“This is for sleeping.”
“I’m just pretending.”
“Oh, over there.” He pointed at nothing in particular.
We were to meet Vivian for dinner. I searched online for directions to the restaurant, though Bah Ba had argued that we didn’t need directions. It was hard to understand exactly what he was saying. He’d been drinking and was slurring and laughing like a child.
In the car, Bah Ba slumped low in the passenger seat. He was mumbling something to himself. We couldn’t have been on the freeway for more than two miles before he shouted for me to get off at the next exit.
“That’s not what the directions say,” I said.
“I go there all the time. What do you know?” His head rolled around like he was doing neck stretches. He stuck his head out the window as we passed the next exit, the wind blowing his graying hair around. He turned back and shot me a puzzled look.
“Not yet, Bah Ba. We’re still a few exits away.”
He dropped back into his seat and drifted off. I couldn’t imagine him taking care of my three-year-old nephew. My dad was clearly an alcoholic. (I had yet to accept he was also a pedophile.) Maybe we’d let him think he was needed to babysit, but really, the setup would allow us to keep an eye on him, similar to his relationship with Vivian.
“That’s the exit,” Bah Ba said.
“Go back to sleep. That’s what you said last time.”
“What are you talking about? This is the exit, right here. I’m telling you, this is it. You’re passing it. What are you crazy? Great, my son is going to get me lost.”
“Oops, I’ll get off at the next one.”
“Good, good.”
“Just relax. Lie back.”
He fell asleep with the seat belt running across his neck. His head dangled over it. I reached across and tilted his head away from the strap. Soon, he began to snore.
The day I left, while Bah Ba was working, I replaced his nasty dish rack with a new stainless steel dish rack, the most expensive one they had at the store. I wondered how long it would take for mildew to grow on this gift, the first I’d ever bought for my father.
a reevaluation
MC Shan had been unable to repair his damaged rep as the loser of the battle with KRS-One. Queensbridge rappers in general also took a hit. Nearly a decade would pass before someone from QB—the largest housing projects in America—would make a notable rap album, but when that rapper did, he dropped the most critically acclaimed hip-hop album of his generation: Illmatic. Nas, in an interview, cites MC Shan as a major influence coming up. “His rap style,” he says, “it helped me craft my rap style.” Shan’s legacy deserved a reevaluation.
Nas would later collaborate with Shan to record “Da Bridge 2001.” The track also features other Queensbridge rappers, but the younger emcees allowed Shan, the QB elder, to lead off the song, the beat, a version of the original, sampling the original. Spitting the first verse, Shan’s voice hasn’t aged, just as fresh. His opening line, the same as in his classic: You love to hear the story again and again.
In hip-hop, anything could be recovered.
a square left behind
In chess, everything has a cost. A move is a loss. Moving one piece means not moving another. And moving any piece, whether it’s swinging the bishop across the board or just taking one step with your old king, will always involve leaving something behind, a square undefended or less protected.
the last exchange
Dad,
I’m having a hard time accepting your “plan” for retirement. It’s very hard for me to discuss what I’m feeling especially since I sent you an email four years ago and you never responded. It was during the divorce and you were busy trying to get that straightened out. My problem just ended up being deleted from your memory. I am still feeling a lot of pain. You might not have noticed when you’ve seen me. We were in Toronto for sad reasons so I had to hide how I felt to be strong for you and the family. Deep down inside, it still hurts and haunts me. With your plan to move back, it is very hard for me to accept. If you feel that moving back to SF is what you would like to do, that’s fine with me. It might be good cuz the family is here, however, I will not be able to live here. I will move somewhere far.
Cindy
* * * * * *
Hi Cindy,
Sorry to respond so late, I am so misery of my job, sometimes the owner want you to do this, and they change their mind because of the whether and than the taste of the customers, so I don’t know what I am doing, it look like I am pulling by something, it has so much stress for my job, I don’t know when I can stand it, as thinking about my grandma, she died at 93, my father at over 80, my mother 70 something, than my sister at 60, these give me a signal, my family’s age might go lower and lower, that’s why I am thinking about retire, I have not see the world yet, I don’t won’t to work until I die like my sister, recently, a school bus driver at 78 crashed in the traffic accidence, he died when he worked, my friends in MN many of them have heart attack or died when they were working, which give me a signal should I retire or keep working? But I know my health, I am not that good, I feel I am getting slower and slower when I work, I don’t know who I can keep up until 62, every week I have to run with the clock in order to complete my work which make me so tire, like this week I work 14 hours on Sat and 12 hours on Sun, the life of my job you will never taste.
It’s tough for you
