CHAPTER 8
ARCHDUKE FERDINAND
EVEN THOUGH EXAMS WERE COMING up and my parents believed schoolwork was of utmost importance, Nǎinai (my father’s mother) was the exception. So when she and my aunt Yilong descended upon Massachusetts for a surprise visit, I was expected to drop everything—which is how I found myself at home dragged down by my textbooks and all my secrets. My family couldn’t know about the Porter Room, or how I’d fallen asleep in several biology lectures, or that I had freaked out over pee and flaky cheese.
And . . . I hadn’t backed out of teaching dance. In fact, I had already taught two Sundays’ worth of classes, and I’d never felt so alive, so in the exact place I was supposed to be, wondering why I had missed out for so long. Which only made it worse.
I needed the dance classes more than I needed their approval and what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, right? I could do this—keep it from them, keep everyone happy. There were good secrets and bad, and this was a good one, right? Those existed?
“Mei Mei!” Aunt Yilong called in her high-pitched voice, squeaking on the last syllable and clutching me to her chest. I coughed out her sickly sweet perfume and rubbed my tongue against my palate to get rid of the acrid taste.
She pushed me back for a closer inspection. “Look at you! I can’t believe you’re in college already! And at seventeen—bùdéliao!” I smiled, my lips lifting with my spirits.
But then she kept going. “Hmm, maybe some more exercise though? Getting chubby.”
I clenched my teeth, unable to thank her with the obedient, Yes, Aunt Yilong, xièxie.
Instead, I turned my attention to Nǎinai, who was seated at the dining room table with her trademark walker beside her.
“Mei Mei, eat your vitamins,” she said.
I bowed slightly. “Yes, Nǎinai, xièxie.”
Aunt Yilong pushed a grocery bag toward me, excitement raising her voice even higher. “I brought you a present.”
“Xièxie, you shouldn’t have.” I reached into the bag and pulled out a dark red sweaterdress large enough for Yilong and plain as could be—rounded neckline, long sleeves, and a single seam at the waist. At my aunt’s urging, I pulled it on over my clothes. The hem pooled on the floor and the chest area was at my waist.
To end this, I said, “Bù hao yìsi.” The phrase is used as a formal version of “thank you,” but literally translated means “I’m embarrassed.” I chuckled at my own joke, then felt completely alone.
Aunt Yilong stowed the now-empty plastic bag so it could make the trip back to her hoarder’s den. When we visit her home, we have to eat meals in fifteen-minute shifts because of the lack of space on the dining room table. I used to wonder how Nǎinai put up with the mess, but then I saw her Taiwan apartment, filled to the brim with trash and every insect imaginable.
“Let’s go to Chow Chow. I’m so hungry I could die.” Yilong gestured to me. “And what a perfect opportunity to wear your new dress.”
I began protesting, but my father shut me down with a glare. Dèng yi yan, more powerful than words.
When we reached the restaurant, I decided to own it, just like in junior high when my wardrobe consisted of flowered leggings and neon hoodies. I held the dress up with two dainty fingers, a princess waltzing into a ball, not a stinky-tofu-scented hole-in-the-wall. Just like seventh grade, it didn’t work. A few patrons pointed and giggled. Others stared. One older woman openly cackled, taking full advantage of her revered elderly status. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father duck his head in embarrassment. Satisfaction coursed through me even though I was the pìgu of the joke. That’ll teach him to think before his next dèng yi yan.
Before we had even sat down, Mrs. Pan rushed over, flashing Hanwei’s picture in my mother’s face. Except this time, she was armed with an entire album. “See how precious he is? Look at him here, age six, playing the guitar for an entire audience. They all cheered so loud.”
I remembered that sad performance my mother had dragged me to. The ten of us in the audience had clapped only because we could tell how much pressure poor Hanwei was under.
I thought my red dress might have been enough to turn Mrs. Pan away, but then I remembered she wanted me for her son because of MIT and my money nose, not my fashion sense.
She flipped through the pictures frantically, as if she knew her time was limited. “And look, so handsome at his college graduation. He finished with honors.”
My mother pushed the album away. “I’m sorry, but Mei is spoken for. Mrs. Huang and I have been talking.”
Mrs. Pan huffed. “The Huang boy? I heard he joined a fraternity and is on the fast track to becoming a drunk deadbeat. Is that what you want for Mei? Hanwei has never had a sip of alcohol in his life.”
If I hadn’t been the piece of meat the two dogs were fighting over, this might have been funny.
Mrs. Pan snapped the album shut and stalked off, her head in the air to hide her hurt pride.
Nǎinai nodded her approval at my mother. “Good. You taking care of Mei. That way she won’t end up like Xing, turned by the devil.”
I swear to God, my mother smiled.
And I sank lower into the pile of manure that was my future marriage.
We ordered so much another table had to be dragged over. Before I had even used hand sanitizer, my father attacked, slurping up beef noodle soup so violently broth spewed across the table. He didn’t become Lu Pàng by caring what others thought.
After dishing food to Nǎinai, Yilong stacked her plate five layers high. A few bāos and pork balls tumbled off and she hurried to scoop them back on top.
“You know, Mei,” she said between bites, “you should think about going on a diet. Or you should start exercising, like Bǎbá. Did you know he could’ve been in the NBA? He turned it down for computer science.”
I mashed my lips together to hold the laughter back. Once a week, my father huffed and puffed around the gym with other fifty-year-olds. There was more heavy breathing and yelling of Chinese obscenities than exercise.
“He’s a regular old Jeremy Lin, all right,” I said, expecting to end the conversation since no one would understand my reference.
“No one is as good as Jeremy Lin,” my mother said.
“Lin-sanity,” Nǎinai added.
I choked on my tea. “Do either of you know who Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, or LeBron James is?”
Nǎinai smiled. “Eat your vitamins.”
I answered my own question. “They’re basketball players.”
“We don’t know them because they’re not as good as Jeremy Lin,” my mother said with a shrug.
I had forgotten about what I like to call the Asian Club Phenomenon—that my family didn’t know Brad Pitt or J. K. Rowling, but they knew Lucy Liu and Amy Tan. Was it because so few Asians broke into pop culture that they felt a sense of shared pride, or was it because they felt a bond with every Asian, even the strangers we bumped into at Kmart and Costco?
“Too bad you didn’t go for it, Bà,” I said. “You could have been Lu-sanity. Well, that doesn’t really work. Lu-nar eclipse. You know, because you would eclipse everybody.”
Nǎinai nodded. “Lunar. We use lunar calendar.”
I nodded at her, too distracted to care that she hadn’t gotten my joke. A rare opportunity had presented itself, but it was so risky I was jiggling my leg the way my mother hated. “Do you guys think Jeremy Lin’s mother was right to let him pursue his NBA dream?”
“Do you remember Peter Cheng?” my mother asked. “You got locked in the bathroom at his house when you were little. Well, he was roommates with Jeremy Lin. And Peter is now a lawyer, making tons of money. I heard he bought his fiancée a three-carat diamond. Huge! The size of my fist.” She held up her tiny clenched hand to demonstrate. “So at least Jeremy Lin went to Harvard and has that degree as backup.”
The weight on my chest lightened . . . until Yilong spoke a second later.
“Jeremy Lin probably went into basketball because he wasn’t good at medicine or law. Don’t worry, Mei. You will make the best doctor. Plenty of job offers, plenty of money.”
Nǎinai nodded. “You won’t end up like your mǎmá. Jobless. No offers.”
My mother’s shoulders slumped forward, her posture matching her position in the family—the lowest, almost invisible.
Yilong added, “Your nǎinai told her again and again to get a job, but nobody wants her.”
And I lost it. “My mother dropped out of graduate school to take care of Xing and me,” I fired back. My mother grabbed my arm, trying to shush me. I shook her off.
Yilong glanced at me with wide eyes, then rested her gaze on my mother. “If you’d taught her better, she’d be more obedient.”
I balled the tablecloth in my hands, squeezing to try to calm the bubbling Lu-suvius. I couldn’t win here. If I let any snark seep out, they would only attack my mother’s parenting more, but saying nothing meant I agreed that obedience was a virtue. I tried to tombé, pas de bourrée in my head, but there was too much frustration coursing through my veins. My fists remained tight, and I hoped it was enough to show my dissent without feeding the fire.
In the ensuing silence, during which I could hear my own heartbeat, Nǎinai’s eyes glazed over as they always did before a flare-up of her dementia. As the cloudiness grew, I knew she was being taken farther and farther back in time. Her episodes often involved Communist Revolution flashbacks, mistaking my father for her husband (and arguing with him), or reliving my brother’s disownment. That last one was the most common. Her eyes would fill with tears as she cursed Xing’s girlfriend, the one who’d gotten him disowned, and then she’d pound her fists on the table, her leg, the person next to her until the episode passed.
Nǎinai looked to my aunt as she yelled, “Yilong! Don’t talk to her!” She spat the last word at my mother, the way she normally spoke about Xing’s girlfriend. “Not until she gives me a grandson!” She turned to my mother. “You can’t sit with us until I have my sūnzi.”
This was a new one. My head swiveled from my mother to Yilong to Nǎinai, wanting to hear more yet dreading it. My voice cracked as I tried to clarify, “Nǎinai and Yilong didn’t speak to Mǎmá until she gave birth to a son?” I didn’t even know who I was asking.
“Enough,” my father barked. “Mā, you have two grandchildren. One is sitting beside you. Remember? Remember Mei?”
Nǎinai looked at me and her eyes gradually focused on my face, which was a shrunken version of my father’s. As she took in my familiar lucky Lu nose, she smiled. “Mei Mei,” she cooed, as if I were still a child.
My father leaned over to me. “Nǎinai isn’t doing well. You need to make more time for her. There’s no one in the world she loves more than you.”
Except Xing. Those unspoken words hung between us, just one of many hidden truths floating in the air. I could never compare with “most excellent,” zuì yōuxiù Xing, who was the coveted eldest son of the eldest son.
Yilong poured the leftover oil from the shrimp onto her plate and dinner returned to normal. Well, normal for when Yilong and Nǎinai were here. Nǎinai stared at me with half-blank eyes while my aunt chattered about the article she’d just read that said if you swung your arms three thousand (yes, three thousand ) times a day, you’d live a longer, healthier life.
I actually missed my mother’s criticisms and fussing. I considered chewing with my mouth open just to get her to slap my hand and remind me to “be a lady.” Or maybe I should prop my leg up on the chair—my favorite eating position always made her hiss, You look like a villager!
But I held back. I was afraid she wouldn’t do anything—just like how she hadn’t swatted my jiggling leg—and it would only remind me how she became a ghost in the presence of her in-laws.
So we ate in uncomfortable silence heavy with secrets and repressed anger—in other words, a normal family dinner. Unfortunately, this was just the calm before the shitstorm.
Since Yilong and my parents’ backs were to the entrance and Nǎinai’s eyesight was even worse than mine, they didn’t see him come in. But I did. And she was with him.
Maybe it’s not him, I told myself—I hadn’t seen him in years. But I knew I was deluding myself. He was a younger, thinner Bǎbá, complete with white Reeboks and sideswept hair.
My brother and his petite Taiwanese girlfriend exchanged a loving glance. Her sleek, stylish bob framed her face perfectly, swishing gracefully with her neck movements. Then he slipped his arm around her tiny waist, routine, but her face lit up as if it were the first time.
My mind scrambled, trying to piece this image of her with the one my parents had forged in my mind. They had led me to believe she was the devil, breaking up our family for her own evil kicks. Not this seemingly sweet girl. An actual person.
Xing met my stare and froze.
My brain flooded with memories. Xing reenacting Sailor Moon episodes with me. Xing buying Horny for me because my parents had been too frugal. And worst of all, Xing, the last time I saw him, burying his face in his scarf, unable to tell me he wouldn’t be seeing me for a long time. Four years, it turned out.
My pulse quickened. I was trapped.
I snatched my father’s chopsticks out of his hand so he couldn’t chuck them across the restaurant when the inevitable battle broke out. The pork ball they had been holding rolled down his shirt as one chopstick slipped through my fingers and clattered to the floor.
Oops.
He raised an eyebrow at me. As he turned to signal the waitress for a new pair, I realized I had just shot Archduke Ferdinand. If I hadn’t done anything, maybe they wouldn’t have noticed. Maybe Xing and his girlfriend would have left.
My father’s hand fell to the side when he spotted them. I braced myself for his Lu-suvius eruption, but it came from my mother. She charged over and grabbed the girl’s left hand.
“You proposed?” My mother spoke only to Xing, as if his fiancée weren’t human. “Even though you know we disapprove? How could you disgrace us like this?”
“It’s nice to finally meet you,” Xing’s fiancée said, clearly lying. “I’m Esther.”
Her response shocked me like a pulse of electricity. Even after all that had transpired, she had taken the high road.
I ran over on the heels of my father, hoping to be able to do something, even if it was merely being a buffer.
My mother’s eyes scanned over Esther, the scowl on her face deepening when her pupils passed over the brown highlights in Esther’s hair. I could hear her in my head, clear as if she had spoken the familiar words aloud. Only criminals dye their hair. I found myself hoping that Esther didn’t have any other strikes, like a tattoo or multiple piercings.
My father was surprisingly calm, which was scarier than Lu-suvius. “Xing, your mother and I are so disappointed in you. If you marry her, that will be it. No chance of reconciliation. Forget our address, our faces, our names. You’re dead to us.” He gave me the eyeball. “All of us.”
I hunched, wanting to disappear.
By now Nǎinai had grabbed her walker and made her way over. She waved a shaky, accusatory finger at Esther. “She-devil!”
I waited for Yilong to rein her in, but she stepped forward and put her hands on her hips, joined forces.
I should’ve known better. Yet after seeing Esther in her perfectly smooth, human flesh, everything was jumbled.
Nǎinai was more lucid than I’d seen in a long time. Unlike my mother, she spoke directly to Esther, in Mandarin. “If you love him, you would offer your fertile sister to him in your place. But since you are selfish and refuse, now I have to resort to praying for your death.”
Holy shit, did we just time travel a hundred years back?
The strained smile vanished from Esther’s face, and she bit her lip. I couldn’t tell if it was to keep from crying or to keep from yelling obscenities. Hell, I was about to start yelling.
I wanted to reach out to Esther, maybe stand in front of her as a human shield, but my traitorous feet were rooted to the ground.
Xing’s eyes were dark and cold as he pulled his fiancée out of the line of fire. “Do not ever speak to her like that again,” he said directly to Nǎinai. I instinctively tensed as if I were the one being scolded.
Nǎinai stumbled, throwing herself onto the walker, which creaked under her full weight. When Yilong’s arms reached out to support her, Nǎinai let go and slumped to the floor.
Yilong screeched, high and piercing, not caring that we were in public. “Look what you’ve done to her!”
Both my parents rushed over, the excess of arms entangling such that Nǎinai remained on the floor as everyone fought over who would help.
Xing used the mess to escape with Esther. He gave me one last look, and there was so much that transpired between us in that second, but I didn’t know how to interpret it. I opened my mouth to say something, but . . . there was nothing. Not that it mattered. He was gone before anything could have come out.
I’m sorry, I eventually mouthed to no one. But sorry for what, I couldn’t put my finger on. I wasn’t on my parents’ side, right? I mean, what had come out of Nǎinai’s mouth was so fucked up there were no words for it . . . yet by remaining behind, I had chosen a side.
Once Nǎinai was back in her seat, my mother hissed, “This is what happens when you disrespect us, Mei.”
I knew all too well. All Xing had done was fall in love with a reproductively challenged woman.
The ride home was silent except for the 1950s Chinese music blasting from the speakers—the same songs that had played in my tone-deaf father’s car for the last ten years. The lyrics I normally found humorous now seemed to be mocking me. Zhè ba nítu no longer just meant this handful of dirt—it meant you’re trapped; you aren’t a part of this culture; you aren’t a part of anything. Then they morphed into accusations that I was betraying myself, my true self. Jiarú wo shì yígè yuèliàng was not just if I were a moon—it taunted me, saying, You’re a coward; You can’t be anything you want, only what others want.
At home everyone made a beeline for the makeshift altar, which comprised a folding table covered in gold cloth. A photo of Yéye sat in the middle, unsmiling—the same portrait that usually hung at the head of our dining room table, eerie and omnipotent. Around his picture sat bananas, peanuts, and Kit Kat bars—his favorite foods. As a child I’d had a hard time imagining this austere stranger loving Kit Kats—better known to my family as Yéye táng, or grandfather candy.
We always honored him around this time of year, the anniversary of his death. Nǎinai paid her respects first, as always, and completed her version of worship while seated, refusing to give her late husband more. I suspected Nǎinai kowtowed only to stay in the ancestors’ good graces.
After Nǎinai, my parents took their places a few feet apart, facing the portrait. They stared at Yéye as they clasped their hands together and raised and lowered them once. Then they kneeled and kowtowed three times, craning their necks to look at the photo between each bow. One final clasped arm raise on their knees finished the ritual.
Worshipping was serious business. No smiling, no laughing, no talking—which of course meant it had taken all my strength to suppress my giggles as a kid.
After Yilong took her turn, I stepped forward. When I was little, this ritual had been a necessity to honor my ancestors (and on Chinese New Year, to get my hóngbāo with a crisp twenty-dollar bill inside). Now it had morphed into just what you do, like how you brush your teeth twice a day or eat dinner at night. Just going through the motions, not really feeling or thinking.
As I robotically raised my clasped hands for what felt like the thousandth time, I couldn’t stop picturing the last worship with the entire family, BD. Before Disownment. My parents had just finagled a copy of Xing’s senior-year transcript, which had taken many phone calls, too many threats, and probably some misdemeanors since Xing had made sure the transcript was never to be sent home. He was already accepted into medical school, his future secured, but my father had spent our rare family time screaming at him for getting a C. Xing had stormed out without worshipping Yéye. Did he know then that he would never be back in this house, be a part of this tradition again? And I couldn’t help wondering . . . was I following in his footsteps?
I couldn’t let it happen. Because unlike Xing, I couldn’t handle being on my own. He had always been rebellious, often choosing the wrong path on purpose just to piss our parents off. The opposite of my instincts.
As soon as I finished the last arm raise, my father cleared his throat. “Seeing Xing should have jolted you, Mei. Study hard. Bring honor to our family. Do not disappoint us. You know the stakes.”
Xing and I are different, I told myself over and over as I tried (and failed) to fall asleep.
At four in the morning, extra pressure on my bed stirred me from my hard-earned sleep. Without opening my eyes, I knew the unwelcome visitor was Nǎinai—the only person with the gall elderly status to regularly intrude on her sleeping hosts in the hopes of waking someone to keep her company.
She spoke in Mandarin. “Mei Mei, you need to learn obedience. Just look at your father, the epitome of xiàoshùn—always putting me first, never asking questions. He was obedient to Yéye until the end—no, past the end. After Yéye’s death, your father paid the proper respect, refraining from cutting the hair on his head and face for a hundred days.”
That wasn’t noble. Just sad. The only way my father knew how to express himself to Yéye was through an archaic tradition done after death.
“But don’t worry, your father wasn’t always that way. It can be learned.” She guffawed suddenly, loud and throaty, startling me. “He was so naughty as a child. How he loved to eat. Whenever I gave him money for a haircut, he would spend the dollar on beef noodle soup and just accept the beating that followed. So naughty, just like Xing.”
My heart ached for my father, who grew up in a different time and had it so much worse. Had he been scared? Confused? Resentful? The few times he had talked about Yéye, he’d spoken with such reverence.
Nǎinai inched closer and leaned over my still torso. “One time, Yéye caught him smoking and used the cigarette to burn his arm. Your father never smoked again.”
I pictured the three welts of scar tissue on my dad’s arm. Whenever I asked where those came from, he just grunted. Nǎinai obviously didn’t know he continued to smoke for years, a pack a day, in the basement. The only way Yéye helped him quit was by dying of emphysema. So many secrets. So much left unsaid. I was guilty of the same, like father like daughter, carved from the same múzi.
She patted my leg. “Try harder. I know you can do it. You’re at MIT because you’re a hard worker, like me. Did you know I joined the army to escape the Communist War? Then, in Taiwan, I argued my way into the police academy.”
For the first time since the onset of her dementia, I felt that thread that connected us. I used to look up to her for her independence, the fight she had inside. My chest used to puff when my father told me I reminded him of her, the highest compliment he could give.
But then she pressed a finger to the off-center mole on my forehead, which was visible now that I was lying down and my bangs had fallen to one side. “We should remove this. I could cut it off for you, to help you catch a man.”
And with that, our moment was over. She shuffled out, muttering about finding a knife for the goddamn mole that had plagued me my whole life.
After wedging a chair beneath the door handle to keep Nǎinai and her knife out, I tossed and turned for hours, haunted by my father’s past, Xing’s past, and my future.