Lee Huang

Julian Ibarra

I used to like to tell people that I’m your average small-town boy who grew up right with
American pride. But now, I tell people two more things: for one, I’m a grandfather now, after the
birth of my first grandson just six months ago. Two, I’m a man who has realized the importance
of considering new perspectives.
Most people nod when I tell them about my grandson.
“That’s nice,” they say, and then ask, “What’s his name?”
But the line about perspective always furrows their eyebrows.
“What do you mean?” they ask me.

For as long as I can remember, I never considered myself to be one who assumed
anything. I thought of myself as a person who took things as I found them, never presuming
anything to be good or bad before I had fully examined it, and instead having an open mind.
Which, in retrospect, was ironic: I was ​presuming​ an open mind of myself, and did so for over
sixty years.
I realized this was not the case when I met Lee Huang. I guess it wasn’t anything much.
Just an interaction. Or a culminating interaction after many almost-interactions. But then again,
it taught me something about my own assumptions.
When I first spotted him, he was hunched over a can of blue paint, sweating buckets. His
store--where the DeMontes’ store used to be--was right next to mine, and in fact it had remained
vacant for so long that I was astonished when I saw him painting its front windows. It wasn’t his
store, of course, it was his father’s. ​Huang’s Asian Market​, he was painting, ​Grand Opening
Soon.
As I poked my head out of my shop door, he seemed to bow his head ever so slightly in
a subordinate manner. He didn’t make eye contact with me. And neither of us spoke.
A day later, the same thing happened. I spotted him as I was walking up the block to my
store in the morning, and he was sitting outside on an upturned paint bucket, digging around in
a plastic bag to find the paintbrush to be used for the gloss of his store’s door. This time, we
made eye contact for a split second, but he quickly looked down, as if ashamed of looking
directly at me for even a split second.
This went on, and repeated. And repeated. And repeated. Before long, ​Huang's Asian
Market h ​ ad been open for two months and I had not said a word to the boy. It was like a certain
tension had been wrought between us: I knew he was afraid of me, but I was afraid to break his
fear. Every time I saw him, I’d think to myself, ​say something, ​but nothing came out. Perhaps it
was because I subconsciously enjoyed watching that fear, exploiting that fear. Maybe it was the
fact he and his family didn’t seem to fully belong on the street--that they were an outlier of sorts
from the denizens of the block. Or maybe it was because I was just like all the other storemen of
Main Street, indifferent and not caring about something that wasn’t an immediate personal
threat.

Finally, he initiated it. One day, after a pleasant drizzle, the boy was outside, sitting on a
bucket again, cleaning the windows of the store. I had closed up for the day, but I knew the
Huangs would be open for another couple hours, as per usual. After locking the door, I adjusted
my gaze downward so as to brace myself for the split second glance we’d share at each other.
Suddenly, the boy spoke:
“Sir,” he said, quietly.
I was stunned. Was he talking--to me?
“Sir,” he said again, this time looking directly at me.
“I-I’m sorry, sir,” he said after an awkward pause. “I’m Lee, Lee Huang. I never
introduced myself.”
Looking back, my mouth was probably wide open. All this time, I had never heard him
speak a word, and I had expected him to share the accent of his parents--a thick Chinese
accent that seemed to blend well with the waving cat on their store’s front counter and that lofty
aroma of steamed pork buns that always floated down the block. But Lee had no accent. He
sounded like he was just another midwestern kid. Straight english, perfect, no mistakes.
I was amazed. For two months, I had presumed that this young man was just like his
father. Sensible, prudent maybe, but undoubtedly foreign. Maybe I never said a word to him for
fear of having to translate one of my American phrases into his Chinese. Maybe I never said a
word to him out of a predisposed dislike of his family’s seemingly abnormal presence in my
town.
He was calling out for a fifth time, walking closer now:
“Sir?” he asked. “Sir, can you hear me?”
I snapped out my trance, realizing what a mistake I had made.
“I can hear you, loud and clear, son,” I said, smiling at him for the first time. “I’m sorry.
I’m just--I space out sometimes when I realize things.”
He nodded, as if to show his understanding.
“Well, Lee,” I said, stretching my hand out, “I’m Todd. Todd Varue.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Varue,” he said, shaking my hand.
My eyes darted around for something to talk about, maybe something to fill the moment
where I could think of nothing except the sheer silence for the last two months. I opened my
mouth but there was nothing to say. Finally, I closed my mouth and locked eyes with him for
several seconds.
“Well, Lee. If you ever need anything, let me know. My door’s always open.”
“Thank you, Mr. Varue.”
I smiled, nodded, and then proceeded along the sidewalk, but then turned back after a
few steps, to find Lee watching my departure.
“Lee,” I said. “Call me Todd. You’re part of the block.”
I considered adding a point about the stiffness or formality of calling people Mister and
Missus and using only their last names, but I turned away from him, continuing to walk down the
sidewalk. A light drizzle had started again, and I had no umbrella. But it was okay, because the
little raindrops felt nice on my skin. I was smiling to myself, because I had realized something,
something about the boy, Lee, of course, but also something about myself. About my
assumptions and my own fears.

And so I tell this story to people, and not everyone gets it. Some people segway into the
talk about Chinese factories and how they’re taking over American labor when I mention my
initial observations of the Huang family. Others just seem puzzled, as if what I’m saying is
completely beyond them.
But that’s okay. I understand--it’s a small story. An interaction, that’s it. But some
understand the reason why I tell it, and if at least some people get it, the story still counts.
These days, Lee comes over to my store when he’s not busy and we talk about all sorts
of things. American things. Baseball, Hollywood, his life at school. Chinese things, too, because
he knows he can talk about whatever he wants around me.
One of these days I’ll tell him about what I had thought of him before meeting him for the
first time. ‘Cause I owe it to him. He gave me a perspective on life whether he intended to or
not, and it was a perspective that has helped me to evaluate myself, a small-town boy with pride
for my country and the people who make it special.