This is Entry 5 of an ongoing serialized memoir.
Start at the beginning → Superpower
How do you get through, Chris?
How do you survive?
First you get quiet.
Then you watch.
I’ve been practicing this for a long time.
My mother often tells this story.
In her lilting English.
We had started with a new babysitter. The neighbor’s girl. You were probably three or four. David hadn’t been born yet so you were still the baby. Your brother, Brian, always spoke up for you.
“Oh! Chris is hungry.”
“Oh! Chris is tired.”
When your daddy and I came home from dinner, I was going to pay the girl. Was looking for some money in the dining room cabinet. You said something to me. And, oh, she hear you speak and burst out in crying.
She say, “Oh, Mrs. Wang, I’m so happy for you! I thought Chris was a mute!”
You always make me worry the most.
You never learn how to ask for what you need.
I’ve started sitting meditation during the lockdowns. It’s the only way I’ve found to arrest the looping tape in my head. The spinning out of control on all eventualities. My breath the only place to go.
Even at night, the fluorescent lights remain on.
Relentless.
In half-Lotus on my bunk, I mention something about it to Tail.
He firehoses his response:
Why do you think I got this bunk down here?
You need dark?
Tie that shirt around your head.
Ain’t no lights out here, boy.
Dangerous things happen in the dark.
You’re in lock up now.
Why do you think our toothbrushes are so short?
Why do you think there ain’t no toilet seat.
Why do you think everything is bolted down?
Inhale.
….Everything they do is about reducing da threat.
Exhale.
Why do you think that they force sterilized my people?
Inhale.
You know that ain’t pepper in the shaker.
That’s salt peter.
Exhale.
That shit’ll make you sterile.
Inhale.
Look it up!
Most of the men here are Native Americans. Maybe seventy percent. The young guys all seem like gang-banger-wanna-bes and the older guys are more like Tail. Dried up and tired but still hustling to stay on top before the young bucks undermine the order of everything.
Tail calls the Latinos on our pod “‘dem Mexicans”. He has little to do with them. Three of them are actually Mexican. Busted for transporting a van full of marijuana - they lay low and keep to themselves.
The other “Mexican” is Honduran. Just a boy. When I ask him what he’s doing here in Spanish, he looks alarmed and then delighted. Maybe he has never heard a Chinese guy speak Spanish.
Ilegal.
Estabas trabajando?
Si, washing dishes in a restaurant but I didn’t get caught at work. I got caught stealing a CD from Kmart.
He shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head.
I’m here because of a $5 CD.
Y ahora?
I wait to get deported.
How long will that take?
Un mes, dos meses mas? I just wait.
How long have you been here?
Tres meses? Maybe I home in another three. I don’t know. I just wait.
Has anyone come to see you or offer help?
No. My friends are too scared.
What will happen when you get home?
Shrug.
They let me go. I stay with my grandparents. Save money and try to come back again.
I want to ask him “why?” but catch myself.
The Honduras he flees is a world away from the one where I visited. Following a Canadian girl down the Lonely Planet trail from Guatamala. After three days of riding a chicken bus sitting next to a little boy puking in a plastic bag, I plopped down next to her on a beach, licked the salt off her shoulder and then we ducked off to cuddle in a hotel that shared a shaking wall with a bar named The Bucket of Blood.
An inmate slides into the table where I sit. Hair shorn so close that I can’t tell if it’s blonde or red. Freshly arrived and too eager to talk. He tells me he got busted for selling synthetic marijuana - “Spice.” I wrinkle my nose and look up.
I don’t think that that’s illegal.
Nah, it ain’t. But I’m in the Air Force and got busted on the base. My C.O. sent me here to punish me.
I thought C.O. meant “Corrections Officer”.
Yeah, here it does, where I’m from it’s “Commanding Officer” but it might as well mean both.
When he tells me that he saw my arrest on the news, my stomach drops. I can feel my face go glowering red. It hadn’t occurred to me that it would be public.
But, of course it would.
I feel shame - but for my capture not my crime.
The hot, sticky exposure.
The judgement of others.
But, truth be told, if I’m getting out of here, there’s an order of steps.
Exposure.
Shame.
Aid.
Freedom.
No skipping.
I used to love to wear stripes.
In the summer before I entered fourth grade, we moved from the suburbs in Central New York to rural Vermont . My father was pursuing a second Masters degree in engineering —Large Scale Integration the science of cramming thousands of circuits on a single chip. The same chips that fed the impending personal computer revolution to come. For one school year and two summers, our family of six moved into a three-room duplex in the Singing Wood Estates.
That summer my three brothers and I played football and built forts with the boys from our condo development. As the third of four brothers, I was used to folding myself into the pack. Small but rough and tumble, I could play tackle football with the older boys and was wily enough for kick the can.
When school started, I found I was the only Asian boy at the Orchard School in South Burlington. That’s when getting dressed became hard.
My mother still kept in touch with some of her old school friends who had also made their way to the states. One of these “aunties” had twins named Chris and Clark. They lived closer to New York City and were a year or two older than my oldest brother. They always seemed cooler and smarter than us. They could play rock roll songs by ear on both piano and guitar while we were still stuck in classical piano lessons. Journey vs. Brahms.
My parents were frugal. We never lacked… particularly when it came to education or food… but most of my cloths came as hand me downs. Every six months or so, a bundle of preppiness would arrive in a box from an upstate suburb of New York spilling out with little alligators, tigers, striped rugby shirts and white tennis shorts. While my two older brothers got the pick of the litter, there were still gems that filtered through.
Still, now, in the mornings I froze. No amount of roaring or spanking from my father could get me dressed in time for the bus.
Eventually, my father imposed a simple clothing schedule and posted it on my wall.
Monday: Buffalo Bills hoodie, maroon Toughskins
Tuesday: Green and yellow rugby shirt, brown cords
Wednesday: Green shirt with the tiger, blue pants…
In the winter of fourth grade, no one at home seemed to notice that I appeared to gain a few pounds. Underneath the outfit prescribed by my father, I wore one of my own choosing. Either the yellow and green velour rugby shirt or its blue and red twin.
I liked the way stripes broke me up.
The soothing texture of the plush velour.
At school, I’d step off the bus and slip straight into a bathroom stall. I went in as one person and came out as another.
But I didn’t want to be Superman.
I wanted to disappear.
To go in as Chris and come out as Clark.
But, in the glaring white of that New England winter, with the snows drifts piled high on the roadsides, blending in grew harder.
Even beneath all the layers, I was receding deeper.
Click there to go to the next installment —> Floating on Hope
This has been a quiet process—writing, releasing, and not always knowing where it lands.
If something in it connects with you, I’d be grateful to know you’re out there.
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I used to like to wear stripes. Great line my friend 💙💜
Sipping the rich imagery and cadence of your story. Right there with you. Keep em comin!