All In (26 page)

“Yes, Xao, of course.” My grandmother smiled. “Here, try them on.”

For the next hour or so, my brothers and I threw on one set of clothes after another. As soon as we put one on, we dashed to the bathroom mirror to look. Then we ran back in the living room for the next set.

After I tried on the last clothes, I looked at all of my new shirts and pants and shoes on the floor and felt like the richest boy in the world. It didn't matter to me that none of my clothes were actually new. Nor did I care that my grandmother had collected them from the donation piles at a nearby church. At that moment, looking at more clothes than I ever knew existed, I was so happy.

The apartment was still filled with family when my brothers and I went to bed, which now was a mattress on the floor. In fact, I wouldn't have an actual bed until I went to college. Even after we would move to Kansas City and later to Fresno, I would sleep on a mattress on the floor. We couldn't afford anything more.

I woke up the next morning to the smells of fried chicken, egg rolls, and pork ribs. What a glorious aroma! We feasted a second day.

Later, in the afternoon, my uncle took the children to the local school to register for classes. Even though we didn't speak English, my father wanted us to start school as soon as possible. I had excelled in school in Ban Vinai and was probably at the top of my class there.

However, Nashville was not Ban Vinai. Not knowing the language meant I had to start at the bottom. Actually, I had to start below the bottom. Back in Thailand, I had completed fifth grade and was now ready for sixth. Yet because I was so small, the school officials in Nashville put me all the way back in fourth grade. Even then, most of the kids were taller than me.

Once school started, my brothers and I spent most of our days in the English as a second language classes. Outside of that class, I quickly realized I now lived in a different world than the one I'd imagined.

My Hmong name, Xao, is pronounced “so.” The kids made fun of me, calling me “So what?”

One skinny kid named Curtis particularly disliked me and tried to pick a fight every single day, calling me “Ching Chong” and “Chink.” I had no idea what he was saying until one of my cousins explained it. Curtis loved the fact that I was smaller than him. He bullied me and all the other smaller children. He thought I was the stupidest kid in the world because my English was so bad. I would not miss him when my family would move to Kansas City at the end of the school year.

While we children went to school, my father went out and found a job. Even though he couldn't speak any English, not even “open” and “close,” he soon found a job at the local Gibson
Guitar factory, where my uncle also worked.

Even though he earned only minimum wage, my father took great pride in his work. His boss put him in charge of polishing the guitars as they reached the end of the assembly line. He put his all into it. At the end of the day, he dragged himself into our home, totally exhausted.

Few men would swallow their pride and take such menial work. My father, the army captain, pastor, and village leader who'd saved his people from certain death, never thought twice about it.

To us, he was the most respected man on earth. To the other workers at the Gibson Guitar factory, he was just another immigrant worker who couldn't speak the language. Though my father spoke three languages fluently, unfortunately English was not one of them, and his coworkers never let him forget it.

One day during their lunch break, my father and uncle went to put some sugar in their coffee. The sugar packets sat next to salt packets. My father, not able to distinguish one from the other, grabbed one packet, tore it open, and poured the contents into his coffee.

Off to the side, his American coworkers watched. As soon as my father took a drink, they fell over laughing. He'd chosen the wrong one.

My father dismissed himself, went outside, found a secluded spot, and wept. But he never let his coworkers know this event had bothered him in the least. He simply went back to work, polishing guitars with the same pride he'd once put into our fields.
The cruelty of a few was more than offset by the kindness of others. A local Church of Christ went out of their way to help Hmong families. We went to the church every Sunday even though we didn't understand English and Pastor A.T. Pate didn't speak a word of Hmong.

One Sunday we found a way to overcome the language barrier. The church started singing “Jesus Loves Me.”

All of the Hmong in the auditorium immediately recognized the tune. In Laos, we always stood for this song, so we all jumped to our feet and began singing in Hmong.

The English-speaking part of the crowd turned toward us and stood up as well.

Everyone smiled and laughed and celebrated while we sang “Jesus Loves Me” in two languages. In that moment, I felt like we all belonged there together. The cultural barrier didn't really matter since Jesus loved us all.

The church had a program teaching English to the Hmong in the evenings. Even though I was in the ESL classes at school, I went to the church classes as well. At twelve years old, I didn't care much for the fourth grade. I wanted to learn English and get in the right grade as quickly as I could. The Thai school in Ban Vinai had put me on a middle school level in math and science. Once I learned English, I could be on my way back up.

I didn't just attend the church; my father taught me the importance of work and repaying the kindnesses others extended to me. After classes, I volunteered for whatever needed to be done around the church.

One Saturday morning, after I'd helped Pastor Pate stack chairs, he asked, “Xao, are you hungry?”

I spoke enough English to understand. “Yes, sir. A little bit.”

“So am I. Let's go get a couple of hot dogs. I know the best place in Nashville for dogs. My treat.”

“Okay,” I said, but inside I kept wondering,
Hot dog? They don't eat dogs in America. Is my pastor making fun of me? Does he think my family eats dogs? I just spent my morning helping him stack chairs, and this is the thanks I get? I thought he was my friend.

I climbed in his truck and rode a few blocks from the church.

“This is the spot,” Pastor Pate said. “Best hot dogs in town.” He pulled into a shopping center, then led me to a stand in front of one of the stores.

If he had looked closely at me and read my mind, he would have known I was anything but thrilled about eating dog meat.

“Two dogs with everything,” he said to the man in the white apron.

I studied the stand. The familiar sights of mustard, ketchup, onions, and sauerkraut made me feel a little better. Then I watched as the man placed what looked like sausages on the buns.

It doesn't look like dog to me
. Still, I was more than a little nervous. I thought perhaps they'd used dog to make the sausages.

“Here you go, Xao,” Pastor Pate said. “Have you ever had one?”

“No, sir.”

“Then you're in for a treat.”

I waited until he'd taken a bite before I tried my hot dog.

When I took that first bite, I thought,
Wow! I hope this isn't really dog meat, because it is really good.

Later that night when I got home, one of my cousins explained hot dogs to me. I couldn't wait to have another, especially now that I knew no dogs were harmed in making them.

A few months after we arrived in America, more of our family came to Nashville from Ban Vinai. All the relatives returned to the apartment and threw a huge party. The new arrivals moved in with us.

A newspaper reporter showed up at the apartment a short time later. The reporter had heard that thirty-eight people were all living in a small, four-bedroom apartment in the Nashville projects.

I didn't know what “projects” were, but I had done a head count and, sure enough, there were thirty-eight of us. My mother and father had one bedroom, and my uncle and his children had another. Another uncle and his family had the other room. My uncle's son-in-law had moved in, and a widowed aunt from Thailand and her daughter were also there. Some people slept in the living room on the sofa bed. The rest of us slept on mattresses on the floor.

None of the adults thought too much of the situation. I'm sure they would have liked to have more room, but in this strange new land, we found safety in numbers.

Later, I would ask my father why so many of us had lived in such a small space.

“None of us knew how to find a place of our own,” my father
would tell me. “When my brother first came to Nashville, his American sponsor had already found this place for him. We didn't know how to go house hunting in America. Back in Laos, we just went out into the jungle, cut down some trees, and built whatever kind of house we wanted. But we weren't in Laos anymore.”

The reality of our situation didn't hit me until one Sunday afternoon when our pastor took my brother and me to dinner at his house.

Pastor Pate's car, a Cadillac, felt luxurious. I nudged Xay. “Can you believe this car?” I whispered. “It's sooooo big.”

Xay nodded.

I watched out the window as we drove a series of tree-lined streets. They looked nothing like the freeway right outside our door. We had a few trees on the apartment grounds, but they didn't look healthy.

The pastor turned onto his street. All of the lawns were so green and lush. In the projects, what little grass we had between buildings had been trampled; the lawn there was more like dirt and pavement. Our pastor's driveway, curving around like a small street, didn't look like any driveway I'd ever seen. To be honest, I hadn't seen many.

The house itself was spectacular. Inside, the living room had a nice sofa and chairs. In our apartment, we had an old sofa; you had to watch where you sat or the springs would stick you in the rear end. We also had an old chair, but the fabric on the arms had long since frayed away.

At our pastor's home, everything was nice. From the carpets to the drapes to the furniture, it was like nothing I had ever seen. And it felt so big, much bigger than our apartment, though only five people lived here.

And then we ate dinner. The quality of the ingredients was better than what we ate every day. They even served the meal on real china, not the plastic plates and cups we used.

After dinner, we went to the basement, where there was a Ping-Pong table.

“Do you boys play?” Pastor Pate asked.

“Yes,” I said. I'd played in Thailand and loved it.

“Good. Let's play.”

He served the ball toward me. I think he was trying to take it easy on me since I was such a small boy. However, he hit the ball in such a way that it bounced kind of high on my side. I spiked it so hard he hardly saw it fly past.

“You have played.” He laughed.

I now understand that the Pates were not rich by American standards but led a normal, middle-class life. At that time, though, seeing their house changed the way I saw our way of life. Till now, I'd seen everything in America in light of where we'd come from. Our apartment may have been crammed with people, but it sure beat Ban Vinai. Now I saw my life in terms of what America had to offer.

When Pastor Pate drove us home and let us out in front of our apartment, I took a close look around the neighborhood. Graffiti covered some of the walls. Broken-down cars
and trash littered the streets. A dilapidated fence separated our apartment complex from the interstate.

A rusted pedestrian bridge crossed above the highway. As I looked at it now, I realized it was not safe. Everyone in the projects had to walk on it, but we were probably taking our lives in our own hands when we did.

Our neighborhood wasn't safe either. There was a reason my parents insisted all of us stay inside after dark, and it wasn't merely our early bedtimes. After years of having bombs blow up just over the next hill back home, I'd always ignored the violence here in our neighborhood.

I now realized everyone in America didn't live like this. That night, lying on my mattress on the floor next to my brothers, I thought,
You know what? Poverty exists everywhere. Even in America.

The thought made me a little sad, until I also realized something else about my new home. Yes, we were poor by American standards, but I also knew this country presented an incredible opportunity even to someone like me who was just beginning to learn the language and customs.

Just as in the hills of Laos, no one was going to hand anything to me here.
But if I work hard enough,
I thought,
anything is possible here.
We hadn't come for handouts. We'd come for the opportunity only America could offer.

That revelation changed my life. I'm thankful it came soon enough for me to do something with it.

When play began at the final table, I was in eighth place. After my all-in gamble on the ninth hand, I'd jumped up to third. Philip Hilm still had the chip lead, with 23 million in chips. I'd watched Philip the past couple of days and noticed he liked to be the aggressor at the table, taking the initiative and forcing others to play his game.

Throughout day six, I had watched Philip bully one player after another.

A few hadn't given in to his pressure, and I was grateful for their persistence. When they'd forced him to go all the way to the river, I could see the kinds of hands he played.

Tight players will only go into a pot with a pocket pair or a pocket hand with at least a 30 percent chance of winning. However, on day six especially, Philip had consistently played hands like eight-five off suit, or seven-four off suit, hands with a less than one-half percent chance of taking down a pot.

Most players won't play these hands because even if they pair the eight or five, anything from a pair of aces on down to nines or sixes will beat them. On top of that, hitting a straight or a flush from such a hand is next to impossible.