Inspiration Words: Tortilla and Aspirational
Braxton sat down on the hard chair in the dining room of his restaurant. It was 2 a.m., and the last of the night crowd had just left. The kitchen staff had finished cleaning up, and he had put away the rest of the drinks at the bar. As he drummed his fingers on the colorful Mexican tablecloth, Braxton checked the messages on his phone. He noticed a Chinese message that he had received at 10 p.m. from the police bureau. He sent it to himself in another app so he could translate it to English and read, We have received more complaints about the noise level in your restaurant. Kindly remember to respect your neighbors.
Without answering, Braxton set his phone down on the striped tablecloth. How had so few customers managed to garner such a complaint? He had almost gotten used to messages like this and the signs reminding customers to be quiet as they left. Why didn’t the signs seem to make a difference to his complaining neighbors? Sure, Grandma has to sleep, but if she closed her windows, maybe she wouldn’t hear as much.
Braxton tried to be understanding, but he was starting to feel the stress of the last couple of months. He had already received several similar messages, and he knew that perhaps his gentle warnings were coming to an end. What would the police do if the neighbors continued to complain? What would happen to the life I’ve built?
In the dim light of the restaurant, Braxton looked around at the yellow walls and the paraphernalia that helped to distinguish this restaurant from most of the Chinese restaurants in the area. Flags and postcards covered one wall. He looked at the red Chinese flag with those five yellow stars hanging next to the Stars and Stripes of America. Why was it so hard to be a foreigner in this country he loved?
“I just wanted to give you tacos and cheese. Who can resist something so good?” Braxton spoke the words aloud to the silent darkness. Surely Granny wouldn’t hear him now.
Braxton thought of his foreign customers, the strangers who had become his friends. He thought about Danny from Arizona, who had finally convinced his Chinese wife that Tex-Mex burritos were not overpriced KFC wraps.
“Even the tortilla is different!” Danny had said pointing at the burrito while Braxton watched, smiling from the bar.
Danny had insisted his wife try a burrito. “Perhaps the ingredients are similar to those KFC wraps—all it has is flour and water, but it’s so much thicker and richer!”
Danny’s wife had smiled politely, but declined eating any more. Danny shrugged and finished the burrito himself. The couple came in several times over the years, and Danny’s wife had finally started eating the burritos. After a time or two, Braxton noticed she had even started to enjoy them.
Braxton remembered the day she came in without her husband, but with a group of her Chinese friends instead. She had walked confidently into the restaurant and smiled at him as if she were a co-conspirator in a plot.
“Show them what Tex-Mex food is,” she had said, as she paid for her friends’ lunch.
But Danny and his wife had left for America eight months ago for a short vacation, right before Covid started. Once the coronavirus situation was less serious in China, Danny had been unable to return because the situation had worsened in America, causing China to close its borders to Americans. More than half of Braxton’s customers had disappeared for the same reason. Some had left when the situation in China became unbearable with strict quarantine rules. Most of Braxton’s neighbors hadn’t left their house for three weeks during the worst of the situation (except to take out the trash—he had heard).
Now Braxton wasn’t even sure he would be able to renew the license for the restaurant. This restaurant had been his dream. He loved the people who came. He loved the late-night crowd the most, especially on Taco Tuesday, when he offered a buffet of all-you-can-eat tacos. He loved trivia night, even though that had originally been his brother’s idea. He loved seeing the excitement on people’s faces throughout the evening. He loved everything about his shop. Was Covid-19 really going to cost him all of this? But what could he do?
“It’s going to be okay. We’ll figure something out,” his wife had said the week before, when they talked about the business license problem.
But what if that “something” is going back to America? Braxton hadn’t said it, but he knew it was looking more and more likely. Foreigners were disappearing from China, and even the ones who remained were often unable to go out with the same freedom as before. The virus was affecting everyone. He often walked down small side streets and saw “Last chance” sales for small shops that would soon be closing their doors.
When he first told his family about the restaurant, they had called him aspirational, and if he gave it up now, he knew he would feel lost. But what choice did he have?
Finally, Braxton stood, pressing against that colorful striped tablecloth as he rose. Maybe he would close his doors, but he still had a wife who would be expecting him home, and he didn’t want to keep her waiting any longer.