MEETING BELLEW: A child of war meets another child of war 

My neighbor, in his 70s, is a European World War 2 war orphan whose only father figure was an American military man. I think about him- seeing the little kids who hang out on the base in Masters of the Air.

 Bellew:

“English Irish and Scottish (of Norman origin): habitational name from a lost or unidentified estate in or near Normandy named with Old French bel + eau 'beautiful water' as is clear from the Anglo-Norman French and Middle English surname spelling de Belewe”

On November 12th, 2023, it was a super overcast day. It was 70 degrees in New Orleans. Being that the city is the “northern most of the tropics”, as some would say, 70 degrees Fahrenheit feels more like 60 somehow. I can’t scientifically explain it, that’s why I’m less bothered here when it’s 90 out because it feels like 75 (when you’re in the shade under a tree with a river breeze). Or all of this renewed acclimatization and heat tolerance could be because of some DNA from being genetically Vietnamese and growing up in the American South.

It’s 11 days until American Thanksgiving and it's feeling like “fall”. Who knows how long this will last. It was just 80-some degrees the other day. American Veterans’ Day was the day before on 11-11. I decided to go for a walk on my own at just after 12-noon. The sky is gray as gray can be and stays that way until the sun goes down.

I have on a dark denim double breast pocket-ed button up shirt over a dark green and gold striped pocket t-shirt and black slacks and some dirty old navy blue “trainers” (aka British for “sneakers” on. I took myself on foot to the local corner-shop to buy a lottery scratcher and have my almost daily chat with the clerk there.

I buy lottery tickets once in a while to help keep the store open because I like my regular hangs there with Rocky, a 20-something Lebanese American who runs the place, and Alfred, my neighbor from a block back who is a Black man in his 30s. We talk about music, tv, cool t-shirts, and sometimes sports. Today, I ask Rocky if his family in Lebanon is still ok. They are, for now. I occasionally will get a locally made Hubig’s pie in “apple flavor”. They’re small hand-pies. Someone keeps beating me to the coconut flavor ones. Most things at convenience stores, I probably shouldn’t make a habit out of eating on a regular basis.

I win $5 with $1, a “3X” prize tripling a dollar and a last $1 from each of the 3 “games” on the tiny card- all winners. That was not the real prize at all. As cheesy as it is, getting to talk to all my neighbors within a small area around my home is. Odds are an interesting thing. I defied them surviving a perilous boat ride as a baby, being nearly kidnapped by Thai pirates and making it this far, when hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese boat people died at sea.

The big prize this particular day was spending a good deal of time on the street corner talking with a one Bellew G (Graham). When we saw one another, it’s as if we recognized each other. I have never met any Bellews before, even if I did live in Europe in my early 20s (on my own). I’d never heard of the name or word, ever. I ask the man before me to spell his name out for me- “B-e-l-l-e-w”. I didn’t see him at first because he was sweeping leaves on the side of his house. What I saw before I saw him was a dark green military jacket with gold embroidery hung up on a wire hanger in front of a very faded blue shot-gun home, on the left side of the un-meshed porch. The house is long and a very pale blue, with the window frames painted a darker blue. There are air conditioner boxes in the windows.

There are long green bean vines eating the front metal fence and part of the house that yield bright golden bell shaped flowers in the springtime. There’s a cream long-sleeved button up shirt on another wire hanger, hanging from a tree in the yard. I don’t think it’s for decoration. I think Bellew is multitasking and also doing laundry - because I spot yet another shirt on a hanger further back in the side yard. The kindly old gentleman has what sounds like a faint British accent to me, but I’m not a complete expert.

Bellew has long-ish white hair and glasses and quite piercing twinkley light blue eyes. He has on a navy blue button up with white markings on it and some dad jeans (I’m a big fan of dad jeans too). I’m not sure exactly how we began talking, but we didn’t start with the weather. We talked about the weather in the middle of our conversation that swept across three continents. I live two blocks from Bellew in another blue house, one that is a much brighter medium shade of blue.

I believe I began with “Looking good”, which I like to use if people have a nice rhinestone headband on, or a nice hat or outfit. In Bellew’s case, “Looking good” referred to his yard work. Other neighbors were out that day. Two blocks the other way I talked with two Black men in their 20s. One has on a New Orleans Saints American football team beanie with a blue and gold pom-pom on top and one had on a Dallas Cowboys beanie, also with a pom-pom that was blue and white. We joked about sports betting for a few minutes before I continued my stroll. 

I live in an “uncool” corner of New Orleans near the suburbs and I wouldn’t have it any other way. You’ll rarely, if ever, see any tattoo-ed hipsters around here. It’s older retired people and families, and some stray singles like me. I really don’t want to reveal where I live for safety reasons, but also I would like to keep it “uncool” so I never have to see people with a lot of money doing their daily hipster “better than thou” fashion shows. I’ve heard people like these make fun of my neighborhood on the radio before, as “un-hip”, that their downtown enclaves were the utmost when it came to arts and what not. They are fucking seriously wrong, but let’s let them keep believing what they do. Maybe their heads will go ahead and explode and we won’t have to worry about them ever again.

It was like that in Los Angeles too, where I lived for ages. It was one of the last zip codes on the edge of town, where it was “uncool” and I had it the way I liked it— with senior citizens. It was where a piece of cake and a coffee would cost $3.25. Then it became “cool” and the same would be $15. Then I had to leave after the invasion of tattooed stroller pushers took the places of Latine senior citizens and my adopted abuelitas who I took $3 Zumba classes with and $3 swimming classes with at the local rec center I could walk to. Then I had to move. I did so to New Orleans, where everything is “old”, with the city itself now over 300 years and still standing- old for Americans.

Bellew reminds me of my “de facto grandpa Stanley” who lives in Kinston, North Carolina. Stanley has been putting up with me since I was three point nine nine years old, when my parents and I were sponsored to his town. Stanley’s wife, Faith Donia Shipp Pearson, was my parents’ ESL (English as a second language) teacher and one of our saviors when another family tried to defraud my parents and leave us destitute refugees, again. That is another story. I’ve likely mentioned the Pearsons before and will again. The Pearsons are really Russian Per-sohns.

Bellew, like Stanley, has glasses, like I said. Their faces are similar too- skinny. They are white men of a certain age, pre-Boomers for sure. They both play music too!

If you know me, you will know that I never knew either set of my grandparents, who are Vietnamese. My mom’s mom was a powerful landowner who died when my mom was 6 years old. My mom’s dad was a philanderer. My dad’s dad was a leader with some political intrigue to him and my dad’s mom was a housewife.

When we came to America, I got sets of white American grandparents who picked me up from the early days of elementary school because my parents worked in factories then to get on their feet before they went back to school. My “grandfolks” taught me English, got me ice cream, made it so I hung out with other little kids in the tiny town in Eastern North Carolina. Some even got me time in summer camp so I could learn to swim at an early age and where I did things like glue uncooked macaroni pasta pieces to paper plates for fun. They very much treated me like their own.

Bellew told me that he was doing yard work “before it rains” and then he joked that it never rains when they say it will rain. I added, “yeah, most often - even when they say there’s 60% of rain and we get 2 drops!” We had a chuckle. I apologized, “I brought the drought here when I moved from out West.” And that might very well be true. All of “hurricane season” that year, there was barely any rain in New Orleans, in Louisiana of all places. We were so happy for a 10-minute sprinkle. “New Orleans is more than 28 inches below normal rainfall for this time of year”, according to the National Weather Service. A good thunderstorm would be great, but yet we waited. There were even “marsh fires” that produced smoke just like the annual California forest fires. And in turn, California got tropical rain storms in 2023. It was bizarro world. How could weather completely be swapped from L.A. aka Los Angeles and LA aka Louisiana? Maybe it was because of my magical dog…

Bellew told me that he was also cleaning up because his lady friend was coming over later for supper and to watch Masterpiece Theater with him. I then learned all about how they met! What was interesting is that they have been together for 28 years and each has their own house and they have never cohabitated.

Bellew tells me that he bought his house in 1974, two years before I was born. He is 79 years old and in three months time from this conversation, I would be turning 48 in American years. If you ask my mother or other Vietnamese people from her generation, I would be turning 49. The Vietnamese count gestation in your age and round it up to a year…

Bellew is three decades older than me and has been living at this spot since he was 29. He met his lady friend at his lawyers’ wedding. He says they really hit it off and “like an ass”- he said he was going to call her and it slipped his mind. She called him. She is “a beautiful Black woman who plays the piano and doesn’t want to live with [him]”. “I can tell she’s glad when I leave.” “It’s not a statement on you; It’s a statement about her glorious independence,” I reassure Bellew.

He shares with me that they went on three dates and were instantly bonded and that is very rare for him- since he’s an orphan and all.

Bellew was in a home for children in London-town from the ages of 2 to 18 and then it was “off you go” they told him. He made a reference to a European television show “off ya go”, but I currently forget what program it is. He told me that he knows that his parents are Irish and French and told me that growing up he actually had quite an Irish brogue.  

I told him that I have an Irish passport (another story for another day). I have an American one too. I am completely genetically Asian. I’ve taken a DNA test to prove it. Bellew didn’t believe me. He insisted there was “something else in there.” It’s true- I have a very aquiline nose, a natural dimple in my left cheek and I turn spotted like an Irish person during the summers- all over my face, down my arms and even onto my hands- full of freckles, but the test said: 90% Vietnamese and the rest Chinese.

How did Bellew come to be a New Orleanian? He met a woman from this city in London. She was visiting. They got married and lived in Australia and then she missed home, so they came here. They didn’t stay together. Then he sold their home in Australia and gave her half the money. He used to play in rock bands, but she didn’t like that, so he became a different kind of musician. Bellew had a Green Card.

With this Green Card, New Orleans called Bellew back yet again, like it does to many, like it did to me, until I finally lived here. It only took me about a quarter century of visiting before I could make it happen. Bellew told me 8 people were living in his house when it was put up for sale for $21,000.00. There was an offer on it already, so he offered $22,000.00 and they agreed that day to sell it to him and he’s been there ever since. He excitedly says it’s worth about $260K now. I said, “No way, you can get more for it.” Not that I ever want him to sell it and leave.

$260K is not bad at all. Like Bellew, I’ll donate what I have when I’m turning to dust. No heirs clubs. Who’s in this club? Bellew, me and Gail Benson who owns the Saints and the Pelicans. She’s worth $5-Billion. What’s worth a lot is stories that may be lost, so I am writing this because knowing Bellew even for minutes is beyond valuable.

So, who’s Marine jacket is on the porch? It belongs to an American serviceman named Wally from the second Great War. Bellew says Wally was the only father figure he had in his life and that this gentleman was also a musician. Bellew recounts, “The first time I saw Wally was in a pub where they also had a ballroom.” I remark, “Oh, when I lived there, I never found a pub that big”. He continues, “I walk in and Wally’s playing the piano with the band, and also doing a crossword puzzle at the same time.” Some people are just ultra talented like that. I’m barely one who can pat my head and rub my belly at the same time.

Bellew asks, “Can you play the piano?” I said, “Not really, I can type, but I cannot play music much with both of my hands at the same time. I did play French horn starting out in seventh grade and then switched to trumpet and could at one time sight read music. I should try again.” I also tell him that my dad worked for the American Navy for decades. 

My gentleman neighbor, Bellew, says, “I don’t usually talk with people a lot— because people usually want something from you.” So, I reply, “I want something from you— may I take a picture of the uniform in front of your house?”. The answer is “Yes”. I also sneak a photo of Bellew while I’m at it. My phone camera seems to have a wide angle function where it looks like I’m taking a photo of something up close, but I can actually capture a wider range of the image…

I did not divulge out loud, but indeed- People do always want something from you. The amount of times strangers have straight out asked me to “put [them] in Vogue or Esquire” is astounding, as if there aren’t layers of editors what not, as if I can just log-on and make them famous. And if I don’t make them famous in “x” amount of time, I’m a bad person or I’m a racist. Happens all the time. Or the “I’m Asian, you’re Asian, put me in Vogue or Esquire”. When I don’t, I’m just the most awful human ever. Or if I’m wanting to talk with people about a serious topic like mental health, I get “can you also plug my comedy show in this? It’s on ______ at ______ pm” or “Can you write a review of my short film in the middle of this mental health article?”. That’s not how it works. It’s all quite hilarious what people want from me and the ransom is my reputation.

Bellew tells me that he “used to live 50 miles from one of the Queen’s castles in England” and tells me that I should go for the gardens. He says to me— “There’s a Bellew Castle in Ireland too”. I had no idea. He says maybe they’re relations, but “no one has claimed me yet, so…” I say to him, “anyone would be so lucky to claim you” and I mean it.

Selfishly, I already want to claim him as my new grand-pa. We are so alike. We like living alone, for decades on end even. I tell Bellew that he gives me hope and that he and his lady friend are modern lovers before this type of modernity even existed, this “new found” type of togetherness where people still have their own spaces and homes. It even has an acronym and a slew of think pieces about the apparently not so nouveau concept: “LAT” aka “Living Apart Together”. Because I’m a disciple of Kate Bolick who penned the book Spinster and of Rebecca Traister who wrote All The Single Ladies and essays asking questions like: Why do we even need marriage?, this all makes perfect sense to me.

Maybe Bellew is a version of me from the future. Maybe I’ll be just like him in three more decades. Maybe I’m someone like him from a past life. It would be dreamy to see Bellew’s home and hear more of his stories. I still have so many questions.

I say to Bellew, “Look, if I win a lot of money on this scratcher, I’ll come knock on your door and take you and your lady friend out to supper sometime”. I also tell him to look out for me and my little old dog and that if he sees us creeping past his house, we’re not casing it, we’re just very, very slow. During this particular walk- my pup is at home napping and I was on a very rare solo mission.

Every other time I or my pup and I have walked past Bellew’s, we’ve never run into him. Today was the day. After bidding Bellew adieu (it took about five times to say good-bye because I truly didn’t want to leave), I walk the three blocks back to my own blue house, stopping to pick a pure white fragrant gardenia blossom from another neighbors’ front yard area, outside of their fence. Hi neighbors- yes, I know I’m on camera, but you have so many gardenias, enough to share with the strangers near-by.

It didn’t take three dates for me to feel bonded to Bellew. Of course I do not consider myself a needy person whatsoever and have lived alone for sizable spells in my life already, it took all of about thirty minutes standing together on the sidewalk for me to become so enamored with this old man, someone who “also lived in London in his 20s”, not being of the garden variety jet-setters who lay claim to such things.

Earlier that day when I was driving around, I found some old Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman records marked “Big band” from the 1940s in a pile of trash marked “free” on the side of the road, on a rougher end of Tchoupitoulas Street, on the same block as the train tracks and the docks. That era was when Bellew appeared on this earth, from what-ever origins, we’ll never truly know except the little information about his parents’ European nationalities, just like my orphaned mutt pup who lay resting on the warm, rich original hardwood floor of our 1930s home. I told Bellew that she was part “British hunting dog” ala a Beagle with floppy ears.

I make myself a “cuppa” tea (always Earl Grey, that is) with milk and honey, a holdover from my London days. My dog and I wait for the rain to arrive, as I imagine Bellew is too.

I sip my hot tea and get back to reading the news about the current war in the Middle East, about a Palestinian man who lost four generations of his family because of the bombings.

The Monday after my chance meeting with Bellew, I drove across a 24-mile body of water called Lake Pontchartrain. The bridge that goes over it is the longest one over open water in the whole world! Across the way, on the Northshore, are two sets of friends, both sets are California transplants like me. One pair who live in a place called Pumpkin Center have a haunted orchard with citrus and figs, the same small crops that my dog, Bea, and I did in El Sereno 90032— at our house built in 1925 that was on what once was farmland.  

We came home to our place in New Orleans with a small fortune in the form of a sack of round and also longer oddly shaped fresh bright orange thick skinned mildly sweet seedless satsumas covered in rain droplets from the heavens.

That day it rained all around the clock, starting with tiny sprinkles from the sky— starting before Bea would even go out for her first pee in the very early AM. It would rain gently for days to come. Good thing Bellew got all of his yard work in before this happened.