Auntie Lu reaches to the side table for a napkin to wipe off the red, chipped lid. "See?" she says, "there's a use for everything."
I groan and toss the now-gray napkin in the Throw Away, box. Carefully, Auntie Lu opens the antique box, which smells vaguely like Belly-button Grandmother's office, old with a hint of pepper, cloves and star of anise. Inside the box are photographs that look tea-stained with age. Letters written on light blue airmail paper, all in Chinese. Postcards. An embroidered handkerchief. Tiny seashells. A jade bracelet.
"Look, your mom." Auntie Lu taps a chubby-cheeked girl, grinning mischievously at the camera. I cozy up to Auntie Lu on the sofa bed for a better look. "She used to get in so much trouble all the time." That is hard to imagine, but Auntie Lu sifts through the pictures and tells me stories that don't sound remotely like the Mama I know and live with. How Mama climbed trees instead of doing her homework after school. How she practiced piano by banging out the notes.
And then I stop listening because I see a photograph of Mama, smiling up at a tall white guy with thick brown hair. My father. Ever since I can remember, I always thought Abe looked like a boy version of Mama. In reality, he looks like an Asian-ized version of our dad, with the same unruly hair and the same quirk to his eyebrows like he's forever puzzling over something.
Auntie Lu studies the picture silently over my shoulder.
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"Your mother was disowned for being with him. I don't think our parents have talked to her once since she got married to him."
"They're alive?" Mama doesn't talk about my grandparents either. Like she's cut off her entire childhood. And ours. So we live in a bubble with breathing room for only us three.
"Yes." Auntie Lu places the pictures she's holding back in the box. "Your mama told me about your boyfriend. I think she feels bad about how she handled it. It reminded her of our parents. But she was very worried about you. She hadn't talked to you since you started camp, and you know how she worries."
"Well, she basically disowned me in front of everyone."
"Don't say that," says Auntie Lu, sharply.
I glance at her, surprised and hurt by her harsh tone. My eyes drop to the box and the Mama I never knew.
"Being disowned is like not ever being born. All your history is erased. It's a terrible thing, especially since..." Her voice trails off.
"Since what?"
Auntie Lu presses her lips together, looking eerily like Mama when she doesn't want a conversation to go any further.
I guess out loud, "Since she did the same thing to you?"
"What? Patty," she says, her voice coated with disappointment, "how can you say that?"
I bite my lower lip, not intending to have spoken my thought aloud... even if it is true. Or at least, I think it's true. My gaze falls from Auntie Lu's disapproving eyes down to the photographs I'm holding. Shuffling through the pictures, I stop on one of my parents holding Abe in between them on a rust-colored sofa. No one looks remotely happy in the
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picture, not the shrieking baby Abe, and certainly not my grim father or my mother, who looks like a kid playing dress-up in her loud purple blouse with enormous shoulder pads.
"Patty," says Auntie Lu gently, "I wish your mama would give Vic a chance, but..." Her voice trails off and she eyes the photograph I'm holding. "But I have to cut her some slack. She thinks she's protecting me."
"From what? Being loved? Being happy?" Again, the words spring out of me like they've been tamped down in a tight coil for too long.
"From being hurt."
I release my breath, a hunh of my own, and roll my eyes in disbelief.
"She just thinks it would be... easier... to be with a man from our own culture. Someone who would understand how we think. How we do things." Auntie Lu shakes her head. "America, with all our choices and diversity, can be bewildering. And there are some people who don't welcome differences."
I think about Steve Kosanko and how impossible it was for him to accept me, a girl born in America just like him. What was it like to be Mama? To know no one in a foreign land? As I consider this, I rustle through the pictures still in the antique box. And gasp at the same time Auntie Lu does.
Auntie Lu tries to wrestle the picture out of my hand. But I have it gripped tightly like I'm never going to let it go. It's Mama, but not. Her face is raw and puffy. Bruises swell her eyes shut. Her nose is bloated, broken on the bridge. I can't help but picture the tiny bump on Mama's nose, right where her glasses sit.
"You remember?" asks Auntie Lu.
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"Remember what?"
Another sigh is my answer. Then, the front door opens. Mama's footsteps go directly into the kitchen, not into the bathroom, not into the office to check on us. But straight to work on dinner.
Auntie Lu, looking every bit as old as Mama, squeezes my hand tight. She murmurs, "You need to talk to your mother."
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28 * Remember When
You know its bad when you're wide awake and you have a nightmare. I can't end or escape this new one playing and replaying in my head, now that it's been shaken free. Worse, there's no Brian downstairs for me to talk to. No Jasmine to go buildering with me. And no Stu.
I close my eyes, not that that does any good. My mind doesn't dish up the same old nightmare with a cleaver-wielding father. It's a brand-new, freeze-frame feature: Mama, the victim. You remember?
But what if I don't want to remember? What if I don't want to know why Auntie Lu's home feels so familiar or why she looked so pained like she was the one with the broken face in the picture? What if I don't want to connect all the dots and reconstruct Mama's history via her antique box?
Half the clutter in Auntie Lu's office is gone, leaving plenty of room for bad memories to seep in. Great, I'm choking on remembrances. Or are they scenes that I've choreographed to fill in a history I know nothing about?
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There's one way to find out for sure. The clock says it's only nine thirty. So I pad over to the phone and dial home.
"Hello?" It's Abe. In the background, music blares and people are laughing. So Boy Wonder is having himself a party. Suddenly, it's as silent as a monastery during prayer time. I can imagine his frantic motions, signaling everyone to shut up.
"Mama?" he says, sounding tentative.
On another night, I might have let him sweat it out. Honestly? I probably would have done a pretty good imitation of Mama and snapped that I was coming home in two minutes. But not tonight. The last person I want to pretend to be is her. "It's me."
"Patty," he says, all relieved. "Hey, did you get my message that Mama was flying out to check on you?"
"No." I hadn't returned any of Abe's calls either. Or for that matter, any of Janie's or Laura's. I had been so determined to try on a whole new life for myself, that I cast off my past like it was a lifetime of fashion no's. Big mistake, as it turns out.
"Damn." Abe must have made an everything's cool gesture because the music cranks up again, though not as loud. I can hear his friends whooping. "Everything OK?"
"How come you didn't tell me that Dad hit Mama?"
Abe is so quiet on the other end of the line that I wonder if he's gone back to the party and forgotten all about me. But then I realize I barely hear the music or people anymore. I'm guessing he's moved somewhere private, his room maybe. "You were just a baby when it happened."
"But I'm not a baby anymore!" My breath goes all uneven. I feel just as shaky as I did earlier today, facing the back wall of Encina Hall. I didn't back down then. And I'm not
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backing down now. Using my shoulder to prop the phone to my ear, I swipe my clammy hands on my pajama bottoms. "What happened?"
Again, a long silence.
"Come on, tell me."
"They used to fight all the time, but this time," says Abe, "when I was five, six, they were really going at each other. In the car. Louder than they had ever fought in front of us. We had jus
t eaten pizza to celebrate your birthday."
My birthday. Guilty, I back tip to the sofa bed and sit down.
"Mama forgot the credit card at the restaurant. God, even though I covered my ears, I could still hear Dad harping on Mama, calling her stupid because she needed me, a kindergartener, to translate for her."
I cringe. How many times have I thought the same exact thing when I heard Mama's broken English as she answered the phone or, worse, talked to my friends?
"She said she was stupid... for marrying him. And then..." Abe's voice goes so quiet, I have to cram the phone to my ear to catch words that I don't want to hear. "Dad started hitting her. I can still see it."
The terrible thing is, I can picture it even though I know there is no possible way I can remember anything from when I was two. Even so, in super slow motion, I see a fist pull back. I hear his hand cracking Mama's nose. How could I not know about this? How could they have kept it from me -- Abe, Mama, Auntie Lu?
I pull my knees to my chest like I can hide from the truth.
"Mama got out of the car. She slammed the door and left us with him --"
"What?"
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"-- and started walking down the sidewalk."
No, I don't want to hear anymore. I don't need to know anymore. My eyes swell with tears and I swipe at them even though there's no Mama here, scolding me to toughen up.
"Dad went crazy, saying that he was going to kill her. You started bawling," says Abe. "Stop," I say.
But Abe can't stop talking any more than I could stop listening: "And Mama just stood there on the sidewalk and Dad was revving his engine like he was going to run her over. But she came back, got into the car. I always wondered..."
Another deep sigh, but I don't know if it's me or Abe or both of us.
"What?" I ask just as Abe starts again, this time in a voice so low, I can barely hear him.
"I always wondered whether she would have kept on walking if you hadn't cried," he whispers.
At first, I can't believe I heard Abe right. Heard his words right. Heard the same wistful envy in his voice that saturates my thoughts whenever I see Mama fawning over him, her favorite. But when his breathing goes heavy like he's been lifting or running stairs, I know I've heard him clearly for the very first time.
I grip the phone so tight to my cheek that my own sniffles echo back in my ear.
"The next morning, as soon as Dad went to work, Mama threw us into the station wagon along with half the house. God, there was a lot of junk in the backseat with us." He barks out a rueful laugh. "Totally random stuff: a rice cooker, spatula, books. She cleaned out the refrigerator, of course."
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My snuffly giggle mingles with Abe's. Mama's world was blasting apart, but she remembered to feed us. "So typical Mama," I say.
"Yeah, she kept yelling at me to get you into the car. You didn't listen. So typical you."
A snippet of a memory breaks through thirteen years of forgetting. In my gut, I know this one is true, not manufactured by my imagination or nightmares. I remember Abe trying to reach me through the barricade of kitchen appliances separating us in the backseat, but his arms weren't long enough.
"You tried to buckle me in, right?"
"Yeah," he says, sounding surprised like he had forgotten that detail. "I don't think we wore seatbelts for even a mile all the way to Auntie Lu's."
"Auntie Lu's?"
"We stayed with her for a year before we moved to our own apartment."
Finally, I know why the lotus shoes with the plum blossoms looked so familiar to me. Now I remember trying them on when I didn't think anyone was watching. But even back then, my feet were way too big and I couldn't wedge my heels in. From nowhere, Mama yanked the shoes away from me, snapping that they weren't for my feet.
I hear Abe mutter to someone at his party, "No pot. My mom'll smell it all the way down in California." He clears his throat like he's worried I overheard him, but he's back to being the in-control big brother. "Look, Patty, you know you can call me anytime, right?"
"Right." I know it's true. He's my big brother, the one person Mama says I'll be able to count on if something ever
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happens to her. But she's always been so tough that I've never been able to picture her hurt. Until now. "You sure you're OK?"
"Yeah," I answer even though I have serious doubts that I am. All my old assumptions are cracking apart and my heart is covered in their splinters. There never was a loving Daddy. Behind the warrior woman who battled salesclerks and a disobedient daughter was a battered woman. Mama didn't come back just for Abe, her beloved Golden Boy who never does anything wrong. She came back because of me, too, the ho-lee-jing conniving girl who can never do anything right.
Outside the window, the house next door practically gleams with all the lights that are on. Cars pack the driveway, and a woman's laugh spirals up to me. A happy family entertaining happy friends.
Earlier, I told Abe I wasn't a baby anymore, but now, all I want is for Stu to put his arms around me and protect me. Shoot myself up with his kisses so that I'll forget all about Mama, Dad, his fists, me.
I pull on sweats and sneakers, and tiptoe across the floor without worrying about tripping and falling. There's no sound coming from the other rooms. The window easily slides open all the way now that it's no longer blocked by junk.
Leaning out, I stare at the one-story drop to the ground. Just this morning, I wouldn't have dreamed of escaping by window. But after buildering across Encina Hall, shimmying out of a suburban house should be as easy as climbing off a step stool. I slip out the window onto a tiny ledge. Sidestepping carefully, I reach out for the overgrown fig tree.
And just like Mama before me, I sneak out of the house.
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***
To put as much distance as I can between Mama and my memories, I start off in a sprint. But it's hard to run when you can't see farther than a couple of feet because your contact lenses are in the bathroom and you're on the verge of crying but can't since you're breathing too hard. Halfway to campus, it dawns on me that I've been running in the dark my whole life. I've always assumed it was my mother who drove my dad away. In reality, she was the one who drove away
I slow to a jog-limp, holding my cramping side.
My father, he of the fantasy rescues, was the one Mama rescued us from.
As fast as I can, I sprint up the steep hill to where music is blasting out of Synergy. Everybody's partying tonight -- Abe, the math groupies, Auntie Lu's next-door neighbors. I'm the lone reveler at my own pity party. I brighten. At least the Synergy party is on a college campus.
College + party = booze.
I am ready to get drunk for the first time in my life, ready to lose total control.
The music literally pounds in the darkened common room, and the thumping bass replaces my own heartbeat. The furniture has been pushed off to the side for a makeshift dance floor. The only people dancing are Jasmine and Anne; a swarm of boys are twitching around them. You honestly couldn't call their jerky motions dancing.
I spot the huge bucket by a couple of kids playing chess. When I paw eagerly into the ice, I pull out nothing but soda. Naturally.
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"Patty!" shouts Jasmine over the music and sways over to me. "You escaped."
Now that I'm here, I don't want to talk about Mama and my father. I don't want to hear this techno non-music. I don't want to think about the problem set I blew off. I just want Stu. Being one of the tallest guys in camp, he's hard to miss. But I don't see him in the room, on the dance floor, or with the chess players.
What I do see is the wary look Jasmine exchanges with Anne.
And then, I know. Anyone who confides in one of those women's magazines or daytime talk shows that they had no idea, not the foggiest clue, that their partner was cheating on them is an idiot. I know why Stu's not out here and why Katie of the Big Hair isn't pushing her big boobs against him on the dance floor.
I could hide this betrayal in my own Pandora's box, tucking away a new bad memory that I don't want to deal with. I could pretend that nothing is happening, that everything is perfectly fine.
But something is happening. Right now.
I race up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
"Wait!" Jasmine runs right behind me, holding me back on the second-floor landing. Anne brings up the rear. Their nervous glances sandwich me. Jasmine says, "Don't."
But I break free and head up the last flight. My hand is on Stu's door when Jasmine places hers on top of mine and tells me again, "Really, don't."
"Why not? You'd do the same if it was your ex in there with another girl," I say and her hand drops off of mine.
So we are an Asian troika, standing together, when I throw open the door. People say that it's the weird details you
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remember clearly after the shock wears off. Like that girl on Oprah who lost her leg in a shark attack and just remembers a loud POP! Yes, Mama made me watch the show on amazing survivals in case I ever found myself stuck in a crevasse or in the open seas with a shark stalking me.
But Mama and Oprah never prepared me for this. My own personal Torture Chamber, smelling of booze, and my almost-boyfriend in bed with someone else.
What I wish I'd remember is how Stu lifts his head and turns to me, his eyes blurry in drunken surprise. Or how Katie tosses her hair over her shoulder, smirking like she wanted me to find her mashing with him.
But I know what's going to be permanently lodged in my memories is Stu, slurring my name so it sounds like it's spoken with an Asian accent: "Pad-dy?"
When I climbed out of my window tonight, all I wanted was to erase the image of Mama's battered face. What replaces it is no better.
Nothing but the truth: (and a few white lies) Page 16