Fresh Off the Boat (2 page)

“Eddie figured it out. They’re using that cheap heavy soy sauce now. Look over there, he’s putting it in all the bottles!”

“Oh my God! Too smart, too smart, I told you, this one is so smart!”

“Whatever, Mom, you never listen!”

“Shhh, shhh, shhh, don’t ruin it for yourself. You did a good thing, just eat your food now.”

I think my mom is manic, but Chinese people don’t believe in psychologists. We just drink more tea when things go bad. Sometimes I agree; I think we’re all overdiagnosed. Maybe that’s just how we are, and people should leave us alone. My mom was entertaining! If you met my family, you’d prescribe Xanax for all of them, but then what? We’d be boring.

At any moment, I was around my younger brother, Emery, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, or my parents. We ate together, went shopping together, and worked together. Sometimes five of them, sometimes twelve of them; on weekends, it was anyone’s guess. We’d pick an aunt’s house and you’d see a line of Cadillacs, Lincolns, and Toyotas form down the street.

Our family counted all the aunts and uncles from both sides as one team, so even if you were the oldest in your family, you might be second or third in the larger bracket. Got it? Good. So, #1 Aunt lived in Pittsburgh, where that side of the family had a furniture store. She would come down every once in a while with her kids and they were always friendly. We loved that side of the family because we saw them only three or four times a year. #2 Aunt was my mother’s oldest sister and she made the best
ti-pang
: red cooked pork shoulder. Her husband, Gong Gong, was a really funny guy. He didn’t speak English, so he’d always test my Chinese, check my biceps, shoulders, triceps, and then ask to arm wrestle. Gong Gong was a funny dude, bent over all his nephews, examining them like they were entries in a dog show.

#3 Uncle was my cousin Shupei’s dad. I never spoke to him ’cause there were always fifty or sixty people in the house when he came, since it was a big event. He lived in Pittsburgh, had four kids, and they all traveled
together in packs. It was awesome when they visited. Shupei and his cousin Schubert, cool dudes who played ice hockey and poker. They were also huge, the first six-foot-three Chinamen I’d ever seen. As a nine-year-old, I’d tell myself I had a chance at going NBA if I grew as tall as they did. Also, Shupei’s wife was white, which gave me hope that I didn’t have to date someone from Chinese school.

#4 Aunt was my mom’s sister. She was crazy and, without any notice, she would say things like “Look how fat you are!” or “You are really stupid, do you know that?” As a kid, I stayed as far away as possible from her and her brother, Uncle Tai, because they were like Boogie Man and Bride of Boogie Man. As I got older though, #4 Aunt became a lot nicer and my brothers and I finally understood: it wasn’t her. My mom was the one telling #4 Aunt about how me and my brothers were acting up. As a favor to my mom, she took on the role of enforcer. She was the first person in our family to figure out how to make cheesecake. For some reason, she had more interest in American food than the rest of us did. Ironically, she also made the best American Chinese food: fried rice.

Then came #5 Aunt, also called Aunt Beth; she was my cousin Allen’s mom. Then came my cousin Phil’s mom, who never took an American name. Next was my Uncle Tai and lastly was my mom, who everyone called “Xiao A-Yi”—Little Aunt. Phil, Allen, and their moms were my closest family.

Aunt Beth put out a good dinner when the family got together at her house on the weekends. It was balanced. Always two vegetables depending on what was in season—it could be
Xiao You Cai
or sautéed
kong-xin cai
(Chinese watercress, literally “hollow heart vegetable”), which is my favorite vegetable. She liked making tomato and eggs, plus some sort of shredded pork stir-fry with either cured tofu or beans, and chicken soup. Aunt Beth was a great host—she served a balanced meal, and let me watch sports before the older people took over the TV to sing karaoke.

I thought my cousin Allen was the coolest dude. He was three years older than me so he knew about everything just before I did. When we went to the mall, he showed me purple Girbaud jeans. He was the first to get a CD player and we always listened to Onyx’s
Bacdafucup
together. If
his mom had to pick him up from detention at school, I went to go get him, too. Sometimes he’d treat me like a burden, but I looked up to him. I was learning.

My other cousin Phillip was my best friend. He was only a year older than me, but he really took on the role of older cousin. He was the kindest person in the family and smart, too. He knew something about everything, but wasn’t afraid of doing dumb shit, either. Our favorite thing to do was to watch WWF together on Saturday mornings at Aunt Beth’s house, get hyped, and try out moves in the pool, where they’d body-slam me, causing me to immediately puke the tomato and eggs I’d just eaten into the water.

We fought a lot, made fun of each other constantly, but it was a good time. It was always chaos in the living room when our whole family came over, so Allen, Phillip, and I would retreat downstairs after dinner and play Tecmo Super Bowl or Mike Tyson’s Punchout. We’d stay in the basement for hours and every once in a while, they’d send me up to get drinks and snacks. I’d go into the dining room, which was only separated from the living room by one step. A false divider. Although everyone else had gone to the living room for karaoke, one person always remained on the dining room level: Grandma. She’d sit there in her wheelchair and make birds out of Play-Doh. I’d come up to get drinks and see her alone, so I’d hang out with her for a minute. All of us would keep her company at one point or another in the night.

Grandma had bound feet. She couldn’t walk, but in the house, she was always present, always watching, an anchor in the middle of the room. No one ever argued around Grandma and we all put on our best faces for her. We revered her, but we also pitied her. The uncles and aunts claimed her feet were “pretty” and that binding was just how things were done in the old days. If you went into Grandma’s bedroom, you’d see her little shoes all lined up by her closet, and the Chinese people that visited were always saying nice things about them. Most of the shoes were silk and had intricate patterns or embroidery. Guests gushed over the stitching, but I thought the whole thing was gross. The little shoes ruined Grandma and I hated them.

We weren’t supposed to see Grandma’s feet, but I snuck into her room once when her nurse was washing them. They were deformed, mangled like potato roots. I was so angry—I couldn’t believe they did that to Grandma. But she never complained. I would ask my mom, “Can we fix Grandma’s feet?” She said no, but I didn’t believe it. My grandma on my dad’s side had her feet bound for a while, too, but luckily, her brother went to school outside China in the early 1900s and the first thing he did when he got back was unbind her feet. That grandma lived to 101 years old, did tai chi every morning at six, and got to live her life. I wanted that for this grandma, too. Without ever reading Audre Lorde or Teresa de Lauretis, I understood how shitty it was to be a Chinese woman and really felt bad for them, whether they were my aunts, Mulan, or Grandma. Especially Grandma.

In China during the war, the people had to stand in long lines for food and water. One day, this guy tried to cut the line and my grandpa jumped him. While they fought, Grandma got so nervous she had a brain aneurysm and nearly died. She lived through a lot but somehow always seemed content with the world. Grandpa, Uncle, Mom, Aunt Beth, they all had bad tempers. There was never a dull moment or a plate that lasted longer than three months. But even when people threw plates or staplers or bowls of rice at each other, Grandma stayed calm. She never stopped smiling. One of the best ways to stop the fights between my mom and Aunt Beth was to wheel my grandma into the room. Everyone was too embarrassed to argue in front of her. It was like putting a lid over the hot pot when Grandma came around. She didn’t have to say anything. We all knew her story and if she could stay calm, we should, too.

My mother’s father had six kids. After the Cultural Revolution, the family fled to Taipei. My grandma was pregnant with my mother at the time so my mother was the only one born there. M.I.T.—Made in Taiwan. My grandpa and grandma were broke and made a living selling mantou on the street, just like Kossar selling bialys or Schimmel selling knishes. The easiest way for Americans to make sense of Chinese history is to compare everything to Jewish history. There’s an analogue for everything. Torah:
Analects
. Curly sideburns: long ponytails. Mantou: bagels. My family sold fresh mantou every morning. People would buy them on the way to work
and eat them with hot soy milk. Back then, most didn’t have money for meat so you just ate the bread alone.

Grandpa would bring the whole family out to do business together every day. The youngest daughters were charged with selling the mantou because pretty girls represented the best chance to close. There was a man from Hunan that would come by like clockwork. One day, he lingered and asked to speak to my grandpa. Turned out that he owned the only textile factory in Taipei at the time and he really liked our family. They were there on time, rain or shine, and the mantou were always hot. He respected the family hustle.

The family that was working for him at the textile factory hadn’t shown up for an entire week. He needed new workers, so he offered to have my grandpa bring over the whole family and get to work. This was one call my grandpa didn’t need the abacus for. As my family likes to tell it, they dropped the mantou on the street and went straight to the factory. They busted ass, learned the trade, and a few years later my grandpa opened his own factory. Eventually, he became one of the first Taiwanese millionaires. They ended up staying in Taiwan about seventeen years, then came to America and opened a furniture store, Better Homes, in northern Virginia. Why leave a country when you’re on top? Whether it was another communist scare or the even greener pastures in America, no one ever gives me a straight answer. (The only thing anyone can agree on is that they still miss the island.)

WHEN I WASN’T
in school, I was at Better Homes, in the office where all the aunts worked. Better Homes was a quintessential eighties mini-mall white box with a square glass front. Built to sell. I spent the first five years of my life handcuffed to a playpen in the middle of this mini-mall furniture-store office. Before I even knew about guns, I was trying to shoot myself.

Outside the office was the showroom, which is where the action was. I liked it. My mom was the only one of her sisters to go to college, where she trained as an interior designer. She had a big part in laying out the store and I thought she did a pretty good job as I toddled through the aisles.
When business was slow, I’d go around and test out the couches, poke the mattresses, and shake hands with customers. I was working. My mom would lose track of me most days so she’d come out to the showroom and shout my name.

“Eddie! Where are you?”

“Mom, I’m over here! Come sit in this chair.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Please, relax, sit in this chair.”

“Eddie, I’m busy, why do you want me to sit in this chair?”

“Just sit in the chair, Mom! I want to sell you something.”

“You’re crazy!” she’d say, laughing. “Why do you want to sell me something?”

“Because I’m a businessman!”

All day, I saw my dad or my grandpa sit with customers on couches or chairs, and within twenty minutes, cash was exchanging hands and furniture started moving. I wanted to be like them. They got to wear suits, customers loved them, and they didn’t have to work in the white box. Grandpa had a big office separate from the aunts and so did my dad. I figured, if I could sell, I could escape.

I was too young to be a businessman, but Uncle Tai had a way out for me. One day, I was wandering around the sales floor looking for my dad, when I ran into Uncle Tai.

“Hey! What are you doing on the floor!”

Uncle Tai was always yelling at the kids.

“Looking for my dad.”

“He’s busy! Go back to the office.”

“I don’t want to go to the office, it’s boring.”

Most of the cousins didn’t talk back to Uncle Tai. He was notorious for disciplining kids, but he knew not to touch my brother, Emery, and me. We were Louis Huang’s kids, not his.

“Hmmm. Do me a favor, then. I need a pack of cigarettes, Marlboro Red.”

I’d seen people get cigarettes before at the Sunoco next to Better Homes, and thought nothing about it.

“Cool. Can I get a grape soda, too?”

“Yeah, if you get me the cigarettes, you can get a grape soda.”

I was dumb excited. Grape soda was my shit! My favorite part was that you got Grimace lips after drinking a can of it. It was a sunny day outside and it must have been the summer. As soon as I opened the door, DMV
^*
humidity just hit me in the face. I walked the 150 feet to Sunoco, got on my tippy-toes, knocked on the window, and waited for the attendant to get on the microphone.

Brrr
. “Can I help you?”

I was barely tall enough to talk into the microphone, but I reached up, pressed the button, and just leaned toward it as I spoke.

“One pack of Marlboro Reds and a grape soda, please!”

Usually, the attendant would just grab your stuff and put it through the window, but he opened the door and came outside.

“Who asked you to get them cigarettes?”

I could tell something was wrong.

“No one. I like Marlboro Reds.”

“You don’t like Marlboro Reds. Who told you to get them?”

“No one.”

He looked away and thought to himself. After a few seconds, he went back in the Sunoco, grabbed me a grape soda, held my hand, and walked me back to Better Homes. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that the seven-year-old Chinese kid had wandered over from Better Homes and that it was Uncle Tai, the pack-a-day smoker, who sent me. We walked in the main doors of Better Homes hand in hand. I was nervous. I started drinking the soda. I knew I’d done something wrong, but he gave me a grape soda so I was a bit confused. Was it my last meal? Was I being poisoned? I stopped drinking the soda.