When my wife and I were living in Jamaica Plain in the early 1980’s there was a family on our street from Laos. They had fled Vietnam in a boat. Chosen from a refugee camp in Thailand, they were provided housing and assistance from an agency in Boston which is how they ended up on our street. The family lived on the 2nd floor of a triple decker. We lived in very much the same style apartment a half a block down from them.
There were four children in the family. The oldest, Boontom (I don’t recall the family name) who at the time was about seventeen, upon learning that I was a musician, asked me if I’d give him lessons. Pretty gutsy for a new arrival, and of course I said sure.
He would come up to our apartment ( 3rd floor ) Casio keyboard in hand. I would show him chords and the names of the notes and maybe a chord or two on my guitar as well. He wasn’t proficient in English, but communicated just fine. We’d listen to the cassettes he brought of Hmong heavy metal. He knew a community that lived out near Minneapolis/St.Paul and I think there was a girl he liked because he often traveled by car to visit her. Forty hours roundtrip.
When the lesson was over, he’d leave, and then about ten minutes later, the doorbell would ring and I’d walk down the stairs to meet his sister, aged eleven, who would be holding a bowl of tripe, noodles, and cabbage simmered in a thin broth — what I think now would be called Phở . I would take the bowl and awkwardly bow. ( kind of embarrassing now that I think of it!) I would have lunch, wash the dish, plate, and spoon, then walk over to their apartment returning dishes to her mom or some other adult. I know she never answered the door.
This went on for a few months and Boontom was progressing nicely with chords and getting the hang of rhythm too. But one day he asked me how much I would charge him. I said the bowl of soup was fine, but what he really wanted from me was to give him a dollar amount. I think by this time he had a job. So I said five dollars. At that time I would usually get forty dollars a lesson, though I didn’t tell him that. He frowned and asked me again “What do you charge for a lesson?” The whole discussion was getting really awkward because I loved teaching him. He was attentive and always practiced what I showed him. And to boot the Hmong rockers played really good. Of course I didn’t know the language of the lyrics. You don’t have to understand the words to understand the meaning.
So I reluctantly said ten dollars. That didn’t seem to move him either. “What do you charge for a lesson?” Impatiently I said twenty dollars, as much to get out of the conversation as anything because I really didn’t care how much he gave me, he was a good student and whatever he wanted to pay was fine. I must have done something to indicate that the conversation was over because he nodded and left without a word.
A month or more passed and I hadn’t seen him, which wasn’t necessarily unusual, as he worked and traveled. Then one day from our bay windows I saw him getting out of his car. I rushed downstairs and hurriedly walked over to him before he disappeared into his family’s apartment.
“Boontom!” I exclaimed in loud American voice. “What’s up, haven’t seen you in a while, maybe we can make time for a lesson,” I eagerly added.
Boontom, not one for mincing his words, looked up at me and, in his serious and direct way, taking me in with those observant eyes said, “Cost too much.” He gave a slight tilt of his head, kind of a cross between a nod and bow, indicating the conversation was over. He turned and climbed the steps to his front porch, without so much as a hint of awkwardness or hesitation. It was a lesson I shall never forget: just answer the question.
The following song isn’t the Hmong heavy metal of Boontom’s era, of which there is an adequate Youtube selection, but more the music of his generation’s children or perhaps grandchildren. You don’t have to understand the words to understand the meaning.
HinjNoiz 