Tiger Babies Strike Back

by Kim Wong Keltner

  Week after week, month after month, I took it upon myself to take care of kids, prepare hors d’oeuvres, assemble lasagnas, bake brownies, mix salsas, and marinate veggies and meat for the barbecue. Every one of our friends is a hardworking, harried parent, and I was glad to offer snacks, relaxation, and a little pampering as if it was some higher calling.

  I wanted to see how far I could push the servitude thing. I figured, hey, why do anything halfway? Chinese people are superior in everything, so I could be a better homemaker than even Carol Brady on TV. For me it was a novelty, and ironic, to behave in this way. Anyone who really knew me at all would know I wasn’t a pushover or diminutive flower in any aspect of life, so this Asian-Female-at-Your-Service kind of thing was an interesting experiment.

  Mind you, no one was asking me to act this way. No one was forcing me into this role. It just sort of began as a way to fill up time and not feel hysterical over having left everything I ever knew. But then again, I kept thinking of that Talking Heads song, and the lyrics, “. . . Well, how did I get here? Letting the days go by . . .”

  And how did I get there? My meals got more and more elaborate. I was sweating eggplant and letting cheesecakes “breathe.” And even though I knew I was acting nuts, I would blow a gasket if someone said they couldn’t make it to dinner because they had a previous engagement. In my head, I sulked and thought, How dare they not come over here and have the most exquisite time of their lives?!

  But then at some point, I remembered what Ann had told me about her mother sobbing uncontrollably at the dinner table. Oh, that’s how that happens, I realized. The martyr thing apparently just sneaks up on you. I didn’t want to go to that wretched place, but I was making myself crazy trying to be a perfect wife and mom. No one forced me to strive for this ideal. I just started to automatically go there. If dinner and homemaking were something good, I could make them better. I could make things fantastic for everybody else, each and every day. I had fallen into the pursuit of perfection and didn’t even know I was descending through a trapdoor that would leave me feeling ignored and, frankly, bored.

  I had unknowingly, but most definitely, slipped over to a version of the Dark Side. Maybe it wasn’t Tiger Mom Dark Side, but for sure it was Martha Stewart Dark Side, which was certainly related. It was the territory of Making Everything Right and to My Specifications, which should have at least made me suspicious. But instead, the persona of Control Freak was rather easy to slip into.

  What now, genius?

  I turned my thoughts to Chinese history. I remembered the story of Emperor Guangxu’s sweet Pearl Concubine. I recalled the legend of how Empress Dowager Cixi, Guangxu’s Tiger Mom, had the Pearl Concubine killed by ordering her to be thrown down a well. I asked myself if it mattered whether the Pearl Concubine was forcibly pushed to her death, or if she fell in by herself. Maybe she jumped in or was simply not paying attention and slipped carelessly. The reasons and the details of the Pearl Concubine’s demise are lost to Qing Dynasty lore, but the end result is all we know: she perished.

  I didn’t want to lose myself in the classic feminine trap of endless people pleasing. I didn’t realize how easy it was to absorb what society as a whole expected of a woman, to start acting accordingly, then to keep doing it because it did attract a certain amount of approval. I wanted to jab myself in the eye with a chopstick because I had turned into a maid. And worst of all, I had done it to myself.

  Femininity and vulnerability are endlessly compelling and alluring. The legend of the Pearl Concubine was so fascinating because she represents the fantasy of the ultimate submissive Asian girl. There is a great painting by Zhong-Yang Huang of the Pearl being carried away by eunuchs. They are intent on throwing her down the well behind the Ningxi Palace in the Forbidden City. On the side of the painting, just out of full view, you can see Empress Dowager Cixi giving the execution order, and just below is the hand of her nephew, Emperor Guangxu, who is the Pearl Concubine’s lover. She is his beloved and his only happiness in life, but as she desperately reaches for him, he does not save her. He was the emperor of China for heaven’s sake. But he didn’t do a damn thing to disobey history’s most notorious Tiger Mother. The Pearl Concubine got tossed down the well like yesterday’s garbage.

  I recall this bit of Chinese history to remind myself that servitude can bring satisfaction, but it’s also a bottomless pit. If you aren’t careful, it can be the wishing well that you throw yourself down, and no one will climb in to save you. The sides are slippery. While you try to get a foothold as a woman, and as a mother, you might find yourself in that pit of despair and not know how to pull yourself out.

  So before you get there, you have to stop yourself. You have one life to live, and it is yours.

  By then I knew I’d never be a Tiger Mom, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I was susceptible to the drowned-girl-in-a-well scenario. Realistically, the modern-day equivalent would be to drown oneself over a period of years in bottomless vodka cocktails, but I won’t be doing that either.

  I am a marshmallow Peep. I will not be “toughening up” anytime soon. However, nor will I be crying at the dinner table if the food isn’t perfect or because I’ve burdened myself with endless people pleasing. From now on, I’ll be who I am and relinquish control of all the things I can’t possibly manipulate into seamless perfection.

  The Hot Mess Club just isn’t for me. I hereby tender my resignation.

  28

  Dispatches from the Front Lines of Third Grade

  Growing up as an Asian American person, you are often called on to explain or defend your race. Even if you are too young to have the confidence or vocabulary to stand up for yourself, situations arise that make you feel crummy, and that uneasy feeling can linger from early childhood up through adulthood.

  By nine years old, my daughter has already encountered disparaging comments about Chinese people. She has witnessed games and scenarios played out by kids younger than she and overheard phrases such as “Look at my Chinese hat. I’m a funny Chinaman!” and “I’m a Chinese girl,” accompanied by mincing steps and the stretching sideways of the eyelids to make slanty eyes. My daughter told me about these incidences that transpired on the playground and after school. The words were not necessarily directed at her, but hearing them and seeing other kids laugh made her feel lousy. She is proud to be Chinese, and hence, she was confused as to why these imitations of Chinese people were deemed so hilarious.

  How do I prevent my kid from internalizing shame for something that is not her fault? I am not proud to have done so, but when I was younger, I myself occasionally laughed along with hurtful comments or remained silent to avoid being targeted next for derision. But my daughter is just a kid. How is she supposed to feel, and what should I say to her?

  I don’t want to lecture her about Chinese American history or make her feel worse than she already does, but I also don’t want to ignore her feelings either. I want to validate that she is right to question mimicry and jokes that mock others. I sometimes suggest phrases she might say, such as “It’s not okay to make fun of people,” but I know that at her age and with her nonconfrontational personality, she would rather keep quiet. Also, I know that little kids make fun of everybody and anybody, and I don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill.

  Nonetheless, if I don’t say something, who will? I could initiate the whole teacher conference thing and drag in the alleged offenders, but have you ever been involved in one of these kinds of meetings with multiple parents, kids, and teachers? The sessions quickly devolve into a he said–she said squabble, with parents often getting apoplectic, and kids even defending their tormentors. It can be a pretty big mess, so one must carefully consider if the offending joke, gesture, or glance is really worth hauling in all the involved parties who are just going to end up fuming and blaming one another.

  Instead, Lucy and I usually just talk to each other in private. And although my husband definitely has the right to be included, sometimes I don�
��t tell him of every little disturbance because he will feel the most outraged of us all. I don’t need him stomping his gigantic, steaming-mad self up some unsuspecting parent’s driveway like an albino Incredible Hulk only to get his head blown off with a shotgun.

  But, yes, we talk. Not in a big, family meeting kind of way, but just as we’re walking to school, or making lunch, or whenever an in-between time allows us a few quiet moments. I don’t want to act so riled up or hurt that Lucy actually just stops telling me stuff. If I were a kid, that’s precisely what I would do. I’d feel so bummed already, and if I knew that my parent would be further upset by what I had to say, I’d just stop talking. So with that in mind, I don’t fly into a rage, even if that’s what I’m feeling. Our talks about teasing, and particularly about race, are hard to have. But I want to keep having them. In emotional housekeeping, sometimes the hardest work of all is to not sweep things under the carpet.

  A little while ago, my daughter was sitting in the bathtub and I was brushing my teeth when she started to tell me about a play that students in an older grade performed at her school. It was about the history of California, and Lucy said she hated the part where a Chinese gold miner got beaten up. Her initial description was that the “Chinese” kid got beat up and everyone laughed, which made her really angry.

  “Was it really a Chinese kid?”

  “No, a blond boy dressed up like he was Chinese.”

  “And what do you mean he was beaten up?”

  “It was supposed to be pretend,” she said, starting to get upset. “But it was mean.”

  “Well, yes, Chinese miners up here did get beaten up a lot, and it was unfair and mean. It is true that that did happen . . .”

  “But everybody didn’t have to laugh!” she exclaimed, and then burst into tears.

  Oh. I hadn’t really anticipated having a conversation about discrimination, racism, and violence against Chinese people when she was still so young, but here we were. Meanwhile, I was thinking of all the regular parent things, like getting her out of the bathtub, drying her hair, clipping her fingernails, putting her to bed, transferring the laundry into the dryer, and so on.

  But then something distracted me, like the phone rang or something. We somehow dropped the subject, I got her out of the tub, and we resumed our bedtime routine. Shortly thereafter, Rolf came upstairs to read to her, and I went downstairs to finish the dishes.

  I forgot all about our bathtime conversation until the next morning. I was lying on my foam mat stretching because I feel about ninety years old if I don’t exercise, when suddenly I remembered what Lucy had said about the school play. From my curled-up position on the floor, I shot upright and thought, WTF? I was alone, so I felt the freedom to be completely angry now. I paced and tried to figure out what to do. I seethed. I had to find out what really happened.

  Be calm, I told myself. I wanted to honor that my kid felt angry, but I also knew that kids get upset about a lot of things that eventually fizzle out. Also, it was possible that maybe her perception was not exactly how things had happened. I wanted to give the people in charge the benefit of the doubt. And yet. When you see your own daughter sad and hurt, you want to lash out. But here was a situation where someone had to be the adult, and in our household, that responsibility does not fall to the little one who’s playing with a mermaid Polly Pocket.

  So I called the school. I asked a woman there whom I trust if she had seen the play. I didn’t want to accuse. I didn’t want to rush right out the gate foaming at the mouth. I wanted to catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. (Once I caught the flies, then I could burn their bodies in a vat of industrial-strength acid.)

  I carefully described the situation and admitted that I wasn’t sure what to do exactly, but felt that I did need to do something. This longtime educator and member of the school community suggested that if a kid, any kid, felt that strong of a negative reaction, the teachers putting on the play should at least know about it.

  So I hung up the phone and decided to e-mail the teachers. An hour later, when I arrived at the school for pickup, a kind of buzz had already occurred. Apparently, the recipients of my e-mail had already forwarded my message to others. Several teachers and parents pulled me aside to offer their support. Two were glad I had said something, and another expressed relief. Another opined, “I think it’s great that you stand up for what you believe in.”

  I hadn’t expected anyone else to read that e-mail, nor did I think that word would travel so fast. After I met Lucy in front of her classroom, we walked up to the corner where I knew the teacher who’d organized the play performed afternoon crosswalk duty.

  Once we got talking, I was glad I had given him the benefit of the doubt before I charged at him with accusations. He described the scene to me and offered to show me the script for my opinion and input. We ended up having an extensive conversation about California history, early relations between the Irish and Chinese, institutionalized racism, and the teaching of children at different grade levels.

  I was happy that Lucy was witness to the fact that we don’t have to bury our feelings. We can confront them.

  For many weeks after this incident, the whole experience stayed with me. I thought about the quiet way Lucy brought this subject to my attention, how I had forgotten about it because daily life had distracted me, and then how irate I had become despite simultaneously being unsure of myself. I thought about how difficult it is to separate one’s child’s feelings from one’s own.

  I surmised that if I were my grandma Ruby on my dad’s side, I would have not said or done anything. I would have “not made trouble.” And if I were my grandma Lucy on my mom’s side, I would’ve blown my stack immediately and would’ve been heard shouting from blocks away. My grannies had two very different approaches to handling disagreements. Maybe throughout my childhood I had observed and absorbed the various effects of these two ways of Chinese being—deferential as a matter of survival, versus hotheaded to one’s own detriment—and having witnessed these two disparate ways of interacting with the world, I realized that neither way felt right for me.

  The trick in standing up for oneself is to do so without having to step on someone else. All in all, I was glad I had handled this incident at school in my own way.

  For some reason, this incident reminded me of an obituary I’d read several years ago for the actress Miyoshi Umeki. In it, one of her costars from the past had mentioned that he had at one time attempted to contact Umeki, but he couldn’t find an address or number for her anywhere, and that no one else he’d asked knew of her whereabouts. I remember the words in the article, “She did not want to be found.”

  She did not want to be found. I had remembered thinking that that strategy sounded very reasonable. Umeki had been a big star for many years and was the first and only Asian to win a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award, for 1957’s Sayonara. She was one of the main characters in 1961’s Flower Drum Song, but I knew her mostly as Mrs. Livingston on The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. I can only imagine what kind of treatment she encountered as one of Hollywood’s most prominent Asian stars, particularly in an era that spanned World War II with intense anti-Japanese sentiment.

  I began to think about how, in a way, I hadn’t wanted to be found either. After living in hyperpoliticized San Francisco and Berkeley, where race awareness is always set on DEFCON 1, my own experiences with racial slights, weird looks, well-meaning yet nonetheless irritating remarks, and occasional outright hostility had worn me out. I had wanted to move away because, frankly, my nerves were shot.

  The Bay Area is so politicized that everywhere you go, you signify something to someone. American-born or fresh-off-the-boat? Speak Chinese or English? Married or single? Gay or straight? Kids or dogs? Bike or car? Omnivore or herbivore? Lacto-ovo or vegan? Butch or femme? Democrat or Republican? Working mother or stay-at-home mom?

  I needed a respite from soaking in racial controversy 24/7, a break from a life where going to Walgre
ens and buying tampons once attracted an old Chinese lady who took it upon herself to inform me that “only stupid and no respect American Chinese use tampon because don’t care about virgin.”

  Moving from San Francisco to Nevada City, I thought I didn’t want to be found, but something sure found me. Speaking up about that scene in the play changed me.

  Our daily tasks are many, and it’s easy to blow stuff off, especially small things that we can convince ourselves are no big deal. But this was a big deal. It was one detail in life’s myriad details, but it showed me that if someone like me—fairly educated, outgoing, physically able—feels the pull of inertia, then what about people whose obstacles are pronounced? How unsure of themselves must they be? And if I don’t speak up, who will?

  That small confrontation about the school play was a turning point in my development as an adult. It made me realize I couldn’t cower. I’m forty-three, and tired. My body had been taken apart and put back together through pregnancy, and having written three novels about growing up Chinese American, I’ve been snickered at, chided, figuratively spat on, and had arrows pointed at me. Nonetheless, I can’t just hide out and hope not to be found.

  Tiger Babies, I’m done cowering.

  PART 5

  Older and Wiser

  29

  Mommy, I Know What the F-Word Is!

  Is it . . . flummox?

  I am a Tiger Mom only in that my back is killing me so I’m covered in Tiger Balm patches, smelling supersexy. Forty is the new eighty.

  My goal for my daughter is a normal childhood, with more fun than I ever had. In pursuit of the hearth and home I want, I don’t aim to replicate the fantasy of Norman Rockwell paintings, or even Brady Bunch episodes; rather, for our little family I just want safety, good times, and love.