A Long Stay in a Distant Land Read online

  Louis considered himself a capable speaker of Cantonese, and dismissed Grandma's winces at his tones because he believed he spoke the Queen's English of Cantonese and she spoke Cockney.

  His mother often took him to Chinatown for Saturday grocery trips when he was in grade school. They'd walk past fruit markets and herbal shops and she'd point at random people and say, "They're speaking Cantonese. Listen. You'll never learn if all you listen to are tapes."

  On the corner of Alpine and Broadway was the tea seller's shop, and there the shop owner's conversations with the retired old locals often became heated. Louis's mother would stop by the small, two-story building to listen. Stacked on the main counter near the entrance were rows of large clear jars that contained everything from tea leaves to dried seahorses and abalone. The scent of ginseng and mushrooms filled the room.

  "Two hundred dollars a pound?" one of the old locals would ask.

  "Monkey-picked leaves, ignoramus."

  "Monkey leaves?"

  "Nobody asked you to like the price."

  "These leaves aren't worth two hundred pounds of monkey turd."

  "Your mother's a monkey."

  "Suck on my asshole."

  "Fuck you and your monkey mother!"

  Cantonese was a tricky language. It was a hard dialect with sharp, bitting sounds. Mandarin was gentle in comparison, too soft. Cantonese was a commanding dialect, fit for someone who gave orders.

  At age eight, Louis wrapped a white T-shirt around the top of his head and fashioned himself captain of a galleon. He gave orders to the stuffed animals in his room. To the pig he commanded, "Swing the tiller six degrees west and watch that mainsail!" He used words he remembered from Chinatown and the tapes. "Bring me a goblet of your finest wine, ignoramus!" he shouted at the dalmatian, its eyes frozen wide in surprised joy. To his disbelieving parents he said, "Don't stand there like blocks of wood. Mop the deck!"

  Different tones produced different meanings. Saangchoi with a high tone on -choi meant lettuce. Saangchoi with a low tone on -choi meant make money. Louis's mother had plenty of the former and was never satisfied with her proficiency at the latter.

  Different modifiers produced different meanings using the same base word. Fong-bihn meant convenient. Daaih-bihn meant take a shit.

  One had to be careful not to substitute lettuce for money, convenience for shit.

  When he was eleven, Louis asked to go to the San Diego Zoo. His father decided to take him to the one in Santa Ana. It was smaller and much closer to home. "San Diego's ticket prices are way too high," his father said. "A bird in San Diego is the same as a bird in Santa Ana."

  The Santa Ana Zoo housed mostly barnyard animals. There were several lambs encrusted in dried mud, a bony cow, and a red-eyed, quivering white bunny that looked like it had the DTs.

  They stopped at one exhibit, his mother on his right side, his father on his left. Louis pointed at the creature behind the steel fence. It was sunning itself on a rock and gnawing on a sprig of weed. "Ah-Bah, paau!"

  "Tone's decent," his mother said.

  His father sighed, then said in English, "That's not a leopard. That's a goat."

  Gin and Juice

  (2002)

  Of ell her sons, Sonny was the one who looked most like Melvin. They all resembled Melvin when they were babies, with their wide square faces and thin lips. But Sonny, as a baby, was Melvin. The resemblance was so close Melvin began calling him Sonny before they decided on a name. "My Sonny. Look at my Sonny." He held their boy, whose head was covered with splotches of red and blue, bruised by the metal forceps used to pry him from her body.

  Esther, panting, thought from where she lay, My Sonny my ass. You're just the damn cheerleader. I did all the hard work.

  "My Sonny," Melvin said. "My Sonny."

  In response, Sonny pissed on his father and let out a wail. Esther smiled. My Sonny, she thought.

  Now fifty-two, Sonny was unhappy with the idea of her moving into his house. "You're not staying long," he said as he carried her bags into Louis's room. He put them down next to the bed.

  "Do you really want to kill the man?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "You can say you don't want to kill him, and you could have said it to Louis if you really didn't want us here."

  "It wouldn't be true."

  "Is it just because you need company? I don't mind staying if that's the only reason. I'd feel better knowing you aren't really thinking about killing him."

  "I think about it," he said.

  "You're stronger than me," she said. "If you decide to do it, how will I stop you?"

  "I don't know."

  "Does my staying here help make you feel like you shouldn't do it?"

  He shrugged.

  "It's been less than a year," she said. "You'll get used to being alone." She meant to sound encouraging, not resigned to unhappiness, but Sonny winced and she immediately regretted her words.

  For a few days they didn't talk except to announce dinner or say hello or good-bye in passing. The fourth night she sat by him on the sofa as he watched TV.

  "Stop staring at me," he said.

  "I haven't seen your face up close in a long time. You have good skin. Hardly any blemishes."

  "You're making me nervous." He took a sip of his bottle. His refrigerator held a case of Seagram's Lemon Splash, a carton of milk, and a bottle of ranch dressing.

  "There's no food here," she said.

  "We have cereal."

  "Just that and alcohol."

  "And milk," he said. "What?"

  "Give me sip of that."

  "It's not good for someone your age," he said.

  "Alcohol thins the blood. I take pills to do the same thing."

  "Are you sure?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  He handed her his bottle and she took a sip. It tasted like lemonade mixed with alcohol, and wasn't nearly as strong as the 120-proof Chinese rice wine Melvin used to bring home. He'd bought the liquor from a Chinatown merchant who'd refused to sell anything below a hundred proof.

  "How's it?" Sonny asked.

  "Fruity."

  "It's fruit-flavored," he said.

  "That's what I meant," she said.

  He went to the kitchen and returned with a new bottle for her. "Here."

  "I didn't mean fruity like it's a weak drink," she said, giving his back.

  "Are you worried I'll get caught and sentenced to death," Sonny asked, "or that you'll be seen as the mother of a mur­derer?"

  "I don't think you'll be happier if you kill him."

  He was still working on his first bottle when she finished hers.

  His face was red and the alcohol seeped from his skin and permeated the air.

  "You want another one?" he asked.

  "No, thanks." She liked the fruity taste. She could have gone for another, but decided not to. It'd embarrass him to watch her out-drink him.

  "You think about me being happy?" he asked.

  "Yes," she said.

  "You think about Louis being happy?"

  "Yes."

  "And Mick?" he asked.

  She nodded.

  "Even Helen?"

  She nodded again.

  "Honestly?" he asked.

  "No."

  "Do you often think about Ah-Bah?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "Because you never seemed happy with him," he said. "You were usually upset at me and Larry. You only seemed happy around Bo, and I used to think it was because out of us three he looked the least like Ah-Bah."

  "I was happy with how all my sons looked."

  "But were you happy with the way Ah-Bah looked?"

  "He looked satisfactory," she said.

  "Satisfactory. That's how you'd describe a bowel movement."

  "I didn't want a very handsome man. A very handsome man will cheat on a woman."

  "You're calling him ugly," Sonny said.

  "I said he wasn't very handsome. That doesn't mean ugly.
He had broad shoulders and they were beautiful enough."

  Sonny smirked.

  "What?" she asked.

  "I can't believe you were attracted to him," Sonny said. "I can't imagine you two had any romance. I used to think you two had to drink a lot before you had sex. That strong stuff."

  She slapped him on the back of his head.

  He laughed.

  They didn't speak for a few minutes. They watched TV. Australian rules football was on and men with no shoulder pads and no helmets smashed into each other with their thick, powerful bodies.

  "Sonny?" She tapped him on the shoulder.

  He'd fallen asleep. She wanted to tell him she thought about Melvin all the time. She thought about how comfortable his shoulders had been to rest against in bed. She thought about how he'd slap her on the bottom as he passed by on the way to get a beer from the fridge, a soft tap as if to say, Hey pal.

  She took the bottle out of Sonny's hand and set it on the kitchen counter. Then she retrieved the blanket from his bed and covered him on the sofa. He turned to one side and mumbled something. She turned off the TV and the living room lamp. He shifted, but didn't wake.

  In the dark she whispered, "What do you know about romance?"

  The Vote to Decide Whether or Not

  Melvin Should Enlist

  (1943)

  (F) = For Melvin's enlistment.

  (A) = Against Melvin's enlistment.

  (F*) = Officially for, but was truly against because voter believed her husband's desire to enlist was inspired by the cartoon character Popeye.

  (A*) = Officially against after voter's parents, Wong Kar and Sun Lau, threatened to send him to an orphanage, but was truly for based on voter's argument that "We [the U.S. Army] need to kick their [the Japanese's] asses out of our country [China]."

  (F**) = Melvin's vote did not officially count in the final tallying, as decreed by Dr. Lum.

  Building Airplanes That Can't Fly

  (1942-1944)

  The first time Esther met Melvin, her father had brought him home for dinner.

  "Friend of yours?" she asked.

  "Sure." Her father tapped Melvin on the back. "Go on into the kitchen."

  "There are only three table settings," she said, and Melvin paused.

  "Keep going, boy," her father said and Melvin went. "Then make one more setting," he told her.

  That night Melvin hardly said a word as her father praised his skills in soccer ("a terrific striker") and his high marks in English and history. He'd just graduated from high school and was now working with his father at the local meat cannery.

  She didn't realize until after Melvin left that this had been her first date with him. More specifically, she didn't realize that until after Melvin had left and her father asked, "How'd you like your first date with Melvin?"

  The following evening, her father asked her to have a second date with Melvin. Just the two of them. Eat noodles. Chitchat. Stroll through Golden Gate Park. Romantic. "Melvin's a good boy," he said. "Honest. Strong body. And I promised his father years ago you'd marry him."

  "That's your problem," she said.

  "At least give him a second date. If you decide afterward you don't like him, you can say no." He pleaded with her for a week until she agreed.

  On her second date with Melvin she sat him down in her kitchen and asked, "Have you had any previous experiences with women?" She didn't want a man who, at nineteen, had already dipped his chopsticks in many different bowls.

  "I talk to my mother a lot," he said.

  "That's not what I mean."

  He smiled. "No, I've never visited the whorehouses."

  "Do you like staying at home?" she asked.

  "Sure."

  "You like talking to your mother?"

  "She's a smart woman, much smarter than me. She told me that in a drawer of sharp knives, I am not the sharpest one. She said I'm more like a spoon than a knife." He laughed at that, and Esther laughed.

  Humility and awareness of one's limitations were nice qualities. He had a sense of humor, too. And he had the most beautiful shoulders she'd ever seen on a man. They were broad and well defined.

  This, to her, was how finding a husband worked. You looked for a man with a strong, healthy body, and when you found him, you married him and the two of you raised kids and spent your old age rocking on chairs and listening to birds sing outside.

  They married three months later and moved into his parents' home.

  A month after their marriage, Melvin took her to Stan Chin's

  Chinatown Theater, located in the two-story apartment building Stan Chin owned. It wasn't their first time attending the theater, but it was their first time seeing Popeye.

  The interior walls on the second floor of the building had been knocked out to create one large room. A film projector, screen, and two hundred wooden chairs had been brought in, and every Saturday people bought tickets to see the features and shorts being shown in the rest of America beyond the Chinatown borders.

  There were two main showings, one in the afternoon and one in the evening; Melvin loved the movies and liked to go to both. The evening shows offered live translations for those who didn't understand English. Stan Chin's wife, Amelia, would stand next to the projector and shout out in Cantonese what was happening.

  "The little black kid's name is Buckwheat," she'd say. " 'Otay' is African for 'It's a nice day.'"

  In Amelia's translation, Abbott and Costello became Skinny and Fatty. "Fatty is giving Skinny a hard time for not eating enough. They're running away from Frankosteen the monster because he threatened to strangle them." Sometimes she'd editorialize. Of the Hindenburg disaster, she said, "See? This is what happens when rich people show off with big things. They die."

  While the films ran, Stan Chin's grandfather was stationed outside the bathroom located in the main hallway on the first floor. He sat on a small wooden stool in a white T-shirt and pajama bottom, a pipe in his hand. Next to his feet was a lime green coffee mug with a piece of paper taped to it. On the paper was written the word TIPS.

  As the theater's bathroom valet, his job was to say, "Hey, wash your hands when you're done," each time somebody entered. He also said, "There's someone in there. I said there's someone in there." Because indoor plumbing was a new experience for many of the theatergoers, some of whom would admire the sink and toilet for fifteen to twenty minutes, Stan Chin's grandfather would occasionally knock on the door and say, "No loitering. Not a museum in there."

  The theater's customers deposited only cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and ticket stubs in the tips mug, which prompted Stan Chin to place next to his father two large cardboard signs. One was in English and the other in Chinese. They read:

  Tipping the bathroom valet (with Cash Money) is an understood tradition in this country. For those who are new to these shores, I welcome you to participate in this fulfilling custom. For those who have been here for a while, you should know better.

  There is a myth going around that Chinese businesses involved in the service industry (like restaurants and thea­ters) aren't accustomed to accepting cash money tips. This is a myth only, and was probably started by Chinese people who didn't want to tip.

  Would you continue to deprive this cheerful old man of his only form of income?

  Stan Chin's Chinatown Theater appreciates your continued support.

  People began tipping with cash money, and Stan Chin put up another pair of signs:

  Thank you for your enthusiastic support of the bathroom valet. Please note the ceramic jar next to him, which has been filled with lollipops and caramel squares. Please feel free to take one as a sign of our appreciation for your business. Please also show your fellow theatergoers consideration by not taking all you can fit into your pockets.

  Stan Chin's Chinatown Theater appreciates your continued support.

  It was at this theater, exactly one month after their marriage, that Esther and Melvin saw a matinee showing of Popeye c
artoons.

  You're a Sap, Mr. Jap had Popeye encountering a couple of Japanese fishermen who appeared peaceful but were actually hiding a larger warship, and Spinach for Britain showed Popeye delivering the green stuff to the English while a German submarine tried to stop him.

  Popeye was a violent and unintelligent thug whose vegetable-derived superhuman strength enabled him to pummel enemies and friends alike.

  He beat up on Nazis, that's one thing. But what about the times he dragged Olive Oyl around like a sack of rice? What about the times he "accidentally" knocked her about with his large, clumsy arms? What kind of a man knocked his girlfriend around? What kind of a woman stood by a man like that?

  In the dark of the theater, Esther glanced at her husband and was disappointed to find him enthralled. His mouth hung slightly open and his eyes glimmered, reflecting the light of the screen.

  When he came home several days later and showed her a tattoo of Popeye on his right biceps, she was horrified. If he saw himself as Popeye, then he probably saw her as Olive Oyl, a warbling bird whose willingness to be with someone like Popeye suggested a severe lack of self-respect.

  "I have to look at that for the rest of my life," she said. "Or yours."

  "It's pretty good," Melvin said. "It looks just like him."

  That night in bed, he reached for her and started to unbutton her pajama top. She pushed his hand off her chest. Even though it was dark, she knew Popeye was gawking at her, waiting for her clothes to come off.

  "What's wrong with you?" he asked.

  "Get out of bed," she said. "Come on."

  She moved carefully through the hallway, testing the hardwood floor with her toes before settling her full weight down to avoid loud creaks that would wake his parents and his older brother, Phil, whose room sat between hers and her in-laws'.