American Panda

by Gloria Chao

  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.

  My mother yelling through the door to wake me up

  Mei! Put on sunblock. You look like charcoal. Your mǔqīn knows best.

  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 w
as 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 th
at 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.