Chess Lessons

I was 8 or 9 when I learned to play chess.  We moved a lot in those days.  I was in the third or fourth grade and we had just moved to a rental house in Lawndale.  My third school that year. We lived in a small one room guesthouse that sat in a remote corner of a big yard, behind the landlord’s home.

The landlord was oriental.  I believe Chinese from what I remember about him.  Of course when you’re 8 years old everyone over the age of 12 looks really old.  I recall him as being ancient, although he was probably only 40.  

My mother was younger than the landlord.  Since I was 9, that would mean she was 25.  He wasn’t as old as my grandparents, but oddly they never seemed old to me the way the Japanese landlord did.

The first time we played chess and he showed me how to move the pieces there was something that seemed just so right about the game.  It was perfect.  No chaos.  No uncertainty.  Every piece had his or her job and they did just that job.  

The pieces always performed to the same level.  The knight didn’t suddenly get magical powers and leap ahead four spaces, over the opponent.  No, he always leaped ahead two and over one.   You could rely on his skills.  The pawns, brave souls that they are, always stepped forward and never turned back, always ready to sacrifice themselves, whenever called upon to do so.

And the rules were always the same.  It didn’t matter who you played the game with.  There are only one set of chess rules that everyone in the world plays by.  Not like at home where each day the rules might change to suit the whims of our mother.  And not like at school, where every class, every teacher and every game – at every new school had a different set of rules.  

I hated tetherball.  A game not played in Pennsylvania schools. At one school the rules said the server must hold the ball in the palm of her left hand and then punch the ball around the pole to start the game.  At another school, the opponent would hold the ball like a baseball and then spin the ball around the pole by throwing the ball.  If you missed hitting the ball on the first go around, your opponent could then keep spinning the ball and wrap you up before you even touched the damn thing.  Those tall black girls always beat my ass at tetherball regardless of which set of rules we played by.

For me chess was perfection.  You won and lost according to your own personal skill level.  How smart you are, how much time you spent studying the game were directly reflected in how you faired against opponents.  There was no roll of the dice.  No spinning some wheel to see if you moved 1, 2 or 5 spaces.  No luck was involved.

There was no subjective grading involved in chess either.  There was no teacher to judge you, not upon your ability, but rather upon how nice you were to her.  

Being always the new kid at school, long after school had started, I was always the stranger.  Always the kid who had just been studying California indians at the old school while the new class was in the middle of studying pilgrims.  I was always just out of step with the students around me.

In those my youthful years I knew I was just about as smart as anyone I had ever met.  That meant if I studied harder than anyone else, I could be better than them.  It certainly seemed that way with chess.

After the second or third chess lesson from our landlord, I walked to the used bookstore and traded some Superman comics for a book about how to play chess better.  Meanwhile our landlord grew to become my old Japanese friend.  We played chess every afternoon after I finished my chores and before my mother got home from work.

I could never beat that old man.  He wouldn’t let me win.  He once told me that if he let me win, it would be showing me disrespect.  Because then he would be saying that he didn’t think I would ever be good enough.

We lived in Lawndale for about two or three months.  I went to a school nearby and was known to everyone as Ernie.  Some perverse twist in my brain had made me tell the teacher that I didn’t use Keith, but was called by my middle name, Ernie.  

During our time at that house I don’t remember doing much of anything except hunting for alligator lizards on the side of the house, cleaning the place after school and playing chess with the old man.  

Oh yeah, I do remember that I hated being called Ernie.  Since I knew we would be moving again way too soon, I decided it didn’t matter what the kids at school called me.  So I just put up with Ernie, knowing in a little while I could go back to being Keith.

Things always seem to happen in explosive bursts of unexpectedness.  We don’t go through life with new shocks, new surprises coming at us every hour of every day.  No, life goes on in a normal way for a week or a month and then suddenly a dozen things happen simultaneously.

That’s what happened in Lawndale.

I played chess with the landlord one afternoon, just like always.   It was in the early afternoon, around 3:00 PM.  We played then so that I could finish my chores inside as soon as I got home from school.  Then I wouldn’t be in trouble when my mother came home for not washing the dishes or for not making her bed.

I had been studying a new opening in my chess book and thought I was ready to spring it upon him.  I needed to be white on the chess board so I could have the first move and that day was my turn to be white because I had been black the day before. I still remember the expression on the old mans face as I made that unorthodox opening move.

The game went longer than usual.  I had his king pinned, thinking in two or moves I was going to checkmate him. I was waiting for him to make the next move when suddenly his hand lashed out and his index finger gently tipped the king over sideways, sending some of the other pieces skittering across the board.

At first I thought he was angry, but when I looked across the board there was a smile on his face as he stood up and did a half bow to me.  Then he explained the concept of conceding defeat and that laying the king down on his side indicated surrender.  He was happy for me.  I was proud of myself.  When I left his home I was feeling a little bit cocky.

I should have known better.  Pride goes before the fall!

My mother arrived shortly thereafter and announced we were moving the next day, back to the bar with her parents, my grandparents.  She hadn’t paid the rent for two months and it was move or be thrown out on the street there in Lawndale.

My old Chinese friend had never once mentioned to me that she wasn’t paying the rent.  I lay in bed that night and wondered if I should cry or not.  I didn’t want to move away from my chess games.  But at the same time I had always known we would move.  And I was really sick of those stupid kids at school calling me Ernie.

The next morning we packed our stuff into my grandparents battered Chevy and drove the 10 miles or so back to their bar, a dumpy place called The Bank, on the corner of 48^th Street and Normandy Avenue in Central Los Angeles.  Before we drove away my old friend gave me a folding chess game that I carried on my lap all the way back to the bar.

That kind man gave me chess and taught me how to eat with chopsticks. And because of him I eventually traveled to China.