“Sam, what miserable student would’ve come forward to turn his friends in?” Carlos asked.
“It was me,” said Sam.
“How could you turn me in!” shouted Carlos.
“I didn’t. Mr. Mash started asking me all kinds of questions. I turned in the others and they must have mentioned your name to Mash.”
“Why would you do that?” I asked.
“It’s wrong for them to cheat,” said Sam. “They would not have scored as high without cheating and it really ruins the rankings.”
“But you cheated as well,” said Carlos.
“I don’t consider it cheating. I enabled you guys to have my answers in the bathroom, but I did not cheat,” said Sam.
“But we could not have cheated without your help!” yelled Carlos.
“I helped you, but I did not cheat off your answers. Besides, I have a bright future at Harvard and you guys don’t. The impact of your cheating is greater than the impact of mine,” said Sam. “Your cheating caused you to score above what you normally would. Mine did not.”
There was no reasoning with his logic, and I really did not want to see Sam go into an emotional tailspin, so we left it alone. Carlos was heated but he did not say more.
Changing the topic, I asked Sam if he would consider giving Delancey her gun.
“She’s rich; her father can get her another gun. I need the money and I am trying to sell it.” I argued that it wasn’t his money to begin with, but Sam’s logic didn’t see it that way.
Sam came home with me and I made him a bed on the couch. John’s parents no longer wanted the responsibility of having Sam at their home. My father was not happy with the situation and felt that Sam was still a child and should be home with his parents. I explained to my father that Sam was going to Harvard and that hardly made him a child. My father responded that anyone who urinates on their parents’ bed is still a child.
During dinner, my father said to Sam, “I don’t appreciate that Iran held fifty-three Americans hostage for more than a year.”
“I don’t either,” said Sam.
“I’m not a big fan of the Shah,” said my father.
“I don’t like puppet governments set up by the CIA either,” Sam smirked.
“Why can’t Iran get its act together?” asked my father.
“Look, I’m Persian but I can’t defend Iran. But I tell you this, the Persian Empire was all that an empire ever could be. Look around at the influence of the Persians in Europe, in mathematics, in architecture. We were once the greatest of all the empires. When the Persian Empire ruled India, it was the Persian ways that they brought with them. That’s why the Taj Mahal still stands. That’s why people from the northern part of India to the southern part of Europe, to the northern parts of Africa look a little Persian. Persian literature and architecture influenced….” My father interrupted Sam.
“The Mughals ruled India, not the Persians. They were Timurids, from the Mongols of Genghis Khan’s army, not Persians,” said my father. My father usually ate dinner in silence, and never discussed history and politics.
“They were Islamic, and not Zoroastrians like the Persians had been. They ruled Iran the same time they ruled Central Asia. And it was a Mughal king who built the Taj Mahal. It still stands because it is a symbol of his undying love for his wife who died. It still stands because when you create something out of all your love, all your pain, all your emotion, it tends to last forever.”
My father had just blown my mind.
“How do you know all this?” asked Sam, stunned as I was, but only because it was the first time that anyone ever corrected his view of the Persian Empire.
“I didn’t go to college, but that does not mean I’m not educated,” said my father. “My father came from a British colony in South America. Half of the population were indentured servants from India.”
“And what about the other half?” asked Sam.
“Mostly Africans, but some Portuguese, Dutch, British left over, and Chinese.”“Why such a mix?” asked Sam.
“Like most nations in the western hemisphere, its history was of a search for gold. Different parts of Europe colonized the Guyanas They all came searching for El Dorado. But when Europe abolished slavery in the early part of the 1800’s, it really ended only the African slave trade. So they went to India for their labor, with the same slave boats from the African slave trade and brought indentured servants to the Caribbean. They packed the Indians in tight, as they did with the slaves. The trip was twice as long as a trip from Africa. The Chinese came as well. It was called Indentured Servitude but working without pay is called slavery.” My father went back to eating.
I was really impressed with his knowledge.
“Some of the boats crashed due to storms. That is why so many people in the Caribbean look Indian. They may be Jamaican, or Dominican, or from Guadalupe, Trinidad, etc. but they have Indian blood of indentured servants.”
“What happened to the gold?”
My father gave a deep sigh, leaned back and said, “All that glitters isn’t gold.”
“Your self education is very impressive, sir,” said Sam.
“There’s too much emphasis on a college degree, and not enough on real education,” my father said.
We finished dinner, and watched television. At eleven o’clock, there was a knock on our front door. We never had visitors that late.
My father opened the front door and found Sam’s mother. She threatened to call the police and report that Sam was being held against his will at my house. She sounded and looked the part of a raving lunatic. My father ordered Sam out of the house at once. Sam wasn’t surprised by his mother’s unexpected presence at our house. He quietly got dressed and left. He climbed into the back seat of his father’s car, and they drove off. I’ve seen happier faces in the backseat of police cars.
“Never again,” my father said.
That weekend at the café, everyone was on edge about the attack on the woman in Central Park. Christine told Shesha that she couldn’t stay late anymore and would prefer to leave at three o’clock. Shesha refused her request and said that she had to stay until six o’clock.
“I found out about Eddie,” Christine said to me at the end of the day. “He’s in real trouble. The Tongs have ordered him dead; his own elders from his own gang. Eddie had gotten into a personal feud with the rival gangsters that he shot. Eddie dropped out of the Chinatown gang, and is going by a new name – The Serpent,” said Christine.
“Have you heard from him? Why do they want him dead?” I asked, recalling Eddie’s Stanton basketball uniform read Stanton Serpents across the top.
“No one has heard from him directly. He shot and killed a rival gang member on his own that day in the billiards hall. In order to avoid a war between the two gangs, the elders have ordered him killed for his actions. ”
“Who did he kill?” I asked. “The son of a Tong from another gang, a guy named Johnny. He didn’t mean to kill him in the pool hall; it was just self defense. It’s very dangerous for Eddie, too dangerous,” Christine said worried.
Eddie could have had a bright future in college, but now it really didn’t matter.On the subway ride home, I thought about Eddie Lo’s violent side, and Sam’s emotional problems. These were two smart students at one of the most competitive and highly reputable high schools in the entire country. I thought about Eddie playing basketball, and how he’d been offered his dream, a scholarship to play at St. John’s and how he had ruined this opportunity. Eddie was accustomed to a life of crime; it was all that he expected out of life. He could not consider life beyond his Chinatown Gang. It was hard to conceive that this was my roommate from the high school senior ski trip. It was hard to believe that this was the coolest guy that I knew. Now his days were probably numbered.
The next week there were many Chinese gangsters outside the school. These were not like any gangsters I had ever seen before. They were older, rougher looking, and looked like they had already done hard time. They must have thought Eddie was still going to school at Stanton.
Delancey and I were growing closer. I walked her home nearly every day that I could. We were both worried about crime. She was uncomfortable about the presence of Chinese gangs outside the school. At times, there were forty to fifty gang members. They surrounded the school.
“Why do you think they are here?” she asked me.
“Chinese democracy,” I replied.
We went for cheesecake and coffee. Delancey expressed that her mother wanted her to go away to college in California. Her father preferred that she go to school in Boston. She explained that it had been an agonizing decision.
“So what did you decide?” I asked.
“I’m going to Vassar,” she said.
“I guess we won’t be that far away, maybe two and half hours by bus. Maybe I’ll come and see you once in a while.” We both knew that we probably wouldn’t see each other at all after high school. We sipped coffee and ate cheesecake. The silence was deafening.
I was head over heels in love with Delancey. She was a beautiful girl, inside and out. We would both grow and develop into adults by going away to college, but it would also quell any chance we had of getting serious with each other.
My heart ached and my appetite receded. If I could do it all over again, I would’ve gotten close to her earlier, as early as the previous year. But I had lacked confidence, and always felt that she was out of my league. She looked up; her eyes were glazed over with tears.
“I wish we had more time,” I said, as my voice choked on the words. “Here we are and it is already May of our senior year.”
“I wish we had different circumstances for our futures,” she said. “But if something is meant to be, then it will happen.”
She meant that we were approaching a fork in the road. We were going to take different paths.
The ride to her father’s apartment in the city was in silence. I held her hand, and threw my arm over her shoulder. We were both saddened, realizing how little time we had left. I walked her to her building on the West Side of Central Park. We were affectionate for a few minutes. Now that we knew that our friendship had a deadline, things were different. I went home, a little depressed.
We ate lunch together every day. I grew more and more in love with her as each day passed. Sam was jealous of our relationship, and made no secret about it. Sam’s greatest flaw was his inability to conceal his emotions.
There was a big change in my English class. Mr. DeJesus, the woodshop teacher, was now in charge of the classroom. Mr. Zoose had been fired, much to the shock, anger, and dismay of many students. I was angry with myself for writing that letter. I had betrayed my favorite teacher, the man who had come to my defense. Someone asked what a carpenter would know about teaching English. Mr. Dejesus replied that he was just a teacher now, and carpentry was behind him.
John called me at home, and reminded me that we needed to rent tuxedos for the prom. He knew a place with a really good deal. The next day, on our way to the tuxedo store, Sam started complaining out loud about my friendship with Delancey.
“I can’t believe she’s interested in you,” Sam smirked in a jealous fit. “She should be going out with me. You can offer her nothing.”
“We are just good friends, Sam. Besides, she likes me and not you.”
“You’re not even going to Harvard, I am.”
“If that was a requirement, then you would date every girl in the school,” I laughed.
“You can’t even afford to date her. Your family is so poor. You live in that dingy small house.” Sam was trying to start a fight.
“You mean my poor family who took you in from your lunatic parents?” I countered. Sam’s face was turning red.
“You can offer her nothing. You’re not even graduating at the top of the senior class. You’re not an athlete; you are nothing.” He paused, then said “And you will always be nothing. Your future is dim. You’re not going to be a doctor or an engineer or anything, just a worker at a dead end job. Don’t embarrass yourself by asking her to the prom. She could never say yes to you and embarrass herself in public that way. You’re too poor for a girl like that.”
“If you want to fight, just say the word!” I shouted. We were outside the tuxedo store.
Sam was not a fighter. To my surprise, Sam took a swing at me. He missed by a mile, and I swung back hard, hitting him in the cheek. Fight over. His face was red, and his eyes welled with tears, not from the pain of my punch, but from the pain of defeat.
We went inside and ordered our tuxedos, trying on the shirts and shoes, as well as the trousers and jackets. I looked in the mirror. I had never worn a tuxedo before. It made me look like an adult. The salesman came and took measurements. He would have to adjust it a little.
Sam was quiet the entire time, and I hoped he was regretting some of the things he’d said to me. I did not regretting punching him in the face, but what good did that do? It didn’t change who he was as a person. It did not change how he really felt about me and Delancey.
On the way home, Carlos and I went back to my house.
“I thought you handled that well without losing your cool,” Carlos said.
“I should have hit him a second time,” I said. We kept walking.