Fresh Off the Boat Page 6

  Translation: “Son of a bitch.”

  ANY TIME WE had trouble with chilis or hot sauce, they made fun of my mom’s side of the family for being from Shandong. Whenever we lost our tempers, it was attributed to Hunan. I was proud to be a Hunan Ren because my grandfather is one of the most honorable people I’ve ever known. I met him only once, as a month-old baby, but walked by his portrait and a scroll with his name on it every day on my way to my bedroom. That’s what I love about Chinese homes: you’re never allowed to forget where you came from. My grandfather had a highly respected position with the Internal Ministry involved with distributing land and resources when Chiang first installed his government in Taiwan, but he saw a lot of corruption. These days, many Wai Sheng Ren hold Chiang up high. My mom says that when Chiang died she cried for days, and that for the Chinese people of Taiwan it was like the Kennedy assassination. My dad’s family was very liberal and saw another side. In his mid-thirties, with a promising political career ahead of him, my grandfather retired. He didn’t agree with what was being done to the Taiwanese natives and, with corruption rampant, he felt isolated in the government. When he resigned, of course, it left the whole family broke. There aren’t pensions in developing countries and my grandmother had a gambling problem, so what money they did have was lost over mah-jongg. This is probably the one time I’ll ask you not to laugh at the fact that my family is a walking stereotype.

  They all struggled after he retired, but it was worth it to maintain our family honor. Grandma might have liked the tiles a little too much, but she held it down, too. For a woman that came from royalty in Hunan, she stuck it out for my grandfather and took full advantage of the fact that her feet were unbound, courtesy of her foreign-educated brother. From a young age, that single event, my grandmother’s unbinding, taught me to appreciate education and challenge conventions—just because everyone else is doing it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t flip it over, look around, poke at its flaws, and see it for what it is yourself. I mean, damn, if my great-uncle wasn’t a curious motherfucker, my grandma wouldn’t have had feet.

  My father was the youngest of the family and although he respected the family, he hated being broke. His older brothers had seen money, had been there when Grandpa was in the government, and understood the transition. Pops, on the other hand, was born into a small-ass house on Yong Kang Jie right by the original Din Tai Fung, which used to sell oil. He didn’t pay attention in school, had horrible grades, and ran his neighborhood with one of the largest Taiwanese gangs. No one in his neighborhood fucked with him. I remember when I was thirteen, one Christmas Uncle Xiao Hei came to the crib and brought a gift.

  “Soosin, it’s been too long.”

  “I know, and you’re still dark as hell.”

  Xiao Hei means “Little Black.” My dad used to tell us stories about running his crew in Taiwan, but we never understood the full extent until Uncle Xiao Hei came to America. This dude had an ill scar on his face and was as dark as a Samoan. He most likely had to run the streets because Taiwanese look down on people with dark skin. I asked Uncle Xiao Hei how he knew my dad and he turned to me with a crooked smile: “Your dad? I carried his knife.”

  Uncle Xiao Hei finished his drink and got up to go to his car. Five minutes later, he came back with a big black bag that looked like a guitar case. He put it on the table for my pops and announced, “Merry Christmas.” My dad tried to hide it, but I could see his eyes widen into a smile. He sent Evan and my mom into the next room, but Emery and I stayed. When Evan and my mom were gone, he closed the door and walked back to the table, rubbing his hands. He unzipped the bag and flipped it open and pow: an all-black gun, the biggest one I’d ever seen. Dad used to fuck around while we were watching cartoons and just cock the shit on Emery and me.

  “Click, clack, GOT YOU!”

  Pops was fucking crazy. He never did it when his white friends were around, but when his old homies from Taiwan came, they were all checking out each other’s ratchets and knives. Just like my friends collected basketball cards, these dudes were laying out .45 semiautos, twelve-gauge double-barrel shotguns, and other guns, showing them off, comparing them.

  WHEN I WAS twelve, we went back to Taiwan because my pops wanted the family to ke-tou (kneel, bow, and pay respects—kowtow in English) to my grandpa’s ashes.

  My most distinct memory is running around Taipei looking for bootleg video games and Jordan 8s—the Aqua 8s with cross-over Velcro. Taiwan was going nuts for the joints. My dad and I walked around for a minute trying to find a pair for cheap and ended up on Yong Kang Jie. The streets of Taipei were nothing like central Florida; they were like walking into the future and into the distant past and into a dream. One moment, we were walking down dark, dingy alleyways looking at bootleg merchandise and all of a sudden, we were at the alley’s end, where there was only a canopy of laundry hanging, cloth blankets, one food cart, and a big bright light from a single streetlamp. Shining under the streetlamp was an old man and his cart of noodles. Just one stainless steel metal cart that you could tell was well worn but still shining. There was a stack of colorful melamine bowls in the front left corner. That’s the style in East Asian street food, melamine bowls and chopsticks.

  We walked up to the cart and I didn’t say a word. I knew where we were. My dad had told me about this man for years. Every few months or so at home, Pops had to have Taiwanese ’Mian. Not the Dan-Dan Mian you get at Szechuan restaurants or in Fuchsia Dunlop’s book, but Taiwanese Dan-Dan. The trademark of ours is the use of clear pork bone stock, sesame paste, and crushed peanuts on top. You can add chili oil if you want, but I take it clean because when done right, you taste the essence of pork and the bitterness of sesame paste; the texture is somewhere between soup and ragout. Creamy, smooth, and still soupy. A little za cai (pickled radish) on top, chopped scallions, and you’re done. I realized that day, it’s the simple things in life. It’s not about a twelve-course tasting of unfamiliar ingredients or mass-produced water-added rib-chicken genetically modified monstrosity of meat that makes me feel alive. It’s getting a bowl of food that doesn’t have an agenda. The ingredients are the ingredients because they work and nothing more. These noodles were transcendent not because he used the best produce or protein or because it was locally sourced, but because he worked his dish. You can’t buy a championship.

  Did this old man invent Dan-Dan Mian? No. But did he perfect it with techniques and standards never before seen? Absolutely. He took a dish people were making in homes, made it better than anyone else, put it on front street, and established a standard. That’s professional cooking. To take something that already speaks to us, do it at the highest level, and force everyone else to step up, too. Food at its best uplifts the whole community, makes everyone rise to its standard. That’s what that Dan-Dan Mian did. If I had the honor of cooking my father’s last meal, I wouldn’t think twice. Dan-Dan Mian with a bullet, no question.

  My pops stood in front of the cart waiting for the old man to look up. He hadn’t been back in that spot in front of the cart for a decade, the last time he took me to Taiwan. The old man rose and looked straight at my dad, with no surprise, no shock, just acknowledgment. Not even a word, he just grunted.

  “Hggghhh.”

  “Hai hao ma?”

  “Hai hao.”

  That was it. How are you? Good. Pops had only told me about the noodles and the old man, but I had no idea they were that close. It was as if they were each carrying something for the other. A secret, a burden, a past, but I knew better than to ask. Within minutes, two bowls of noodles appeared for us. Huge melamine bowls with khaki noodles, steaming soup, and a gremolata-like mixture of crushed peanuts, pickled radish, and chopped scallions. Of course, my pops put chili oil in it immediately, but I wanted to taste the broth: intense, deep, and mind-numbing. It was one of those bites that make you think maybe, just maybe, your taste buds carry a cognitive key that can open something in your mind. Like the first time I heard Lauryn Hill’s voice
scratch over “Killing Me Softly,” I felt that I just had a mental breakthrough via sound; there has to be something like that with taste. It was then and there that I realized, you can tell a story without words, just soup.

  Pops told me that the old man’s noodles were so popular that he would sell them until he ran out of bowls. If people wanted noodles after he ran out, they’d have to either wash the bowls or bring a bowl of their own, and they did. After a few minutes the old man asked my pops:

  “Lao Da ma?”

  “Dui.”

  The old man assumed I was the oldest of my dad’s kids and he was right. He was flattered to understand that this visit was a rite of passage. There was silence again and then the old man turned and spoke to me in Chinese.

  “Your pops used to protect me from the other punks in this neighborhood. Every day. This was his neighborhood.”

  “But you had me that one day!”

  “Ha, ha, ahhh, we’re even.”

  One day, apparently my dad got caught wide open on the street without Uncle Xiao Hei, his other homies, or a weapon. People from a rival gang chased him and he had to come through that alley with the quickness. Of course, the first thing out of the alleyway is the noodle cart. Twenty-five years ago, the noodle man was young, too, like Taipei’s own Artie Bucco. So, the old man sees my pops on the run and reaches into his cart for his cleaver. Pops grabs another one of his knives and they have it out on the street right there, slashing away with cleavers and cooking knives until the other gang runs away. I looked up at my dad after the old man finished the story, watched him empty the last bit of broth from that bowl of Dan-Dan Mian, the rough fingers of one hand still delicately clutching his chopsticks. My pops was a gangster. And suddenly, shockingly, I was proud to be who I was.

  THOSE FIRST FEW years in Orlando, I hated being Chinese. All the fucking kids I saw at Chinese school were herbs and I didn’t fit what their parents thought a Chinese kid my age should be. I called everyone’s parents “Auntie” and “Uncle,” said “Please” and “Thank you,” but I threw my tennis racket when I was pissed, took hard fouls playing ball, and if I didn’t study, I’d copy other people’s homework. I knew I wasn’t built like them.

  After I went back to my dad’s neighborhood, everything started to make a little bit of sense. The whole neighborhood loved him. He hadn’t been back for twelve years and it was like he never left. He wasn’t just some old fucker kicking my ass, he was a neighborhood legend trying to make me a man, just like him. For the first time, I saw him and Taiwan as part of me. It wasn’t a country full of kids with salad bowl haircuts and TI-82s. There were bosses in stretch Benzes, bad bitches selling betel nut, and master chefs making Dan-Dan Mian. It was a country with characters, characters that I related to and found interesting. I wanted to know more about Taiwan and what it meant to be Taiwanese. Why did we come to this country where I can’t even be on ESPN, if we could have stayed in Taiwan and been anyone we wanted to be? I didn’t understand! My parents told me it was for money and, yes, the houses, the neighborhoods, and the cars were nicer in America, but it didn’t matter to me. They didn’t have to grow up in America. I did.

  My dad sat me down and told me that even though it seemed like he was respected growing up in Taiwan and had what he wanted, coming to America was necessary. To him and his generation, this was the land of opportunity, free love, and the Bee Gees.† I’ll never forget the talk he gave Emery, Evan, and me that year. I was barely twelve years old at the time, when he sat us down for breakfast.

  “Boys, I know you like Taiwan, but America is beautiful. You know what the best part is?”

  “Yeah, we know … land of opportunity, make money, blah, blah, blah.”

  “No. Your mom doesn’t want me to talk about this, but one day you will understand. In America, you can do anything you want. I couldn’t grow my hair long in Taiwan; in America, no problem! I had a band in America, we’re free in America!”

  “Man, you ran around shanking people with Uncle Xiao Hei in Taiwan and you’re telling me you can’t grow your hair out?”

  “Look, difficult to explain, but I tell you this way. In America, you can ‘sports fuck.’ ”

  Emery couldn’t help himself. This type of shit was his wheelhouse.

  “Sports fuck? That sounds awesome, what’s that?”

  “You’re too young. Eddie, you’re too young, too. Evan, this guy definitely too young, but keep in your memory. In Taiwan, girls only ‘make love.’ You have to take them out, lie to them, tell them you love them, etc. But in America, it’s like sports! They’ll fuck you for fun … or practice! When you guys are old enough, you gotta take advantage. Sports fuck, don’t forget it.”

  That was my dad. The one man besides Al Bundy who could take me on a magical trip to Taiwan, a trip that set me on to a huge soul search, set me up for what I expected to be the Rosetta Stone talk, and then tell me about sports fucking. I had to come to grips with the reality that my dad didn’t come to this country for freedom or opportunity or any special way of life. He came to America, knocked up my mom at a house party in college, married her three months later, and there he was that day, sitting in our kitchen, blowing up in his early forties, still figuring out how to be a dad. I realized that day that anyone can be a parent; you just need live bullets. My dad was always proud that he quit smoking cigarettes the day Mom had me. I believe it, but I don’t believe cigarettes were his only vice.

  * Or at least until the VI’s came out. Can I live?

  † The Bee Gees are clearly a British group, but my dad equated rock and roll with America.

  4.

  ROTTEN BANANAS

  I remember my grandma always asking, “Are your parents still fighting?” I hated when she asked me that shit. If I could keep it quiet and pretend ain’t shit going on, she should, too! You’re almost a hundred years old and you don’t know the rules to this game? Everyone knew they were fighting. The whole neighborhood could hear it like LT breaking Joe Theismann’s leg. People throwing woks at each other is some pretty loud shit. And if you missed that, you definitely didn’t miss my mom driving our van through your bushes.

  The only person that held me down was Emery. Every week, I’d still say or do something my parents didn’t like and they’d make me kneel on the kitchen floor for a few hours. Emery would see it, laugh, say something else crazy, and get stuck kneeling next to me, too. We were a unit. If one of us got stuck, the other would be there. If he was the one in trouble, I’d get him water or food or just talk to him. I wasn’t dumb enough to say some shit in front of my parents and get punished, too, but I’d check on him.

  One day, Emery didn’t want to play piano, so my mom went to hit him with a steel brush. Both parents would hit us, but my mom was under control. It would hurt, but she’d never black out on us or get flagrantly creative, like it was her hobby. She’d use kitchen utensils or beauty products while my dad would use all kinds of joints: belts, whips, bo staffs, kala sticks, whatever he could get his hands on that would walk the line between really hurting and disabling us. He was smart. He never hit us in the face, he never hit us on the arms, and when he hit us on the legs it was above the knees. Smooth criminal. That day, my mom told Emery to hold his hand out to get hit but Emery wasn’t having it.

  He was different than me. As the oldest son, I always felt like I could argue with my parents, but I couldn’t hit them back or disobey. But Emery would run, push my dad, and fight back. That day, Emery tried to run. He darted up the stairs and Mom reared back and threw the steel brush at him like a spear. It scraped him across his face like bear claws. She felt bad immediately, but it was done. He had pretty bad cuts on his face the next morning. Not knowing any better, my mom dropped us all off at school and when the teachers saw my brother’s mauled face, they went a little apeshit. Within the hour we were in the principal’s office, split up. I saw administrators and police talking to Emery and I was placed in another area. I could tell Emery was shook, but any chance
I could make eye contact—when they’d walk me to the bathroom or the water fountain—I gave him a look like “everything’s OK.” Whatever I had to do or say to hide what was going on in our house, I did.

  There was an unspoken understanding that Emery and I had. I would never, ever tell him how I felt about Mom and Dad, but he could read my face. He’d say what I was thinking before I said it.

  “You don’t like Dad, do you?”

  “No, I do. He’s your dad, you have to like him.”

  “Mom’s crazy, huh?”

  “No, she’s just excited. If your mom is crazy, then you are crazy. Are you crazy?”

  “Maybe?”

  “No, you’re not crazy. Trust me, I’m older.”

  “Why do you always get stomachaches?”

  “Because I’m upset.”

  “About Mom and Dad?”

  “No. Just eat your food, Emery.”

  Emery wouldn’t go talk to my parents about the things he really cared about or about how he really felt; he’d talk to me. When he talked to them, they just yelled at him. When he came to me, I’d always get stomachaches because I didn’t know what to do most of the time. I just told him what they’d taught me about how we should behave: respect your parents, respect your family, speak Chinese at home, take off your shoes at home, be polite at other people’s homes, don’t borrow money from people, but if other people need it from you lend it to them, as long as it’s inconsequential. Don’t fight, but if someone calls you a chink, fight.

  I don’t think my parents know how much I defended them to Emery and to my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. That day, I defended my parents to the police. After speaking to each of us individually at school, the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS) drove us home. I kept thinking, Please don’t snitch. I couldn’t talk to him without the cops hearing so we just spoke with our eyes. Emery knew. He was in full Bojangles mode, shucking and jiving, but almost over-the-top. With a big gap-toothed smile, he told a story about how he fell down the stairs. In a genius move, Emery talked about it so loudly in the car that I knew what his story was. No snitching.