The Sunset, 1973
Bitter cold fog seeping in during the mornings,people jogging with their running jackets on
in Summer, Chinese restaurants
and hardware stores, block after
block of the same stucco
cottage-cheesy houses in timid colors.
My mother cried when she first saw
our new house on Santiago,
a white box with pink-trimmed windows
on a flat street, nothing at all
like the Victorian we rented.
She told my father she wanted
to take my sister back
and rent a one-room efficiency,
at least Chinatown was warm,
and everyone spoke our language.
We were one of the first families,
sprung from Chinatown—the smelly fish
and crabs, the sidewalk snot and urine,
the rotting garbage—to move into this desolate
neighborhood of fog and stucco.
Here, my mother started sewing
for a sweatshop
that delivered piece work, collected
leftover fabric to make our clothes.
At Parkside Elementary, 25th and Ulloa,
my sister and I wore matching coats
and bellbottom jeans with elastic waistbands.
The friendly long-sleeved mothers of Parkside
used to point at us, laughing
through their noses,
How adorable. Chinese girls. Twins.
In school, their children beat us up,
dragged my sister into the bathroom
and took her clothes off in a stall
to see what a Chinese butt looked like.
Looking back,
I don’t know why my father moved us
to the Sunset in 1973. He must have thought
we were very strong people, making our home
out in the fog.
Priscilla Lee
Our
house in the Sunset in 1973. That's me running home.
Me in the second grade
My sister, Sherilyn in the first grade