In the kitchen of the Rodehouse at the Rodeway Inn, I start at the bottom of the food chain: dishwasher. It’s challenging work, about as glamorous as it sounds, and I go home smelling of leftover steak, burgers, pizza, and quesadillas. We have to move quickly
during the dinner rush, tossing the large, plastic dishwashing tray onto the ever-in-motion dishwashing assembly line and then filling it up rapidly with the plates, bowls, spoons, forks, and knives before they enter the carwash-like tunnel. When they emerge from the other side, the contents theoretically cleaned and sterilized, we separate the various silverware and flatware and place them into their proper places. We move especially quickly during this phase, as the items are scalding hot, and to hold anything for more than a second is to risk second-degree burns to our tender fingertips.
The work has its moments of fun and camaraderie, as we work in teams of two.
Supposedly, we are to manually spray down the dishware and cutlery to rid them of stubborn grime, grease, and food residue. However, we take a twisted pride and joy in doing only a cursory spray-down and then trying to jam as much as we can into each dishwashing tray. We then delight in the results, which are mostly clean and sterilized items, but with some gnarly crud inevitably sticking to one or two things. These die-hard holdouts we simply toss back into the next batch to repeatedly run through the carwash until they appear clean to the casual observer.
One day, as I have been learning at home how to cook Chinese from Mom, I goof around with a knife and help slice up some tomatoes. Miguel is impressed, and instantly I am promoted to associate prep cook, which is merely a more sophisticated way to
describe a newbie cook. It’s also tough work and still about as glamorous as it sounds, but at least I get to go home smelling of fresh steak, burgers, pizza, and quesadilla.
As Mom has taught me to use a cai dao (traditional Chinese cleaver), I bring one to work with me each day. The cai dao is a delightfully light, multifunctional implement. With it, I can dexterously slice, dice, chop, mince, julienne, peel, pare, fillet, devein, debone, core, scoop, saw, carve, smash, and hack everything from tender chives to thick porterhouses. Miguel, Juan, and Chef Alex give the cai dao a try, and they all start reaching for it first in the kitchen. So I ask Mom to buy a few more from the one Chinese grocer in all of Phoenix, and soon we’re all Chinese chefs, cleaving away into the night as one.
Except we’re not as one. There is quite a hierarchy in the kitchen. One night, after watching us prep cooks move a tad too languidly, Chef Alex sets up a “cooks versus prep cooks” food prep competition. The first event centers on who can slice the greatest number of mushrooms within three minutes. At the drop of Alex’s chef’s hat, we all start rapidly cutting away, some with chef knives, others with cai dao, each using our individual techniques.
I am ripping through my first set of ten mushrooms, just slightly ahead of Miguel, who is the fastest of the cooks. Then I notice it. First, some ketchup out of nowhere spills onto a few of the mushroom slices. As I continue to swiftly slice away, more and more ketchup flows until I realize—
“Hey, Rich, you’ve cut open your finger, dipshit!” yells Chef Alex. “Stop, stop, stop! We don’t need your goddamn cocktail sauce all over the fucking mushrooms.”
*****
A few stitches and several days later, Tom tells me there’s an opening in the catering department in which he works. Not wishing to risk losing any of my digits and salivating at the higher pay, I jump at the chance. The catering group primarily sets up and breaks down the function rooms for meetings, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other special events, delivers room service, and serves complimentary donuts, coffee, and tea at the cabana bar early in the morning.
Of these three, delivering room service can be the most arduous and interesting. Arduous as sometimes we hoist two trays stacked with appetizers, mains, and desserts over our shoulders and carry them over the acres of parking lots to get to the various rooms, half of which we need to climb stairs to the second floor to access. Of course, the hotel provides us with carts to use, but then we have to go to one of the remote elevators for second-story deliveries. More importantly, it’s much more macho-looking to be lugging stacked trays of plates and food all over the grounds rather than pushing them on a cart.
We encounter a wide assortment of people while delivering. Most of the time, we deliver to boring everyday people: a traveling salesman, a family transiting through Phoenix. But sometimes we have more creative encounters. Like the time I am offered a tip in the form of a line of cocaine, which I politely turn down. Or another time when a statuesque amber-haired beauty answers the door in her lingerie and asks me whether I would like to share the food that she has just ordered. That offer I almost take up — until I hear a man clearing his voice behind the bathroom door.
The most intense delivery of all occurs one night when the entire catering staff is on shift. Our catering group consists of three other young guys, all a bit older than me. Of
the three, I enjoy working with Tom most, of course, as he is my friend, easy-going, and quite funny. Then there’s Scott, who is the most experienced and quite bossy. Working with him feels as carefree as working with a cantankerous bomb maker—one wrong move, and either he or the bomb blows up. However, I find working with Joe the most challenging. Joe is a rather imposing Native American boy about a year older and twenty pounds heavier than me. It seems these twenty pounds manifest themselves in the form of a large chip that he carries bitterly on his shoulder.
The hotel occupancy is maxed out, with many out-of-town competitors of a major rodeo competition staying over the weekend. Moreover, we have a large wedding taking place this evening as well. It has an open bar throughout the evening. In Arizona, or perhaps most places around the world, the only thing more dangerous than an open bar at a wedding might be if all the men fire AK-47s into the air in celebration. So we are all on high alert, and even Amy drops in from time to time to make sure everything runs smoothly.
At around 8 pm, we get an enormous order from the largest room, which serves as a hospitality suite for the rodeo participants. Scott assigns Joe and me to make the delivery, and we leave nearly an hour later with two carts loaded up with finger foods and beverages. We need to cross two large parking lots to get to the suite. In the first parking lot, we begin to hear country music with loud laughing and singing. When we pull up, the door is open, and about forty or so people at varying levels of drunken revelry fill the room. All are decked out in blue jeans, plaid shirts, and black, white, or the occasional tan cowboy hat.
When no one bothers to receive us, we walk in and start to place the food on a
large table. People that do notice us smile or tip their hat. One gal mouths a “thank you” while she dances with a man as tanned as my faux leather wallet. It looks like good people having a good time, and everyone appears friendly. Still, I can’t help but feel a bit ill-at-ease with all the cowboys and cowgirls around. This is about as Western or
American as it gets in Arizona. If this were one of Sesame Street’s “One of these things is not like the other” skits, well, any toddler could immediately point out that Joe and I do not belong.
We make our way towards the door, past bleary-eyed smiles and bobble-head nods. Joe holds the bill in his hand as we search for someone to sign it. A man in black intercepts us, smiles enthusiastically, and signs the bill.
“Y’all wanna join us?” he asks with as much gusto as his wide smile. “No, thanks, sir,” I reply. “We got a wedding to get back to.”
“Well, if y’all change your mind, come on back and ask for me, Jimmy.”
We start walking through the second parking lot when we hear a shout from behind us. We turn and see it’s Jimmy. He reaches me first and hands me a twenty-dollar bill. Then he gives another one to Joe.
“Sorry, I almost forgot your guys’ tips. Here you go, chief,” he chirps cheerfully.
An Andrew Jackson represents a significant tip in our world, especially when we already receive a fifteen percent gratuity tacked onto each room service bill. So I am quite giddy with this largess at the moment. However, Joe’s face visibly darkens.
“Who you calling Chief?” Joe asks with a sharp edge in his voice. “You. Uh, why?” Jimmy asks, appearing genuinely confused.
“You think I’m Chief Joseph or something? That I’m Geronimo or Sitting Bull?” “No, sorry, I didn’t mean that.”
“Yeah, you wanna call me Tonto next, kemosabe?” “What? No. I just meant it out of a, you know, respect.”
“Well, fuck you and the horse you rode in on, ya shitkicker.” “Hey, I ain’t no shitkicker.”
“Yeah, whatever, Tex.”
Things are getting a bit tense, so I edge in between the two.
“Sir, I really apologize,” I say. It kills me but I thrust the twenty back into his hand. “Here, take this back. Let’s all forget about it.”
Jimmy visibly relaxes a bit but pushes the twenty back to me. He says, “Nah, it’s okay. You deserve it. Just get your friend here under control.”
I turn around and see that Joe is already pushing his cart away. Even in the shadows of the night, I see his neck muscles tense and can imagine his face filled with fury.
When we arrive back, Scott and Tom are not at our station behind the function rooms now turned into one large ballroom. Instead, Miguel is there, peering through a circular window on one of the doors to the ballroom.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I ask as I try to peer into the ballroom. Miguel turns around and moves a bit away so I can take a look. There appears to be a couple of cops speaking with Amy and a man in a form-fitting black tux holding his nose, with Scott and Tom looking on.
“The father of the bride got cold-cocked by the father of the groom, who then ran off,” explains Miguel. “Things got out of control between the two sides, so Amy called
the cops.”
“Wow, and I thought things were crazy on our end,” I say, looking over at Joe. “Yeah, we heard. The cowboys called Amy just before this wedding fight broke
out. Said you’d called a guy a ‘shitkicker’ and told him to ‘fuck off.’ Why you always gotta be like that, amigo?”
“Fuck you, I ain’t your amigo,” says Joe. “And he called me ‘Chief’ first.”
“I think he meant it as a sign of respect,” I say, “kind of like boss or captain.” “Well, he didn’t call me either of those. White people think they can get away
with calling us Chiefs, Braves, Redskins. They think it’s okay for them to think of us as the ‘noble savage.’ Well, it ain’t right.”
“I think it’s because they admire Indians,” says Miguel, trying to assuage Joe’s mounting anger.
“I think the more appropriate term is ‘Native American’ these days,” I add softly. “You guys are both fucking idiots. We’re people of the ‘First Nation’ as a whole,
and we belong to proud tribes individually,” Joe says. “And to name sports teams after us is to dehumanize us. Like we’re wild animals. Panthers, Tigers, or Bears.”
“Hey, listen, they make fun of us Mexicans the most here,” Miguel says. “They wear sombreros and ponchos like they’re Pancho Villa for Halloween. They trash the words to ‘La Bamba’ while they do the white man’s two-step to it at weddings. And they all call us ‘amigo’ as if that’s our name. But I know who we truly are, and I don’t give a shit how other Americans think of us.”
“That’s because you guys call everyone ‘amigo’,” says Joe. “And, anyways, you guys never do anything about anything. You play along with it all because you’re just happy to be across the border.”
“Well, being called a ‘brave’ sure beats being called a ‘chink’ or ‘flat-face’,” I counter. I try to be simpatico and add, “I know exactly how you feel. Your blood is ours. You guys came over from Asia over the Bering Strait. You, Miguel, me…we’re all related by common blood and cause. The whites have abused all our people over the last few centuries.”
“Fuck you, we have common blood and cause,” seethes Joe. “You guys are just like the whiteys, or trying to become them, so you’re worse, like fucking off-white.
Coming to our country, looking up at the whites while looking down on us. You think
this is some goddamn ‘This land is your land, this land is my land’ campfire sing-a-long? This land is our land, stolen from us, and now you off-white motherfuckers wanna beg the whites for your scroungy-ass share.”
We all fall silent, not exactly sure what to feel or say. Here we are, three people of color in America, each dealing with bias, discrimination, and slights, both real and
perceived, in starkly different ways. I’ve tried to counter them by becoming more white, less Asian in looks, behavior, and values. Miguel, a Mexican-American, comfortable in his own skin, tries to get along by shrugging off condescending tropes and stereotypes. Lastly, Joe, a young man of the First Nation, fights for a proud race. One that originally inhabited this land but has since been relegated to team mascots and tomahawk chops at sporting events around the country. One that has faded into obscurity, invisible even to other minorities.
The most ironic part? When Amy, Scott, and Tom return, we say nothing of this to any of them. After all, they are the real Chiefs, and we are the Braves in various tones of brown. Immediately, each of us returns to scrambling in our own way to please and appease them. Meanwhile, I wonder to myself, if I cannot completely empathize with Joe, how can the average white person ever hope to do so with him or with me, for that matter?
Richard recently moved from Shanghai to Portland. He enjoys singing with his wife, learning the intricacies of pickleball with their two teens, and ensuring the two toddlers don’t dismantle the house. His work has been featured in The Write Launch, The Dillydoun Review, Prometheus Dreaming, and other publications. Richard is proud to be part of the highly selective ROOTS. WOUNDS. WORDS. community of emerging BIPOC and LGBTQ+ writers.