Ga Jeh was visiting from San Diego. She wanted to spend the day with Jordan and Alana. The movies then the park. And of course the ice cream truck by the sandlot, even though she knew Goh Goh didn’t want his kids eating sweets. The thing was, she had to drop them off in North Beach, and only Bah Ba would be home. Goh Goh was out of town, and his wife was working. My sister hesitated when Goh Goh told her this, but he assured her that it’d be fine. The plan was simple. Jordan and Alana would ring their apartment, and Bah Ba would buzz them in. Ga Jeh wouldn’t have to see or talk to our father.
It had been months since she saw the kids. Jordan was seven, his cheeks less chubby. Alana was three, and Ga Jeh worried that it might take them a bit before they’d warm to her. She was Yi Goo Jeh, Second Aunt. I was Saam Sook, Third Uncle. It doesn’t translate well. There weren’t two aunts or three uncles. The numbers signaled our birth order. My sister loved being an aunt, loved to hear them say, Yi Goo Jeh, so I started calling her that too, and she’d call me Saam Sook.
She’d phone my mom on weekends because our nephew and niece would spend the night. She’d ask our nephew, “What does Yi Goo Jeh like?”
“Good boy,” he’d reply. Even though this was an old routine that they had, Ga Jeh would celebrate his answer like he was a prodigy.
It was an overcast day, and my sister thought how odd it was that she’d already forgotten how summer in San Francisco wasn’t summer at all. She parked her SUV near the entrance at the gate, a few parking spots away rather than the parking spot directly in front, a precaution. Didn’t want to be in plain sight if Bah Ba came out.
She kept the engine running as she looked over her shoulder, waiting for Jordan and Alana to be buzzed in at the gate. Goh Goh had told Bah Ba that a friend would drop off the kids. Ga Jeh hadn’t seen our father in a few years, and she wanted to keep the streak alive. She kept busy with a new job, a promotion, more responsibilities, people to supervise, a new relationship with a guy who wasn’t a jerk—a first. After work, she’d walk across the beach. The way her toes sunk into the sand put her at ease. She’d close her eyes and hear the waves, a cleansing.
Once, when Bah Ba was out of town, I hung out at Goh Goh’s apartment. I saw a Father’s Day card pinned on Bah Ba’s room. On the front of the card, a large balloon contained the words “World’s Best Grandpa.” Jordan flipped the card to the next page, and he pointed at his own name on the bottom, the letters unaligned.
I could’ve opened Bah Ba’s bedroom door, saw his new life, what it smelled like, the pictures he might’ve had up, but I didn’t touch the door. The less you know, the easier it is to forget.
The card on the door was Goh Goh’s idea. It was weird seeing our brother in this role, a father teaching his son to be thoughtful, sweet. For Christmas, my brother stayed up until five in the morning wrapping gifts for his kids. He tried to do Santa’s work. He assembled a Big Wheel and a kitchen play set, which took forever because of the stickers. He couldn’t figure out where they went. Harder than it sounds, he’d told me.
This is the way I’d like to think I’d be as a dad. My brother was the one who spent time with the kids. My sister-in-law, Dai So, worked a graveyard shift, supervising at a mahjong parlor, though it wasn’t always clear when she was working and when she was playing herself. She wasn’t home often. Anything to do with school, anything recreational with the kids, taking them to the park or a movie, getting them into extracurricular activities, martial arts, ballet, or just sitting at home with them, that was all on Goh Goh. Dai So was like our father in that way—unavailable. But at least she’d handle dinner. It was as though, to her, this was her sole duty as a mother, anything else optional. As soon as dinner was over, she’d be out the door with the quickness.
Goh Goh and Dai So used to argue about this, her always out, but now they fought less. They’d settled into the routine. “I’ve failed as a father,” Goh Goh once told me. He wanted more for his kids than he had, but he was struggling to pay the rent, having to borrow money occasionally from one of us. He was raising his family on the same block that he’d grown up on, a new version of his old housing complex that didn’t feel new enough, the dynamics in his own family too similar to the one that had raised him.
There was no answer at the gate of the complex. The kids turned back to my sister confused. She lowered her rear window and reversed so they could hop back in the car. Take them to their mom’s job, she thought.
“I think Yeh Yeh is asleep,” Jordan said. When Jordan calls Bah Ba, Yeh Yeh, my sister’s body shudders like mine. Our father has a new identity, untainted.
Ga Jeh unlocked the car door. Through the thick bars
