In a transformation never before seen in Western Civilization, Mama inflates into The Dragon Lady. For a woman who barely squeaks past five feet tall, it's impressive how her heaving size 32-A chest and bulging neck tendons can occupy so much space in this foyer.
The Dragon Lady points an accusing finger at Brian. "You! You supposed to watch over her."
My fellow math campers creep toward us. I can hear some of the other kids coming in from the common room. I'm sure none of them has ever witnessed such a performance in their homes where normal life includes "family meetings" to "discuss issues" and "resolve differences."
Mama doesn't disappoint her riveted audience. Her emotions are a special effects team, coloring her face first moon white and now liver red.
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I feel, rather than see, Stu step closer to me. How many times have I imagined having someone big and strong come charging to my rescue? Someone like the father I never had? Now that I have my own samurai guy, I wish Stu were anywhere but here, listening to this. My entire body starts overheating as I gird myself for Mama's next onslaught, which is coming hard and fast.
"I say you be friends with boys. Just friends." Mama snarls, "You think you know everything. Big fifteen-year-old girl. But you know nothing. You throw yourself away like cheap ho-lee-jing garbage."
Sweat beads on my nose. But a small part of me rebels. God, it was just a couple of kisses. What is so wrong with that?
"You make bad decision. All the time," Mama says.
No, Mama, I want to say. You made the had decision to marry the white guy, to have two kids, to move to America. Don't punish me for your had decisions.
I slowly raise my eyes, only to run head-on into Katie's amused smirk. Her expression is a potent cocktail of superiority and condescension. I would bet a million bucks that she just can't wait to relive this moment in blow-by-blow snide detail over the rest of math camp. Mama's chest swells, a warning sign that she's about to burn an even wider swath of public embarrassment.
"Mama," I say in a voice which sounds surprisingly cold and calm. I don't look at Mama, don't look at anyone, just my big clodding feet. "I'm going to pack now."
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24 * Lotus Shoes
Jasmine sits at her desk, hunched over a problem set. I know exactly what Mama is thinking the moment our traveling act of Blame-and-Shame steps into my dorm room: "Look at that good Chinese girl. Not like my useless daughter." Ironic, isn't it, that the girl who lost her virginity at thirteen, who sneaks out so regularly the Swiss could set their watches to all her late-night rendezvous, who tells people off in two languages, is the one I am going to be compared to for the rest of my life as the Shining Example of Obedience. Unlike me, The Waster of Good Opportunities, not to mention three thousand bucks.
Then Mama breathes out, hunh! I look around, queasy, wondering what in this small room could possibly make Mama hiss like a pissed-off Komodo dragon. I spot the culprit. Heaven forbid, it's the glossy poster of the shirtless rock-climbing wonder. Damn it, why did we staple Mr. Hot Chinese Climber Guy on my side of the room? Mama's cheeks flush. She climbs onto my bed. With one swift pull, she rips
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him and all hints of sexual temptation off the wall, leaving only the poster's corners clinging for safety. Goodbye, Asian hottie. Hello, Asian hothead. "You pack," the hothead orders.
I half-expect Jasmine to say something about her shredded poster, but she looks between me and Mama, adding it up. It's a simple equation:
One half-mad Asian mother + one silent half-Asian daughter = One Highly Combustible Situation.
I stand still as a Rodin statue, too shocked to do anything other than watch Mama grab clothes out of my closet and fling them into my suitcase. Somehow, my stuff has expanded in the brief week of freedom. Not everything fits back inside Mama's old suitcase. Coming to, I scoot over to heave myself on top of the wide-mouthed luggage.
"I'll take care of it," Jasmine murmurs, shooting me a sympathetic look when my frantic wrestling match with the suitcase leaves me no closer to closing the two-inch gap. Mama is hunh -ing all the while in the background.
I nod, leaving Brian's sweatshirt and a few random shirts and shorts on my bed. Just as I latch the suitcase, I swear I can hear The Gates of Hell creaking open and sucking me back into Hellhole Ho.
When Mama is at the wheel, the highway patrol would be doing a great public service by issuing an all-points bulletin for everyone to stay off the road. Tonight, Mama's driving is more erratic than normal. Not that my driving tonight would have been any better. My fists are clenched in my lap as I glare out the window. Wouldn't you know it? I didn't
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even want to come to this stupid camp in the first place, but now that I want to stay, Mama whisks me away.
I should have predicted this because, heaven forbid, I was having fun.
I was actually feeling free for the first time in my caged-up, cramped-in and controlled life.
I actually had a boyfriend -- or at least a guy who thought I was seriously cute. Not to mention interesting, smart and sexy.
But oh, no, with Mama's sex-dar perpetually on high alert, we'll have none of that. My life, or the way Mama wants me to live it, is supposed to be miserable, isolated and under her thumb.
"Not all guys are bad, Mama," I mutter, keeping my eyes out the window and off her face.
"You wrong!" she snaps. "You know nothing. I tell you, need know boy long time before know if he a Good One."
How long? I don't want to live on guard all the time, with foo dogs stationed around my heart, waiting for a guy to mess up so that I can scare him out of my life. Like Mama did with my father.
"You think can trust everything people tell you. You just like my new client. He think he so smart because he a doctor. He tell me, Yes, turned in all receipts, Mrs. Ho. Yes, everything in order. But I say, where is twenty-five thousand dollars? Not in bank. He say, Oh, Mrs. Ho, you make a mistake." Hunh! Mama slaps the steering wheel with her open hand. "Office manager took! He think can trust her. She so nice, so pretty. Work for him two years." Mama's voice deepens into a facsimile of the doctor's, if he lost his grasp on verb tenses: "I can't believe she steal from me!"
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This tirade ends with an especially loud, satisfied, told-you-so hunh!
For no apparent reason, Mama slams on the brakes in the middle of a barely lit street. I bite down on my tongue, drawing blood. I muffle my moan, not wanting to draw Mama's attention back to me. The car behind us screeches to a stop, nearly rear-ending us. I can only hope it's not a cop. If it is, I'll have to explain that Mama hasn't been drunk driving, unless you count her boozing big time on my sins. Yes, Officer, I kissed a boy; so throw away the lock and key. Come to think of it, being imprisoned in House Ho might be a blessing since I can't face all the SUMaCers who've witnessed my mom, a grown woman, have an all-out, mental meltdown.
Five lurches and eight slammed brakes later, we finally park in front of Auntie Lu's home, a small gingerbread cottage. The only thing missing from this fairy tale setting is the wicked witch who happens to be sitting next to me. Mama glowers like she plans to toss me into a black cauldron and clang the lid right on top of my empty head. Tonic Soup with a dash of Disobedient Daughter. A special Chinese delicacy.
The front door swings open, and a younger version of Mama bustles out with a delighted smile. All looks of happiness fade when Auntie Lu sees me. Her brows furrow into the same worried expression Mama wears 24/7. I seem to have that effect on first-generation women tonight.
"Victor still not here, right?" Mama demands, forgetting to speak in Taiwanese.
Auntie Lu's mouth tightens for a split second, the way Mama's does when she's displeased about something. "I told you, he's on business for another two weeks."
And then it occurs to me, Mama's random drop-in visit
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may not have been entirely to spy on me or to attend a seminar on how to maximize the new version of her ac
counting software, but to take advantage of the infamous Victor being out of town. If I were Auntie Lu, I'd tell my mom to get over herself. I mean, who Auntie Lu -- a grown woman -- is living with shouldn't be any concern of Mama's, but Auntie Lu's lips relax back into a smile.
"Lai! Chia bung," says Auntie Lu.
Who can think of eating at a time like this? Obviously, these women can. Auntie Lu takes Mama's black briefcase from her and holds Mama's arm, leading her like she's an old lady, an obasan. In the shadowed driveway, Mama really does look like one of those humpbacked old women who haunt Chinatown with their plastic bags and shuffle-step walks. My throat tightens, and I wade through Mama's trail of disappointment, my back bending from my suitcase and hers.
By the time I make it inside, Mama and Auntie Lu have disappeared somewhere in the house. Mama's practical slip-on flats, soles barely there, are lined next to Auntie Lu's red-beaded, dainty mules.
Left on my own, I shed my sneakers in the far corner, outcasts like me. Then I stand there awkwardly, barefooted on the cool tile floor, not sure what I should do when Auntie Lu walks out of the kitchen toward me. Her hot pink slippers barely make a sound. I gird myself for another lecture, but instead Auntie Lu hugs me, tight, hard and quick.
"You can sleep in my office tonight," she says. "First door on the right. Why don't you put your mama's luggage in the guest room, across from my room?" She casts a look toward the kitchen and murmurs, "We'll sort this all out."
Then Auntie Lu disappears back into the kitchen, where I
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can smell Mamas dinner, cooling there for the past three hours while she simmered in Synergy. From the sounds of it, Mama is having a grand old time talking about me. Her sister-talk is all big-worded Taiwanese that I don't understand, except for my angry-staccato name as I walk quickly past with Mama's luggage and briefcase.
I know then that I can't go home with Mama. I don't want to hear her harping on me the whole summer, not when I'll have her undivided, nagging-you-not-good-enough attention all to myself once Abe abandons me for college. I'll do anything to stay at camp -- if I only knew how.
As I place Mama's things inside the guest room, my gaze falls on the laughing Buddha on top of the bookshelf. I bunch my fists at my side so I don't give in to my impulse to pull him off and smash him onto the ground. If I didn't have to face the Wrath of Mama, part two, I'd do it. I glare at Buddha. There is nothing joyful about being me right now, I want to tell him. This is no laughing matter, not when you've got a crazed, irrational mother who doesn't realize that we live in twenty-first-century America, not the Taiwan of her girlhood.
My stomach cramps as I imagine Mama conspiring with Auntie Lu in the privacy of the kitchen. I'm sure first thing tomorrow, we'll be on a plane, heading back up to Washington. My life here is already ruined; I've been publicly sliced and diced with Mama's cleaver-sharp tongue. Stu has got to think that I'm a nutcase, and if he doesn't, Katie is sure to make me out to be the strangest Chinesey experiment ever to go wrong.
When I head downstairs to grab my luggage, I hear my name followed by "ho-lee-jing" and "boy." Self-preservation prompts me to bunker down in Auntie Lu's living room, where I can listen to what Mama's planning to do with me.
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Most arsty-fartsy living rooms I've been in, like the ones Janie's mother designs or the ones Janie ogles in magazines, are hardly meant for living. They're color-coordinated salons of style designed for pleasing the eye rather than the butt. But Auntie Lu's is a clashing, mismatched, multicultural community center. Oil paintings done in the Old Masters style hang next to modern, bright acrylics. An overstuffed, red velvet sofa is parked on top of a striped kilim rug. Behind it is a display of African masks and a line of jade green ceramic pots.
The painting above the fireplace makes me jerk away uncomfortably -- a young Chinese girl in a traditional cheongsam dress whose legs end in pinpoints and whose mouth is bound. I can't get the image out of my head no matter where else I look, so I step up close to it. The creepy part is that the girl looks perfectly placid like she hasn't even noticed that she's gagged. I touch my own mouth that's been covered with Stu kisses one moment and bitten the next to keep myself from railing back at Mama.
At the bottom corner of the painting, I spot the artist's signature: Louise Ho next to a red chop, her Taiwanese name. I had no idea Auntie Lu was an artist, but then again, I don't know much about her except that she's been a missing person in my life. Just like my dad, another victim of Mama's haranguing. Oddly, I can hear Mama and Auntie Lu, still chatting away like long-lost best friends. Nothing reunites people more than someone else's scandal.
Two scrolls with Chinese calligraphy flank the French doors. Peering outside, I can barely make out the shadowy outline of a few sculptures in the tiny garden outside. Finally, I'm drawn to the back wall, entirely covered with eight-by-ten,
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black-and-white photographs of people of all ages and ethnicities, smiling, grinning, laughing. It's an openmouthed and closed lipped montage of joy. The white mats are signed by the same man: Victor Jackson, Auntie Lu's mystery man.
The kitchen is finally silent. I hold my breath as the sisters plod along the hall, but they don't stop to lecture me in stereo. They head straight up the stairs. And soon, a door closes quietly behind them, locking me out.
I pluck a couple of dead, brown leaves off the bamboo squatting in a green ceramic pot to the side of the fireplace. Then I collapse onto the red sofa and pick up one of the art books heaped on the leather ottoman. The weird Dali paintings feel too close to my mixed-up mental state, so I put the coffee table book back down. Just then, a door upstairs opens and the low undertone of the sisters' conversation seeps out. To clue into my fate I tiptoe to the Japanese tansu chest in the hall. The chest looks like a miniature staircase that leads to nowhere, with each successive layer shorter than the one below it. On every step is a different pair of shoes the size of my palm, all framed in matching shadow boxes. Some have tiny wedge-shaped heels. Others are flat. All are embroidered, yellowing with age and fraying on the bottom. I can't take my eyes off of the pair stitched with purple blossoms, recognizing the shoes though I've never seen anything like them before.
"These were your great-great-grandmother's," murmurs Auntie Lu.
I rear back guiltily from the tansu as Auntie Lu glides down the staircase. She shoots me a glance that I can't read, before reaching for the shadow box with the shoes I had been studying. She holds them up to the spotlight and says, "Lotus shoes."
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"They look like doll shoes." China Doll shoes, I think to myself. Way too small for me or any normal human being for that matter.
"Dolls who had their feet broken and bound so that they wouldn't grow bigger than three or four inches long. Like lotus flowers."
I grimace, curling my toes in imagined pain. "Why?"
Auntie Lu snorts. "Some scholars say that women bound their feet to get a sexy walk kind of like the way women wear four-inch heels today."
I think about life with Mama where I've never even gotten the Sex Talk, where no makeup is permitted and, certainly, no dating Stu is allowed. Somehow, thousands of years of foot-binding to obtain a sexy walk just doesn't compute. Unconsciously, I glance over at Auntie Lu's gagged girl over the fireplace.
"It was to keep girls from getting into trouble, right?" I ask. Chastity belts for feet. If you can't walk, you're not likely to sneak out in the middle of the night, say to kiss a secret lover in the Quad or climb up the side of a building.
Auntie Lu shrugs and holds up one hand, bending her fingers under her palm. "Imagine hobbling on top of your toes like that every day, starting when you were five."
What a way to imprison women: cripple them so they can't run away. "Hell on heels," I mumble.
"That's very clever." Auntie Lu laughs, nodding and looking at me over the lotus shoes. "We are so lucky, aren't we?"
We. Not "you." Which is the way Mama would have put it: you
so lucky. Making it sound like my being lucky is a bad thing. But the way Auntie Lu says it, we're a team, lucky together. Except tonight is proof that I'm anything but lucky.
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Who can understand why Mama does half the things she does? She never explains. Her reasons are hidden away like twisted feet tucked in gorgeous, handmade shoes.
"She thinks you're throwing away your perfect chance for a good future," says Auntie Lu gently. "You know, your mama turned down a fellowship at the University of Taipei in math to run off with your father."
"She did?"
Auntie Lu nods and shoots a cautious glance up the stairs. Mama's door is still closed. What I've just learned is more than anyone's shared with me about Mama's past -- my history. I have hundreds more questions, but Auntie Lu's lips are pursed, looking uncannily like Mama when she locks in her thoughts. So I'm surprised when Auntie Lu steps closer to me and whispers like the words are hard to say, harder to hear, "And then when things didn't work out, she regretted her decision..."
Her voice trails off, but not before I follow that thought down the path of Mama's life. How Mama regretted marrying her white guy, having children. Having me. From somewhere in the past, I remember overhearing Mama tell the potluck group: "Life lot easier with no children."
"Out of all of us, our parents said that Mei-Li was the one who would do something great, be someone. A research scientist, an engineer," murmurs Auntie Lu. She gently dusts off one of the shadow boxes on the tansu. "Professor Ho."
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