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Authors: David Henry Hwang

Trying to Find Chinatown: The Selected Plays of David Henry Hwang (4 page)

BOOK: Trying to Find Chinatown: The Selected Plays of David Henry Hwang
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STEVE: Cadillac. Cadillac is mine.
DALE: Limousine... Limousine is yours?
STEVE: Yes, yes. Limousine.
(Pause.)
 
DALE
(To Grace)
: You wanna ride in that black thing? People will think we’re dead.
GRACE: It does have more room.
DALE: Well, it has to. It’s built for passengers who can’t bend.
GRACE: And the driver
is
expensive.
DALE: He could go home—save all that money.
GRACE: Well, I don’t know. You decide.
DALE
(To Steve)
: Look, we take my car, savvy?
STEVE: Please—drive my car.
DALE: I’m not trying to be unreasonable or anything.
STEVE: My car—just outside.
DALE: I know where it is, I just don’t know why it is.
GRACE: Steve’s father manufactures souvenirs in Hong Kong.
DALE
(To Steve)
: Oh, and that’s how you manage that out there, huh?—from thousands of aluminum Buddhas and striptease pens.
GRACE: Well, he can’t drive and he has the money—
DALE
(To Grace)
: I mean, wouldn’t you just feel filthy?
GRACE:—so it’s easier for him.
DALE: Getting out of a limo in the middle of Westwood? People staring, thinking we’re from SC? Wouldn’t you feel like dirt?
GRACE: It doesn’t matter to either way to me.
(Pause.)
 
DALE: Where’s your social conscience?
GRACE: Look—I have an idea. Why don’t we just stay here.
STEVE: We stay here to eat?
GRACE: No one from the restaurant will bother us, and we can bring stuff in from the kitchen.
STEVE: I ask you to go out.
DALE: Look, Grace, I can’t put ya out like that.
GRACE
(To Dale)
: It’s no problem, really. It should be fun.
(To Steve)
Since there are three of us—
DALE: Fun?
GRACE
(To Steve)
:—it is easier to eat here.
DALE: How can it be fun? It’s cheaper.
STEVE: Does not seem right.
GRACE: I mean, unless our restaurant isn’t nice enough.
DALE: No, no—that’s not it.
STEVE
(Watching Dale)
: No—this place, very nice.
GRACE: Are you sure?
DALE: Yeah. Sure.
STEVE
(Imitating Dale)
: Yeah. Sure.
DALE: Do you have... uh—those burrito things?
GRACE:
Moo-shoo?
DALE: Yeah, that.
GRACE: Yeah.
DALE: And black mushrooms.
GRACE: Sure.
DALE: And sea cucumber?
STEVE: Do you have
bing
?
(Pause.)
 
GRACE: Look, Dad and Russ and some of the others are gonna be setting up pretty soon, so let’s get our place ready, okay?
DALE: Okay. Need any help?
GRACE: Well, yeah. That’s what I just said.
DALE: Oh, right. I thought maybe you were just being polite.
GRACE: Yeah. Meet me in the kitchen.
DALE: Are you sure your dad won’t mind?
GRACE: What?
DALE: Cooking for us.
GRACE: Oh, it’s okay. He’ll cook for anybody.
(Grace exits. Silence.)
 
DALE: So, how do you like America?
STEVE: Very nice.
DALE: “Very nice.” Good, colorful, Hong Kong English. English—how much of it you got down, anyway?
STEVE: Please repeat?
DALE: English—you speak how much?
STEVE: Oh—very little.
DALE: Honest.
(Pause)
You feel like you’re an American? Don’t tell me. Lemme guess. Your father.
(He switches into a mock Hong Kong accent)
Your fad-dah tink he sending you here so you get yo’ M.B.A., den go back and covuh da world wit’ trinkets and beads. Diversify. Franchise. Sell—ah—Hong Kong X-ray glasses at tourist shop at Buckingham Palace. You know—ah—“See da Queen”?
(Switches back to American accent)
He’s hoping your American education’s gonna create an empire of defective goods and breakable merchandise. Like those little cameras with the slides inside? I bought one at Disneyland once and it ended up having pictures of Hong Kong in it. You know how shitty it is to expect the Magic Kingdom and wind up with the skyline of Kowloon? Part of your dad’s plan, I’m sure. But you’re gonna double-cross him. Coming to America, you’re gonna jump the boat. You’re gonna decide you like us. Yeah—you’re gonna like having fifteen theatres in three blocks, you’re gonna like West Hollywood and Newport Beach. You’re gonna decide to become an American. Yeah, don’t deny it—it happens to the best of us. You can’t hold out—you’re no different. You won’t even know it’s coming before it has you. Before you’re trying real hard to be just like the rest of us—go dinner, go movie, go motel, bang-bang. And when your father writes you that do-it-yourself acupuncture sales are down, you’ll throw that letter in the basket and burn it in your brain. And you’ll write that you’re gonna live in Monterey Park a few years before going back home—and you’ll get your green card—and you’ll build up a nice little stockbroker’s business and have a few American kids before your dad realizes what’s happened and dies, his hopes reduced to a few chattering teeth and a pack of pornographic playing cards. Yeah—great things come to the U.S. out of Hong Kong.
(Steve lights a cigarette, blows smoke, stands.)
 
STEVE: Such as your parents?
(Steve turns on the radio. Blackout.)
 
Scene Two
 
Lights up on Dale and Steve eating. It is a few minutes later, and food is on the table. Dale eats Chinese-style, vigorously shoveling food into his mouth. Steve picks. Grace enters carrying a jar of hot sauce. Steve sees her.
 
STEVE
(To Grace)
: After eating, you like to go dance?
DALE
(Face in bowl)
: No, thanks. I think we’d be conspicuous.
STEVE
(To Grace)
: Like to go dance?
GRACE: Perhaps. We’ll see.
DALE
(To Steve)
: Wait a minute. Hold on. How can you just...? I’m here, too, you know. Don’t forget I exist just ’cause you can’t understand me.
STEVE: Please repeat?
DALE: I get better communication from my fish. Look, we go see movie. Three here, see? One, two, three. Three can see movie. Only two can dance.
GRACE: True, but...
DALE
(To Grace)
: That would really be a screw, you know? You invite me down here, you don’t have anyone for me to go out with, but you decide to go dancing.
GRACE: Dale, I understand.
DALE: Understand? That would really be a screw.
(To Steve)
Look, if you wanna dance, go find yourself some nice FOB partner.
STEVE: “FOB”? Has what meaning?
GRACE: Dale...
DALE: F-O-B. Fresh Off the Boat. FOB.
GRACE: Dale, I agree.
DALE: See, we both agree.
(To Grace)
He’s a pretty prime example, isn’t he? All those foreign students—
GRACE: I mean, I agree about going dancing.
DALE:—go swimming in their underwear and everything—what?
GRACE
(To Steve)
: Please understand. This is not the right time for dancing.
STEVE: Okay.
DALE: “Okay.” It’s okay when
she
says it’s okay.
STEVE
(To Dale)
: “Fresh Off Boat” has what meaning?
(Pause.)
 
DALE
(To Grace)
: Did you ever hear about Dad his first year in the U.S.?
GRACE: Dale, he wants to know...
DALE: Well, Gung Gung was pretty rich back then, so Dad must’ve been a pretty disgusting... one, too. You know, his first year here, he spent, like thirteen thousand dollars. And that was back ’round 1950.
GRACE: Well, Mom never got anything.
STEVE: FOB means what?
DALE: That’s probably ’cause women didn’t get anything back then. Anyway, he bought himself a new car—all kinds of stuff, I guess. But then Gung Gung went bankrupt, so Dad had to work.
GRACE: And Mom starved.
DALE: Couldn’t hold down a job. Wasn’t used to taking orders from anyone.
GRACE: Mom was used to taking orders from everyone.
STEVE: Please explain this meaning.
DALE: Got fired from job after job. Something like fifteen in a year. He’d just walk in the front door and out the back, practically.
GRACE: Well, at least he had a choice of doors. At least he was educated.
STEVE
(To Dale)
: Excuse!
DALE: Huh?
GRACE: He was educated. Here. In America. When Mom came over, she couldn’t just quit ’cause she was mad at her employer. It was work or starve.
DALE: Well, Dad had some pretty lousy jobs, too.
STEVE
(To Dale)
: Explain, please!
GRACE: Do you know what it’s like to work eighty hours a week just to feed yourself?
DALE: Do you?
STEVE: Dale!
DALE
(To Steve)
: It means you. You know how, if you go to a fish store or something, they have the stuff that just came in that day? Well, so have you.
STEVE: I do not understand.
DALE: Forget it. That’s part of what makes you one.
(Pause.)
 
STEVE
(Picking up hot sauce, to Dale)
: Hot. You want some?
(Pause.)
 
DALE: Well, yeah. Okay. Sure.
(Steve puts hot sauce on Dale’s food.)
 
Hey, isn’t that kinda a lot?
GRACE: See, Steve’s family comes from Shanghai.
DALE: Hmmmm. Well, I’ll try it.
(He takes a gulp, then puts down his food)
GRACE: I think perhaps that was too much for him.
DALE: No.
GRACE: Want some water?
DALE: Yes.
(Grace exits.)
You like hot sauce? You like your food hot? All right—here.
(He dumps the contents of the jar on Steve’s plate, stirs)
Fucking savage. Don’t you ever worry about your intestines falling out?
 
 
(Grace enters, gives water to Dale. Steve sits, shocked.)
 
Thanks. FOBs can eat anything, huh? They’re specially trained. Helps maintain the characteristic greasy look.
 
(Steve, cautiously, beings to eat his food.)
 
What—? Look, Grace, he’s eating that! He’s amazing!
 
A freak! What a cannibal!
GRACE
(Taking Dale’s plate)
: Want me to throw yours out?
DALE
(Snatching it back)
: Huh? No. No, I can eat it.
(Dale and Steve stare at each other across the table. In unison, they pick up as large a glob of food as possible, stuff it into their mouths. They cough and choke. They rest, repeat the face-off a second time. They continue in silent pain. Grace, who has been watching this, speaks to the audience:)
 
GRACE: Yeah. It’s tough trying to live in Chinatown. But it’s tough trying to live in Torrance, too. It’s true. I don’t like being alone. You know, when Mom could finally bring me to the U.S., I was already ten. But I never studied my English very hard in Taiwan, so I got moved back to the second grade. There were a few Chinese girls in the fourth grade, but they were American-born, so they wouldn’t even talk to me. They’d just stay with themselves and compare how much clothes they all had, and make fun of the way we all talked. I figured I had a better chance of getting in with the white kids than with them, so in junior high, I started bleaching my hair and hanging out at the beach—you know, Chinese hair looks pretty lousy when you bleach it. After a while, I knew what beach was gonna be good on any given day, and I could tell who was coming just by his van. But the American-born Chinese, it didn’t matter to them. They just giggled and went to their own dances. Until my senior year in high school—that’s how long it took for me to get over this whole thing. One night I took Dad’s car and drove on Hollywood Boulevard, all the way from downtown to Beverly Hills, then back on Sunset. I was looking and listening—all the time with the window down, just so I’d feel like I was part of the city. And that Friday, it was—I guess—I said, “I’m lonely. And I don’t like it. I don’t like being alone.” And that was all. As soon as I said it, I felt all of the breeze—it was really cool on my face—and I heard all of the radio—and the music sounded really good, you know? So I drove home.
BOOK: Trying to Find Chinatown: The Selected Plays of David Henry Hwang
10.49Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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