In the distance, a crowd of people walk along the road with heavy footsteps. With the sounds drumming closer, she glances out the window at the wide steel gate and at once realizes that the guests were not the usual friendly neighbors offering food or the kind salespeople trying to sell a product. Instead they were Japanese soldiers wearing green uniforms, carrying a bayonet on one hand and a Japanese flag on the other. They break the wooden door and march into her house, heading towards the stairs to destroy the house from top to bottom. Immediately the caretaker’s baby begins to cry. She runs over to carry her and together they hide under the dinner table. Before long, she beings to cry with her and the screeching cries startle the soldiers. At the foot of the staircase, the soldiers start talking in Japanese and one points to the door. In an instant they leave and the children stop crying, sniffling and gasping for breath. The mothers, unaware of what had happened until they had heard the cries, come downstairs and embrace their children.

“It was life-changing. Looking back on it now, I was really scared I was going to die but I was lucky the baby and I started crying,” my grandmother, Mu Juan Huang, reminisces about her frightening encounter with the soldiers. The soldiers’ intentions were not to kill, but to intimidate the people and destroy the house to obtain firewood to make dinner. There had been rumors, no, facts, that most young men were captured to do strenuous labor and women were captured as a source of entertainment and pleasure. Because of this, women smeared dirt on their faces to make themselves less than appealing. My grandmother’s older sisters and brothers left the area to avoid being captured and tortured by the Japanese, leaving only my grandmother’s mother and her in the house. “The experience was traumatizing”, she adds, smiling at the thought of being uninjured and alive.

“The Japanese were so superstitious,” she chuckles. When the soldiers heard the children crying, they quickly left and tore down the house next door. The Japanese believed that the cries would chase away good luck and fortune and therefore did not persist in ruining my grandmother’s house. The house was grand, unusual for an impoverished family that grew up in a provincial farm village. To my grandmother, the house symbolized everything and nothing. It was the only thing that her family had. The house was evidence of her grandfather’s hard work in America. He had made enough money in America to build a house back in China to shelter his family. Each month he would bring several cans of salmon to his family.

She ate the salmon, savoring and remembering the taste forever. As a child, she had admired her grandfather for coming to America to make a living as an immigrant. She became exposed to what she thought as good food and saw his financial success. After the death of her grandfather and the abandonment of the house, she arrives in America and looks for the same delicious taste of salmon that she had tasted decades ago. After her daughters were employed and money started circulating at home, she bought loads of canned salmon to find and recreate the same taste but never found it. Her daughters say, “Because you were impoverished you thought it was really good but now after coming to America, you are no longer in poverty, so you cannot find the same taste.”

Today she lives with her daughters, son, and grandchildren. When her children went to make money to support the mortgage, food, furniture and family expenses, she took care of her three grandchildren who were born within 13 months. She taught them to be well-mannered and kind, yet aggressive and confident. She never hit them or scolded them when they got in trouble; instead, she made them stand against the wall for what seemed like hours on end to repent for their mistakes. As my sisters, cousins, and I grew up, we constantly heard the story of how my grandmother was directly involved with the Japanese when she was 6 years old, how she treasured the house that her grandfather worked so hard to build and maintain, how she came to America hoping for success and how she disciplined us to be better people. Today, the house still stands in China. After the Japanese left China, the Communists dominated and took control of one-half of the house, leaving the other half for her family. My parents tell me that life was cruel at the time; poverty flourished in my grandmother’s native village of Sun Woi in the Guangdong province of China.

Each week, my grandma would throw in an ancient Chinese proverb that my older sister, cousin and I have never heard. The most recent adage she told me was “A book holds a house of gold.” Another included “Perseverance can reduce an iron rod to a sewing needle.” Over time, these sayings interminably buzzed in my ear and I learned to understand what they meant. “Study hard and get a better future”. “Success is won through long-term commitment and diligent effort sustained over time.” From these proverbs, I strove to do well in school, persevere through life’s strenuous obstacles, apprize and spend time with my loved ones and embrace my identity as part of two cultures. No matter what I do or where I go, I will always keep these Sundays and proverbs in mind, as well as my Grandma. I respect her for the struggles she has gone through and the life she had lived in China. Through her past experiences in China as a young child and her present experiences in America as a parent and grandmother, I have come to realize who she is – a strong woman with multiple roles.

My cousin (left), her daughter (center), and her husband (right).

May 17, 1988.
On the morning of Xiao Yan Li’s (李小燕) eighteenth birthday, the air, diffusing through the opaque windows, was as hot and suffocating as normal. There were no signs of celebration. Not even a tinge of love did she feel, as she watched her mother, preparing her younger brother and sister for school. She envied their boiled eggs and new school uniforms. Soon, she was bored at the sight of it, for she knew that she would never be treated the same and that going to school was just a dream. For many mornings and nights, she had thought about the same fantasy of going to school, meeting new friends, and reaching above the low ceiling of her potential. But she now quit, for it was no longer a dream of a teenager girl. She had finally become an adult, and her dreams and wishes had now all been shattered and destroyed into millions of pieces. She was angry and hateful, not toward her parents who had lost affection since she was born, but toward herself and the harshness of the reality.

At noon Xiao Yan was in a room all by herself, the only time without cold supervision and bitter sarcasm from her mother. At the age of eighteen, she became a professional needlewoman and a dispassionate working machine. She was working tirelessly in the house. Though she earned fifteen yuans a day, she never had a penny in her pocket. Her parents would use all the money to provide for their family. An old neighbor came by the door that day, as usual, and brought in more clothes for her to sew. Xiao Yan did not know how long she must have waited for the delivery. Seeing the neighbor at the door comforted her. It became an illusion that for a moment, she was ordinary. Soon the neighbor left the front door, and her life went back to reality. For the next six hours of her life she would only be dedicated to sewing, free of mind, body, and dreams. Xiao Yan looked at the locked refrigerator and front door– tears oozing down her cheeks and penetrating through her rugged clothing. Looking at her scarred hand, she wondered how long she could bear her isolation from the outside world.

Xiao Yan had never left the house for the past few years, partially because she was albino. Her permanent white hair and crossed eyes at the time of birth had humiliated the parents and reminded them of this shameful memory everyday whenever they caught the sight of her. Her mother had even suggested to Xiao Yan’s grandmother to drown Xiao Yan when she was still an infant. Though the grandmother later persuaded the mother to raise the young Xiao Yan herself, she was sent back to her mother once she was capable of babysitting her siblings. For the parents, locking her in the house was the best option for them to hide the fact from the public. Often relatives would come to the house, and Xiao Yan would hide upstairs. She, too, was embarrassed by her frightful physical appearance.

Later that night, the parents came home arguing downstairs. Five more hours and Xiao Yan would become eighteen. She had never expected her parents to buy a cake for her after all these years ignoring her existence. Still, she hoped the mother would allow her to cook herself a noodle soup with red colored egg. She never recaptured that same hope again after the mother ran upstairs. Without explanation, she started beating Xiao Yan. “Because of you, my husband looks down on me,” the mother screamed in anger. What was left of her, after the beating, was a young girl without love and passion.

For the next two days, Xiao Yan had no food, and the parents took away all her remaining allowance, fearing that she would escape. On the third day, a neighbor, who saw what happened, gave her 10 yuans. Xiao Yan saw hope from this money, though she did not where she could escape to.  She feared that if she had escaped to a relative’s house, his parents would eventually find her. But she was determined to escape; with 10 Yuan in her hand, anything was possible for her.

At five o’clock in the morning on May 20th, Xiao Yan was prepared to leave the house and her misery behind her. Though she didn’t have any extra clothes or savings on her, 10 Yuan was enough, especially for a desperate young adult who could no longer endure the oppression of mind and body. As she made for the front door, she heard footsteps from upstairs, in the parents’ bedroom. Each footstep came with rising anxiety. After making sure that her father was going to the bathroom upstairs, Xiao Yan opened the front door. It had been a long time since she had inhaled the fresh air. This would be her first journey, alone, to see the world that had almost closed its door on her.

Xiao Yan ran as fast as she could to the harbor, bare footed. Unsure of what her future might be, she boarded the ship to Tang Xia, a town where no one knew her. For the next four years of her life, she spent her time at the Buddhist convent. She was convinced that the world she lived in was meaningless and cruel. She wondered why the siblings who were also albino received better treatment than her. In reality, Xiao Yan did not have the worst physical appearance among her siblings; she was the only one with the burden of misery and rejection.

I knew my cousin Xiao Yan since I was barely able to walk on my own. Prior to interviewing my mother, I never noticed her disability. Not until a few weeks ago did I learn that Xiao Yan’s parents were first cousins. Because of this marriage, Xiao Yan inherited albinism from her grandfather. Though she would bring me home from Kindergarten, she never discussed her life before she started working for my mother, at the age of 24. This memoir helped me to clarify all the disconnected memories I had about my cousin. I had always known the tension between Xiao Yan and her parents, but never understood why she was never invited to any of my aunt’s family celebrations. For the past few years since my family moved to America, my mother still keeps in close contact with her on telephone and gives her financial support.

As a teenager and a son of three, Richard Tortorice excelled in the sports world.  Touchdowns, home runs, and goals filled my father’s life since the early age of six, when he picked up his first ball.  When I asked my Uncle Joe about my father as a teen he replied, “He was always referred to as the athletic one.  Winning was part of his life.  It was one thing he truly knew how to do.”  I always knew my father was athletic in every sport imaginable, but to hear the respect in my uncle’s voice was a truly amazing occurrence.  Ever since I can remember, my Uncle Joe and my father would always compete at things.  Now this may seem like the typical cliché brotherly competition, but this wasn’t the case.  The two grown men would compete in things from who could hit the furthest baseball or who could get to grandma’s house the fastest.  Being the best came natural to my father.  Another aspect of my father that everyone respects is the fact that he never let his ego get the better of him.  Even if he was the best at every aspect of life, my father remained humble and modest.  This is a truly difficult feat.

When digging up information about my father, I traveled to his hometown of Knickerbocker Village.  Most people don’t know where this is, but it is a typical Italian neighborhood near Mulberry Street.  When I arrived at my father’s old stomping grounds, I recognized a few friendly faces, one in particular.  This person was my family’s close friend Patrick.  I began with the basic questions, asking various about his childhood. Patrick couldn’t help but mention my father’s athleticism.  “Man, could your father play.”  Quotes like this bombarded me for hours as I interviewed different sources for information about my father.  I eventually came across one of my uncles who still lived in this quiet Italian neighborhood.  As soon as I mentioned my father’s name, I was in the middle of a story.  “I remember one time, Richie played an entire game of baseball without shoes.”  I couldn’t help but laugh at my uncle’s comment, picturing my father as a teenager running the bases shoeless.  When my Uncle Paul saw my laughter he said, “Don’t you ever wonder why your dad was called ‘Shoeless Richie’?”  My jaw hung unhinged for several seconds.  I never knew about this unique nickname my father had acquired as a young athlete.  Money was never abundant seeing as my father was  one of three boys, son of Italian immigrants, fresh off the boat.  “We couldn’t always afford shoes,” said my uncle “but your dad was never afraid to take on a challenge.”  Stories like this could go on forever, but it was something else that made my father the great man he is today.

Money was a hard thing to come by during my father’s childhood.  At the young age of fourteen, my father decided that it was his responsibility to help with the family income.  Being the oldest son, he knew sports could wait.  His family was in trouble and he took it upon himself to provide financial aid.  When I asked my grandmother about this she stated, “Your grandfather and I never asked him to help with the money.  That’s just the kind of boy he was, always caring for family.”  My father never really mentioned when he first started work, but I knew it was at this young, delicate age of fourteen.  He first started at odd jobs, working at the corner deli for three dollars an hour.  He knew that he wouldn’t rake in the big bucks, but whatever he made would help the family.

When he turned eighteen he acquired the job he still holds to this day: fish salesman at Caleb Haley.  This was no easy, glamorous job.  It consisted of heavy lifting and long work hours in inclement weather conditions.  He persisted through these horrific conditions over thirty-three years and can still sell a piece of fish to a restaurant at the age of fifty-one.  Many of his friends and co-workers left their positions at the Fulton Fish Market due to the unfavorable effects on the body, but not my dad.  When I journeyed to the fish market to ask people about his working skills, I learned he received a nickname from his younger colleagues.  I wasn’t surprised in the least bit to find out it was “Old Man Superman.”  Now, you may be thinking he was given this name because he looks twenty years older than his actual age.  This surely isn’t the case.  My father doesn’t have a grey hair on full head of hair, a gene I look forward to inheriting.  The name was given to him because he always got the job done.  Whether it was stacking twelve boxes of fish on top of one another or making a lucrative deal to the hottest restaurant in town, Richie Tortorice did it all.  His experience and expertise at this vocation was obvious. This eventually led him to become co-owner of Caleb Haley.

At the end of every night, as I lie in bed and try to sleep, I would hear the alarm clock in my father’s bedroom sound.  Grumbling and trying to wake himself from his deep sleep, my father walks past my bedroom and dresses for work.  After brewing his cup of coffee, he is out the door by 1:00am.  When I was 8 years old, I would scurry out of bed to get one last glimpse of my hero, my father, departing for work.  At around this age was when I began to notice the physical toll it was taking on my father’s body, especially his hands.  He would come home almost every day with his hands full of sores and cuts from the cold weather, but he would never complain.  I would always ask, “Daddy, why did you stay with the fish market so long?”  I’ll never forget the night he sat me down and explained to me his reasoning for putting up with the cold, bitter weather.  “It may not be the most glamorous job in the world but it pays well and it gives me time to spend with you guys [my family].”  Most people don’t know that my father’s work hours for the past thirty-three years have been from one at night to eleven the next morning.  He worked nights in order to have time to coach little league, see my sister’s ballet performances, and eat dinner with his family every night.  When he explained this reasoning to me, all I hope was that I became half the man he is when I grow up.

Like his childhood, he put his certain things on hold and never lost perspective on the most important thing in life: family.  If there is one thing I learned from my father it is that family is the most important thing in life.  “Never forget, family comes first,” he would preach to my sister and me every so often.  Providing a roof over his family’s head, loving his wife and his children was what this man did for a living.  Selling fish at the Fulton Fish Market for the past three decades was merely a hobby.  A man who is “admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.”  When all my friends would talk about Superman and Batman as their heroes, I would talk about my hero, my father.

           Upon looking at her pictures, I was first surprised at the freedom that existed during the 1970s and 80s in Tehran. At this time, Shah Reza Pahlavi was in power; and Iran was just as modern and chic, if not more so, than parts of Europe. Although many picture Iran as a country with an oppressive and strict government, especially in terms of clothing, it was far from that during my mother’s youth.

           Growing up as the middle child in a family of five was one of the pivotal reasons that shaped my mother. Constantly living up to her older sister’s expectations, and dealing with the teasing and quarrels with her older brother, and two younger ones, she sought to be independent. When she was three years old, her father died from cancer, forcing my grandmother to raise five children on her own. Although my mother doesn’t recollect much of her experience and relationship with her father, the one memory she vividly remembers is perhaps the most significant.

           Always eager to be around her father, she accompanied him to the hospital for his chemotherapy treatments. It was there where she discovered what she wanted to be in the future: a nurse. “I remember this one nurse who we often saw there. She was kind, helpful, and always uplifted my father. He knew his life was short, and so did she; but she always put a smile on his face. She undoubtedly gave more life to my father placing hope in his eyes, and I realized she is precisely the type of person I wanted to be,” my mother recalls.

           However, being a nurse in Tehran was a highly competitive and prominent role. Knowing this, my mother set out to accomplish this feat, proving to her siblings and friends that she would be successful. Many of my mother’s friends weren’t concerned with having professional careers, rather wanted to get married early and be stay at home mothers. My mother despised this traditional role, and sought to exceed all expectations, and overcome all barriers in her efforts to become a nurse.

           As a result of her rigorous work ethic, my mother sacrificed and limited her social life. My grandmother laughs, “I would wake up in the middle of the night by the light shining beneath her door into the hallway. I would walk in and see her in a deep sleep, exhausted from studying. I could barely enter her room with all her textbooks and papers scattered and circled around her.” Through her studious nature, my mother was accepted into Tehran University, the most prestigious university in Iran, equivalent to today’s Harvard, where she maintained a 3.8 GPA. While many of her friends were focused on simply enjoying daily things, disregarding work and school, my mother immediately started working as a nurse at Tehran University’s Pahlavi Hospital, one of the biggest and most renowned hospitals in Iran.

           As expected, she chose to work in the Emergency Room, which is arguably the fastest paced and most difficult unit in any hospital. It is there where she encountered people of all ages: children, young adults, the middle-aged, and elderly. While working there she developed many relationships with patients. Their ailments ranged from various types of cancers, tumors, heart attacks, amputated limbs, strokes, HIV/AIDS, viruses, diseases – you name it, she probably met someone who had it or was battling it. In her conversations with them she learned about their lives prior to their sicknesses, families, failed aspirations, regrets, accomplishments, child-hood sweethearts, their unsatisfied and short-lived youth, and every so often their fulfilled and audacious lives. It was through their valuable experiences and wisdom that she instilled it upon herself to live every day as if it was her last, to take risks and advantage of all opportunities that came her way, to pursue a life without inhibitions, and most of all to smile, because there was so much in life to smile about.

           One of her most fulfilling experiences was with a patient named Kamran (or Cameron in English). He was fighting a battle with cancer, and miraculously overcame it. During his stay at the hospital, my mother attended to him with much care and attention. Embodying the qualities of the nurse that helped her father, she sought to do everything she could to help Kamran bear the pain, and persevere against this life-threatening monster. After he was happily cancer-free and released from the hospital, he told my mother that he had bought her a present as a token of his appreciation for her kindness. Though my mother insisted she didn’t want anything, he kept his promise. “Guess what he gave me? You will never get it right – a bottle of ketchup!” At that time, ketchup wasn’t a household item, rather a luxury, and this particular brand of ketchup was manufactured, and mailed from a factory in Abadan, approximately 600 miles southwest of Tehran, the capital. To this day, she still laughs about Kamran’s gift, but in fact he provided a far more priceless gift: his gratitude.

           It was her experience as a nurse that inspired and propelled her to always be independent, and follow her heart, of course within reason. Looking at her many photographs, I saw the magnitude of impact the patients’ words had on her. She constantly traveled all over Iran with her girlfriends going to beaches, parks, skiing, mountain hiking, residing in villas, dressed herself in fashionable clothing, danced the night away at social events, all while maintaining her successful professional career. She did what she wanted, when she wanted, and didn’t let any obstacle or person prevent her from experiencing the world, and making the most of every second of her life. As her patients repeatedly advised, “life is too short, and the future is never certain; so do all that you can in the time you have, for you never know when, or if ever, you will have the opportunity to go back and do it again.” Looking at her mountains of albums filled with her contagious smile and charm, there is no doubt that she took those wise words to heart, and still does today.

On April 23^rd, 1958, my father, Joseph Andrew Musgrove, was born in Washington, D.C., and then lived in Oxon Hill, Maryland, a short walk away from Southeast D.C.  He was one of five boys born to Tom Hardwick Musgrove and Dorothy Hall Musgrove, as part of the Baby Boomer generation. Each of the brothers is two years apart in age and he is the second youngest. His father was in the Navy and he met my grandmother in Virginia at Colonial Beach by the Dahlgren Naval Station. My grandmother grew up in Washington D.C. but my grandfather came out of poverty in Newton, Georgia. That region is so poor that the Great Depression changed nothing for his family because they could not get any more impoverished. The first house my father lived in was a two bedroom, one bathroom triplex, undersized for seven people and a dog, so it’s understandable why he says, “I don’t think it ever crossed my parents mind to move because the neighborhood was going to change. I think it was just time. … We definitely needed more space.”

When he was eight years old, he moved to a more rural part of Oxon Hill, named Friendly, and two years later his old neighborhood was nearly completely black. The neighborhood’s demographics changed quickly. This seems most interesting to me because he grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, when race riots and the Civil Rights Movement were occurring. He described growing up in such a tumultuous time as, “Those decades, especially the 60’s were times of great drama, accentuated by the fact that most of it was brought into our living rooms by television. For me, it started with the Kennedy assassination. I was five years old and fairly aware for my age. I remember vividly the day of, and the days after the assassination. I particularly remember being upset that Saturday morning cartoons were disrupted by coverage of the funeral. Then the killer, Lee Harvey Oswald got shot, and that was also on T.V. It wasn’t too long after that when Herbert Hoover died, so I sat in front of the tube and watched another horse drawing a flag-draped coffin riding down Pennsylvania Avenue. It wasn’t long after that when I began to realize that the civil rights movement was gaining momentum and things were getting stickier in Viet Nam. My oldest brother turned 18 in 1964 so the concept of possibly being drafted also entered into the picture.” He was barely six.

His mother was a secretary for the Department of Agriculture and his father was a truck driver at the Washington Navy Yard. Living on the border of D.C. He explained, “My parents had to show papers to enter D.C. to go to work. My old neighborhood had soldiers with tanks and guns and jeeps patrolling the border. The skyline glowed orange from all the fires. You couldn’t even buy gasoline for your lawn mower for fear that you might be building Molatov Cocktails, which were little bombs that you made with gasoline and a rag in a bottle. That was all in the name of the civil rights movement and racial tensions in the U.S. The sentiment against the war was also escalating at a rapid pace during that time.” This was happening when there were the hippies and drugs on the news, increasing the generation gap.

My father’s family used to go to the Washington Monument every year to watch the fireworks. He describes one of these outings as not so pleasant, “When the big riots came in 1968, I had a front row seat… Not only were the fireworks spectacular, but there was always a potential that something would happen. I remember one year the Yippies, who were like militant hippies, were protesting and causing trouble and the Park Police tear gases them and got thousands of other people including me and my family.” I cannot imagine going to watch a spectacular show of fireworks and in turn being partially blinded. What a nightmare all of this seems like to me. Of course T.V. played a large part in all of this. My dad told me that, “The younger generation, who were already in a low-level rebellion in the early sixties, really got hot when the war was escalating. No one had a good explanation on why we were even there, and every night at supper time we saw the horrors of war on T.V.”

Presidential assassinations, race riots, the draft, and the war: at a young age, this all hit close to home with my father quite literally. Which is why it blows my mind when he tells me that he was still a pretty happy little kid, remembering the best historical achievements of those decades to be a man on the moon and the Beatles.  Music has always been one of his passions and it defines him throughout his transition from childhood to adulthood. He was not satisfied with the radio stations until they were more rock infused. “You would not believe the crap we were listening to on the radio. And I don’t mean our parents music. Guys like Frank Sinatra and Henry Mancini were big on the radio, and I didn’t pay much attention to that but it wasn’t awful. The awful stuff was like Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Singing Nun, the Monster Mash, Flying Purple people Eaters and a bunch of crap like that. Just horrible!” Still, he gave no complaints about his childhood.

Other than the terrible music, he didn’t mind growing up in such volatile decades because they brought good change along with the bad. Aside from the protests and war showing up on the news, my dad always seemed to see life in an optimistic light. He enjoyed the more positive aspects of television with great enthusiasm. He always seems to remember tunes from outdated commercials and old television shows, and “Going to the moon was cool…and I saw it all live on T.V.”

In the early 70’s, while he was still in secondary school, there were fewer assassinations, but still a lot of turmoil. “There were protestors everywhere. If not race riots, then war protests, or just those guys that wanted to protest the establishment in general. Early in the decade, there were the college students killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University.” The biggest disappointment my father felt, however, was in 1971, when the Washington Senators moved to Texas. As a 13-year-old baseball fan in Washington, it was devastating to my father, as well as to his family. On the brighter side, “That blow was probably softened a little by the Redskins getting better after decades of decline.”

Despite all these crazy on goings occurring during his childhood, my father does not complain, but instead, he embraces the positive aspects of where he was born, grew up, and where he later settled down. “Well, let’s see, you sure meet a lot of different people from different places. Almost everyone here is from somewhere else. Living in Virginia is kind of neat since it has so much rich history, being the birthplace of eight presidents and all. And the museums in D.C. are some of the finest in the world, and most people in America don’t realize that they’re all free! Then there’s the monuments and other cool Government Buildings like the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, the FBI. and Arlington Cemetery. It’s kind of neat filling out a form that asks what state you were born in and you can say N/A.

After the tragedy of the Senators leaving, and then the Redskins finally winning again, my dad began college at University of South Carolina in the Navy ROTC program.  Even though he was far away from Washington D.C. for the first time in his life, he still followed close behind his parents footsteps. He served courageously in the Navy like his father. His parents were both employed by the federal government, and he, too, married a government employee. In his life, among owning a baseball card and collectible store, he has also worked for the government and then as a contractor working with the government. Growing up near Washington D.C. has defined my father as a person and the decades in which he grew up have left an impression on him that still affects him in his interests and work ethic today.  When speaking about what type of work he does when I so often get confused by how he is either an engineer, program manager, or contractor, working for either the Navy, a corporation, the government, or all three at once, he often tells me that he is taking a step towards “Making the world safe for democracy.”

For the greater part of the last 18 years, there has been a silent war being waged between me and my brother.  The battles were always brief and indirect.  Clashing in the open just isn’t our style.  All of our bouts and their outcomes were concluded to be illegitimate – SAT scores, school grades, and best times in swimming were all declared void because of the two year age difference.  He took the old school SAT out of 1600 while mine was the new one out of 2400.  He attended Stuyvesant High School, where they don’t give weighted averages for AP classes.  We started swimming at the same time, meaning I had a two year head start on him relative to our ages.  We just didn’t think it was fair to use our separate performances under vastly different conditions to answer the questions that everyone asks: Who’s smarter? Faster? Stronger? Better?  People seem to take pleasure in labeling one of us as superior – some kind of strange amusement in pitting siblings against one another in their minds.  Both of us think otherwise.

It wasn’t until the 2005-2006 PSAL Boy’s swimming season that we were finally forced to race each other head to head.  Throughout the season, we were hitting similar times, and everyone knew that it was going to be Stuyvesant and Midwood swimming for the City Championship.  Everyone knew about the two brothers, both breaststrokers, who had spots on their respective rosters.  Beyond that, I can’t tell you much.  I’ll let my brother speak now:

“‘Oley! Oley, Oley Oley….Oley!’

‘Oooooooh!’

These are the noises ringing through my ears right before I step up on the unsteady white diving block.  ‘JUSTTTTIIINNNN’

‘GO JEFF!’

These are the barbaric noises both teams are screaming.  ‘Hey, you two Wongs, turn around!’  A click and a flash.  A picture to remember this event forever.  A picture to remember the butterflies in my stomach.  A picture to remember the butterflies about to escape along with my chicken salad I had that afternoon.  This was the 2006 PSAL City Finals.  Two teams duking it out for the city title.  But everyone knew Stuy would win, and nothing was going to change that fact.  Midwood didn’t have a chance.

However, the real excitement was coming down to the two brothers racing each other in the 100 yard breaststroke.  This was a joke.  This was merely an exhibition match to show which team had the better Wong.  Brother against brother, Wong against Wong, Justin against Jeffrey.  Was it really necessary to have to see which one of us was the better swimmer? I guess our coaches thought so.  I didn’t.  I really had nothing to prove to anyone, not even myself.  I knew I was faster than my younger brother.  So what really happened during this particular race?

Neither of us performed our best.  I know I certainly didn’t.  A 1:09 low for the last meet of the season is something I definitely shouldn’t be proud of, nor is a 1:08 high for my brother.  ‘Quiet please. Quiet please.  This is the 100 yard breaststroke.  Each swimmer will swim four lengths of the pool breaststroke.  Swimmers, take your mark.’ BANG! I can hear everyone scream, ‘GOOO!’ just as I leave the blocks.

Diving a bit deep is never a good start for a race.  This is especially true if the side you’re starting on is four feet deep.  I barely missed scraping my face against the tiled bottom.  ‘Awesome, I didn’t break my face, but I’m still half a body length behind.’  As I try to catch up to my brother, my stroke count skyrockets up.  Not good; at this rate I’ll be dead by the last lap.  I manage to pull half a body length ahead on the third lap.  I glance to the right with my peripherals.  I only have a quarter of a body length now.  We hit the turn; I slip.  Nice, my streamline also breaks.  I pop up back to the surface about halfway before I usually do.

Now my brother is half a body length ahead.  Time to speed it up.  I take twelve strokes on the last twenty five as opposed to my usual eight.  Also, do you remember at the beginning when I said I was going to be dead tired? Guess what, I was.  We hit the finish.  I take a look over my shoulder at the clock.  Lane 4: 1:09.1, Lane 3: 1:08.9.  Touched out.  I let him win.

There’s a silence for five long minutes, my brother has a smirk on his face.  I look at him, he looks at me.  I smile and tell him to watch out tonight; he’s going to wake up with two broken legs.  Just kidding.”

He wrote that for his own IDC class.  I found it, read it, and forgot about it until this project came along.  I knew that I had to tell this story to set the record straight.  I could only use his story because I don’t remember any details from that day – it’s all a blur to me.  I see how self assured he was that day in direct contrast to me, a boy of 15 years, struggling and fighting to escape his brother’s shadow.  I didn’t believe it at the time, but I think he really did let me win.  In our first public battle, he played the older brother and helped me find my confidence.  He let me win so that I would believe in myself and work hard to get even faster in the years to come.  To this day, my parents refuse to admit who they were cheering for.  I don’t blame them.

           If he wasn’t working he was driving. Driving south, every few months after the divorce from his first wife Marilyn McClure and the separation from the son he always wanted, he just dropped everything and drove. On his way there he thought of her, how when he married her she looked just like Diana Ross- she still did. He thought of Bryan, their son Bryan who was so bright in everything.  It was the thought of them that kept him awake and heartened on the road. From New York City to Orlando he didn’t even make a stop at to sleep at one of the motels that lined the highway.

            He drove down that highway in a trusty brontosaurus of an Oldsmobile station wagon, his Chips sunglasses glinting in the sunlight. Gold rimmed, green tinted Rayban Aviators that he bought right after seeing “that guy from Chips” wear them. He checked the gas, looked left before making a turn and adjusted his rearview mirror as he turned his Ms. Ross’s best tune “Do You Know Where You’re Going To?” up. As he arrived closer and closer to Florida he felt himself grow warmer. Even for early spring it seemed unnaturally warm almost as if the earth were letting off steam. Or maybe it was the warmth emanating from the sheer goodwill of his intentions. If he worked it right he thought, “this might be the last trip I have to make….”

           His son Bryan turned eleven and started his first year of junior high that year. Instantly the corners of his lips turn upwards, he relaxed the tautness of his jaw and his eyes crinkled. He remembered the conversation he had with him the week before, “Dad I am going to SeaWorld next week, on a class trip, two whole classes are going, and our teacher asked us if our parents, you know our mothers and fathers, want to volunteer to help out. Hey dad, when are you coming to visit us dad?”

             As he pulled up to the junior high school he was stunned at the space between the separate buildings. To him they resembled simple one-story houses widely spaced on a thick green grass carpet– a far cry from the stone catholic schools of his youth.

            He strode up to the front desk where a secretary looked up from her paperwork gave him a strained smile. “Excuse me can I help you?”

            ”Yes, my name is Julio Alarcon and I am here to get my son Bryan for the class trip to Sea World” His chest puffed out a bit as he anticipated an expression of recognition from her.

          ”Bryan? I’m afraid we don’t have a student here by this name…” She trailed of as she saw his smile crumple, “Wait, we have a student named Jules Alarcon is he your son?” At that he let out a loud swoosh of air from his lungs thanked her and mechanically followed her instructions. Even though his son was his namesake, no one referred to him as Jules, not even himself.

          As he opened the door to the classroom he didn’t even have a chance to alert the teacher as Bryan came bounding into his arms with an impetuous hug and a  “DAD!”. It was worth it he thought, as he had to explain to the bemused teacher that he really was his father. Bryan’s mother Marilyn, although of mixed race herself was considered African American. Although America liked to think of itself as racially unprejudiced even in 1979 his marriage to her raised eyebrows. His son was just caught in between these social forces he had no control over. All you need is love.

          In a flurry of commotion he found himself on a bus and then off it, shepherding students from on exhibit to another. All the while he made sure to catch Bryan’s eye and smile reassuringly at him, as if to say he would never leave. His son appreciated that and rewarded him by flashing him a dimpled smile and a wave. “Hey dad, do you know the difference between a killer whale and an orca? There is none! They’re both the same!” The front row of his teeth mischievously peeped out and his eyes shone as he grinned broadly at his own wit and father. He then ran back to sit with his whole table of friends. Julio tried to capture that moment in a photo but at the last minute the whole group decided that they were camera shy. All that remained was hands in front of faces hiding almost as if they wanted to be forgotten.

        As they drove home in his car Bryan jabbered on ceaselessly. Julio was regaled with tales about his latest high score about hoops and his new high score in Mega man. As he pulled up the clean white driveway of 17 Columbine Drive his indulgent glowing smile turned into one of bemused despair as he realized that he had forgotten his keys to the house. Ever handy and prepared from the last time he forget his keys, he pulled out a piece of wire from the glove compartment a proceeded to pick the lock of his own house. Again.

         “Mom! Dad is home!”

And so it began again. He smiled confidently and tried to catch her all the while explaining his surprise visit.  She only had eyes for the exhilarated expression of joy on her sons face as ran back and forth between them, a merry pendulum with long limbs and Cheshire cat grin. All he had to do was wait for the right moment to ask her to come back to New York. All they needed was love.

                Dinner was always a silent affair but on that particular night everyone chattered on as if to dance around the giant elephant in the room. Technically they weren’t married anymore. Technically Julio was free to remarry or move on with his life. Technically Julio could forget he ever had a son and no one would judge him for it. Technically that is what any stereotypical free willed man would want, to ramble on into the world unencumbered by the worries of domestic life.

            This wasn’t what he wanted.

        He told her right after dinner, right as he watched her rinse the dishes with that poised air and efficiency he loved so much and right as Bryan walked into the kitchen. For what reason no on ever remembered, not even him.

          All there was….all there was left for him, was a silence.  In that moment of “damn communication breakdown” as he put it, he knew he had to go.

            ”Marilyn could you make me a carrot cake? and upside down pineapple cake you know the ones you always made for me?….before I go….?” He started the question off strong just like anything he undertook and then the uncertainty in the air came stinging clear as he saw the incredulity in her eyes. He trailed off…

              “You want me to bake all that now, Julio look at how late it is! I just got out of work!”  Her left hand worked up reflexively on her right hip yet even as she grumbled she set to baking. His mouth watered from the cinnamon smell as she set them out to cool later that night. By morning he was gone.

As he drove into Virginia later that afternoon he hit the break, pulled over, cradled his forehead onto the steering wheel and cried.

He had forgotten the carrot cake.

And the upside down pineapple cake

But not his family, he never could.

            If he wasn’t working, he was driving. After that last trip, he decided to take a break from driving. He thought back to his homeland Bolivia and that girl, oh girl *intake of breath…girl he took there, and left behind. When he got back to New York he bought a one-way ticket there and left.

             Little did he dream he come back to New York the following year with that same girl. Her name was Ada, now an older woman and in that year she was carrying in her womb his very first daughter, Katie. It would be just like starting over. If he failed then he would try again and again, and again.

It is strange for me to think of my father as anyone other than the person I knew him as.  It is even stranger to think of him with any other woman than my mother but once upon a time this was true. My father had been married once before and I had no knowledge of this and never imagined or thought that it was even a possibility. This is often the ignorant misconception of children; that their parents had no lives before they were born. In many cases this is not the child’s fault because their parents may be the type that never eludes to their past or is very private about their former lives.
This was exactly my case. My parents rarely talked about their life before me. I have little knowledge about what their childhoods were like or what it was like growing up in another country. The little information I do have concerning these topics was actually acquired from relatives and not from my parents. They didn’t really talk about it and I never thought to ask. So, it came as quick a shock to find out that my father had actually been married before.
My father passed away, unexpectedly, in October of 2004. It wasn’t until my mother and I were cleaning up some of his old belongings in his study. I came across a folder that was labeled “Divorce Papers”. Immediately, I froze. I didn’t know what to expect when I opened it so, I quickly slipped it into a pile that I knew my mother would be going through later. I suppose it was out of fear that I would find out something that I didn’t want to know. During such an emotionally trying time, I didn’t think that I could take any more stress. What could be worse than enduring all the regrets and the anguish and then finding out that my parents weren’t even married anymore? I mean, I knew that they went through rough patches as all couples do but this information would have been unbearable at this time.
I knew that neither of my parents would ever divulge this information to me willingly, and I probably never would have known about it otherwise. I respected that my parents wanted some things to remain private. If they didn’t want me to know it would most likely be for a good reason. When my father became ill, it wasn’t until his second bout with cancer, that I was even told. Although I had known that something was wrong I did not press the subject. I imagine that for my own protection, I was never told certain things. So, when I saw the label on the folder I assumed the worst.
I continued going through the old papers and records and waited and watched as my mother sorted through the pile. She didn’t even hesitate when she saw the folder. She opened it and read through the papers that it contained. I noticed an old, crinkled, black-and-white photograph paper clipped to the corner of one of the pages. It was an image of a tall slender woman that I did not recognize. “This was your dad’s first wife,” she said, as she handed me the folder and walked out of the room. After that point I never revisited the subject again. The folder was placed in the deep recesses of a filing cabinet in the office.
Over four years have passed since that day and I suppose curiosity got the best of me. A project for school was the perfect excuse to find out what really happened and who my mother’s first wife really was. My first and most important source was my uncle, Joe. He always gave the most candid answers and is still a troublemaker, even at the age of 74. He was my father’s older brother, the oldest of all of the children. He was the ultimate source of information for anything that happened in our family. His memory never ceases to amaze; phone numbers from a half century ago, his addresses in four different cities, the names and faces of countless employees and friends, still fresh in his mind as if they were from just days ago. As it turns out, he and my father’s younger brother, Peter, were the ones that took care of all of the paperwork for my father’s divorce.
During the time m father was getting his Master’s degree at the Oklahoma University and working as a chef in a restaurant. His wife was living in Taiwan and he would send money back to her every month. They were sweethearts in college and got married right after graduation. Looking at her photograph, she was an attractive young woman, probably too attractive to be married at twenty with a husband halfway around the world.
My father worked hard in school and whatever time he didn’t dedicate to school was devoted to work. He sacrificed a lot to get his Master’s. He worked a grueling job at a local restaurant and soon became a self-taught chef. Working his way up from a line chef to the head chef, this would allow him to one day open a restaurant with my mother.
It was soon discovered that she was having an affair and not putting my father’s hard earned money to good use. She squandered much of the money he sent back. Luckily, he was smart enough not to send her every last penny. He was distraught to find out about this and immediately instructed my Uncle Peter, who was in Taiwan at the time, to file the papers on his behalf. It was a long and complicated process, to divorce someone from thousands of miles away, but understandably my father did not want to see her again.
During the time that the divorce was being settled, my father met my mother at a holiday party. She remembers that he didn’t seem all that upset. He figured that if it didn’t happen that he probably wouldn’t have met my mother. If things had not worked out the way in which they did, it’s hard to say what everyone’s life would be like, and if I would even exist. While all this was very surprising to find out, it was almost more of a relief to know that it was not my mother’s name on those papers.

Klementei Rybak was just like any other farmer in the Russian Empire. After the Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks overthrew Czar Nicholas II of Russia and attempted a complete redistribution of wealth. In 1920, he received free land in Moldova, a country in the Soviet Union.  It was distributed to him for the purpose of him making money and growing crops.

For five years, he worked from sunrise to sunset. He toiled on his land, and made it quite productive. Others in his towns were too lazy to plant anything on their government-funded plots.  He fought to support his family.

When the Bolsheviks came to power, they also started to collectivize the nation’s farmlands. They formed  kolkhozy, whose purpose was to control and collect the crops that the farmer planted. Farmers had a choice whether or not to join these kolkhozy.  Klementei Rybak rejected the offer. He enjoyed his success and did not want the communists to take that away from him. Since the majority joined these farms, Klementei became one of the outcasts in society and people started calling him kylak (in English, the literal translation is ‘fist’), suggesting that he was criminally elitist. He was not the only one; there were millions across the country just like him. It did not only happen in Moldova, it also happened in Ukraine, and Novgorod.

Raskylachivanie means to take everything away from a person-house, animals, land, make him poor, and also send him to prison. In 1925, this happened to my great-grandfather. His family was left with absolutely nothing. On top of that, they sent him to a Gulag in Siberia. Gulags were government-controlled camps that were for criminals. His family was forced to move in with relatives who joined one of these kolkhozy. He was now a political prisoner. Millions of people ended up in Stalin’s gulags.

Klementei was exiled to Siberia. The Government needed people to work in Siberian mines and to build roads, and cut down forests, and penal servitude began to replace long prison terms. When Communists came to power, most of the Siberian prisoners were political prisoners who were accused of treason, espionage, sabotage, or anti-Soviet propaganda. Ninety nine percent of them were innocent. Whoever didn’t work, they killed.

The prisoners served their ten or twenty-five-year sentences in Siberian camps for nothing. The purpose of these camps was to destroy not only the opposition, but the idea of the rebellion itself. Everyone was arrested, even communists who helped expose “enemies of the Soviet people”, and soon the majority of prisoners were guilty of no ‘crime.’

Gulag prisoners constructed what are currently known as the White Sea-Baltic Canal, the Moscow-Volga canal, the Baikal-Amur main railroad line, numerous hydroelectric stations, and military roads in remote regions. Three types of camps were developed: factory and agricultural colonies for work like lumbering and mining, and “punitive” compounds for special punishment of prisoners from other camps.

Due to its remoteness and severe weather conditions ‘Russian Australia’ was one huge prison, escape from which was almost impossible and very dangerous not only because of the chase, but because of the Siberian killing frosts, unbelievably long distances, bounty-hunting natives, deep forests and wild animals. In jails, inmates were poorly fed. People died from the exhaustion, starvation, cold winters, and disease in Siberia. Inmates were often physically abused by the guards or by fellow prisoners. People froze to death as they were transported to the camps or died from hunger, severe beating or various diseases. For fifteen years Klementei served in Serbia.

In 1940-he came back to his hometown, a year before World War II began. A year later, after the war began, he was arrested again. Some of the neighbors reported him to the government as a conspirator–he was reportedly plotting with the ‘enemy.” In reality, all he had done was keep his light on in the dark. He was sent to Siberia once again. He spent another 19 years there, and came back in 1959, fragile and exhausted. He lived two more years and then he died, in 1961, at the age of 82.

It is a tremendous irony that his grandson, Andrey Rybak, is now the director of the remaining collectivized farms, which his grandfather opposed and for which his grandfather sacrificed his life.