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Because, in 1978, we were the first Thai family in a working class neighborhood of Chicago, predominantly inhabited by Polish and Irish. Because we found our mailbox off its post every weekend, the aluminum dented in the shape of a baseball bat. Because rotten eggs splattered the white siding of our bi-level, which my mother scrubbed until she could see the pale of her face. Because someone scrawled on our driveway, Chinks Go Home, in shaving cream that stained and stayed on the concrete for weeks. Because at the tile factory off Archer Avenue my father got into a fight. Because a co-worker said he talked funny, and he was tired of everyone telling him he talked funny, and so he punched the offender in the face, who was as white as some of the floor tiles the factory churned out. Because we owned a gun, a heavy silver one with a leather handle, a safe guard against anyone out to do us harm. Because we believed everyone was out to do us harm. Because my father chased two boys away with the gun one night, his splayed feet slapping the concrete, his voice screaming obscenities until he was hoarse. Because those boys kept ding-dong-ditching our home till past midnight. Because we called the police and they never showed. Because I was four and endlessly crying, and my mother couldn’t shush me, so she pressed me hard to her chest, so hard my nose bled. Because a year later I found the gun in my father’s briefcase of important things, and I picked it up and pulled the trigger and nothing happened, but in my brain there was a bang that silenced robins. Because my mother’s first true purchase in the country, a ’74 Thunderbird, was stolen, and the police did nothing except laugh at her accent. Because they told her if she learned to speak better they’d take her more seriously, that if she wanted to live in America, she should speak like an American. Because my mother felt a smidgen of glee when she saw a police officer wheeled into the emergency room where she worked as a RN, but she did her job anyway. Because she knew a nurse’s job was right and thankless. Because her brother in Thailand was a police officer and his job was right and thankless. Because, despite herself, all police officers were not those police officers and those police officers were far and few between; we just managed to always find them. Because a year later, the Thunderbird was found in pieces in the parking lot of an abandoned steel factory. Because my family was referred to as chink, gook, jap, words that in no way referenced us but we carried the wounds they carved anyway, like etchings in the pale bark of a cypress. Because words had the ability to crumble us. Because the word “bitch” uttered by the white three-year-old boy behind our house forced my mother to enroll me in Tae Kwon Do, so I could defend her honor. Because honor was what we had left. Because we clung to our honor like a safety blanket. Because honor sometimes made me do stupid things like breaking windows and blowing up mailboxes, like punching a little boy in the nose for calling my mother a bitch. Because honor is linked to pride, which is linked to stupidity. Because sometimes we were stupid. Because once on a spring day I was surrounded by white boys who beat me down and someone stole the Buddha hanging around my neck. Because I was eight. Because I was not white. Because I spoke with an accent. Because a white man with receding hair stood in his driveway and watched the beating before complaining that I tore up his grass in my attempt to kick free. Because no matter how hard I was taught to kick and punch at the dojo, it never seemed hard enough, bloody enough. Because it never managed to restore anything, but instead let guilt settle in the stomach, heavy and laden, like the brick I launched at the house across the street from the Chicago Thai Buddhist temple, after news that a monk was hit with a rock and had to get ten stitches on his brow. Because police officers did not come then either. Because I was angry. Because I was scared. Because it seemed I loved hiding in the shadows more than standing in the light. Because the light exposed my fear of the world. Because my fear of the world started with my mother’s familiar line, heard over and over throughout my life: “You are not like them. Always remember that.” Because I learned they are not like them either. Because we are always looking for an answer, a reason why things happen, why there is so much hate in the world, in a country, in a city, in a home. Because the word “because” demands cause and effect, demands sequential understanding, though in the face of hate there is only cause, cause, cause. Because the effect is this country on the brink of chaos. Because we are looking for some sense in senselessness. Because we need to be saved. Because, despite our anger bubbling over, I cling to the belief that we are able to love. Because of Buddha. Because of God. Because of Allah. Because we are human, blood and biology, and able to show empathy and forgiveness and understanding, the flowers of humanity about to burst under great duress. Because of Emmitt Till or Rodney King or Vincent Chin or Kuanchang Kao, who police officers shot because they feared his martial arts moves. Because of the history we carry within us, a history that, no matter how much we want to deny it, is part of the genetic make-up of our being. Because we carry all these histories, heavy and burdened. Because we share this body of history, which joins—never separates—us. Because here, in my palms, are all of the social and political injustices enacted on our planet. Because here, under my fingernail, is the debris from centuries of war. Because here, in each follicle of hair, are the names of the deceased, slain because of race or gender or sexual orientation. Because here, inside the cavity of my ear, are tears shed. Because here, in my heart, is our heart, beating, beating, beating.

Because. Because. Because.

 

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IRA SUKRUNGRUANG is the author of the memoirs Southside Buddhist and Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy, the short story collection The Melting Season, and the poetry collection In Thailand It Is Night. He is the coeditor of two anthologies on the topic of obesity: What Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthology and Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology. He is the recipient of the 2015 American Book Award, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature, an Arts and Letters Fellowship, and the Emerging Writer Fellowship. His work has appeared in many literary journals, including Post Road, The Sun, and Creative Nonfiction. He is one of the founding editors of Sweet: A Literary Confection, and is the current Richard L. Thomas Chair and Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College.