by Dickson Lam
Earlier that day, Bah Ba had brought me along to his church picnic. He’d become a church-going man since his older sister had passed away. Most of the members were senior citizens. We’d gathered in a circle to say grace. The woman leading the prayer thanked God for sending me here, a son returning to his father. The story sat especially well with this crowd—aging parents afraid of being abandoned by their kids.
Bah Ba’s breathing grew heavy. “I have to retire. Live my life. My boss complains and complains. For any machine that goes wrong, we pay the cost.” He shook his head like a boxer pumping himself up before a fight.
“Retire.” I gripped his shoulder. “Faan ah.” Return.
We strolled around the mall, passing two GAPs and two Victoria’s Secrets. When we saw Hooters, Bah Ba nodded toward the sign and began chuckling. We only explored one shop, a massive outdoors store. We had no intention of buying anything, but we sifted through racks of lumberjack clothes, picked up lanterns, testing their weight, their portability. We ducked inside a family-sized tent.
“Where should we put the TV?” I asked, imagining that we were decorating our new house.
“This is for sleeping.”
“I’m just pretending.”
“Oh, over there.” He pointed at nothing in particular.
We were to meet Vivian for dinner. I searched online for directions to the restaurant, though Bah Ba had argued that we didn’t need directions. It was hard to understand exactly what he was saying. He’d been drinking and was slurring and laughing like a child.
In the car, Bah Ba slumped low in the passenger seat. He was mumbling something to himself. We couldn’t have been on the freeway for more than two miles before he shouted for me to get off at the next exit.
“That’s not what the directions say,” I said.
“I go there all the time. What do you know?” His head rolled around like he was doing neck stretches. He stuck his head out the window as we passed the next exit, the wind blowing his graying hair around. He turned back and shot me a puzzled look.
“Not yet, Bah Ba. We’re still a few exits away.”
He dropped back into his seat and drifted off. I couldn’t imagine him taking care of my three-year-old nephew. My dad was clearly an alcoholic. (I had yet to accept he was also a pedophile.) Maybe we’d let him think he was needed to babysit, but really, the setup would allow us to keep an eye on him, similar to his relationship with Vivian.
“That’s the exit,” Bah Ba said.
“Go back to sleep. That’s what you said last time.”
“What are you talking about? This is the exit, right here. I’m telling you, this is it. You’re passing it. What are you crazy? Great, my son is going to get me lost.”
“Oops, I’ll get off at the next one.”
“Good, good.”
“Just relax. Lie back.”
He fell asleep with the seat belt running across his neck. His head dangled over it. I reached across and tilted his head away from the strap. Soon, he began to snore.
The day I left, while Bah Ba was working, I replaced his nasty dish rack with a new stainless steel dish rack, the most expensive one they had at the store. I wondered how long it would take for mildew to grow on this gift, the first I’d ever bought for my father.
a reevaluation
MC Shan had been unable to repair his damaged rep as the loser of the battle with KRS-One. Queensbridge rappers in general also took a hit. Nearly a decade would pass before someone from QB—the largest housing projects in America—would make a notable rap album, but when that rapper did, he dropped the most critically acclaimed hip-hop album of his generation: Illmatic. Nas, in an interview, cites MC Shan as a major influence coming up. “His rap style,” he says, “it helped me craft my rap style.” Shan’s legacy deserved a reevaluation.
Nas would later collaborate with Shan to record “Da Bridge 2001.” The track also features other Queensbridge rappers, but the younger emcees allowed Shan, the QB elder, to lead off the song, the beat, a version of the original, sampling the original. Spitting the first verse, Shan’s voice hasn’t aged, just as fresh. His opening line, the same as in his classic: You love to hear the story again and again.
In hip-hop, anything could be recovered.
a square left behind
In chess, everything has a cost. A move is a loss. Moving one piece means not moving another. And moving any piece, whether it’s swinging the bishop across the board or just taking one step with your old king, will always involve leaving something behind, a square undefended or less protected.
the last exchange
Dad,
I’m having a hard time accepting your “plan” for retirement. It’s very hard for me to discuss what I’m feeling especially since I sent you an email four years ago and you never responded. It was during the divorce and you were busy trying to get that straightened out. My problem just ended up being deleted from your memory. I am still feeling a lot of pain. You might not have noticed when you’ve seen me. We were in Toronto for sad reasons so I had to hide how I felt to be strong for you and the family. Deep down inside, it still hurts and haunts me. With your plan to move back, it is very hard for me to accept. If you feel that moving back to SF is what you would like to do, that’s fine with me. It might be good cuz the family is here, however, I will not be able to live here. I will move somewhere far.
Cindy
* * * * * *
Hi Cindy,
Sorry to respond so late, I am so misery of my job, sometimes the owner want you to do this, and they change their mind because of the whether and than the taste of the customers, so I don’t know what I am doing, it look like I am pulling by something, it has so much stress for my job, I don’t know when I can stand it, as thinking about my grandma, she died at 93, my father at over 80, my mother 70 something, than my sister at 60, these give me a signal, my family’s age might go lower and lower, that’s why I am thinking about retire, I have not see the world yet, I don’t won’t to work until I die like my sister, recently, a school bus driver at 78 crashed in the traffic accidence, he died when he worked, my friends in MN many of them have heart attack or died when they were working, which give me a signal should I retire or keep working? But I know my health, I am not that good, I feel I am getting slower and slower when I work, I don’t know who I can keep up until 62, every week I have to run with the clock in order to complete my work which make me so tire, like this week I work 14 hours on Sat and 12 hours on Sun, the life of my job you will never taste.
It’s tough for you and it’s tough for me too, you have so much bad memory, I have nothing in my mind, my mind is blank, I don’t have anything which I can recall, I don’t know, where, I don’t know, when, I know something did happen, because I trust my children, you never lie to me, so I know I had did something wrong which I still can’t recall.
Dad
* * * * * *
Dickson,
I think all the alcohol has killed his brain cells!
Cindy
erasure
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return
Our school year began two weeks before the students arrived, with staff development days to reflect on the prior year, what had to be changed. A mural had been painted of Javon in front of the school. Next to his face was an angel, wings, and a crown above a cloud.
It was after lunch, and we were meeting in a classroom, the student desks arranged in a circle. Leading the session was Toni Gill. She’d refer to other staff as Brotha and Sista, as in Brotha Lam. Her son also attended the school, and some students would call her Mama Gill. Toni was facilitating a discussion on ways to prevent sexual harassment among students. I tried to ignore her as best I could without looking obvious. This was just a few days after Ga Jeh had revealed her true feelings to me about our father, how it gave her suicidal thoughts.
Now when I thought of my father, all I could think about was the image of him in my sister’s room. “He used to touch me,” my sister had said. I asked nothing about the details, what exactly happened. Like Ga Jeh, I also wanted to keep my eyes closed. But my mind ran wild with the possibilities. They’d play out in my head, and I couldn’t say, “No, that didn’t happen”; it all happened.
My father was everywhere. I’d pass a Chinese restaurant—Bah Ba. I’d see an old Chinese man—Bah Ba. I’d see a father—Bah Ba. I’d look in the mirror—Bah Ba. The guy was in my fucking blood. He was a Lam; I’m a Lam; my children will be Lams. They will call me Bah Ba.
Walking around the empty school hallways, I’d tap my fist against the wall, lightly at first then with more power until I reached a point where any stronger, I’d break my hand. In my classroom, I’d be on my laptop, then for no reason, I’d slap the desk as hard as I could. Pain soothed me.
I brought my lunch to the meeting on sexual harassment. I hadn’t had the chance to eat yet. I’d picked up Hawaiian takeout from a spot on Mission Street, loco moco in a small Styrofoam box. As Toni continued with how prevalent sexual assault was at our school, boys grabbing girls’ butts, I broke the fried egg, the yoke spilling over the burger patty. I cut the meat into slices. I picked up a slice and ate it with a spoonful of rice. I reviewed my to-do list on my clipboard.
“We’re blind,” Toni said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the things I hear from the girls.”
My sister was trapped in her room with our father again—I had to leave.
I walked out of the room, turned the corner, walked down the hallway past my classroom, and past the front office. I left the building. I went to the courtyard and sat on a bench. There was no shade. The sun was warm, arrogantly so. The rims of the basketball courts had been tampered with, the front ends slanting toward the ground, from kids hanging on them. Next to me was a garden enclosed by a chain-link fence.
I imagined my sister at school, a preteen Ga Jeh hanging out with friends at lunch, gossiping about boys, pretending the night before was just a bad dream. When she’d arrive home, later that night, she’d see the boogeyman again, this time with the lights on.
I was eight or nine when it started. My room was directly across the hallway from my sister’s, a footstep separating her door from mine. I wanted to empower that young Dickson, give him a weapon. I’d been old enough to pick up a knife but had chased the wrong tormenter.
I dropped to the ground and did knuckle push-ups on the concrete. My knuckles reddened and were dirty. I banged my fist against the edge of the bench until I cut my knuckles, the blood mixing with dirt.
It was a few weeks into the start of the semester, and I’d thrown myself deeper into work. As a teacher at June Jordan, we already had plenty to do, had the advisor role on top of teaching, but I’d volunteered for more: volunteered for the School Culture Committee, the Academic Equity Committee, the Hiring Committee, chaired our Humanities Department, signed up to lead a yearlong professional development program for the staff, and agreed to mentor a student teacher. The shit was exhausting.
I’d come home and still have papers to grade, lessons to plan, and parents to call, the mothers and fathers of advisees who’d gotten kicked out of class. The conversations could turn lengthy. Parents often vented to me, but I had enough family drama of my own.
One day, I was running a discussion in class on abortion. A student was making a case that it was murder. I jotted down his points, as I did during all class discussions, but the student, Peter, began to ramble, veering off on tangents. He had a disability that made him walk with a limp and drag his foot. On top of that, he had a speech impediment. Words came out nasally. He’d tested out of special education, but he wasn’t trying to merely fit in. He wanted to be the most popular kid on campus. During lunch, Peter would jump into freestyle rap cyphers—and win. When we brought Challenge Day to the school, and they led us through a set of cross-the-line questions, Peter, a Chinese kid, crossed the line to identify not only as Asian but also Latino and African American. He claimed he had friends of all stripes; thus, he identified with (as) them. “It doesn’t work like that,” I’d tried to explain, but Peter wouldn’t be swayed.
I quit writing Peter’s repetitive points. Murder, we got it. Usually, I’d refocus him or move on to the next student, but I found myself doodling. An outline of a face, its mouth opened wide as though gasping for air. I began to fantasize about killing my father. It’d been a recurring daydream.
Bah Ba was asleep in his bed; my hands hovering over his neck. He awakens and tries to squirm away, but I throw him to the floor. I pounce on his back, press my weight on him, and sink my hips low to the ground. I had a piece of string in my hand that’d been snipped from my mother’s spool of string. Ga Jeh and I would cut string from this spool to play Cat’s Cradle. I loop the cotton string around Bah Ba’s neck and pull. The string turns into wire, a garrote. It cuts into his skin. He tries to shake his head free. His panting eventually trails off, and this pleases me. I pull harder.
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” a student screamed at Peter. It was Roxanne, who shouted all her sentences. She could make, “Can I borrow a piece of paper?” sound violent—she would’ve been a natural Cantonese speaker—but when she’d realize she was too loud, she’d flash an innocent smile a
nd apologize earnestly. This wasn’t that sort of shout.
“It’s still a life, Roxy,” Peter snapped back.
“If it is, then you might as well say condoms are killing life!” Roxanne stood up from her desk. “You gonna say birth control should be against the law too? No, didn’t think so!”
An “oooh” erupted in the class.
I checked the clock. “Roxanne had the last word,” I said to the class.“It’s time to go. Make sure you grab a handout.” I placed a stack of papers on the table in the middle of the room, which all the desks faced.
“Wait,” Peter said. “I get to respond. She asked me a question.”
“Didn’t you hear Lam?” Roxanne said. “Time’s up!”
“All you who think it’s OK—” Peter stood up and shouted like he was a preacher on a corner downtown. He accidently knocked over his two-liter bottle on the floor. The kid drank a lot of soda.
“It’s over.” I glared at him, but he wasn’t looking. He was trying to pick up his bottle. I couldn’t find my stapler. It was my go-to method for getting their attention or shutting them up. I’d tap the stapler three times against the edge of the table. The teacher next door used a Zen meditation chime.
“What if your parents had aborted you?” Peter said to the class, saliva spewing from his mouth.
“Peter, stop.” I grabbed an empty metal chair and banged its rear feet three times against the floor.
“You guys are all murderers,” he said and pointed at the class. He launched further into his diatribe.