by Dickson Lam
I gripped the chair by its wooden backrest. I raised it high in the air. For a long second, I was fully conscious of what I was about to do. Breathe, I told myself. Put. The chair. Down. I weighed my options. Big mistake. Once I considered the violent act, the urge became irresistible. I needed the release.
I slammed the chair to the floor as hard as I could, twisting my torso, pivoting on the ball of my rear foot. The chair fell to the side, one of its metal legs bent at a sharp angle.
Peter sat in his chair silent, hugging his two-liter soda bottle, fingering the cap. The students wouldn’t look at me. I knew I should say something, an explanation, an apology, but I couldn’t take their faces. They looked petrified.
“Y’all can go,” I said.
They cleared out in record time, not saying a word. I hadn’t checked their notebooks to ensure they’d written down the homework, and none of them mentioned the slip in routine.
I sat the chair up. It was wobbly because of the broken leg, wrecked. No one would sit in the chair again, but I never tossed it out. I’d keep it in the middle of the room, at the table, front and center, a reminder, of what, I wasn’t sure.
church
Hi Dickson,
How are you? Are you enjoying your Thanksgiving break? Last night, we drove your dad to my sister’s place for Thanksgiving. The last couple of times we had our monthly church meetings, your dad seemed very tired and down because he said he didn’t sleep well, and he wasn’t very sober. I told him he needs to go see the doctor and check things out, but he said that if the doctor told him to rest, he couldn’t afford to take time off. Do you call him on the phone often? He said he hasn’t heard from you since you visited. Please send him your love!
Sarah
public shaming
Compared to other landlords, my great-grandmother had gotten off light during land reform. Tortured but not killed. Over a million landlords were executed under Mao’s sweeping land reform. Some condemn him for the bloodshed. He initiated the campaign, but to suggest he orchestrated the results underestimates the rage of the peasants. They ran the tribunals and decided the sentencing, not the communists. For the first time in China’s history, peasants confronted their oppressors without fear of retribution.
Given free rein, it’s not shocking that many peasants, particularly those most mistreated, were bloodthirsty. What surprises me is that the overwhelming majority of landlords were spared from execution. In a nation as populous as China, a million landlords accounted for a small percentage of the entire landlord population, seven to ten percent, according to one study. I cite this not to argue that a million deaths is insignificant—that would be insane—but to point out just how many peasants were not in favor of revenge killings. Public shaming was a preferred form of justice. Villagers could mock and attack the ones they held responsible for their bleak lives. Even kids picked up rocks and hurled them. It wasn’t solely about inflicting pain or even humiliation. Some villagers weren’t seeking revenge so much as a confession.
truth and reconciliation
The Mao unit was the last unit of our yearlong course on world history. The first unit examined apartheid in South Africa. We’d watched the documentary Long Night’s Journey into Day, a film about South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. To help the nation recover from a legacy of apartheid violence, the commission had been authorized to offer amnesty to perpetuators of “gross human rights violations.” Perpetuators had to confess their wretched acts in a public forum, not only in front of television cameras, but also in front of an audience that often included their victims or the families of their victims, a voluntary public shaming. The intention was not retributive but restorative. “This process is not about pillorying anybody,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu says. “It’s not about prosecuting anybody. It’s ultimately about getting the truth, so that we can help to heal and also so that we may know what to avoid in the future.” To be granted amnesty, perpetuators had to meet several criteria including satisfying the commission’s requirement for “full disclosure.” Honesty was a prerequisite for forgiveness.
In the last segment of the documentary, Rian Bellingan, a white officer, applies for amnesty for his involvement in the killing of seven young activists, but during his testimony, Bellingan does not admit any wrongdoing. Self-defense, he claims.
Thapelo Mbelo, a Black police officer, Bellingan’s colleague, also applies for amnesty for his participation in the same case. In Mbelo’s testimony, a starkly different account from Bellingan’s, he admits that he shot one of the activists in the head, even though the activist had approached the officers with his arms up in surrender.
Later, in an interview, Mbelo discusses how he dealt with betraying his own people, “The only time when you think something is going to bother you, the nearest place or the nearest thing to do was take booze. Then you stay drunk, you remember nothing.” As he speaks, his left eye constantly twitches.
Mbelo requests to meet the mothers of the seven slain men, including the mother of the son he killed. He meets the mothers in a private room and asks for forgiveness.
One mother tells him she’ll never forgive him. Her son died for freedom, while Mbelo sold out to the Boers. The camera jumps from the face of one mother to the next. Cynthia Ngewu, the mother of the man Mbelo shot, has taken off her sunglasses, eyes glistening, like the rest of the mothers. Some time passes because when Ngewu speaks again, she has her glasses on, lightly tinted. You can still see her eyes. Something clicks in her. She remembers the meaning of Mbelo’s first name, Thapelo: “prayer.” She thinks about how he and her son are the same age. “God will be the judge,” she says and adds, “we want to get rid of this burden we are carrying inside, so that we too can feel at peace. So for my part, I forgive you, my child.”
This is the kind of end I want for this book. My father expresses remorse; my sister forgives him; I can forgive him. But Bah Ba’s testimony is one of denial, the opposite of Mbelo’s testimony, but it’s also a different form of denial from Bellingan’s. Bellingan disputes the facts. My father claims not to remember them: Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.
Full disclosure was not made. Amnesty will not be granted to my father. No contrition, no redemption.
uncover
Javon’s killer remains at large, though footage exists of him, taken from the surveillance camera on the bus from that fateful afternoon. In the video, a teenage boy fires shots through the window. The boy was later identified with the help of this footage, charged with felony gun possession but not with Javon’s murder. Because this shooter’s gun was never recovered by authorities, there was no forensic evidence tying him to the bullets that hit Javon. It’s possible Waga was killed by another kid on that bus. Three other boys, filmed but not identified, ran off the bus to get a better shot. A decade has passed, and the case hasn’t been solved, but there’s more to the story than who did the crime.
Every April, to commemorate Waga’s death, Javon’s folks organize a peace march of hundreds, a family-friendly event with inflatable jumpers, face painting, and a marching band. They turned Waga into W.A.G.A., War Against Gun Activity, a family tragedy morphing into a community movement.
Once at a subway station, I ran into Javon’s younger sister. I was exiting the turnstile, she was entering. “You’re Mr. Lam, right?” She was soft-spoken and wore glasses. I didn’t recognize her at first. Several years had passed since I’d last seen her at the memorial for Javon.
I asked her about her family, how her mom was doing. The conversation was brief. I didn’t know what else to say. I still felt responsible in some way for her brother’s death. I hadn’t admitted this to anyone. I wasn’t looking to be comforted or pitied or even forgiven. I wanted to forget.
I sought the same defense used by my father.
But to be a writer, a memoirist, I must uncover what I wish to hide.
mother and da
ughter
My sister was at our mom’s house, surfing the net in Willie’s office. Willie was in his bedroom across the hallway singing karaoke, Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” Clarence Henry’s “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” Willie sang these songs over and over, as though he was in a recording studio and the producer was telling him, “Again, this time, more feeling, more emotion.”
My mom was at the doorway of the office, talking to my sister about Bah Ba, but Ga Jeh didn’t turn around, her eyes stuck to the computer screen. “Why do you have to move just because he’s coming back?” my mom asked in Cantonese.
“I can’t stand him.” My sister had secured a transfer to another resort down in San Diego. No way in hell she was sticking around with my father set to return.
“You went to Toronto to see him, and now you want to get away from him. I don’t understand you.” My mom didn’t want my sister to leave, but she wouldn’t say it explicitly. She never wanted to appear as if she needed anyone.
As Ga Jeh clicked the keyboard to jump to another website, my mother came up beside her, put her hand on the backrest of my sister’s chair. Before my mom had a chance to continue, my sister told her, “Just leave it alone, woman.”
“I thought you guys love your Bah Ba,” my mom said. “Ever since we divorced, you guys keep seeing him.”
“For funerals.”
“Jackson talks to him on the phone all the time. Dickson thinks he lonely, goes to see him. Maybe you should let him move in with you.”
“I’d rather be dead!”
“Don’t say that, it’s bad luck.”
“That’s how I feel.”
“That’s crazy. A daughter doesn’t need to run from her father.”
“You’re crazy. You’re the reason why.” Once she started, she couldn’t stop. “Every time you used to go away with Willie, Bah Ba would come in my room—he’d touch me.”
My mom pulled back. She wasn’t sure what she heard, so Ga Jeh said it again. Slower this time. “He’d. Touch. Me. And only when you were gone.”
“Leih goh sei leuih baau a! ” My mom said, a Chinese version of “good for nothing daughter,” but our version is worse, the central part of the expression, two characters, “die” then “daughter.” My mom started to lunge at my sister, as if she thought she could beat back what my sister said, what my father did, but she stopped herself. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. Her tone accusatory.
Ga Jeh pushed past her to leave.
“OK, OK,” my mom said. “Mouh haam, mouh haam.” Don’t cry, don’t cry.
My sister put on her shoes. She ignored what my mom was saying. She grabbed her purse and stormed down the stairs into the garage. She squeezed past Willie’s Camry, careful not to bump against his tools hanging from the wall: wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers, saws. She hit the button to open the garage. She heard the sound of the motor and ducked under the rising door.
Ga Jeh didn’t call my mom that night, or the next, though they usually spoke every day. But in a week, they were on speaking terms again. That’s how it was in our family. We concealed our pain and mistook it for Being Strong.
The next time my sister stopped over at my mom’s house, my mother told her that she had written a letter to Bah Ba calling him every name in the book. This was my mom’s version of an apology. She wanted Ga Jeh to know that she was on her side. She kept talking about my father and what a despicable person he was, but it didn’t make my sister feel any better. Sometimes, Ga Jeh felt angrier at my mother than my father.
She’d think about our mom as it happened. Wished that she’d come in to save the day. Each time it wasn’t just her father betraying her, but her mother abandoning her as well, off pursuing an affair while the forsaken husband snuck into her room, into her bed.
“Time for dinner,” my mom said. She went to the fridge and took out a bowl of marinated chicken. “This will be fast.”
My sister cleared the kitchen table while my mom tossed the chicken in a wok. Soon you’ll be in San Diego, Ga Jeh said to herself, a job near the beach. No friends, no family, the life of an unknown. Perhaps you should’ve moved further, to another state. How many miles does it take to escape your family?
the board
The chessboard contains 64 squares. Each square has a name, a coordinate, e4, d5. Columns are called files. Rows are ranks.
A city is a board. Its streets, files and ranks.
My sister thought she was leaving the board, but cities are also squares, the state a larger board. Highways are files and ranks.
A state is also a square, the country a board.
A country is also a square, the planet a board.
A planet is also a square, the solar system a board.
Everything is a square, everything a board. You can flee a square but not The Board.
Reverse it. Work backwards to the micro-level. A neighborhood is a square within the city, but a neighborhood is also a board, comprised of blocks, squares.
An apartment complex is a board, each unit a square. Inside each apartment unit, rooms are squares, the hallway a file, a rank.
Any square can be revisited, but not all squares are equal. The ones at the center of the board are most valued. Place your pieces here, and they’ll wield the most influence, controlling the most squares, but the center squares are also the most contested, the riskiest place for your pieces, exposed and vulnerable.
north beach place
I had a parent conference to attend, a home visit. The family of my advisee lived in my old neighborhood, North Beach. I wasn’t sure if you could still call them projects. The city had torn down the old North Beach and replaced it with a townhouse complex. Slapped a cute name on the property: North Beach Place. At least you could still claim NBP. Each unit now had a washer and dryer, an upstairs and a downstairs, a balcony or a patio.
The new NBP was a “mixed income, mixed-use complex.” Forget cracking down on hustling. In the new North Beach, a gated complex of townhouses, you couldn’t even dribble a basketball—too loud. Space was tight. From the balconies across from each other, you could hold a conversation without having to shout.
On the ground level facing the street, there were storefronts: Trader Joe’s, Starbucks, Edible Arrangements, a bike rental shop, a ballet school for kids—somebody was getting paid. Most of the original tenants hadn’t returned. Though the city had offered units in the new North Beach to all prior tenants, five years had passed since the first tenants had been asked to leave—kicked out, really. You had to settle elsewhere. It wasn’t a choice. The wrecking ball was on its way. Residents could’ve either rented an apartment in the city using the Section 8 voucher they were given, like my brother, or they could’ve moved into another housing project. Some said screw the city and left for the East Bay where rent was cheaper. By the time North Beach was rebuilt several years later, most prior tenants weren’t about to pack up and start over again. Rob was living in the new Army Street housing projects, also remade into townhouses, with his wife, a teacher at a private elementary school. They’d had a city hall wedding, and I’d been the lone witness. ’Dullah lived in a housing project in Hunter’s Point, but his folks had moved to West Oakland. Mansur, I’d heard, was regulating on the young cats on his block. None of that dope dealing here, son!
My brother returned to the new North Beach with his wife and his son, and now they had two additions to the household, a new baby girl, Alana, and Bah Ba. I’d stopped visiting after Bah Ba moved in. Wouldn’t even drive past North Beach. If I wanted to hang out with Jordan, I’d have to have my brother drop him off. My father would walk Jordan to kindergarten and back each day. Goh Goh, unlike me, could separate Bah Ba the grandfather from the Bah Ba that haunted my sister. She didn’t give him grief over this, so I didn’t either. Part of me felt relieved that my dad lived with family. If he had retired alone, I might
feel sorry. I wanted to be free to dismiss him, not chained by pity.
Goh Goh’s apartment, fortunately, was not on the same block as the apartment of my advisee. My brother’s block was our old block. I called him as I approached North Beach to find out if Bah Ba was home. “He smokes on Francisco,” my brother said. “Just park on Bay.”
Doing a house visit for my advisee wasn’t my preference, but Lakida’s mother, due to work, couldn’t make it to June Jordan in the evening. And skipping a parent-teacher conference wasn’t an option. We’d made an agreement that we’d meet with all of our advisees’ families.
Lakida’s mom, Tanya, had invited me to eat dinner with them. I sat on the leather couch while music videos played on the television. Tanya handed me a strawberry margarita. She wore a velour tracksuit, and she couldn’t have been much older than me.
“Cheers,” I said.
We clinked glasses. At another advisee’s house—we did all our parent-conferences during the same week—I’d gotten tipsy off vodka and juice. That mom kept pouring, and I kept drinking.
“Is this going to be bad?” Tanya asked.
“Not all.”
“Lakida!” Tanya called her down for dinner.
“Do you want help setting up?” I asked. I could smell the barbeque sauce. I got up but bumped into the folding tray, knocking over my margarita. The glass broke on the linoleum floor.
“Don’t worry,” Tanya said. She poured me another glass.
I fingered the rim of salt and licked it off my fingers. “Sorry, I’m a klutz. Let me clean up.”
“It’s nothing.” She took out a broom and swept the broken glass into a dustpan.
Lakida came downstairs wearing a hoodie and sweatpants. She was one of the shortest kids in school, but she’d call some of her friends, “daughter,” as in “How come you didn’t come to school yesterday, daughter?”