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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 111: Brown 322
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 118
The next week Vashti and Derek went with Lei He to 215 South Liberty Street to the Chinese Mission founded by Lena Saunders. About a hundred Chinese, mostly young men, and a nearly equivalent number of others came to the service. It was part Bible study, part English as a Second Language class. Everyone muddled their way through simple songs in ways that hurt Derek’s more trained ears. No doubt if Alfonso were here this would be pure agony for him.
As he saw dozens of small conversations between the various mostly White teachers throughout the crowd explaining English language idiosyncrasies and Bible points to the local Chinese laborers, he knew this was necessary. Asking people who could barely stumble through Jesus Loves Me, a child’s song, to sing an uptempo version of Saints would just be pointless cruelty. Looking on, he saw a genuine desire to learn. So when one young man introduced himself and asked what was the meaning of the words of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’, he was pleasantly surprised both by the advanced question, and by the fact that he was recognized for their signature song. Several other Chinese men babbled to each other, and he heard them describe him and his wife and Lei He as the Saints Band.
He could see how the goal of racial unity was being achieved here, and at the same time the difficulty of it. Just how did you create unity without a common language? So he used this time as well to improve his Cantonese, and he heard his wife talking to two of the very few Chinese women doing the same.
Afterward they had a dinner. It was rice, boiled okra, shrimp, and brown gravy in a casserole, and while filling not nearly as good as picnic on the grounds at the Black Baptist church. This was more institutional fill-them-up-cheaply food provided by gifts from others instead of the design of gifted individual cooks bringing their wonders to share at a picnic. A remembered joke flashed through his brain.
In Heaven, the cooks are French, the policemen are English, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian, the bankers are Swiss. In Hell: the cooks are English, the policemen are German, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, the bankers are Italian.
The trio parted from the Chinese Mission crowd with many hugs, and babbles of half comprehended Cantonese and even a sprinkling of Mandarin tossed in as well along with laborious English partings. Walking away, Derek considered his goal.
“Lei, can you understand the Cajuns?” Derek had a hard time with some of them still, in large part because he had not met that many. Lei shook his head ‘no’.
“It took me a while to fully undestand you, Delek. I leun Southen. Like Missus Johnson.” Derek nodded, understanding the point. To Lei, coming to New Orleans from China, the local Southern accent would be Standard English.
“What about Mandarin?” Vashti suddenly asked.
“I see you both leuning. I staht leuning as well. It is good. I stop fight last week between two Chinamen. One from Guangdong, speaks Cantonese, otha from capital, Bay King City. Speaks Mandalin.”
“Peace is good.” Derek said absently.
“Except against Devil. Him, we fight. Neveh quit,” Lei said loudly. Derek turned and smiled at his friend.
“Peace between all the tongues and races of men, eternal war with Satan. I like it, Lei He.”
Companionably, the trio walked to the trolley line, and parted there for, as Lei He had explained, he lived in a crowded apartment with other bachelors. This let him send most of his salary home to his parents and village in Guangdong Province. Before he had gotten this job as a drummer he had some gigs as one, but mostly he had worked with other Chinese young male laborers in the dried shrimp factories. Others of his nation dominated the laundry business, but he said that he had never worked in one.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
