Away and Back

I’m going to tell you about my childhood and if I’m to be blunt, I don’t really remember anything much. I must have bumped my head or something because everything that happened before I was five years old is lost to me. Everything here has been pieced together by my parents and grandparents. Everything here is secondhand. Everything here is what I’ve heard and how I’ve interpreted the stories of my life and made them real to me. There’s a gaping hole I need to fill. I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know if my childhood will come alive in your eyes. I don’t know if you’ll understand. All I know is that this story is built on lies, but that’s the only truth I’ve got for you and for me. 

***

My parents have told me their story exactly 16 times. Every year on Thanksgiving, after the family eats, their lives begin again.

They tell me they were born and raised in Fuzhou, China. There’s a different ring to that than saying you were born and raised in NYC. When I say raised, I use the word loosely because I don’t think you can say my parents were raised in the sense that they had a good childhood. They were dirt poor and worked in the fields doing back breaking work day in and day out. I wasn’t there but they always tell me stories about farming, stories about the rigid cycles. Get up, eat, tend the crops, eat again, tend the crops again, and sleep. The monotony must have killed them.

Food was glorified then. Rice and potatoes fueled them, kept them moving. My parents lived on a rice farm. The plots of land housed rice plants, wilting with the weight of the white pellets. Excess rice would be brought to the “market area” every morning. The streets there weren’t streets, they were uneven clusters of sand smoothed out by crowds of sweaty men and women looking for the cheapest foods. There was one cart on the corner that would have no customers 364 days of the year. On New Year’s, it would be choked by the number of broken people fishing out their savings to create the largest meal of the year, a whole fish.  “Lai Mai Yu, Jui Wu Bai Yuan. Wu Bai Yuan. Come buy fish, only five hundred yuan! Five hundred yuan!” Five hundred yuan. That’s 50 times how much my parents’ families made. To afford the fish they had to barely eat two or three months before New Year’s so that there would be enough money.

No one finished the fish of course because food had to be saved. Little bites would be taken, than the plate would be left on the table. There were no refrigerators and the food just sat there absorbing the feces of the swarming flies, building up invisible dirt.

***

Mom says Dad and she came here illegally on a boat. The moment they left was quite dramatic really. My Mom stood on the boat with Dad holding 100 yuan in her hands, the only money they had left after paying for the boat fare. Well, let’s be honest. They really didn’t pay. Borrowed would be the better word. Everyone says Chinese people are resourceful. Well, I’ll tell you what. My parents were definitely resourceful. I like to imagine a little spy story sometimes. A story where they secretly contacted a person who gave them fake identification and smuggled them to the US. Unfortunately, the story’s a bit less romantic than that. My parents found a man, let’s call him John, and he lent them 10,000 dollars to buy tickets for the boat and start a life for themselves once they arrived.

Good things always come with the bad. Good thing is they got to the US safe and sound. Bad thing is they were now 10,000 dollars in debt. The market was hard, Mom and Dad had no skills, and they spoke no English. In the 1980’s, Flushing, Queens had a predominantly Asian population and Mom and Dad followed the trail. They didn’t get much of an education, so they did the only thing they could. Work at a Chinese restaurant.

“One small Chicken and Broccoli with White Rice, One Eggroll, One Chicken Wings with French Fries,” the cashier would shout.
Ten minutes later the meal would almost be ready, fast hands working nimbly at the packaging. There’s a science to it. Pack the largest container first, the smallest last, fit the medium sized ones together like a puzzle. It’s quite simple really, but having the manager stare down at your actions is quiet scary, really halts your progress.

“You stupid son of a b----, hurry up. The customers are waiting. You want me to lose business? Huh? I have three children. Three children. They are hungry and you’re f------ taking your time. I’m gonna fire you. You better get your s--- together,” the manager would say, face red with anger.

The customers would stare in confusion, knowing something was going on. Knowing but not understanding. Kind of like you and me. I know it was hard. I know it was stressful. I know it was dirty. I know it was s***. But I don’t really know. Hard, stressful, dirty, and s***. Words don’t really mean anything here. Only your senses mean something, but there’s no way to give you that, so words will have to do.

My parents worked at least twelve hours a day in the restaurant, slaving away but making little to no money because they had to repay John. For 5 years my parents worked until they were clear of debt. I’m lucky they both had something of a business instinct. Taking whatever money they had, Mom and Dad opened up their own restaurant in Brooklyn. I was born about a month later.

You would think that parents would recognize whether or not they are in a situation to have a child, but I guess my parents just didn’t. I was born at a time when they were still struggling to make ends meet. I was born at a time when they ate pieces of bread while walking to work and were bound to their job. I’m sure they loved me, but it’s hard to notice at the moments of my childhood. Mom and Dad didn’t have time to take care of me, so while they were working, I was put in a large cylindrical carton about 3 feet tall that was used to store food.

The carton was paper on the outside, metal on the inside. It seemed like a world of its own at the time, my metal prison. There was barely room to move. Thinking about it, it’s kind of like I was in a womb for 3 more months. Except it didn’t feel safe. It felt cramped. It felt like I had disappeared. Three times a day, sometimes two, sometimes one, food would be dropped in. A piece of broccoli, a cup of rice. It was actually quite tasty. Those moments were my exposure to the outside world. Other than that, I could only hear the distant sounds of the restaurant. Sounds of the workers. Sounds of the customers.

My parents tell me I was a loud child. I cried all the time, wailed at the top of my lungs and threw tantrums. In the carton, I was quiet. I sat there like a robot devoid of life every single day for three months until Mom and Dad decided to ship me off to China. They sent me off with a random Chinese lady on the airplane to Fuzhou to live with my grandparents.

It’s hard to remember what happened in China. Childhood memories are perhaps the most muddled. It’s hard to remember what exactly happened during that period of time because those are the moments that we most often forget. What I remember is probably what I made up in my dreams. Figments of my imagination repeated so many times in my head that it became reality. I can’t tell anymore. I can’t go back to that first “dream” and gauge whether or not it was based off of a memory. I’ll never know if what I think I know is the truth. It’s frustrating, but at the same time, comforting. If my “memories” are lies, then I’ll have lost 5 years of my life to the biological whims of my body.

***

Candy was a pretty big luxury in China. There was a jar on the table at the farm. The different colors were quite the contrast from the brown of the fields. The candy jar was my cookie jar. Every single day I would get candy and most days I would sneak 5 or 6 pieces. Mom showed me a picture of my five year old self. My hair was greasy and my teeth were yellow and filled with cavities. My cheeks were gaunt and my skin was devoid of color. The luxury almost killed me.

I got sick a lot back then. Every month I would have a new disease. When I was two I had a seizure. My grandparents tell me it was their fault. It was at night and they accidentally smothered me with the blanket they were sleeping on, crushed me with a protective force. My grandparents woke to me shaking in the middle of the night. My eyes had rolled up, spasms racked my body, and saliva had crept out my mouth. It felt like my mind had blanked. I could see my grandparent’s worried faces. In the distance were cries of help. Frantic screams, people running around. But I felt calm. Thinking about it, that was probably the moment I lost all hope.

I survived. Barely. My grandparents must have really loved me, to care that much. My grandparents are dead now. They were in China, so I never got to see them again. I never got to say goodbye. Never got to say thanks.

***

When I was about five, Mom must have told my grandparents that it was about time I went back to the US. The phone call must have cost my parents a couple of dollars, a couple of dollars that could have bought much needed food. I can only imagine how awkward the situation must have been.

I had never talked to her when I was in China. Her was my Mom. Her was a person in the US. Her was someone who had given birth to me. Her was someone I had never seen before. Her was someone barely brought up in conversation. Her was a nobody.

***

When you live in a village, people get really close, everyone knows you. Everyone knew me as the kid who studied hard in school. The outgoing kid who would say whatever was on her mind. The kid who loved school and would come home and immediately start her homework. I must have made some friends there. They’re probably in high school right now too. I wonder how their lives turned out. What are their dreams? Have they ever wondered about their pasts? Do they remember me? I don’t remember them. I don’t know who they are anymore. I can’t see their faces, I can’t hear their words. Time is perhaps the most effective barrier. It tears away at the seams of your memories until each one breaks away from the core mass, drifting away into oblivion. If only I could swim into that oblivion, snatch those memories up, and carry it back to the mass.

They held a small party for me. Party’s in the village aren’t like parties here. There’s no dancing, no one gets drunk. There’s no cake. There’s no singing. There’s no music. But there is a bowl of noodles. Every family has their animals and Grandma had a chicken. On the day I left they took the chicken, killed it, and cooked it with the noodles for me to eat. A soft boiled egg was added in for good luck. The bowl would give me a safe passage to America. It would bring me luck.

The first bowl tasted quite good. Neighbors started coming in with their own bowls. Perception’s very important in China. You need to care; whether you truly care or not doesn’t matter. They all killed their chickens for me and it didn’t even taste good.

***

The plane landed in the middle of the night. There were masses of faces waiting for me. The first thing that caught my eye was the peculiarly large eyes and the striking colored hair of the people in the waiting area. There were only very few faces with black hair and small eyes. I was in a different world. I tried finding a familiar face. There were several people with Asian features. I ran past all of them and before I could keep on running, a hand grabbed me. The woman picked me up and patted my head and I cried and shouted, beating my arms against her chest. This woman was kidnapping me. This woman was a stranger. This woman was my mother.