The Communists had locked up Sophia’s dad before she was even born. There was a time when he was finally going to get released. In the months before his arrival, Aunt Kim was happier than Elle had ever seen her. Her aunt’s entire comportment was different. Her back seemed straighter. She was chipper. She reminded Elle of a hummingbird buzzing about to beautify herself and her home for his arrival. But in the end he never made it. Aunt Kim told us, “There was some bureaucratic mistake. They say he can’t come to America. Ever.”

Aunt Kim was younger than Elle’s mom but she looked older. Elle suspected the lines on her aunt’s face were etched in to match the depths of her despair. After the disappointment with Uncle Duc, she started going out late night and gambling all the time.

Aunt Kim said she slaved away working two jobs to raise two kids on her own. In truth, Marcel was barely around. He was pitcher on the varsity baseball team and was practically being raised by the coach. They were grooming him to take the team to State and to get an athletic scholarship to college. If Marcel wasn’t staying over at the coach’s or traveling with the team, he was eating over and staying the night at his girlfriend’s house. Everyone knew his curveball was his ticket out and no one got in the way. Aunt Kim barely made enough to feed a growing sixteen-year-old boy. Her money went to paying off men who had long pinky nails, drove low rider cars with shiny rims, and spoke bad English.

Aunt Kim found solace in being able to say, “Thank God Marcel plays ball. He could have ended up like Frankie.”

Elle used to secretly think Frank was the cutest of her boy cousins until he showed up at a family reunion with a chopped-off pinky finger. The deformity freaked her out. She found out from little Sammie, who was still young enough to want to be good, that it marked his promotion to Lieutenant in the Asian Boyz. On the car ride home, her mom said to her dad, “How did Lam let his boy get so out of control.”

It was scary how they had all started off in the same house at 22nd Ave. and now everyone was spinning off in wildly different directions. Nobody realized exactly how out of control Uncle Lam’s house was until he was found shot through the back of the head inside the driver’s seat of his car. At first the cops thought it was just a robbery gone bad. Uncle Lam’s wallet, his watch, and the rims of his brand new Acura were stolen. But later, it was linked to Frank’s gang-banging. And in the end, they came up with evidence to say it was an ordered hit, likely ordered by Frank himself.