by Gloria Chao
“What is it?” my mother asked, breaking into my thoughts.
“What do you mean?”
“I can tell—something’s bothering you.”
“Really? You can tell?”
“Of course. I’m your muqīn.”
My chest twinged. “Nothing’s bothering me. I’m just . . . thankful that you want the best for me and that you’ve sacrificed so much to get me here. Thanks, Mǎmá. You gave up your own education and career for me.”
My mother balled socks angrily. “I could’ve been successful, too. I went to Tái Dà, National Taiwan University—the Harvard of Taiwan! I did better than Bǎbá, and certainly better than Yilong. Yet I don’t have anything to show for it.”
Each ball she threw into the pile further pounded into my head that my mother’s demands, her criticisms—they were because she wanted better for me. I tried not to think about the fact that she was so unhappy.
Or that Xing and Esther had looked so in love.
Or that the pressure was boxing me in, restricting my airflow, with no end in sight.
Voicemail from my mother
Mei! Good, you didn’t pick up. You are supposed to be in
CHAPTER 10
QUEENS
NICOLETTE GROANED IN HER SLEEP. I froze, hoping to stave off what usually came next. The hoarse, Must you be so frickin’ loud?
I jumped when she spoke.
“Why do you see your parents so often? It’s, like, every week. You know that’s not normal, right?”
Nothing about me was normal. Maybe if she were around more, she’d have figured that out already. I wasn’t even seeing my parents today, but she didn’t get to know that.
I didn’t say anything. Wasn’t that what she liked about me anyway?
She yawned. “Tell them to get a life and stop inserting themselves into yours.”
I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. Nicolette opened one eye and squinted at me. “You’re an odd egg. What’s so funny?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“They’re just . . .” My mind blanked. Fuzzy screen, jumbled words, emotional soup. “Traditional,” I finished lamely. “Not that that’s a bad thing,” I added quickly.
“If I had to see my parents every weekend, I’d fake my own death.”
“That’s pretty extreme, don’t you think?”
“So is seeing your parents every weekend in college.”
My anger bubbled to the surface. She didn’t know anything about them, my situation, how hard it was to straddle two cultures. What gave her the right to Judge Judy my life?
Before I could come up with a conversation-ending retort, Nicolette rolled her back to me. “Just sayin’ . . . Maybe stop hanging out with them and go out a bit more.”
Easy for her to say.
I slammed the door on my way out, hoping it jolted her from her half slumber. That was for insulting my parents. And for the condom wrapper.
As the Dartmouth Coach chugged along the road, Helen Mirren’s The Queen played sans sound on all thirty or so TV monitors overhead. I couldn’t help but feel proud of my independence even though it was sad that this was such a big step for me and a regular day for everyone else on the bus.
This was the first time I’d ventured out on my own (not counting that time I had snuck to Walgreens to buy tampons despite my mother’s directive to “not deflower myself prematurely”). Thanks to the internet, I had figured out the subway, found the bus that ran from South Station to Hanover, New Hampshire, then crossed state lines—all without my parents. And once I’d done it, I wondered why I had never thought to do it before. Following directions? Super easy. Going unknown places by yourself ? A little scary, but also kind of exhilarating. Reason for leaving? After the crap-storm that was this weekend, my past, present, and future were broken and jumbled, pieces floating around and crashing into one another. So I was running away to Helen, the only high school classmate who’d been mother-approved (aka Taiwanese) and thus my only friend.
The mix of pride, excitement, and anxiety churned my stomach. Or maybe I was just carsick. I hadn’t thought far enough ahead to bring a vomit bag. Hopefully on this day of firsts, it wouldn’t be my first time throwing up on a stranger, too.
At least we were getting close. According to the online schedule and my phone’s GPS, we were fifteen minutes away.
The bus bucked over a pothole, and I grabbed the seat in front of me as my stomach flipped. A tiny moan escaped from my lips (so embarrassing), and I desperately hoped my seatmate didn’t hear.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice sympathetic.
“Sorry. Yeah. I’m fine.” I took a second to calm my insides, then leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes. “I get motion sickness. I probably shouldn’t have been watching the movie. It wasn’t even any good—I was just bored.” And trying to distract myself from the thought-tornado inside my head.
“I know, right?” She gestured to the screen. “It’s just Helen Mirren, in makeup, talking. I mean, yeah she earned an Academy Award for it, but it’s not like we get to experience any of that with the sound off.” She chuckled. “And you know what? They play that movie every trip. It’s my seventieth bus ride, I’ve changed majors three times, and yet that goddamn movie is still the same.”
“Wow, seventy bus rides?”
“My girlfriend goes to Dartmouth and I’m at MIT.”
“I’m at MIT too!” I felt an automatic bond form between us. Was this what my mother felt with other Asians?
“I’m Jenn,” she said. Luckily, she didn’t hold her hand out.
“Nice to meet you! I’m Mei.” I barreled on to fill the silence, just in case a handshake was still on the horizon. “So, seventy trips, that’s gotta add up.”
Her features darkened for a moment, and I could tell she was contemplating whether or not to show me a window into something important but private. I knew that look all too well—I struggled with it every day growing up, when I didn’t know how to explain my parents to my classmates. By junior high, I’d stopped trying. It only led to more questions and a bigger target on my back for being different.
She took a breath. “The price of bus tickets is worth the small sacrifices of drinking less coffee and using the library’s textbooks instead of buying my own.” Her eyes lowered to her lap. “Sarah’s my family. My parents didn’t handle my coming out well. They made me choose between them and being who I was, so . . .” She looked right at me, and I felt like she somehow knew about me, Xing, and the similarities between our parents. “It was an easy decision, yet it wasn’t, you know?”
I sighed, heavy enough that I was pretty sure Jenn knew I had some experience with this, at least remotely. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. I hope they come around. And if not, they don’t deserve to have you in their life.”
Jenn smiled, more open, and she relaxed her shoulders. “Thanks. I’m lucky to have met supportive people like you since the falling-out, which helped a little. I lost so many people over this—not just my parents, but other family who tried to convince me that my mom and dad were doing this because they loved me, and I should try harder to work it out with them.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said, the words flying out before I could think. My hand flew to my mouth, partly because I had said the word “shit” out loud but more because I hadn’t realized I felt this way. I was brought up to believe questioning your parents was immoral, but on the outside looking in, I sided wholeheartedly with Jenn. My parents had never talked to me about homosexuality—maybe because they avoided all politically charged topics, or maybe because we never talked at all. Whatever the reason, I had formed my own opinion over the years, hadn’t flinched when Jenn first mentioned her girlfriend, and now was appalled by her parents’ actions. Of course they were wrong.
And the
n it hit me.
Why hadn’t I thought more about Xing’s situation when it happened? In the years to follow? I only knew the curses my parents threw. Only their side. I hadn’t questioned their actions because there wasn’t a choice to be made—I simply had to choose them since I lived under their roof.
I never thought my parents could be wrong about anything, but the seed of doubt that had been planted this weekend was sprouting.
I opened my mouth to ask Jenn more, but because we were pulling up to our destination, she said, “My last name’s Green,” implying I should look her up. “Don’t hesitate to reach out if you ever need anything!”
“I’m happy you found Sarah. I wish you two the best, and I really hope your parents come around.”
Jenn pulled me into a hug, and, uncharacteristically, I embraced her back.
Helen was waiting for me, perky as ever in a green and white Dartmouth tee that had been cropped into a cute tank with scissors (and not very sharp ones from the look of it). She waved frantically, and I wondered how she managed to look so cute doing something that would’ve made me look desperate.
She wrapped me in a hug the second my foot touched asphalt. Two hugs in two minutes—that was a record for me.
“Lunch first?” she asked in her singsongy voice, and after nodding, I let her loop her arm through mine. Helen’s touchy-feely-ness had been so off-putting to me at first—ten-year-old me had been so startled the first time she hugged me that I had accidentally smeared ice cream in her hair—but over time I had grown to expect it (and maybe even crave it, though I would never tell her that). She had been the most normal part of my high school experience, and there was something so calming about being back with her.
Helen introduced me to 90 percent of the people who walked by, each with a name and a description—Charlie, the best Christopher Walken impersonator you’ll ever meet; Jake, the best beer pong player. . . . Basically, everyone was the best at something useless. I wondered what I would be, but she just introduced me as Mei, my friend from high school.
She seemed to be the queen of campus. Another Queen Helen. The difference between us couldn’t be more pronounced, like molten lava cake and red bean dessert soup. And it only became starker as we made our way, arm in arm, into the Dirt Cowboy Café, which I originally read (with a zap of panic) as Dirty Cowboy Café. But there weren’t any men in cowboy hats and assless chaps dancing on the bar. Just rows of coffee beans on one side and a display of pastries on the other.
I was initially frazzled by the plethora of options written on the wall, but then I remembered how far I had come to get here today. With confidence, I ordered a turkey sandwich (safe) and a parsley-carrot juice (yee-haw!).
I sat beside Helen, whose head was swiveling to and fro, clearly searching for someone.
“I just heard that the guy I’m crushing on checked in here,” she whispered so softly I barely heard. It took me a moment to fill in the blanks, half the words having disappeared into her pale-pink lipstick.
“Checked in on Facebook?”
“Shhhh!” She waved her hands at me, drawing way more attention than my four words had. “Duh, on Facebook.” With one more scan of the perimeter, she settled into her chair. “He’s not here yet. So, how’s MIT?”
“Good,” I said instinctively, in the same way you answer I’m fine regardless of how you’re actually feeling. “I mean, I like it,” I said sincerely. “I fit in there better than I did in high school.” I ignored Helen’s snort, which she didn’t try to cover up. “But there’s still a bit of a disconnect.”
“Do you think it’s because you’re younger?”
I shrugged. “I mean, no one knows I’m younger. It hasn’t come up.”
“Yeah, but you are. You’re supposed to still be in high school, worrying about parents and grades and the mean popular kids.”
“Um, I still do that.”
She laughed. “You should’ve come here with me, Mei. I could’ve helped you shed your stiff exterior.” Then she said what I was thinking but wouldn’t have voiced aloud. “But I guess that wasn’t really an option with your parents.”
I stiffened.
Helen looked at me warily. “Ease up, soldier. I know better than to say anything negative at this point.”
I laughed, short and forced. Ms. I-Hold-Nothing-Back used to rail on my parents, calling them dictators, tiger parents, qíguài. And each time, despite the fact that I had been complaining just moments before, I’d defend them, inciting a fight. Eventually, we learned to steer clear, but it didn’t make me any less tense when we circled it.
“You know, I didn’t even have to apply to MIT. Remember?”
Of course I remembered. I felt like she was just rubbing it in at this point.
Before even visiting, Helen had told her parents she didn’t want to go to MIT because she didn’t want that kind of college experience, whatever that meant. You know what her parents said? Sure, Wei Wei, whatever you want. Her parents called her Wei Wei. Taught her Mandarin. Yet she didn’t have to go to Chinese school because she didn’t like it, and she didn’t have to strive for MIT/Harvard and accept Dartmouth as a shameful consolation. Her parents had thrown a party when she was accepted early decision, while mine hid Xing’s Dartmouth attendance away in shame.
I realized that I had come here partly because I wanted to know why our experiences had been so different. Her parents were from Taiwan, just like mine. They had immigrated here for graduate school, just like mine. Yet Helen had boyfriends, spoke her mind, and her only house rule growing up was Don’t let the dog poop on the bed. I bet Helen never suffered from Lu guilt—you know, that special brand of disgrace, responsibility, and shame bred by an environment where most things you did weren’t good enough and unconditional obedience was expected.
Other childhood acquaintances popped into my head like whack-a-moles. Kimberly Chen, who married a non-Chinese guy and then got divorced . . . Jade, who moved in with her boyfriend without a ring on her finger . . . even Hanwei, whose mother hadn’t cut him off when he’d decided to pursue music.
Suddenly I saw the spectrum they represented. It had been right before my eyes, but I hadn’t seen—or more accurately, had refused to see. Before, I had blamed my culture, but that wasn’t the problem. It was so much more complicated than that. It was a clashing of personalities and interpretations of cultures. How would my parents and I ever find a solution to this impossible mix of opposing ideals and desires? No right answers. Only a long list of wrong ones.
“Helllooooo.” Helen waved a hand in front of my face. “Did you fall asleep over there because of the all-nighters you’ve pulled doing homework?”
“When people ask you what you are, what do you say?”
She quirked a brow. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, then waved my hand to draw the answer out.
“Chinese, I guess. Why?”
“Do you feel Chinese?”
Her eyes narrowed in confusion. “Of course. I speak the language, my parents are from Taiwan, and I mean, c’mon, look at me! Supercute Asian girl!”
She felt Chinese but didn’t feel constrained by it like I did. Maybe I was the problem. Maybe I could learn from Helen. But we were so different I couldn’t isolate her views of the culture from the effervescent bubble that made up the rest of her. And mixing red bean soup with lava cake was disgusting.
I barely tasted my turkey sandwich as Helen chatted to me about her crush, Nate, and his blond curls and tanned skin. I grew so accustomed to her voice that it blended with the background din and I didn’t notice when her mouth clamped shut. She whacked my arm—not very subtly—and I finally caught on when I saw curly blond hair out of the corner of my eye.
Maybe Helen and I weren’t so different after all. Even Queen Helen turned awkward in front of her crush.
“Go talk to him!” I said, nudging her foot with mine under the table.
She shook her head frantically, packed up her sandwich and mine, th
en dragged me out with a viselike grip.
“Why didn’t you talk to him?” I asked.
“Are you kidding me? He’s a junior! And didn’t you see him? He’s gorgeous! So out of my league. I might have a shot when I get into Tri Delt though. I think I’ve got that in the bag now.”
Lava cake and red beans.
The next few hours felt like a blur. I met student after student, all perfectly pleasant, but soon they jumbled into person-soup and I couldn’t remember one name from the next. Maybe it was because our conversations were short, meaningless, and rehearsed, or maybe it was because I couldn’t focus with everything going on in my head.
On the return bus, I slumped in my seat and stared at the nondescript trees flying by. Somehow, even though I was seeing clearer than before, I felt more trapped.
Voicemail from my mother
I heard from Mrs. Tian who heard from Mrs. Lin that Ying-Na tried to make it in LA as an actress but couldn’t. They even stopped paying her to take off her clothes. You’re studying hard, right? Make me and Bǎbá proud. This is your mǔqīn.
CHAPTER 11
IN STEREO
AS I STROLLED PAST THE Johnson Ice Rink, my name rippled in the distance. I glanced around. Maybe a stranger had said the word “may,” not my name, but then I made out a familiar jagged outline of hair.
I strolled, trying to suppress my eagerness, which resulted in an embarrassing quick-slow-quick-slow trot—like I had the trots. Darren and three of his friends had skates slung over their shoulders. He introduced me to a lean Latino male, Billy; a cute brunette named Penny; and a short Indian freshman, Amav, who was also Penny’s boyfriend. I recognized Billy and Amav from Chow Chow.
I smiled ear to ear as I shook hands with each of them. New friends. Who seemed genuinely happy to meet me.
“Free skate is going on for another hour. Want to join us?” Darren asked.
My pulse quickened. I hadn’t been able to Rollerblade in junior high PE—what horrors awaited me on ice? And I knew from my online stalking that Darren was on the MIT hockey team.