My father ended the conversation by standing and sweeping the cash, coins, checks, and food stamps into the vinyl satchel he carried every morning to the Bank of America. My parents kept some of their profits in the bank, donated a portion to the church, and wired another percentage to the relatives in Vietnam, who periodically mailed us thin letters thick with trouble, summed up for me by my mother to the tune of no food and no money, no school and no hope. Their relatives’ experiences and their own had taught my parents to believe that no country was immune to disaster, and so they secreted another percentage of the profits at home, just in case some horrendous calamity wiped out the American banking system. My mother wrapped blocks of hundred-dollar bills in plastic and taped them underneath the lid of the toilet tank, buried dog-tag-sized ounces of gold in the rice, and stashed her jade bracelets, twenty-four-karat gold necklaces, and diamond rings in a portable fireproof safe, hidden in the crawl space underneath the house. To distract thieves, she devised decoys, placing a large glass vase heavy with coins high on a bookshelf by the front door, and a pair of gold bracelets on top of her dresser.
Her fear of robbery was proved justified last October, when, on an otherwise forgettable Tuesday evening, someone knocked on the door. My father was in the kitchen, having just turned on the stove, and I reached the door a few steps ahead of my mother, already in her nightgown. When I peered through the peephole, I saw a white man who said, “I got mail for you, sir.” If he had spoken in Vietnamese or Spanish, I never would have unlocked the door, but because he spoke English, I did. He used his left hand to push his way into the house, a young man in his twenties with feathered hair the color of old straw, long enough to brush the collar of his frayed jeans jacket. Not much taller than my mother, he was slightly built; when he spoke, his voice squeaked like rubber soles on a gym floor.
“Get back,” he said. His forehead was slick with sweat, and in his right hand was a gun. Even with the passage of decades, I can still see that gun clearly, a black-barreled .22 revolver that he waved before him with a trembling hand as he stepped past the threshold, kicking at the jumble of shoes we kept there and forgetting to close the door. My mother concluded later that he was an amateur, perhaps an addict desperate for money. He pointed the gun past me, at her, and said, “You understand English? Get on the floor!”
I backed away, while my mother threw her hands in the air, saying, “Khong, khong, khong!” My father had appeared, halfway between the kitchen and the front door, and the man fixed his aim on him, saying, “Get down, mister.” My father got onto his knees, raising his hands high. “No shoot,” my father said in English, his voice faint. “No shoot, please.”
I had never seen my father on his knees outside church, and I had never seen my mother tremble and shake with fear. Pity overwhelmed me; I knew this was neither the first nor the last time someone would humiliate them like this. As if aware of my thoughts, the man pointed the gun at me wordlessly, and I got down on my knees, too. Only my mother did not sink to her knees, her back against the wall and her face, freshly peeled of makeup, very white. Her breasts undulated behind her nightgown, like the heads of twin eels, as she kept saying no. The man was still aiming his gun at me as he said, “What’s her problem, kid?”
When my mother screamed, the sound froze everyone except her. She pushed past the man, nudging the gun aside with her hand and bumping him with her shoulder as she ran outside. He stumbled against the bookshelf by the door, knocking over the glass vase full of coins. Falling to the ground, it shattered, spraying pennies, nickels, and dimes all over, the coins mixed with shards of glass. “Jesus Christ!” the man said. When he turned toward the door, my father leaped up and hurled himself against the man’s back, shoving him across the threshold and then slamming the door shut. Outside, the gun went off with a short, sharp little pop, the bullet ricocheting off the sidewalk and lodging itself in the wall next to the mailbox, where a policeman would dig it out a few hours later.
On Sunday morning before we left for church, my mother used a dab of Brylcreem and a black Ace comb to slick my hair and part it down the middle. I was horrified at the way I looked, like Alfalfa from Little Rascals, but I didn’t protest, just as I hadn’t said anything to her after the police brought my mother back home from a neighbor’s house. “I saved our lives, you coward!” she yelled at my father, who smiled weakly at the police sergeant taking down our report while we sat at the dining table. To me, as she yanked my ear, she said, “What did I say about opening the door to strangers? How come you never listen to me?” When the police sergeant asked me to translate, I rubbed my ear and said, “She’s just scared, officer.”