When Invisible Children Sing
Page 12
“What type of prizes?” she asks.
“Hmmm. Stickers. Erasers. Pencils. Pens.”
“Those are prizes? Those are things left in your desk.”
“C’mon. I’ll bring something back from Games Galore for you.”
“Okay. You promise that you won’t make fun of my grades?”
“Sure,” I say. My sister hands me her grades. B. B. B. C. D. B. “Dang, Fatso. You’re not only fat like a hog—nrook, nrook—you’re also stupid!”
She snatches her grades from my hands. “I hate you!” She stands up and stomps out.
“Same to you and more of it,” I spit out.
“I hate you!” Fatso shouts through tears. “I am never going to let you see my grades again!” Mingfang runs into her room and slams the door. A second later, she opens her door and shouts out, “I didn’t need that!” She always says that. As if I was worried about what she needed.
I stand before the door to my sister’s room. “C’mon, Mingfang. It’s time to go through the obstacle course.”
“No! I hate the obstacle course,” I hear through the door.
“I’ve got prizes from Games Galore.” The local arcade hands out free game tokens for good grades, and I spent mine on Skee-Ball and the skill crane to win prizes for Mingfang.
The door opens a crack, then swings open ever so slightly. “What kind of prizes?” asks Mingfang.
“They’re in my backpack. You have to earn them.”
She opens the door all the way, and she beams forth an angelic smile. I almost want to give her the prizes without making her earn them. We walk into the living room, and I explain the situation. “Okay. You need to finish the course within sixty seconds. If you finish in world-record time, you get to blindly pick out of the treasure bag.”
“You have to promise that you won’t hit too hard,” she says. “The last time we played obstacle course I bruised my elbow.”
“I can’t help it if you couldn’t handle the linebackers.” She gives me a sad look. “Okay,” I say. “It’ll be a level-one obstacle course. Promise.”
“Okay,” she half smiles and then gets a hard, determined look on her face.
“Ready,” I say. She leans forward. “On your mark. Get set. Go!” Mingfang hops over the pillow hurdles. “Go! Run!” I shout. “Now zigzag between the cones. Underneath the piano bench. Careful! If you touch it you’ll burn to death! Okay, now jump over the moat filled with alligators. Okay, now comes the hardest part.” I pick up a big pillow. “The linebackers of doom.” Mingfang tries to run past me as I pop her with the pillow. She falls, gets back up. “Time’s running out! C’mon, you can do it! Boom! Boom! Boom! Beat those football players up!” She crunches into the pillow with her shoulder and dashes over the finish line.
“And in first place! Mingfang Huang in fifty-five seconds! A new world record!” My sister doubles over, panting. She smiles with glee.
“Okay. You can pick out of the grab bag of treasures.” She reaches into the backpack. She feels pencils, papers, little pinball games, key chains, but I know what she’ll take out.
“Look what I got! Look what I got!” she shouts.
“A puppy stuffed animal. Good job.”
“Thanks, Chi.” She beams. “You’re the best.”
October 1985, College Station, Texas
It’s 7:05 a.m. My sister’s leukemia is in remission. I’m not sure what that means, but we don’t have to go to Houston anymore, and everyone is real happy about it.
I have a math exam today. “Dad!” I holler from the foyer into the hallway. “Hurry up! We’re going to be late again.” Gee whiz. “Dad!” I holler. Out hops my sister. I can’t stand Fatso. She needs to exercise more and eat less. It’s all supply and demand, simple as that. “Hey, Mingfang! Hurry up!”
“Leave me alone,” she says perfunctorily as she walks past me into the living room.
“I don’t have to leave you alone if I don’t want to, so just shut up!”
“Leave me alone,” she says again, as if I were a machine needing clear, repeated vocal commands.
“Hey,” I whisper to her, “you need to know something.”
“What?” she snaps at me.
“Abnormal fat distribution throughout your body will cause you to fall and lose your balance.”
She steps toward me. “What are you talking about?” Before she can finish her question, I stick out my leg. She trips and smacks her face on the tile floor.
“Waaaannnnnn!”
Shoot. Blood flows from her mouth. Did she lose a tooth? Shoot! “Chi! What did you do?” My dad mysteriously appears.
I hate my sister. She always gets me in trouble. She should have known I was going to trip her. She should have kept her face from hitting the floor. Why can’t she be more resilient? I wish I had a brother so we could wrestle and play.
“Chi! Get in here.”
It is 7 p.m. now. I thought my dad would forget what happened. I broke the golden rule in our family: no violence against anyone. As I walk into the living room, I remind myself that he’s never spanked me. My father is standing up. That’s a bad sign.
“Chi!” he shouts down at me. “You lied to me this morning!”
“I did?” Did I?
“Yes, you did,” he says in Taiwanese. “You tripped your little sister. You know that you are not allowed to hit or hurt anyone.”
“Yes, Father.”
“You could have caused her to lose her teeth.”
“Yes, Father.”
“You could have scarred her face.”
His face is beet red. My father is so angry. And he keeps glaring at me. “Go outside and get a stick!”
I look at him as if he was kidding.
“Get outside and get a stick!”
My mother runs over to me in a panic. “Just go outside,” she whispers, “and don’t come back for a little time. Let him cool down.”
“Okay.”
I leave the house. It is dark and cold outside, and I notice various sticks lying on the brown grass. None of them look very good for hitting, except for a thick plank with nails sticking out of its end, which sits quietly against the foundation of the house. My father has never hit me or my sisters—not even spankings.
I don’t know what to do. Just wait around here? I feel so alone suddenly. I walk to Thomas Park, where I stand around on the basketball court without a basketball. For a couple of hours, I look up at the sky, and then I study the basketball hoops. How do people do this? Live alone without a family or home?
I know I can always go home. I might get hit a few times, but it’ll surely be the last time I get hit. I’m never going to hurt my sister again. This really stinks. I’d rather take a stick back and let my father hit me than have to be out here another hour. I look around for appropriate sticks. What would it be like to get hit with a stick? Maybe I won’t go home just yet.
Another half hour, and I walk back home. I open the front door, and my mother and father look at me silently. I turn down my eyes and walk to my room. I can tell by the look in my father’s eyes that his fury has cooled and he will not hit me tonight. I lie down on my bed without changing clothes. My father has taught me nonviolence. Violence is wrong. I fall asleep knowing this, and I sleep well knowing it.
November 1987, College Station
I’m a junior in high school, and I am finished studying for tomorrow’s advanced biology exam. I walk into my parents’ bedroom and see my sister lying on her stomach, studying on the bed.
“What are you studying?” I ask her. “Maybe I can help you.”
“Yeah, right,” she says, rolling onto her back. “Every time you help me, you make fun of me.”
“Okay. I promise that I won’t make fun of you this time.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“I have a spelling test tomorrow,” explains my sister.
“Okay, I want you to do three things for me. I want you to spell each word by mouth
, write it down on paper, and then use the word in a sentence.”
“But it’s just a spelling test.”
“I know it is just a spelling test, but you will remember the word better this way in the long run. Besides, I want you to get a hundred on tomorrow’s exam.”
“Okay.”
“The first word is logic.”
“Logic. L-O-G-I-K.”
“Try again. Think.”
“Logic. L-O-G-I-C.”
“Very good. Now write it on the piece of paper.”
I watch her carefully inscribe the word on her paper. “Great,” I say. “Use it in a sentence.”
“Ummm. I don’t know what it means.”
“Look it up.”
“Gee whiz. You make more work for me. It’s just a spelling test.”
“Look it up,” I insist. Two hours later, around midnight, we’ve gone through each of the twenty words. At times, I don’t understand my sister’s poor memory. A part of me is embarrassed by her. The fact that she is not athletic or smart or artistic does not sit well with me. A failure in all three areas. And yet she studies harder than I did at her age. My mother tells me that it is her cancer that made her this way, but how can a disease make you stupid?
“Okay,” I announce, “it is time for the speed rounds!” I shoot out the words as fast as she can handle them, and she spells every one of them correctly.
“Great. You can go to bed now. Review the words tomorrow morning and you will get a hundred.”
The next afternoon, Mingfang comes home and I ask her what she got on her spelling test. “Seventy-five,” she tells me. “I got nervous and couldn’t spell the words because my mind went blank.”
Several days later, after everyone else has fallen asleep, my father calls me out to the living room to sit and talk. We never sit and talk. Usually he commands and I do. My father leans forward and clasps his hands. “We need to talk about Mingfang.”
“It wasn’t my fault. I was only playing.”
“What wasn’t your fault?” he asks. “We must talk about Mingfang’s future.”
“What about it? She’s going to be a big, fat pig for the rest of her life. Ba ha ha ha!”
“No. Chi. This is serious.”
“Sorry, Dad.”
“You will need to take care of her when you get older.”
“Me?! Why me? I am only a teenager. Why not Chiufang? She’s the oldest, and she’s in college already.”
“Why? Because you are the eldest son.”
“And? She is the eldest daughter. What has that got to do with anything?”
“As the eldest son, you will need to support your younger sister.”
“Why can’t Mingfang support herself? She’s got two legs. Maybe she can go to the Houston Zoo and be a part of the petting zoo as a piglet. Ba ha ha ha!”
“Chi. You need to treat your sister with respect. I will not tolerate this.”
“Sorry, Dad.” A dead-serious look washes over his face. “Okay,” I say. “What do you want me to do?”
“Well, I would like Mingfang to go to college after high school. I sincerely doubt that she will get into a university with her grades, but Regents College is a viable option.”
“Sure. How much does that cost?”
“Your mother and I will pay for the tuition. But when we retire, we would like you to support Mingfang.”
“Gee, that’s pretty big stuff. I guess I better earn some big bucks.”
“You need to find an occupation that can support you, your future family, your sister, and us too.”
“Who am I? The Social Security system? What does Chiufang do? Hang out at Club Med sipping piña coladas? This isn’t fair.”
“That’s life, Chi.”
“Man. I better enjoy my childhood freedom, because it looks like I’ll be thrown into adult slavery.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s called growing up.”
“No, it’s called growing poor!”
“One possibility is that you give your sister enough capital investment so that she can run a gift shop. She loves the Hello Kitty paraphernalia and would really excel at sales.”
A gift shop. She would like that. She’d be happy doing that. Not a bad idea. “Okay. Okay. Can I leave now? You put me in a bad mood.”
“Respect, Chi.”
“Yes, Father.”
Mingfang does not speak in public. I do not know why. Is it because she has nothing to say? Does she think people will think she’s stupid? Or perhaps that nobody will listen? I’ve never asked her why, but one day I will. We’re siblings; we don’t really talk like friends.
Right now she’s doing ballet, and I’m sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal. Every Saturday morning my two sisters do ballet along with three other girls. First they do the stretches, which seem to go on forever. And then they do the real thing, little dances and routines. My mother teaches. She used to dance ballet in a studio in South Carolina.
As I crunch on my Frosted Flakes, I watch Mingfang make her chubby body into shapes that I figured were impossible. It’s like she’s a completely different person. Mingfang loves ballet. She hangs her ballet shoes up on the wall of her bedroom. She happily wakes up early every Saturday morning, takes those shoes off the wall, and launches her body into rigid movements that seem to set her free. She flies in those shoes.
I am in high school now, and she is in junior high. After ballet, we’re all going to practice Chinese, reading and reciting from elementary school textbooks. I’m looking forward to that like a cat does a bath. I finish my bowl of cereal and prepare to walk through all their uppity ballet dancing to get to my room. Boy, am I glad my mother doesn’t make me dance. Look at Mingfang. She’s making her leg stick out, straight out. It’s unnatural. It’s beautiful. Yeah, I hate to admit it, but it is. I bet it hurts like a dog. There she is, quietly prancing across the floor, her whole body, round as it is, somehow transformed into a set of straight, fluid lines. Standing on her toes and keeping her head straight, she’s got to be screaming inside. And yet she doesn’t let out a peep.
13
Christmas Eve
December 24, 1987;
College Station, Texas
It’s the morning of Christmas Eve. I am sixteen, and Cutie is thirteen. I am a senior in high school, and she is a freshman. I stand behind Mingfang as she sits at the coffee table making Christmas cards out of construction paper, Hello Kitty stickers, and colored ink stamps. She seems a bit old to be playing with this kind of stuff; Chiufang, who’s now a psychiatric intern in Dallas, says that Cutie is “socially regressed.” But I suppose what matters is that she’s a sweet girl and a good sister. I wish I were a better brother. “I’m sending these to my friends,” she tells me with a sniffle. She’s recovering from a cold.
I sit down behind her on the couch and read. Spring semester starts after the Christmas break, so I’m getting a head start on all the other nerds by reading Hamlet.
I get through the first act of Hamlet, and then I go out to play tennis with fellow tennis team member Chris Dinkel. The day is bright, dry, spectacular, in the high 60s. The tennis ball whistles through the air.
I come home after tennis. Mingfang is still making Christmas cards.
“Hey, Mingfang.”
“What do you want? Leave me alone.”
“Who made you so grumpy?”
“I know you are up to something mean.” She squints her eyes at me.
“It’s almost Christmas. Would I do something mean to you on Christmas Eve?”
“Okay, okay. What do you want?”
“Nothing. Do you want to go to College Hills to play on the swing set and slides?”
Her eyes light up, and her pale, round face produces a smile. “Sure,” she says.
Mingfang attended College Hills Elementary School, which is just a couple of blocks southwest of our house. Its playground has a swing set with slides and bridges and monkey bars and a swinging tire, and it also h
as a basketball hoop that’s only eight feet high. We drive there in the banana car. I hop out of the car and dribble my red, white, and blue Dr. J basketball to the hoop and dunk. My sister follows me. “Okay”—I turn around and face her—“you can play on the swings after you run five laps around the playground.”
“What?”
“Five laps.”
“Why?”
“Just because.”
My sister is fat. She needs to lose weight and grow strong physically and mentally. The world has little patience for the weak. I guess my being mean to her doesn’t help her confidence much either. Maybe I’m jealous; my parents ignore me, but I’m still expected to take care of Cutie when I get older.
“Because why?” she asks me.
“Because it’s good for you. If you don’t run laps, I won’t let you play on the jungle gym.”
Mingfang pouts. She looks at the same track I used to run around as a kid. Five laps is a long way. But it can be done. “Okay,” she says. “I knew there was a trick.”
Mingfang walks toward the track as I slam-dunk the basketball a few times, and then I stand there and watch her run. She takes a slow pace. She is in no hurry. She knows she will get there. It’s just a matter of time. And whether it takes her twenty minutes or an hour, it doesn’t seem to matter. I love her simplicity. I can say that sincerely. I admire her. With her simplicity, she makes life good. If she can make her banners and cards, if she can play with her Hello Kitty, if she has her ballet on Saturday, she is happy. I wish I could be more like Mingfang—content with the simple things in life.
Twenty minutes later, Mingfang walks up to me, huffing and puffing, her hands on her knees. “Okay,” I tell her, “you can go play on the swing set for twenty minutes. Afterward, I’ll let you drive the car around the parking lot.”
Mingfang stands up straight, and she tilts her head to one side as she searches my face for signs of trickery or mental illness.
“What are you talking about?” she says.