his hair?”

  “YES, they did it, Mom!”

  Emery and I were loving it. We knew we were going to get our asses kicked, but watching the snitch cry was the best. And as long as Evan had a headful of Gack, we knew Mom would be preoccupied.

  We weren’t happy for long.

  Mom poked around at the Gack for a few minutes, went to the kitchen, and came back with a bottle of Heinz white vinegar. She took Evan to a bathtub and poured the vinegar over his head. Instantly the Gack started to bubble and dissolve.

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Run.”

  Without even waiting for my mom, Emery and I took off up the stairs to his room. We always hid in his room. Even though I was the oldest, we liked hanging in Emery’s room best. His room had more light, action figures, and goofy patterned furniture. We drew our master plans to escape on his desk, made forts on the floor, and went out on the roof through his window.

  In those days, we were all about getting away. My parents got married young, after knowing each other for only three months and Mom had me when she was twenty. You know the deal. Mom likes to say we grew up together. When she had problems with Dad, we’d ride around in the car and she’d tell me all about it, even though I wanted nothing to do with it. I was seven; how was I supposed to play Dr. Phil?

  “We’re running away, Eddie!”

  “To where, Mom?”

  “Away from your dad! He’s crazy.”

  “You always say that and we always go back home.”

  “This time is different. I’m not going back anymore.”

  “Emery and Evan are still there.”

  “Shut up!”

  She knew she was going back.

  My dad was a tough dude. Didn’t waste a word. He was firm, smart, and pretty damn funny, too. The worst part for my mom was that when she wilded and tried to make fun of my dad, he had all the jokes. She was from the more suburban and sheltered part of Taipei so he called her shambala (country bumpkin) or a fan tong (rice bucket). He was a hilarious dick.

  When they fought, we’d all lock ourselves in Emery’s room. Evan would get scared, so we’d make forts and read comics. My mom only ever bought us three comics (Uncanny X-Men #1, Punisher, and X-Factor) so we just took turns reading them over and over. From those three comics we created our own characters, gave them special abilities, and then played out scenes from the worlds we created ourselves. The Punisher was my favorite, a bad dude with good intentions. Any means necessary to do the right thing. I liked that blurring of good and evil. At an early age I realized, like Black Star said, “Things ain’t always what they may seem.”

  When I was only five, my mom got in a fight with my dad at dinner.

  “You told me you’d take me to the mall!” she yelled at him. “You promised! You always break your promise!”

  “I’m too fucking tired, OK! It’s six o’clock. I don’t want to go on the Beltway and fight traffic.”

  “Loser! You’re a loser! Never keep a promise!”

  Then he flipped the table. Food went flying everywhere. Plates broke. That’s when Mom went Connie Corleone.

  “Yeah, break all the plates! We have tons of money, just break the plates!” Dad screamed.

  As Mom started kicking plates and Dad walked away, I picked up a pair of chopsticks. Held the shits tight.

  “Mom …”

  “What!?”

  I showed her the chopsticks.

  “I’ll go fight traffic with you, Mom.”

  To this day, that’s her favorite story. I was always ready.

  SHORTLY AFTER THAT birthday dinner at Yi Ping Xiao Guan, my grandfather passed away. We knew it was a matter of time, but you’re still never ready. My parents loaded us up in the car and we all had to wear suits. No one said a word. The limousines met at Grandma’s house on a cold fall day. Gray skies, no breeze, just kind of frozen. It wasn’t the cancer that killed Grandpa. He ended it in the basement. The illness was terminal; the pain was too much. My mother told me what happened, but none of the other cousins knew. I don’t know why she told me, but there’s no reason not to. I dealt with it. Quietly. And didn’t speak a word of it to anyone, not even my brothers. I had a feeling my family would never be the same without Grandpa at the top. I remember when my grandma died years later, everyone was hysterical, crying, loudly mourning. With Grandpa, it was silence. I can’t say why; maybe it had to do with the suicide. Or perhaps we knew he didn’t want anyone to cry for him. He never really needed our sympathy. Or maybe everyone was worried about themselves. Mind on the money.

  What happened after is “adult business.” Suffice to say, primogeniture was alive and well in 1980s Chinese families. My father decided not to work for Uncle Tai managing the furniture store after Grandpa passed. My dad had loved Grandpa and he always says that Grandpa was his best friend. But Dad was a grown-ass man; he never would have taken orders from anybody but my grandpa. So when my grandpa passed, he went solo. Mom loved her family, but she understood why my dad struck out on his own. My dad opened up his own store in the Fair Oaks Mall. He became the first Thomasville furniture dealer in Virginia.

  Coming over as a broke Taiwanese immigrant, he was really proud of himself and I was, too.
He somehow saved up enough to get the shop going, but things went south quick. Within two years, the store folded and my dad left home. My parents were constantly fighting, because we had lost everything and the court froze our bank account. For a while, it looked like my parents might even get separated. It was one of the worst times in my life. Even as a seven-year-old, I knew exactly what was going on.

  The winter of 1989 was the worst. My father decided to take a new chance to make it happen for himself in America. He left the DMV and went down south to Orlando with his friend Lao Zhou, where he got a job as a line cook at Steak ’n Ale and L&N Seafood. He wasn’t really trying to kick off a career as a line cook. What he wanted to do was get into the restaurant business. He knew some people who would help him get on his feet, and restaurants were going up all over the place in Orlando. Landlords would give you a restaurant with no key money and three months free rent if you’d sign a lease. It was a theme-park and sunshine-fueled boomtown. After working a few weeks as a line cook, taking notes and watching how they set up the operation, my dad signed on his own spot: Atlantic Bay Seafood.

  I couldn’t believe it. One second we had a frozen bank account and no furniture store; the next, my dad had gone down south and he and Lao Zhou had a restaurant. Mom wasn’t convinced by Dad’s reports. She kept us back in Virginia while she went to go visit Dad, to make sure he really was a success. It was Thanksgiving weekend. #4 Aunt moved in to babysit us for the week and all we ate was Domino’s Pizza every single day. For years after that, I didn’t want to see another fucking Domino’s Pizza box ever again. She wouldn’t let us play video games and we weren’t allowed to go outside or stay up past 9 P.M.