Jade Han

Shifts at Peet’s Coffee with My Coworker Mike

Mike tells me about his daughter— 

So I’m watching her and we’re in the park, 

and she’s three, so she’s just dancing,

and she says, “Look at my dance, Daddy!”

and I’m thinking, ‘Ooh, I’m gonna be in trouble.’

I tell Mike about the old men / customers who hit on me. 

See, that’s what I’m worried about with my daughter.

Mike tells me why he doesn’t drink anymore—

Yeah, I was doing all that shit and getting into trouble, 

but then I realized, I had a little girl. 

And I realized I needed to put a stop to all  ’at, 

so I could be her dad. 

I tell my coworker Mike about the customers who stalked me. 

See, that’s why Imma always be worried about my daughter. 

Mike tells me the thing about having kids— 

The thing about having kids is,

 once you have ’em, 

you can’t leave ’em.

I’m my little girl’s dad forever. 

The new girl asks me if anyone we work with has kids.

A customer answers. She brings up Mike— 

He loves that little girl. If anyone ever tried to hurt her, 

he’d kill them.

To look like a

Everyone who doesn’t know me well enough to know

I hate being told this tells me I have very Asian eyes.

I do not have my father’s eyes.

My mother tells me I look like my father

only when we argue. 

I have the eyes of a woman my father hates.

I emote like a Mexican woman—

I smile wide and get excited often. 

I drink coffee every morning and it yellows my teeth.

I started drinking coffee when I was 17—

that’s when all her sisters started to say I look like her.

My father with his yellowed cigarette teeth

hated my mother’s smile. 

I look more like her every time I look in the mirror. 

He hated her yellow teeth. 

I look most like her when I’m smiling.

My mother smiles wide and gets excited often. 

The only ones who say I look nothing like her 

are those who don’t know her well enough to know

I look just like her. 

This is something I wish more people could agree on.

My father would never admit

his daughter looks like a woman he hates.

House Rules in the Han Household

after Jamaica Kincaid

We keep words like secrets, keep them away from our feelings, keep them away so
they cannot be used to address them in any way that would give them the wrong idea,
the idea that it is okay to feel that way, feel any way, feel. We do not do that. We think.
We think in this house. We think before we speak. We do not think out loud. That’s what
your head is for. We think before we speak, about what we will speak, about how we will
speak it, about what we spoke, about how we spoke it. And we will speak better next
time. Always speak better next time. We look in the mirror and will ourselves into a white
man. We trick ourselves into talking like one. We will feel sick doing it. No one will listen
to you otherwise. We say words even we don’t believe. We will be better next time. We
buy things, but only the right things. We do not buy what we want. We do not want. We
buy what we do not want. We wear the right clothes. We drive the right car. We walk the
right way. We say the right thing. We think before we speak, so we only say the right
thing. We don’t do the right thing, we say the right thing. We will never hear what we
want to hear from who we want to hear it from because what we want to hear is
something they don’t have a word for. We still do it all anyways.