I glared at Mr. Yao, feeling my composure unknot. “You’re just mad that we won.”
He burst out laughing. “You think that just because you had a couple of good nights this summer, you won?” Tiny bits of tomato sauce flew from his mouth and landed on my nose.
“Dad!” Jason said again, looking panicked.
“You know nothing about running a business!” Mr. Yao said. “You’re a mere servant masquerading as a boss!”
The room went silent. I sat with Mr. Yao’s words, feeling the tangy tomatoes sour in my stomach. It got so quiet, I could hear the dinging of the crystals on the chandelier above as they lightly tapped one another.
Slowly, I put my napkin down and got up from the dinner table.
“Mia, where are you going?” Jason asked.
I ignored Jason and went to his room to get my jacket. I couldn’t believe I thought that maybe this time Mr. Yao would be different. That he might view me as an equal, a professional, his industry peer—when clearly, I had never advanced past hired help in his eyes.
Jason caught up with me as I reached the front door and followed me out to the driveway, leaving the door open behind him.
“Look, I’m sorry about what my dad said. He hasn’t been himself lately. You gotta understand, all his investments are down—”
“Good,” I said bitterly. “I hope they all tank.”
It was mean, but I didn’t care.
Jason looked down at his feet. His mom and dad called him from the dining room but he just stood there, socked feet glued to the cement, looking so tragically sad that I almost wanted to turn around and go back inside. Maybe the sweetness of his dessert would erase the bitterness of his dad’s words.
Then I remembered that I didn’t have to put up with Mr. Yao’s words anymore—that was the best part about owning the Calivista—and I kept walking.
I sat on the back staircase fuming when I got home. Lupe was right, I should have never gone over to Mr. Yao’s house. People don’t change. I heard footsteps coming my way and looked up to see José.
“You okay?” he asked gently. When I didn’t reply, José set down his tools and took a seat next to me.
“Is it Lupe?” he asked. “Something happen at school?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s Mr. Yao,” I said. José raised an eyebrow. I groaned and told him what happened at dinner.
José shook his head. “Lemme tell you a story,” he said.
Unlike Hank, José was a man of few words. So when he had something to say, you knew it was important. I sat up straighter in the moonlight.
“Eight years ago,” José began, “when we first came over from Mexico, my wife and I worked in the fields, picking grapes. It was very, very hard. I was always coughing, because, you know, the grapes, there were many, many bugs, and they had to spray that … that … what you call that?” He paused, trying to describe with his hands.
“Pesticide?” I guessed.
“Sí, pesticide,” José said, shuddering at the memory. “It was very bad for people. I wanted to find a better job, but my wife, she wanted to stay. She was scared. Lupe was very young then. Only three or four. My wife carried her on her back when she worked.”
I smiled at the thought of little Lupe. She had never told me the story of her parents working in the fields when they first came.
“I didn’t want Lupe smelling the pesticide, so I convinced my wife to quit and go to the city. Everybody said, ‘José, you crazy. You not gonna find a job. You dreamin’.’ But you know what?” José asked with a grin. “I found a job.”
“Fixing the cable?” I asked.
“No, that was later. First, I found a job as a pizza boy,” he said.
I smiled, thinking that sounded like a marvelous job, kneading the dough, throwing it in the air. But José said it wasn’t fun at all, it was dangerous.
“Dangerous?” I asked.
“The pizza delivery place had a twenty-minute guarantee,” he explained. “We will get your pizza to your house in twenty minutes, still hot, or your money back.”
My eyes widened. That wasn’t a lot of time.
“The white guys, they took the addresses that were close by,” he said. “But I got the ones far away, super far away, way on the other side of town. No one can do it in twenty minutes.”
“So what’d you do?”
“I tried,” he said. I pictured José speeding down the city streets in his shaky truck with a piping hot pizza next to him. “Only thing we can do as immigrants is try, right?” he asked.
I nodded. “Right,” I said. “And what happened if you didn’t make it?”
“Then free pizza for the customer, and I must pay,” he said. “I paid for many, many pizzas because I was five minutes late. One time, it was raining and I was driving very fast, and I nearly crashed.”
I put my hands to my mouth and gasped.
“So I decided to get a better job. But it was not easy. Again, everybody told me, ‘José, you not goin’ get better job. You no skills,’ ” José said. He looked down at his tools and took a deep breath. “So I learned skills. I learned to fix the cable.”
“Was that hard?” I asked him.
José nodded. “Oh, yeah. My first customer, I screwed up. I had to buy the guy a brand-new TV and pay for a professional to come fix it.”
José winced, like even now, years later, it hurt. I thought of all the refunds I had to give our customers last year. They still hurt too.
Then his face brightened. “But I didn’t give up. I kept practicing till I got it. And now I can fix any cable. And nobody can deny it, not even Yao.”
I giggled, wishing an essay was like the cable, undeniable if it was good and working.
“I’ve known Yao a long time. Don’t let his words get you down. You just have to keep proving him wrong.”
“Thanks,” I said. As he gathered up his tools, I looked over at him curiously and asked him a question that had been on my mind even before Lupe told me her secret. “Hey, José, why did you and your family decide to come here in the first place?”
José put a hand to his beard and gazed up at the stars. “I came here to give a better life for my daughter. A better education. Opportunities. Freedom.”
I smiled. They were the same exact reasons my parents came here.
That night, I went to bed thinking about José and all the things he was willing to do to achieve his dreams, including racing across town with a pizza, and all the things I was going to do to achieve mine. I was determined to prove Mrs. Welch and Mr. Yao wrong.
On Saturday, my dad and I drove up the 5 Freeway toward the San Gabriel Valley in search of the shaved ice place that my dad said would bring me straight back to China. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go straight back to China. I hadn’t thought about my cousin Shen in months, which made me a little sad but mostly puzzled. He was like a brother to me growing up. Why didn’t I miss Shen as much? Maybe because now I had Lupe.
“Wait till you see it! They have everything in Monterey Park,” Dad gushed as he drove, practically giddy. “It’s full of Chinese restaurants and grocery stores—even bigger than 99 Ranch!”