Kevin’s whole existence could be summed up in three words: Number One Son. Even as a toddler he was certain he could do no wrong. He was one of those little kids that already looked disturbingly good in a tuxedo, even though the size was only a 4T.
At age six, he was already an entrepreneur, digging through the neighbors’ garbage in search of discarded items to resell for piggy bank money. Tapping into a natural gift for project management, he enlisted Lindsey and the neighborhood kids to run his makeshift tag sales, promising them a tiny share of the profits. He made future business contacts by hanging out with a pack of other Number One Sons at the Chinatown YMCA, and in Little League he learned about team dynamics and the importance of having psychological advantage over one’s opponent. From then on, competition was his life: comparing baseball cards and playing kickball eventually evolved into comparing luxury cars and playing the stock market.
The summer after his eighteenth birthday, Kevin was determined to win a complicated radio contest. Listeners had to piece together song clues that would yield a mathematical formula, which somehow hinted at the identity of a certain baseball player. As the days passed, Mrs. Owyang would return from work and find her son lazing about on the sofa, listening to KFRC. She nagged him to forget about the silly contest, urging him to get a job somewhere, anywhere. But Kevin had set his mind to win. His ear glued to the radio, he whiled away precious hours he could have spent toiling as a theater usher or as an unpaid intern.
Lindsey was at the DMV, having just flunked her driving test, when she heard her brother’s voice broadcast live on the transistor radio sitting atop a state employee’s desk. Kevin was caller number eight, and he proceeded to name a slew of songs and their years of origin. He calculated math in his head and recited an impressive array of earned run averages, finally naming Vida Blue as the mystery answer. Lindsey couldn’t believe her double-pierced ears when, over the din of congratulatory bells and whistles, the deejay announced that her brother had just won $25,000.
For months, KFRC replayed his winning moment as a promo between songs and commercials. It seemed to play every five minutes. The deejay screamed, “You could be a winner, just like Kevin Owyang!”
The phrase tormented Lindsey all summer long.
Kevin put the money toward his college tuition, which was the responsible Number One Son thing to do. He majored in business without a second thought. (When he was younger, Kevin had wanted to be an artist. He had shown great talent in drawing, but his parents had quickly convinced him that such endeavors could only lead to the poorhouse.)
A few months ago his Chinese boss told him he’d improve his sales if he affected a Chinese accent. “Don’t say, ‘This offer is the best price.’ Instead, talk fast and choppy. Say, ‘GET YOU BEST BUY!’ Pretend you don’t know good English. Clients feel better if they think you are not spoiled American-born. Also, you’ll fit in better if you start smoking.”
Kevin felt somewhat ridiculous practicing his fake broken English every day in the shower, but at least he was rich.
“I just made eight hundred bucks!” Kevin snapped his cell phone shut and pumped his fist in the air. He opened the restaurant door for Lindsey, and they went inside, choosing a table near the large fishtank.
“You’re gonna love this—it’s like dai been lo,” he said.
“What’s dai been lo?”
“You know, like on Chinese New Year when Gung Gung used to slice up all the seafood and stuff, and we’d make the soup in the hot pot. Like shabu shabu in Japanese restaurants.”
Lindsey didn’t know what shabu shabu was either, but she definitely remembered the special meal that Gung Gung used to prepare every Chinese New Year. It suddenly occurred to her that no one in her family had prepared the hot-pot dish since he had passed away.
“Just point to the meal you want,” Kevin said, gesturing toward the laminated place mats, which had numbered photographs showing various meal combinations.
At a nearby table, a couple was debating whether or not the name of the restaurant was pronounced “Fuh House.” Lindsey absentmindedly spaced out at them until she noticed that Kevin had ordered two tapioca drinks.
She liked the milky sweetness of the cold beverage. Pau Pau always expressed disgust at sugared teas, telling her granddaughter the only good tcha was the bitter Chinese kind. Lindsey, however, quite liked the trendy chai drinks, but was certainly alarmed when she noticed gelatinous balls that resembled gigantic brown salmon eggs sloshing around at the bottom of her glass.
“What the hell are those?” she asked, swirling the mixture.
“They’re chewy, try it,” Kevin said, inhaling the jelly beads through an extra-wide straw.
She took another sip of the drink, and one of the tapioca beads shot to the back of her mouth and made her gag. Coughing, she studied the pictures of the noodle soups and tried to figure out what kind of meats the squares were supposed to be.
The waitress came and took their order.
“Hey, I hear you’re going to China,” Kevin said.
Lindsey choked on another rogue tapioca bead. “I’m not going to China. Where’d you hear that?”
“Dad says Pau Pau wants to go back and visit Gung Gung’s village. We all decided you’re the only one without a real job so you’re the one who should go with her.”
This was the first time she had heard anything about Pau Pau wanting to go back to China.
“Well, I’m so glad you all have my life planned out for me. What if I don’t wanna go?”
“Tough luck. You’re going. Why are you complaining? It’s a free trip.”
“And when is this trip supposed to happen?”
“Oh, it’s not for another few months or something.”
“I’ll have to see if I can get the time off from work,” she said.
“Oh, gimme a break. If they won’t let you go, then you can just quit. When you come back, you can get a real job.” As he spoke, Kevin checked the calendar on his electronic day planner.
The waitress brought them bowls of rice noodle soup mixed with veggies, fish cakes, crab claws, and prawns.
They ate without talking for a while. When they were almost finished, Lindsey said, “They should sell impostor jewelry, steins of beer and schnitzel here, too. They could call the place Faux Häus.”
She spelled out the words and giggled as Kevin rolled his eyes at her. He slapped down his American Express card.
The next night, Lindsey sat at the kitchen table while Pau Pau ladled doong-gwa soup into a fine, gold-rimmed bowl. Ribbons of steam swirled up and disappeared, revealing a clear broth that held delicate cubes of translucent winter melon and small chunks of ham.
Lindsey touched the bowl and immediately burned her fingertips.
“Ow, it’s too hot,” she complained.
“Must drink now. No good cold,” Pau Pau snapped back, convinced that soup wasn’t hot enough unless absolutely scalding.
Lindsey dipped a porcelain spoon into the broth and blew on it until she was light-headed. She sipped the salty, soothing liquid as her grandmother broke into a huge grin.
“See, you like it! It’s Virginia ham. The best!”
Lindsey had no idea where Pau Pau had absorbed such information as the superiority of Virginia ham, but she nodded in agreement.
After she slurped some more, she asked, “Are you going to China?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Pau Pau said, her eyes lighting up. “You coming, right?”
Pau Pau explained that they would go to Shanghai to see her cousin and then to Toisan to visit Gung Gung’s old village.
“It sounds like fun,” Lindsey said innocently. Pau Pau emitted a light scoff, then shuffled out of the kitchen to go smoke a cigarette on the roof.
Friday afternoon Lindsey was grappling with an undecipherable formula from her Excel spreadsheet when she detected the old-white-lady smell of fart-dusty talc.
“Hey Lindsey, do you know what this says?”
Yvonne, the
public relations event planner, held up a travel guide to Tokyo and pointed to a page with illustrated captions.
Lindsey glanced at the characters and replied, “Nope, I don’t. This is in Japanese.”
“But aren’t you Japanese?”
“No, my last name is Owyang. I’m Chinese.”
By the look on Yvonne’s face, Lindsey could tell that the woman didn’t know the difference between Japanese and Chinese surnames.
She added, “As a matter of fact, I can’t even read Chinese.”
Yvonne shrugged and began to shuffle away. She turned around abruptly and said, “Oh, are you going to participate in the test today?”
Lindsey looked up. “What test?”
Yvonne rolled her eyes. She planted her hands on her hips and said, “Don’t you know anything? Next issue we’re having an article on how you can tell meat-eaters from vegetarians by the way they smell. We’re starting the test in a few minutes. I’m trying to convince Howard that we should sniff out all the flesh-eaters and make them turn veggie if they want to keep working here.”
As Lindsey listened, she kept her arms tucked tightly at her sides.
“Yeah, I’ll be there in a jiffy,” she said enthusiastically.
Yvonne smirked. “See you in the conference room,” she said, and ambled away.
Lindsey exhaled with relief. She had successfully thrown Yvonne off her scent. For now. What exactly would they be doing in the conference room, smelling each other’s armpits? Lindsey was suddenly grateful for her Asian sweat glands. She, like most Chinese, perspired very little, which allowed her to mingle undetected among her suspicious coworkers. What a happy coincidence, she thought, that here at Vegan Warrior her minimal body hair and underactive apocrine glands contributed to her job security.
Getting up from her seat, she pressed the answering machine switch so she could quickly run to the bathroom. Striding past the kitchen, out of the corner of her eye she spotted Michael. She paused near the doorjamb and poked her head out from behind the wall to spy on him for a moment. He didn’t see her, but he peered around cautiously as if he could feel someone’s presence. Not seeing anyone, he began to search through the cupboards and open all the drawers. Throwing open the refrigerator door, he took a gulp from someone else’s carrot juice, then picked up the parcel of cat grass Yvonne had bought earlier that morning. He examined a clump and then tore out a few blades and started chewing on them. Lindsey covered her mouth with her hand to keep from laughing as she watched him then sift through the spice rack. He unscrewed the nutmeg and the cumin and began to inexplicably sprinkle his shirt and arms.
“What are you doing?” Lindsey whispered.
Michael looked up, startled. Seeing it was her, he smiled.
“Did you know today’s the vegetarian Inquisition?” he whispered back. “I wouldn’t have eaten a cheeseburger last night if I’d known.” He rubbed his sleeves with oregano and shook off the excess by twisting his arms like a mambo dancer. He said, “I’ve got five minutes to smell like a hippie so I don’t get fired.”
“I think I saw some essential oils in the lost-and-found box in the mailroom,” Lindsey suggested. Just then, Yvonne appeared out of nowhere, stepping from the hall toward the kitchen, holding a yam. She stopped and glared at Lindsey, who blocked the entryway while Michael replaced the spices in the rack and dusted off the countertop. Lindsey darted toward the bathroom, and as the door slowly glided shut behind her she heard Yvonne say to Michael, “Are you polluting the microwave again with your pork sprinkles?”
Holding her ear against the bathroom door, Lindsey heard him reply, “Those weren’t real Bacos, I swear. They were Fake-O’s.”
Later, in the conference room, Lindsey waited in line to be sniffed. Ojna, the sullen and sallow HR troll, was running her nose along employees’ sleeves, trying to hoover up any olfactory traces of top sirloin consumption. After her anteater impersonation, she held her cupped hand against her proboscis and told her victim, “Now come forward and breathe into my nose.”
Lindsey considered how illegal, unscientific, and unsanitary this exercise was, but she awaited her turn quietly. She looked around for Michael but didn’t spot him.
When Ojna was done with the mousy advertising coordinator with the weak chin and bleached blond hair frizz, she beckoned for Lindsey to step up. Lindsey blew a stream of air into Ojna’s tunnel of fingers and noticed the grime embedded beneath the woman’s chewed fingernails. She tried not to focus on Ojna’s see-through blouse stained with sweat rings like circles on an old-growth redwood tree.
“Hmm…” The woman considered Lindsey’s scent as if she were savoring the irresistible aroma of boiled tofu dogs. Although Lindsey had only eaten a fruit salad for lunch, she began to worry about the Virginia ham in last night’s soup. Ojna squinted at her ever so slightly.
“I suppose you can go…for now,” Ojna finally said.
Lindsey hightailed it back to her desk.
Before she left for the day, she e-mailed Michael:
If you ever invite me to dinner, I could read Sports Illustrated magazines while you prepare a simple dish of lamb kidneys. And we could have real Bacos.
Pau Pau Checks Her Look in the Mirror, Just Like Bruce Springsteen
Lindsey took a day off from work because of an afternoon dentist appointment, but first she was going to accompany her grandmother to Chinatown to buy groceries.
Pau Pau wasn’t ready yet. She was standing in her high-waisted granny underwear and silken long johns, rummaging through two large shopping bags full of clothes.
“Vivien say she give me all these for gift, but I think don’t fit her no more.” She pulled on a pair of Jordache jeans that were meant to be worn tight, but instead sagged around her bony posterior. She grabbed Lindsey’s shoulder with a viselike grip to maintain her balance as she pulled on a pair of rainbow toe socks. After struggling with them and then yanking them off, she exclaimed, “Sheesh! Too much trouble!”
Pau Pau then pulled a French-cut T-shirt over her low, loose-skinned breasts and admired the sparkly, iron-on decal that spelled Foxy Lady in puffy letters.
“Ho leyeng, eh?” She observed her outfit, delighted by the crisp crease down the middle of the dark blue jeans. She zipped a polar fleece vest over the T-shirt and topped it all off with her favorite quilted jacket.
Lindsey sat back and admired her grandmother. She wore her salt-and-pepper hair in a bouffant style that, years ago, had been as large and poufy as Angela Davis’s Afro, but now hovered about three inches from her scalp. With the added height from her hair, the old woman just cleared five feet.
Pau Pau’s face was an even, golden pale tone with a pretty apple shape. Her fine features were accentuated by an elegant widow’s peak that Lindsey was proud to have inherited.
“Bring here,” Pau Pau said, pointing to her Famolares in the corner. She laced up her shoes, then sat up and reached into the pockets of her previous day’s pants, which were folded on the bed. She pulled out handfuls of hundred-dollar bills and stuffed them into the pockets of her new designer jeans.
“You shouldn’t carry that much cash with you,” Lindsey said. “You should put it in a bank.”
“Is just mahjong money! What’s big deal?” Pau Pau glanced in the mirror one last time and said, “Ready to go!”
Parking was always terrible in Chinatown, so they decided to take the bus. Boarding, Pau Pau spotted two Chinese ladies she knew and chatted with them as Lindsey looked on. A few minutes later, Pau Pau grabbed Lindsey’s arm, checking for bone density or flesh plumpness, and proudly announced to her acquaintances, “This is my granddaughter.” The ladies exclaimed words in Cantonese that Lindsey recognized as “Pretty!” and “So fat!”
Saying that she was fat was meant as a compliment. It was supposed to mean, “How rich, well-fed, and healthy! Surely she will not starve during the winter!” But Lindsey just cringed. To her it only meant she had a big, Häagen-Dazs bootie.
The women co
ntinued to assess Lindsey as they would a suckling pig hanging upside down in a market. One of the ladies, wearing an ill-fitting wig, poked her in the ribs, testing her firmness.
“Ah,” they noted appreciatively as Pau Pau beamed. They continued their gossip, and the bus lurched slowly down the steep incline. Lindsey glanced around at the other passengers, who were mostly Chinese folks mixed in with a few yuppies dressed in business attire or J. Crew ensembles.
The Chinese, with their unfashionable discount clothing and stoic faces, appeared to be more newly arrived in San Francisco than Lindsey’s family. Many of them clasped multiple plastic sacks filled with various food items and Chinese newspapers. They looked straight ahead without smiling. The young professionals wore crisply ironed shirts and polished shoes. Some chatted on phones or listened to CD players.
Lindsey wondered where she fit into this scenario. Her posture and the smiling way she held her face was more akin to the other Americans on the bus, but her skin and features matched the Chinese. She admired the Fluevog shoes of a redheaded woman who sat near her.
A Chinese man a few rows behind was picking his teeth, eating sunflower seeds, and loudly hacking the shells on the rubber floor. None of the other Asians took notice, but Lindsey turned around, mortified. She was silently grossed-out as she watched the man emit sprays of saliva with each chew, smack, and spit.
As she looked on, a white businessman in a pin-striped suit blurted out loudly, “Oh, that’s disgusting!”
Lindsey was shocked and offended; it was as though he had insulted every Chinese person on the bus. At the same time, she worried that the businessman considered her equally capable of such an unsanitary act.
She felt obligated to explain cultural differences to the intolerant yuppie, but she also felt like commiserating with the old Chinese man about rude Westerners who didn’t respect their elders. She said nothing. The suit exited at the next stop, and the Chinese man continued to obliviously spit out his shells.
The Dim Sum of All Things Page 12
