Page 38 of His for Hanukkah

Cathy stepped in once with, “Mom, you know his legal name is Tate and he’s been using it for years.” And even Yamming, also called Raven, piped up with, “Grammy, that’s not nice. People get to choose their own names.” She delivered the line with the condescension that only a seven-year-old could pull off and Adam made a little heart for her with his hands where the parents couldn’t see.

It was no wonder Tate sometimes left early.

The conversation over dinner was work. He and Tate would get into a perfectly good conversation with Min and Cathy about, well, anything, and their parents would derail it.

Adam finally tried to have a real conversation with the parents, praising their home and holiday decorations. They responded with complaints about how their children didn’t appreciate them and never came to visit.

He tried praising the food, which was actually pretty good. Tate’s mother immediately cornered him about not eating any ham.

He quietly explained that he didn’t eat pork, which caused Tate’s father to loudly burst in with, “That’s nonsense. Everyone eats pork.”

It was one of those odd moments when many conversations all paused simultaneously, so the declaration came down like a shout.

Silence fell over the table. Tate looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel. Cathy and Min looked concerned, but he wasn’t sure if they’d figured out what the problem was or how to step in. Yamming, sensing the tension in the room, curled into her mother’s shoulder.

Adam, oddly, wasn’t worried. His own parents had never raised their voices, but they had made casually disparaging remarks all the time while he was growing up. The difference was, when he was a child, he’d thought he needed their affection. As an adult, he knew that neither he nor Tate needed anything from this man.

Since he’d gone in expecting it, his anxiety was actually pretty low. It was that weird state where the external problems were real, so he didn’t need to manufacture any internally.

He looked back at Tate’s father and just raised his eyebrows, silently asking if the man really meant to say that in the middle of Christmas dinner. He didn’t want to start an argument, but he wasn’t going to be bullied either.

Finally, four-year-old Zixuan, also called Mira, came to the rescue, if it could be called that. “Grandpa, vegetarians don’t eat pork because it’s made of meat!”

Tate’s father mumbled something under his breath about vegetarians and liberals, but at least he didn’t say it out loud.

Cathy made eye contact with Tate and her husband, then said brightly, “Who wants to open presents?”

Everyone departed the table in the wake of the two excited children. Adam had hardly eaten half the food on his plate, and he didn’t seem to be the only one. This was apparently the necessary precursor of getting the fuck out the door.

“Vegetarian?” Min asked quietly as the kids sorted out their presents.

“Jewish.”

Min nodded. “Ah, of course. Sorry that happened.”

“Tate warned me. I’ve heard they give you a lot of trouble, too.”

“Yeah, but it’s died down over the years. Now it’s mostly you Chinese are stealing our jobs.”

“Yuck. Do they even understand that their own grandchildren are Chinese Americans?”

“Yeah, that was most of the issue. They still don’t understand that I’m an American. Like, I was born here, and I’ve only been to China for a couple weeks.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Tate told me it would be bad, but I didn’t understand the scope.”

“Bless you for sticking around. God knows that we debate not coming every time. I’m glad we got to meet you, though.”

Adam smiled. “You, too. It’s good to know that Tate has people in his family to support him.”

While they chatted, the kids tore through four or five presents each. Cathy was sitting behind the parents, and she made gagging faces and rolled her eyes at each one.

So far, the kids had gotten Barbies, a gigantic pink car that Adam knew wouldn’t be compatible with a NYC apartment, and several pink Disney toys that talked and made noise.

You didn’t have to be a parent to know that those were annoying as shit. And he imagined that Cathy and Min didn’t want their kids playing with a bunch of gendered commercialized crap.

He hoped they liked the gifts that he’d picked out better. He always tried to get his nieces and nephews educational games, but he’d chosen these basically based on the kids’ ages. He’d gotten Raven, the older one, a cooperative board game and Mira a set of magnetic blocks.

He felt relieved when both kids and parents oohed and aahed over his gifts. And he felt even better when Tate’s mom turned up her nose and sniffed at the blocks. Bitch.