Chapter 24 The Chins #2
It was Richard’s favorite holiday because his children respected it as his holiday.
No matter what was happening at the homes of the son-in-laws’ families, his girls understood they and their grandchildren were required to come home for Thanksgiving.
Nothing brought him more joy than the sight of his grandkids: Stacy and Emily, Frank and Amanda, Dennis and Patrick.
At fifty-eight, Richard found life at home with Foon Wah was a monotonous cycle through the same tired rituals they’d invented decades earlier.
The prior year he’d injured his back at Wo Hop and retired on SSI, and so, for the first time in his life, he wasn’t running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to support the family.
His children were old enough to take care of themselves, and he’d settled with the loan shark and paid off the East Flatbush mortgage.
He had left a lot of things to the past, though sometimes he had to sit in front of the TV for hours to keep himself from vomiting up the memories.
Yet there was something strangely off about this Thanksgiving.
Foon Wah had been on edge all week. He’d assumed she was anxious about the cooking, but on Thursday when his daughters’ families arrived, his girls behaved strangely, too, disappearing together into the master bedroom and closing the door.
When he barged in and asked why they had hijacked his room, they exchanged glances.
“Uh… planning Christmas presents, Daddy. Don’t come in. ”
He hoped it was some womanly matter best resolved by women.
Returning to his recliner in the living room, Richard let Frank and Emily scramble up his legs, and he bounced them up and down like he was one of those coin-operated horses in Sunset Park.
Next, he took Amanda in his arms, blew air into her belly, and let her soar the sky above his head.
His daughters’ husbands plopped down on the couch to watch the football game. He had acquired three impressive sons: a police officer, a bank manager, and a pharmacist. With these family-oriented, well-paid jook seing in his house, he could almost put out of mind the fact that his own son was late.
His girls returned from the bedroom, laughing and seeming at ease. Julie helped Foon Wah carve the turkey, Jackie gave Emily a piggyback ride, and Jennifer opened the window so they wouldn’t melt from the oven heat.
“Jackie, did you hear Jason is coming with his girlfriend?” asked Jennifer.
When Richard heard her, all sounds fell away: the football game, the children’s squeals, the rumble in his belly—everything hushed, like he’d turned the volume low.
“What girlfriend?” he said, but the girls didn’t seem to hear him.
“Yeah. They should be here soon,” Jackie said.
“Do you know what her name is?” asked Julie.
“I think Rachel?”
“Rachel,” repeated Richard.
“Rabinovich,” Jennifer added.
“Rachel Rabinovich!” Richard gasped. “That’s a Jewish name.”
“I think she’s bringing rainbow cookies.”
“Jason’s got a Jewish girlfriend!” he exclaimed, not knowing whether to laugh or to scoff.
“They’re serious,” said Jennifer. “They’re living together.”
“They’re engaged,” added Jackie.
All three of his daughters avoided his eyes.
Amanda, Frank, and Emily disbanded, bored because their grandfather had stopped bouncing.
Sammy, the banker son-in-law, handed Richard an an tat and told him to eat it.
Reflexively, he lifted the crust to his mouth.
The kids attacked Uncle Johnny with the couch pillows; their shrieks filled the silence.
They had known. They had all known and had kept the news from him.
“That son of a bitch.”
“Daddy, the kids.”
“Son of a bitch!” He pushed back the footrest, rose to his feet, checked his pockets for a cigarette, and crossed the room in the direction of the porch.
“This is Jason, Daddy,” said Jackie, touching his elbow. “You know Jason. You’ll never change his mind. And if you say no, you’ll never see him again.”
Richard grabbed his coat and pushed open the porch door, letting it rattle behind him.
He leaned on the railing and smoked, as cowboys or as country peasants do, and a strange blend of sweet and bitter filled his mouth: tobacco mixed with the an tat’s custard.
He squinted down the street at the driveways crammed with the cars of visiting families.
Dance music played from a stereo. These Haitians understood they had a day off from work, but who knows how many could cook the traditional Thanksgiving foods, Richard thought.
Most likely they were stewing goat and red snapper like usual.
Though, he couldn’t deny it: the street smelled pretty good.
Jackie was right, of course. Jason did not care what he thought.
And that had always been what was wrong with his son: not a whit of respect for what his parents felt or had to say.
Made a disgrace of them, went around in flip-flops looking like a goddamn queer.
No serious job, spent all his time reading poems. What was he supposed to tell people, his only son was marrying a bak gui?
He was angry, but then, it felt almost disingenuous, as if he were only pretending to be angry because this is what they had all come to expect.
That made him furious in a different way: Did they think he was so backward, so traditional, so Chinese that he couldn’t accept a Jew? He who had grown up with Jews!
What they didn’t know, what they didn’t need to know, and what he’d never told anyone, was that he’d loved a Jewish girl once. But that had been another time.
Then he saw them. They were approaching on foot; they must have taken the train and walked the mile from the station, hand in hand.
Jason and his girl threaded in and out of the lampposts’ glow.
Richard felt there was something uncanny about the picture they made—how, from a distance, they resembled each other: both lean, with long dark hair; both wearing shabby hats and plaid scarves.
Startled by this mirage, he lit another cigarette.
And then a kind of softness took him. He only knew that there was something those two young people possessed that he did not.
They were coming to him, afraid, but hoping that he might recognize what had flowered between them, that he’d treat it with tenderness.
They were two houses away. It was dark, and she had not seen him yet, but Jason had. His son stiffened upon recognition.
His son feared that when they reached the porch, Richard would be obnoxious, that he wouldn’t look Rachel in the eye, that all through dinner, he’d berate Jason for his life choices. That he didn’t understand times were changing.
But his son underestimated him.
“Oh ho ho! That must be Rachel!” Richard called out.
He flung the cigarette nub across the lawn, and Jason raised a tentative hand.
They reached the steps. “Welcome, welcome!” Richard said, opening his arms wide, and when Rachel reached the top of the stoop, he gathered her bewildered frame into his arms and kissed her cold cheek with all the warmth of a big fat zayde.
He could tell they were perplexed. He led them through the door into the warmth of the kitchen.
The table was covered end-to-end with dishes—turkey and sweet potato, yes, but also shrimp in lobster sauce and no mai fan, probably things the girl had not expected to see on Thanksgiving night.
When dinner began, he enjoyed the awe on her face as a maze of reaching hands, spoons, and chopsticks crisscrossed like vines in the canopy of a rainforest. Foon Wah ran back and forth pouring apple juice into cups, reheating dishes, and cutting the meat into bites for the grandchildren, while his daughters’ husbands shoveled food into their mouths like unabashed teenagers.
“I grew up in Brownsville. You heard of that neighborhood? Just northeast of here. Back then it was a Jewish neighborhood,” he explained to Rachel. “My friends called me the ‘honorary Jew.’ They even taught me the prayers—Ba-rook, ell-you-hay-new, Adam-noy…”
She laughed in appreciation. He still remembered the melodies: “Ay-ya-yay-yay-yay,” he sang, swaying slightly like he’d seen the rabbis do in the synagogues, delighted as she covered her mouth to stifle another giggle.
“They called me the ‘shabbos goy.’ I was useful because I wasn’t Jewish.
Every Saturday, if I stood on the street, I could make five cents an apartment ’cause these Jews couldn’t do anything on a Saturday—they’d have me light the candles, light the stove, and then they’d pay me.
But on Saturdays, they can’t touch money either, so they’d lift the tablecloth and there’d be pennies for me on the table.
They’d plan it out in advance. And I could make half a dollar a week that way. ”
And then, because he was also still Chinese and the head of his house, he urged her to eat and spooned the best cut of fish onto her plate.
“I’ve always known it. Jews and Chinese are the same kind of people,” he rambled on while the women washed the dishes—all but Rachel, who he insisted sit beside him.
“Number one, they’re ambitious. Back where they’re from, everyone was poor, so they came over here.
Number two,” and he counted these off with his fingers, as Rachel laughed, “they’re good with money and they’re stingy, so everyone hates them. ”
His daughters brought the vanilla ice cream to the table, then a pumpkin pie, an apple pie, and a bowl of ji ma wu.
“Number three, education. Study, study, study. Because they came here with nothing, and they want only one thing: to get to the top.” He patted Rachel’s knee. “The Jews and the Chinese. More American than all the others put together.”