The Chinese Groove, page 11
“A lot of boys were in love with Diana,” Mr. Lee said. “My brother Andy was crazy about her. She was a beautiful girl, kind to everyone. She broke hearts when she married Henry Cheng. He was a schoolteacher from New York. Nobody knew him. He was older. Sour. But we all loved Diana. She kept the store going after her parents retired. She loved the place.” He gave a low sigh like a pluck of his erhu. “They shouldn’t have left the neighborhood. They had protection here.”
“What happened?” Mrs. Low said.
Mr. Lee told her the story.
“That’s awful,” Mrs. Low said. I didn’t speak. I was there to listen.
“The store closed after that,” Mr. Lee said. “The police never caught who did it. Worst of all, they said maybe the store had been a target because of something the son wrote in the newspaper.”
“What was that?” Mrs. Low said.
“He wrote an article about the store that said his mother was often there by herself at night. The police said she was a target. The robbers knew she’d be alone.” He tapped the table. “The real problem was that her husband, Henry, left her unprotected. He could’ve been with her, you know. He was retired from teaching by then. Sam never left Lilliann alone in the store; he always made sure he or one of the employees was with her. Henry didn’t do that. He saw himself as some kind of intellectual, too good to be selling groceries. He could’ve protected her, but he didn’t.”
Stop the presses! Hold the phone! Aviva had told me none of that. I had a rush of affection for the ancient gent, my creaking, rusty casket of knowledge. No wonder Ted was so morose. He had guilt as well as grief.
“I’ve got that newspaper article somewhere. It was in my brother Andy’s papers when he passed. That’s how much he loved Diana.”
Mrs. Low turned to me. “I’m so sorry for your uncle.”
“When the aunties heard of her passing, they lit incense for her and paid for temple prayers,” I said. This was true. They had cried for real on behalf of the family name.
“That’s good to hear,” Mr. Lee said. “There was a big Chinatown funeral. We packed the church. All of Diana’s and her brother Leland’s friends were there and everyone who’d known their parents. Henry Cheng didn’t stand to greet a single one of us. We took up a collection and paid for the mourners’ band. He was angry about it, said he didn’t want it. But that’s what Sam and Lilliann would’ve wanted, so Leland arranged it. Henry was furious at Leland and mad at your Uncle Ted. Leland said he blamed your uncle for what happened. That’s not how the rest of us saw it. It wasn’t your uncle’s fault, though he had no business exposing his mother like that. He paid a terrible price. But Henry Cheng shouldn’t have left her alone in a neighborhood that never wanted them there in the first place.”
“Times have changed,” Eddie said. “There’s plenty of Chinese in the Sunset now. We’ve practically taken over. And this guy, Henry, wouldn’t have expected armed robbery in the dairy case at Forty-Sixth and Noriega.”
“It happened,” Mr. Lee said.
“They sold groceries?” I said, double-checking. I was still hoping for the big department store.
“Sure,” Mr. Lee said. “After her parents died, Diana made some nice changes to the place. Put in better lighting and started selling specialty products. She catered to the neighbors who wanted the fancy stuff.”
“You mean the white folks,” Eddie said.
“The foodies,” Grandma Low said, surprising everyone. I thought she hadn’t heard a word. Old people could be teary-eyed, but they also could be cagey.
“That’s everyone in San Francisco,” Mrs. Low laughed. She was too jolly to stay sad for long. “Anyway, it’s good you’re being useful to your ye ye. Your uncle and auntie need your help. They just didn’t know it.”
I cleared the table and brought hot water for the pot. If Bill Lee had it right, Henry and Ted each had reason to blame the other for the deaths of Diana and Eli. Anger stuck to them in equal measure. Or maybe, like Father, they had the habit of grief. That’s why Ted was so angry when he saw me trimming Henry’s toes, I thought. It wasn’t embarrassment that caused him to snap. I could crouch all day at his father’s feet, an acceptable transaction as long as Henry paid me. But Ted didn’t want me calling Henry Ye Ye when the only real grandson was gone.
Mr. Bill Lee went to fetch the newspaper clipping. “Diana was a modern girl. Maybe that’s why she married that jerk Henry Cheng.”
11.
Once Shunned, Chinese American Grocer Now Beloved
By Ted Cheng – July 17, 2009
WHEN MY GRANDPARENTS, SAM AND LILLIANN HONG, opened their corner market in the Outer Sunset in 1950, the neighbors didn’t stream through the door. They weren’t used to seeing a Chinese grocer outside of Chinatown. So Sam installed a big red sign on the building that announced in fancy white lettering, HONG’S FINE FOOD MARKET.
“He didn’t put Chinese characters anywhere on that sign,” his daughter, Diana, recalls. “He wanted folks to know: he was here to serve everyone.” She remembers how excited he was the day the sign went up. Before that, he’d been working in his father-in-law’s Chinatown vegetable market, and he was eager to strike out on his own. “The Sunset District was an overlooked section of the city where lots of families lived, and Dad went for it,” Diana says.
With that big red sign offering a friendly welcome, it didn’t take long for the locals to start shopping at Hong’s Market. My mother, Diana, who loved helping her parents when she was younger and now runs the store herself, remembers the matrons of Italian, Irish, and German descent coming in often to buy Sam’s fresh produce and to get cooking tips from Lilliann. Sam’s early morning trips to the wharf for fresh crab had folks lining up out the door during Dungeness season. When Lilliann began renting out roller skates to teens who rolled the three blocks on Noriega to Ocean Beach and raced beside the Great Highway, their clientele cheered.
“It turned out, the store was the easy part,” Diana says. “Finding a house they could buy was harder.” They worked long hours at the store, and Sam and Lilliann wanted to buy a house close by, but homeowners in the Sunset didn’t want to sell to non-whites. Racially restrictive covenants, while legally unenforceable, remained on the deeds for many Sunset homes, which Diana believes caused a chilling effect on sales. It took Sam and Lilliann more than three years of looking before they could buy a home. During that time, they lived with their two young children behind the store.
Covenants intending to keep out African Americans, Asian Americans, Jews, and other groups were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948 and outlawed in 1968 by the federal Fair Housing Act. But the prohibitory language can still be found in many property deeds and neighborhood bylaws, including in the Outer Sunset.
A bill introduced in February by Assemblyman Hector De La Torre, D-South Gate (Los Angeles County), would require that racially restrictive covenants be stricken from public records at the time of the next sale. Opponents, including the California Association of Realtors, call the measure unnecessary and claim it would cause a bureaucratic mess. But supporters, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, say it’s important to remove the illegal provisions.
“It is offensive to have people, minorities, have to sign documents that denigrate them,” De La Torre said. “We need to wipe away the stain of that time in our history.”
As an “Outerlands” homeowner, I was curious to know whether the deed to the home my wife and I purchased in 2000, the year our son was born, contains any restrictive language. Sure enough, studying the fine print on both our deed and the deed to my parents’ home next door, I was shocked to discover a prohibition on sale of the properties to “people of the Negro or Mongoloid race.” The clause was a stark reminder that, not so long ago, my Chinese American parents and I, and likely my Jewish wife and son, were unwelcome.
When I showed the language to my mother, she, like so many of her generation, told me to ignore it. “A lot has changed since then,” she said. “I’ll always appreciate how the neighborhood embraced us.” At age sixty-three, she still handles the nighttime shift on her own. She doesn’t mind the late hours because that’s when her customers have time to stop and chat. “The people in this neighborhood, we look out for each other,” she says. The products are different now—sustainably sourced coffee beans and curated craft cheeses—but the big red sign endures, a testament to the pioneer spirit of Sam and Lilliann.
12.
Spongers Worldwide
FOR ONE GLORIOUS MONTH, HENRY AND I LIVED LIKE emperor’s sons, enjoying our private palace. He started sleeping ten hours a night; his toe life returned to normal. He resumed his qigong practice at the local rec center and his fly-casting sessions in the park. He marched around the backyard and combed the library sale for bargains and helped me apply for a driver’s license that said “California” across the top, replacing my Gejiu special. I purchased a lucky key chain in one of the many Asian markets on Irving Street nearby. Every weekday, Henry traded stocks on his computer. He could sit for hours hitched close to the screen, humming and clicking away. A big haul was eighty dollars. I never bet big. You bet big, you lose, he told me. Slow growth is for pussies, Cousin Deng sang in my head.
Under his tutelage, my English improved greatly. Ted still wrote in my notebook and Eddie coached me too, but Henry made me his mission. Over dinner every night, he demanded discourse that he would then appraise. At first I didn’t know what to talk about, not being a storyteller like Father, but slowly I began to tell him about Miss Chips and Lisbet and Yu. Thinking of Yu got me talking about Cousin Deng and his keen sense of business. Deng had his fingers in a whole lot of pies, but what he really wanted was one great idea and the financing to launch it. He’d take care of the rest. He sounds like an operator, Henry said with a chuckle, and I said the compliment fit, if an operator was a guy who knew how to make money.
Eventually, I got around to talking about Father and Mother. I told Henry about how, when Mother was alive, the three of us hadn’t needed anyone else and so it didn’t matter that the relatives froze us out. But once she was gone and Father fell silent, I used to hope that Father and I would be invited to live at the lao jia. I hadn’t expected to sadden as I spoke, but my eyes grew moist and my voice faltered. Henry patted my hand and taught me a word that sounded like what it meant, wistful. I was learning that the telling of a tale changes the bearer as much as it changes the hearer. Father’s stories always ended on a happy note, so I returned to lightness, saying, Fate was unkind until it delivered me to you.
Henry told me that he didn’t believe in fate; as an American, he believed he made his destiny manifest, and now that my verbals were improving, I, too, could be my own master. Look what a little steady practice can produce. I was happy as a lark that Henry had taken me under his wintered wing. Ted had refused the job, along with all my aunties. Father, though he might’ve tried, was occupied by sorrow. And so we passed our evenings together, one happy ending after another.
I suppose I should’ve realized those halcyon days wouldn’t last. Aviva demanded a daily update on key Henry components (feet, bowels, marbles) so she could judge whether I was doing the job right. She had a penchant for telling others what to do, which I didn’t mind since it meant she found me useful, and she was the one to please.
Don’t neglect school, Aviva instructed me often, usually right after asking me to pick up a few items for her at the store. I assured her that I had everything under control. In truth, I was cutting classes in order to spend time with Eddie and Paloma, which could’ve gotten me into trouble, but a friend of Paloma’s who worked in the IT office changed my attendance record from spotty to spotless, and I kept my test scores high. The three of us were working on their app, Five Minute Local, which had gotten funding from a crowd of complete strangers, American goodness abounding. I’d recorded a tour in Mandarin of Mrs. Low’s favorite Chinatown spots, and it’d already been downloaded over three hundred times, which Paloma said was pathetic but which inspired me nonetheless. My next big step would be to read my poems to Lisbet, as soon as I wrote them and as soon as she came looking.
“Come to this party tonight,” Paloma said to me. She adjusted her beanie over her long black hair. She had a thick horsetail that frizzed on foggy days. Today it flowed because the day was bright and sunny. She was tall and firmly muscled, the opposite of Eddie—they made a stylish couple. He was wearing his usual track suit and a new pair of Nike Airs, part of his revolving collection. Paloma wore a striped green cardigan from her grandpa’s closet and her mother’s round-collared dress.
“Glenna Oh will be there,” Eddie added. Glenna was a friend of Paloma’s whom he wanted me to hang with. I liked her a lot, but I dreamed only of Lisbet.
“You know I have a girlfriend,” I said.
“What kind of girlfriend disappears off email and never bothers to write?” Eddie said. “You should meet somebody new.”
“She’ll get in touch. When she’s ready.”
“What’s taking her so long?” Eddie said.
“She’s on a search. She wants a different kind of life.”
Eddie made a face worthy of an auntie. “She’s an outlaw. She fled the scene. You’re wasting yourself, pining for her. Is she really worth it?”
“I love her!” I said. They both startled at the word. Eddie blushed and stole a glance at Paloma. She softened for a second and laced her fingers in his. To my envious eye, they were perfect together.
“See? You know what it is to love,” I said.
“Maybe she’ll turn up,” Eddie conceded. “Or maybe she’ll stomp your heart into a thousand little pieces.”
“We’ll be here, either way,” Paloma said. “There’s loads more work to be done. Our app sucks. We need a new idea.”
It had been nine months since I’d last seen Lisbet. I thought of all the hours we’d spent together talking in the teahouse and walking in the park. She had looked at me tenderly, as only a lover would; she had kissed me into reverence. Wherever she was and whatever she was doing, she wouldn’t have forgotten those special days, or me.
ONE MONTH LATER, IN April, I went next door to return a glass dish which had held Aviva’s latest, a cinder block she called “kugel,” and found Kate and Orit huddled with Ted and Aviva. Kate gave me a wan smile. Ted was furrowed. Only Aviva said hello. All four were standing, too agitated to sit. I took up my customary place in the kitchen doorway.
“Who’s got Leo?” Aviva said. “He was here a minute ago.”
“He’s watching a movie,” Orit said. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she was wearing rubber sandals. Kate looked like she’d put on the wrong clothes in a hurry, pants that flapped above her ankles and a jumper I’d seen Orit wear with crisscrossing zippers like scars.
“Oh, Shelley, it’s awful,” Aviva said. “There was a fire in their building last night. Nobody was hurt, thank goodness, but the whole place was damaged.”
“I really think the landlord did it,” Orit said. “He wanted us out, and now it’s done.”
“You can’t say that to reporters,” Kate said. “We don’t know anything yet.”
“It’s the fourth major fire in the Mission in the past three months. You think that’s a coincidence?” Orit said.
“It’s a real problem for the mayor. It’s making the neighborhood nervous,” Ted said.
“You see?” Orit said. “Ted agrees with me. It was arson.”
Ted and Kate objected: that’s not what Ted had said.
“You’re on their side now,” Orit accused Ted.
“Honey, don’t say that,” Kate said.
“Ted’s taken a new job,” Aviva informed me. “He works for the city. He’s communications director for the Mayor’s Office of Housing.”
“Paid flak,” Ted said.
“Never mind that,” Aviva said. “Kate and Orit, you’re moving in with us.”
Kate began to protest. Aviva stopped her.
“I won’t hear any argument,” Aviva said. “This is the best place for Leo. He needs a familiar home. Thank goodness we have the room. You stay as long as you like.”
Orit accepted on the spot. She said they couldn’t afford to rent a new place, and this way, Leo could stay in his preschool.
You could’ve knocked me over with a kugel. Kate and Orit were moving in? Only four months ago, there’d been no room for me! They had turned out to be a pair of regular spongers, those two, and they were bringing Leo with them and their rackety little dog.
“I don’t know,” Kate said, looking anxiously at Ted. “Maybe it’s not a good idea.”
“Convince her, Ted,” Aviva said.
Ted was silent. Then he looked at Aviva. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“I won’t have Leo crashing at an Airbnb,” Aviva said.
With a hard look at his wife, Ted left the room. A second later, Aviva followed, her face set and determined. I heard them clatter down the back stairs.
“Okay, got to go. Henry needs me,” I said to Kate and Orit, and I dashed back to Henry’s house. Henry was packing up his rod and reel to go fly-casting in Golden Gate Park, the one place he insisted that I let him drive himself. I rushed past him, hurried into the backyard, and pressed my ear to a crack in the fence.
“. . . time,” Aviva was saying.
“Where’s he going to sleep? Are you giving him Eli’s room?”
“Of course I am!” Aviva said. “It’s not doing anybody any good, sitting there empty.”
“It’s not empty,” Ted said fiercely.
“It’s empty of all that matters. I’ve waited long enough. Our friends need us. Leo needs us. Look at the problems he’s having. He needs a safe environment and a stable home.”
“What are you talking about?” Ted said.
