The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life

by Amy Tan

  Inaccuracy, I fear, has become epidemic among publications whose writers rely on the Internet for research. For there, past interviews and articles survive and even thrive, as if they were fresh off the press, perpetually part of today’s news. An interview dating from 1989 said, rightly, that I had been married for fifteen years. A reporter who evidently used this interview as background in 1996 stated that I had been married for fifteen years. Other reporters, perhaps wishing to differentiate between the first set of fifteen years and the second, have referred to Lou as my “current husband.”

  Having a twenty-year-old photograph of me run with articles also causes me consternation. I have had PR people refuse to take me to the greenroom before an event, only to have them later rush up to me and say, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were the Amy Tan. I was looking for someone else.” Read between the lines.

  I did some sleuthing the other day to see who exactly is this Amy Tan who looks forever the same as in 1989, has been married to multiple husbands for always the same number of years, and has won all the literary prizes on earth. I found her lurking in at least one den of iniquity. This website opened with the following come-on:

  Do you need a quality paper on Amy Tan—today, tomorrow, next week, or next month?

  Since 1997, our experts on Amy Tan have helped students worldwide by providing the best, lowest-priced writing service on the Internet. If you’ve waited too long to start your paper on Amy Tan, or have more writing than you can handle, we can help. Our staff of over 200 professional writers located around the world has produced thousands of college term papers, essays, research papers, dissertations, theses, and book reports on all topics involving Amy Tan. These excellent papers are available to you instantly for only $25.99 each.

  How dismal to think I can be instantly summed up for only $25.99. These papers could not possibly be correct. I’ve paid psychiatrists $200 for fifty minutes many times over, and I still don’t understand who I am.

  For years, I have felt stymied by my alternative reality. It has created a new kind of existential angst. Who was I really, if not what all these articles said I was? If the Internet and its share of misinformation went on in perpetuity, then I too would live on in immortal muddle. The real me would become lost to misstatements of fact.

  Then I realized I could use the same methods by which the errata grew to quash them, all 48,291 hits. I decided to write this piece, the one right before your very eyes. It would become part of the Internet Archives Used by Reporters, and thus I would at least have recorded my rebuttal for posterity.

  So herewith the facts, as put forth by the ultimate expert, Amy Tan, and you don’t have to pay $25.99 to get the scoop on what in her life is only a mistake.

  Erratum 1. Tan’s works do not include The Year of No Flood (1995). That was a chapter in her novel The Hundred Secret Senses. At one time, Tan thought she might write a book with that title that would include the flood and then the drought that preceded the Boxer Uprising, but because she blabbed about that book so much before it was written, it ejected itself from her imagination. Apparently someone to whom she blabbed assumed she finished the novel and published it.

  Erratum 2. Tan did not attend eight different colleges. It was five, she says, and that number proved excessive enough, particularly when the fund-raising season rolls around every year and she is asked to contribute to the coffers of her alma maters.

  Erratum 3. Tan did not teach poetry at a university in West Virginia. She has no idea where that came from, because she has never been to West Virginia and she has never taught. But the idea is rather flattering, and she has always wished she could write poetry, let alone teach it. Along those same lines, Tan has never been a workshop leader of a writers’ group, and as to those who claim to her agent and editor that she led their group, that was Molly Giles who was the leader. She has red hair. Tan has red hair only when she performs in a literary garage band called The Rock Bottom Remainders. She has never worn the red wig while leading a writers’ workshop.

  Erratum 4. Tan never worked in a factory alongside a certain person who was your best friend, not in this life or in any past life that she can remember. Among Tan’s early jobs, she was a switchboard operator at her high school, a carhop at an A&W drive-in, and a Round Table pizza slinger.

  Erratum 5. Tan has never lived in a mansion in the multimillionaired hills of Hillsborough, California. She went to a fund-raiser there once where guests were asked to shell out $25,000 to help a political candidate but she was somehow let in for free; the political candidate later lost. As to where Tan lives, that would be a more modest condominium in San Francisco, a town that has some pretty nice hills itself, and a mix of billionaires and poor, both of whom the political candidates profess to have in their camp.

  Erratum 6. Tan’s condominium is not the top floor of a former mansion. Her building was constructed in 1916 as apartments. Her unit is on the third and fourth floors, the fourth being a former attic. Tan, no spring chicken, having been born in 1952 (to determine approximate age, take today’s year and subtract 1952), now wishes she had an elevator.

  Erratum 7. Tan has never had a fight with anyone from her publishers’ in a bookstore, nor did she scream and fling books around, causing store patrons to run for their lives. Tan claims that she and her publishers have always had an amicable relationship, and they fight only over bills at restaurants, and then only as an ostentatious show of politeness. Most times, Tan lets them win. They pay the bill.

  Erratum 8. With the exception of arguments over restaurant bills, Tan has never had a fight with her agent, Sandy Dijkstra, and switched to a new agent. Sandy was the one who encouraged her to write fiction early on. She is like a Jewish mother, badgering Tan week after week to keep writing. Tan owes her life to her agent for giving her the life of a writer. For that reason, Tan probably also owes her lunch, but Sandy usually pays anyway.

  Erratum 9. Lou DeMattei is indeed Tan’s first husband. He is also her current husband. In addition, he is her only husband. They have been together since 1970, married since 1974. To discover how many total years that is, take today’s year and subtract from it 1970 for togetherness or 1974 for marriage.

  Erratum 10. Tan does not have two children, unless you consider, as she does, that her dogs are her children. In articles about Tan after 1997, Tan’s cat, Sagwa, should be referred to not as her pet but as her late and dearly beloved kitty. Tan acknowledges that she has included children in most of her books, except the one about the cat. Predictably, these children have grown older with each subsequent book. Although they are imaginary, she is terribly fond of them. But she has never done homework with them every night, taken them to soccer practice or swim meets, cried in an emergency room when it turned out they had merely stuck beans in their ears, or gone through the cycle of being angry, then worried, then hysterical when they drove off to a forbidden place and went missing for six hours. Thus Tan cannot say with real conviction that her dogs are her children.

  Erratum 11. Tan does not have yellow skin as depicted in a cartoon version of her on The Simpsons. It is yellow-skin depictions like these that make Tan slightly uncomfortable in being called a Writer of Color. Also, Tan did not really berate Lisa Simpson and humiliate her mercilessly in front of a TV audience. Those words were put in Tan’s mouth by another cartoon character, namely Matt Groening. Other than the skin-color thing, she thinks Matt Groening is a sweetheart and a pretty nice guy. She once argued with him in public over the lunch bill, but he pushed her credit card aside and paid.

  That’s it for now. I will be adding to this regularly, as needed. Look for installments in 48,291 websites and growing listed by Google for “Amy Tan.”

  • scent •

  As a teenager, I longed for a corsage of gardenias, that symbol of prom nights and first kisses. But when I was fifteen, my brother, and then my father, were struck ill, both with brain tumors, and in lieu of going to dances, I lived in hospital waiting rooms. In less tha
n a year, our living room was twice filled to bursting with white gardenias adorning funeral sprays. For a long time afterward, while attending some joyous occasion, such as a wedding or an anniversary party, I would be caught off guard by the oppressive sweetness of gardenias, their scent an instant reminder of unbearable grief. Recently, however, I saw a pot of gardenias in a plant store and was seduced by the milky white blooms and vibrant green leaves. I brought the gardenias home, where their lovely fragrance immediately saturated my small deck and reminded me of an earlier time, of happy expectations. Alas, unlucky gardener that I am, the blooms soon turned yellow and fell off, and I gave up watering the plant. In spite of my neglect the plant has not died. In fact, it has sprouted new leaves. And now I am watering the gardenia again. I am hoping the flowers will bloom, wondering when they will.

  AMERICAN CIRCUMSTANCES AND CHINESE CHARACTER

  I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix?

  I taught [my daughter] how American circumstances work. If you are born poor here, it’s no lasting shame. You are first in line for a scholarship. If the roof crashes on your head, no need to cry over this bad luck. You can sue anybody, make the landlord fix it. You do not have to sit like a Buddha under a tree letting pigeons drop their dirty business on your head. You can buy an umbrella. Or go inside a Catholic church. In Amer- ica, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.

  She learned these things, but I couldn’t teach her about Chinese character. How to obey parents and listen to your mother’s mind. How not to show your own thoughts, to put your feelings behind your face so you can take advantage of hidden opportunities. Why easy things are not worth pursuing. How to know your own worth and polish it, never flashing it around like a cheap ring. Why Chinese thinking is best.

  • The Joy Luck Club

  • fish cheeks •

  I fell in love with the minister’s son the winter I turned fourteen. He was not Chinese, but as white as Mary in the manger. For Christmas I prayed for this blond-haired boy, Robert, and a slim new American nose.

  When I found out that my parents had invited the minister’s family over for Christmas Eve dinner, I cried. What would Robert think of our shabby Chinese Christmas? What would he think of our noisy Chinese relatives who lacked proper American manners? What terrible disappointment would he feel upon seeing not a roasted turkey and sweet potatoes but Chinese food?

  On Christmas Eve, I saw that my mother had outdone herself in creating a strange menu. She was pulling black veins out of the backs of fleshy prawns. The kitchen was littered with appalling mounds of raw food: A slimy rock cod with bulging fish eyes that pleaded not to be thrown into a pan of hot oil. Tofu, which looked like stacked wedges of rubbery white sponges. A bowl soaking dried fungus back to life. A plate of squid, crisscrossed with knife markings so they resembled bicycle tires.

  And then they arrived—the minister’s family and all my relatives in a clamor of doorbells and rumpled Christmas packages. Robert grunted hello, and I pretended he was not worthy of existence.

  The Tan family—(left to right) Peter, John, me, and Daisy—in Oakland, California, the day after I was born, 1952.

  Dinner threw me deeper into despair. My relatives licked the ends of their chopsticks and reached across the table, dipping into the dozen or so plates of food. Robert and his family waited patiently for platters to be passed to them. My relatives murmured with pleasure when my mother brought out the whole steamed fish. Robert grimaced. Then my father poked his chopsticks just below the fish eye and plucked out the soft meat. “Amy, your favorite,” he said, offering me the tender fish cheek. I wanted to disappear.

  At the end of the meal my father leaned back and belched loudly, thanking my mother for her fine cooking. “It’s a polite Chinese custom, to show you are satisfied,” he explained to our astonished guests. Robert was looking down at his plate with a reddened face. The minister managed to muster a quiet burp. I was stunned into silence for the rest of the night.

  After all the guests had gone, my mother said to me, “You want be same like American girls on the outside.” She handed me an early gift. It was a miniskirt in beige tweed. “But inside, you must always be Chinese. You must be proud you different. You only shame is be ashame.”

  And even though I didn’t agree with her then, I knew that she understood how much I had suffered during the evening’s dinner. It wasn’t until many years later—long after I had gotten over my crush on Robert—that I was able to appreciate fully her lesson and the true purpose behind our particular menu. For Christmas Eve that year, she had chosen all my favorite foods.

  • dangerous advice •

  My mother used to provide vivid examples of what would happen to me if I was foolish enough to ignore her advice. If I ran out into the street without looking both ways, I could be smashed by a car, flattened like a sand dab. If I ate unwashed fruit, I could end up poisoned, writhing like a snail on a bed of salt. If I kissed a boy—a boy who probably never brushed his teeth or washed his hands—I would wind up diseased and pregnant, as bloated as a rotten melon.

  Thanks to my mother, I never eat sand dabs or snails, and I made sure I married a man who brushes and flosses his teeth every day. So it is strange to report that my mother did not warn me against skiing. Fact is, she encouraged it.

  We were an urban immigrant family who lived in blue-collar California neighborhoods, then wended our way into the middle-class suburbs of Silicon Valley. Unlike my friends, I did not go to summer camp, where unlucky boys and girls had to ride rabid ponies and swim in snake-choked lakes. My summertime thrills included making lanyards in a cafeteria, seeing The Angry Red Planet at a bargain matinee, and going to the library once a week. The only snowcapped mountain I had ever seen up close was the Matterhorn at Disneyland. Of course, I was not allowed to go on the Matterhorn ride.

  “Why not?” I whined.

  “This not fun,” my mother replied. “Only dangerous.”

  “Everybody else is going!”

  “Everybody jump off cliff, you do same?”

  Smug look. “Yeah.”

  “Well, anyway, too many people wait in line. Wait so long, you get sunstroke.”

  Intentionally or not, my mother raised me to become the Great Indoors Type. In my youth I failed to develop any athletic prowess. I thought of myself as a klutz, and this self-image was reinforced over and over in PE classes. Three times a week I had to endure a cruel ritual in which girls lined up to be chosen by team captains.

  “Let’s see,” I’d hear the captain say as she surveyed the dregs. Big sigh. “Oh well, I guess I can take Tan.” And I’d leap up like a grateful dog at the pound, spared yet another day from being the very last to be chosen.

  I was the girl who couldn’t run a relay race without falling down and throwing up. I was the player who sprained her finger just looking at a volleyball. I was the bungler designated to stand in right field, where baseballs were seldom hit. The one time a girl did hit a fly out there, I was jeered for running away from the ball. Like my mother, I saw danger coming at me from all angles.

  When I was sixteen, my mother decided to take me and my little brother to Europe, where she believed it was safer. I thought she’d gone crazy for sure. In August, we sailed to Holland with no Dutch language skills and no idea where we would live or go to school. After a month of wandering, we found our home for the next year: a century-old chalet in Territet-Montreux, Switzerland. It was picture-postcard perfect, set in a neighborhood of fourteenth-century houses and cobblestone pathways, with glorious views of Lake Geneva and the Alps.

  My mother gave my brother and me a mandate: We were to take advantage of every opportunity presented—speaking French, going to museums, skiing . . . Skiing? My mother had recently seen The Sound of Music, and she could envision no harm in an activity that took place in a landscape that even a nun had sung praises about.
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  Actually, I had no choice about the skiing. It was a requirement of the school I had been enrolled in—a school attended, I should add, by wealthy kids with international lifestyles who had been skiing glaciers and drinking Bordeaux since the age of three. Several of the girls shopped in Paris on the weekends.

  Your basic insecure teenager, I tried to fit in and act like my peers, as though I was bored silly by a life of plenty.

  “When I was in Geneva last week,” I told my new friends in a voice tinged with ennui, “I found it utterly impossible to find any ski clothes that I liked.” And then I lit another cigarette.

  To buy the requisite ski equipment and clothes, my mother took me to Migros, a store that was the equivalent of an American Wal-Mart. When the shop clerk asked me to raise my right arm, I didn’t ask why. I extended it as fully as my five-foot-three-and-three-quarter-inch frame could muster. I was shown a pair of red 196-centimeter wood skis with cable bindings. So as not to be taken for a consumer fool, I carefully examined the proffered skis, making sure they had no chips in their paint and were suitably heavy to resist breaking.

  To complete the rig, my mother selected some steel poles with leather baskets—sturdy ones, nice and heavy—as well as a pair of black Dolomite boots roomy enough for the three pairs of wool socks she had knit and insisted I wear. She also picked out a burgundy outfit that could accommodate layers of sweaters. When I emerged from the dressing room looking like a cross between an overripe eggplant and an Eskimo, she pronounced me fully equipped to go schussing.

  For my first ski trip I went to Gstaad with a couple of school friends and, unbeknownst to my mother, my very first boyfriend, Franz, who was twenty-two, an excellent skier, and a deserter from the German army.