Nothing but the truth: (and a few white lies)

by Justina Chen Headley

  "You look like you've done this before," says Trevor.

  "Something like it." I shrug and ask nonchalantly, "You ever try buildering at Stanford?"

  "No kidding." Trevor is literally gaping at me like I am the Goddess of All Things.

  I am not the Goddess of All Things, but just possibly the Goddess of Some Things, which doesn't include buildering, however sexy that may make me seem to be.

  "Climbing really isn't my thing." I tell him the truth and step off the wall, back to the ground where my feet belong. "I run."

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  "Me, too."

  So there we are, Twin Geeks, grinning at each other when Uncle Vic walks in. A couple of weeks ago, I would have been mortified if Mama, or any adult, for that matter, picked me up like I was some kid without her driver's license. Which I am. I mean, who am I kidding? There are worse things than having an uncle who looks seriously happy to be schlepping me around town.

  "Well," says Trevor, uncertainly. At loss for words for the first time in hours. "Maybe I'll see you at Stanford."

  "I hope so," I say.

  And then, three cheers for space-clearing, Trevor hands me a business card with his cell phone number. "Look me up if you ever come down for ProFro weekend or something."

  Or something. Nebulous and loose, just the way I want my future.

  "I can't leave you alone for three hours," says Uncle Vic to me in the car, his voice completely somber serious. Dread bubbles in my stomach, wondering if maybe, just maybe, Uncle Vic's latent paternal side is rearing its ugly head. I'd never been in the audience for a full-on fatherly lecture, and wasn't so sure I wanted to get one now.

  But Uncle Vic starts laughing, a bubbling frothy champagney chortle that makes me want to laugh with him.

  "You are just like your Auntie Lu. Just wait till I tell her that your 'educational'" -- he makes bunny ear quote signs with his both of his hands -- "experience today was nothing but a way for you to meet a guy."

  "A hot guy," I correct.

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  "When you get into Stanford," he says, shaking his head and, thankfully, putting both hands back on the steering wheel, "you're going to have to live with us so that I can keep you under lock and key."

  You try, Uncle Vic. Just you try.

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  32 * Math Redux

  Here it is, The Big Day. After a month of working with our TAs on The Research Project, slumming in the math library and leafing through the books that the profs brought to us in Synergy, we're ready to present What We've Learned This Summer. So like wannabe professors, we troop group by group to the front of the classroom. It's actually interesting to see how passionate, not to mention proficient, we've all gotten about our subjects. Naturally, Anne kicks butt on her cryptography project, and I even notice Professor Drake jotting down notes like she's given him some new insights.

  It could be my imagination, but I think one of the visiting professors sits straighter when Jasmine starts her group's presentation on error-correcting codes. When computers process all the information we demand them to, there's bound to be a mistake at the rate of one in 10 billion. That's where these two guys, Irving Reed and Gustave Solomon, come in. They figured out a speedy quick way to detect problems over mind-boggling amounts of data and correct them before the mistakes happen.

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  "Imagine error-correcting your choices," says Jasmine, grinning at me. Yeah, just imagine.

  Here's the thing: I can't even count all the moments where error-correcting could have saved me a world of grief... like calling Mama right after she phoned. Or giving Anne a chance instead of writing her off. Without SUMaC, I may never have realized that she's actually a loyal romantic trapped in a whiz kid's brain. Come to think of it, was I any different from Steve Kosanko in insta-judging someone based on her looks? Now, that's an epiphany I wasn't prepared for: Steve Kosanko, my evil twin.

  Just as I'm about to spiral down that twisted path, it's my group's turn to present. Our team has been decimated with both Stu and Katie kicked out of camp. I'm happy to report that everyone laughs at our jokes about Group Theory and how it relates to the Rubik's Cube. But I get a tiny lump in my throat when David presents Stu's part of the project. My feelings are still a little mixed up about Stu, apparently. As Mama says, though, history is lo-ooong. So who knows if our paths will cross again, maybe even back here at Stanford? (But he'll have to wait in line after Trevor and who knows what other boys I'll meet in my future dorm.)

  As I look out into the lecture hall and at the SUMaCers and the teaching assistants and our professors, I wonder if we all aren't missing the point. The most important thing I've learned this summer isn't about how the toy I'm holding is actually a real-world application of a mathematical group.

  What I've learned is this: no matter how many combinations of problems and crises life throws you, you can always

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  twist yourself around. Sometimes, you end up in a worse place than you were before. But you can always move somewhere else. I mean, if the twenty-six plastic "cubies" on a Rubik's Cube can have 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 (that's forty-three quintillion!) different positions to choose from, surely an infinitely complex Kung Fu Queen slash Hapa Girl like me has lots of maneuvering room.

  And here's the earth-shattering, awesome part. Sometimes, you end up in the best place of all: exactly where you want to be.

  Like me, right here, right now.

  As Jasmine and I walk into the Quad, I feel a hand holding me back. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I almost think it's Stu asking for a second chance. (I suppose this really means that I'm not quite over him yet.) But it's Brian. He grins at me and says, "Nice presentation. I knew you had it in you." And then he hands me a piece of graph paper, folded neatly in half. "You dropped this."

  "No, I didn't," I say, even as I open the paper. My jaw nearly dislocates because this is what it says:

  SUMaC Truth Theorem One

  Given: Patty Ho is a hapa.

  Prove: Patty Ho is like no hapa woman on earth.

  Statement

  Reason

  1. Patty can do math half-asleep and fall completely asleep during her math.

  1. TA can vouch

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  2. She can talk her way out of more trouble and get into new trouble faster than an entire math camp combined.

  2. Ditto.

  3. She can wholly survive a Torture Chamber and House Ho.

  3. Given.

  Therefore, Patty Ho is an all-brain, all-spunk and all-terrain hapa.

  100% given.

  So what is Patty going to do for the next couple of years, aside from apply to Stanford?

  "How did you know about my theorems?" I ask, embarrassed.

  "The Big Kahuna surfs all waves -- sound and air," says Brian, pretending like he's scanning the horizon for the perfect curl. He drops his arm around my shoulder and knocks me gently under the chin. "I'll see you back here for your freshman year, kiddo."

  And when Brian takes his arm away, I notice he's draped his Stanford sweatshirt around my shoulders.

  "It's a deal," I say, throwing my arms around my blond-surfer-dude-math-genius of a TA.

  On my last night with Auntie Lu, I'm trying to teach her how to make batsang, sticky rice wrapped inside two-foot-long bamboo leaves. The rice packages are supposed to be

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  shaped like pyramids. Auntie Lu is hopeless. She keeps forming envelopes.

  "Like this." I show her again, twisting the bamboo leaf into a cone before filling it a third of the way with sweet glutinous rice. Auntie Lu tries to copy me, but rice squishes out the top. So I give her mine and fix hers. "See?"

  "Uh-huh," she says, but I see she doesn't. That's OK. We all have our strengths.

  "You know, I'm going to have a talk with Mama about Uncle Vic," I tell my aunt.

  "She's coming around." Auntie Lu doesn't sound too hopeful. "Slowly."

  "Then it's time to speed things up. But Auntie
Lu?" I bite my lip uncertainly and rush on before I lose my courage. "Why aren't you and Uncle Vic married?"

  Auntie Lu's eyebrows lift, blindsided by my question. Without a doubt, Miss Manners would tut-tut at such a rude and forward question, but I really want to know the answer, not just because I'm curious (which I am). Or because it'd take away one more objection that Mama has with Auntie Lu and Uncle Vic (which it would). But mostly because I love how Auntie Lu and Uncle Vic act when they're together.

  "Well," she says slowly, "after what happened between my parents and your mother, I suppose I just didn't think any man was worth getting disowned over. Especially if it might not work out anyway."

  I look up from my perfectly formed batsang and hand it to Auntie Lu to tie with string to keep its shape. "You couldn't create a man who's more perfect for you. Or more in love with you." Rice sticks to my fingers and I turn on the faucet,

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  rinsing the grains off into the sink. "Someone told me that my story starts with my parents. But it doesn't have to end with them."

  "A pretty smart someone." Uncle Vic, with his usual impeccable timing, saunters into the kitchen and winks at me before hugging Auntie Lu close. He sniffs the air. "No offense, Lu, but I'm going to miss my niece, and not just for her cooking."

  A moment later, Auntie Lu shoots me a sideways glance. "Me, too."

  I can tell by the way she's studying Uncle Vic as he picks up her flat, rectangular batsang and whistles admiringly at it, that she's rethinking her own Truth Statement. What was true eight years ago may not be true now.

  I inhale deeply, and smell the soaking bamboo leaves, stewing meat and boiling peanuts. An unfamiliar wave of homesickness knocks me over. I want to go home to Mama and make sure she's OK. The place I was running from at the beginning of summer is the only place I want to run to now. I just didn't know how to translate Mama's love. It's been there in every batsang, every spoonful of Tonic Soup, every lecture, every minute of her overtime at work and every mile she drove from a man she didn't trust with Abe. And me.

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  33 * Homeward Bound

  My first day of sophomore year starts with Bowl Fifty-Two of Tonic Soup. After I got home from camp, I decided that since the soup wasn't hurting me, just my taste buds, I could live with it. Especially since it means so much to Mama. Besides, Mama finally told me that the Tonic Soup is supposed to make my eyes glitter. Who am I to snub bright eyes?

  But if you want to get all technical, my morning actually started with a phone call from Mr. Harvard himself. From way out in Boston, he tells me, "Look, if Steve Kosanko bugs you, tell the new seniors on the baseball team about it. They know what to do."

  "Thanks," I say. But I don't need new bodyguards this year. I've got Laura and Janie and Anne. And myself.

  Mama drops me off in front of the high school. She's wearing the brand-new sweater I bought for her after we space-cleared her closet and there were only about ten decent shirts and pants, combined, left. I told Mama it was time to start working on her life now that me and Abe are older. So

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  guess who is sitting in the knowledge seat these days? That would be me. Mama insisted that I take Abe's spot so that I'll be open to learning everything before college. "You be good girl," says Mama.

  "I will," I tell her. Mostly, I add to myself with a wicked-flavored smile.

  Grinning, I rush down the halls toward my locker, passing the seniors who are strutting like they own the halls. Clumps of freshmen dot the hallway and I make an effort to smile reassuringly at them. High school is hell enough without ghouls like Steve Kosanko and his cronies, including Mark Scranton, lurking up ahead. I don't break my stride, and I don't look down at my feet.

  "Yo, Half-breed," Steve says with an ugly leer that's fermented in the summer heat.

  My stomach quakes a little, but I lift my eyes to Steve, glaring at him with my best Dragon Woman stare. The pinto-brained wonder must be astonished because he doesn't say another word, and his henchmen part like the Red Sea. So I sail right through them and overhear Mark tell Steve, "OK, cut it out, man." Looks like Mr. Sophomore Class President grew some balls, if not brain cells, over the summer. More power to him.

  But halfway down the hall, I turn around slowly, ever so slowly, and pierce Steve Kosanko, racist pig, with another glare. I articulate every word clearly as if English isn't his first language: "My. Name. Is. Patty. Ho."

  "Patty, there you are." Mrs. Meyers is practically standing guard outside her classroom, waiting for me. She's holding a

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  thick, pink binder with the title Romance by Numbers. Anne's novel. So she somehow finished it between all our problem sets and Harry. Even though I know I'm going to hear about it in some potluck group once it gets published -- "Anne only fifteen and author! How come you not write book, too?" -- I don't feel the slightest poke of jealousy.

  The classroom feels different, and it's not just because Mrs. Meyers is teaching the new Basic Oral Communication class to clear up what the school board calls the "annoying vocal patterns of today's youth." I mean, not all teenagers lilt the end of our sentences so that everything we say sounds like a question?

  The chalkboard is squeaky clean the way Mrs. Meyers always leaves it. Maybe that's how you need to approach life to make room for fresh new beginnings. Space-clear your home and your past; wipe the slate clean.

  I finally figure out what's different. There are a ton of quotes from Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe, Maya Angelou, Amy Tan, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Maxine Hong Kingston, Richard Wright, Julia Alvarez.

  And above the chalkboard, Mrs. Meyers has hung a new sign: "Honors English Lexicon."

  My mouth drops open and she laughs, delighted like a child. "Yes, I plagiarized that idea right out of your Truth Statement." Her eyes twinkle as she hands me a red file folder. "What you wrote was good, very good. You spent more than a summer writing it."

  Mrs. Meyers is right. I've waited my whole life to get the truth down onto paper. It's still nothing like the tomes the rest of the class produced a couple of months ago. But it's my truth. Mostly the truth, anyway.

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  The following is an excerpt from the only A+ ever to be given on an Honors English essay. Which was then edited into a kick-ass college essay. (Can you say, "China Dolls, please Google 'college acceptance.'" Oh, sorry, gals. The founders of Google are from Stanford, too.) Which was then rewritten into a thank-you letter of sorts sent to Belly-button Grandmother, Mrs. Auntie Lu Jackson and the one and only original Dragon Lady who still presides over House Ho.

  Nothing but the Truth (and a few white lies) By Patty Ho

  The whole truth is, I am Incomplete.

  I used to think that was the world's worst fate. Not to be wholly anything. Not to be all white or all Asian, but something in the murky in-between. Not to have a nuclear family with two perfect parents, but a broken family that periodically goes nuclear on each other.

  That all changed this summer at math camp, of all places.

  I have it from a trusted source that Auguste Rodin considered his opus, The Gates of Hell, to be completed, but not finished. 1 So I figure I'm in good company to be completed (I do have all the requisite DNA strands, after all), yet a woman-in-progress. My incompleteness is something to celebrate. I mean, what do you have to look forward to once you re completely done? Boredom and a six- feet-deep hole is my guess.

  My other huge, ambitious work-in-progress is The Official Patty Ho Lexicon to Hapa Life. Incidentally, hapa used to be a derogatory term like gook, chink, nigger or spic, only now its cool. Kind of like my name. Ho bag is now Hosanna. 2 The truth is, labels are nothing but what we attach to ourselves and to other people, just like labels that are glued onto spaghetti

  ***

  1 Brian Simmons, SUMaC Camp Counselor cum unofficial Stanford University tour guide. 2 Created by yours truly upon meeting Trevor Michaels, Stanford freshman cum budding word guru (like me!). Don't worry, Mama, I'm not dating h
im. Yet.

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  sauce jars or something. Take off the label and there's a mystery inside (especially if that sauce came out of Auntie Lu's kitchen). I spent a day at a naming lab and here's the amazing thing. People actually get paid big bucks to create new names for regular old things, games to gadgets. Not that I'm going to up and change my name. So don't worry. There'll be no call me Ishmael (can you imagine going through life always known as the Moby Dick kid?) or The Girl Formerly Known as Patty Ho. But its mind-blowing to think that we can create our own selves, our own labels, just as neologists create words.

  Fantalicious, isn't it?

  My life as I once knew it was all about wishing to be white. On every falling star, with every rub on a Buddha belly, with every touch of my own belly button, I wished I could be more like Janie or Laura or any of the millions of vanilla white girls on earth. I thought life would be easier if I could whitewash myself. So I did. Its funny-sad how you can learn to detest your-se If just because a teacher tells you not to speak your mother tongue (literally), or a friend's mother plays Miss Western World Manners and chastises you when you so much as grunt uh-huh with a morsel of food in your mouth, or a racist pig hates you for the slant of your eyes.

  But then, a pair of amber-colored glasses landed on my face at math camp, and the way I viewed the world completely changed. Completely, as in entirely, as in the whole dim sum cart kind of change. Jasmine, a fearless buildering nymphomaniac, 3 showed me that all I was doing was committing Patricia-cide and killing my inner girl. The only place that landed me was in Sibernation where I isolated myself in my own head.