That spring, Dad came home and we were reunited. But before we could enjoy it, they dropped a bomb on us: we were moving to Florida. How could I be so dumb? Of course we were moving to Florida! Dad wasn’t going to live there by himself forever, but it just never registered in my mind that I’d be going, too. It caught me and Emery totally by surprise. My mom might have told us that it was happening, but we still weren’t ready for it. With two weeks left in the school year, we packed up the house over one weekend, and prepared to leave on Monday. I didn’t want to go.
I still remember sitting in the back of our Starcraft van, parked at the top of Phil’s driveway.
“We’ll still be friends, Xiao Wen.”*
“Yeah … but I’ll be in Florida!”
“So what, we’re cousins! My mom says we’ll come visit.”
“I may get eaten by alligators by the time you come! Gators are everywhere in Florida.”
“Hmmm, that’s true. Remember to run in zigzags if you see one!”
Phil was smart and knew everything about animals. He told me that if an alligator had its mouth closed, you could put your hands around it and it wouldn’t be strong enough to open again. Shortly after, my parents, aunts, brothers, and Allen came outside as well. The whole family was on the driveway to say goodbye. I really didn’t want to leave, but then the van started to move.… Getting farther and farther, the people got smaller but I could still see Phil in the front waving me goodbye. I remember thinking their hands would stop waving, but they never did. All the way until they disappeared, you saw their hands waving in the air and then poof! They were gone … and there we were, just the five of us going down to Florida in a Starcraft van like the “Definition” video. “Hold your head when the beat drop, Y-O.”
Two days later, we got to Florida late at night, groggy, and stinkin’ from the ride. We pulled into the parking lot of this place called Homewood Suites; I liked it ’cause their logo was a duck. We usually stayed at Red Roof Inns, so I was pretty impressed with this place they called an extended-stay hotel. Emery and I walked around touching everything in the room, but my parents were tired so they made us shower and go to sleep.
We all woke up super-late the next day. It felt like we slept a year! Dad was already at work. The best part about Homewood Suites was that you could look outside and see the sign for Atlantic Bay Seafood and Grill. It was a monstrous neon sign you could see from the highway and follow all the way from the exit.
“Mom! Why does Dad do American food and not what you make at home?”
“Because nobody want to pay for REAL Chinese food.”
“Why not?”
“Because they not Chinese! Stupid question! Your dad is smart, he has white chef so people don’t know Chinese own Atlantic Bay and we can sell seafood for more!”
“Is Atlantic Bay like Chesapeake Bay?”
“Yeah? Do they have hush puppies?” I asked.
Before she could answer, Emery chimed in, too: “We can eat all we want since we own it, right? We don’t have to have more aunts for more free kids meals anymore!”
“Yeaaahhh! I want fried cod and hush puppies with Tabasco!”
“OK, OK, you guys can eat all you want. Let’s go see Dad.”
“We don’t need aunts anymore! We OWN the restaurant!”
Emery and I were dumb excited to see Atlantic Bay. It was huge! Three times bigger than our old house and they had cool uniforms: polo shirts with big blue and white stripes. But my dad wore a suit! We found him in the kitchen and it smelled so bad. It was the first time I’d been in a restaurant kitchen. The food smelled great, but there was this funky old mildewy smell that I’d never smelled before.
“Dad, why’s it smell so bad? Isn’t it supposed to smell good in a kitchen?”
“This is a restaurant! It smells like a … factory or industrial place because we have strong cleaning chemicals.”
“It smells like a dirty dishwasher!”
“Well, the dishwasher is always going so you’ll smell that, but this is just how restaurants are.”
“Mom said it’s like Chesapeake Bay. Do you have hush puppies?”
“No, but we have homemade biscuits! You’ll like them.”
Dad pulled a hot biscuit off a speed rack and handed it to me steaming hot. It had a good hard crust. It wasn’t a super-flaky biscuit, but I broke it open and it was really moist on the inside. I took a bite and remember how distinct the flavor was. It had a sweetness that most biscuits didn’t have. I wasn’t going to forget about hush puppies anytime soon, but it wasn’t bad. I found Emery hanging out by the fish tank at the front of the restaurant.
“Hey! We don’t have hush puppies.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but we got biscuits!”
“Biscuits? Are they good?”
“Yeah, not bad. Kinda sweet, but good.”
“We don’t own a Chesapeake Bay, but I think we have a Red Lobster … ’cause they have biscuits, too.”
THAT SUMMER WE had no friends because school was over, but Mom dropped us off every morning at the Aquatic Center for swim camp, while she worked with my dad during the day. All the swim groups were named after Florida college teams so I was a Hurricane and Emery was a Gator. It was 1990, so I was pretty happy to be a ’Cane.† All summer, all we did was swim and wait for my mom to pick us up—and she was always late. We’d end up sitting outside the Aquatic Center in lawn chairs for at least an hour after camp was over every day. Luckily, there were lots of lizards around so we tried to catch them while Mom took her sweet-ass time. The months blended into each other and in August, they enrolled me at Bay Meadows Elementary.
The first day I got there, I recognized all the books. They were using the same books for third grade that we had for second grade in Virginia. These Florida kids were kinda slow, too. No one really asked questions in class and recess was pretty boring. We used to wrestle during recess and lunch at Oakton Elementary, but no one wrestled at Bay Meadows. This one kid with a birthmark played tetherball with himself every day, so I went to hang out with him. He was pretty good; every time he hit the ball, it wrapped around the pole at least three times. His name was Jared. I guess he was my friend, but he didn’t talk much.
Unlike D.C., there weren’t many Chinese kids around. The only one was a girl that spoke Chinese, who got moved to our class because she couldn’t speak English. I was the only other person at school who spoke Chinese so I helped translate for her every day. My Chinese wasn’t great, but I guess it was good enough because I won Student of the Month for helping her out. I never won anything before, but my parents ruined everything.
“Louis, we need to put him in private school.”
“Ahhh, it’s so expensive!”
“Eh! Don’t be cheap, school is important! He never wins award in D.C. then all of a sudden he wins Student of the Month here! I don’t want him to be like you with bad grades!”
“So? I own my own restaurant now! And he doesn’t have bad grades. He’s winning things here!”
My parents always insulted each other. Mom was a good student and thought school was important. Dad agreed even though he had a chip on his shoulder because he never got good grades. He learned most things from running around on the street, but in a funny way, my dad was smarter. He’d always tell me stories of old generals, emperors, and philosophers. My mom never remembered what she learned in school because she just memorized stuff for tests; it was my dad, who had bad grades, that actually remembered everything he learned. After arguing for a few weeks, my dad gave in and they pulled me out of Bay Meadows. That’s when it all went down the shitter.
We rolled up to this joint and it looked like a compound—huge white buildings that looked like Decepticons, a skyscraper-sized cross on the front lawn, and minivans everywhere. This was my new school, Baptist soccer mom heaven. Pinks and pastels, ribbon sandals and croakies, oh my. First Academy went from kindergarten to twelfth grade but when I scanned the crowds streaming through the front doors, somehow Emery and I were the only Asian kids. I’m even counting Eurasia. Up north, even if you’re the only chino in a working town, at least you got some Eastern Bloc homies from Poland or Russia, but down south it was you, yourself, and I.
Since kindergarten my parents had been sending me to Christian schools, where the teachers would feed me soap and made me use my right hand even though I’m a lefty, because we supposedly got a better education at parochial schools even if we weren’t actually Christians. If you asked my parents, they’d say they were Buddhist. Buddhists that ate meat, never went to temple, but did say A-mi-tuo-fuo seven times if they saw roadkill. Religion wasn’t a big deal in our house. I don’t think it was a big deal in most Chinese households. We always had photos of ancestors, oranges, and incense in bowls, but the family unit was bigger than any religion, or government for that matter. Besides education, there weren’t any social issues I remember my parents getting down for. I remember watching TV or listening to the radio; anytime there was crime, you could hear my parents in the background screaming “Where are the parents?” It was never about what you could do for your country or your country could do for you, but what were you going to do for your parents?
What we did do was go to Chinese school. Whether you lived in D.C., Ann Arbor, New York, or Orlando, if there were Chinese people, there were Chinese schools where you went every Sunday to take Chinese language and culture classes. Chinese people would drive hours from every direction to take their kids to school. All teachers were volunteers and the parents chipped in to keep it going. While the rest of America went to church, we learned how to read right to left.
WHEN I ENTERED the classroom at First Academy that first day, instead of math, science, or English books under my chair, I found The Storybook Bible. That blue one with photos of Joseph, Mary, and Big Baby Jesus‡ on the cover. I’d seen this version before; they ran commercials for it in the afternoons during Wonder Woman and The Dukes of Hazzard. For the first few days of school, all we did was read out of this book, starting from the beginning. The teacher was Ms. Truex, this tall white brunette that a lot of the kids and parents thought was cute, but I didn’t get it—she was pasty, cold, and vanilla, a good look for ice cream, I guess. She kept telling us Adam and Eve were our “parents,” so by Thursday, I had to say something.
“If Adam and Eve are my parents, then why does Cole have blond hair and I have straight black?”
“Eddie, that’s a good question and the Tower of Babel will answer your questions about that.”
“We’re not there yet, Eddie, so you’ll just have to wait.”
That was the end of the exchange. It all seemed pretty mild to me, but the whole class was shook. Thirty sets of eyeballs turned and ice-grilled me as if I’d just taken my book to the front of the class and set it on fire. Three days in and no one wanted to hang with me. We kept reading the Bible, but from then on every time I challenged a story that didn’t make sense to me—how the universe was created in six days, why Cain killed Abel, how fucking big was that ark?—Ms. Truex put me in time-out. By the time Christmas came around, while all the other kids made cards, she had me sit in a corner and face the wall because I wasn’t a “believer.”
The time-outs were worse than that time Optimus Prime died in the first twenty minutes of Transformers, so I gave up. I waved the white flag and asked Ms. Truex what I needed to do to be like everyone else. She told me that if I wanted to participate in class and go to Heaven, I had to “let Jesus into my heart.” So for the first time in my life, I sold out. One winter day, just after Christmas break, Ms. Truex asked me to stay late. The classroom emptied out until it was just me and her. I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be down.
Ms. Truex walked behind her desk and broke out her Bible. I remember that Bible. Black, leather-bound, King James Version. She asked me to come to the front of the class and sit in one of those Kentucky-Taco-Hut school chairs. You know the joints with the desk, chair, and basket in one? Then she told me to repeat after her, “God almighty, I let you into my heart and believe that you sent your only son to forgive me of my sins.”
She looked down at me with a smile and prompted me with a nod to repeat it. I was ready to sell out but was stuck between wanting to laugh and wanting to run screaming for my mom. It was creepy, like playing “Bloody Mary.” I don’t think people realize how fucking weird Christianity is if you’re not raised around it. But, hey, it got me off time-out. And, who knows, maybe a billion white people can’t be wrong and it’s all really true.
When I told Emery what I did, he laughed.
“Ha, ha, you ‘let God into your heart’?”
“Yeah, man, it’s a good deal! You gotta do it, too, or we can’t hang out after we die.”
“But you don’t believe it!”
“So? If God is real, you should let him in just in case. If it’s real and you didn’t, then you go to Hell. It only takes two minutes!”
“But if God is real, then doesn’t he know you don’t reaaaallllyyy believe?”
“Well, I’ll convince myself.”
“You can’t convince yourself! You either believe or you don’t believe.”
“People can be convinced of anything! We’re stupid. Plus, this is like those lottery tickets Mom buys. We know she’s not gonna win but just in case, naw mean?”
“You and Mom … crazy ideas all the time.”
My conversion only got me so far with these Christians. Months into the school year I made one friend: Chris Nostro. Peep the last name, you already know. His pops owned a pizza shop and he had the biggest schnoz you’ve ever seen. We became friends betting on sports, specifically the 1991 NBA All-Star Game. I remember coming to school the day after the game.
“Man, did you see the end of that game?” Chris said.
The other kids didn’t know what he was talking about, but I did.
“The All-Star Game?”
“Yeah! I bet on the West but Karl Malone ruined it!”
“You should have won; Kevin Johnson’s shot was going in!”
“I know! I lost five bucks! Stupid Karl Malone!”
I mean, come on, who does like Karl Malone? Karl Malone doesn’t like Karl Malone!
Even though I made a friend in Chris, the other kids avoided me like spinach. When we’d get together to ball after school the kids, led by this older boy named Blake, elbowed me whenever I tried to get rebounds or pushed me to the ground when I tried to drive the lane. I’m not going to say it’s just because I’m Chinese, but it didn’t happen to anyone else. I didn’t fight it—I was outnumbered. My mom would pick me up after school and see the bruises on my face from the elbows or cuts on my arms from the hard fouls and trips. Soon she’d seen enough.
“What is going on? Why you have the bruise?”
“It’s just basketball, Mom.”
“No, not basketball! Michael Qiao dan§ does not have bruise like this.”
“That’s ’cause he’s black, Mom. It doesn’t show up.”
“You lie to me, who hit you?”
“Mom, no one hit me, this is just what happens.”
“If you don’t tell me, you don’t play basketball!”
I had to tell the truth. I was getting picked on, but I didn’t know what to do. When Mom told Dad, he told me he wouldn’t be mad if I got in trouble for fighting, but no one in our family ever went down without a fight and I wasn’t going to be the first. The dude didn’t give me no blueprint; he just told me not to lose! What my parents didn’t understand was that it wasn’t just basketball. I was miserable every hour outside the house.
I kept coming home with infractions, for asking questions or drinking milk through my nose, so she had to have a parent-teacher conference with Ms. Truex. Mom came to school one Friday afternoon to pick me up and spoke to Ms. Truex alone while I sat outside. I couldn’t hear what they talked about, but I could hear my mom raise her voice every few minutes to defend me, saying things like “He comes home with bruise every day! You complain but who protects him?” I remember watching other Asian parents in D.C., whether it was at the grocery store, school, or the mall, get yelled at and picked on by white people, but my mom always spoke up. She wasn’t scared. She would haggle, honk her horn in traffic, push people out of the way if they tried to cut us in line. It was really funny. Mom wasn’t even five feet tall but she was tough. Even when she had parent-teacher conferences, I wasn’t scared if my grades were good, because that’s all she cared about.
“This bitch is an idiot.”
“I told you, Mom! Everyone thinks she’s pretty, too.”
“Pretty? Boring and so slooooow. Take forever to talk to her, talk, talk, talk, all garbage. I tell her get to the point!”
“What’d she say?”
“She say you ask weird questions, but I say you’re student, you supposed to ask! Her job to answer! I say you’re lazy, if student ask, you answer!”
“Yeah! She told me my real great-grandparents are these white people named Adam and Eve!”
“Bullshit! But hey, Xiao Wen, be smart. Why you argue with her about that? You know they believe this stuff, just let them believe.”
“But she told me I was going to Hell if I didn’t believe and told me to ask God into my heart!”
“Ha, ha, yeah, she told me, too, think she do something sooo good to help you. Whatever. You know it’s lies, let those idiots believe. Just focus on real school. Don’t be stupid and fight them, you’ll lose.”
Mom was smart. I stopped questioning Ms. Truex about God—but lunch was still a problem. Every day, I got sent to school with Chinese lunch. Some days it was tomato and eggs over fried rice, others it was braised beef and carrots with Chinese broccoli, but every day it smelled like shit. I’d open up the Igloo lunchbox and a stale moist air would waft up with weak traces of soy sauce, peanut oil, and scallions. I didn’t care about the smell, since it was all I knew, but no one wanted to sit with the stinky kid. Even if they didn’t sit with me, they’d stand across the room pointing at me with their noses pinched, eyes pulled back, telling ching-chong jokes. It was embarrassing so I asked Mom to start packing me some white people food.
“What do white people bring to lunch?”
“Like sandwiches, chips, and juice boxes. Everyone likes Capri Sun, Mom!”
“Ohhh, the foil drink? That’s expensive!”
“Mom, it’s worth it! Everyone says it’s really good.”
“What’s wrong with your soy milk? You always like soy milk.”
“It’s different at school, people laugh at you! My stomach hurts when I eat ’cause I get mad.”
It was true, my stomach would cramp into angry knots when those kids clowned me. It got extra shitty when show-and-tell came around. My parents didn’t want to spend money on show-and-tell, so Mom’s idea was to bring something exotic for lunch and kill two birds with one stone. That day, I walked to the front of the room knowing I was about to give the wackest presentation any third grader had ever seen. I opened my lunchbox and took out a plastic container of seaweed salad.
“For show-and-tell today, I brought seaweed salad.”
“Eeeewww! What’s seaweed!”
“It’s like spinach but from the bottom of the ocean.”
“Gross! I would never eat that.”
“If it’s on the bottom that means sharks poop on it!”
“Sharks don’t poop on seaweed! It’s really good for you and tasty.”
“No, it’s not, you eat shark poop!”
The teacher jumped in to stop the other kids, but I had no comebacks. I just went back to my chair and ate my seaweed salad. My mom saw that the relentless food shaming was getting to me and gave in. I loved my mom. We didn’t have much back then, but she always did everything she could to get us what we wanted. I remember being at Chinese school hearing all the kids complain that their parents wouldn’t buy them toys, new clothes, or McDonald’s. Some kids really wanted to be white. I joined in and told jokes about my parents, but I knew they tried hard and that was enough for me. OK, I’d admit that it seemed a lot nicer to be white, but I liked my parents! I was OK without Ninja Turtles and McRibs; I just didn’t want any more stinky Chinese lunch. That night, instead of going to Dong-a Trading or Hong Kong Supermarket for groceries, she took me to Gooding’s and Publix. We walked the polished, halogen-lighted, air-conditioned aisles looking for lunch stuff. She really cared that I ate well and didn’t want to just pack me sandwiches and sugary drinks.
“I like this penguin, Mom!”
“Ha, ha, you always like penguins or pandas.”
“Yeah, they have cool colors and waddle around. They’re friendly.”
“OK, let’s see, what is in this meal? Chicken nuggets, peas, mashed potatoes. What is this called?”
After the nutritional information panel met with her approval, Mom loaded up the cart with Kid Cuisines and Juicy Juices.
The next day at school I couldn’t wait to break for lunch. There was a microwave oven in our classroom and every day a few kids would take their lunches and get in line. I proudly pulled out my Kid Cuisine, still cold in my hand, penguins grinning, and got in line. I was third in line so I wouldn’t have to wait too long.
There was one black kid in our class, Edgar. He had the same trouble I did: he was a loner without many friends. But he was Christian, so at least that was going for him. I was still the buffer between him and the bottom. He lined up behind me.
The two people in front of us were taking too long. Why were they taking so long? What are they doing up there? I stood waiting as our lunch period ticked away; I felt Edgar’s mouth-breathing ass creeping behind me. By the time I finally got up to the microwave, there were only fifteen or twenty minutes left for lunch. I was getting ready to pop open the oven door when Edgar grabbed me by my shirt and threw me to the ground.
“Chinks get to the back!”
I looked up from the ground, dumbfounded.
My dad had told me about the word, and what it meant, but you’re never ready for your first time. It just fucking happens. I waited for Ms. Truex to get involved but she just sat on her fat ass eating lunch like David Stern watching the Malice at the Palace.
Finally, something went off in me. I was nine years old, and I called ’nuff. I jumped up from the floor and went right at Edgar. The boy was bird-chested. I grabbed his arm and threw it in the microwave. With my other hand I grabbed the door and slammed it on his arm as hard as I could. I wanted to kill him. I don’t know if I broke his arm, but he slumped to the floor crying. I stood over him like Ali and wouldn’t back off. I went to kick him and that’s when Ms. Truex finally got involved. She shouted over to another one of the students, the kid named Cole.
“Cole! Help!”
“Yes, Ms. Truex!”
“Cole, you take Eddie to the principal’s office. Take Chris with you to be safe! I’ll take Edgar to the nurse.”
“He hit me first and called me a chink!”
“Eddie, you are in enough trouble! You go straight to the office with Cole and Chris.”
“Eddie, just go to the office, man …”
I walked down the hallway with Cole and Chris flanking me; I was shaking the whole time. I didn’t know why. I wasn’t scared of the principal or Edgar, but something was wrong. I was shaking like crazy and couldn’t even keep my hand still. We got to the principal and I started crying. Cole told him what happened and I was so shook I couldn’t speak. The principal took away my lunch, locked me in a walk-in closet, and wouldn’t even let me out to go to the bathroom. When my mom came to pick me up, they pried open the closet door to find a kid drenched in piss. Mom bugged the fuck out.
“You stupid ass! How do you do this to my son! He was hit first!”
“Mrs. Huang, your son was out of control today and severely injured another student.”
“He called him a chink! You think that’s OK? Words hurt, too. I hear you people say that words hurt like sticks! Look at him!”
My mom would always get sayings wrong, but they knew what she meant. I was never happier to see her. Every day I went to this bullshit school alone and no one ever had my back besides my mom. But despite her best efforts, I was never the same. She always talks about how I was a happy kid, deep-thinking, liked to read books, and didn’t bother with drama. Even when other kids in the neighborhood got caught up, I’d just shoot hoops, ride my bike, or listen to music. I tried to fit in and get along, but people weren’t havin’ it. Edgar forced me into my William Wallace moment. From that day forward, I promised that I would be the trouble in my life. I wouldn’t wait for people to pick on me or back me into a corner. Whether it was race, height, weight, or my personality that people didn’t like, it was now their fucking problem. If anyone said anything to me, I’d go back at them harder, and if that didn’t work, too bad for them: I’d catch them outside after school.
WHEN MY DAD got home, he took the whole family out for dinner as if he’d been waiting for this day. I couldn’t believe it. He was prepared. We all piled in his Lincoln Town Car and went for a ride over to Chinese Choo-Choo’s fast food on Orange Blossom Trail. My dad told me a story about when he was a bartender at my uncle’s restaurant. These customers ordered a martini straight up so he went to pick it up at the bar. There wasn’t a garnish on the drink, though, and he couldn’t remember whether it was supposed to get an olive or a cherry so he just put a cherry in, figuring it wasn’t a big deal. When he finally got to the table, these assholes clowned him for being an FOB, so he came back and threw olives on the table, but he never forgot it. We weren’t Americans like everyone else. We’d always be the other in this bullshit country. From that point on, he put me in kung fu classes, started sparring with me, and gave me a belt to wear to school. If anyone fucked with me, he said to use the belt. It was the most important thing my father ever gave me: A License to Ill. Things started to change.
When I played ball now, I emulated Charles Barkley. I was short, but I boxed people out, posted them on the block, and stuck my elbows out on pick-and-rolls. I went to five schools in seven years because I stayed in trouble: knocked a dude out in a parking lot, fought kids at the JCC playing ball, and hit a twenty-three-year-old dude at McDonald’s with a bat when he broke my friend’s hand in a fight.‖ Anyone who had something to say, I dealt with it. I was never proud of it. My psyche just clocked out that day and gave up. No more diplomacy. It’s not OK for people to say “Ching Chong Eddie Huang” or squint their eyes at me. It was the most important decision I made in my life. China went through the Cultural Revolution and a lot of bad decisions by Mao, but you know what? That man expelled the barbarians and so did I: everybody out.
One interesting thing happened that year. A man called Master Wu came to Orlando, Florida, as part of a global tour. He was a chi gong master who also practiced Taoist face reading. I didn’t understand the concepts, but he was revered. After Chinese school one night, the parents threw a big potluck dinner in his honor and everyone was invited. I remember wandering around with a party plate of food, huddling with Emery and Evan to avoid parents, when all of a sudden, he pointed toward me.
“This one! He has the face of an emperor! Ta hwai jwo gwan!” (He will be a public servant.)
I certainly didn’t look like an emperor with half-chewed Taiwanese mei fun hanging out the side of my mouth.
“Hi.”
“What is your name? Whose son is this?”
“Huang Xiao Ming. That’s my mom.”
I pointed toward my mom, and she’d never been that happy to claim me.
“He is my son!”
A few weeks later, Master Wu came to Atlantic Bay because he wanted to meet me. I’d never seen my parents that proud, and the best part was I didn’t have to do anything for this guy to pick me out of a crowd like I was Kung-Fu Panda. He read my palms, checked out my face, talked to me about chi, and declared I surely had the face of an emperor. I was confused, but Emery had a great time with it.
“Ohhhhh, my brudder the emperor! Please, Huang Di, give me Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for SNES!”
“You will have all the Ninja Turtle games, my brother! I also give you Tibet!”
“Ha, ha, yes, Tibet is mine!”
“Hey, Mom, don’t you think you should get us some more stuff? I’m going to be an emperor one day.”
“Oh, shut up.”
That year Louis Huang took the child emperor to his first NBA game. The Orlando Magic sucked. I thought their name was wack and there were mad cornballs on the team like Scott Skiles and Jeff Turner. They used to play this song on the radio making fun of the squad:
“Orlando Magic, they are so tragic, ooooohhhh watch out beware …”
But it was still fun to be at a game. My first game was Magic versus Warriors. The Warriors had Chris Mullin and Tim Hardaway and I loved Hardaway, but my dad was a sucker for the Magic. It was part of his “we’re Orlandoans” campaign. The rest of the family hated Orlando. It was full of ass-backward transplants, bad food, and doo-doo basketball players. It was everything that sucked about the South with none of the benefits. People drove ride-on lawn mowers through their neighborhoods wearing Home Depot hats, but you couldn’t find any decent barbecue within five counties. No Southern hospitality, just hot asphalt and suburban phoniness. All the ignorance, none of the sense.
We sat down for the game and every time Hardaway crossed someone over, fans would scream “double dribble” or something equally embarrassing. These fans had no basketball IQ; they didn’t know about that UTEP Two-Step. Hardaway was breakin’ fools off left and right; it was dope. But my dad insisted I cheer for the Magic. He came up with his own “cheer” and slick-talked me into doing it with him.
“Next time Chris Mullin gets the ball, yell, ‘al-co-holic’ and then stomp your feet.”
“What’s an alcoholic?”
“Chris Mullin is an alcoholic.”
“OK, cool!”
He had the whole section screaming “al-co-holic.” He was officially a brain-damaged Orlando resident, but at least he was having fun. My dad and I always watched Married with Children together and this was my Bud Bundy moment. Instead of beer and strippers, we had nachos and Run TMC. I really liked this Mullin guy: the man’s jumper was wet and he had a flat top like me. I thought to myself, “I wouldn’t mind being an alcoholic …”
When I changed schools the next year, to Park Maitland, another private school, this time ninety minutes from home, it was basketball that helped me make friends. A bunch of us collected basketball cards and read Sports Illustrated for Kids so we’d stay after school and trade cards and play ball. That year, the Magic were supposed to get the number-one pick and Shaq was coming out of LSU. We couldn’t wait. Every day, we sat around after school thinking about what would happen if Shaq came to Orlando.
“Dude, we could beat the Bulls!”
“We’ll never beat the Bulls!”
“We can beat anyone with Shaq! He breaks backboards, man!”
“We should get Shaq and then trade him for Charles Barkley. He’s even better than Jordan.”
“No way, man, Barkley stinks. He’s so fat!”
My best friend was Jeff Miller. We both read the Encyclopedia Brown books and made up fake crimes to solve at school. We all loved Kris Kross and Hammer so we tried to rap. But all roads led back to Shaq and we bugged when we found out he rapped, too. We were obsessed. Teachers would try to ask us questions about science or math and we would answer back with news about Shaq coming to Orlando. It was an exciting time.
One day, Jeff invited me over to his house for a sleepover. I had never been to one before, but I always saw other kids going home with their friends at car pool and I was curious. He told me he had a Super Nintendo and tons of board games. I couldn’t wait, because we didn’t have shit at my house. My brothers and I shared three comics, two dinosaurs, and one copy of Coming to America between the three of us. There was one blue dinosaur that Emery and I both liked, and this big shitty orange dinosaur that neither of us wanted to play with. My kindest act as a brother was to let Emery play with the blue one. That was the apex of my accomplishments as a good older brother. I mean, damn, I ate all the kid’s food, he should at least get the blue dinosaur.
Of course, I had to ask my mom for permission to go over to Jeff’s house.
“What do his parents do?”
“Doctors.”
“What kind?”
“Uhhh, anesthetic?”
“Anesthetic? I have not heard of this.”
“Yeah, Jeff says he gives shots to people so they fall asleep before surgery.”
“Hmm, let me call your aunt, she will know …”
After calling several of her sisters and friends, she figured it was a good job and approved.
“OK, you can go to Jeff’s house. Me and Dad will drive you Saturday. Good job. You make a good friend.”
My mom was pretty proud of herself. Her plan to have me rub elbows with the children of rich kids was working. From a young age, Mom made sure I was aware of money and how important it was. Everything revolved around money for her. School was important, but it was only a means to some ends. If you asked her why we came to America, she’d tell you straight up: cold hard motherfucking cash. Why else? We didn’t like the food, people, culture, anything here. My dad “believed” in America, but my mom didn’t. She just wanted the eggs.a I wasn’t mad, though—I couldn’t wait to play Super Nintendo and watch wrestling with Jeff. Every Saturday, WWF came on TV and my favorite wrestler was this big greasy Latino dude named Razor Ramon, who threw toothpicks, kicked sand in people’s faces, and did the Razor’s Edge. He’d put someone on his shoulders like a reverse cowgirl (pause) and then slam them down on their backs for the pin. I liked Jake the Snake, too—I did his signature move, the DDT, on Emery all the time—but Razor Ramon was my favorite. As a bonus, Jeff said we could practice the Razor’s Edge on his little brother.
When the day finally came, my mom dropped me off.
“Hi! I’m Jessica. Are you Jeff’s mom?”
“Yes, I’m Mrs. Miller. And you must be Eddie! It’s so nice to meet you. Jeff talks about you every day.”
“Yeah, hey, Jeff.”
“Hey, man.”
“Well, Jeff, go on ahead and take Eddie upstairs; you boys can play video games.”
We were so excited we ran upstairs to play games, but I could hear my mom from downstairs.
“Thank you so much for having Eddie over! We brought this for you.”
My mom had brought a gift. She always brought gifts everywhere we went, usually some sort of dessert or a bottle of wine from the restaurant.
“Oh, thank you! Yes, we’re very happy to have him over.”
“He says your husband is a … uh, anesthetics?”
“Oh, you must mean anesthesiologist?”
“Yes, yes, he gives the shot, right?”
“Well, yeah, he gives people shots or treatment before they go into surgery.”
“Ahhh, like the novocaine.”
“Yeah, sort of like that.”
“Oh, great! I know the novocaine! I get it all the time at the dentist.”
“Well, that’s, that’s … fantastic.”
“OK! Great. Well, I will see you tomorrow. We pick up Eddie around three?”
I mean, people loved my mom and all the parents said nice things, but I would just laugh my ass off inside listening to her try to show people she knew what was up. That novocaine shit had me rolling.
I walked up to Jeff’s room—they called it a loft because it was upstairs and had a low ceiling; I couldn’t believe my eyes. Everywhere you walked: toys, games, huge television, stuffed animals, it was like living in a Toys ‘R’ Us. I remember thinking to myself that if I died, I wanted to come back a white man. These fuckers had EVERYTHING. I didn’t know what to play first, I was so confused. I literally rolled around in video games, read the instructions, looked at all the GamePro magazines, and then went to the bathroom and wiped my ass with their fancy toilet paper just to see how it felt. When you washed your hands, they had hand towels so you didn’t have to wipe your face with the towel your brother wiped his balls with ten minutes ago. For real, if you are a broke-ass kid, you are wiping your face with your brother’s balls. I felt like some wild gremlin child living in Chinese hell after going to their house.
By that point, I was ready to convert. I wanted to be white so fucking bad. But then dinner happened. All of us sat down. I had never eaten at a white person’s house, but I just figured they ate pizza, hot dogs, or something like that. After a few minutes, Jeff’s mom came out of the kitchen with two bowls. One bowl was filled with goopy orange stuff. For a second, I thought they might be little boiled intestines in an orange sauce, which I could get down with, but on closer inspection they were unlike any intestines I’d ever seen. The other bowl was gray and filled with a fibrous material mixed with bits of celery. I thought to myself, These white people like really mushy food.
She also gave us each two pieces of bread, the same plain Wonder Bread I saw at school. Jeff started wiping the gray stuff on the bread. I didn’t want to come off like an idiot so I did the same thing. I put the other slice on top, lifted up, and went to take a bite, but holy shit, that smell. What the fuck was in this? Jeff and his brothers couldn’t get enough but I was scared. I took a deep breath, clutched my orange juice, and forced myself to take a bite. Right on cue, gag reflex, boom went the orange juice. I couldn’t hide it anymore. I had to ask.
“What is that, man?”
“You’ve never had tuna fish sandwiches?”
“No, never. Where do you get it?”
“At the grocery store, you want to see the can?”
“OK, but what’s the orange stuff?”
“Macaroni and cheese.”
“What’s macaroni?”
“It’s pasta.”
I didn’t know what pasta was, but was really starting to feel like a dumb-ass so I didn’t ask. The shit was so nasty. We never ate cheese and it stunk like feet. A lot of Chinese people are lactose intolerant, so it’s just not something we eat normally. We drink soy milk instead of cow’s milk and stir-fry our noodles instead of covering them with cheese. I suddenly realized that converting to white wouldn’t be easy, but still, that toilet paper was like silk. I tried to force myself to eat the macaroni and cheese but literally barfed it through my nose. Jeff and his brothers couldn’t believe it. I realized no matter how many toys they had, I couldn’t cross over. I’d much rather eat Chinese food and split the one good dinosaur with my brother. Macaroni is to Chinamen as water is to gremlins, teeth are to blow jobs, and Asian is to American. It just didn’t fit.
* Xiao Wen was my original Chinese name. When I started getting in trouble around third grade, my parents went to a fortuneteller, who named me Xiao Tsen, and when it got really bad in middle school, I was reborn for the third time as Xiao Ming. But to this day, Phil calls me by my first name: Xiao Wen.
† Five words: RANDALL HILL SHOOT ’EM UP.
‡ R.I.P. ODB.
§ That’s how you spell “Jordan” in Chinglish. His nickname was Kong Zhong Fei Ren = Mid-Air Flying Man.
‖ When I was fifteen, we were hanging out at this McDonald’s parking lot when these two guys in a Camaro rolled through. Both were twenty-three years old but liked the girls we were with so they started a fight with my boy, Lil’ Cra. Cra got the first punch: cracked it on the guy’s head and broke his hand. I had seen it happen from inside McDonald’s so I ran out with a tee-ball bat and handled that. Readers, pay attention, if you tryin’ to fuck people up, leave the baseball bat, bring the tee-ball stick, you’ll always beat them to the kneecaps.
a What up, Woody? Annie Hall … you already know B.