THE SUMMER OF 1996, waitressing in Tampa, a Vietnamese boy tried to take me on a date to Busch Gardens, and a lecherous cook pinched my thighs and wanted to buy me a car.
That summer too, my father wrote, in formal stodgy Chinese, from Malaysia, that: Crucial funds may have to be diverted from my college education towards my mother’s illness. College may have to be aborted. Translation: I may have to go home in dishonour, not finishing what I set out to do.
Flat out broke, I shacked up on a friend’s couch while she and her boyfriend canoodled in a canvas tent in the living room, which was devoid of any other furniture. I’d walk in the door and find the tent jostling all its corners, as if it had captured two prize-pugilists. When Lu Pin and I had dinner, she’d deliberately angle her cheek so I could see the red, welting bite marks on her neck. I hope we’re not making too much noise, she smirked.
I got a job passing out pizza coupons, but I couldn’t hack the miles of walking in the baking Florida sun. My sneakers were too tight, a hand-me-down from a co-ed in college, and my soles burned from pounding the asphalt. The Hillsborough County neighbourhoods all looked the same to me: sprawling single-family homes camped out around circular gravelled drives overlooking a golf course.
I stole a baseball cap from a tourist vendor stand. The cap had hand-stitched oranges and the words ‘Sunshine State’ in bright yellow. I’d walk these neighbourhoods, soaked with sweat, and alternately chant, ‘No more funds’, ‘No more sun’ to the tune of some Beach Boys’ tune stuck in my head.
Desperate, I chucked in the pizza-coupon job and got myself two waitressing jobs—weekdays at Tok-Cha’s and weekends at Hunan Garden. What I loved about Tok-Cha’s were the bamboo lanterns along the floor-to-ceiling windows; it was a high-class establishment, even though the clientele was plain redneck. Tok-Cha herself was Korean, though her last name was Martinez; she chain-smoked huddled on top of a stack of old Yellow Pages in an arched nook. The cook wore coke-bottle glasses and his back curved like an arthropod. We all ate dinner together every night. He’d look at me over the egg-drop soup, his glasses all foggy. What you like? Beef pepper sauce? General Tso’s chicken? You say, I make. And Tok-Cha would smirk. Waitressing had its dishonours. Dishonour was no big deal, but sometimes it left a taste of cinders. The cook pinched my hams, like they were drumsticks, and he gritted his teeth. Kinda plump, aren’t you? Under his breath, Ee…i…ya…, as if he couldn’t stand it any longer. The pinches hurt.
Compared with Tok-Cha’s, Hunan Garden was dim and schmaltzy. Someone had stolen a broken police siren and attached it to a hat stand next to myriad old postcards featuring Chinese scenery—Cheng Du, Guilin, Wuxi, Xinjiang. The tables were crowded together; on weekends, groups of customers had to share tables like refugees. It was run by a Mainland Chinese couple, but the lone waiter was Vietnamese. My first day there, I broke two teacups. To pay for the damage, the Chinese couple garnered my tips. As I got ready to leave that night, the Vietnamese waiter, Lonh, offered to show me how to stack dishes along my arm, like some circus act. I thought I saw pity in his eyes; it made me want to challenge him to a game of hawking lugers, just to show him a girl can do these things.
Lonh offered to drive me home at night. I told him I’d rather take the bus.
Florida rednecks were desperate for someone, anyone, to tell them what to do. Customers cracked open their fortune cookies at Tok-Cha’s, desperately trying to glean personal-life directives from those slivers of papers tucked in dough. They’d show them to me: If you don’t enter a tiger’s lair, you can’t catch any cubs, or Play the lute to an ox. They’d shake my arm, What does that mean, huh? Is that some sort of Confucian teaching?
Truth had a wildness, like a foraging animal. Tok-Cha took me aside, and I watched her over-painted red lips move. You must treat customers nice, Cake (my name is Khek Lin, damn it), you must treat them nice or they complain. Put on some makeup, your face too much like moon, Cake. When Señor Martinez called her to take her out Friday nights, I would watch Tok-Cha paint her lips, carefully outlining the contours with a pencil, filling in the fleshier folds with crimson. The Florida rednecks kept sneaking glances down my blouse. They’d whistle between their teeth, call me Girlie, crook their finger and I’d have to go pick up their leftover dishes and lean in to listen to their dirty talk and CB-radio lingo.
I wrote home: Please do what you must to save Mother. But the envelope wouldn’t stick from too much spit.
The cook kept asking me if I liked Miatas or Hyundais. I never walked past him if I could help it.
At Hunan Garden, Lonh tried to give me take-outs every night. They were customer leftovers. Moo goo gai pan and pork egg foo young were Florida redneck favourites. I accepted them gratefully and Lonh was getting hopeful. He was so earnest that his round, dark eyes gleamed and tugged; when he proposed Busch Gardens, his lower lip trembled.
When would we have the time to go? I said. Who had time for fun, I thought, but couldn’t say.
July 4th, how about July 4th?
I calculated. It was a Saturday. You sure we don’t have to work?
Are we open July 4th? he shouted out to the kitchen.
No. The woman proprietress shoved her head through the swinging doors. Go have fun.
Okay, I said. Okay. Though I had misgivings.
The evening of July 3rd, after closing up at Tok-Cha’s, I handed her the cash register, cleaned up the kitchen counters. The night’s takings were over a thousand dollars. I looked outside; the cook was smoking with dirty fingers. Inside, Tok-Cha was busy painting her lips. It was Friday night. I looked at the drawer full of money again and my mouth went dry.
The cook came in while I was getting my bag. You need a ride? he said. I shook my head. He stood casually in the doorway. I tried to slide past. His hand shot out. Barely a second—a grope and a squeeze. But the imprint on my breast scalded me red-hot all the way home.
I cried hot salty tears of humiliation that dampened my earlobes. I cursed Florida, yelled out to no one in particular (Lu Pin and her loping boyfriend had gone away to Orlando for the long weekend) in that living room devoid of any furniture, that Florida was one gigantic spewing fraudulent fortune cookie. Bǎi gǎn jiāo jí (a hundred feelings are welling up inside me), I shouted. You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard. Find release from your cares, HAVE A GOOD TIME!
I thought of Mother. What came to me, like a puff of powder from a shaken compact, was how she sang during one Chinese New Year—her hands dancing along. She’d stood by the wok in her red jacket, stewing e-fu noodles, and she had on red lipstick. All this before she got sick. And then, it was as if she materialised beside me. As if she took hold of my jaw and pulled open my mouth—there! She smiled, pleased. Your crooked teeth are all there, still the daughter I recognise. Will you give me some advice? I begged. But all she seemed to say were more fortune-cookie platitudes. A fall into the pit, a gain in your wit. Pride is bottomless. Later, I couldn’t stand the darkness any more and went out and bought a light bulb for the lamp fixture. After I bought it, I realised I had no way of reaching up high enough to change it.
As I neared my friend’s house, I saw a red Camaro parked out front. Lonh was sitting on the hood, twirling something in his hand. When he saw me, he leapt up. He held out his hand to display a red rose with petals made of some synthetic fabric, complete with fake pearlescent drops, fakery that was so genuine it hurt. I couldn’t touch it. Lonh looked wounded.
I told him the living room had no light. I told him about my predicament. He had a clever idea. He got the black trashcan from around the house and dragged it in. While I held it steady, he clambered up and fixed the bulb. Voila, all of a sudden, there was light.
I couldn’t help it, I was so grateful I looked deep into Lonh’s eyes and allowed him to kiss me. Before we knew it, he was trying to get me into my friend’s tent, which bore a fusty smell that suddenly made me retch. I told Lonh I’d see him tomorrow and we’d go to the Busch Gardens, but he left looking discontented.
The next day, Lonh showed up again in his red Camaro but I let him knock and knock. I pretended not to be home. My heart thumped with a wild banging the longer he knocked; I felt like a fraud. How could I have made him a promise if I had every intention of breaking it?
I never actually gave Busch Gardens any serious thought. The idea of walking down the Disney-esque esplanades with him—eating salted pretzels, or fine-spun cotton candy—seemed completely unreal, as if we were a movie playing in my head.
The knocking finally stopped, but I didn’t go and look if he’d left. Through the closed door, he shouted, AMERICA IS FULL OF OPPORTUNITY! Why won’t you let me in? Half an hour later, the knocking started again. Lonh knocked for hours that day. But I didn’t let him in.
Back at work at Hunan Garden, Lonh’s eyes tracked me reproachfully, but not once did he ask me, Where were you?
I told the Chinese couple I quit. They paid me, but didn’t even bother to ask why. Chinese waitresses were a dime a dozen. I couldn’t face Lonh. I didn’t even say goodbye.
I received another letter from Father. Mother was rallying. The treatments were working. May be you don’t have to come home. If you’re able to find a way to pay for the rest of what you owe the college after your scholarship, maybe you won’t have to come home.
Two days later, Tok-Cha left the cook and me alone to close up. He came up to me and said, You want to go for a drive later? See my new Miata? He pointed a finger at the parking lot where the Miata must be, but all I noticed was the dirt encrusting his fingernail, rimmed with black. I grew afraid when I saw his eyes, sneaking glances full of a furtive delight. I told him I was busy closing up and quickly counted up the night’s takings. He rested his arms on the counter, very close, leaned over and his glasses slipped down his nose. We’re from the same village, he said. You and I have the same Chinese surname, we’re relatives, Khek Lin.
The only person able to pronounce my name properly in this damn country and his shirt was ecru and streaked with oil stains from the wok. He reeked of stale pan-fries and something else, sweaty and heavy.
So what? I said.
Don’t you trust me? I’m a generous man, willing to help someone from my own village. If you like my Miata, I’ll buy you one. But first, you have to come for a drive with me.
If you touch me again, I’m going to call the police, I said.
He laughed. He wasn’t afraid of the police.
I have a boyfriend. He’ll beat you up if I tell him to. It took a lot of mental steadying for me to say it in one breath—I pictured Lonh sitting on his red Camaro to calm myself—then looked the cook in the eye, and made every word count.
He backed off. Walked out the door without saying anything else, his shirttails flapping. I breathed deeply for the respite and found myself staring at the pile of cash in the register. I could easily skim off five hundred dollars, no way for Tok-Cha to find me, not knowing where I was shacked up. The greasy greenbacks seemed to be floating on the tabletop, the face of George Washington fading into a patchwork pattern.
I peeled off two twenty-dollar bills, stuffed them in my bra. I also threw one of the customer receipts into the trash can. All night, I dreamt of sirens and the police coming. They would arrive at the doorstep of my roommate’s house and refuse to come in because the light wasn’t working. The next day, I replaced the money in the roll of bills. Tok-Cha asked why the intake exceeded the customer receipts. With a start, I realised she was none too bright. Why did I ever listen to any of her insipid advice about men?
That night, I took pencil to pad. Like soldiers, each thing I wrote paraded past, marching, triumphant. Like a horde of multitudes. Bǎi gǎn jiāo jí, I wrote until dawn arrived, pink-hued and dewy, and I took the pieces of paper with my writing on and stuffed them in my bra where they scratched me for two days. Then I burned them in the backyard of Tok-Cha’s restaurant. The only person who witnessed this was the cook. He didn’t say a word, but watched me behind lenses flickering with the reflection of my burning words. Only when the lit pieces of paper singed my fingers did I finally let go.
One week later, at Tok-Cha’s, Lonh showed up. He sat at a table, making me wait on him. All he ordered was a Chinese ice tea. I fumed, setting it down with a heavy thud. He twiddled the fake rose in the vase, he fingered its pearlescent drops.
What is it you want? I said.
Why didn’t you tell me you quit?
I don’t owe you anything.
Lonh looked at his ice tea as if he were about to cry. Can you bring me a menu?
Please go. Please. Get out.
Civility, I’d like to order some civility, he said.
Tok-Cha jerked her head out from her alcove. The cook was rolling chicken in breadcrumbs. I covered my eyes with both my hands. Nothing like that on the menu, I said. Moo goo gai pan. Try some moo goo gai pan. Try some America.
I never saw Lonh again. He threw a ten-dollar tip on the table, three times the price of his ice tea.
I looked at the money. Honour, shame, compassion, sacrifice. People lost little pieces of themselves all the time in America. No fortune cookie to spell that out.
I looked at the ten-dollar bill for a long time.
Then, I pocketed it.