The Friedmans, Richard learned in time, were respected people in the neighborhood. Alan’s father owned the butchery near Amboy Street and was known for his eloquent speeches at the Labor Lyceum; Mrs. Friedman volunteered for the Hebrew Ladies Day Nursery. There was also the daughter, Rebecca, valedictorian of the junior high, and everyone said Alan would become the first Jewish president of the United States.
When the Brownsville Boys Club newspaper came off the press, Richard accompanied Alan through the neighborhood, handing it out in schoolyards and on street corners, and in that way, he gained a new name: not Chinaman, not Chop Suey Kid, but Right-Hand Man to Founding Member of the Brownsville Boys Club. Friend to Alan Friedman.
The club obtained city grants for field trips. Richard loved every one of those adventures: to the Empire State Building, to the circus, to Fort Tilden, and, of course, to Ebbets Field. There was always a long line of people, and everyone would wait patiently for hours to cram into that tight cigar box of a stadium, to stare down at the ballfields ringed with ads for Griffin Microsheen and Luckies cigarettes, and then finally, finally to see the muscled, gum-chewing fellows with big whiteB’s on their blue baseball caps.
In his second year in the Brownsville Boys Club, Richard made it onto the All-Star softball team that competed in citywide competitions. They rode the IRT dressed in ties and slacks and carried their shorts and sneakers in brown paper bags. Richard felt himself floating, rising. His mouth hurled new phrases free and fast: “Hold yourhorses!” and “Break a leg!” He was conquering the English language like he had conquered Coney Island and the pool.
One afternoon, Alan held a conference on “The Negro Question” at the Brownsville Boys Club headquarters.
“Citizens,” Alan said to all the boys gathered in the Stone Avenue library. They sat on wood chairs, on the floor, and on top of the bookcases. “If we believe in democracy, if we loathe fascism, if we believe in the American way, where every one of us, of whatever nation, of whatever creed, should have a say in this society, then what would make us stop at color?”
The group clapped and whooped.
Richard was familiar enough with what Alan called “the Negroes.” A few of his junior high school classmates were hak gui, and they seemed normal enough. At the same time, Richard had learned a thing or two about hak gui fromLIFEmagazine. Once, he’d come across a cartoon illustrating the world’s people. The cartoon showed a mountain, and at its peak, a white man with one foot raised. Down the mountain, a man with skin yellow as egg yolk toiled on a plateau, and on a lower hill, a nearly naked brown man picked fruit off a tree. At the very bottom, a hak gui lay flat on her behind, licking the ripened fruit that had fallen to the ground.
There had also been a second yellow man in the cartoon, climbing up the side of the mountain at fantastic speed. He held an abacus, and his thin nose and spectacled eyes made him resemble a dark-haired version of the white man at the peak. “Rise of the Japanese Empire,” the caption said, but in Richard’s mind, this superior yellow man was himself.
All that said, when Alan asked the members to take a vote on whether “Negroes” should be recruited into the club, Richard raised his hand along with everyone else.
Over the next few weeks, the officers invited Black boys into the club space. Richard liked playing paddleball with Freddie Johnson; Freddie put up a strong defense but was always a good sport the times Richard beat him. Willy Patterson was so good at math hecould help the older kids with their homework. When they went to the Italian and Irish neighborhoods and kicked the butts of the opposing teams, those kids would chase them all the way to the subway station, screaming, “Go home you kikes, chinks, and coons!”
But the Brownsville Boys were faster, and together they’d dive through the closing doors of the IRT and laugh so hard that tears fell.
During those same years, a grave silence fell over Canton Kitchen. The Japanese military had sunk its teeth into the heart of the motherland, had mashed and devoured Canton City. The restaurant workers kept a cardboard relief fund box by the cash register and bowed their heads with gratitude whenever a bak gui stuffed a dollar in the slot. Every Saturday, Koon Lai took a trolley to Chinatown for a “Bowl of Rice” fundraiser, or to donate blood, or to join a parade—a hundred homesick fathers marching the Chinese flag up and down Broadway.
“Dun Ho, your mother walked to Gui Lin. Fourteen days,” Koon Lai would explain at dinner, handing Richard his mother’s letters, though Richard had already forgotten most Chinese characters. “Everyone in the village has fled.”
“Dun Ho, do you know what the Japanese did in Nam Gein? They killed everybody. They did terrible things to the girls.”
“Dun Ho, the gum in your mouth. In China that gum could buy a dinner for a starving family.”
None of the Brownsville Boys Club members seemed to know about the war in China; they never spoke of it, and neither did Richard. At night, however, he’d stumble his way onto Cloud Hill and find the ancestors sprawled in the mud, their withered bodies battered and bloodied. Sometimes his mother would be one of those battered bodies. Yet in the morning, when he was on the asphalt at Nanny Goat Park or racing across the Betsy Head Park pool, everything happening in China seemed no realer than a dream.
It was Pearl Harbor that resolved his inner discord. The night of the attack, he huddled with his father and the restaurant workers around the radio, and on their behalf, translated the president’s words:
“… A date which will live in infamy…”Goi ng hui mong gi gai yi diem.
“… many American lives have been lost…”Hou o mi gok ngin hei sha sei!
“… a state of war…”Mi Gok nui jein!
Now America knew what it felt like. His fathers and the workers cheered, sharing their bottles of diu with Richard.
Soon after, the city mandated air-raid drills, and it became Richard’s job to turn off the lights, swathing the restaurant dining room and their customers in whispering darkness. The Brownsville Boys Club organized a scrap metal collection and attended the war effort benefit concert at the Pitkin Loew’s. And the country needed its Chinese too—had finally claimed them. Now they could apply for citizenship, or work in the defense plants, or even serve under the American flag. At last, Richard thought, everyone was on the same team, a team called America, land of the free. Yet one day the dishwasher came home from the subway complaining that a bak gui had spit in his face.
“He called me Jap!” the worker exclaimed. “And I told him in English—‘No, I not Jap. I Chinese, I not Jap.’?”
“They can’t tell the difference.”
“I’ll make you a T-shirt,” Richard declared. “On the front,Chinese—not Japanese, on the back,Believe me, I hate those nips way more than you do!”
The workers laughed, and they said to one another that the boss’s son talked like an American now, his English far better than theirs.
A week before his departure to the army base, Alan invited Richard for Shabbat dinner with his parents and sister—Richard’s first invitation to an American home.
On that Friday afternoon, he hogged the restaurant bathroom to slick his hair, straighten his tie, and scrub his nails. He was sure, on the walk to Herzl Street, that his hands still reeked of scallions. It was raining, which made things worse: leaves stuck to the bottom of his shoes, and he knew that by the time he arrived, he’d look like afarmer returning from the rice paddies. When he reached the house, he stood outside the iron fence, wondering what he could do to fix himself.
Just then, Alan’s sister Rebecca opened the door.
