On our dining table, every dish is a dime-store pattern:blue dandelions, red nasturtiums, the entire stack,a small legacy won in a 1959 coin tossby Lealand, the uncle with the long armsand legs, who pitched penny after pennyat a parking lot carnival until his pocketswere emptied of everything, but lint and luck. My family wouldn't buy Emporium bowlsthick like heads of cabbage or soup spoonsholding hand-painted water lilies;our plates, chipped and resounding,clatter at every feast. In America,we acquired what was necessary:some English to earn a living, cottonfor dull work, enough noodles for a long life. My father and uncles fled Chinawith a black leather trunk, four wool sweaters,and proud photographs of their two-story mansion.They rented on Mason, Alfred's Steakhouse clangingall night below. Great-Uncle's wifedonated a lazy susan, mini Bora Borapitchforks, and wooden bowls, rancidfrom salad oil—whatever she couldn't unloadat her yard sale. Sundays, she invitedher nephews to hang coats, change diapers,and serve finger sandwiches, told guests,ignore those farmboys, too stupid to say yes or no. The boys didn't tell her about the jars of jadeor the “big house,” its pondswimming with yolk-eating carp.They studied calculus and chemistryand worked after school, eighty-five cents an hour,pouring coffee at Mee Heung Bakeryand ironing pleats in sweat shopstowards a new life: chicken and fresh fishevery day, wonton noodle soup and televisionat midnight, Grace Kelly on weekends. When I get off the boat,America is a beautiful country, my father saysas he watches Uncle Lealand, the organoleptic specialist, dish upthe leftover black bean lobster for his cats.
Poetry Foundation.
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