American Panda(63)
She smiled while the crowd chuckled. The mic still in her hand, she grabbed the stand with the other and froze for a second, thinking.
“You know, that’s a lucrative business there—matchmaker for the mothers, bouncer for the daughters. Anyone out there interested in investing?”
She placed a hand over her eyes to shield the spotlight and looked left, then right. Several hands went in the air.
“Two dollar?” she asked in a Chinese accent. “Two dollar going once, twice . . .”
Everyone roared. I glanced around at the bodies rocking back and forth, the knee slaps, the clapping hands. Closing my eyes, I focused on the laughter wrapping around me, basking in Ying-Na’s hard-earned success. She hadn’t just survived; she was on her way up, and all by herself.
“So for those of you who aren’t familiar—and to those, I ask, what Big Dig rubble have you been living under?—boys are the desired babies in Chinese culture. When my brother was born, my parents snapped hundreds of photos of him daily, get this—with no pants. They got their firstborn son, and damn it, the world had better see the teeny-tiny proof. Good thing they didn’t have Instagram in those days. His penis would have been immortalized, the Confucius of penises.”
Ying-Na’s aura was on fire. She was so clearly meant for this. If only her parents could see her now. If only the entire community could see her. Although then she’d lose her source material. I chuckled, thinking about how she had won. She had turned their punishment into her success, the ultimate revenge.
“Have any of you noticed how a lot of Chinese proverbs revolve around bathroom humor? Anyone got one for me?” Ying-Na held a hand up to her ear and waved encouragement with the other.
“Búyào tuō kùzi fàngpì!?” I bellowed.
Ying-Na clapped her hands, the sound amplified by the mic. “Yes, thank you! Don’t take your pants off to fart!”
The audience laughed. How amusing—the idiom was hilarious enough to be a joke in itself.
“Chī sh? dōu jiē bú dào rè de!?” an elderly woman yelled from the front row to a wave of groans.
Ying-Na snapped her head back in shock. “You’re so slow you can’t even eat the shit while it’s still hot,” she translated. “Damn, that’s extreme, even for stinky tofu lovers!”
She stopped gesturing to the audience and grasped the mic with both hands again. “Along those lines is one of my favorites: Gou gaibùliao chī sh?. It’s kind of like ‘a leopard can’t change its spots,’ but directly translated, it’s ‘a dog can’t help but eat shit.’?”
My nose burned. That had been Nǎinai’s second favorite phrase. Who would’ve guessed dog shit could stir up such nostalgia? It was so ludicrous I laughed through the grief. Best medicine, better than acupuncture or the cow’s hoof.
“Why did they have to go with something so crude?” Ying-Na continued. “There were so many other options. . . . A panda is still a bear beneath the cuddliness, scallion pancakes will always give you diarrhea, a woman can’t run in her qípáo. . . .” She flashed the slit up her left side, revealing her leg, Angelina Jolie–style. “Unless she’s an American girl who knows how to use a knife!”
She raised her voice to shout over the thundering crowd. “You’ve all been so wonderful. Thank you so much! Remember, none of this was racist because I have Asian immunity! Zàijiàn!”
The spectators whistled, screamed, and stomped their good-byes. Their enthusiasm mirrored mine, and even though I barely knew her, I felt proud of Ying-Na. She wasn’t the cautionary tale; she was the hero. The dreamer. The fighter.
As the audience stretched before the next act, I downed my Coke, then collected my things. Should I try to get backstage? I hadn’t realized Ying-Na was so popular. Now she felt like a celebrity, not an old friend.
A club employee tapped me on the shoulder. “Miss Chu would like to extend an invitation backstage.”
I followed his broad bouncer shoulders, weaving through chairs and feeling like a bit of a celebrity myself. The dressing room was merely a coat closet with a stained armchair on one side and a stool on the other. A smudged mirror leaned against the wall, threatening to topple at any moment.
Ying-Na’s face brightened when she saw me. I stuck a hand out, but she pulled me into a hug. Her sweaty skin stuck to mine, and I held back a cringe.
Now that we were in close proximity, memories flashed through my mind. Ying-Na, age six, yelling out her mother’s mahjong hand to the rest of the table. Everyone had been amused except her mother, which now, in retrospect, had probably been her motivation—getting some laughs, but more important, annoying her ultra-tiger mom. Ying-Na, age eight, grabbing the stuffed animals to put on a show for the younger kids, cartoon voices and jokes galore. I remembered keeling over with laughter, my stomach hurting, just like tonight. Ying-Na, age twelve, reading us kissing scenes from her romance book, telling us she’d teach us how to kiss since our Chinese mothers never would. She had grabbed stacks of oranges for us to French with. I had eaten mine.
I pulled away first. “Ying-Na, I mean Christine, I can’t believe you remember me!”
“Of course! And I still have an ear to one last grapevine leaf. I heard about what happened with your parents. I’m really sorry.”