The glass shut, the motor growled, the tenants dodged out of the way, and Richard Wong careened down the street, turning south on East Ninety-Eighth with a screech.
THE CHINS
Richard hadn’t seen the ancestors in thirty years, but then lightning struck the transmission lines, and the circuit breakers tripped, and Con Edison’s backup plans failed, and New York City was plunged into darkness. July 13, 1977.
Next came those who knew the darkness best. He was in the living room when they arrived. They pooled over the furniture, folded themselves into the window curtains, and leered from the void of the dead TV. He sat in his lounge chair, smoothing out the Help Wanted section of the New YorkDaily News, struggling to make sense of it, a shivering candle on the table beside him. His children and his wife were asleep, but the rest of the city was awake and restless, taut with desperate desires, and he was part of that restlessness, that desperateness. He was in trouble.
The ancestors knew.
Why are you wasting time?
They took turns whispering.
That shark will take the roof over your family’s head.
Don’t you know in America there are rules? How come you thought you could be a landlord and you didn’t know any of the rules?
You brought a wife from China and now you’re going to put her on the street?
How come you still can’t read English? Can’t read English! Can’t read Chinese!
How come you don’t go to Chinatown to find a job?
He tried to ignore them, but the room filled up with a strange odor: the smell of wet soil and rotting apples. It made him dwell on his bad decisions.
Buying 78 and 80 Livonia Avenue from Arnold Cohen—that had been a stupid idea; he could see so now. Because the bank had refused to approve a mortgage for the tenements, he’d borrowed ten thousand from a scumbag who was charging him nearly 100 percent annual interest. He’d thought the rent from the building would allow him to pay the guy back, but then the tenants had gone on strike.
He’d been fired from the Wall Street lounge after nine years of loyalty. Mr. Connelly had called him to the office, he thought for a raise. Instead, he was sacked, and Mr. Connelly promoted the Jamaican man with the name Richard couldn’t pronounce. Richard was beside himself. He felt he deserved the higher wage—needed it. He was behind on his payments to the lender, and the collateral on the loan was the East Flatbush house.
Forgetting that the fridge had been off for hours, the food rotten and the beer lukewarm, he grabbed a Budweiser from the door.
You drink while your baba suffers. What kind of son is that?
Ancestors drip-dropped from the kitchen sink faucet, oozed from the rice cooker, bubbled up from the bamboo vase.
Your baba needs a knee replacement. That’s what the doctor says. But you never do anything for him.
You should wonder what happened to your mother.
You don’t know what happened to your own mother?
When she stopped writing the letters, what did you do? You drank a beer.
Richard slumped into a chair at the kitchen table and held his head in his hands.
What kind of father are you? Your son doesn’t respect you.
“I tried!” Richard cried into the dark. “I tried to teach him things. The kid’s too sensitive.”
The boy is smarter than you. He knows you’re stupid.
“I know! I know! I know!” He had known this for a long time. “Don’t tell me what I already know!”
Richard knew he was running out of time. He hadn’t told Foon Wah about losing the Wall Street job. For two weeks he’d pretended to drive to work, when really he was bound for a pay phone booth on a deserted street in Red Hook. So far, he’d called forty-five realties. The phone always grew greasy with his sweat, and not a single agency took interest in buying the Livonia tenements.
A few days after the power returned, he found the humility to take the train to Chinatown. Telling himself it would only be a temporary arrangement, he folded back his sleeves and walked to Columbus Park, where his second cousins played handball. Delighted to see him, the cousins invited him into the game. He played, intending to ask them where he might find a job.
These cousins, who worked as cooks and lived their lives within the radius of Mott Street, treated him like the peasants in China had; they thought he was a big man because his father was a donor to the association and because he lived across the bridge. He found it difficult to disillusion them. Before he knew what he was doing, he proposed a feast. They walked to Wo Hop, ordered enough dishes for a banquet, and got drunk. When he slapped their shoulders and assured them he could take the subway home in his sleep, they probably thought he was a happy and wealthy man. Instead, he walked to the Brooklyn Bridge.
