THE CAFE AROUND THE CORNER: This Is America

A story about a funeral, a cafe, and America.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:15

It's story time with Mitch Juzrich. Today, the cafe around the corner. This is America by me. The funeral chapel was small, with two rows of wooden pews filling up most of the room. A blue hue emanated from the morning sun passing through tinted skylights. Ahead of me stood several elderly women dressed in black in front of an open casket. Off to the side, three family members of the deceased sat in the front row, alone, in silence, wearing the customary morning white cloth headband. In their Vietnamese language, these headbands are called Khan Tung, and they are closely linked to the Confucian tradition of the grieving rituals for the dead by showing respect and duty towards one's parents. I sat in the back, trying not to be noticed, but the eldest daughter saw me and approached. I'm so surprised you're here. I said I hoped it was okay. Yes, of course, but I'm so surprised, she said. How did you know? I responded that she told me when she took my order at the cafe around the corner from where I live. When she told me her mom died. She didn't necessarily invite me to the memorial, but she gave me the time and place, and I took that as an opening to come and show my respect. Her mother died of cancer at sixty four years of age. We chatted briefly, and then I told her not to worry about me. I was happy to sit alone, in the back, and in silent contemplation. She returned to her family, and I watched the older women light incense at the table near the casket, placing the burning sticks upright into a large incense urn and bow in prayer. I thought I should do the same, but I was hesitant because I already stood out being the only non Vietnamese person there. My large motorized wheelchair draws attention itself, and my back tire was making such a loud, obnoxious clicking noise that I hadn't fixed yet. I don't like standing out. I prefer to sit in the back and be at the edges. Instead, I'm often like an elephant in the center of a tea room. But I did what disabled people do. I did it anyways. The table next to the casket had a white tablecloth over it, on top of that a large incense urn where one's prayers are transfigured, lit candles, small Chinese tea cups filled halfway with water, and a bowl of fruit, all in the offering to the deceased. The son of the woman in the casket approached me and asked if I'd like to say a prayer. I said I would, and he lit an incense stick and handed it to me. I held it and gazed upon his mother's face. She looked dignified, older than I remembered, and darker too. My mind was racing with what to say. I thought of all the generic things, but I wanted something more, and then it came to me, and I blurted it out. Thank you for your peanut sauce. That's it. I looked at her son quizzically and said, You know, I've probably eaten tubs and tubs of her peanut sauce over the years. I remember when the cafe around the corner opened up a decade and a half ago. It was in a location where I've seen many other small businesses fail within a year after opening. Happy to have somewhere close to grab food, at least temporarily, I went in and this young woman smiled and asked if she could help me. I looked over the menu and ordered the tofu spring rolls. Three large rolls wrapped in rice paper came in a box. It was a full meal, along with a container of peanut sauce. The dipping sauce was delicious, and I'd have the spring rolls hundreds of times over the next decade and a half. Her mom made the sauce. The young woman running the cafe had just turned twenty years old at the time. She had come to the United States from Vietnam with her family just a couple of years before. I, thirty eight at the time, was her first regular customer, and for a while it seemed like the only one. With just the two of us in there, we talked a lot. We became friends, without ever losing our roles as customer and vendor. Living in a city, one's only interaction sometimes is with the workers behind the counter of the businesses frequented. It may be just five minute chat, but over time, it becomes a long story, updated with each short visit, picking up from where it left off. After thanking the deceased mother for her peanut sauce, I turned to her son and asked if he remembered me. I hadn't seen him in years, but I remembered him as a kid sitting in the cafe playing video games on his older sister's phone. He said he did. I am hard to forget. I do stand out. I looked at him directly and said that I have watched his family practically since they arrived in America. I saw them start this little shop, with all their hopes and dreams stuffed inside of it, in a place that no other business had survived. But they had no choice. It was this or bust. They had to make it work, and they did. I saw the first difficult years when it seemed I was the only customer. I watched his older sister rework the menu over and over, trying to find the formula of what appealed to American appetites. In time, a line of customers began to form at the counter. In the years ahead, the line would sometimes lead all the way out the door. I saw her hire other young immigrant women who just arrived from Vietnam trying to fulfill their own parents' dreams by working and going to school at the same time. I tutored some of them between orders of sandwiches and smoothies, because no matter what subject they took, it always doubled as an English class for them. I helped them write their essays, and they helped ease my loneliness. I marveled how they worked lengthy shifts at the cafe and spent the rest of their time studying. They worked so much harder than I ever have. Most of them have become nurses and dental hygienists now, and I am proud of them. Soon other regular customers began sitting inside the shop too. I got to know them. I met my neighbors and for the first time, living in a city, I felt I was part of a community. The cafe became a neighborhood hub that we've never had before. The shop shares the building with a Pan African cultural arts center. Early on, sometimes, there was racial tension as these Vietnamese women hardly understood American racial dynamics. There are layers of understanding that trip almost everyone, including those of us who were born here at some point. It's complicated. But they worked at it and smoothed things over. Those who go to the cultural center, mostly black, have made up a majority of the coffee shop's customers for years now. I watched this young woman who opened up the shop in her early twenties, become a successful small business owner by her mid thirties, and turned her first coffee shop into a second one, and bought a home for her family to live in, and put her brother through school. He's an engineer now. So I looked at him and said, Your mother came here with her dreams, and you have fulfilled them. I have watched it from the beginning, and I want you to know it has been an honor. An honor to see. Because to me, this is America. He cried, which pleased me because I said the same thing to his father who only reacted with a sturdy nod, but I'm not sure he understood a word I said. As I left the chapel I thought of my best friend growing up. As a kid he cleaned offices at night with his Mexican born parents and went to school during the day. He's a doctor now. My mom loved him and wished I was more like him. I'm not. I could never work that hard. As I strolled to the train station to go home, I thought of another best friend from years past who came as a child with his family to the United States from Iraq. He was the eldest son and provided for the entire family until it practically destroyed him. He sacrificed everything, including times of getting high with us. I think of the many friends in my life who served as their immigrant parents portal into this new world they live in. I thought of my Nepalese neighbors, whose teenage daughter has lived her entire life in a small one bedroom apartment. She was born in the county hospital down the street, and now she has the highest GPA in her Oakland high school. She's being recruited by universities. She's going places, and I hope in her future memoir, she writes of me kindly. But I don't know. I can be a crank. Not all the stories are inspiring. The immigrant life is hard. Not everyone succeeds, and not everyone has the American dream. I had a friend who turned to alcohol to quell his loneliness in a foreign land, and ended up panhandling in San Francisco's mission district. Sometimes I found him near twenty fourth Street with a guitar in hand, singing the sweetest folk songs. He was harmless. But all of these stories, all, without exception, are a part of the larger story that makes America.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Until next time, be well.