Mansur was the first adult to give me the green light to kick someone’s ass. This made me feel grown—I had a duty to uphold.
goh goh’s room/my room
My sophomore English teacher, Ms. Porto, frequently had us write in class. Because she spoke to us through a microphone, we called her MC Porto. The room was no lecture hall. It was tiny, half the size of a normal classroom. She’d said she was tired of students always whining, “What did you say?” The mic was the kind you’d clip to your shirt, but she’d still raise it to her mouth.
One day, she wrote on the board: Describe something memorable that occurred at home.
“Don’t think about it,” MC Porto’s nasally voiced boomed from the large speaker in front of her desk. “Just write.”
I wrote about the night I woke up and saw Bah Ba and my mother screaming in my room. I was six. They stood on Goh Goh’s bed, and my brother, who would’ve been nine, hid behind my mother, clutching her oversized Mickey Mouse T-shirt at her waist. There was a satisfaction in seeing my older brother in trouble.
Bah Ba pressed up against my mother. She backed up and told him to get out, her hand extended, fingertips almost touching his chest. She had her hair tied up in a bun with a pink jaw hair clip.
My father knocked my mom’s arm away and shook his finger at her face. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. His words were barks. I’d heard of Bah Ba hitting my brother, but I’d never witnessed it, or if I had, I was too young to remember. Bah Ba would smack my brother, even in public, if Goh Goh dared to ask our father to buy a toy. Why my father wanted to beat my brother that night, I had no clue. Bah Ba might’ve just wandered into our room in a drunken stupor and decided to pick on my brother.
My father lunged for Goh Goh, but my mom stepped aside like a matador, keeping my brother tight on her hip. It was the first time I saw Goh Goh shed a tear. I was the crybaby. He’d sock me in the shoulders in front of his friends to make me cry on demand.
I threw off my covers. I’m not sure why. I didn’t plan to get up. Bah Ba and my mother turned to me.
“Bei leih goh jai tai dou,” my mother said, pointing at me. You’ve let your son see you like this. She backed herself against the wall with Goh Goh still locked at her hip.
“Yuhk hoi, diu!” Bah Ba said. Move, fuck! He reached for Goh Goh.
My mother didn’t budge. She spread her arms wide, and Bah Ba slapped her. She fell on the bed, her hand still holding onto Goh Goh. My brother threw his body across hers, his back to Bah Ba. My father made a move toward them.
“Why was I so stupid to marry you?” my mother said. “You don’t love your kids. You only love mahjong. Why do you even come home?”
His shoulders slumped. He muttered something to himself and stepped off the bed.
My mother held her cheek, and my brother couldn’t stop say- ing sorry to her. She rose and tucked us into bed.
“Mouh gong yeh,” she said to us. “Fun gaau.” Don’t talk. Sleep. She turned the lights off and the room darkened, but she didn’t leave. She stood by the doorway, her silhouette still visible.
kitchen
I shoved a form at my mother while she was washing dishes. “You have to sign this at the bottom,” I said.
“Yi goh meh yeh?” she asked.
“This is where I’m going to school.” I pointed to the box labeled “First Choice.” I’d listed McAteer on the form for my preference of high school. Mac was across town. I knew little about it. I didn’t know about its selective arts program, a school within a school. I didn’t know that many of its students were coming from neighborhoods at war with each other, that all the dudes in the school claimed something: a turf, a dance crew, a graffiti crew, or that strange cult, ROTC. All I knew, and all I needed to know, was that practically no one from my middle school was going to Mac, which meant no more dealing with kids coming up to me in the hallway telling me how phony I was, reminding me and anyone else around that I had betrayed my best friend.
He was a white kid named Max, skinny, big ears, dark greasy hair, always wore Chucks and baggy sweatpants. His friends became my friends. For every hour spent playing video games, we spent an hour playing sports. Didn’t matter which. None of us were particularly good at any, but that wasn’t the point. He brought me to my first baseball game. He had an allowance and would break me off some money when we went to the arcades or the comic store. He’d order pay-per-view fights, and his mom would order pizza. He had the latest video game systems, one setup in his room, another in a loft. One night, as I left his house, I snuck one of his game cartridges in my pocket. He phoned later that night and banned me from his house until I confessed.
I can’t say for certain that stealing
