2 a.m. I stumble through the teal door and just to the right was my father asleep in a chair, mouth agape and snoring a symphony with the remote firmly in his grasp with no chance of escape. He wore black pj's with polar bears on them and kung fu slippers. I plopped down on the couch beside him, hiccuping and booze ridden. The room was lit by one dim lamp and the TV which projected skewed Indonesian shadow puppets that danced around the room. The vast collection of art and books always needed to be dusted.
My father made a large, phlegm ridden noise as if he were hissing and choking at the same time. His chest rose and fell. Just below the light on the cabinet beside my father sat a buffet of pills for his cholesterol, his pain, his lungs, his infection, his sleep apnea. His neck rolled his head to sort of face me. His left eye opened and then his right.
"Hi, Kore," he said quietly.
"Hi, papa," I whispered trying to hide my inebriation.
He rolled his shoulders up, back and down and pulled himself straight."What are you watching?" he said.
"You have the remote in your hand, papa. It's still on CNN." My father always watches the news. When he is home, the news is on, even when he sleeps.
"Oh … sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-it." He smiled with his eyes closed. I chuckled. He is a little Indo man who resembles Tommy Chong with an occasional twang native to south Newark. He is an electric guitar rockin', 8 language speaking, war refugee. But for the past ten years or so, the bill collectors and the stress have been taking their toll. The phone rings all day from various 800 numbers.
"You see the economy, koko? It's terrible. This fucking president. Gott ver damen. He stole everything."
I tried to refocus my eyes on the TV. I slurred my concurrence.
"I'm going to make coffee." He stretched to the side with one eye strained and the other relaxed.
I woke up abruptly from my awake-nap. "Papa, it's 2 in the morning, you need your rest."
"I can't sleep."
"But you just …" I stopped, "I'll make it for you."
"Thank you, koko. You're a good girl."
He fell back asleep. I fell asleep, too on the couch beside his chair. The CNN shadow puppet show continued while we rested.
"Will! I can't burn a CD!" My mother can never burn a CD, even though she does it all the time, even though she's burned hundreds and she is a college professor. She just can't. "Willlllllllllll!"
"What?" my brother said, large, hairy, tired, cantankerous and burnt.
"I can't do this." Her eye lashes would bat and would blow waves of annoying, but loving sarcasm in my brother's direction.
"Man. Why can't you do this yet? Aren't you a feminist?"
She slapped him with whatever newspaper-like roll of paper in proximity. The whole house chimed in with laughter.
"She's being ironic, Maaaan. Just help your mother, duuuuuuuuude," my father said a la Cheech. I always manage to get a joke in some how. I'd ask my brother to pick up my dry cleaning, call him Jeebs, whatever the mood called for. My mother always reaches a variety of rose, rouge and scarlet laughing at the antics of her children.
"You're ridiculous, Kore," Will said.
"That's my girl." Papa always gives me a rib breaker squeeze and a cheek kiss before he puts on his inmate orange jacket, grabs his STOP sign to goes to cross the children at Valley Road and Mount Hebron, his retiree, part-time position. Now, the refrigerator always has crayon drawings of my papa from different 6 year-olds. He knows their names. He knows their likes and who wants to be a ballerina, a doctor, a race car driver, even with a 101 degree fever and massive respiratory infection which come more frequently with years and emphysema.
When I was a girl it was different. He woke up at seven p.m. and went to work at the Post Office. He came home in the morning, slept, woke up and did it again. His eyes were red, puffy, sallow. Bed. Up. Again. Every day. Christmas. New Years. Bed. Up. Again. Again. Again.
My sisters' mother - an intelligent and beautiful, but flawed woman - started to call us up when I was approaching high school's end. She always liked to fill whoever would listen's ear with tales of her life and other large doses of extremely personal information that would be deemed inappropriate: bikini wax details, free love, etc. My mother, brother and I always found spots on the wall to stare at in an attempt to not hear any discomforting detail when she came to visit New Jersey and were forced into dinner with her via familial obligation.
As a boy in Indonesia, my papa saw his mother and sisters being abused by Japanese soldiers; he was the only boy young enough to be with the girls in his family in the POW camps. My father detests men who hurt women. He protected the girl back-up singers from his band mates as a young adult. He holds doors. He only had a father in story, my opa was murdered by the Japanese in World War II. What my father had was the stories of his 14 older siblings and their families' stories of the great love and respect my opa had for my oma.
Papa couldn't save Joelle. He did his best to protect my sisters, too.
"Kor?"
"Yes, papa."
"Are you ok? I want you to be happy, Kor Kor."
"I'm fine, papa … I'm fine, really," I'd say, head cocked to the side.
"I'm glad I retired, Kor kor. I'm here now."
"I know, papa. I know." I wandered away, eyes down. He watched me as I went.
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