That Said (18 page)

She filled the teakettle.

By the time it boiled,

the table was set, minus knives and forks,

and my father had fetched the big brown paper bag

leaking grease: five shiny white

food cartons stacked inside.

 

My little sister and I unpacked the food,

unsheathed the wooden chopsticks—

Siamese twins joined at the shoulders—

which we snapped apart.

Thirteen years old, moody, brooding,

daydreaming about boys,

I sat and ate safe chop suey,

bland Cantonese shrimp,

moo goo gai pan, and egg foo yung.

 

My mother somber, my father drained,

too exhausted from work to talk;

clicking chopsticks

instead of words in their mouths.

My mother put hers aside

and picked at her shrimp with a fork.

She dunked a Lipton tea bag into her cup

until the hot water turned rusty,

refusing the Hong Kong's complimentary tea,

no brand she'd ever seen before.

 

I cleared the table,

put empty cartons back in the bag.

Glued to the bottom,

translucent with oil, the pale green bill

a maze of Chinese characters.

Between the sealed lips of each fortune cookie,

a white scrap of tongue poked out.

 

Tonight, the waiter brings Happy Family

steaming under a metal dome

and three small igloos of rice.

Mounded on the white oval plate, the unlikely

marriage of meat and fish, crab and chicken.

Not all Happy Families are alike.

The chef's tossed in wilted greens

and water chestnuts, silk against crunch;

he's added fresh ginger to baby corn,

carrots, bamboo shoots, scallions, celery,

broccoli, pea pods, bok choy.

My daughter impales a chunk of beef

on her chopstick and contentedly

sucks on it, like a popsicle.

Eating Happy Family, we all begin to smile.

 

I prod the only thing left on the plate,

a large garnish

carved in the shape of an open rose.

Is it a turnip? An Asian pear?

The edges of the delicate petals

tinged with pink dye, the flesh

white and cool as a peeled apple's.

My daughter reaches for it—

 

“No good to eat!” The waiter rushes over—

“Rutabaga! Not cooked! Poison!”—

 

and hands us a plate with the bill

buried under three fortune cookies—

our teeth already tearing

at the cellophane, our fingers prying open

our three fates.

Crazy Joey was famous,

more famous than the mayor.

Though he was as old as my father,

and tall and clean-shaven,

he wore his navy blue stocking cap

pulled way down over his ears,

dressed for winter even in June.

 

What was he doing

hanging around the schoolyard,

slowly pedaling his dented Schwinn

just as school was letting out?

He'd pick a kid. Boy or girl.

He'd wait until you turned the corner.

Then he'd follow you home on his bike,

an empty red milk crate strapped

to its back fender.

 

There were rumors

that he lived with his mother in a basement.

Rumors that he was born wrong-end first.

Rumors that his father beat him senseless.

Rumors that some boys lured him

into an alley and made him

pull down his pants and pee.

And that Crazy Joey did it, cheerfully.

 

When, in the seventh grade, my turn came,

I pretended to ignore him,

clutching my homework, my empty lunchbox,

never once turning my head.

Crazy Joey trailed me

past the used-car lot and the deli,

through the neighborhood

neither of us lived in,

grid of locked garages, neat shoebox lawns,

house after house after house

like televisions all tuned to the same station.

 

It wasn't my fault

I studied piano and ballet.

It wasn't my fault

both my parents were alive.

It wasn't my fault

I was normal, even though

I lived in an apartment over our store,

and not in a real house, either.

 

So I didn't take the shortcut,

or try to hide, or run crying to my father

rolling up the awning of our store,

but watched my every careful step

the day Crazy Joey chose me.

When my mother got into a bad mood,

brooding for days,

clamping her jaws shut, refusing to talk,

brushing past me, angry,

on her way to the kitchen,

I'd call her “Mrs. Hitler” under my breath.

 

I knew it was wrong, very wrong.

But when her back was turned,

I'd stick out my tongue

at Mrs. Hitler in her blue nylon nightgown

and pink foam hair rollers,

glaring at the dishes in the sink.

Sometimes I'd give her the finger,

though I knew it was wrong, very wrong.

 

Hitler killed Anne Frank,

whose diary was required reading

in my junior high.

My father fought Hitler during the War.

But the first time I heard Hitler's name

I was eavesdropping on my aunts

sitting around our dinner table,

whispering about “the Jewish camps.”

When I burst into the room,

they switched from talking English

to Yiddish, to me pure gibberish,

my ear a funnel for their gravelly words.

 

Were they planning to send me back

to Camp Bell, the Jewish day camp

where, homesick, I lost my appetite

and five pounds, refusing to eat?

If they made me go next summer,

I'd go on another hunger strike.

 

I'd seen the
Life
magazine

hidden in my parents' bedroom—

seen the photographs of Jews,

all skin and bones,

and a picture of Hitler

and his little black push-broom mustache.

 

I'd seen an old newsreel on TV:

German soldiers dressed

in gray uniforms, blocks of them marching,

taking giant steps in unison

as if they were playing

Follow the Leader with their friends.

 

I made up a game.

While my mother cooked dinner,

I'd sit on the kitchen floor,

with a plate and a knife

and a big chunk of Muenster cheese,

and pretend I was a Jew starving to death

like the Jews I saw in
Life
.

 

The cheese supply allotted me—

like my father's Marine rations—

was to last exactly thirty days:

I divided my cheese into a grid

cut into thirty pieces,

I popped a tiny cube into my mouth

as if taking my daily vitamin,

and gobbled it down, then whispered,

so my mother wouldn't hear,

“I was very hungry, thank you.”

 

A moment later, I'd gruffly reply,

“You're welcome,” pretending

to be my jailer, a Nazi guard;

taking on both roles, both voices,

at once—one high, one low—

just like when I played with dolls.

 

Day Two dawned a minute later.

My breakfast, lunch, and dinner

melted in my mouth.

“Thank You.” “You're welcome.”

Day Three followed, and so on,

as I played my game, Concentration Camp.

 

And I fed myself

the way a mother feeds her baby.

And I ate and I ate and I ate

until all the food on my plate was gone.

Saturday afternoons, they like

having me over, having

had no children together

of their own.

 

Late afternoon, the venetian blinds

stripe gold prison bars

on their white satin bedspread:

both of them dressed

in casual slacks and pastel golf shirts;

they played eighteen holes

earlier today.

 

Door ajar, I burst in,

about to ask them a question.

He sits on his side

of the bed, facing the blinds,

his back to me,

his head tilting up to hers

leaning down, as if to kiss him.

 

He turns and, for an instant,

I see it—see her tenderly

swabbing the empty socket

of his missing right eye, her Q-Tip

poised over the flat planes of his face

as if she's about to dot an
i
.

 

Losing so precious an organ

is my uncle's punishment—