CHAPTER 20
DR. AND DR.
MIDSTUDYING, I SCROUNGED THROUGH MY desk, searching for a fix of dried squid, my favorite brain food. But I came up empty. Of course.
When I failed to convince myself that the knot in my stomach was because I was hungry and nothing else, I slammed the drawer in frustration, sending a photo loose from the stack of papers on my desk.
My favorite baby picture, tucked into my college-bound boxes in a last-minute sentimental rush. It fluttered to the ground, catching the light streaming in from the window.
Two-year-old me, dressed in a red, embroidered, cotton-padded mián’ao and navy-blue sweatpants that said PUMP instead of PUMA. My father was holding me—no, he was clutching me to him, his arms awkward and cramped from squeezing so hard. His cheek was pressed against mine, an uncharacteristic curve to his lips. And his eyes—they radiated love.
I was his baobèi.
And this baobèi was about to lose it. I snatched up my phone and ballet shoes, then retreated to Mr. Porter’s open arms.
Everything felt tight. Too tight, like a coffin. My muscles screamed at me as I dissolved into movement without any warm-up. And as stiff as I was on the outside, the inside was rigor mortis—still too soon after the death of my relationship with my parents.
There was a hole in my chest, a piece of me missing without them. When I thought about continuing down this path, trying to find my way, the crater grew. I folded my arms across my torso as if that could stop it, but the void swelled and billowed, laughing at me.
But then when I thought about making up with them, the hole in my chest closed as a cavity opened in my brain, a partial lobotomy. I couldn’t go through life as a shadow. If I gave in to them, I’d lose myself.
No matter how painful this was, I couldn’t go back. But just because I knew that didn’t make it any easier.
In the Chinatown supermarket, I dug through vacuum-sealed packages of pork jerky, jelly candies, and seaweed but couldn’t locate the dried squid. I had spent thirty minutes on the T, gotten lost twice, and now I couldn’t read the obscure characters on the product labels.
I grasped my head with both hands and held back a scream. First the Star Market hadn’t stocked the snacks I craved, and now this.
Okay, Universe, I get it. I just want some dried squid, damn it!
My breath rushed in and out of my nostrils noisily, and I focused on it to ebb the rush of emotions.
A voice behind me said, “Mei?” It was more of a question than a statement.
I turned to face a middle-aged Chinese woman I didn’t recognize. “Āyí hao.” My greeting was robotic; my mother had so many acquaintances I couldn’t remember their faces (and my poor vision didn’t help).
“You look just like your mother!”
“I do?”
She touched her hand to my chin. “Yes. Same bone structure and delicacy. Your features are obviously from your father, but your base is so clearly her.”
My chest tightened at the mention of my parents. I guess my tale hadn’t traveled too far down the grapevine yet.
She lowered her hand, then her eyes. “I was so sorry to hear about, you know.”
Guess I spoke too soon. My lips hardened into a line and I acknowledged her condolences with a brusque nod.
“I’m shopping with my sister. You remember her, I’m sure. She used to drive you and Hanwei to Chinese school.” She put her hand on the woman beside her, whose back was to us.
Mrs. Pan turned and dropped the vermicelli she was holding. “Mei! Oh! Uh, hello.”
I bent down to pick up the noodles at the same time she did, and when our fingers grazed, she snapped her hand back as if my disobedience were contagious. Pretending I didn’t notice, I scooped the package up and dropped it in her shopping basket.
“Āyí hao. How’s Hanwei?”
Mrs. Pan flinched when her son’s name came out of my mouth. “I’m sorry, Mei, but Hanwei has been spoken for. He has a girlfriend now, a good girl, so you should just forget about him. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
Her pinched lips and cold eyes told me she was lying, and even though I had never wanted Hanwei for a second, disgrace shot through me. They hurried away and left me, my limbs shaking, in the prepackaged food aisle.
I left sans squid. Back on the street, despite the cold, my feet wouldn’t listen to me. Go home, I told them, but they remained planted. You have no home, they reminded me.
I stood on the sidewalk, staring at the Chinatown archway, the gate into this other world. My body was inside, past the entrance, but it felt like the rest of me was outside.
The people around me morphed into a blur, and I eventually stopped registering their shoulder grazes as they pushed past me. They became a sea of black hair. . . .
But then I spotted a familiar shape. Two contrasting bodies—one tall and thick, the other short and petite—walking together yet apart.
I ran toward them, not thinking, not sure what I wanted, but I had to see them. My parents’ eyes met mine—my father’s hard and distant, my mother’s wounded and helpless—and they took a sharp turn into the first store beside them. Silky Fabrics. A store they would never go into otherwise.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I hadn’t realized my heart could break all over again.
Outside MIT’s financial aid office, I let out a breath and watched the water molecules condense before my eyes. As the puff of fog drifted languidly, I wished I could float away with it and leave everything behind.
Seeing my parents had been a wake-up call to get my shit together. And not only were my emotions in pieces, but so were my finances. Because I was under eighteen and there was no “my Chinese parents disowned me” check box on the form, I would have to go to court to become emancipated. My parents would probably contest, it would be a long process, and it “just wasn’t a viable option,” according to the gray-haired financial-aid lady with coffee-stained teeth.
Xing had offered to help me, but I hoped to keep him out of it. He had enough parental-related burdens without adding mine. And for all I knew, he was still paying our parents back for college and med school.
Instead of secrets, my dumpling was now stuffed with fear and way too much responsibility. And it was already exploding, even without squeezing.
An unfamiliar voice called out my name. I peered up at a handsome male stranger who looked a few years older than me. My eyebrows furrowed. “Sorry, do I know you?”
“I’m Eugene.”
Oh, Eugene. My preapproved Taiwanese knight. I shouldn’t have been surprised—Harvard and MIT students frequented each other’s campuses—but it just never occurred to me that I would one day put a face to the dreaded name.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, but despite my best efforts, my tone implied the opposite. “How’d you recognize me?”
“My mom showed me a picture. Of course.” He rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry about your parents.”
“Oh, you heard?” Maybe I was Ying-Na 2.0 already.
“Yeah. My mom’s a bit panicked that your mom will still try to set us up despite everything. Because of your . . . situation . . . she’s finally gotten off my back about our meeting. Good for us, right?”
I tried not to be offended since I never had any interest in him either. But it was hard not to be a little stung by his rejection, especially now that we’d met. “Guess I’m not good enough for you anymore,” I joked. “I won’t be the obedient Chinese wife she wants for you.”
He laughed, a little mocking and a lot haughty. “Yeah, I’m not going down that road. She’ll learn eventually.”
“How can you say that so confidently? Won’t she freak out and guilt you or cut you off until you do what they want?”
Eugene squinted at me like I was an alien. “I’m their only son. I’ll get my way eventually. I just have to wait them out.”
“Lucky,” I mumbled.
“It was nice to meet you, Mei. Maybe in another life we could’ve been friends, but I have different taste in women than my mother.”
I watched as he disappeared from view (and my life), thankful I wasn’t going to be Mrs. Huang in the future. Or Dr. Huang to his Dr. Huang.