Beef
tomato diary
After work, I
took a few tokes before I ate my beef tomatoes in the Bay Avenue house.
Sometimes I listened to freight roaring through the night air by the slough,
only separated from me by the dirt field and the cyclone of blackberry vines.
My immigrant forebears could have laid the railroad tracks. They came as far as
Washington State and settled in Hoquiam, the twin town of Aberdeen.
Now the
Georgia-Pacific line comes to the Port of Grays Harbor, where timber is shipped
to Japan on Hong Kong merchant ships, and Hong Kong sailors sometimes come to
our restaurant, the Hong Kong Café on Simpson Avenue, and sometimes, in a
hushed tone, they asked how they can jump ship. I was naïve, even though I was
in my late twenties.
Years later I
took a U.S. history class at the University of Washington in Seattle for
someone else. They paid me to do it. I read about the “Underground Railroad.” I
then put two and two together and questioned my parents’ integrity. Then things
began to make sense. I knew then why my father told me, in the wee hours after
the bar rush, while we are eating our late meal while sitting at the makeshift
table on milk crates, that during the Sino-Japanese War, he was bookkeeper to
an illiterate criminal, one who had murdered an old woman he robbed and then
was later hung for the crime.
My father told
me between mouthful of white rice, from the platter he put a rib steak on top
of a mound of it. He was matter of fact, telling me about the “real” business
he was in but without telling me.
Later, I was
diagnosed mentally ill, and I myself questioned my own thoughts and judgment,
so insidiously was the illness that I cannot know reality for certain.
Simonson’s
coffee diary
Gene Miller was
our coffee man. He brought Simonson’s condiments and coffee. He was the
son-in-law of the owner. Proudly talkative of his older daughter who was chief accountant
for King County, Gene bragged how no one can figure out his daughter’s
bookwork. The transactions must have been like the interconnected tunnels of
prairie dogs. Not visible at first glance but there is a subterranean series of
tunnels, entrances, and exits that only she knew. And as you know, prairie dogs
alert one another through their tonal language. The pitch of a sound mattered
in its meaning, like Chinese language. We
were a Chinese-American restaurant, and we served coffee because it was
American and hot mustard and sesame seeds with sliced barbecue pork; that was
Chinese.
Gene had
another daughter. The younger one was Marti, and she was my classmate at
Aberdeen High School. Gene knew that because Marti talked about me at home no
doubt because I was the literary chair of the creative writing club of which
she was a devoted member.
Four decades
later I went back to the Aberdeen Public Library to give a reading of my
poetry, celebrating my second book of poems. Marti came and she did not look
well. She was now a self-proclaimed artist. I knew she must have been bipolar,
like me. The librarian was upset Marti took so much time talking during the
question and answer period following my reading. I told the librarian later
that Marti had been my classmate. The librarian then said, “It is truly remarkable
you can talk everybody’s language. I told her I had been around and that a poet
needs to know a bit of everything. Disenfranchisement seemed normal to me, and
so I got “in” with the “out-crowd.” There are some still out there, but a
tremor or a facial tick gives them away, even before they become talkative of
nothing in particular and then suddenly lapse into a sullen mood because no one
cared to listen. Drinking coffee to excess can also make one chatter much. Gene
the father never talked about Marti. And so Marti talks a lot to define
herself.
