I slammed the knife on the counter and said, “Jimmy, nobody does anything for nothing. The US may have some vested interest or something to gain in the future, otherwise, the US would not be giving financial aid to India. If they are, they are not giving it to me! I’m in the US, and I am working equally as hard as you are, so don’t tell me about this financial aid anymore!”
For a moment, Jimmy stopped stirring the coleslaw and just looked at me in amusement. “Okay, Kris,” he said. “Okay.” He resumed his work, but from that point on, his taunting only grew worse.
“Do not say this thing anymore,” I cautioned him one day.
Jimmy laughed. “What are you going to do about it?”
Without thinking, I picked up the stainless steel dish rack and threw it at him as hard as I could. Jimmy was about eight feet away and quickly dodged the flying dish rack. It bounced with a loud clang and hit Linda, who was standing nearby.
Immediately, a great commotion filled the kitchen. Linda screamed, “Kris, how dare you?”
Lee ran in, grabbed both my wrists, and shook me hard. “What are you doing?” he yelled.
I tried to control my anger. The waitresses stopped to watch the scene, Linda stared at me, and Lee released my wrists, looking at me with a hard, serious expression.
“Lee, I’m sorry the rack hit Linda,” I said, “but I cautioned Jimmy not to tease me in a condescending manner anymore, and he did not stop, so I had to do what I did. I am very sorry.”
Lee did not know what to do. I was a hard worker and a good short-order cook. Jimmy was an especially fast worker and had worked at the restaurant for a long time with no problems. Lee finally told me to wait in his office while he talked to his dad, the owner of the restaurant.
When Lee came back, he said, “Kris, in the future, don’t do something like this. If Jimmy is still teasing you in any regard, come tell us, and we will take care of it.” Lee talked to Jimmy separately as well. That weekend, the atmosphere was tense, but the work kept us busy, and Jimmy and I did not speak to each other at all.
In the meantime, I began working at a commercial laundry in the evenings and on my two days off. For eight hours, I folded towels and sometimes helped another employee feed sheets through the flatwork ironer. When the Dorsey Hotel closed a few weeks before the end of summer, my friend Jasbir Singh Mann joined me at the commercial laundry. It seemed his time as a busboy had gone well, although several times he expressed discontent with that type of work. One day, while I was folding towels, Jasbir got into an argument with two black guys who worked in a different area. I heard shouts, and looked over to see the black guys towering over Jasbir, their muscles flexing beneath their shirts. Oh no, I thought. This can’t be good. Jasbir has never been in a fight in his life, and those guys are twice his size. Jasbir didn’t seem to notice the disadvantage. He continued talking loudly in an angry voice. Suddenly, one of the guys grabbed him, threw him on the floor, and began punching him.
Just then, the manager rushed out of his office, a furious expression on his face. He separated them and yelled, “You’re all fired! Get out!” The black guys cursed and spit at Jasbir, yelling offensive remarks at him. He looked ready to yell back, but this time he held his tongue. A moment later, he left the building and sat on the sidewalk, waiting for me to finish work. When I went outside, he began to weep bitter tears, a result of feelings he had been holding onto for months. I did not know what to say, but I knew how he felt.
I sat next to him on the sidewalk and listened while he angrily poured out how insignificant he felt and how he tried to understand life in the States, but he just couldn’t. Jasbir came from a well-to-do family in India, much wealthier than mine. He and his brothers possessed plenty of farm land, and they even owned farming machinery, which was rare on most Indian farms during those days. Now he was in the US, working menial jobs and feeling completely out of place.
The black guys were not used to foreigners. They tried to put Jasbir down, perhaps taking out their own frustrations on Jasbir, who was not familiar with all the swearing and slang the blacks used. He misunderstood something they said and took offense at it. While I usually went with the flow, even when I didn’t know what was going on or what people meant by their words, Jasbir was easily insulted. In India, he had spent money lavishly on his friends, and he was at the top of the social ladder. Everywhere he went, people looked up to him and respected him. Here in America, he was nearly broke, and no one cared who he was. When the black guys put him down and made fun of him, he couldn’t take it anymore and defended himself vigorously.
Jasbir returned to Knoxville a week early. I offered to come with him, but he shook his head. “No, you should stay and make as much money as you can,” he said. “You have two more weeks before classes start.”
I felt sad. I wanted to help Jasbir, but I didn’t know how. Just like me, he would need to figure out the American culture and try to
