Chang-Rae Lee - Native Speaker

“What party is that?”

“It’s the party of jobs and safe streets and education. These are the issues. Are you for them or against them? Please nod. Good. Of course you are. Every politician in this city wants the same things. And the people know very well any one politician can only do so much. So what’s left is that we set out to capture their imagination. We let them think that change will come to their lives. How many politicians have walked through the Carver housing projects in the last twenty-five years? How many rallies and speeches have been made there? How many words of hope have been spoken? And what does it still look like? Would you live there for any price? Generations have been lost in those buildings. Thousands of people. A black mayor couldn’t change that. What can a Korean do for them?”

“Still, black groups should be supporting you,” I said. “I can’t think of any other prominent officials who are minorities.”

“Some of the organizations do,” he answered. “The church community seems open to talking. That’s why I’m going to meet them next week, and not with more political groups. The NAACP has invited me to certain forums but I feel token there. Everybody is hesitant, cautious. They study me carefully. I can see they’re not sure if I’ll promote an agenda that suits them. I can support social programs, school lunches, homeless housing, free clinics, but if I mention the first thing about special enterprise zones or more openness toward immigrants I’m suddenly off limits. Or worse, I’m whitey’s boy. It’s a grave reaction. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.”

“It’s still a black-and-white world.”

“It seems so, Henry, doesn’t it? Thirty years ago it certainly was. I remember walking these very streets as a young man, watching the crowds and demonstrations. I felt welcomed by the parades of young black men and women. A man pulled me right out from the sidewalk and said I should join them. I did. I went along. I tried to feel what they were feeling. How could I know? I had visited Louisiana and Texas and I sat where I wished on buses, I drank from whatever fountain was nearest. No one ever said anything. One day I was coming out of a public bathroom in Fort Worth and a pretty white woman stopped me and pointed and said that the Colored in the sign meant black and Mexican. She smiled very kindly and told me I was very light-skinned. ‘Orientals’ were okay in those parts, except maybe the kind from the Philippines. I remember saying thank you and bowing. She gave me a mint from her purse and welcomed me to the United States. What did I know? I didn’t speak English very well, and like anyone who doesn’t I mostly listened. But back here, the black power on the streets! Their songs and chants! I thought this is America! They were so young and awesome, so truly powerful, if only in themselves, no matter what anybody said.”

I told him how I was too young to understand any of it. How my father never bothered with what was happening. He got passionate only once, when he got angry that a young teacher let us out early the day they arrested Bobby Seale. My father was like Mr. Beah. So focused on his own life. He couldn’t understand anything about rights . “What a big noise,” he’d mutter at the television. Egoh joem ba, tihgee seki-nohm mehnnal nahwandah. Look at this, every day these black sons of bitches show up . He’d shake his head slowly, as if to say, Useless . The sole right he wanted was to be left alone, unmolested by the IRS and corrupt city inspectors and street criminals, so he could just run his stores.

Kwang nodded, beckoning me to eat and drink. I noticed that his gestures were becoming tighter than before, that somehow he appeared more calm and ordered, which seemed to me unusual, given how we were drinking.

“Who can blame him?” he said loudly. “Your father’s world was you and your mother. He didn’t have time for the troubles of white and black people. It was their problem. None of it was his doing. He was new to the situation. The rights people could say to him, ‘We’re helping you, too, raising you up with us,’ but how did he ever see that in practice?”

“He wouldn’t have looked if they had,” I said.

“Don’t be so hard on your father,” he quickly answered. He cleared his throat. “Likely, I know, you are right. But I understand his feeling more than I ever have. Everyone can see the landscape is changing. Soon there will be more brown and yellow than black and white. And yet the politics, especially minority politics, remain cast in terms that barely acknowledge us. It’s an old syntax. People still vote for what they think they want; they’re calling on a bright memory of a time that has gone, rather than voting for and demanding what they need for their children. They’re still living in the glow of civil rights furor. There’s valuable light there, but little heat. And if I don’t receive the blessing of African Americans, am I still a minority politician? Who is the heavy now? I’m afraid that the world isn’t governed by fiends and saints but by ten thousand dim souls in between. I am one of them. Lately I’ve been feeling like the great enemy of the oppressed. You look knowledgeable for your years, Henry. You have a kind face. You should know, how there must be a way to speak truthfully and not be demonized or made a traitor.”

“Very softly,” I said to him, offering the steady answer of my life. “And to yourself.”

Steadily the other dishes were brought in, a half dozen or so of them, one varied and progressive course. Koreans like to taste everything at once, have it all out on the table, flagrantly mixing the flavors. Sashimi, spicy soup, the grilled meat, fried fish. More soju . He poured as I grilled. He obviously wasn’t a drinker, I mean a drinker in the way I’d seen real drinkers, which is to say the liquor was beginning to affect him in a manner I couldn’t predict or call. Old Stew might rant, he might take you by the collar, become belligerent, even stumble on the stairs when going to sleep, but none of it was a surprise. A man like that was eminently navigable. From the first glass you could see the whole dark trip of his evenings, every black jetty, every cove.

But John Kwang was affecting me. A good rule of thumb when you drink with a subject is that you keep yourself twice as sober as he is. Jack calls it the Taxi Rule. This means that you can get drunk, for the sake of building ambience and camaraderie (and for your own taut nerves), but still keep in mind that you haven’t done right if you don’t eventually bear him home. Call a taxi and tuck him in. Tonight I was working unscrupulously. I usually abstained completely on the job, much less matched a subject shot for shot. But soon I found myself pouring the drinks, too, joking with him for no other reason but to share a simple pleasure. We flirted with our two waitresses, making them stay a moment and have a drink with us. I rapped on the table when one of them downed three quick shots in a row. I thought I saw Kwang nip the other waitress’s ankle with his finger and thumb. She sat next to him on the floormat and drank with him. After a while they both scolded us and thanked us and curtsied before they left, laughing. Somehow we got on to the idea of making a toast to our absent wives.

“To Lee,” I said first, clinking Kwang’s cup too hard. “The person who taught me how to curse out loud. And mean it.”

“To my perfect May,” he responded. “Who has never cursed or sworn, even in her mind.”

We grew quiet then. There is always the slenderest remorse after any fanfare. We ate the food in near silence, the Korean family way, bent over the steaming crocks and dishes like scribing monks.