The new restaurant clientele were hak gui. They came with their dates or for a family meal after church. Richard would lean against the back wall of the dining room and watch them. One night, a party of four arrived and pointed to the center table, where the Schulmans had once sat. While most hak gui guests requested just a couple of dishes, this group ordered a whole banquet, and Richard doubted their ability to pay. Then they talked and laughed joyously and sang “Happy Birthday,” and when one of the women reached across the table to playfully pat the birthday boy’s cheek, she accidentally knocked the teapot off the table.
It hit the floor and shattered, jasmine tea spilling across the wood. The girls yelped and the men laughed, throwing their napkins on the floor to soak up the spill.
“Waiter? I’m so sorry,” the woman cried.
Koon Lai didn’t want a scene; he sent a waiter to fetch a broom. But Richard couldn’t tolerate it.
“Get out!” he demanded, standing above the table. “We can’t serve you anymore.”
“Oh, come on,” one of the hak gui men said. “We’ll pay for the teapot. Add it to the bill.”
“I said you’re out. You guys are loud, you break the china. No one can enjoy their meal!”
“No disrespect, sir, but there are no other customers here but us.”
“I said get out!” Richard pounded his fist on the table. “Get out of my restaurant!”
The birthday boy gave Richard a cold stare, and the group left in silence with their food half-finished.
Christmas, 1966: Koon Lai found a letter in the restaurant mailbox.
He usually waited to read them at home, but it was six o’clockand there had been no customers. That, perhaps, was the most eerie change—Christmas had always been their busiest day.
He had already sent Richard and Foon Wah home, and alone, he walked slowly from one side of the dining room to the other, checking for trash and straightening tablecloths, his left knee throbbing with each step. The doctor on Baxter Street had prescribed snake oil, and for four months, Koon Lai had massaged it into his knee at bedtime. There’d been little improvement.
Koon Lai flicked off the lights and sat down behind the cash register to examine the envelope. It was addressed from Hong Kong, but he recognized his wife’s handwriting. He broke open the seal. Water had penetrated the envelope, rendering a column of characters illegible.
I have taken my mother to Hong but your third brother did not make
It wasn’t hunger in the end, it was the youth Your wealth in America is no more than a
They saw the height of the house they saw the perfume you sent from New York, the ivory
They called us landlords rich peasants
They took stones and smashed the windows, stole the furniture smashed the made me walk on the glass
Your third brother they tied to a tree and whipped until he
We buried him in the
The house is destroyed.
Blood drained from the hand that held the letter. A humming in his chest, erupting on his lips as a moan.
His brother.
We buried him in the…
His young nieces.
The house is destroyed…
His wife, in exile.
Your wealth in America is no more than a…
And then a thought, unbearable, rose to the fore and overpowered him.
