REMINISCING ABOUT A CHINESE RESTAURANT

Last night I ate dinner
in a Chinese restaurant
roast pork and mashed potatoes,
rice and corn, a wedge of custard pie.

Others were eating rice
with beancake and cha siu
One man ate corned beef and cabbage
and shimmering Jello cubes

Glasses clang, silverware shook,
Oil sizzled to another Chinese restaurant
to Chinatown, a girl

who washed glasses, wipe forks, knives and spoons,
who typed the next day’s menu
who squeezed oranges for juice,
large, small,
but always fresh.

In the back kitchen in the damp air
a man bakes apple pies and banana shortcakes
a cigarette dangles from his mouth,
his eyes half closed.
When the afternoon off comes,
he shuffles off to his rented room, pulls up his sleeve,
sticks a needle into his arm.

He escapes, orange, delicious,
and I run upstairs, stuff myself
with strawberry pie.
My skin rises in hives,
my skin wants orange, wants delicious.

I awaken.  More dishes, more menus.
I refill the sugar jars.
Granules sparkle, I cover them up
and salt shakers take precedence
on the Formica counter
in wooden booths.

Slide and run, run and hide,
wait on those who inhabit
this Chinese restaurant.
A man with a crutch and one leg
limps downstairs from the Aloha Hotel,
sips his dinner of black coffee
and sugared “bombs.”

A shriner and his wife, with wide smiles,
eat halibut steak, rice and gravy
and apple pie.
The shriner shakes his tassel with authority.
He splits one 60-cent dinner
for his two young daughters.

Three slices of whole-wheat bread
for a glass-eyes customer
who smears catsup on each slice,
thick, juicy, oozing over the plate.
This man paints red in my father’s eyes
who shouts to me:
Give him the bottle with the quarter-inch catsup
or we will not survive,
we will not survive.

A young gypsy girl and a sallow old man
sit in the back booth.
He lifts her skirt, caresses
her thigh, feeds her a spoon of rice.
She shivers. I look away.

A gas station attendant peeps
behind the American menu,
one eye on the other waitress.
His lips parted, he orders leg of lamb
with mint jelly.
his money is good, is green.
He pays to eat and look
at the other waitress.

And I eat and my skin itches,
knows nothing, not its hives,
its questions marks.

I return to the Chinese restaurant,
its blinking coffee-cup neon sign.
I read the menu, examine it
inside out.  The ink spills.
The calligraphy sprawls.

This Chinese restaurant demands love,
demands attention.  Its walls expand,
I slither inside.

What would the glasses, the ovens
and chopsticks tell, what grease
on uniforms, what language
beyond food?

Nellie Wong

© 1986 Nellie Wong