“My father moved out when I was ten, and I grew up feeling like he didn’t care about me. I started to hate him, and that filled my balloon. But I’m telling y’all, you don’t want to live with that hate. Let it go. It’ll turn you crazy. You’ll do things you’ll regret, drop out, get locked up. I forgave my dad, and just like that, all the air left my balloon. I woke up a new person. I forgave my dad for not being there. I forgave him for being a jerk to my mom. I forgave him for what he did to my sister—”
I couldn’t continue. I leaned forward, my hands on my knees. The microphone dropped, and I heard the thud over the speakers. I began bawling.
I saw my sister as a child in her bed and Bah Ba next to her. The image of my sister and father moved forward like a video as though someone had hit the play button. Bah Ba tugged at Ga Jeh’s pajama pants, and I felt the sensation as though it was me under his hand. I could smell his breath, nicotine and Hennessy. My legs got weak. A gentle push would’ve tipped me over. I closed my eyes and felt myself being drawn into a dark place I didn’t have the strength to resist.
A hand rubbed my back, then an arm lifted me up, but I was limp.
“It’s your favorite student,” Antonio said.
Another arm helped me up. “No,” Carmelina said, “I’m his favorite student. Tell him, Lam.”
Other students surrounded me, ready to help. I picked up the microphone. I don’t even know if I made any sense at that point, but I remembered why I’d gotten up to speak in the first place.
I spoke through tears to finish what I had planned to say, “If you don’t want to forgive for the sake of the other person, do it for yourself.”
I heard the crowd clap as I walked back to my seat. I grabbed the Kleenex box to blow my nose and sat down. I looked up and saw JB.
He shook my hand and pulled me up for a hug. “You’re a deep man, Mr. Lam.”
It wasn’t until I was back in my classroom packing up at the end of the day that I realized I had lied to my students. How could I have forgiven Bah Ba if I hadn’t dealt with what he’d done? That’s why the image felt fresh. I was seeing it for the first time.
Maybe Ga Jeh hadn’t forgiven our father. Perhaps like me, she’d hidden the images from herself. We hadn’t talked about any of this since she’d revealed it to me. I wasn’t sure the exact nature of the abuse, and I wasn’t trying to find out.
I told myself I’d call Ga Jeh as soon as I finished grading the set of papers I was taking home, but I didn’t. Admitting to myself what Bah Ba had done was one thing, broaching the topic with my sister was another. Should I initiate a conversation, force her to confront the past, or keep quiet, let the past stay buried? I didn’t know the best way to help my sister with her balloon, how to keep it from popping—I was still a rookie.
In the two years leading up to my trip to Minnesota, I slipped back into forgetting. I covered up what I didn’t want to see as easily as one might toss a throw over a stain on the couch.
good ol’ pops
After I returned from my visit to Bah Ba, I told my sister that I’d encouraged our father to retire in San Francisco, to be closer to us. She wrote me this in response:
We need to talk, you and me. I don’t know how I’m feeling about our good ol’ pops. I know how he’s “trying” to be a father and a grandfather, but I still feel a lot of anger towards him. I sent him an email asking him why he did what he did, and he never responded! I know I need to see a psychiatrist, but I don’t think it’s going to help. You forgive him or you don’t. And I’m not stable enough to forgive him. I still have to interact with him. I don’t like talking to him or seeing him. I try to put those feelings aside, but it’s very hard.
* * * * * *
I met Ga Jeh at her apartment. She’d just moved in. The place was sparse. Sitting on one of the shelves of her skinny bookshelf was a small brush painting of a panda. I’d bought it for her on a trip to China. In the corner of the room was a papasan chair, a holdover from the apartment she’d shared with her most recent ex. Their dogs would sleep in the chair, or rather, his dogs, a greyhound and a bulldog. They were the reason why it had taken her so long to leave the crummy boyfriend. She was ready to say bye forever, but saying that to the dogs, that proved more difficult. Now the chair was all she had of them.
“If Bah Ba moves back,” my sister said, “I’m moving out of the Bay. I still feel like he’s a threat.”
Her last three encounters with our father had been during funerals. They barely had to talk. And during our visit to Toronto, our interactions with Bah Ba had been buffered by uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. Living in the same city as Bah Ba, Ga Jeh would be expected to regularly share meals with him, to yahm cha together on weekends, to invite her abuser over to her house.
“If I’d known how you really felt about Bah Ba,” I said, “I would never have gone.”
“Sometimes I feel bad,” she said, “sometimes I don’t give a shit.” She blew her nose. “Sometimes I
