by Lisa Lim
Truong sat there grinning, taking enormous pleasure in my anguish. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Positive.”
“OK.” Truong propped himself up on his elbows. “Get ready for this … they call you Chancellor Angela Merkel.”
“NOOOoooooo.” I buried my face in my hands.
“Oh yes.” Truong’s eyes glinted with mischief. “Ve haf vays of rescuing your economy. But if you go bankrupt … KAPUT! Like Greece and Spain, then ve vill abolish the Euro and bring back the Deutsche Mark,” he intoned in a silly German accent before bursting into hysterics.
“Humph.” He needn’t sound so enthusiastic about it. “If I’m Chancellor Angela Merkel, then you’re Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”
“Hey Chancellor.” Truong held up his hands in mock arrest. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
“But,” I said indignantly, “I don’t think I’m a bad boss.”
“You’re not bad,” he teased, “you’re awful!”
“If you think I’m awful, it’s all that book’s fault! It puts heat on women bosses and it perpetuates this stereotype that all of us are inherently evil.”
Truong didn’t bother to hide a snicker. “But you are.”
I glared at him with blistering scorn.
“Calm down. I’m just messin’ with you.” He sat up and adopted a more serious tone. “All right, which book are you referring to?”
“The Devil Wears Prada.”
Truong started giggling. “You’re more like The Angel Wears Payless.”
I threw him another dirty look.
“The Devil Wears Prada. I didn’t read the book but I saw the movie; Meryl Streep played the delicious villain. All right, I see it …” He nodded thoughtfully. “I see where you’re going with this. She does make me fear the evil female boss.”
“See!” I said with a satisfied air. “It’s partly Hollywood’s fault. They make you despise the lady boss and cheer for the hooker with a heart of gold.”
“Hey!” Truong looked askance. “Pretty Woman is one of my all-time favorite movies and Julia Roberts will forever remain my beloved tart with a heart.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s a tired trope that needs to be laid to rest.”
“Oh, it never will be. Not when Hollywood loves hookers as much as the politicians do.”
“True …” I trailed off. A beat. Another beat. “Truong,” I said at last, “can you be straight with me?”
“I always am.”
“Do you,” I broke off and added hesitantly, “do you wish you were on someone else’s team?”
“Of course not,” he said at once.
I sighed. “The other day, I overhead Adam saying that he preferred working on Joshua’s team.”
“Weird.” Truong tilted his head to one side. “Why would Adam say such a thing?”
“In his exact words, Joshua’s a lot less emotional than me.”
“Jalapeño Joshua?” Truong’s voice pitched higher. “Are you kidding me? That guy’s a hothead! I’ve got chest hair longer than his fuse.”
“See what I mean!” I frowned to myself. “There’s such a double standard. When Joshua loses his temper, oh he’s just being a man. But when I blow my top off, I’m being hormonal, moody, emotional. It’s just not fair!”
“Mmmm.”
“And you know what the worst part is?”
“What?”
“Pamela and Jewel agreed with Adam! They said men make better bosses. And I thought they were supposed to be on my side.” I threw my hands up in despair. “Can a sister get a little solidarity in the Sisterhood?”
“I don’t judge a book by its cover and I certainly don’t judge my boss by gender. So I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”
“But I can’t help it. I feel like I constantly have to prove myself. You tell me, should I be more masculine or feminine?”
“It depends.” Truong chewed on his bottom lip. “Why don’t you define masculine and feminine?”
“Why don’t you define it? After all, I’d like to know how you really feel about all this.”
“Generally speaking …” Truong seemed to be choosing his words carefully, “Women are more nurturing and caring. Men are less so and they tend to focus more on other things …”
“Like?” I pressed.
“Oh you know,” he murmured airily, “things like facts and logic whereas women tend to focus more on feelings and um, their emotions.”
“I’m not emotional!” I cried defiantly. “I get things done! If you want to talk about a task, go ask a man. But if you want it done, ask a woman!”
“By the way,” Truong said mildly, “you’re getting really emotional right now.”
“Stop using that word,” I huffed with annoyance. “I am not emotional!”
“All right, I’ll give you credit where credit is due. You do get things done a lot more efficiently than Joshua.”
“Thank you!” I said with dignity. After a pregnant pause, I asked, “Do you really think I’m emotional?”
“Well, all women are emotional when their basement is leaking. Then it’s like the communists have invaded the summer house.”
“Truong! You’re such a sexist pig! You can’t blame me for having PMS. And by the way, the preferred expression is Elmo riding the cotton pony.”
Truong pulled a face. “What do you have against Elmo?”
“Nothing!”
“Speaking of double standards,” Truong said pointedly, “when a man talks dirty to a woman, it’s sexual harassment. When a woman talks dirty to a man, it’s $3.95 a minute. And when you women look after your own, it’s called ‘Solidarity in the Sisterhood’ or at worst, you’re labeled a radical feminist. But when I try to watch out for my brothas, I’m called a chauvinist.”
“Ah, but there lies the difference. Feminists believe in the equality of sexes, whereas chauvinists don’t.”
“Hey! I believe in the equality of the sexes. Hell, I wore spiked heels to work yesterday.”
“Oh yeah, that reminds me. He wants you to tone it down a notch.”
“Who does?”
“The dude with the lips.”
“You mean Carter, the male version of Angelina Jolie?”
“Yep.”
“Tone what down? Exactly?”
“You know,” I said carefully, “dress a little less like an eccentric piano player.”
“You mean dress less like Liberace?” His voice was dripping with sarcasm. “Or Elton John, perhaps?”
“Erm …” I trailed off.
“Honey!” Truong did a zigzag finger snap. “Carter has no right to dictate how I dress.”
“But, Truong.” I cushioned my words with thoughtful pauses. “He’s imposing this dress code on everyone, not just you. I know you want to celebrate who you are, but maybe the workplace is not such a good place to be doing it. The blouses, the ruffles, the dresses, the heels, it can be a bit much at times.”
“A bit much?” Truong looked at me with sudden anger and a torrent of words came spilling out. “Let me tell you what’s too much! When I was nine years old, my dad had a one-on-one talk with me. And do you want to know what he said? He said that if he ever found out that I, his only son, was a homosexual, or as he called it, a hợp với người đồng tính, he’d snap my neck in half.”
I swallowed hard and spoke around a croak, “I’m sure he must’ve been joking.”
“He was dead serious,” Truong deadpanned. “My own dad. Can you believe that? I stayed in the closet for years and years, locked away in my own Narnia.” There was a small silence and then he added, “I only came out when my dad passed away two years ago. So now I celebrate who I am. How I dress is who I am. And I am who I am, Kars. There is no alternative.”
“But what about your mom? Wasn’t she there for you?”
He emitted a silent laugh. “My mom was too busy grieving over my sister.”
“Oh …” I trailed off. “I never knew you had a
sister.”
“That’s ’cause she took her own life.”
I couldn’t speak for shock. The silence was stifling.
Eventually, Truong explained with patient resignation, “My mom was one of those tiger moms. Any grade less than an A was unacceptable. So from an early age, me and my sis … we associated our self-worth and who we were with how well we performed at school. Whenever we didn’t get an A, oh hell! My mom went ape shit! She made us feel awful. Worthless, even.”
Quietly, I said, “She sounds just like Amy Chua.”
“But my sister didn’t turn out like Amy Chua’s daughters. Actually,” he amended, “she did, in a way. She was every Asian parent’s wet dream. Scored straight As, took AP classes, placed first at the Science Olympiad, president of the Student Council, perfect SAT scores, attended Harvard Med School.” He said nothing for a moment, then, “During her second year at college, she took her own life.”
“Why?” My voice came out strangled.
“Haven’t you heard?” He gave a little shrug and said in a sardonic voice, “The tiger mom approach makes depressed cubs.”
I knew Truong well enough to know that he was using mockery to mask his deep anguish.
“But no one really knows with Tien.” He sighed deeply. “She had always kept up this facade that everything was great. Inside, she must have mentally cracked under all that pressure. Sometimes, I wish I’d done more to help her. Should’ve. Could’ve,” he said almost angrily.
In the pause that followed, I reached for a silver framed picture sitting on the nightstand. “Is this your sister?”
He nodded and smiled ruefully in answer. “We were twins, you know. I was actually a surprise. When Tien was born, my parents thought she was going to be one big baby.”
“Really? But how could they not know?”
“My mom never wanted to have an ultrasound and when she went for her routine checkups, her doctor only heard one heartbeat.”
“That’s insane.”
“I know. Tell me about it.” Laughing in a fatigued way, he tried to joke, “After Tien was delivered, the doctor said, ‘Oh, I think there’s another baby!’ Five minutes later, I entered this world as my mom cursed, ‘Holy Shitballs!’ ”
I started laughing. “Your mom never said Holy Shitballs!”
“Well, she said something along those lines in Vietnamese.”
“You and Tien.” I took a long last look at her picture before replacing it on the nightstand. “Were you close?”
His face softened and he smiled slightly. “Very close. I’d give anything to have her back. So would my mom. My mom …” He stopped and gave a bitter laugh. “Once a stoic tiger mom, well it crushed her. Now all we have left of Tien is a room full of perfect report cards, sheaves of terms papers—all graded A’s of course, and a shelf lined with her gold medals and trophies. Ironic isn’t it? It’s what my mom had always wanted from Tien. And mom got what she wanted.” He didn’t say any more but his eyes said the rest.
“Truong,” I said gently, “don’t blame yourself.”
In an abrupt confession, he said, “For a while I blamed my mom. She wanted us to be successful so much that nothing else mattered. Not even our happiness. Do you know,” he added heatedly, “that suicide rates are outrageously high amongst Asian Americans?”
“No.” There was a startled pause and I said in a small voice, “I did not know that.”
His face went oddly blank. “Well now you know. And I refuse to become another statistic. So Kars, you can tell Carter Lockwood that I am going to celebrate who I am, and live my life how I wish to live it. Not how my parents want me to live it. Or how society wants me to live it. OK?”
“OK,” I said quietly, giving just the smallest nod of understanding.
For a while, we lapsed into a deep and poignant silence. My heart ached knowing that Truong’s tender heart was hurting. I decided now would be a good time as any to change the subject. “Do you want to hear some office gossip?”
Truong sat bolt upright and brightened like the sun. “Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back? Hullo? YES. GIMME SOME GOSSIP NOW!”
I laughed, reveling in the excitement I heard in his voice. And I didn’t keep him in suspense for long. “Pamela and Deepak are dating,” I blurted out.
“Deepak?” His eyes widened like saucers. “Deepak Prasad the supervisor?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Uh-oh,” said Truong in a dark, ominous tone, “Pamela’s journey to gonorrhea has just begun.”
“I warned her about him, but she doesn’t seem to care.”
“That sounds just like Pamela. By the way, how’s the living situation going with her?”
I sighed. “She’s not the easiest roommate, but she’s bearable. I just wish she’d stop prancing about. I don’t understand why that woman can’t walk. Walk. Like a normal person.”
“Pamela the prancing party chick.” Truong gave a great yawn. “Is she even around much?”
“Not really. Ever since she started seeing Deepak, she’s hardly home.”
“Pamela and Deepak,” Truong muttered idly, “who would’ve thought those two would wind up together?”
“I know.” I stretched my legs in front of me and added impishly, “Who would’ve thought you and Ayinde would wind up together?”
His eyes flickered. “You have a point.”
“Anyway, how are things with you and Ayinde?”
“Well …” he said hesitantly, “not so great.”
“How come?”
“Ayinde hasn’t given me an Australian kiss. Can you even believe that? And we’ve been dating for over six months now.”
“Australian kiss?” I waited for him to amplify this illuminating statement.
“It’s the same thing as a French kiss,” he explained, “only down under.”
I let out a gale of laughter.
“It isn’t funny!” He pouted. “In fact, it’s a travesty of international proportions. My kitty hasn’t meowed for months because my boyfriend seems to think ‘going down’ is a button you press on an elevator.”
“Truong! You don’t have a kitty!”
“All right,” he amended, “my Snoopy hasn’t whimpered for months.”
“Well then,” I said decisively, “it’s time you got creative.”
“I have been! I even changed my ringtone to ‘Downtown’ and Ayinde still didn’t get the hint.”
Snapping my fingers like Sinatra, I found myself humming to the tune of ‘Downtown,’ and before I knew it, we were bursting into life-affirming music, belting out the chorus Broadway style.
It was such a powerful rendition. We sang with raw conviction, hitting all the high notes, moving in between the medium and low notes with mathematical, though never mechanical, precision. Afterward, we were completely spent.
“That was totally a Glee moment,” said Truong, catching his breath.
“Totally! Speaking of Glee, I have to pee,” I said in a rush, like I was Dr. friggin’ Seuss. “Do you have a bathroom I could use?”
“As a matter of fact I don’t,” Truong replied tonelessly. “I shit in the backyard.”
“Seriously, Truong!”
“Seriously, Kars!” He fixed me with a sardonic look. “You know better. When you ask a stupid question—”
I rolled my eyes and finished, “I’ll get a stupid answer.”
He slapped me on the back affectionately, almost winding me. “You know it.”
I sighed. “Let’s try this again. Where is the bathroom?”
“Down the hallway, second door to your right.”
Chapter Five
Cinco de Mayo was upon us and it fell on me to organize another potluck—my worst nightmare. Most of my fellow coworkers don’t cook, nearly all of their creations are processed or done with shortcuts by assembling canned or frozen ingredients (a.k.a. Rachel Ray style of cooking). And those who can cook have absolutely no concept of food sanitation.
The morning
of the potluck, Shoshanna walked in carrying a casserole dish and gingerly tucked it under her desk.
“Shoshanna,” I said lightly, “why don’t you refrigerate your dish?”
“Oh, my casserole will be fine. It’s hot right now and I know it’ll cool to room temperature, but that’s all right. I’ll just heat it up in the microwave oven when it’s time for our potluck.”
I managed a tepid smile, horrified to think of all the bacteria growing in her casserole like brain-eating amoeba in a Petri dish.
Next, Nate strode in with some store-bought potato salad and deposited it next to his workstation. Um, doesn’t he know that mayonnaise must be refrigerated?
I sighed wearily and headed to the break room, intent on refrigerating my seven layer taco dip. When I pulled the fridge door open, my eyes widened and my hand flew up to my mouth in horror. It looked like the inside of a microwave oven after a watermelon explosion.
My stomach did an involuntary lurch. Pssh! How disgusting.
Do these slobs live like this at home, too?
Probably, I surmised.
Really. I shook my head in disbelief. I worked with a bunch of pigs.
I slammed the fridge with deliberate force, scribbled a note down on a Post-it and stuck it right in the middle of the fridge:
CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF! YOUR MOM DOESN’T WORK HERE!
There! I straightened myself, feeling marginally better.
“Let me guess,” came a familiar voice, “the fridge is gross again.”
I spun around and exclaimed, “Yep! Don’t go near it, Truong!”
He started backing away from the fridge like it was a parcel bomb. “Inge has a mini fridge. Let’s go store our food there.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
As we meandered through the maze of cubicles, I grumbled, “Some of these people just don’t understand the concept of keeping cold foods cold and hot foods hot.”
“Relax,” said Truong, patting my back. “Exposure to new bacteria will only strengthen your immune system. Look at me! I’ve got a stomach of steel.”
“I’m afraid.” I let out an involuntary little shudder. “Very, very afraid. I’ll never know if someone didn’t wash off the cutting board with soap in between cutting up meat and vegetables.”
