CHAPTER 9
(NOT A) CANDY BAR WRAPPER
WHEN MY FATHER DROPPED ME off at Burton Conner, my mother darted out of the car after me, claiming I needed her help because my room was luànqībāzāo. Even though she did proceed to tornado through, sucking up dirty clothes, gum wrappers, and hair ties while clucking her tongue at me, I knew she was here because she couldn’t stomach any more Nǎinai or Yilong. In another hour, max, they would be on a plane out of here, but I guess even that was too much. Understandable.
I had anticipated this, hiding my dance shoes (which were calling to me like they knew I needed them) in a pile of Nicolette’s (hopefully chlamydia-free?) clothes. The polka-dot socks on top marked the pile as hers, which my mother would know since she bought most of my clothes and why you need colorful socks? The plain ones are cheaper.
But still, every time my mother breezed close to the buried treasure, I stopped breathing. Luckily, she was too appalled by the mess to pay much attention to me.
“If you don’t learn to clean up, maybe Eugene won’t want you.”
“I’m sure tiger Mrs. Huang will be wiping his butt until she dies,” I muttered from my desk. I was trying to drown out the tongue clucks with a p-set (MIT lingo for homework).
“Mrs. Huang is not a tiger; she’s a horse. And you’re right, she will probably live with you once you’re married. Except you will need to clean up after her. The only reason Nǎinai doesn’t live with us is because Yilong never married. Poor Nǎinai, having to deal with that. If you don’t marry, I would be so ashamed I’d never show my face.”
I scooted my chair closer to the desk and hunched over my paper. Drop-copy-decrease-chain, I chanted in my head as I differentiated, trying to tune her out—the only defense in this situation. I wish she had taken up my offer to walk around MIT again. I’d been hoping to re-create that day from a few weeks ago, but she had said no—reluctantly at least—citing that she didn’t want my father to have to wait on her if we took too long (heaven forbid).
Suddenly, my mother screamed. An I’m-getting-murdered, make-your-eardrums-bleed kind of scream. I covered my ears so fast I stabbed my temple with the pencil in my hand. Fortunately, it was the eraser side.
My head whipped toward her. She was perfectly fine, standing there in one piece, holding a candy wrapper. “Jesus, Mǎmá. So I ate a candy bar. Calm down. That scream should be reserved for ‘I’m dying.’ ”
“How could you? This is Ying-Na level stuff!” My mother stomped up to me and shoved the wrapper in my face. “Mei, you should know this already: Sex is a crime before marriage. Ying-Na did the sex, and it ruined her life.”
When my eyes focused enough to make out that my mother was actually holding a condom wrapper, it was my turn to scream. I backed away from the giant bacterium. “That’s not mine!”
She took another step. The wrapper was inches from my nose now. “That’s what you would say if it was yours!”
“Maybe so, but it’s definitely not mine—it’s my roommate’s!” I fought the urge to hyperventilate—could chlamydia be breathed in through my mouth?
To my relief, she threw the wrapper to Nicolette’s side of the room. She looked from the lacy underwear strewn across the chair to the bottles of makeup on the desk. “We’ll need to see if we can get you a new roommate,” she grumbled. “Don’t confront her though. Amberly Ahn confronted her roommate. Then her homework was changed in her sleep! Can you believe that? She had a semester full of Bs—the horror!”
I suspected Amberly merely used her roommate as an excuse for her grades (and I tucked that idea away for future use), but I wasn’t going to get in the way of my mother working her magic to get me a new, possibly chlamydia-free roommate.
My mother went back to cleaning, but before she could touch any of my stuff, I snatched the hand sanitizer off my desk and squeezed a gigantic glob across her knuckles. She narrowed her eyes at me, and I knew she was saying, I hope this doesn’t interfere with your future. My struggle with germs was an unspoken tension, and I often had to hide it from my parents to avoid fighting. I was used to sneaking sanitizer on beneath the table, in my pocket, behind my back.
To change the subject and avoid the land mine, I said, “I saw on Facebook that Jade moved in with her boyfriend.”
My strategy worked. “Aiyah! Really? How could her mother let that happen?”
I ignored the implication that I would never be able to move in with a future boyfriend, which I already knew anyway.
“Bú xiàng huà! I bet you they’re having the sex,” my mother said, nodding her head. “No one can live together and not have the sex.” She returned to cleaning up. “Good for you, Mei, avoiding these temptations. I taught you well.” I patted myself on the back for earning free brownie points. My abstinence wasn’t exactly by choice, but I might as well collect the perk associated with it. “Like I said before, this is why it’s important to have the right boy. One who won’t pressure you. Eugene.”
I cringed into my p-set.
“Eugene will never take you if you’re dirty, sullied by another person,” she continued, oblivious to my nausea. “Don’t let your roommate infect you with her bad behavior. Peer pressure happens when the other person is jealous. So if she tries to make you feel bad, remember it’s because you’re better than her.”
She stopped folding clothes, and my radar pinged. I wasn’t sure what serious (and possibly embarrassing) conversation was coming, but I knew enough to get out of there. Unfortunately, I wasn’t fast enough.
“Mei, we need to talk about what happened last night at Chow Chow.”
I held my breath. I actually wanted to talk about Xing. More than anything. Not because I was confused (which I was), but because I hadn’t heard my mother talk about him in years. And after yesterday, if we didn’t even mention him now, it would mean he was really gone. The bar was so low—even if she brought Xing and Esther up just to curse at them, I’d have some hope. Because then they would at least exist, be important enough to still get under her skin.
She sighed. “It was nice of you to stand up for me, but you need to learn that’s not how it goes.”
I exhaled quickly like I had been punched. I wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t brought him up, but I wasn’t okay with it either.
She didn’t even notice my reaction and continued. “In the future, your mother-in-law, Mrs. Huang, will be number one in the family. And right now, in our family, Nǎinai is number one. You can’t disrespect her or talk back. I’m scared you’re too headstrong, and it will be a problem when you get married.”
Only if I marry a Chinese person with traditional, unrelenting parents . . . like you and Babá.
“But that’s why I think Eugene will be a good match,” my mother went on. “I think his parents will be better. I’m trying to set you up with a good boy with a good upbringing from a family I know. I’m trying to save you the heartache I suffer. . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she left her sentence vague, no details.
“Mǎmá, if you don’t want me to go through what you went through, wouldn’t it be better if I married someone not Chinese? Or at least someone with parents less overbearing than Mrs. Huang?”
My mother paused for a moment, but only one. “Marrying another Chinese person who understands your upbringing and values—that’s what creates a solid foundation for a strong marriage. Remember Kimberly Chen? Her mother didn’t object when Kimberly married that Spanish boy. Now they’re divorced.”
“I doubt they divorced because of their different backgrounds. Many people get divorced.”
“None of my friends are divorced.”
“None of them are happy, either,” I muttered.
Seeming not to hear me, she barreled on. “I’m sure Mrs. Chen regrets it now. Kimberly is left with two kids, and no one else will marry her. Can you believe she let that happen to her own daughter?”
Umm, yes? Because she’s not an oppressive dictator?
My mother gasped, and I instinctively scooted my chair away, anticipating another non–candy bar wrapper. But when I turned around, she was holding up the calculus test I had “accidentally” left out. The 100 at the top was so big and red I could see it from across the room.
She smiled at me, a hint of pride in the curve of her lips, exactly as I had hoped for. “I can tell how hard you’ve been working, Mei. My good girl, spending all her time studying.”
I tried to bask in her pride, to feel the glow from inside that came only every few months such that I had to store it away and ration it out . . . but all I could hear was my heart pounding in my ears, trait-or, trait-or, trait-or. Quit teaching dance had been on my calendar every day the past few weeks, but so far I’d been oh for twenty. But it wasn’t getting in the way of my studies, right? Except for the sixty on my biology p-set, which was burning a hole at the bottom of my drawer.
“Mǎmá? Why is it so important to you that I become a doctor?”
She busied her hands with folding as if the topic made her nervous. “You can’t end up like me, Mei. You heard them last night. No respect for me. As a doctor, your husband and in-laws will be better to you. They have to,” she said, more to convince herself than me, it seemed. “You need power in your relationship. If you earn your own money, your husband can never use it against you.”
“Can’t I do something else? A different job, also respectable?”
“Doctor is the most respectable, and you have the smarts to do it, Mei. Don’t worry. You won’t end up like me. I’ve been planning for you since the beginning. Since you came out a girl. And I’m still planning. Always planning. I do your laundry and bring you food so you can devote all your time to studying. So get good grades, okay? Don’t let me work myself to the bone for nothing.”
I’ve always been jealous of my friends whose parents kissed their cheeks, read them bedtime stories, bought them whatever toys they wanted. But my parents showed love in different ways: shopping exclusively at garage sales, reusing napkins and Ziplocs, never treating themselves to the furniture or vacations they coveted. It was so I could go to the best school and end up with a stable career where I would never have to sacrifice like they did. To them, a secure future was the ultimate gift a parent could give. How could I refuse them when this was their motivation?
Except Esther wasn’t what they said she was, a tiny voice whispered in my head.
“What is it?” my mother asked, breaking into my thoughts.
“What do you mean?”
“I can tell—something’s bothering you.”
“Really? You can tell?”
“Of course. I’m your muqīn.”
My chest twinged. “Nothing’s bothering me. I’m just . . . thankful that you want the best for me and that you’ve sacrificed so much to get me here. Thanks, Mǎmá. You gave up your own education and career for me.”
My mother balled socks angrily. “I could’ve been successful, too. I went to Tái Dà, National Taiwan University—the Harvard of Taiwan! I did better than Bǎbá, and certainly better than Yilong. Yet I don’t have anything to show for it.”
Each ball she threw into the pile further pounded into my head that my mother’s demands, her criticisms—they were because she wanted better for me. I tried not to think about the fact that she was so unhappy.
Or that Xing and Esther had looked so in love.
Or that the pressure was boxing me in, restricting my airflow, with no end in sight.