He wants to say, “No, they do not work at all,” but then he and Miss Rosen are in front of the vegetable market, a great cornucopia spilling onto tables and into bushels. Durian fruits hold a position of importance on their own raised shelf, looking tough and unassailable, the way Da Wong thinks they should look, smelly beasts he abhors and the rest of his family adores, so stinky they must be eaten with a shuttered nose.
Da Wong dislikes them and everything else in the world that appears one way but is really another, except when it comes to his painting, then he likes things to be hidden, known only to him. Or at least he keeps the work itself hidden from others. Sometimes he paints layers and layers and layers, trying to figure out what should happen next and having no idea of which way to go; other times, he knows exactly what he is after. Still, regardless of whether the work comes easy or hard, even when he is alone in his small room with the easel he found tossed away in a Dumpster on Great Jones Street, and the canvases that he buys one by one because they are costly, and his brushes, and paints, his ideas swirling like sparklers in his head, he feels himself avoiding the truths of himself.
Past 精, with its limp yellow chickens hanging from hooks in the window, Chef Uk at the counter mixing up a vat of the day’s marinade, its tables empty at this hour, and Lendy Electric, the only place on the street not open until noon.
Cars race down the cobblestone streets as they cross Elizabeth, Mott, Mulberry. The WELCOME TO CHINATOWN sign hanging over the street looks sad to Da Wong, its lights turned off, the letters barely visible in the slanted morning sun. Past narrow Centre Market Street, known, on the flip side, as Baxter, and then Chinatown recedes as they step forward into Little Italy. Da Wong did not to think to ask Miss Rosen where she lives. Despite the weight of the fish and the heat, and his stomach churning from the pastry sugar, now that he is free, he hopes it is a long walk.
When did he last leave the shop, or Chinatown, for that matter? Was it last year, perhaps back in December? He cannot remember. How pathetic that he has no memory of leaving the confines of his world, when such an unusual action should be a firecracker event, the colors of all that exploding gunpowder created by his own people emblazoned on his brain. How hard could it be to remember when he last escaped from a life circumscribed to a single building. He lives over Haiyang Best, on the third floor, and the rest of his family lives two floors above him. Since childhood, he has always felt separate, removed, an outsider among his clan. Even the way his family’s names fit each of them, and his does not, tells the story of his life. Yéyé’s name, Hai, means coming from the sea, and he started Haiyang Best, Fùqīn’s name is Chang, which means thriving, and the store thrived under his guidance, his mǔqīn’s name is Lì húa, which means beautiful pear blossom, and his younger sister’s name, Jinjing, means gold mirror, both of which fit mother and sister perfectly. Only Da’s name does not suit. It means accomplishing, but what he is accomplishing in his life he could not say. Even when da is used as a word, it does not apply to Da. It means big, large, loud, strong, heavy, huge, and he is the opposite, small and quiet, only his heart is big, large, loud, strong, heavy, and huge, and it weighs him down.
Sometimes he thinks he is no different from a lobster caught in a cage under the waves. He has wondered whether the lobsters are aware of their imprisonment, the vast seafloor suddenly out of their reach, if they have a false sense of security, are unclear about what their sudden caged existence means. He carries no such delusion. He knows he is caged, imprisoned, and with each year that passes, the lock is a little more rusted, until one day it will be impossible to break. Since his twenty-first birthday, five years ago, he has commenced a slow-moving battle with his parents, fought in his quiet way.
Mǔqīn and Fùqīn remain upset about his tendency to keep to himself. Politely extending them all the venerations they are due, he bows to them, and says that as long as he must work in the family business, he must be afforded some privacy. It is a concept that bites at the way he was raised, what his family expects from him. It took a dozen tries to explain to his parents what he was asking of them, the sacrifice he understood they would be making so that he might find some little happiness.
“American ways have altered our once-good boy,” his mǔqīn had said in Mandarin.
And Da could not explain that being American had nothing to do with it. After all, how American could he be when he never leaves Chinatown?
He is Da, which is his only explanation. He is not like his parents, or his sister Jinjing, or his cousin Bai, or Bai’s younger sisters and brother and parents, who live on the top floor of the Haiyang Best building. Da’s and Bai’s fathers are brothers, two years apart, but they look so nearly alike they call themselves the Wong twins, arms thrown across each other’s shoulders and happy laughter when the two of them are rocking the scotch.
Da does not share the same excitable Wong temperament, their love of being together all hours of the day and night, eating together and working together and watching American movies dubbed in Mandarin they buy from the bootleggers on Canal. In a big mass, they all take part in the Chinese New Year proceedings, eleven Wongs all together, his family of four, Bai’s family of six, and Yéyé’ Hai.
When Da realized he would have to take what he wanted, that his parents would not simply give in, he started showing up for dinner only on Sunday nights, and he endures so much grumbling and mumbling and declarations that Da must not really be a Wong when he enters his family’s home. Always he shakes his head, says, “What you are saying is not true. I am a Wong through and through,” though really he would give anything not to be. All through those dinners, all the reminders that Da is the eldest Wong son of the eldest Wong brother, the only son in this wing of the Wong family, and he has obligations.
“In not too long,” his father says, “Haiyang Best will be yours to run on behalf of us all. Running it until your own son has come of age to take over from you.” It is, to Da, an intolerable jail sentence.
Da’s sister smiles when his parents discuss his failings, as if he were not at the table hearing it all. Seven years younger than Da, Jinjing is as Americanized as a nineteen-year-old Chinese girl can be who lives at home and is not allowed to date. Bright and reflective, a perfect embodiment of her name, pleased to have all the parental attention, saying that she will take over from Da, run Haiyang Best if he does not want to, pinching Da under the table whenever she puts herself forth as a better heir, a painful twist to his upper thigh that he cannot decipher, whether it means she is kidding or not.