My mother never did go back to her job at the dojo. I have no idea whether she regretted that or not; she never said, but she continued to teach me kendo and kunfu almost every night, after the kids were in bed, which is to say from about seven-thirty to eight-thirty. We alternated: three nights a week for kendo, three for kunfu, and Sunday nights off. Ma teased me that she needed the break more than I did, chasing after that baby all day. 

It was nice while it lasted, but after I turned nine, things did a sort of one-eighty. I still don't know exactly what happened, but it was hard not to notice that my father had been extremely stressed out for several months. And then one day he came home and purely erupted. Not at us, but it was still scary and the three of us hid in my room until things quieted down a little. Two days later, Ma told me that she would be working with Pop in the restaurant, so things were going to have to change a lot. During the day, my siblings would be under the care of the woman several doors down, who did day-care for many of the neighborhood kids. My job would be to walk over there every day after school, take Sister and the brothers home, and look after them until our parents came home from the restaurant.

"We'll be getting home quite late, probably nine or ten at night," she added, watching me with unusual seriousness. "You'll have to give them their dinners and put them to bed. You can do this?"

"I can put them to bed," I agreed. "And baths, but dinner..." 

"I'll leave something in the refrigerator each day for you to heat up for them, along with their snacks."

"Oh, okay, yeah, I can do that," I agreed cheerfully. 

"And your homework?" 

"Sure." I shrugged. "Brother's easy to take care of, and Sister'll help me with the little one. She likes to boss him around. And he likes to boss her around, too. I'll just make sure they don't do anything bad." I scratched my head, thinking about that. "It might be a little loud, but we're used to that."

Ma smiled- a strange smile, kind of relieved and sad both. I understand now that it was hard for her to leave her kids and go to work, but at the time I thought she was just worried. "That's true," she said; "just try to keep the roof on and we'll be content." She reached out and touched my cheek, which was odd- she hadn't done that before.

"Don't worry," I assured her. "I listened to you- if they get very bad, I say, 'do I tell the honored father about this? He'll be cross if I have to call him at work and tell him a person here is not behaving.' I think-"

I never got to finish what I thought, because my mother dropped to her knees and threw her arms around me, sort of laughing but still looking worried-sad. "My child," she said softly. "My good, clever, responsible son...you make your mother proud."

Funny how that works. Having someone proud of you is a great feeling, but it also gets a lot of anxiety going. You want them to stay proud of you, not regret it or change their mind. So with that notion hanging around in my mind, I did my best to look after my siblings in a way that would make my mother proud of me. It wasn't always as easy as that, but Sister and I managed fairly well, considering. Even not considering. I mean, the house was never as neat as it used to be, but I got my homework done, everyone got their dinner and a bath every night (whether they wanted one or not), and we had about a 90% compliance rate on bedtime. Plus, none of us ever broke anything significant, and there were no serious injuries. Bruises, yes, and scratches, and sometimes a bite or two- don't ask- but we would have had those even if Ma was home.

The one thing I resented about the whole business was that Ma couldn't teach me anything at night anymore. I missed the lessons, but I think mostly I missed just spending the time with her. I abandoned baseball as my after-class activity to take up the kunfu club, but though I enjoyed it and was better than most of the other students, it wasn't the same at all. When I told my mother, she got that sad look again and said she was glad I was keeping in practice; maybe when I was a little older, she'd be able to start teaching me again. 

"You mean because I'll be able to stay up later?" I asked slyly, and she laughed.

"That, and maybe there'll be enough business that I can come home earlier," she agreed, and then she tucked the covers around me, got up and told me to go to sleep now. I watched her close my bedroom door behind her, and I felt a little sorry for my brothers and sister. They were always asleep when she got home- she went in to see them, but they never knew she was there. I was lucky; I was old enough to still be awake at nine-thirty, even if I was in bed.

'A little older', for a kid, isn't the same as for an adult. I gradually got this idea as second grade passed and third grade proceeded onward and my parents still kept coming home late. A year isn't much time to an adult, but to a kid it is an eternity. 

I did pretty well in school, in spite of all the distractions at home. I was never first in my classes, but I was always in the top quarter and that suited my parents fairly well. My weak point was mostly special projects and papers- things I couldn't spend an awful lot of time and preparation on, because I had to interrupt myself and get dinner together, or manhandle hyper-kid into the tub, or plunk someone back into bed for the fifteenth time. But my day-to-day work was good. My worst subject was math. Math is one of those things, I think, that either you know and love or you totally hate. I totally hated it. It's too- I dunno, logical, and there's never any room for other interpretations. And if you didn't get it, you had no chance- you were wrong, wrong, totally wrong and had to start all over again. Frustrating.

As far as the social stuff went- well- you remember what I said about Koreans and Chinese being quietly- very quietly- discriminated against? Yeah. So the friends I had were mainly the kids from Chinatown who happened to go to my school. Ironic. None of us had much time to meet and hang out at home- too busy doing family stuff, like taking care of sisters and brothers or doing chores in the house or working with the parents or whatever. But in school, a bunch of us met and hung around together and were on pretty friendly terms. Now I'll be fair, some of the Japanese kids were pretty pleasant, and most of the teachers were fair. But there was still that undercurrent of 'them' and 'us'. Like there was always going to be a social gap.

I did run into one case of counter-prejudice, though. I think that's what it's called, anyway. The big majority of my kunfu class was Japanese students, and most of them were in the very basic beginner level. I was almost to intermediate, so I got both envy and respect out of that. Well, for some reason, a couple of the Chinese students decided that I was basically selling out, turning my back on 'my' people and trying to ingratiate myself with 'them'. Seems if I had any 'racial pride and dignity', I'd do my training at the Chinese dojo, after school. I had to make it clear- loudly- that I wasn't turning my back on anyone; I was just taking advantage of a useful class because I had no time for after-school activities. Not with three little siblings all waiting for me to get them home and give them dinner. I also made a point of mentioning that my Chinese mother, the dojo instructor, had been the trainer that made me so skilled. After that things quieted down. I'm not sure which had more to do with it, logic or volume, but hey- whatever works.

I still don't see how doing well in a class with a lot of 'them' is any different from doing well in a 'mixed' class or an 'us' class, but people do get bugs up their butts about the weirdest things.

Oh yeah- that was the year we first went to New York. Almost forgot that. It was in the summer, during one of the season breaks, that Pop decided to take us to America and visit Uncle Chin. Uncle Chin was also running a restaurant, and the two of them wanted to compare notes and maybe play with some recepies. That was a really fascinating experience- America is a strange and wonderful place. I liked Uncle Chin a lot, he was jolly and really laid-back, and I got to meet my cousins, his daughters, for the first time. They giggled a lot, but they were cool, and they taught me a lot more English than I'd learned in school. We stayed there for almost a month, until it was time for school again, and I remember being envious that the American school day and year were shorter than the Japanese one. 

The really amazing thing to me was how much more relaxed and good-natured my father was while we were there. I'd never heard him laugh so much. 

!!! 

...Okay, Rowen just freaked me out. He knew my uncle; he used to eat at Chin's restaurant whenever he went into Chinatown, which was like six blocks from where he lived. What're the odds on that?! Gah, I've got goosebumps...

Um. Anyway. Where was I? Right, third grade, ten years old. Well, not much to say about it. The restaurant did better- apparently people were intrigued with the new recepies and ideas- and my parents came home earlier at night, and in better moods. So that was great. School was school: I hated math even more, but I ground my way through it. I introduced lots of cool American slang to my pals and impressed my English teacher. No, I didn't teach anyone any cuss words- didn't need to. Sister started first grade and did well, thanks to me. I guess it really was okay for me to teach her how to read and write a little before she was technically old enough. Makes sense, really; if American kids can learn at age five, I guess Asian ones can too. Um... First brother stopped being quite so anxious all the time and didn't follow me all over the place anymore; he and hyper-kid started playing together, though Sprout was definitely the take-charge one. It's...a little worrying when you have to keep the baby from bullying his older brother. On the positive side, our little screamer didn't scream nearly so much anymore, and it was good that they managed to entertain each other, since now both Sister and I were wrapped up in homework. 

The next significant thing that happened was that Ma started coming home early- I mean real early, even before I got home from school. Then she started taking days off entirely. And of course you can't help but notice, um, certain things, sometimes. It became pretty clear to everyone that there was going to be an addition, and after a few weeks, Ma made it official. Brother said he hoped this one wouldn't be so loud, something we all agreed with, and Sister had about a billion questions, but apart from that I think we all took it calmly enough. Myself, I wasn't exactly thrilled at the thought of diapers again, and I made a mental note about not letting the new baby eat the crayons this time. Ma hadn't been too pleased about that, though they hadn't hurt Sprout any. I thought she wouldn't notice, but I failed to connect the dots. What goes in....comes out.

Anyway, it was nice to have Ma around the house again, and she even taught me some more kunfu for a while. But Pop kept coming home tired out and cranky, like before, and that had a very significant effect. On me. He was short-handed, he explained, but he couldn't afford to hire anyone to take Ma's place. So the result was that a couple months before my eleventh birthday, I stopped looking after my sister and brothers and started helping my father in the restaurant after school.