American Panda

by Gloria Chao

  “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.

  Voicemail from my mother

  I watched some of the videos you sent of  Ying-Na. I didn’t laugh, but at least she’s not taking off her clothes. The audience seems to
like her. Hunh. Who would’ve guessed?

  CHAPTER 27

  HACKING

  “ARE WE DOING THIS OR what?” Nic jumped up and down and threw a few jabs. “Get pumped, Mei!”

  “I am, I am,” I said in my best tough-chick voice. I wasn’t used to being up in the middle of the night, and Nic was right—I needed to circulate some adrenaline. Rocking back and forth on the balls of my feet, I returned a few punches.

  “More! Not because we’re going to have fun, but because it’ll be really fucking cold and we need to get our blood pumping.”

  I burst into laughter.

  “That’ll work too, I guess.” She grabbed my chin. “Good, your cheeks are flushed.” She circled a finger in the air like a lasso. “Let’s move out!”

  Nic and I were dressed like cat burglars—matching black turtlenecks, spandex leggings, and beanies. Our outfits weren’t all that visible beneath our coats, scarves, and mittens, but we knew what was underneath.

  We swept through the empty hallways quickly, communicating with only hand gestures and looks.

  It’s a roommate thing, I thought excitedly.

  We snuck past the lone security guard whistling down the corridor, then crept through Barker Library, up the endless staircase, and past the locked door Nic picked with ease. Once we were on the roof, I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. It fogged immediately as the wind cut through my down coat, numbing my body.

  Nicolette leaned a ladder against the little dome’s platform and motioned for me to go first. No six-foot-something companion to help me up this time. As I climbed, my shivers threatened to topple us. If it weren’t for Nic beneath me, pushing me on (sometimes literally head-butting my pìgu), I might have turned back.

  On top of the little dome, I tried to take a moment to reminisce about Darren and my first kiss, but thinking about him poked at the remorseful bubble that had been floating around inside me since the night of the wedding. At least it motivated me to push through the cold. Grand gestures weren’t normally my thing, but turns out, trying to find the right words to express yourself was really freaking hard.

  I turned on my flashlight with shivering fingers.

  “Okay, quickly now,” Nic shouted over the wind. “Work fast so we can get the fuck outta here.”

  I gritted my chattering teeth and we moved swiftly and in sync, just as we had practiced in our room. Because of the wintry weather, we had opted for a simple design, just a few sheets of cardboard that were easy to carry and required minimal assembly.

  The final piece. We were almost there. Just had to tie down one last corner . . . and . . . oops. I lost my footing.

  The wind whistled past my ears as I careened down the side of the dome. I clutched the rope in my hands. My lifeline. My feet smacked against the limestone repeatedly. I gripped the rope until my hands hurt. A burst of pain exploded in my leg. Finally, the line went taut and I was jolted to a stop. My arms burned at the resulting tug, but it was nothing compared to what I felt in my thigh.

  I bit my lip to keep from screaming—I knew it would be a five-hundred-dollar fine if we were caught up here. Nic tied off the last bit of rope, finishing our hack, then helped me inside.

  As we huddled for warmth, she shined the flashlight onto my leg. My pants were torn, my Hello Kitty underwear on full display, and a trickle of bright red blood dribbled from my inner thigh down to my knee. The sight flipped my stomach upside down.

  “Shit,” Nic said between chattering teeth. “You must’ve caught a jagged edge of limestone on your way down.”

  I used my hand to shield the blood from view. “If you make a joke about my underwear, I swear to God I’ll find a way to grow real claws.”

  Nic forced a smile. No laugh. Crap. It must be pretty bad.

  “Let’s get you downstairs before the numbness from the cold wears off,” she said in a tight voice.

  “Great, so we’ll just leave my DNA all over the crime scene.”

  “We didn’t commit any crimes. . . . Well, not really. And it’s supposed to snow later anyway.”

  I looped an arm around her shoulder. Her wavy hair was frozen with wayward icicles, and they snapped at my biceps like Medusa’s snakes.

  “Mei, I think you need stitches. I’ll call Student Health. EMS can give us a ride.”

  “No! They’re the worst! They’re going to do more harm than good!”

  Nic rolled her eyes. “They can’t be so incompetent they don’t know how to give you stitches.”

  “Oh yes they can! Trust me.”

  “Well, where else are we supposed to go? You don’t want to just bleed all over our room all night, do you?”

  Annoyingly, she had a point. I wanted to ask her if she would come with me, but her tight grip around my waist answered my question. I reluctantly agreed.

  Ten minutes later, at the entrance of the Infinite, flashing lights appeared. The student EMT exploded from the back of the ambulance like a firefighter. I shrank down in embarrassment. No burning building or children to save—just sad little ol’ me with a scratch on my thigh. I grabbed the flap of my torn pants to cover Hello Kitty.

  When the EMT was close enough for me to make out his features, my jaw dropped. “You?”

  “At least you have underwear on this time?” He forced a laugh. “Glad your rash cleared up.”

  I wanted to disappear.

  Nic stared at me with wide eyes. “What haven’t you told me?”

  “Oh my God, it’s not what you think. He walked in on me in the bathroom once.”

  He leaned down toward my crotch. “Let me take a look.”

  I inched backward, and a sharp pain shot down my leg. I winced. The numbness was wearing off.

  He looked at me warily. “I’ve already seen you naked. And I’m a medical professional.”

  I sighed and gave in, dropping the flap and flashing Hello Kitty.

  He pushed the fabric aside and blotted with gauze. “So how did this happen?”

  “Dancing,” I said at the same time Nic said, “Rock climbing.”

  He raised an eyebrow at us. “It could be medically relevant. What were you doing?”

  “She was trying to dance while on the rock wall, okay? You got to peek at her goods again, you perv, so congratulations. Now can you get her to the real medical professional?”

  He blushed as red as my old rash (and maybe I did too).

  We loaded into the ambulance and tore away, sirens screaming. I felt like they were announcing to the world, Here’s the biggest baby! She can’t handle a little blood!

  At MIT Medical, we settled into the waiting room. One student beside me held a bag of frozen peas against his ankle while another held a carton of Ben and Jerry’s to his temple.

  My gaze met theirs and the ice-cream man said, “Chair surfing.”

  Nicolette nodded in approval.

  “We’ve been here for three hours,” Pea Boy added.

  Nic looked right, then left, and seeing no employees, she darted down the Urgent Care corridor. I yelled after her, but she either didn’t hear or didn’t care. Probably the latter.

  Twenty minutes later she returned with a wheelchair and carted me off to an examination room, where Dr. Chang was waiting.

  With a sour look on her face, Dr. Chang took a deliberate step to distance herself from Nicolette.

  “I’ll wait for you outside,” Nic said with an eye roll. As she walked away, I heard her mumble, “Jesus, and she knows I don’t fucking have chlamydia anymore.”

  Thank. God.

  Dr. Chang prepared the anesthetic for the stitches that she had determined were needed. Trying to distract myself from the twenty-two gauge that would be in my leg soon, I asked her, “Fish anything out of the toilet lately?”

  To my surprise, she laughed, which shocked me so much I didn’t even feel the pinch.

  Around ten the next morning, I fought my exhaustion and dragged myself to 77 Mass Ave. Nic’s friend had to hack—traditional definit
ion—to get Darren’s schedule, and this was the only time he’d be crossing in front of the little dome.

  The ground was dusted with a white layer that crunched beneath my UGG knockoffs. Luckily, there wasn’t enough snow to cover our hack, but there was enough to cover my DNA on the roof, as Nic had promised.

  The passersby pointed at what Nic and I had added atop the dome’s apex, but I barely registered their reactions. Instead, I was scanning for that spiky hair that made my heart beat faster.

  I stamped my feet to stay warm. Then, finally, the jagged outline. The class-to-class traffic thinned, leaving just the two of us amid a couple stragglers. When the recognition dawned on his face, he stopped in his tracks, staring with so much intensity he didn’t notice me sidling up.

  “Think there’s whipped cream in there?” I asked.

  He tore his eyes away from the three-dimensional hot chocolate cup strapped to the dome. The words “thinking of you” were scrawled across in red script. I had considered writing it in Japanese, but Darren wouldn’t have understood and according to Google Translate, it was twice as long. Beside the words was a picture of two nuts—I think they were almonds? Pecans? Whatever. I had printed the first non-X-rated image I’d found online.

  He gaped at me with his mouth slightly open. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “It cost me a chunk of leg, too.” I gestured to my right thigh, thick with bandages beneath my sweatpants.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nodded, then took one of his hands in mine. “I’m sorry about what I said after the wedding. The thought of you having to jump through hoops for me was just . . . I care about you too much. But being apart made me realize it didn’t make sense to throw away what we have because of other people and beliefs I don’t agree with.” I’m ready to fight for you, I thought but couldn’t say aloud. I hoped the hack said it for me.