Chapter 1: Moving to a fishermen village

 

 

I took a look at my past today. Some people don’t give a damn on their past. Not me. The more you look into your past the better you understand who you are. That’s why I would like this story to sound as true as it was. Though I am concerned that nothing would sound true, when told in words. I put what happened to all of us down on paper, and I could see that words cannot describe the joy and sufferings that surrounded the years of my early youth. As I try to talk about sadness, the lack of true words cracks me up. So, I’m going to let you, the reader, fill out the blanks in my story.

It started with my eighth grade, when I had this idea that I’d have to take my life seriously. Dad began calling me “watch out, young man”, when he needed to scold me. Dad and I had always something to argue about. Back in those days I was a rebel boy. Outside the house though I behaved. Mom taught me this rule:

“Outside home or among strangers you are not allowed to have arguments with dad.”

I wouldn’t say that I remember with precision all the events worth of talking about. Like, I can’t say what happened in a certain day, since I didn’t keep a journal.

The brutal break out from my every day routine happened when my family decided to move from downtown Chicago to a rural town called Tarpon Springs, a fishermen’s place in Florida. That is how it happened: my uncle George married a Singaporean woman. Her name was Shin. He decided to move and live with her in Singapore. It really made me think, what a courage for a man his age. Uncle was selling his three bedroom/three bathroom house to dad, for a meagre amount of $20,000.

“If you scrub the floors and paint the ceiling you have a new house,” Uncle told mom. The true value of the house, uncle told us, was $100,000.

“We have a treasure in our hands,” dad would exclaim.

“Plus, the weather is good for your lungs,” mom added.

Dad had emphysema. His doctor told dad a story with a man that went to Italy, where the weather is mild, and got cured of emphysema. I’ll return to this topic later on. I’d just say that dad used to smoke two packs of cigarettes every day. When mom would tell him that the cigarettes were not good for his lungs, dad would say:

“They are not good, but I like them.”

People don’t care about their lives. They think they are indestructible and that they’d live forever. They care about their pleasures.

“I’ll give you a cigarette if you stop coughing and wheezing,” mom kept telling dad.

Then she’d feel sorry and give him a cigarette. They’d smoke together and laugh.

“You have to laugh,” mom would say.

Then dad would stop laughing and cough for a while. I had to close my ears to make him stop.

After they finished smoking they’d have a glass of wine.

For dad the new house was a great accomplishment. Mom was not crazy about it. She would tell us that she was longing for Chicago. I also didn’t give a damn about the new house.

In Chicago, there were two gangs in my neighborhood: one was called Holy Stiff, also nicknamed “The Hawks”, the other called Flunky Janus or “The Vultures”. You could hear bang-bang shots at least twice a week. Nobody would go out after dusk. Dad was the only one to go out when he forgot to buy cigarettes. Sometimes I fancied that I could enlist in a police squad and take care of those thugs. I thought those were the only things I was not going to miss, the hawks and the vultures; or the hooligans and the muggers, as mom used to call them, though I couldn’t tell them apart. As far I was concerned I was born next to them, I was part of them.

For a week, before I left Chicago, I kept saying good bye to my buddies. One of them told me that Florida stinks like a dead fish.

“If you split with us, you are a rat. That’s the rule.”

My neighbor’s daughter threw her arms into the air and said:

“Why a handsome boy like you would go to live among old bags. They are going to eat you up. I heard that there are lots of ghosts living in old houses over there.”

Then, the day we had to leave for Florida arrived. All of a sudden I felt overwhelmed by anxiety and excitement. Mom was crying. Dad was wheezing. We didn’t have any idea how our life was going to be there. And yet, I had so much hope that everything was going to be ok.

“Anywhere is better than in a Chicago suburb,” dad would comment.

We had to stash all our clothing and toilet stuff in three suitcases and two chests. Then dad opened the door and we said good bye to our apartment. That very moment I felt like I was not going to miss that place a bit.

Dad’s mind was made up the moment he got a phone call from my uncle. Mom, that spent her whole life in Chicago, told dad that it wasn’t right for her to emigrate.

“Why do you call it emigration? Florida is still America. If we don’t like it we still can return,” dad said.

Now, to move from a metropolis to a tiny rural town is like losing respect to yourself. That’s the way I would put it. And I felt like that. That’s the honest truth. My pride was squashed. Mom asked me to shut up.

“Try to not upset dad. It was his decision. This is not a good time to be rebellious.”

“I don’t want to hear any comment,” I heard dad shouting. It sounded like an order.

“We are going to take a look at how people are living over there. Our neighborhood is full of rich people, old American families with solid traditions. Not like here where people have to start their life over again every day. It doesn’t make sense to live in a town in which people don’t see other people. People in big cities are blind. The only way they see you is when they shot you so that you have to shot them back to see them,” dad said jokingly.

I remember the cold temperatures when we left Chicago, The pigeons, which mom used to feed with rice, would gather outside the window. I still could hear them rattling the window glass with their wings.

 

 

Chapter 2: My first airplane trip and then more

The trip from Chicago to Florida was tricky. We travelled by air to Miami. The nightmare played in front of my eyes, like in a horror movie, when dad realized that we forgot to take from the concierge one of the big chests with us: my books and my computer were among the stuff.

“Don’t worry, I’d call John. We’ll get it delivered in a couple of days,” Dad said.

I became so anxious, it made me think that the whole trip was going to end in a disaster.

The plan was that my uncle would come to pick us up once we got to Miami and bring us home. That was what I knew.

When we arrived in Miami it was late at night. Uncle called us to say that there was a tornado warning and a curfew ordinance and that he was coming to pick us up tomorrow. In Miami it was warm and humid. The sky was starry, no sign of a tornado.

So, instead of heading “home”, that is how dad called it, we had to sleep one night in an Inn, to the chagrin of my mom. The hotel had a gazebo where dad and I went to sip soda on the rocks. Mom was watching us. She looked amused. Our table was surrounded by palms and flower bushes that had a weird smell.

Then, mom went back to our suite to make the beds and ordered dinner. I remember the good sense of that evening hour. God was thoughtful. Dad would smoke one “poof” and drop the ashes in the bush, behind him.

“Everything will be just fine,” dad said. “I want you to succeed as a man. We owe now a house. Things will be the same as they were in Chicago. We’ll be together. We’ll be happy. That’s what we are going to do. Be happy. I got already a job as a CPA in a government firm. You’d go to a good school, just eight blocks from home. Mom would have everything she wanted, a dishwasher, a washing machine, a microwave, all like new. Especially when you think that mom wanted so much to have a washing machine… She’d be thrilled,” dad said.

Out suite was “cozy”. I had my own room with a wide bed. I could roll on it back and forth. Also I had a pile of tropical fruits on a plate next to my bed. I felt like jumping. No more fear for me. I looked out the window. There were palms everywhere, black hard shadows.

In the morning the beautiful landscape amazed me. There were lots of people sitting at the beach tables. I rushed to get dressed and I went with mom and dad to have breakfast. The air was very warm but breezy.

A couple of hours later, uncle came to pick us up. He arrived in an open Cadillac, an old model, like cars produced in 1080th decade, much fancier than the Audi car dad had in Chicago; He was dressed in an all-white suit and had a red flower in the front pocket of his jacket. He gave an embrace to each of us. He also gave a smooch to mom.

On the way home, uncle and dad kept talking and laughing, paying no attention to mom and me. Some men, when they get together are hungry to talk manly stuff and reveal themselves as machos. Every word they pronounce seem to say more than the words are made for. Dad would say “definitely” when uncle talked, while uncle would say “that’s right!” Profuse lips and tongue munching syllables. Uncle would tell dad that the house is placed in the middle of a “U” shaped compound that people call “The Ublock”.

As we got there oh, in our Tarpon Springs home, uncle’s Singaporean wife, Shin, bowed to us a couple of times and offered us cookies. She addressed me:

“I know that for a young man like you a change from a big town like Chicago to a small town like ours is a big deal,” and she pet my hair.

I can’t stand when people are petting me. I wished I could grab her hand and bite it. But I liked her smile. Perfect aligned teeth, a line of pearls. And I felt her mouth giving off a pretty scent, when she gave me a smooch. She also gave a smooch to mom.

Their dog, Bongo, came by and jumped to embrace me and lick my face.

Uncle and dad went into the kitchen to talk business. I saw dad giving him a stashed envelope. Uncle flashed a smile.

Shin wanted to show us the house. She’d ask all the time if I liked it. Our house is shadowed by an old oak tree. The tree has dark green leaves. I suppose it is too old to sprout new acorns. For some reason mom already called the tree “The Admiral”.

I told mom that the house wasn’t too sunny.

“It is better that way. You can rest while moving around,” Shin said and laughed.

It was something strange about the smell of the house. It bothered me. It was nothing familiar I could connect to. I asked mom what is that strange smell about.

“It is just a new smell. Get over it…”

I think the house got permeated with Singaporean spices odors. It got buried in rugs and fabric, and in Shin’s skin. I blew my nose discretely. I thought that smells like that could keep company to a bad egg stench.

“You would better keep your mouth shut,” mom said. And then she addressed Shin:

“He is going to love it,” don’t worry. “The house looks like a dream.”

Chapter 3. Roosters and a girl named Danelle

This morning I woke up to the roosters crowing. It came as a surprise to me. I think I never heard in real life a rooster crow, which I know it is scientifically called cock-a-doodle. The roosters wake you up and then keep crowing for a good ten minutes. I counted the number of crows: twenty six. It didn’t excite me that crowing thing. They crow until you get saturated with their crowing and, when they stop, you cannot get back to sleep. I saw mom and dad later on, at the breakfast. Mom was complaining:

“The nuisance of a village life.”

Uncle said that rooster crowing brings back with it the innocence of primeval time. I didn’t understand what he meant.

Shin asked me if I had a girlfriend in Chicago. I said yes, though I disliked such a personal questioning.

Dad was sipping his coffee and smiled with a smirk on his face:

“He is going to have lots of girlfriends here. Village girls are crazy about city boys.”

Then dad stared into the distance, with a dreaming like stare:

“Only old people are troubled by their future. Marc doesn’t have any reason to be concerned of. Give him a couple of days. He’d go to school, make new friends, new girlfriends. In Chicago, if he tried to talk to the wrong girl he could get lynched. You’d never know. Who needs to put up with this all? I went to school to pick him up, everybody was screaming, they were shouting at each other, one big guy was holding Marc by the neck. I could grab that guy by the hair and make him spin. But then, I didn’t want to give Marc a bad time later on. I told the guy: Tell me when you finish your business with my son, because I have to drive him home. The guy didn’t look scared. He smiled. In his eyes I was an old man. Your son is a pain in the ass, he said. Ok, let him go or I’ll send you flying, I said. I’m off and going, he said, and ran.”

“I’m sorry dad, I don’t want to be disrespectful, but this happened once in five years. And it happened because I broke his pencil between my teeth.”

Then we all sat in silence around the table and had our breakfast. The table was covered with homemade brioches, spreads and fruits. Shin made biscuits with sweet potatoes, chocolate chips and sour cherries preserve. I don’t like sweet potatoes. Uncle mentioned that after he married Shin, he never ate anything else but homemade food.

“This is why you gained so much weight,” dad quipped.

“Come on, Archie, your belly doubles George’s. If it wasn’t for me you’d be obese. I am the one that stopped Archie to eat junk food,” mom intervened.

Shin asked me if I liked her biscuits.

“Wonderful. I never ate anything so delicious…” I lied.

She stretched her lips in a wide smile. If she didn’t have ears her smile would go round around for sure.

Shin also served coffee (fresh grind, she insisted), and tea (large green leaves brought from Singapore on her last trip back home).

All those details she gave us sounded funny to me. It didn’t seem to bother anybody else.

Then Shin told us again how much she loved this house. She all chocked up.

“I spent most of my young years here. Life with George was like a feather. The happiness pulled us along. If mom would not be ailing I wouldn’t leave this house. I have to be with her, just in case. I told her that I was happy here. I was not going to divorce George or leave him behind. She never came to terms with my marriage. She’d always ask me why I married an American. I sent her a picture lately and she said that I got wrinkled while living with George. I knew where she was headed. I hope when we get there she is going to change this aspect of hers…” Shin said.

“Her mom doesn’t like me…” uncle said. “Whenever we met, she was staring off. I asked her point black if she didn’t like me. She said: what is to like about? I was really upset. And then there is Shin’s dad that said: If you ask me you can marry her if you come to live with us…”

After breakfast we all got dressed to go out. I needed to brush my teeth. I always brush my teeth after each meal. Shin was there. She forgot to close the door. I felt like fainting. She was half naked. If uncle would know it he’d kill me. Shin just laughed. I glanced at her and ran away. I didn’t have a good look at her. I just opened the door and I saw hes gurgling or something. She was bent downwards and rinse her throat. I hope I didn’t bother her. I had an eyeful of skin and curves. Kind of made me feel dizzy. This was hell of a happening. Made me feel sort of guilty when I saw uncle. Then I thought that it wasn’t a big deal. That’s how she was supposed to behave in her house.

Mom saw me motioning back to my bedroom:

“Marc, why don’t you go out for a walk? Dad and I are having a siesta,” mom said.

I didn’t have any desire to go out. I had to digest what just happened, to put my embarrassment away.

Unfortunately, uncle offered himself to help, to show me the courtyard, and the surroundings.

Such a lousy landscape, I thought. I wasn’t interested in anything I saw, like the old tree that uncle would call his friend. Compared to Chicago the whole place, I mean the Ublock was so small that a folded picture would catch the feel of it all.

“If only I could make uncle understand how bored I was!” Uncle tried to describe the neighborhood in flying colors. I wasn’t blind. I kept thinking that I didn’t have anything to do with that rural place. To be peasant was pointless. What’s going to happen when I pass my teenage years? Am I going back to Chicago? I wondered if I could run away.

Just a dozen yards away, I saw a girl holding a puppy.. She would hum to her puppy and mumble pom-pom words. She was wearing a strawberry colored blouse and a knitted skirt, her mom’s work I thought, offering herself to be admired. She had her hands in her sleeves.

“Do you like the courtyard?” my uncle asked.

“Very much,” said.

The girl looked at us and motioned to get near:

“Hi George,“ she greeted my uncle. “Would you please introduce me to this new boy?”

My uncle smiled and I heard my voice sounding with a tremolo:

“I am Marc,” I said.

“I am Danelle,” the girl said.

She let me shake her sleeve. It was all about checking my reaction, I thought.

“Did you have trouble finding my hand?” she asked.

She really cracked me up.

“Not at all,” I said. “It is in your pants.”

“You are a naughty boy!” she said and ran by skipping inside her house.

All of a sudden I understood that what would keep me happy here in the village was that girl, Danelle. She fired up my thoughts and my dreams.

As uncle and I walked outside the Ublock he remarked:

“I don’t have a clue how your generation thinks or talks. But then, you just met that girl, who is a fine girl, the best you could find around here, and you made her uncomfortable. Maybe that is a Chicago thing,” he said.

“What I was supposed to say? She asked me a silly question. I don’t play girly games…” I said.

“You could have said: I don’t know. Show me your hand. Or something like that, to please her.”

As we kept walking around, uncle looked upset. He wouldn’t talk to me.

Finally he said:

“People are nice around here. Their hearts are pure like spring water. If you want to live a peaceful life around here, you need to be nice. You are intelligent, aren’t you? Your dad told me that you’re a genius.”

His talk made me feel uncomfortable.

“This vacant lot belongs to the city,” he continued. “The Ublock kids got ownership of it and are using it to stage soccer and volley matches. Those two soccer gates are permanently in place. That volley net had to be mounted on those two poplar pillars. If you like to play wait until the weekend. You could see Danelle playing here all the time. If you play good you may win her heart,” uncle said.

Then, on our walk we reached a lake surrounded by thin trees and bushes.

“This is what I’m going to miss in Singapore. This lake. There is nothing as beautiful as this lake in the whole world. I mean the water is crystal clear, full of small red fishes. You can’t see them because of that hedging plant mess. Then there are those swans and geese. I’d come here with Shin and Bongo and sleep. That’d clear my mind of worries and negativity. Sometimes life is too much to take. You need to slow down. Of course at your age such talk doesn’t make too much sense.”

Then he turned around and showed me a street lined with old two flat brick Tudor houses. They looked all the same and had a somber air.

“This is the historic side of this place. Some of those Tudor houses were built last century before the new town was built. People living in those houses are fishermen and their families. There are lots a kids living there. People call them fish-boys. The girls are called clams, which is not nice. They must be very smelly. After you play with them take a shower,” uncle joked.

Eventually I found an apt moment to apologize to uncle for my vulgar talk to Danelle.

“Uncle, I would like to apologize. I am sorry for what I said to that girl,” I said.

“No need for that. Your apology is just good for a laugh. You’re not going to change. Life will change you. You’ll have to roll in. I’m afraid life here is going to bore you. You can’t mix with people around here. They are, to say the least, quiet, disciplined and naïve.”

On the way back we walked by Danelle’s house. I saw her standing behind the window. She was watching us.

Uncle saw her also.

“Just wait,” he said, “I bet you two will get together one day. She is such a fine girl.”

I was hearing roosters crowing, ducks quaking, dogs barking, and uncle talking. Every sound in that dam village was hurting my ears.

Once back home, mom asked me if I was happy.

I was not. Than it hit me this idea that I should live in that damn village as if I was in a short vacation. That’s right, an unwarranted vacation. It didn’t seem possible that I was going to live here forever. At long last we were going to return to Chicago, I thought. There, I used to go out and melt into a crowd of people. It was stimulating. What I was going to do here? It would slowly mortify me. Endless bore. I’ll end up howling like a wolf.

Then, as I looked out the window I saw Danelle, sitting on the bench in front of her house. She changed her cloth. She was wearing a yellow blouse and a Scottish skirt. Dad and uncle were talking business on the balcony, so I couldn’t go out without being seen. The uncle called me:

“Marc, come over. Look, Danelle is out there. She is waiting to talk to you. Go and apologize to her.”

As I went out and motioned in her direction, she got up and went back into her house. Just girly sort of gaming. I got back into the house and I heard uncle laughing:

“She is a crafty girl. She wants to see you suffer…”

Mom was in the living room crocheting, as usual. One day she told me that crocheting is keeping her mind alert. I saw Shin in the kitchen. I thought I should go there and get over with my guilty feeling…

“What kind of dish are you cooking now Madam?” I asked her.

“I make a soup. What about if you tell me what kind of dish would you desire to have for lunch?”

“A red hairy herring cooked in a duck breast fat,” I said.

She began to giggle like a child. Mom scurried to get into the kitchen.

“Your son is funny,” Shin said. “I am sure you heard this before from him: frying a red hairy herring in duck breast fat…”

“He’d barely eat what I cooked for him. He’d ask me to cook for him silly things…”

“What else would you like?” Shin asked.

“Duck legs in white stockings, cooked in a dark pitch mayonnaise sauce…”

“You must be very knowledgeable about stockings. Are you?” Shin asked.

“He is a silly show off…” mom said.

Then she started a serious discussion on how the weather is in Singapore, if it rains, etc. and ignored my presence. So I left, followed by Shin’s eyes that I felt literary piercing my nape.

Chapter 4. The farewell dinner

 

 

I had to retire to my small bedroom and read one of the supermarket novels I bought in Miami airport: “The lost carriage”. It was about a gold treasure that vanished while a colonist family crossed the Rocky Mountains and got ambushed by Indian warriors. The story was a little bit predictable but its plot made me feel anxious. What was the reason to be anxious about? I was thinking of Shin. I knew what this thought meant. She and uncle are going to leave tomorrow. This is going to clear my mind of her image for sure, given that I’ll never see her again. The book was talking about a dog the survived the ambush and returned to the settlers fort. Then there were those clichéd figments of what could have never happened in history, like the Indians using that stolen gold to buy guns from the settlers and getting barked at by the darling dog…

“Stop reading!” I heard mom. “Come to have lunch with us. Put some nice cloth on.”

As I got into the dining room mom showed me the dinner table.

“You sit there, next to Shin. Shin made fresh bread, fish soup mixed with omelet and vegetables grown in her own garden behind the house. Then, she also made fried fish with fresh onion and bay leaves…”

The soup was served first. Shin wanted to know if I liked it. She’d pour gently another dipper of soup in my bowl and touch my hand:

“Eat, you need to grow taller…”

I never felt so obliged to eat fish soup and vegetables, a dish that I detested.

“Uncle and Shin are departing for Singapore tomorrow. You’d never eat such a delicious soup after Shin leaves,” mom said.

As Shin went to the kitchen to get the fried fish, I asked mom to take my soup away. Then, in a casual way, I poured my soup in mom’s bowl. Uncle saw me. You’d have to see the angered look on mom’s face.

“Shin is the best chef you could imagine,” uncle told mom. Then he turned towards me: “You

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 22.06.2016
ISBN: 978-3-7396-6154-4

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