Prose by Kane Lê Hồng

Edited by Cai Pasco

During these days when the bustle of university life has me occupied and stressed, I find my thoughts wandering back home – to family. A drive from my Irvine apartment to San Jose is a monotonous six hours across flat and mundane farmland. So much so that it is impractical, dangerous even, to travel back home during the academic quarter. If I’m not well rested, I could easily doze off the freeway and ride into my eternal slumber. Therefore, I find it much more practical to allow my mind to run its course on the freeway of memories and to take the nearest exit into my previous life that now seems so distant. Once there, my mind parks in full view of my old living room as I try to reminisce about how life would unfold.

It was a humble space, with the usual amount of room expected for a mobile home. There would always be a multitude of food items on our dinner table that would take up half of the eating space. Sometimes, it was shriveled old tangerines that claimed their spot in the middle of the table for days. On other occasions, it was the metal boxes of bánh pía that demanded our attention. And sometimes, a giant garlic shrimp chip bag staked its claim over the table. Yet, in this memory, the table was barren. 

The moon had shown its face for a while now, long enough for a mist of clouds to drift in, obscuring its light. During these late evenings, the neighborhood seemed to do the same, retreating into their respective homes and concealing their whispers. Not a soul walked about the streets. 

I had returned home famished after a late middle school tutoring session . With my hair fraying in all directions, I walked through the front door and sat quickly at the empty dining table. My father, who had driven me home, followed closely behind and turned into the kitchen to prepare dinner. He wore his usual black polo shirt lined with gray stripes and a pair of navy blue chinos—both kept in nearly perfect condition despite years of use. It was his day off from work, and he offered to tend to me so my mother could sleep early. From the kitchen sink, his face turned to me, making visible the etched lines that spelled its ruggedness.

“Today is going to be a simple meal, alright? We have salted duck eggs and brussel sprouts in the fridge,” he said in Vietnamese. His dark brown eyes looked to me for approval, softening his stern face with the warmth of an unspoken compassion. My parents hadn’t gone grocery shopping for the week, and I could tell there was a tinge of guilt in the statement. 

“It’s okay,” I replied. I was starved and I would have accepted anything. 

He set to work immediately. After meticulously scrubbing and then boiling the brussel sprouts, he moved on to the rice with the same care. He then took out four salted duck eggs from the refrigerator and placed them into the rice cooker to warm. The movements were deliberate. In less than fifteen minutes, the food was ready. With our chopsticks, we picked mouthfuls of rice and egg into our mouths. The boiled brussel sprouts were a palette cleanser against the egg’s intense saltiness. The food was minimal, but it was enough. 

My father gave a muddled chuckle as he stuffed himself, “Sometimes you need a simple meal to appreciate what you have right?” I nodded. “I remember when I was your age. I didn’t have anything. I remember my friends and I would have to share one egg and a cucumber for dinner!”

“Mhm,” I replied, my face in the bowl. I have listened to this story numerous times. He always seems to forget that he’s told the same stories and tonight was no different. 

“We would crack the egg in a bowl and whisk it so hard and so long that bubbles would form in the mixture,” he continued. “Then, once we poured it into a pan, the egg would foam up so large that it looked like it was enough for a whole group of people. It was just one egg but we could imagine it was five!” He looked at the bowl he had in his hands with that same appreciation and smiled. He savored every grain as if it were his last. 

I felt safe in the calm of it all. Nothing could have disturbed our enjoyment of the meal that night. I often find myself yearning for that feeling again — when my world was smaller, confined to the walls of my family home. In that distant place, my father and I stuffed our souls over the dinner table for an eternity. He would keep telling his stories and I would listen. I wonder if I’ll ever experience that sense of safety again. I dread that I never will. 

---

The more I articulate my memories onto these pages, the more I realize the distinction between present and past is rather brittle. During hours of introspection, they become two lanes of the same freeway, distinguished merely by a dotted line. At any moment, I may slip into the opposing lane and traverse it to the outer rim of my consciousness. Without anyone else driving, I wouldn’t be able to distinguish which lane leads where. I simply allow them both to blur together as the singular highway of my soul. At that moment, I am nothing more than past and present. 

The past cannot exist without a present and the present cannot exist without a past to rest on. In many ways, that is how I see my relationship with my father, Chiến Hồng. When I am away from home, I am compelled to reflect on the wounds that we’ve inflicted on each other, wounds that festered throughout my teenage years like a poison trickling through our veins. Miles apart, we are the scars that line our bodies – damaged yet healed. We’ve only come so far because we’ve hurt each other. We are only happy now because we were in pain before. These binaries weave in between each other, and I only wish I was able to appreciate him more when I was younger, when I was still home. 

My father owns a humble barbershop in my hometown of San Jose, California. Under the name, Kane’s Barbershop, it sits quietly on the intersection of Alum Rock and McKee Road amidst the noise of cars constantly whirring past. Beginning its service in 2002, it remained one of the core vestiges of the local East San Jose community. Being situated beside a populous high school, a myriad of apartment complexes, and blue-collar workplaces, it offered affordable and quality haircuts for innocent high schoolers and working families. Those who are acquainted with him know that it was named after his first-born son.

My father never wanted to be a barber; he had an affinity for architecture. I remember watching him draw intricate designs for European buildings, outlining them on sheets of paper over the dinner table. I could tell he had an eye for it. During his time working at a local manufacturing company, he would even steal unused sheet metal, bending and cutting them to form detailed carriages and helicopters from his memories of living in Vietnam. My father could envision the world with all its possibilities and shape it to his will. However, he had left any semblance of that dream behind when he decided to drop out of high school to make a living as a barber in Vietnam. He needed to take care of his family, and it was a decision out of necessity, nothing more and nothing less. Once he immigrated to San Jose, he got to work as a full-time barber and started his own business. Working seven days a week, he built the shop from the ground up. The bright blue logo reading “Kane’s Barbershop” across the long window pane was his design. The six barber chairs were installed with his back. The aqua-blue walls were painted with his hands. That conviction and work ethic brought us out of crippling poverty. I will always be grateful for that. Down the hallway of chairs sits a glass display of all those metal artifacts. They are the possibilities that will never escape the realm of his vast imagination, a reminder of his sacrifice. My father named the barbershop right after I was born. It was proof that none of this was for himself. It was implied that he believed in the idea of “Kane”. He believed that despite the difficulties of starting a business, I would be worth it. I struggle with believing if I truly am. 

First and foremost, as a barber’s child, I do not know anyone else who used to cry more than I did. My father would give me the nickname “Khốc Lộc” to characterize how prone I was to bursting into tears while getting a haircut. In my defense, everything about it was scary. The hallway to the barber chair was like walking up onto a stage to perform for a crowd. I remember feeling the glaring eyes of waiting customers as I trekked down to my father. Once on stage, my father would brandish his sleek maroon razor and mercilessly shave my head. I remember feeling every prickle of hair being pulled from me as if tiny needles were poking at my scalp. I would cry through the whole performance and in my mind, the crowd roared with laughter at me. 

From my adolescence up until I left for college, I’ve had my fair share of awkward haircuts. I simply never quite found something that felt natural to me. My hair was always too straight to experiment with styles that involved volume and too rigid to mold without specific hair products. Conceding to its vices, I would opt for ones that required the least amount of effort to maintain, and it lead to phases of uneven bangs or strange comb-overs.

Every time I sat on that barber chair, my father would let out a resigned sigh. “Tóc của con khó cắt quá,” he would say, pushing up his glasses and shaking his head in frustration. “Just go spikey. Better than this,” he would continue.

He never liked the styles I chose and I never let him choose them. There is an unspoken rule among children of Vietnamese hair stylists that if your parents like your haircut, it’s more than likely ugly. He preferred my hair to be drenched in shiny gels and shaped into a bush of spikes like a 2000s rockstar. To him, the spikiness was a hallmark of masculine attraction. In my middle school years, I embarrassingly complied. During a class field trip to Disneyland, my father packed me a plastic bag of  signature glossy gel for me to use. Trusting my father’s advice and wanting to impress my classmates, I lathered my hands with the substance in the hotel restroom. With it, I meticulously slicked my bangs upward so that my hair stood up on its own. My friend, Jon, walked into the bathroom and I asked him how I looked. 

“Uhhh…” He paused, eyes wide open. “It looks… good.” 

In hindsight, I should have noticed his hesitation. It would have saved me the embarrassment of walking into the Disney resort looking like a combed porcupine. That was the last time I listened to my father’s hair advice. 

I believe the way my father wanted to cut and shape my hair mirrored the way he influenced my life. I think he wanted “Kane” to live up to the legacy of hard work that was Kane’s Barbershop Kane’s Barbershop’s. He wanted an obedient son, someone good enough to receive the wealth of opportunities that he never got. He saw a wealthy computer engineer, an eloquent lawyer, or a respected government official in me. He wanted to know that the blood and sweat put into the barbershop would surmount a legacy beyond his own. And for the longest time, I was angry at him for that. Out of spite, I did everything I could to carve my own path. In high school, I began toying with cameras to show him that I would much rather pursue a career in the arts than the conventions he expected. I immaturely waved and taunted my good grades as leverage to spite his expectations. 

To my father’s horror, I got myself into a romantic relationship with a girl from a neighboring school. With her long deathly black hair and rebellious eyes, she represented all the anger I had for my father’s expectations. She, too, had issues with her mother at home. I would spend nights locked up in my bedroom calling her, listening along as she berated her. 

“Shut the fuck up, you bitch,” she would say to her mother with a voice of pure vitriol. 

From a distant hallway, her mother would stop towards her room and fire back at the top of her lungs, “Don’t disrespect me, you bitch!” Watching their interactions, I was horrified. There would be times when my girlfriend espoused the same hatred towards me. I grew used to hearing the words “I fucking hate you” and “You’re so stupid.” Hearing my sobs from the hallway, my father would often knock on the door but I wouldn’t let him in. The constant abuse was more bearable than the mountain of expectations that stood outside my room. At the time, anything was better than that. 

During one of these nights, our relationship descended into another series of arguments. Her relationship with her mother had worsened and she began smoking cigarettes as an emotional outlet. We sat detached on opposite sides of a Facetime call arguing about her new addiction. We hounded each other like wolves over a carcass, fighting for dominance through a screen that seemed to do nothing but prevent us from clawing at each other. Realizing it was futile, I hung up and stormed into the dining room. My father, dressed in a dirty white shirt and a pair of my old basketball shorts, sat alone at the dinner table, reading a Vietnamese news article. By then, his short prickly hair started to gray from stress and creases outlined the corners of his eyes. He noticed my tears and quickly turned his attention to me, removing his glasses. 

“What’s wrong?” He said with a saddened expression.

“Nothing,” I said. 

“I don’t like you locking the door like that,” he said in Vietnamese. I didn’t reply. “You have to take care of yourself.” He took off his glasses and looked away from his computer and at me. 

”I am taking care of myself. She just needed my help.” I sat down at the end of the table, facing his expecting eyes.

“You’re staying up late every day,” he said. 

I knew he was right but I didn’t want to admit it. “You don’t understand, Dad. I love her. I want us to go far.”

“We are the ones who will be with you forever, not her.”

I didn’t want to believe that. My hands were shaking and I wanted to direct all my anger towards him, “You are the one that messed me up, Dad.” I kept going. “Why can’t you let me live my life? I’m a good student. I have good grades. I do everything you want. You have no idea what it’s like.” 

He stared at me blankly, then let out a chuckle. “Fine. Do what you want.” He rubbed his fingers across his forehead looking down. 

I grew silent, the disappointment setting in. “I…”

“Đi ra!” His voice was final. I became aware of how our argument broke the silence of the night. 

I slowly got up from the table and locked myself in my room. The shame was immediate and I wrestled with it for the rest of the night. 

Life went on after that argument. My father still provided everything for me. He still drove me to school, cut my hair, and ate with me at the dinner table. Even after I broke up with my girlfriend, he was there to provide bowls of fruit during the late nights to console me. Despite it all, we stopped talking. He stopped telling his stories even though I yearned to listen. It was as if he locked himself in his heart and I gave up the right to own a key. 

Looking back, I know how much it hurt him that I set our relationship in flames. In truth, all I wanted to hear was an “I love you”. Despite all the stories he would tell, that was the one thing he refused to say. At a time of such vulnerability in my life, I needed that reassurance. 

---

Along the highway of memories, my mind wanders one last time. The wasteland of arguments and broken expectations lay close behind me taking up deathly space in my consciousness. The large swaths of land blur into streaks of light for one last stop. The car slows down and the lights quickly become the headlights of other vehicles driving down Alum Rock Road. I was driving my father to the barbershop for my final haircut before leaving for university. My hair had grown shaggy leading up to the day of the move-out. I hoped to get it cut short so that I wouldn’t have to visit a barber for a while once there. I remembered it was a full moon then as we walked up to the storefront. It was clear of looming clouds and its brilliance provided a soft veil of light over the black sky. Beside us was the long-standing Salvadorian restaurant, still open with a few families enjoying their last meal of the day under the lit patio. My father unlocked the shop door and the bright LED lights flipped on. I took a deep breath and looked all around the place, making sure to take it all in before leaving it for a long time. I stared at the long wall mirror that stretched from the shop entrance to the cash register. Our reflections stared back and, for the first time in a while, I took a hard look at my father. His hair had since grayed with age and slight wrinkles accentuated his eye bags from long hours of hair cutting. I knew too well that he was tired of being a barber, and his face began to show it. Despite it all, his eyes always looked with determination at his next task. We hovered over his barber station where his razors were organized neatly across the tabletop. A picture of me in red overalls and sunglasses kept the workstation from ever feeling too sterile. After all, one could not own a family barbershop without hanging up embarrassing photos of their children for the entire world to see. Just like any other haircut, he sat me down on the chair and swung over his maroon barber bib over my body. 

“Con muốn cắt như thế nào?” he asked. 

“I’ll get a taper fade as usual,” I said. He let out one of his signature sighs. It never gets old, I thought.

“You should get something else, man.” 

“I’m good, Dad,” I replied. 

As he raised his razor toward my hair, I began to attune myself to the mundanity of the electronic buzzing. That was when I began to hear it. At first, there were subtle sounds of a rhythmic beat floating in the air. I realized that the nightclub that shared the same wall as us awakened. The music changed and the pace quickened in a series of synthetic rhythms. My father recognized it immediately and began swaying to it. 

Lyrics wafted in like a mist. It was nearly indescribable, the way he breathed it all, how it opened something within. It was as if his body took in the music, accepted it, and turned it into something intangible. The bright synths and uplifting voice carried a soothing warmth into the atmosphere and he surrendered his entire body to it. Despite being constricted to the seat, I couldn’t help but tap my fingers. Eventually, I forgot he was cutting my hair at all. Then, the chorus came and I realized what it all was:

I just called to say I love you 

I just called to say how much I care 

The music became his own and he shared it aloud. I allowed the tender lyrics to caress my skin and open me up. Sitting there, barber to patron, father to son, our souls touched. He took a step to my right and I swayed my head to follow his lead. The comb quickly made an entrance and brushed against my hair. It made way for the razor to perform its routine—sliding across the comb prongs and sending hair follicles twirling to the floor. My father stepped behind and I tilted down anticipating it. Synchronized to the beat, his hands gracefully maneuvered the razor up and down the back of my head. Then, he swayed his way to my left and performed his routine again. Touch – step, step – touch. With every movement, we become more intertwined in the dance. His past became my past. His present became my present. I could see, for the first time, what he always wanted to say to me:

I just called to say I love you

And I mean it from the bottom of my heart

The music connected both of us, weaving our love within the threads of rhythm and chorus. I began to remember all the paths that we’ve walked together as a family and I became overwhelmed by the unwavering affection of it all. I could see the source of everything my father believed in. The struggle, the pain, the anger, the legacy. All of it led back to one singular emotion: that my father loved me. 

Before I knew it, it was over and my father finished his cadenza. He held up the mirror for me to check the taper and I nodded with content. Not too short but enough to get my hair out of the way. I smiled in the mirror and my father smiled back.

“How is it?” he said.

“It’s good. Thank you, Dad,” I replied. He let out his universal chuckle. 

“Alright, boy. Go sweep for me.” 

I walked behind the cash register, grabbing the shop broom. The same broom that has sat there for as long as I could remember. I began sweeping up my fallen hair to the trash can, trying my best to restore the floor to its best condition. 

“Hey, Dad?” I asked. “What was that song?”

“You don’t know Stevie Wonder?” he replied nonchalantly.

We listened to that song on the road back. The night air was far from silent as my father hummed its tune all the way home. Despite the dimmed roads, we looked ahead toward our future that had yet to come.