American Panda(11)

Me, I thought, but I didn’t want to remind my mother that I would be a bad wife for Eugene Huang because I couldn’t cook.

At the MIT Coop, my mother tried on twenty different MIT MOM shirts until she found The One that accentuated her figure. I snapped a photo (no mabù needed), just managing to catch the hint of pride at the edge of her eyes.

“Imagine everyone’s faces when I walk into Chow Chow wearing this,” she said to herself, but loud enough that I heard. “Mrs. Pan will be so jealous!”

I laughed despite myself and thought I could soar no higher, but then she paid, ripped the tag off, and wore the shirt out.

On our way back to Burton Conner, my mother’s bright pink MIT shirt lighting our way, I stopped at the parabolic benches, two concave stone parabolas spaced a few feet apart. Since the benches matched the rest of MIT’s funky eclectic architecture, their unique sound properties were a secret from most passersby.

I positioned my mom at the focal point of one of the parabolas, her front to the concrete seats.

“What’s this?” she asked. Her words, traveling as sound waves, hit the bench, concentrated, and shot back to us, amplified. Her jaw dropped as her hand flew up to cover her open mouth.

“Gia xiláng,” she whispered in amazement, so softly I wouldn’t have been able to discern her words had we not been in the whispering gallery. She didn’t speak Taiwanese often—only to my father when they wanted to talk about Xing and me without our knowing what they were saying—and it caught me off guard.

Suddenly I was happy and sad at the same time, like oil and water in my brain. Where had this side of my mother been my whole life? Had she appeared now because I was in college? Or had she been there all along, but I had been too busy or selfish to spend time with her?

She turned to me so our conversation wouldn’t be amplified. “How does this work?”

“Sound is a wave, an invisible vibration that travels through a medium such as air, and because of the shape of the benches, the sound waves are concentrated and reflected.” I tried to use the simplest words I could, but they clearly went over her head. I switched to Mandarin, but it wasn’t just a language problem.

Even though she didn’t understand, she nodded at me, one sharp movement. “I’m so glad you’re here. You fit. You’ll do well. I know you’ll get into the best medical school and become the best doctor.”

They were simultaneously the best and worst words. I tried to focus on the pride in her voice and eyes, but instead, my stomach shot into my intestines.



By the time we returned to Burton Conner, we didn’t have to wait long for my father to pull up. From the SUV’s trunk, my parents pulled out a giant cooler plus several plastic bags filled to the brim. And these weren’t flimsy grocery store bags—they were behemoth ones bought for nickels in Taiwan and lugged back home across the Pacific.

“I did your laundry and brought you food for the week,” my mom explained.

Gratitude welled into a lump that stuck in my throat like a Codd-neck Ramune bottle from my childhood. “Thank you so much, Mamá.”

She waved a hand through the air. “It’s so you can devote all your energy to studying.”

My family did not mess around when it came to academics. My yéye had passed away during my father’s studies in graduate school, and his family didn’t tell him his own father had died until the semester ended. It was the reason I lived in perpetual fear that my parents were sick or dying and they wouldn’t tell me until it was too late.

After the clothes were put away, we stood awkwardly, crammed into my tiny room with our arms folded over our chests. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other.

“Well, I guess we should let you study,” my mother said.

I laughed. “You guys drove all the way here. Let’s go get dinner together.”

“Are you sure you don’t have homework to do?” my father asked.

“I’m all caught up.”

He nodded, and off we drove to Chow Chow, no discussion needed to decide our destination. I forced myself to ignore my craving for pizza.

When we parted later that night, a small piece of my heart broke off and went home with my mother. Would I ever see this version of her again? Somehow, as the physical distance between us increased, so did her hold on me.





Voicemail from my mother

Mei! You’re still pinching your nose, yes? It’s already naturally big, so don’t worry—you will make money in the future. But it doesn’t look good. Pinch it twice a day, twenty minutes, so it’s slimmer. More feminine. You know what? I’ll bring you a clothespin. This is your mǔqīn.





CHAPTER 5


(Of course there is no chapter four. Mǎmá Lu would faint at having the number four—which in Mandarin sounds like the word for death, therefore making it unlucky—as a chapter number.)





RASH DECISIONS


THERE COMES A TIME WHEN every parent must have the ever-important sex talk with their child. Unfortunately for me, my version consisted of the following: Sex is a crime before marriage and an obligation for a wife, and, Do not get a Pap smear or use a tampon because you will deflower yourself prematurely. How will your future husband know your looseness is from that tool they use, not another penis?