Half-in, half-out, I look around at am enormous red ballroom, decorated with gold bows, balloons, and banners, and crowded with people sitting around round tables, piled mountainously high with pig offal and Peking ducks and KFC buckets, toasting one another and smoking cigarettes. In one corner, a bunch of Chinese children crowd around a giant TV screen […] it’s playing Jaws […]
At floor height, I see people I recognize […] My grandmother and my grandfather. The other grandmother and grandfather, My great-great-aunt, eye blinded, world-weary. […] My four uncles, dressed in tuxedos, patting one another on the back and smoking so hard like it’s still the eighties. My father, sitting next to them […]
Then I spot my mother […] She sees me at the same time I see her. Coming over, she bends down and pulls me through the mouse door […]