Lingua Franca

The only time I ever heard my fatherspeak his native Cantonese was on vacationwhen we'd stop at a Chinese Wok or ChopSuey restaurant. He'd yammer at the waitress until she brought out the owner, stunnedmy father, who didn't look Asian, spokeperfect Chinese. He'd finagle us aHappy Family Meal, or something elsenot on the menu. Then try to teach us kidsto use chopsticks—stabbing his Mongolian Beefand prying it apart, picking up a singlegrain of rice and holding it to the light.

My father would tell us how he and his brothershad three words for everything: Chinese,Portuguese, and English, choosing whatbest captured the thing they meant to say,the resulting pidgin a dialect all their own.But talking that way produced a subtle yetpermanent crisscrossing of his language wires,causing him endless embarrassment as an adultin America: saying dis and dat to customersat his store, asking us to sweep the groundor weed the floor, telling Mother to close,not turn off, the kitchen lights.

Perhaps that's why he always lovedthe dumbest puns: tricking us into sayingMacHine instead of machine; demonstratinghow assume made an ass of u and me;boasting of an insurance policy so goodit covered one not merely from birth to death,but from the erection to the resurrection.Perhaps that's why he never wanted to teach usany Chinese or Portuguese—he was an Americannow, and we were his American children. FarawayHong Kong just a dot on the globespinning on my older brother's desk.