This Jade World by Ira Sukrungruang

Author:Ira Sukrungruang [Sukrungruang, Ira]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000 Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs
Publisher: Nebraska

Fortune

When my father met my mother, it was his mole that attracted her. His mole was a prominent focal point, and when he didn’t shave, it had fine fuzz that looked like a burying tick. But then, my father’s mole was attractive, like super model Cindy Crawford, the thing that brought your attention to his face and eyes and hair. My father was handsome; it was easy to see how women fell for him. It was all because of that mole.

My father and mother shared a mutual friend, who was having a party at her new home in Orland Park, a suburb of Chicago. This was the first time they would meet, and my father and his mole spent the night wooing my mother.

Since she’d immigrated to America in 1968, my mother rarely had the attention of a man, except for the doctors she worked with at Englewood Hospital, who complained about her English. She spent most her time in the nurses’ dorm with Sumon—Aunty Sue—whom she met when she first arrived, the two of them becoming fast friends, confiding hopes and dreams, homesickness and fears. What my mother didn’t tell my aunt was she secretly yearned for a man to take her out of the crumbling inner-city dorm and into a house where she could raise children. Her younger sisters in Thailand were married and had kids. They sent photos and letters written on thin blue airmail stationary, telling my mother about their smart and obedient children. At the end of each letter, her sisters asked about the prospects in my mother’s life.

Here was my father with his mole.

Here was my father with his mole and smile.

She didn’t know anything about him. Not many did. She didn’t know he had been married once before. She didn’t know about the daughter he left in Thailand to pursue American dreams. She didn’t know he was in the country illegally, working at some steel factory, fleeing immigration officers on more than one occasion. My father was a “Robin Hood,” a Thai term for being in a foreign country illegally. No one knew how he arrived, where he stayed, and what he did. Surrounding him was mystery, and it was this mystery that drew people in.

“Who is that man?” my mother asked her friend.

“A friend.”

“Where does he come from?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you know him?”

“I don’t remember,” her friend said.

That evening, my mother went against her caution. She allowed herself to enjoy the company of this man with a mole, who possessed a startling high-pitched laugh that made her blush.

They sat by the fireplace, the fire warming their backs, plates of food on their knees. My mother picked at grains of jasmine rice. My father spoke about his youth in Thailand. He was endless with stories. He was a boxing champ. He owned a VW car dealership. He managed a hotel. Stories I would hear, too, when I came into being, stories I was not sure were true. It didn’t matter. Love was happening.

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