It was a long night. I fell asleep at some point among that forest of machines, humming without a break. I remembered seeing my Dad putting in a tape when the program changed. It looked complicated, with all those buttons. Complicated only because I was tired. I normally excel quite well with machines. But I was tired. I had finished my homework, even though I had the whole weekend to do it. My Dad taught me to never procrastinate, God knows what disaster would await me that would prevent me from doing my homework if I waited till Sunday night. So I had finished my homework and watched a little bit of the programming he was putting on. It was probably a little past eleven at night.
I woke up briefly when he told me it was time to go. Waking up in an unfamiliar place always creeped me out. Maybe it had something to do with waking up one morning before sunrise to say goodbye to my Mother before being apart from her for six years. But that's another story. I just always feel weird waking up by someone at the wee hours of the morning.
The guy taking over the next shift was there. I didn't see his expression. I am not even sure if it was a woman or not. My Dad took my hand gently and spoke to me softly, telling me to get my bag and quickly leave so the man or woman could do his or her work. I dragged the bag onto my back and than dragged my body out the room and through the corridor.
I came to see where he slept at nights when when didn't come home. Or not before I went to sleep. And often he would wake up with us to take us to school before going to his other job, which I have seen because I would meet him there. It was near the school. But I had never seen this job he had in the famous Empire State Building. Unlike the building, my Dad wasn't a tall person. Very soon I would be much taller than him, but that was probably more due to better nutrition in my childhood than in his. He was raised during postwar China and I was raised at the start of the famous economic reform that propelled China to the awesome global power it is today. He was more muscular than me, but that didn't take much since I was very scrawny, not out of malnutrition, just that I was built that way and I was never put through any physical hardship. My Dad, though raised malnourished, I think, had to do a lot of lifting since we immigrated to this country. Before this job he was working in a grocery store lifting heavy crates of boxes instead of books when he was a teacher back on the other side of the ocean.
So I dragged my small, elementary school body behind his short but stout body. He was wearing that thin, beige jacket that he had been wearing since the first week of his arrival in the country and that he would continue to wear for the next six, seven years. Fashion really isn't part of our psyche, just look at Mao, and add to it that you're from a peasant background. All of our clothes were passed on from the rich families my Mother and Grandmother worked in as live-in housekeepers. At times I must have looked like some preppy boy heading straight to Yale or Harvard, which at the time were dreams for my parents, any immigrant parents from the old country.
In the elevator, which was, understandably, empty, I was slightly more awake. My Dad seemed tired, but he was able to utter something, "You are too tanned." Meaning, I looked too much like a peasant, too much like before coming here. It was true. I used to spend a lot of time outdoors, doing many mischievous things between school and home. Now that I lived in what my parents deemed the most dangerous city in the world, I have been indoors a lot. Besides, it was nearly winter and I still wasn't used to the cold, having experienced this country's winter only once.
I didn't say anything to his remark. He was right. I have spent too much time outside in the sun. I simply won't do it again.
Then the memory became foggy. There was some image of the 34th street station, the sharp stink of urine, which was still better than the noisome pungency of the homeless, of which there were many two decades ago. My dad steered us clear of these islands of social jettisons. Or he must have, he always did, but I was too sleepy. I do remember the feel of his powerful grip on my pathetically tiny right wrist. Nowadays I see that hand, still looking a little powerful, but so wrinkly, the skin so thin and weak. But back than, even when I was tired and sleepy, I felt his hand, I felt safe.
Then I fell asleep in the D train. The clunky old N-train before it was remodeled. I am sure the one we took had been showered with lots of uncreative graffiti. Back then there were lots of more angry New Yorkers and a lot less police control over spray paint. Still, I didn't notice. I sat next to my Dad, between him and the window, I fell asleep in safety, though in retrospect, riding the New York City subway two decades ago at 6 in the morning was a little weird, even for the city that never sleeps, and by then people were starting to go to work.
For us, we were getting off work. My Dad must have fallen asleep too soon after I did. He always slept. My memory of him, besides being angry, is either he was eating or sleeping. He didn't talk much, watched a lot of TV, and smiled only in front of people or discovered he was embarrassing himself.
So when I woke up after the train stopped I saw him dozing off. I looked out and saw the first ray of sun. The sky was a dark blue. Soft light. The station we were pulling out of was Fort Hamilton Parkway. I thought I missed the ride over the bridge. I always prepared myself for the ride over the Manhattan Bridge. Crossing bridges brought a curious mix of excitement and fear, probably because a while back my dad and I fell off a bridge into a little dike during the monsoon season. But this time I missed the bridge, missed the gigantic East River that seemed eternally gray seen through the train tracks below me whenever I crossed the bridge.
We were almost home, almost in Sunset Park where the latest wave of Chinese immigrants settled. It's the hidden Chinatown that was hidden only to everyone else but the Chinese. I yawned and looked around me. the car was a little empty; many other Chinese were dozing off. There were no other ethnic groups. I was in the Chinese train. The houses lining the train tracks seemed to be sleeping too. The only sound I heard was from the humming of the rusty subway train ferrying us through unknown neighborhoods of unknown ethnic groups, "foreigners" who didn't speak Chinese, or like very much people who did. But I wasn't thinking about anything negative. I was simply admiring the tranquility of the Brooklyn houses in the twilight that would give way to a lot of noise in this city that was just taking a brief nap. The chimneys of the town houses, the plethora of graffiti, the nearly empty streets, in a strange harmony with the interior of this train car, with my mind.
I took one more look at my right, where my protector was. When he dozes off he does look at peace. He frowns, as if even in his dreams he is troubled. I noticed it then, though it would take me many many years later to really think about why. But I noticed it then, and all I did was rest my head on the window and fall asleep again until his soft voice woke me up once more when the train was slowing down towards our stop.
