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Talking Story |
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From The Asian Reporter, V18, #1 (January 1, 2008), page 7.
Brandon, Bruce Lee, and me
I see Bran here almost every time. At breakfast. At Cameo Café on the edgy corner of N.E. Sandy and 82nd Avenue. Across the way from where that asylum or sanitarium or nursing home used to stand. So cold. I never knew what it really was, no one ever spoke about it, everyone averted eyes whenever we passed by it. Sad ghosts leaned against twisted fir there, mumbled to themselves on those long grassy lawns there.
Now there’re apartments. Very nice. Tidy. You have to believe managers advise new tenants about it. About them. Those layak. Maybe fresh residents get a good discount. For them. Those undead. You have to hope so because we know for sure that Americans don’t call in a quiet St. Johns Hmong shaman or a N.E. Portland venerable Lao Buddha monk, to sweep a creepy place clean before building something new.
I don’t discuss any of that with Bran.
We don’t talk a lot. Bran chats with these Korean ladies, working here. They’re why he comes. He told me so when we met. He also told me his name.
"Bran?" I said.
"Bran," he said.
"Oh you mean like Bruce Lee’s boy?" He didn’t get it, so I went on. " — Hmm, Bran. Like Raisin Bran, like Kellogg’s cereal?"
"Bran," he said, "like short for Brandon."
"Right. Bran-don. I see how it works." Bran does mufflers and brakes at a shop some blocks west. When he was younger, Bran was stationed at a U.S. Army base in South Korea. It must’ve meant a lot to him, those years, that place. It’s why he’s here. Hangs out here.
Another time, Bran asked me why I came. I said for steak and eggs and rice. "Koreans really know how to do steak." Yum.
"No. I mean, why you came to the states." It wasn’t a question, he had no inflection. Maybe he’d taken offense at my Raisin Bran remark. Probably. Americans get itchy near borders, where cultures cross. Like here, at this café; in this neighborhood, newly named Portland’s International District. Here, at the convergence of a bowl of Kellogg’s and The Crow, Brandon Lee.
"Why did you come here? The U.S."
I didn’t answer right away.
Why we come here
I knew he wanted me to say Freedom. To talk about freedom. You know, the way we do when asked. When required. Required to recite what’s expected. And I wouldn’t have minded. Getting all effusive. Gushy. Because we are, in fact, grateful. Blessed to be here.
But I paused, because I am now old. No longer an eager beaver. My bright boy, my brave girl, have advanced degrees and do art for a living. They have lovely spouses. Are now entitled, to America.
I paused also because it was a New Year. Another promising January morning.
It was an auspicious time and Bran was beginning our newborn year by giving me an opportunity to be honest. To be true. To begin a clean discussion among immigrant families and ethnic minorities and Anglo America. To get out of those tired ruts we’ve worn fulfilling each others’ fantasies. Well-worn clichés, now way dysfunctional. Now untrue.
I wanted to honestly say: Brandon my brother, we come for da bucks. We love those Yankee Doodle Dollars, dude. We do. It’s true. America long ago betrayed our ideals. Hers and ours.
And we don’t have money, back home. Not at the scale an American can earn them, and save them, and share them with familia across that big deep blue, or across that white hot desert.
I wanted to tell Brandon that whatever Yanks need to believe about democracy as ideologized by the U.S. is okay, but it’s a whole other order from an entirely different breakfast menu if you ask an Asian or an Arab or an African or Latin American about freedom. We mean different things. We want different lives. For our children.
I wanted to tell Brandon that these café Koreans and also those vigorous Viet Kieu a couple blocks west in Little Saigon, that those Ukanians, Georgians, and Mexicans a couple miles east on Sandy Boulevard, will back me up on this, on these differences, but that’s no reason for him to get tense. To get mean. Because our different ideas on democracy will only make a more muscular America.
Freedom for what
I wanted to tell Brandon that on every Bangkok side street, any ambitious lady with a big heart and a tiny loan will buy an iron burner and a tin of gas. She’ll get a round wok, a couple of plastic bowls, and a handful of bamboo implements from another woman just like her; then, depending on the competition, she’ll be serving fried rice or tossed noodles or crispy fish or grilled chicken or crunchy yams and bananas, early tomorrow morning.
And no officious guy from a downtown bureau in the portfolio of a duly-elected city councilman will be shoving her or her fellow flaming-wok entrepreneurs off their sidewalk citing safety code violations. No self-righteous county health inspector will be making bacteria counts or clucking tongues or writing nasty tickets. No pencil-neck federal tax agent will be checking cash register ribbons against annual tax returns, because there are no tidy books, only hard currency. Because there are no fastidious accountants or herringbone lawyers speaking for our energetic women. Because it’s simply desire and lots of freedom. It’s strictly cash.
"It’s aaall about da money," I wanted to tell my bud, Bran. Our rich stay home. Sure, some university kids and of course our loudmouth professors, politicians, priests, and poets wind up in Portland. Shouting democracy. But those folks hammering shingles, planting shrubs, assembling motherboards, shovelling coal into Oregon’s hot economy; those parents dressing their boys nice, pushing them hard, doing those double shifts to ensure their girls’ success — are not yakking democracy. Dreaming liberty. They’re wishing they were free to sleep a bit deeper, to work a little longer. Love that overtime.
That’s what I wanted to say to Bran. Yup siree.
That’s what I should’ve told him, that muffler and brakes guy. But I didn’t. I looked into his anxious eyes. I looked at this lost soul, this American longing for something he could not name but clearly felt in our cozy Korean café — then I told him exactly what I figured he wanted to hear. I lied.
"I came for your freedom, man." I said to Bran. "For Mr. Bush’s democracy." And he felt better.
"Steak and eggs and rice," I said to our waitress. "Rare and over easy and steaming hot." And she felt better.
Maybe next New Year (I said to myself), I’ll be more brave. Maybe I’ll be better too.