“Can’t take it, huh?” Dad said.
“I ain’t got to take it.”
“You do as long as you’re my son.” Dad grabbed me from behind and threw me back into Mom’s recliner. “Fight back, fat ass. Show me your Bruce Lee moves.” He pinched my flabby chest—he knew that was the body part I was most conscious of—and slapped my belly. “All that talk and you let an old man get the best of you.”
“What’s going on here?” said Mom, who had suddenly appeared in the doorway.
“Wesley was showing me his kung-fu moves.”
“What kind of father are you?”
“Evidently I’m the type of father who is tougher than his weakling son.”
“Come here, Wesley,” Mom said.
“That’s right, run to Mama you Mama’s boy.”
Mom tried to hug me but I pushed her away and went to my room, where I lay in bed with my head under the pillow which did not block out the sounds of them yelling and cursing each other for the next hour. Mom ended the fight by saying, “Unlike you, I have to work tomorrow and need to get some sleep.”
CHAPTER 2
Other than that one backhand, Dad, over the next few days, didn’t hit me. But he found a way to make sure I was hit, and often: tae kwon do lessons.
The Bruce Lee movie, I knew, was what gave Dad the idea, although he claimed he had thought about it for a while. I didn’t ask for tae kwon do lessons and didn’t know I was going to be taking lessons till Dad drove me to the largest dojo in town. It was run by Mr. Bollars, a fifth-degree black belt. Mr. Bollars was in his 30s, with shiny black shoulder-length hair and a matching mustache. Dad didn’t approve of long hair, and by Dad’s standards Mr. Bollars’s was far too long. He also believed that mustaches were nasty, that they only served to collect bits of food and allow them to fester. After seeing the Bruce Lee movie, I was let down seeing that an American might be the one who was going to teach me the fighting secrets of the Orient.
After shaking hands with Dad and me, Mr. Bollars led me into his office, around which were trophies—some small, some tall, and a few with medals draped over them. Mr. Bollars was in his gi, which was white and trimmed in black. We sat at his desk and he asked me why I wanted to study tae kwon do. I could tell him about the Bruce Lee movie, but if I did, I felt that
he wouldn’t take me seriously. I also knew that if I came out of this office not enrolled, Dad would be let down; and when he was let down, he became angry, which I didn’t want.
“Some older boys,” I said, making up a story on the spot, “have been picking on me.” Mr. Bollars stroked his mustache and nodded wisely. I used James and Roger as the models for this story and was readily accepted into the dojo.
We walked out of the office and Mr. Bollars handed me a plastic bag with a folded white gi in it; the gi looked like his except it lacked the handsome black trim. “Bring him back tomorrow night,” Mr. Bollars told Dad.
On the drive home, Dad said, “This’ll make you a man. Teach you to be assertive and disciplined.” We stopped at a red light and Dad leaned towards me. “I want you to take care of that uniform by yourself.” Dad pressed his pointer finger into the plastic, and I could feel the pressure from his finger on my thigh. “That means keeping it clean and putting it on properly.”
Keeping possessions clean was important to Dad and keeping my body and especially my pimple-riddled face clean was important to Mom. Though twelve, I had the shine of an oversexed, greasy sixteen-year-old. I would stare at my face in Mom’s lighted mirror, glasses off, a reflection blinding me from my cheeks and forehead, and white puss mounds bubbling from
my neckline. These pimples extended to my chest, red dots on flabby bitch-tits—that’s what Donnie and the other boys called them, always pointing them out when we changed for P.E..
The gi’s top opened at the chest, and I didn’t want my chest showing. A T-shirt, white and cotton, would take care of the situation. Or so I thought till the next night when I was getting ready for my first tae kwon do lesson and Dad walked into my room. “You a queer or something? Take that damn shirt off and put your belt on, it’s almost time to go.”
Class started at seven and it was just now six o’clock; Dad never liked to be late, and on time wasn’t good enough either; after all those years of making timed deliveries across the
nation, Dad always had to arrive earlier than expected. He left my room and I took off the T-shirt, but I kept pulling the top of my gi together to keep as much of my pimpled chest hidden as
possible. My belt was white, the lowest of the low in the martial arts world, and I was having a fit attempting to tie it. Directions and a diagram came with the gi, but they didn’t help me get the
belt tied properly. Since Dad had already checked on me once, I had to get this belt tied soon. I needed help, but I wasn’t about to go to Dad, who would laugh at me, yell and curse, and still not
tie the belt or show me how. Mom was the one for tasks that required patience.
Besides patience, Mom also had a knack of knowing when I needed help. I didn’t know if this was because she was part Indian or not. But right on cue, Mom entered my bedroom. The first thing she did was to take the belt, which was knotted and twisted due to my failed attempts, from around my waist, and she looked at the diagram, imitating the maneuvers in the air. Her lips moved silently as she read, and her arms moved without the aid of eyes, which she never took off the diagram.
The back door slammed and I knew Dad was making his last trip to my room. There would be no putting him off this time. Mom sensed this and snatched me to her roughly and ran the belt around my waist. I held my hands away from my sides, like a boy about to take flight, and I had my back to Mom and faced the door, looking for Dad, hoping he wouldn’t walk in and
see Mom tying my belt for me.
“You do every damn thing for that boy!”
We were too slow.
“You better live to be a hundred or that boy’ll be lost without you.” That was a popular saying of Dad’s.
“He has to get his belt tied,” Mom answered, still standing behind me. “You want him to be late for his first lesson?”
“I want him to be able to put on his own uniform.”
“He will. Just give him time.”
“No he won’t. Not as long as you do it for him. You might as well go take the lessons for him too.”
“Don’t be silly.” That was one of Mom’s favorite expressions.
They were quiet, and I stood between them waiting to see if this exchange was going to escalate.
“Are you gonna take him to his lesson,” Mom said, “or do you want me to?”
The dojo was a forty-five minute drive, and Dad didn’t say anything the whole way. He listened to only one radio station, the easy listening station, and it played softly. The dojo was in a strip mall, between a TG&Y and a Japanese restaurant, the kind where the chefs cooked your food in front of you. Once at the dojo, Dad took a seat in the waiting area. The only other people there were an older Hispanic couple, but they didn’t look to be older than Dad. But few people I saw were older than Dad. There were some folding chairs, about a dozen, in the waiting area, and Dad took the one nearest the front, just on the other side of the black metal tube that separated the waiting area from the workout area.
All of the students were kids, and I appeared to be the youngest, but as usual not the smallest. I was larger than all the boys except for a few teenagers, and one of the teenagers was a black belt. But his gi didn’t have the black trim like Mr. Bollars’s. I was nervous, but ready to learn those flying kicks and board-breaking chops that I had heard about. I walked around the workout area, which was covered with a thin tan carpet and had black metal tubes running along the two long side walls. Some students were stretching on them, while others just stood against them talking, which was what Donnie did. At school, Donnie never mentioned that he took tae kwon do, so I figured he must be a new student like me—his parents making him take classes to keep him occupied for the summer. He wore a white belt but he seemed to already have friends here, so I didn’t think he was as new as I was. I turned away from him before he saw me and headed toward the back wall, which was entirely mirrors. In front of it hung a gray punching bag. The teenage black belt was punching and kicking it and quick snorts came from his nose with every strike of the bag. He looked Hispanic, just like the couple sitting in the waiting area with Dad.