Memoirist

Introduction

My friends call me Krispy Kim.

My earliest exposure to business was through the sweet enterprise of Sunrise Donuts.

My parents have been running the Mom-and-Pop shop since 1990. As soon as I could memorize my multiplication tables, I began to interact with our customers, taking their orders and working the register. I was barely tall enough to see over the counter. But, my customers still knew me by name and I knew them by how they liked their coffee. By the time I entered college, I had already clocked in thousands of hours of customer service managing the shop. And because I spent so much time with my family building our donut empire, I developed a deep understanding of my family’s cultural legacy—an understanding that continues to shape my personal and professional motivations.

No matter how far I advance in my career, I will always remember my beginnings as a donut extraordinaire.

 

 

Mom says

There was nothing left – we traded the last bits of our gold for the guide. We set off at night so the army wouldn’t see us, but the blackness of the jungle made it impossible to even see the ground. We had no choice but to completely trust that the guide knew where to avoid the land mines. When we crossed the forest, it got so cold that your father—because he was so skinny—couldn’t stop shaking.

Even though I was four-months pregnant, I still piggybacked him, and while he hugged my back for warmth, I continued the 100-mile trek towards Thailand.

I fell so many times.

We wore these flimsy shoes that provided no comfort. I kept tripping over rocks and branches – things on the ground that I couldn’t see. I was so scared that your older brother wouldn’t make it. It was such a long and dangerous journey. But when we finally got to the camp, the nurses said that we were both fine. I couldn’t believe how strong he was. Yes, we were both … alive!

 

 

 

Dad Says

This is where Baba had to work, he says as he points to a sepia photo of a small dam surrounded by a crowd of alarmingly frail teenage boys.

I inch closer to the photo on the wall of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, trying to find my father’s face amongst the hundreds of other forced labor workers in the camp. Knowing that over 20% of the Cambodian population died during the ultra-communist Khmer Rouge regime, I wonder how many of these boys are still alive today.

Standing beside my father as he recalls this cruel past, I find it hard to imagine that he was once there, in the fields, overworked and starving, avoiding the slightest mistake that could be grounds for a trip to the killing fields. I suddenly experience a glimpse of what my parents have been feeling for the past 30 years of their life: an influx of good luck and fortune.

 

 

Hands

I hate it when they don’t speak sensibly. It doesn’t matter that I don’t speak Cantonese or Vietnamese or Spanish—I’ve lived in the San Gabriel Valley long enough to understand basic phrases like “How much?” or “That one” in their respective language. I despise the way they just point at what they want. I don’t expect them to speak English and don’t need them to either. I just want them to talk comprehensibly in a language that actually exists so I can figure out which item they want without playing this stupid guessing game. So I stare them down, disgusted by the way their filthy fingers point and palms slap down the crumbled bills on the orange counter.

“This one?” I ask, turning my back against him while sticking my tongue out as I point to the neon green stack of $3 Bonus Crossword lottery scratchers. He grunts and I begin to see the formation of wrinkles between his hairy eyebrows so I move over to the next scratcher, and the next one and the one after that. I grimace at the row of over 35 scratcher tickets and pray that I won’t have to go down one by one.

Finally, after four damn tries, I finally guess the correct stack of tickets he’s been pointing at. When he leans over the counter, his breath reeks of Iced French Vietnamese coffee and Marlboro Red cigarettes and I feel like I need one of those face masks that everyone in Hong Kong during the SARS scare wore. With his coarse voice, he tells me he wants three tickets from the top of the stack. When I ask him why, he says the other customers have already won with the ones at the bottom. The top one’s are luckier, he says. That’s what they always say. It’s bullshit. So I tear the tickets off like I want to tear his head off, take his $10 bill and quickly throw back his buck of change.

After serving him and a couple of his friends, I rest against the counter, have a dab at my ice cream that’s been melting in this sweltering heat and survey the crowd of customers. I am neither comfortable nor afraid of the mosaic of yellow and brown faces and familiar yet repulsive smell of sweat from blue-collar jobs. Mexican, Vietnamese, Chinese, Cambodian, Cantonese and occasionally a few whites and blacks fill up the few seats in the store. All these regulars arrive with different experiences, histories and secrets that I will never know. Some stop by for five minutes for a fresh croissant baked by my own cousin’s hands and some stay for hours, trying to feed the growing gambling temptation that gnaws at their soul. And here I stand, at the corner Garvey and Walnut Grove Ave., tending to their every command. Or at least that’s what they think.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her talking on the phone with her best friend from Santa Ana. Mixing Khmer, Mandarin, and Teochew together, she catches up on family gossip and of course, complains about the worsening conditions of the store—the declining work ethic of her brother-in-law, ungrateful defiance of his wife, the increasing frequency of slow business days, and the intense arguments she has with her husband about his betraying family.

“Things just aren’t the way they used to be,” she sighs. I glance at her tired and persevering hands gripping the receiver and compare them to my own, long gangly set. Turning my palms up, I see that her deep lines have already started to sketch into my 22-year old hands.

 

 

 

Fights

I’m the 1-2-3 Kid this time. He’s considered the underdog in the Federation with his scrawny figure and limited wrestling experience. Everyone thought he was outmatched when he went up against Razor Ramon on last week’s Monday Night Raw but I knew he could do it. I cheered him on. He’s just like me, a nerd trying to make it in the real world and prove everyone wrong. So it was a natural choice to pick him as my wrestler.

I’m standing in my Pink Power Ranger t-shirt Mom bought me from Chinatown with my thick hair in pigtails and red plaid framed eyeglasses. I adjust the neon pink eyeglasses lanyard hanging off my back and get ready to fight. With both hands on my hips, I face my competition. Today, he’s Bret “the Hitman” Hart, aka my older brother. He embodies everything my older brother wants to be—tall, strong, menacing, hypermasculine. A champion. A winner.

I can tell from his quick speed and aggressiveness that he’s been practicing his moves on David and paying close attention to the World Wrestling Federation matches that have been going on. Oh yeah, I think to myself. I’ve got moves too, from all that Chinese jump rope that I’ve been playing everyday in our yard that faces Del Mar Ave. I jump around him and suddenly transform into Chun-Li. She’s another favorite of mine: cute, athletic, and competitive.

“Lightning kick!” I yell, lifting my right leg and wildly swinging it up and down in front of my brother. “Yatyatyatyat. Take that, mister. Who’s the boss now?”

Before I get charged up for my super combo, my brother changes into Ryu and tries to up-up-uppercut me. Instead, due to my excellent defense skills, he punches my stomach, causing me to lose my balance and fall onto the sofa. My precious glasses fall off in front of me and before I reach for them, it’s already too late. I see them dive in between the sofa cushions as my brother pushes me from behind and lands on top of my back. The next thing I know, I hear a crack and I can already see the pretty frames bending and breaking in half.

 

***

 

“Can you believe him, Linda?”

My older brother is laughing, but I sense something serious in his tone. Like most Asian men, he suffers from being vertically challenged but that doesn’t mean he’s some wimpy kid. Every time he’s home, my mom shrieks when she sees that his biceps are bulging out of his t-shirt sleeves, making him look beefier than ever before.

“He’s been throwing out my stuff without asking me. Who does he think he is?” He shakes his head at disbelief. He’s forgotten what David is like. Now that he goes to UCSF for Pharmacy School, he only comes home a couple times a year. I wish I could do that—leave for a while so I can distance myself from home and the family. Since I only go to school twenty minutes away at USC, I’m expected to visit at least twice a month.

“I don’t know.” That’s as straightforward of an answer that I can give him. “David can be stupid, you know that.”

“Yeah, but he’s throwing out my stuff. I’m gonna go talk to him,” he mumbles as he gets up from the sofa. At 24 years old, my older brother exemplifies the maturity and charisma that all Asian families love to see in their eldest son. There is no question that he’s the favorite of the family. After all, he was born in the year of the dog—loyal to his family and friends.

I decide to stay out of his way during his confrontation with David. I glance up at the clock and my stomach immediately growls when it reads fifteen after six. I’ve been waiting impatiently for everyone to get ready so we all can try to have a nice family dinner for once at 888 Seafood Restaurant in San Gabriel, conveniently located only blocks away from the store. One of my favorite restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley, “Triple 8” is known for its spacious rooms and sumptuous dim sum.

Thinking about all of this makes me lightheaded. My stomach cramps up whenever I get too hungry or stressed out. I can already smell the pungent fried fresh lobster tossed with chow mein and chopped green onions and taste the thick warm shark fin soup mixed with the tartness of red vinegar. It’ll be our first dinner eating out with my entire family in over six months.

As I channel surf between commercials, I hear the beginnings of an argument upstairs. I start to get nervous as I listen to David raising his voice in defiance, attacking at any comment interrogating him for something he did or did not do.

Godamnit, he’s doing it again, I think. As the youngest, David, for some unknown reason, just has to rebel against anything that stands in his way, especially our parents. You would think that at 19 years old, he would have been over that teen angst stage of his life and for once, respect everyone in the family. My parents often wonder how he lives with his roommates at UCLA. Years back, they asked me if he was in a gang in high school because they couldn’t phantom why he was so violent and cruel, threatening to kill and hurt even those who single-handedly raised him. But the thing was, David was only like this at home. Strangely enough, all my teachers loved David and were completely shocked to find out that we were related. You guys aren’t anything alike, they said. Well, at least they got that part right.

“What?” David barks.

“What do you mean what? Did you take my stuff or not?” asks my older brother, more firmly this time.

“What stuff?”

“The stuff in the drawers of my desk.”

“I don’t know.”

“How the hell do you not know whether you took my stuff or not.”

“Why don’t you stop yelling at me. I didn’t take your stuff OKAY.”

“Oh yeah? So where’d everything go?”

“What? You think you can come here once a year and think all your stuff will stay the same? It’s my desk and I can do whatever I want with it.”

“First of all, it’s my desk. And what the hell. You don’t go throwing away my stuff. You ask me first. OKAY?”

“Shut the fuck up. Why don’t you just shut up?”
“What’d you say? Say that again and I’m going to beat your ass,” my older brother threatens. Like so many times before, I can picture him, tightening his grip, ready to pound at anything at any moment.

Hearing all this commotion, I see Dad coming out of his room to talk to them. Afraid of what’s going to happen next, I quickly get up but my grandparents catch me before I make my ascent upstairs. They ask, Gee Nee Muok? What’s going on? I quickly explain, Wo bo zai. Yee no nang do sia ma. I don’t know. Those two are fighting.

Suddenly, I hear scuffling noises upstairs and realize that it’s already begun. Dashing up two stairs at a time, I make a quick left into their room and find my older brother headlocking David as David’s skinny arms are trying to reach for my older brother’s neck. Both of my brothers have taken jujitsu, Tae Kwon Do, and other forms of martial arts and they’re both testing out their self-defense and attacks on each other as if they were true enemies in war combat. Seeing this, Dad, Grandpa, and I yell in English and Teochew at my brothers and jump in to intervene.

STOP! Hia Me! Are you crazy? Le nang siow hah? You guys are brothers! Hia di bo muok a-he nia.

Getting our arms in between my brothers’ tangled, heated bodies, Dad, Grandpa and I struggle to pull them apart. Our old and young unconditioned muscles are no match against their strength. Finally, with an extra strength pull, we separate them apart.

David’s face burns red and drops of sweat and tears of hatred slide down his face. His eyes are dark and infuriating; he glows with hatred. My dad approaches him and touches him on his shoulder. “Let go of me. I’m gonna kill you. I HATE YOU,” he screams, throwing off Dad’s hands.

My grandma quickly hides the car keys, afraid that David would take off and runaway to his friend’s place like he did a year ago. I remember getting the call from my mom while I was at work. She’s never cried to me on the phone before and it was a terrifying to imagine my mother so vulnerable and hurt. In ultimate defiance, David shaved his head to spite my mother by resembling a Latino gangster. She said he took the car and left home for days. He didn’t pick up our calls. He didn’t call back. Nothing.

My older brother, touching his chin where David’s scratch peeled a piece of skin off, shakes his head. He says out loud, more to himself than to David, “You’re not worth it. Hey, it’s my fault. I should have been the bigger man. From now on, I’m not going to have anything to do with you.”

Mom, who with Grandma, stood by the door at disbelief, tells my older brother to go downstairs. Her reaction to the whole fight surprises me. She didn’t scream and yell at David as usual. She didn’t even cry nor did she raise her voice. She said a few things and watched in horror. I follow the procession of family members downstairs. I try to blink the tears out of my eyes.

A few minutes pass, and everyone excepts for David and Mom gather in the family room with long faces and heavy hearts.

My dad starts talks to my older brother and me. He says in Teochew: You would think that with all of you grown up in college, this wouldn’t happen anymore. You all are bright and smart and you still do this to tear the family apart. The one day we want to have a family dinner, we can’t. It’s New Years Day and this is what happens?

 

 

 

The Arrival

Shifting the weight onto her other foot, she repositions the baby in her arms and glances at her almost-two-and-a-half year old son standing by her side. With their beautiful brown skin and curious eyes, she is proud of her two children and the life that she and her husband will be able to provide them in this new country.

Their trek began two years ago in Thailand. After passing a series of US immigration interviews and physical examinations for refugee status in the US, they were elated to escape a life of genocide, communism and hopelessness that haunted millions of displaced Cambodians under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge dictatorship. Freed from a living hell that cost the lives of her brother, father, and whole families of relatives, she and her husband began to learn English a couple hours a day in the Khoa-I-Dang Thailand Camp that they’ve been living in for the past two years. Once sponsored by US relatives to live in America, they flew to Morong, Bataan of the Philippines in September 1984 to learn more about the American customs they will soon encounter. But this trip meant that they had to, at the ages of 20 and 24, leave their parents and younger siblings behind in the camp to establish a new beginning for themselves in Los Angeles.

Arriving a year later with two children born in countries not of their own homeland, Sok Houng and her husband Tek Seang were finally given the opportunity to realize their dreams. Upon immediately exiting the Northwest Airlines terminal at 9 AM, airport officials noticed the 6 x 3 inch cards stamped with the distinct red square logo dangling from each of their necks. The Intergovernmental Committee for Migration (ICM) issued cards served as their passports since they didn’t have one as refugees. Quickly, they were whisked away to the immigration center rooms where more paperwork was to be filled out. Sok Houng and her family winced at how long the process took: 3 hours.

Now standing outside, waiting for the LAX airport shuttle to take her family to the John Wayne Airport where she would be picked up by her sponsors, Sok Houng could only be patient and pray, as she has been for the past two years, for assistance and good luck. Clinching at her International Refugee Committee jacket against the chilly air, she tries to stay calm for her children. But hearing their cries, she can no longer be strong like her mother told her to be.

Scared, hungry and afraid of the unfamiliar surroundings, strange language and people he has encountered in the past 24 hours, the son—Chhun—begins to softly cry.

“Mama, dung lai. Dung lai,” he whimpers. Go home, go home. “Wo ai ke lai.” Please let me go home.

And at this, something loosens inside of her and she breaks down. Clutching her son, she cries with him at the realization that there’s no turning back, there’s no home but this one in LA, and that they have experienced too much to ever want to go back. Even though they’ve arrived with nothing, the fact that they arrived is something. This is home now, she explains to him through tears. This is our home now.

She squints at her husband’s cheap watch noticing the small hand already creeping up to the 1 mark. They have been in Los Angeles for four hours already, yet it doesn’t feel like. Her family is starving and she can’t do anything about until her relatives pick her up. There’s a familiar feeling of hopelessness that she cannot seem to identify.

 

 

 

 

Steve Kay

Tall and skinny with rich brown skin, he stood out among the crowd of pale yellow Chinese and tanned Mexican customers. I thought of Michael Jackson when I saw his web of long curly hair that almost reached his tailbone. My mom, nudging me forward to meet this strange man, tried to introduce me as her daughter while I wiggled around her to hide behind the orange counter, afraid to meet his eyes.

“Hi. What’s your name?” he gently asked.

“Linda,” I answered, still trying to hide behind my mom’s shifting body.

“So your parents are going to take over the store now?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

And then he turned around to greet another girl that was about my age. She was the store owner’s daughter and felt very comfortable chatting with him as she discussed school and her friends. I couldn’t help thinking how much prettier she was; I mean, she even wore a matching pink outfit. With both hands, I pushed up the heavy, thick red glasses that weighed down on my nose and stared at the lame unisex “Welcome to Los Angeles” t-shirt I was wearing. I immediately felt small.

Reaching out of a black plastic bag, he took out a box of Scooby-Doo Valentine’s Day cards to give her. With only three days until Valentine’s Day, I still haven’t bought any cards and didn’t have the courage to bring it up to my parents since they always looked so tired. I felt the envy building up against my chest. There was so much I didn’t have and I was amazed at this man’s generosity and friendliness to the girl.

After paying for his coffee and chatting with my parents for a bit, he left.

Shyly, I asked my parents, “Who’s that man?”

“His name is Steve. He’s a nice person, don’t you think?” My mom replied as she watched him approach his car in the parking lot.

 

****

 

“Hey Steve, how’s it going?” I ask, as he enters the store in his usual long-sleeved dress shirt and tie with his CVS Pharmacy nametag still on. After fifteen years, he’s still working at the same convenience store that sits on San Gabriel Boulevard and Garvey Avenue.

“You know, same old, same old. Drama with girls. No money. Tired. It’s all the same,” he says as he stirs the milk, blending the black coffee into a creamy brown. He takes a sip and adds more sugar and looks up to me. “How about you?”

Our conversations are always the same. We talk about any movies we’ve seen lately. He asks about college, whether I’ve found a boyfriend yet, or how my brothers are doing. Even though I’ve met Steve Kay 12 years ago, he hasn’t changed a bit, still keeping up with his high-maintenance hair. While everyone around him, including his family and mine, is trying to move up in the world and leave this sorry city, he sticks around, buys his lottery tickets and drinks his coffee. For Steve, this is where home is.

Steve is one of our oldest customers, but he’s grown into a family friend over the years. Whenever my parents couldn’t pick me up from school, they’d call Steve for the favor. If I happened to be closing the store, my mom would call Steve to stay with me in case anything happened. We even convinced him to visit Cambodia where my uncles served as his tour guide on his vacation. But like the store, Steve represents the same old, same old.

 

 

 

Commutes

“These kind of people … aiya,” he harps as we pull out of the store’s parking lot. It took us 15 minutes to leave since the customers kept coming back for more scratchers, refusing to let us tend to anything that wasn’t gambling-related. I look at my DKNY watch and note the time. It’s almost 2 and we didn’t even pass Wal-Mart yet. I grumble, thinking of all the homework my procrastinating self left to do at the last minute. I wanted to get back at school. ASAP.

“They don’t go crazy? They never get sick of it?” my dad condescendingly inquires of the customers. I know he thinks that he is better than these Vietnamese and Cantonese men who waste their lives away on some million-to-one odds that they’ll win big.

“Why don’t they take care of their kids or eat dinner with their family,” he says in his mixed Teochew and English. “I don’t have this problem at New Store. Mexican customers are good in Pomona. They bring their whole family for ice cream and smoothies and donuts and everyone’s happy.”  And there it is. The signature trademark of being Asian. Here come all the comparisons.

To be honest, I’m not really paying attention to what my dad is saying. It doesn’t matter that much because I am almost a hundred percent sure what it’s about. One. My mom is crazy and she needs to stop talking to everyone about family or store business. She needs to stop being so damn dramatic and blaming my dad because it was, after all, an arranged marriage. Two. Old Store is not as good as New Store. Three. My dad is proud of his investment in New Store. Instead of listening to all of this, I notice his apparel and take in a whiff of the aroma of melted sugar and baked yeast that covers him from head to toe.

Today, my dad is sporting his usual green windbreaker jacket with a gray polo shirt, khaki pants and his favorite Saucony running shoes. He’s long given up on professional dress shoes since his feet can’t last on such hard and painful rubber soles. He’s smiling today, which is quite rare, I think to myself.

We are heading down the 60 Freeway in his 1999 magenta Toyota Sienna mini-van. It’s his baby—he spends more time in his car than he does with anyone in the family. That’s why this is treasured time. Even though we’re stuck in horrible traffic that stretches east-west and west-east from Santa Monica all the way past Pomona, it’s okay because we’re together.

 

***

 

He is always moving, transporting others to realize their dreams, which in turn realizes his. We don’t need to say much, no. In the hour that we spend in the car every other weekend, there is an understanding, appreciation that we are together. Father and daughter. Yes, we don’t say much because we don’t have to. We already know.