Fresh Off the Boat Page 7

  We got home and my mom answered the door. Pure shock on her face. I had never seen her like that, but she adapted quickly, just like us. After the initial five seconds of shock, she got her game face on. Smiling, measured surprise, gracious, oh, I could never have done that routine. They kept us off to the side with one of the officers and my mom wasn’t allowed to speak to us. We didn’t get to hear the conversation from outside but we could see inside the house. My initial reaction all day was worry. I didn’t want my mom to get in trouble, I didn’t want to be a foster kid, but after a few hours, I gave up. I quit worrying. I realized the truth: they fucking deserved it.

  I was glad they got caught. There’s a difference between hitting your kids to discipline them and kicking the living shit out of them. I could be a man like my dad without all this extra shit. On top of the physical abuse, the mental attacks were worse. Constantly being told I was a fan tong (rice bucket), fat-ass, or waste of space. The worst happened twice a year, as predictable as summer and winter. It was the only time I’d break down. My mom and dad had a cycle of fights, culminating in an epic, semiannual battle that would end with my mother screaming that she wanted a divorce. She’d then turn to me and say, “I wasted my life for you! Dao le ba bei zi mei.” Translation: I wasted eight lifetimes for this. What she meant was having me in college and giving her life up to be a mother. Whenever my mom got frustrated over money, not being able to work, being married to my dad, or her own health, this was her refrain. I knew she loved me, but twice a year she was really fucking convincing when she railed me for being born. When Emery saw it, he’d cry sometimes, too. I’d just be there in the kitchen or my room minding my business when she’d run out of her room after fighting with my dad. She’d grab her purse, the car keys, knock something over, and just let me have it. Same thing every time: Ba bei zi mei!

  It was those two days every year that I cried, but then said to myself, Whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, wherever you are … if someone is doing something to make you feel that way, it’s probably not right. It’s the same feeling my grandfather had when he left the Internal Ministry. Everyone needs those moments. The times that something forces you to step outside of yourself and realize, yes, I’m sure there’s a reason for what you’re doing and I want to respect your idea of morality, but in my eyes, at this moment, that shit you’re doing over there? THAT shit, son? That shit ain’t right.

  I read everything I could about Charles Barkley during those years. I saw him on television getting made fun of for being short, fat, and unable to beat Jordan. I saw people hammer him for marrying a white woman, spitting on a girl, throwing someone through a plate-glass window, and not being a role model. But he was for me. I’d read about Charles and how he persevered. I figured, if this guy is being made fun of every day on national television and can throw it back at people, never forgetting to smile, I could, too.

  I read Thank You, Jackie Robinson. I read Hank Aaron’s biography and all the hate he faced breaking the home-run record. Without anyone to talk to, I just read books about sports heroes and the racial barrier. There wasn’t a section in the library titled “Books for Abused Kids” but there was black history and somehow, some way, it made sense to me. I listened to 2Pac. I remember when “Me Against the World” came out, Emery and I would just sit by the radio reading comics listening to that song over and over. People in Orlando never understood why two Asian kids were rocking Polo, Girbauds, and listening to hip-hop. We didn’t do it because it was cool. At private school, teachers, parents, and other kids looked down on us for listening to hip-hop. It was a “black thing,” downward assimilation. They didn’t understand why we had flattops and racing stripes in our heads, but we did.

  And when you get stranded

  And things don’t go the way you planned it

  Dreamin’ of riches, in a position of makin’ a difference

  Pac made sense to us. We lived in a world that treated us like deviants and we were outcast. There was always some counselor or administrator pulling us out of class to talk. We stayed in detention and we were surrounded by kids who had no idea what we were going through. We listened to hip-hop because there wasn’t anything else that welcomed us in, made us feel at home. I could see why Milli wanted to pull a pistol on Santa or why B.I.G. was ready to die. Our parents, Confucius, the model-minority bullshit, and kung fu–style discipline are what set us off. But Pac held us down.

  After an hour or so, the cops brought me inside. My mom was in the living room. They spoke to me in the foyer.

  “Eddie, we need you to be very honest with us right now.”

  “Of course, I have been the whole time.”

  “Good. We spoke to your mother and your brothers, but we still have questions.”

  “Sure, come with me, let’s go somewhere my mom can’t hear us.”

  I remember thinking to myself, These cops probably don’t think I’m old enough or smart enough to use a red herring. I figured if I make them feel like I’m going to ask for privacy from my mom that I’d give them the real story. I told them to come with me to the dining room, where we sat down, and they took my mom outside. Realizing they were hungry for something, I told them, “Look, I really don’t like my parents …” I waited for them to process that, read their faces, and then proceeded. “But, really, who does like their parents?” I looked for laughs, but none. I remember almost to the word what I said to them.

  “I’m sure you guys can tell, Emery is a bit goofy and last night he fell down the stairs. I told my mom not to let him go to school, but she sent him anyway because she never thought anyone would think it was from anything but a fall. I mean, I thought it was pretty obvious she should have kept him at home, but she’s clueless. Look around, I hate them, but they’re good parents. We have food, clothes, a nice house, we’re clean, we have a dog, there’s really nothing a kid needs that we don’t have. Do you see anything wrong?”

  I baited them with exactly what my dad had been using as a cover for years. Show good face, always put your best foot forward in public, don’t show any cracks in the family unit, stick together. All our values still derived from the mind of Shihuangdi, the man who built the Great Wall and unified China.

  After deliberating for a half hour, they brought me back in with my brothers to see my mom.

  “Mrs. Huang, we are going to keep an eye on you guys, but this one here … You’ve done a good job. There’s an old man hiding in that kid.”

  From that point on, my mom kept calling me Lao Erzi: old son. She was proud of me and once the cops left she was apologetic. Evan forgave her. He was just happy to be home. Emery felt guilty because in his mind, he had brought the trouble, but me? I was fucking pissed. I didn’t want to defend them, but I did because it was the right thing to do for my brothers. Evan and Emery still needed parents. I remember thinking to myself, Motherfuckers owe me a pair of Vs for this one …

  THE HOME SITUATION made it extra difficult to stomach the kids at private school. These kids had parents picking them up in Benzes, blessin’ them with kicks, throwing them birthday parties, surprising them with cupcakes and shit. Not only did they have all that good shit, but they had to stunt on me, too. They couldn’t just leave me, my chinky eyes, and my hand-me-down clothes alone. There’s nothing worse than someone who got shit and can’t recognize other people don’t. I just wanted to dance on their motherfucking cupcakes. So around this time, I started to scrap with these kids. I remember kicking a kid into a bush and throwing him into the air conditioner when he laughed at my lunch. Another kid was taunting me because my parents wouldn’t buy me Mad Libs so I put him in the Rick Flair Figure Four Leg Lock and stole his Mad Libs. One kid was talking shit saying he had a Batmobile and I didn’t so I put his toy on the ground and DDT’d his face on the joint. I saw these kids just livin’ the cupcake life while I was limping around because my dad went opposite field on my right leg. I didn’t feel bad because they stepped to me first. They should have just let wounded
dogs lie.

  By the time I hit seventh grade, I wasn’t the same anymore. My mom noticed, too. The complaints from teachers went from “Eddie needs to stop telling jokes” to “Eddie purposely threw a basketball in another student’s face when he wouldn’t let him play.” I didn’t take shit from anyone at this point. I only had one rule: don’t pick on people who were already being picked on.

  One school got so sick of Emery and me that they demanded we get psychological counseling before we could go back. We had good grades, but we disrupted class telling jokes or arguing with teachers. I didn’t need Howard Zinn to know Christopher Columbus was a punk-ass stealing from colored people and I let it be known. Emery was a beast, too. I started lifting weights and he did it with me. He wasn’t even eleven years old when he started. I think it stunted his growth, but by the time the boy hit eighth grade he was Megatron just stompin’ out the other kids that fucked with him.

  When we went to see the psychologist she asked us questions, we did the Rorschach blot shit, we took IQ tests, and just talked. We went for like three weeks and afterward she announced her diagnosis.

  “Mrs. Huang, I am pleased to say there is absolutely nothing ‘wrong’ with your boys. The school is concerned, but they’re just a couple of really bored kids.”

  “Bored? What do you mean? They have lots of activities! I take them to piano, swimming, karate, they are busy!”

  “No, by bored, I mean, intellectually. They aren’t being challenged.”

  “I buy them homeworks all year round. I pay for Kumon! Even in summer, I give them more homeworks, there is no way they are bored.”

  The psychologist could tell there was a cultural gap trying to explain this concept to my mom.

  “OK, take a look at these tests. Emery has a very high IQ on this timed test. He tested off the charts.”

  “Oh! He is genius!”

  “Technically, he’s ‘gifted.’ Now, Eddie is interesting. He doesn’t score high or do well on the timed test, but on the IQ test without time constraints, he scored exceptionally high.”

  “What about Evan?”

  “Evan actually scored the highest.”

  “So all three boys, no problem!”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  No, no it wasn’t. On my thirteenth birthday, I won the 740 AM Final Four Pick ’Em, which was open to all of Greater Orlando. I remember the radio station calling my house and not believing it was a thirteen-year-old kid’s entry. I was also running NCAA pools at school, taking bets on NFL games, and selling porno. Emery and I figured out how to download Internet porn before the other kids so we put GIFs on 3.5-inch diskettes and sold them to other kids in school. Mind you, this was when everyone was still reading magazines, before USB drives or CD burners.

  The porno hustle was ill. We’d break up more popular photos into different sets and sell them for more like greatest-hits mixtapes. For people who wanted the physical magazines, Emery found my dad’s stash of Penthouse magazines and would tear out individual photos and sell them that way to the highest bidder. Ten years before I ever heard the Clipse talking about breaking down keys and sellin’ ’em like gobstoppers, we were doing the same thing with porno in middle school. I liked selling things or taking bets on sports because it was a challenge. School was easy for me, but no one, not teachers, not parents, not friends, taught me how to hustle but myself. Every time I sold something I felt a sense of pride like a kid taking his first shit. “Look, Mom, I made this myself!” What did we buy with all this money? Video games, trading cards, snap-back hats, and Starter jackets.* All the things our parents wouldn’t get us, and we really fell in love with the paper because to us, money was synonymous with freedom and all we wanted to do was get free from our crazy-ass family.

  One day, we were eating breakfast and my mom comes running out of Emery’s room with pages ripped out of Penthouse magazine. Fuck …

  “Soosin! Soosin! Emery wants to be a serial killer!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look! He cut out these girls from a dirty magazine!”

  “Hey! That’s my magazine!”

  “Who cares whose magazine? He is sick!”

  “Mom, Emery’s not a serial killer. He sells the photos to kids at school.”

  “Wait … people buy this?”

  “Yeah, people love it!”

  “Ahhh, almost heart attack …”

  When my mom found out what we were doing she wasn’t upset. She respected the hustle. Whether it was in school, piano, or porno, her entire American experience was about the paper.

  AFTER THE COPS came to our house, my mom changed a bit. She would try to temper my dad when he hit us. She also realized how close she was to losing her kids. Emery had to go to the nurse’s office and take off his clothes every Friday at school to show he wasn’t being hit. We had to go to counseling sessions and the school kept a close eye on us. We felt like criminals, but we hadn’t done anything wrong. Around this time, we also stopped most of our Asian after-school activities. We stopped going to Chinese school and I didn’t want to play piano, tennis, or any of that shit anymore. I think my parents gave up. They could see it was a struggle and a fight they weren’t going to win. For years they’d tried to beat us into doing those things and we refused. With HRS checking on them constantly, they threw in the towel. I just played basketball in the neighborhood, listened to hip-hop, and in a way, tried to distance myself from Asian family bullshit.

  Around this time, my cousin Allen started to change. I’d see him in the summers, in D.C. during holidays, weddings, etc. Something was different. He looked tired. Aunt Beth was always hard on him, comparing Allen to other cousins or his sister, and even at his house she’d yell at him for joking around with me or not getting better grades. I didn’t understand. He was the coolest dude I knew, played on the football team, always beat me at Tecmo Super Bowl, or this board game Hotels. To me, Allen was invincible, but as with all great Asian men, his moms was like fucking kryptonite. I saw this woman literally suck the marrow out of his life. Aunt Beth didn’t mean wrong, she was just doing what Asian moms think they’re supposed to do: ride their kids, make sure they do their homework, stay out of trouble, go to an Ivy, and be either a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. When we were kids, she’d throw Allen’s crayons on the floor and make him pick them up. As we got older, the crayons became board games, then video games, then CDs, but the process was the same. Anything Allen liked besides school was thrown to the ground. Well, except for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Aunt Beth was so out of the loop in Allen’s life that she didn’t even know he was into girls. When she found the issue, she was so happy and told people, “I’m so glad he’s not gay!”

  A few years later, my cousin Angela, Allen’s sister, started dating this guy Tom. He was Chinese, too, and from California. Aunt Beth kept talking about how great Tom was because his parents owned a burger stand in California, saved their money, and sent Tom to Northwestern, where he was going to study to be a doctor. During winter break one year, Tom and Angela came to stay with us. Tom was the first Uncle Chan I ever met. He was so proud about starting the Asian frat at his school, being pre-med, and basically everything that Asian parents wanted us to be. The first night, we all went out to dinner at Atlantic Bay Seafood. I remember Angela ordered a Midori sour. I wasn’t drinking yet at this age, but even I knew it was some bullshit. She took one sip and turned bright red. By that time, I had snuck off to the bar to watch Monday Night Football with the bartender and we just laughed at her.

  I didn’t want to eat with my parents anymore. I’d take my food and go watch whatever was on ESPN during dinnertime. My parents said it was rude and I’d get my ass kicked for it, but I didn’t care. Dinner had become the time for everyone to be picked on in roundtable fashion and I hated it. I knew what they were going to say before they were going to say it, and I quit. We went back to the house that night and I hung out with Emery in his room. I remember we had just gotten
2Pac’s All Eyez on Me album and we were listening to the shit when Tom came in.

  “You know, guys, this is garbage.”

  “Say what?”

  “This hip-hop stuff. It’s garbage.”

  “Man, you, your parents, your burger stand is straight garbage, son!”

  “You know, I’m going to let that go because this is a phase. You’ll grow out of this.”

  Tom was wrong. It wasn’t a phase; I never stopped listening to hip-hop. From the day my mom bought me the Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff’s “Nightmare on My Street” to the moment Allen put The Chronic in my tape deck to the day the next Nas descends upon planet Earth and blesses us with another perfect hip-hop album, it will never stop. That was all I knew. I was a Chinese-American kid raised by hip-hop and basketball with screaming, yelling, abusive parents in the background. If that makes me a rotten banana, well, tell it like it is.

  * It was the nineties, dun.

  5.

  THIS AMERICAN LIFE

  Dave had no shoes. This was something I noticed was very common with white people down south. They went everywhere with no shoes. Their parents would drive barefoot, then throw a pair of sandals on the asphalt as they walked out of the car and into Publix. I didn’t get it. The bottoms of their feet were all red, there were little pieces of gravel between their toes, and somehow they didn’t care. I mean, Dominicans hate socks and love Aventura, but at least they still got Jordan 7s on.

  “Hey! I’m Dave.”

  “Wassup, I’m Eddie.”

  “You guys just moving in, huh?”

  “Yeah, we moved in yesterday so unpacking now.”