American Panda(22)
Xing and I are different, I told myself over and over as I tried (and failed) to fall asleep.
At four in the morning, extra pressure on my bed stirred me from my hard-earned sleep. Without opening my eyes, I knew the unwelcome visitor was Nǎinai—the only person with the gall elderly status to regularly intrude on her sleeping hosts in the hopes of waking someone to keep her company.
She spoke in Mandarin. “Mei Mei, you need to learn obedience. Just look at your father, the epitome of xiàoshùn—always putting me first, never asking questions. He was obedient to Yéye until the end—no, past the end. After Yéye’s death, your father paid the proper respect, refraining from cutting the hair on his head and face for a hundred days.”
That wasn’t noble. Just sad. The only way my father knew how to express himself to Yéye was through an archaic tradition done after death.
“But don’t worry, your father wasn’t always that way. It can be learned.” She guffawed suddenly, loud and throaty, startling me. “He was so naughty as a child. How he loved to eat. Whenever I gave him money for a haircut, he would spend the dollar on beef noodle soup and just accept the beating that followed. So naughty, just like Xing.”
My heart ached for my father, who grew up in a different time and had it so much worse. Had he been scared? Confused? Resentful? The few times he had talked about Yéye, he’d spoken with such reverence.
Nǎinai inched closer and leaned over my still torso. “One time, Yéye caught him smoking and used the cigarette to burn his arm. Your father never smoked again.”
I pictured the three welts of scar tissue on my dad’s arm. Whenever I asked where those came from, he just grunted. Nǎinai obviously didn’t know he continued to smoke for years, a pack a day, in the basement. The only way Yéye helped him quit was by dying of emphysema. So many secrets. So much left unsaid. I was guilty of the same, like father like daughter, carved from the same múzi.
She patted my leg. “Try harder. I know you can do it. You’re at MIT because you’re a hard worker, like me. Did you know I joined the army to escape the Communist War? Then, in Taiwan, I argued my way into the police academy.”
For the first time since the onset of her dementia, I felt that thread that connected us. I used to look up to her for her independence, the fight she had inside. My chest used to puff when my father told me I reminded him of her, the highest compliment he could give.
But then she pressed a finger to the off-center mole on my forehead, which was visible now that I was lying down and my bangs had fallen to one side. “We should remove this. I could cut it off for you, to help you catch a man.”
And with that, our moment was over. She shuffled out, muttering about finding a knife for the goddamn mole that had plagued me my whole life.
After wedging a chair beneath the door handle to keep Nǎinai and her knife out, I tossed and turned for hours, haunted by my father’s past, Xing’s past, and my future.
My mother yelling through the door to wake me up
Mei! Put on sunblock. You look like charcoal. Your mǔqīn knows best.
CHAPTER 9
(NOT A) CANDY BAR WRAPPER
WHEN MY FATHER DROPPED ME off at Burton Conner, my mother darted out of the car after me, claiming I needed her help because my room was luànqībāzāo. Even though she did proceed to tornado through, sucking up dirty clothes, gum wrappers, and hair ties while clucking her tongue at me, I knew she was here because she couldn’t stomach any more Nǎinai or Yilong. In another hour, max, they would be on a plane out of here, but I guess even that was too much. Understandable.
I had anticipated this, hiding my dance shoes (which were calling to me like they knew I needed them) in a pile of Nicolette’s (hopefully chlamydia-free?) clothes. The polka-dot socks on top marked the pile as hers, which my mother would know since she bought most of my clothes and why you need colorful socks? The plain ones are cheaper.
But still, every time my mother breezed close to the buried treasure, I stopped breathing. Luckily, she was too appalled by the mess to pay much attention to me.
“If you don’t learn to clean up, maybe Eugene won’t want you.”
“I’m sure tiger Mrs. Huang will be wiping his butt until she dies,” I muttered from my desk. I was trying to drown out the tongue clucks with a p-set (MIT lingo for homework).
“Mrs. Huang is not a tiger; she’s a horse. And you’re right, she will probably live with you once you’re married. Except you will need to clean up after her. The only reason Nǎinai doesn’t live with us is because Yilong never married. Poor Nǎinai, having to deal with that. If you don’t marry, I would be so ashamed I’d never show my face.”
I scooted my chair closer to the desk and hunched over my paper. Drop-copy-decrease-chain, I chanted in my head as I differentiated, trying to tune her out—the only defense in this situation. I wish she had taken up my offer to walk around MIT again. I’d been hoping to re-create that day from a few weeks ago, but she had said no—reluctantly at least—citing that she didn’t want my father to have to wait on her if we took too long (heaven forbid).
Suddenly, my mother screamed. An I’m-getting-murdered, make-your-eardrums-bleed kind of scream. I covered my ears so fast I stabbed my temple with the pencil in my hand. Fortunately, it was the eraser side.