After Bah Ba found out, he called my brother, and in no time, they were chummy, two fathers bonding over fatherhood. Bah Ba would be coming to the Red Egg and Ginger Party after all. They’d always had a connection I couldn’t compete with. Both were first sons. My brother, the first son of a first son, now had begot a first son. (Whoop-de-fucking-doo. My sister was the first daughter of a first daughter, but nobody gave a shit about that. Patriarchy rules!)
My brother had married a woman that he’d only been dating for a month or so. He’d met her through work, a cousin of a waitress. She was from Macau, and her green card was about to expire, so they took off and got married in Reno.
“That girl is using you,” my mother had said.
“Playing you like a sucka,” I said.
“This is real,” Goh Goh said. “I love her.” He said it was such heartfelt emotion that my mom and I couldn’t help it, we busted up laughing.
My brother had chosen an Asian buffet downtown to hold the party. His friend worked there and had gotten him a discount. Goh Goh needed it. Though he’d quit the take-out job and landed a gig behind a desk at a small shipping company, my brother was living check to check with three mouths to feed. He wasn’t even paying his own rent. Bah Ba was, but unbeknownst to my dad, my mother was no longer living in that apartment in North Beach. Sure, she still had her room there, but she was sleeping in Willie’s bed every night. I’d moved out as well, so the money Bah Ba was sending home, not a substantial amount, in effect went to Goh Goh via my mother. The leftover money from Bah Ba’s checks went to paying for his life insurance. I guess my mother figured, you just never know.
On the far side of the restaurant, a band wearing Hawaiian shirts was playing an Elvis song. The walls were a tacky violet. Light gleamed from the metallic “Happy Birthday” banner hanging above the registration table.
My mother spotted me and waved me over. Bah Ba and Ga Jeh were also sitting at that table. Our section for the party was separated by a wooden partition. My mom ran up to embrace me as if she hadn’t seen me in years. “My baby,” she said, louder than she needed to.
“Stop saying that,” I said.
She smiled. “Even if you are 100 years old—”
“New jokes, please.”
“I’m not joking.”
My sister came over and hugged me. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispered. “Mom won’t shut up.”
“The trick is to ignore her,” I said. “Let her talk to herself.”
“I’ll try that,” she chuckled. Ga Jeh wore a dark blouse, probably was going for a formal look, but it came across as somber. I was wearing a dress shirt that my brother had given me. All the buttoned-up shirts in my closet were short sleeve plaid shirts.
Bah Ba rose from the table, dressed in a suit and tie. The only time I’d seen him in a suit was in old photos, the wedding picture that still hung over my mother’s bed. I gave him a quick hug, the way men do. I asked the typical questions, “How are you doing?” “How’s work?” and got the expected one-word responses, “Fine.” “OK.”
We sat around the table according to age as though we’d planned it—Bah Ba, Mom, Ga Jeh, and me. A balloon hovered over each of our heads, the ribbons tied to our bright colored chairs. My mother kept fidgeting in her seat. She cuffed her hair over her ear, revealing a gold hoop earring. She placed a shimmering clutch bag, also gold, on the seat next to her, between herself and Bah Ba. Willie wasn’t coming now—she’d had to disinvite him—so my mother wasn’t saving the seat, just preventing Bah Ba from sliding over.
My father muttered something to me, but I couldn’t hear over the noise of the restaurant, the chairs scraping against the floor as people left for and returned from the buffet. Bah Ba stared at me, waiting for a response.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. Seemed like a safe response.
Busboys swarmed around an empty table nearby, grabbing plates of leftovers. I was hungry but decided to wait for the crowd around the buffet to thin. My mother curled her lips when she saw Sai Yi at another table, along with Gung Gung and Poh Poh. Sai Yi had her hair parted in the middle, revealing a generous forehead. She worked as a clerk at Walgreens.
“My family likes him more than me,” my mother whispered loudly to me and my sister. According to her family, a father or husband could do no wrong. “He’s still your dad,” they’d loved to remind me.
Bah Ba slid the small basket of red-dyed hard-boiled eggs my way. He gestured with his palm. “Sihk.”
I grabbed an egg and peeled the shell. Red-dyed eggs and a plate of sushi ginger on each table, that was about all there was to a Red Egg and Ginger Party, a baby shower post-birth, minus the silly games. I didn’t know if I had to eat a red egg for good luck, or if the mere appearance of the eggs had already granted us good luck. Maybe the whole red-egg-good-luck thing wasn’t for us at all but only for my nephew, Jordan.
Bah Ba gestured for Ga Jeh to grab an egg. My mother used one hand to shield her face from Bah Ba, turning toward my sister. My mom scrunched up her face to Ga Jeh, as if to secretly impart: the eggs are poisoned! My mother was recruiting for Operation Ostracize Bah Ba.
“Is something wrong with your face?” my sister asked.
Not registering Ga Jeh’s annoyance, my mother smiled at my sister as though for a camera. My
