CHAPTER 26
AFFAIR 2.0
MY MOTHER STARED AT THE scratches on the Bertucci’s table. There hadn’t been any sleuthing for friends today. From the moment I saw her in the parking lot, I knew something was different. She radiated sadness. I drummed my fingers on my lap, anxious for her to tell me what was going on.
She took a breath. “Bǎbá saw on the GPS that I went to Bertucci’s. We fought.”
Meaning he yelled and you cowered in a corner, I thought to myself.
“I fought back.” My mother’s strong voice shocked me as much as her words. “I stood up for you, Mei. I told him I still wanted a relationship with you. I had to. I didn’t want things to end like with you and Nǎinai. With Xing and Nǎinai. And now”—she took another breath—“Bǎbá’s not talking to me anymore.”
“Thank you, Mǎmá.” My voice came out a husky whisper. I sniffed, very unladylike, but she didn’t reprimand me. She was busy muffling her own sniffle.
“Mei, I raised you how I was raised because I thought it was the only way. But your words the last time we met”—she patted the spot over her heart—“I heard them. I ask myself, what if things could be different? I never considered it before. Then I thought about my childhood. I hated when my mǎmá—your wàipó—gave away my toys. Or told the neighbor her daughter was better than me. Or scolded me no matter how good of a grade I got. It was what every parent did so I didn’t question it, but I hated it. Of course you hated it too. We believe a stern hand is the way to produce moral, hardworking children, but . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Now I couldn’t keep the tears from falling, but for once I didn’t try to hide them. “Thank you for saying that. I know this hasn’t been easy for you. Any of it. As a child, I could tell you didn’t want me. And now you standing up for me . . . well, I feel like you want me.”
She looked up, her eyes transparent for the first time. “Of course I want you. Maybe I wasn’t . . . ready . . . when you were little. I’m sorry you could tell. You weren’t planned. Actually, I found out I was pregnant with you at my appointment to get my tubes tied. Counting doesn’t work, even if your period is regular.”
I wanted her to add, just kidding, but I knew she was telling the truth. It explained why Xing and I were nine years apart in age. Deep down I had known that I was an accident, but I could never admit it to myself. I couldn’t handle my parents not wanting me before and after my birth.
“I want you now.” She placed a hand on mine, but as soon as contact was made, she lifted and pulled back. “Xing was such a handful—he ran off at airports, colored the carpet with marker—and I had him before I was ready.”
She took a few moments to collect herself, then locked eyes with me. “Your yéye was dying when Bǎbá and I met. Emphysema. He only had a few months. Bǎbá was the only other Taiwanese student in Missouri, where we were in graduate school, and I was already twenty-seven. Past marrying age. My eggs were going to be dinosaurs soon!”
I groaned but let her continue.
“We married after three months. I didn’t love him. How could I when I barely knew him? I hoped the feelings would grow with time. But I didn’t know he couldn’t communicate. That he was so angry underneath.”
Her eyes left my face, as if she couldn’t look at my reaction as she told me the rest of her story. “As you already know, Bǎbá is the eldest and only son. He had to carry on the family name. The moment we married, Yéye demanded a grandson. If it was a girl, Yéye didn’t want her. Girls don’t matter. For Yéye’s generation, only the boys count. He used to say he has three siblings when he actually had eleven—three brothers and eight sisters.”
I knew the culture was largely to blame, but I couldn’t help loathing him a little. “Well, good job, you had a boy.”
“I ate nothing but tofu, lettuce, and oats for a month.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I felt like we were speaking different languages.
“Those foods increase your body’s pH, which helps you have a boy.” The usual lecture quality to her tone was missing. In its place, regret. “As soon as Xing was born, Nǎinai and Yilong took him from me to Taiwan. To Yéye.”
I thought of the pile of photographs in the back of the hall closet that I had stumbled upon when I was too young to understand. Hundreds of photos of Xing’s first year of life—all of him with Nǎinai, Yilong, and Yéye. The only photo of Xing with my mother from that year was in the hospital, right after he was born. I had never guessed the truth—it was too preposterous, too horrifying. But now, hearing it straight from my mother, it made complete sense, and I wondered why I had given my dad’s family so much credit that they had never earned.
Her voice became stripped, raw, breaking between sentences. “I didn’t see Xing for the first year of his life. I couldn’t afford to go with him. I was still in school. We were living in a trailer home. No health or auto insurance.”
Part of me wanted to say, How could you let them take him? But I knew there was no way I could understand what it had been like for her. And hadn’t I also felt trapped? Hadn’t I done things I normally wouldn’t have because I felt I had no choice?
She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. “When Yéye died, they sent Xing back. Suddenly I had to figure out how to become a mother on my own. Bǎbá didn’t help at all. I became bitter at everyone. I couldn’t take it out on Nǎinai or Bǎbá, so I took it out on Xing. Then, when you came along, I took it out on you. I’m so sorry.”
I felt like I had been dragged under by a wave, overwhelming me in the moment but washing me clean in the process. For the first time, she had been honest. And for the first time, I saw her. “I’m sorry it was so terrible for you.”
She planted her palms on the table and closed her eyes in shame. “I want to redo it. I want to shove you back in”—she pointed to her womb—“and start over. When I think about all the things I did to you that I hated when I was in your xiézi, I feel so sorry. I regret it. Please forgive me.”
She reached for my wrist but stopped before contact, her hand hovering. I grabbed it and squeezed.
“I’m trying to make Bǎbá come around,” she said. “He’s just so difficult. But he needs me. He can’t cook or clean or do laundry. I have some leverage. One time he brushed his teeth with Preparation H, then blamed me! Can you believe it? He said I shouldn’t have left it so close to his toothbrush.”
“Yeah, Mǎmá, how could you do that to him?” I let out a laugh, mostly from picturing my father brushing with hemorrhoid cream.
She joined in, and we laughed together for a few minutes. A first.
She stared at our hands, still adjoined. “I’m sorry it took me so long to see, especially when I suffered in similar ways. I do want you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. But now I see—your idea of happiness doesn’t match mine. Mei, I want more for you than me. I always have.”
“Are you not happy?” I leaned forward, trying to read her eyes.
She ignored my question. “I had a cousin whose parents wanted him to be a doctor. He went to medical school, of course—no one would even think about disobeying their parents back then—but he hated it. On his medical school graduation day, he handed his parents his diploma, then drowned himself in the river.”
I gasped and pulled my hand from hers. How could she have pushed me so much after witnessing that?
“He’d always been in the back of my mind. Haunting me. I was hoping maybe when you tried medicine, you would fall in love with it. . . .” She grabbed my hand again. “But I don’t want to risk your happiness. If you say you won’t like it, I trust you.”
My response was a breath of a whisper, quieted by my welling emotions. “Thank you, Mǎmá.”
“I trust you to decide your own major and your own track”—she paused—“as long as you don’t become an artist or musician.” Her curved lip implied she was joking.
My mother! Cracking a joke! I grinned, a welcome reaction instead of the usual frustration.
She slid a red envelope across the table, shielding it with her hand as if it were contraband. “Take it. It’s all I could scrape away for now, but I’ll try to get you more. I’ll do what I can. I don’t want you to worry.”
I accepted the tiny red packet of love with a shaky hand. “So you want to see me again?”
“Of course.” No hesitation.
Outside the restaurant, I wrapped my arms around her. Beneath her winter layers, she relaxed, and then finally, what I had been waiting for, for far too long, she reciprocated. Two petite arms wrapped around my back. Squeezing. Because she wanted me.