I’m nice like that.
He’s down on the ground, clutching the family jewels that he wishes were not Korean, and I’m holding my jaw, trying to figure out if I still have all my teeth, when my dad comes over to us.
“Museun iriya?” he says. Which loosely translates to “WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?”
ATTORNEY FITZGERALD’S FINGERS are steepled and his eyes are fixed on mine. He leans forward in his chair slightly. I can’t decide if he’s listening, or if he just wants to look like he’s listening.
How many stories like mine has he heard over the years? I’m amazed that he’s not telling me to get to the point. I finish telling him everything about the night in question:
The actors took three bows. They would’ve taken a fourth if the audience members hadn’t started filing out.
Afterward, Peter and I stayed in our seats, waiting for our father to come back out to get us. We waited for thirty minutes before he showed up. I don’t think it was because he knew we were waiting. He appeared through the thick red curtains and walked to the center of the stage. He stood there for a full minute, just staring out into the now-empty theater.
I don’t believe in souls, but his soul was on his face. I’ve never seen him happier. I’m certain he will never be that happy again.
Peter broke the spell because I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“You ready, Pops?” he shouted.
My father looked down at us with his faraway eyes. When he looks at us like that I’m not sure if it’s him who’s missing, or us.
Peter got uncomfortable, the way he always does when my father does that. “Pops? You ready, man?”
When my father finally spoke, he had no trace of a Jamaican accent and no Jamaican diction at all. He sounded like a stranger.
“You children go on ahead. I will see you later.”
I speed through the rest of the story. My father spends the rest of that evening drinking with his new actor friends. He drinks too much. On his way home, he rams his car into a parked police car. In his drunkenness he tells the police officer the whole history of our coming to America. I imagine he monologued for this audience of one. He tells the policeman we’re undocumented immigrants, and that America never gave him a fair shot. The officer arrests him and calls Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Attorney Fitzgerald’s brows are furrowed. “But why would your father do that?” he asks.
It’s a question I know the answer to.
CHARACTERS
Patricia Kingsley, 43
Samuel Kingsley, 45
ACT TWO
SCENE THREE
Interior bedroom. A single queen-sized bed with headboard dominates the space. Perhaps a picture frame or two. The floor on Samuel’s side of the bed is overflowing with books. Stage right we see an opening to a hallway. Samuel and Patricia’s teenage daughter is listening, but neither Samuel nor Patricia knows it. It’s not clear that they would care if they did.
PATRICIA: Lawd have mercy, Kingsley.
She is seated on the edge of her bed. Her face is in her hands. Her speech is muffled.
SAMUEL: It don’t mean nothing, man. We going to get a good lawyer.
Samuel Kingsley is standing on his side of the room. He is hunched with his face in shadow. A spotlight shines brightly on the single sheet of paper he holds in his left hand.
PATRICIA: And how we a go pay for a lawyer, Kingsley?
SAMUEL: Lawd, Patsy. We figure it out, man.
Patricia takes her face out of her hands and looks at her husband as if she’s seeing him for the first time.
PATRICIA: You remember the day we did meet?
Samuel slowly crumples the paper in his hand. He continues to do this throughout the scene.
PATRICIA: You don’t remember, Kingsley? How you came into the store, then you kept coming back day after day? That was so funny. One day you buy something and the next day you return it until you wear me down.
SAMUEL: Wasn’t no wearing down, Patsy. It was courting.
PATRICIA: You remember all the promises you make me, Kingsley?
SAMUEL: Patsy—
PATRICIA: You say all me dreams would come true. We going have children and money and big house. You say me happiness more important than you own. You remember that, Kingsley?
She rises from the bed and the spotlight follows her as she moves.
SAMUEL: Patsy—
PATRICIA: Let me tell you something. I didn’t believe you when we started out. But after a time I change my mind. You a good actor, Kingsley, because you make me believe all the pretty things you say to me.
The paper in Samuel’s hand is fully crumpled now. The spotlight moves to his face and he’s no longer hunched. He is angry.
SAMUEL: You know what me tired of hearing about? Me tired of your dreams. What ’bout mine?
If it wasn’t for you and children them, I would have all the things I want. You complain ’bout house and kitchen and extra bedroom. But what ’bout me? I don’t have any of the thing them that I want. I don’t get to use my God-given talent.
I rue the day I walk into that store. If it wasn’t for you and the children, my life would be betta. I would be doing the thing God put me on this earth to do. I don’t want hear nothing more ’bout your dreams. Them not nothing compared to mine.
BUT I DON’T TELL ATTORNEY Fitzgerald that part—about how my father’s wife and children are his greatest regret because we got in the way of the life he dreamed for himself.
Instead, I say, “A few weeks after he was arrested we got the Notice to Appear letter from Homeland Security.”
He looks over one of the forms I filled out earlier for the paralegal and gets a yellow legal pad out of his desk drawer.