by Tiffany Tsao
Even if investigations met with success—a few nights in jail for the perpetrator, broken bones, a scar or two as a lasting reminder—the men in our families wouldn’t have been informed of the gruesome details. They would have been assured it had been “seen to,” and that would have been enough. People like us couldn’t take these things to heart: Great wealth attracted enemies. Add “Chinese” to the equation and the resentment doubled—simple as that. All the more reason to get filthy rich: So you could rise above it. So you could earn respect and protection from the powerful. So you weren’t at the mercy of others because of your slitty eyes and buckteeth.
Apart from my misery and the incident with the peacock, I suppose the wedding was a success. They got married, which was the main thing in theory. My sister looked gorgeous, but most brides do. And no one significant was slighted by any breaches in protocol, which, given the scale of the event, was no mean feat.
I regret not saying a proper good-bye to Estella. I meant to the morning after, once the madness had passed and people had stopped whisking her and Leonard here, there, and everywhere. But the wake-up call I ordered never came, or I was so tired and drunk I don’t remember answering it, or else I thought I ordered one but didn’t at all. Whatever happened, I rose and she was gone. With Leonard. For some reason, he’d got it into his head that the romantic thing to do was to embark on their honeymoon ASAP the next day. By the time I woke up, at the shamefully late hour of twelve, their plane was already winging its way to Italy. They were to spend three weeks there before heading to Japan. Leonard hadn’t been able to decide between them, so they were heading to both.
A light was flashing on the phone by my bed. I had a message. Her voice sounded distant and crackly around the edges. “See you when we get back, Doll. We’ll keep in touch, okay?”
WE’LL KEEP IN touch. As if I were a mere acquaintance, a minor friend. I would have been offended if I hadn’t been so crushed.
I didn’t realize at the time how forced my sister’s nonchalance was—the effort she was making to commence married life in a state of joyous self-delusion. Smile and the rest will follow. It sounds like a tip from a self-help book on the power of remaining positive. Estella must have hoped that the same principle would apply.
I wonder, now, if she hadn’t put up such a brave front in the months leading up to the marriage and immediately after, whether I would have behaved any differently. Let’s say her message had been tearful and barely coherent—“Doll, I don’t want to leave you” rather than “Keep in touch.” Would I have made more of an attempt to shake off my self-pitying lethargy and fight for her in those initial years? To at least encourage her to stand up for herself against Leonard and her in-laws, since our family wouldn’t?
I’d like to say I would have, but I don’t think so. It’s simply the excuse I fall back on as I lie here supine, trying to trace the sequence of events that turned my sister into a mass murderer. I tell myself she kept her unhappiness a secret, that she didn’t reach out for help. But weren’t the tears she had shed that night in our kitchen in Berkeley more than enough evidence that she was in desperate need of rescuing? Why did I let her push me away?
Truth be told, I blinded myself, as I would later with our mission to find Tante Sandra. Shouldn’t I have known that something was terribly wrong the second Estella uttered that word—“redemption”—that night by the pool? And when she uttered it again as our car sped along the California highway?
We started off from the hotel at eleven the next morning, after braving the ghosts of that Matsuhisa dinner past. Not too early; we weren’t gluttons for punishment. But not overly late; for all my skepticism, even I couldn’t help but feel excited about the prospect of finding our aunt. Estella was in the driver’s seat again. I played navigator, in my hands MapQuest directions courtesy of the hotel concierge. Road maps were tucked into the glove compartment just in case. We’d barely made it to the interstate when I promptly fell asleep again. When I woke, it was to the rise and fall of truck song—the roar of engines escalating to a deafening pitch, the clatter and squeak of jostling bolts and rubber, and their diminishment into a peaceful swoosh of wind and air as we zoomed past. Like breathing, I thought, the workings of the world still illuminated by the clarity of sleep. The breathing of the open road. My eyes cracked open to the California winter sun, blinding and gray, to dusty hillocks dotted with stone and vegetation, green and also gray, to the sudden appearance, at our right, of rumbling wire flats housing feathered bundles, grizzle-eyed, gray as well.
“Chicken truck!” Estella called out gaily.
“How long did I sleep for?” I asked.
“Don’t know. Not long. Maybe an hour? A little less?”
Estella driving without my company for an hour: This perturbed me, though I wasn’t sure why. “Where are we?” I asked, sitting up, peering outside, as if it would help me get my bearings.
“About halfway there. How about lunch?”
Even as she was posing the question, she flipped the right turn signal on and we swooped off the freeway into the parking lot of a Taco Bell.
We ate our meal greedily, the more discerning palate for Mexican food we’d developed during our college days grown rusty from years of disuse in Indonesia. Within half an hour, we were back on the road, Estella again taking the wheel, despite me arguing that it was my turn.
She was aglow with it—the vitality that was becoming more evident with each passing day since she’d called me about Tante Sandra’s photo. “Spunk,” that was the American term for it. She steered with confidence, and her voice sounded almost brassy, with a sort of robust twang. It was as if she had unfurled herself, a banner fluttered open by a strong wind. I felt I could barely keep up.
An oncoming sign told us we’d reach Bakersfield in fifty miles.
“Hey, Stell,” I said, breaking in on her happy chatter. She’d been keeping it going since lunch, speculating about our aunt’s life (husband, children, house, hobbies?) and pointing out interesting billboards (ads for quaint specialty stores like the Preserves & Pickles Patch and Kast-Iron King). “I just want to say—I’m sorry.”
She laughed, puzzled. “About what?”
“Oh, you know,” I mumbled, suddenly feeling sheepish. “About not being there for you those first few years of your marriage. I know Ma and Ba didn’t do anything, and neither did the rest of the family. But I should have known better. I should have—”
“Forget about it. It’s not your fault.” Her brow furrowed. “I was trying to be happy with Leonard, and given the way things were between the two of you… Well, I made my choice. It was a bad one. I never should have let him pull us apart.”
“But I should have reached out, been more proactive…” I insisted again.
She shook her head briskly. “It wouldn’t have done any good.”
I opened my mouth once more to protest, but she cut me off. “It was beyond your help. The rest of the family might have had some influence—if they’d chosen to get involved. But not you. I would never have let you. I couldn’t.”
“What do you mean? Why was it beyond my help?” I asked.
She ignored my question and chuckled. “Never mind,” she said. “Anyway, I’d only have burdened you. Stood in the way. You had your own life to live.”
“Yeah, right,” I scoffed. “All that life.”
“Don’t be so modest,” she said, knitting her brow again. “You know I envied you. Everything you learned—about insects especially. You were able to keep taking entomology classes. You were able to continue working at the Essig—”
“I remember you saying there was more to life than all that.” The remark spilled out before I could stop it.
“I did say that,” she conceded with no trace of umbrage. “And I was right; there was more. It just wasn’t as worth having as I thought.”
She continued, grinning. “Anyway, it wasn’t as if you didn’t have more going on in your life than just studying and insects.”
I stared blankly at her.
“Ray Chan?” she prompted, waggling her eyebrows.
I’d practically forgotten him. I supposed she had a point.
With her free arm, she leaned over and nudged me. “You guys had some fun, didn’t you?”
It had all been far more innocuous than her tone suggested. Raymond—Ray for short. The engineering major with a buzz cut we’d met during freshman orientation at the BASA pizza party. One year above us, Chinese-American, and a native to the Bay Area, he’d gone out of his way to be friendly to Estella and me when we’d attended the BASA events. In one of our very first conversations with him, the three of us compared notes on stereotypes about the Chinese in our respective home countries.
“Stingy,” I’d said.
“Here too,” he’d replied.
“How about good at making money?” I asked.
He nodded. “Same as here. Partly because of the stinginess. And because we’re all supposedly industrious.”
“Exactly,” I said. “People in Indonesia think that as well.”
He laughed. “Not that there’s nothing to back these stereotypes up. I mean, take my parents: I remember having a cold when I was a kid and being over at a white friend’s place. His mother offered me a Kleenex and I kept trying to refuse. My mom always told us that tissues were way too expensive, so in our house we used toilet paper for everything. She used to say, ‘If it’s good enough for your ass, then it’s good enough for your nose.’ ”
This made Estella and me smile.
“Same story with your family?” Ray asked us. “Toilet paper as tissues and bowl haircuts at home? Buying everything in giant economy packs because it’s cheaper in the long run?”
Once again, my sister and I laughed, but we didn’t answer the question. We’d long figured out that in egalitarian America, and in the socialist stronghold of Berkeley especially, being wealthy was more a cause for shame than pride.
“What about being rich?” I asked, steering the conversation both away from and closer to the truth. “Is that a Chinese stereotype here? In Indonesia, people think that the Chinese always have lots of money and that’s all they care about.”
Ray tilted his head and thought for a while. “Not re-e-eally. I mean, people are more likely to think of the Chinese running cheap takeout joints or doing laundry than as rich.” He thought some more. “Do you mean ‘rich’ as in millionaire rich?”
“Um. Yes. And no…” said Estella, also trying to work out what “rich” meant in the Indonesian context. “A lot of the big businesses back home are owned by Chinese families. But people think that even the Chinese guy who owns the corner store is doing pretty well, comparatively speaking, I guess. Indonesia’s a Third World country. Most people are pretty poor. So maybe ‘rich’ over there translates to ‘middle class and above’ over here?”
“You said yes just now,” noted Ray, “when I asked if you meant millionaire rich. So the Chinese families who own big businesses back where you come from. They’re millionaires?”
Estella gave a small nod. So much for avoiding the subject.
Ray chuckled. “Chinese millionaires. That definitely doesn’t fit the stereotype here. Not yet, anyway. What about your family?” he joked. “Are you guys swimming in cash?”
Again, we let our laughter speak for itself and hoped for the best.
“And you said ‘stingy,’ ” Ray said, trundling on. “So the Chinese millionaires are stingy too? They don’t live in mansions and drive Rolls-Royces?”
“They do,” I said evasively, but also trying to think through the contradictions myself. “Maybe it’s a different kind of stingy?” I ventured. “I think you’re thinking of it like frugal or thrifty. And that’s what I meant too. But also, maybe, ungenerous? Spending it on oneself but not wanting to give any to others. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, I guess,” said Ray, trying to process this. Then he shrugged. “Then again, it’s not like stereotypes are consistent.”
“How about duplicity?” asked Estella. “And cunning? Are those associated with being Chinese here? They are back home.”
Ray rubbed his chin. “Maybe they used to be. Stereotypes change. Shrewd, maybe. But downright duplicitous? I’m not sure.”
“What about arrogant and snooty?” she continued.
“Hah! More like submissive and servile,” said Ray with a hoot. He grinned. “Snooty, eh? And shady? And hella rich? Hey, Chinese-Indonesians sound pretty badass, if you ask me. Positively gangsta.”
Not all our exchanges with Ray were so profound, though Estella and I had found such conversation refreshing. We’d never had friends who considered topics like racial stereotypes fodder for casual discussion. But when things got more serious between Estella and Leonard, I had to go to BASA events alone. And though I made a conscious effort at first, I gradually stopped attending altogether.
Estella stepped on the accelerator and shifted lanes in order to avoid the exhaust fumes from the ancient Oldsmobile ahead of us. “Didn’t you guys meet up outside of BASA too?” she asked slyly.
I couldn’t believe she remembered. I know I barely did. “Only once.”
“A date, wasn’t it?”
“Just lunch,” I insisted, even as I recalled with some wistfulness what a perfect lunch it had been. It hadn’t even been anywhere particularly special—some run-down café on Telegraph Avenue with wobbly, sticky-surfaced tables and a faint moldy smell emanating from the walls. But, as Estella put it, we’d had some fun. He’d been friendly and good-humored, and polite but not overly so. He’d found my fascination with insects “intriguing”—“Really. In a good way,” he’d claimed. We’d parted with a handshake, but as our fingers had lingered in each other’s, the silly parody of stiff formality had melted into a gesture of surprising warmth.
“We should do this again,” he’d said.
We never did.
“What happened, anyway?” asked Estella. “Why didn’t things go any further?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, even as I thought that maybe I did. Why ruin a perfect moment with what might come afterward? I used to wonder occasionally what might have happened if he and I had gone out again. It had always ended in a nightmarish vision, with Ray morphing into Leonard, his affability turning strained and his hand gripping too hard, his thin lips becoming fleshy and pressing themselves into mine.
“I don’t mean to hurt you by bringing it up,” said Estella, finally sensing my resistance and backing away. “I envied that part of your life, you know, even if things between you two didn’t come to anything. Or maybe because they didn’t come to anything. You can’t spoil what you leave untouched.”
“In that case, maybe we should turn around now,” I observed, only half jokingly. “We should leave Tante Sandra alone. Whatever her reason for leaving, she’s free of the family now. Why drag her back in?”
“Because she’s the only member of our family we haven’t managed to ruin.” Estella spoke impatiently, as if the answer were obvious. “Maybe she’ll rub off on us. If we have any shot at redemption, it has to lie with her.”
I winced. “Could you not use that word?”
“What word? ‘Redemption’?” Estella even rolled the r and flashed me a rakish grin.
“It’s not funny,” I insisted, disturbed by how many things Leonard was still tainting, even after his death. He was like a corpse decaying in a reservoir, its unwholesome juices seeping into the water.
“Sorry,” she said. “I know it reminds you of him. But I can’t come up with a better word.”
Upon the invocation of Leonard’s ghost, we sank into quietude. And it seemed that our minds drifted in the same haunts, for then Estella murmured with a thin smile the very words that were taking shape in my mind: “ ‘Everyone who does evil hates the light.’ ”
Those were Leonard’s last words—the only ones he’d uttered in his final, feverish moments, sometimes in fragments and sometimes whole, so
metimes in between the bouts of moaning and trembling and sudden paroxysms, sometimes in frantic repetitions like a mantra to ease him of his pain. Poor Leonard. Yes, even I could think “poor,” for who couldn’t pity him in the end?
Estella murmured something else: “ ‘And will not come into the light for fear their evil deeds will be exposed.’ ”
“What?” I asked, startled.
“That’s the rest of the verse,” Estella explained, checking her blind spot before shifting lanes. “I looked it up after he passed away. Since they were his dying words, I thought it was the least I could do. They’re from the Bible.”
Obviously. Leonard was always quoting the Bible in those days. We’d all thought he’d gone mad. I’d told him so once. “You’re right, I am mad,” he’d admitted. “I’m crazy for Christ.” And how he had looked it, his grin awful in its breadth and height and toothiness, his pupils radiant with fanaticism—a stark contrast to the saggy crescents under his eyes, a by-product of his new habit of waking at five every morning to “commune with the Lord.”
Estella continued. “I’m not saying we need to get religious like Leonard wanted us to. I just think we should stop hiding everything from each other, not to mention ourselves. Anyway, have some faith. She’s Tante Sandra, remember? She’s like—”
“Drops of dew.” My response was immediate. And with its utterance came again the foolish conviction that retrieving our aunt would fix us all. That’s right: us. Thanks to this quest of Estella’s, the boundaries she and I had worked so hard to establish between me and the family were beginning to erode.
At that moment, our car reached the crest of a hill. The road and the land dropped away before us into a sun-bleached vista of gnarled trees and clumps of grass and some kind of crop in the distance—almonds? oranges?—planted in orderly rows, basking to the point of withering in a relentless, dazzling brilliance.
“What a gorgeous day!” exclaimed Estella.
I reached for my sunglasses.