The Red Bean Soup story in high school ceased being a public story to poke fun at my dad and became a story I’d tell myself, the last defense against completely writing off my father. Bah Ba had made the soup and managed to come to my party, though he never did the same for my brother or sister. It was the only day I could remember he’d taken off work. No small sacrifice. Bah Ba worked an under-the-table job without personal or vacation days.
red bean soup redux
I gave my students at June Jordan a writing prompt about a childhood experience. They asked for an example, and I told them the first story that came to mind that wouldn’t be a downer, the Red Bean Soup story.
“If he skipped work for your party,” one student said, “why didn’t he do the same for your brother or sister?”
I sought my mother’s opinion. “Yauh mouh gaau choh?” she said. How can you have it so wrong? “Your Bah Ba made the soup, but he never came to your school. If he was there, why did I carry that pot on the bus? That thing was heavy. I had to walk up three flights with it to get to your classroom.”
Her version sounded more credible than mine. Even when Bah Ba was sick, he’d muster the energy for Tea House. No work, no check.
My version was most likely false, but I continued to tell it.
two drivers and not an old shoe
My mother’s first memory of my father was at a nightclub in a fancy hotel. Bah Ba saw my mother sitting by herself, and he asked her for a dance. They spent the night dancing to Elvis, Tom Jones, and the Beach Boys. She thought my dad was “handsome” and had a “sense of humor.” A few years later when they had my sister, they named her after this club, The Scene, which they pronounced “De Seen.” They switched the order of the two syllables: “Cindy.”
When they became a couple, Bah Ba began to ask my mother to cover his shift at his father’s gift shop. “In the morning,” she says, “I work at the store. Only by myself.” Bah Ba would leave to play mahjong, and my mother would never mention the gambling to my father’s parents.
She wasn’t happy about their relationship, but she accepted it. My mother married my father when she was twenty-one. She only had an elementary education. Anything more required money. As a teenager, she had worked in a factory, assembling Christmas light bulbs.
My mom had bigger dreams of being a singer/movie star. When she was eleven, she read commercials on the radio. At fifteen, behind her grandmother’s back, my mother managed to land a gig on television singing classical Chinese songs. The first song she sang was about a woman waiting on her husband to come home, wishing his love was like the trunk of a palm tree, his love never branching off. My great-grandmother saw my mom singing on television and made her quit. Showbiz was for sluts.
For my mother, marrying into my father’s family was marrying up. When she’d walk around with Bah Ba, friends of his father would see him and call him wohng ji. Prince. Bah Ba’s family owned several tourist shops, their most notable one being the store where my mother covered for my father. It was located on the ground floor of the then newly-built Hyatt Regency, the first overseas Hyatt.
I’ve seen a black-and-white photo of Bah Ba in that store. He’s wearing a three-piece suit and tie, posing for the camera in front of shelves of folded clothes. His hair parted neatly to the side, he stands regal over a checkered floor, a fist against his hip, his hand resting on the edge of the glass counter.
After they married, my father attempted a new venture. He picked up a job as a chauffeur, shuttling around Japanese businessmen. Then it occurred to him, why not go into business for himself? He’d be a self-made man, not a son chained to his father. He pawned the gold jewelry my mother received as wedding gifts—necklaces, bracelets, rings—and with the money, he purchased a taxicab. The cab would sit idle, my mother says, parked in front of where he played mahjong.
On another occasion my mom contradicts herself. She says he did have passengers. Many were prostitutes. They’d hop in his cab, and he’d take them from one john to the next. They felt relaxed enough around my father to share tales from work. Bah Ba might’ve been the only man in their lives they told these stories to. My father, the affable driver.
Willie drove the 30 Stockton. That’s how he and my mother met. Simple hellos led to longer chats. One day, Willie convinced her to stay on past her stop. “Sightseeing,” he said to my mother, who was sitting in the passenger seat behind him. There’s no rush for her to go home. We were at school—I was in the first grade at the time—and my father
