by Cara Chow
“But your skin is so beautiful,” I say. “Not one wrinkle in sight.”
“You think so?” Mom says ruefully.
Never before has Mom cared about my opinion. In the past, she has always rushed past me in the race to get things done, arguing that I’m not competent enough to help. But this time, I get to show her that I, too, can take care of things. That is why she is talking to me in this new way, like a friend rather than a mother.
I will make sure that I am different too. My first competition will be my last. Once speech class is over, I will redirect my attention, with a more penetrating focus. I will right all the wrongs, wipe the slate clean.
I take my backpack to the bedroom and pull out my UC application. As I proofread it, I recall Ms. Taylor’s advice to apply to all the UCs, to expand my options. I look at the list of schools: UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, et cetera. Only Berkeley has an X next to it. Ms. Taylor’s suggestion, if only a flicker of temptation, is now snuffed out, a charred match floating in a puddle of gutter water. I fold my application neatly, place it inside the envelope, and seal it. I walk my UC application and my San Francisco State application, which I filled out last week, to the mailbox down the street, risking being caught outdoors should an aftershock strike.
When I return to the apartment, Mom is hunched over in the kitchen, sorting through the trash. She lifts a porcelain bowl, the one with the red-and-gold dragons, from the trash bag. It is cracked and missing a huge piece. “This was a wedding present,” Mom says. “This was the life we were supposed to have.” Then she gasps and drops the half bowl onto the floor. It shatters. A bead of blood forms on Mom’s thumb. I run to the bathroom to get the first-aid kit. Then I clean Mom’s finger and bandage it.
“Those pieces are sharp. You shouldn’t touch them,” I say. I shuttle Mom off to the bedroom. Then I help her get into her pajamas and into bed.
Afterward, I begin to return to the kitchen, where Mom dropped the bowl, but I stop myself halfway. My bones ache. I’ve done enough today. I can always clean this up tomorrow. I return to the bedroom and climb into bed.
The next day, I wake up to the sounds of running water and clanging silverware and dishes. At first, between sleep and wake, I think I am dreaming, but as the haze of dreaminess fades away, the sharp sounds from the kitchen remain, sending a spark of alarm through me. We didn’t cook last night. Why is Mom washing dishes?
After making my bed, I put on my slippers and walk to the kitchen. Mom is standing at the sink. Her arms move in a flurry. A collection of bowls and dishes is accumulating in an organized manner on the dish rack. Hot white steam rises from the sink and the dish rack, but it seems to emanate from her body rather than the hot water.
“Mom, why are you washing dishes?” I say.
“They all fell onto the floor during the quake,” Mom says. Her consonants form jagged edges. “Don’t you know that the floors are dirty? How can you put them back in the cupboards without washing them?” As she places each dish on top of the other, they make increasingly loud clanging sounds that further punctuate her fury.
“Why help at all if all you do is make things worse?” Mom says. She turns off the faucet and points to the floor. “Look.” She crouches over a spot on the kitchen floor, still pointing. Her index finger shakes with rage. Puzzled, I bend over, my nose following her finger, which is just a few inches from my face. Next to the trash bag, porcelain pieces form a mosaic in a fine cloud of white porcelain dust. One of the pieces has a dragon’s head on it.
“I couldn’t find my slippers this morning, so I went to look for them,” Mom says. “Then I decided to go to the kitchen to make tea, and now look!” Mom removes her right foot from her slipper and holds it up to my face. The ball of her foot is covered with a bandage. A large spot of blood is visible through the gauze.
Mom slips her foot back into her slipper and starts marching around the kitchen. “Then, afterwards, I walk around, and all I hear is crunch, crunch, crunch! There is porcelain everywhere!” Mom circles back to where I am kneeling and points again. “Tell me what you see,” she says.
“That’s the bowl that you dropped last night,” I say.
“No! They’re the pieces you forgot to clean up.”
“But that’s not true,” I say. “The floor was clean before you dropped it. You inspected it last night and said that it was fine.”
“I wouldn’t overlook something as obvious as this.”
I stare at her incredulously. She has always been the one to memorize phone numbers after seeing or hearing them once. She remembers people’s birthdays and never forgets a promise made or broken. Can she possibly have forgotten that she cut her finger on this bowl and dropped it?
Or is she just pretending that she never dropped it so she can blame it on me?
I decide to test her. “You must have dropped the bowl,” I say. “How else did you get the cut on your finger?” I point at the bandage on Mom’s right thumb.
Mom ignores that last remark. “You’re imagining things, Fei Ting. Stop twisting the truth and accept your shortcomings.”
I start to wonder if I really did imagine the events of last night. Then I remember Ms. Taylor’s words on the first day of school. Language is power. We … have the power to … persuade others …
Is this the power of language? I think of witches’ spells, how the right words can change princes into frogs. To shake off Mom’s spell, I focus on her bloody finger. I remind myself that had she not touched the bowl, that wound wouldn’t be there. But I keep that knowledge inside, where it is safe.
“You can’t do anything right,” Mom continues. “Follow me.”
She marches into the bathroom. Assuming a posture of deference, shoulders slumped and head bowed, I follow. Mom points at my bath towel. It is lemon yellow, a glaring contrast to the pink and maroon tiles. As far as I can tell, it is arranged just as she likes it, folded longways, then draped over the towel bar.
“You can’t even hang your towels properly,” Mom says.
I squint at my towel, looking for the flaw. Seeing my confusion, Mom points at the edges.
“It’s crooked!”
Then I see it. It is crooked. By about ten degrees.
“Mo no! Mo yong!” she says. That means “brainless” and “useless.” She says this as she drills her index finger into my temple, as if tattooing these labels onto my head. “Fix it now,” Mom says.
Carefully, I lean over to adjust my towel. I make it perfectly aligned. Then, on a whim, I position my back to her so that she can’t see my towel and I adjust it ten degrees in the opposite direction. I hold my breath, waiting for her reaction.
Mom scrutinizes my towel. Then she says, “This is how you should do it from now on. You should be able to do this on your own without my reminding you.”
“Yes, Mommy,” I say, looking at the floor.
Mom exits the bathroom and returns to the kitchen to wash dishes. I wait another second before letting a smile erupt on my lips. Then I take Mom’s towel, which is lemon yellow, just like mine, and adjust it exactly the same as mine, ten degrees off center. After all, that’s exactly how she wants it done. I wait the rest of the day to see if she notices. She doesn’t.
That night, in bed, while Mom is snoring softly on the bottom bunk, I lie on the top with my eyes wide open. One word keeps echoing in my mind.
Liar. My mother is a liar.
Why should I feel guilty about lying when she does it too? What have I gotten all these years in return for playing things straight? Nothing.
I envision myself at a fork in the road. One prong leads to Berkeley, then med school, then residency, then working and living with my mother for the rest of my life. The other road leads to speech, then Scripps, then … I can’t see the rest. I can only see my arms spreading, like wings taking flight.
Regardless of the cost, I must go ahead with speech and protect it with whatever means necessary. I will apply to Scripps, Ms. Taylor’s school, a school far away
from here. From now on, it’s me against Mom, warfare with words. Mom is the superpower. I am the guerilla fighter.
The flames of the day have calmed down to an ashy gray and orange. But that’s when the coals are the hottest. I blow on the orange in my heart. It warms me until I drift off to sleep.
Chapter Six
Ironically, just as I strengthen my resolve to pursue speech and Scripps, Mom decides to change her schedule, making it more difficult for me to cover my tracks. She gets home before I do now, and she sits at the window every day, waiting for me to step off the bus or out of Nellie’s car. I end up staying over at Theresa’s a lot just to ease the claustrophobia at home. But then Mom calls me at Theresa’s just to make sure that I’m there, so that I’m not missing again should another natural disaster strike.
During speech rehearsals, Theresa hangs out at the library after school, to make it look like we are doing academic research together. As we plan for the competition, Theresa and I figure that since Mom works overtime on Saturdays and my tournament is on a Saturday, getting to the tournament should be a slam dunk.
However, on the night before the competition, Mom has other ideas.
“Fei Ting,” she says during dinner, “Mommy has a surprise for you. I have taken tomorrow off from work. We can have dim sum, look at jewelry, even buy a new TV.”
I cringe at the saccharine quality of her voice. She has never taken a day off, not when she was sick, not even when I was sick. What has gotten into her?
“I already promised Theresa that I would spend Saturday with her,” I say.
“That’s okay. The four of us can eat and shop together.”
“But we’re doing school stuff, research for an English term paper.”
“But Nellie said that you did that last weekend.”
“Well, one day isn’t enough,” I say. “It’s a big paper. Also, some of the periodicals I needed were checked out. I’m hoping that they’re available tomorrow.”
“Can’t you do that next weekend?”
“It’s very urgent. Our outlines are due this week.”
Mom’s voice changes from saccharine to caustic. “Why didn’t you take care of that this week? Now look what you’ve done. You’ve made me miss a whole day of work and lose money for nothing.”
My eyes say, Well, you should have told me about this ahead of time so I could have altered my plans, instead of springing this on me at the last minute. But my mouth says nothing.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Mom says. “I spend all this money to educate you, and now you think you’re so smart.” She nods slowly, her eyes skewering me. “Ah-hah, I can see how smart you think you are, smarter than your own mother. I need your permission to make changes. Your schedule prevails.”
“That’s not true,” I say.
“The next time you place your studies over me, just remember where your education comes from,” Mom says. “You have what you have only because I choose to give it to you.”
Mom begins clearing the dishes from the table. “You better study now,” she says. “Do what is most important to you. Your servant mother will clean up after you.”
I leave the table hurriedly, as if the dishes were covered with worms.
Once I am in the bedroom, I close the door, shaking. I am glad that no one at school knows about my life at home. No one at the competition will know either. I am glad that I have speech, a place where I can be courageous and strong.
All night long, Mom tosses and turns violently in the bottom bunk. My bed rocks back and forth with each turn. Because I’ve upset her, she can’t sleep. And if she can’t sleep, then she won’t let me sleep either. She wants me to know how much I am making her suffer. I’ve heard that sleep deprivation is a common form of torture for POWs, that the exhaustion can wear soldiers down and make them divulge any military secret. I can see now why this might be true.
As Mom tosses and turns, I stay as still as possible, afraid to give away that I am awake and that her strategy is working. After several hours, I quietly press the night-glow button on my watch and look at the time. It is 3:57 a.m. I am tempted to cave in, to apologize and give up on the competition, just to make her happy. Just as I’m about to open my mouth to say sorry, she becomes silent. She has fallen asleep. Relieved, I allow my body to relax and move a little. It is stiff from holding the same position for so many hours.
But as her breathing deepens to a soft snore, I am wide awake, my eyes like bright lights shining on the ceiling. I wish I could toss and turn to wake her up now, see how she likes it. But I’m afraid of provoking her and reigniting the whole battle.
When my alarm goes off the next morning, I check below me. Mom is still asleep. I tiptoe down the ladder and towards the bathroom. I am sticky and oily from last night. I should be exhausted, having had no sleep at all, but sparks of excitement keep me awake. I scrub briskly in the bathtub, as if washing off Mom’s accusations.
As I pump up my layered bangs with Aqua Net and a hair dryer, I review my plan. Theresa will pick me up at seven thirty and drive me to school. There I will meet Ms. Taylor and the rest of the team to carpool at eight to Cupertino, where the competition is. Ms. Taylor is borrowing someone’s van to transport us all. While I’m competing, Theresa will study and do research at the library or hang out somewhere, anywhere but Clement Street, Irving Street, or Chinatown, where she might be spotted by Mom or Nellie. Then, once we get back to school, Theresa will pick me up and drive me back home.
I put on the clothes I prepared yesterday, black tights and a pressed white long-sleeved shirt. I pull up a pair of jeans over my tights. I packed a black sheath skirt in my backpack yesterday, to put on in place of my jeans as soon as I get to school. I picked black because it is supposed to be a slimming color; I hoped it would hide my pouch and my thunder thighs.
As I step into the kitchen, I look forward to a decadent breakfast of toasted Eggo waffles, but Mom is already there. She has not forgotten about last night. I can tell by the sticky, heavy static in the air. I ignore her, hoping to avoid more fighting. I pick up a banana and head to the bedroom, pretending to be busy with school stuff.
Minutes later, Theresa honks her horn. The sound of it startles me, even though I’ve been expecting her. I rush to the door with my backpack.
“You’re not even going to say ‘Good-bye, Mommy’?” Mom asks.
“Bye,” I say. To soften her mood, I add, “Have a nice day.”
But her reaction is the opposite of what I intended. “That’s it?” Theresa’s horn honks again. “Is that how little respect you show your mother?” Mom says.
I can’t tell what she wants from me, so I guess. “Bye, Mommy,” I say.
“How can you be so cold?” Her sentences are broken up with sobs. “I went through all this trouble just to take this day off. For you! But you don’t care.”
As inconspicuously as possible, I eye my watch. It’s 7:38.
“See, even now, I’m crying, begging for you to care, and all you do is look at the time,” she says.
“I have to go now,” I say. “I’m running really late.”
“The library’s open all day,” she says. “So what if you miss an hour?”
An hour? She’s going to do this for an hour? The doorbell buzzes. Theresa has gotten out of her car and is trying to reach me at the gate.
“Theresa’s waiting outside,” I say. Perhaps the mention of Theresa will pull on Mom’s guilt strings.
“Let her wait,” Mom says coldly. So much for guilt strings.
“I’m sorry about the mix-up,” I say. “Let’s spend some time tomorrow, to make up for today.”
“I’m busy tomorrow. I have to clean the apartment, wash your clothes, pay your bills, and make your dinner.”
“Can’t you do those things today, so you’ll be free tomorrow?”
“I can’t. You’ve upset me so much that I’m too sick to move.”
At first, I am frustrated and confused. I can’t convince
her to reason with me. Then it dawns on me: being unreasonable is her way of winning. No matter what I say, she will turn it against me to keep me from leaving. I will have to either placate her by giving up on the speech tournament or do the unthinkable: ignore her outbursts and walk out the door.
Our doorbell buzzes again. This is my last chance.
“Well, if you’re not feeling well, then maybe you should rest,” I say. “You wouldn’t be well enough to go out with me anyway.”
I am surprised by my own cleverness. Mom stares at me in shock. Before she has a chance to recover and reload her ammunition, I rush out the door.
At the bottom of the stairs, Theresa is clutching the gate and looking at me through the spaces between the metal bars.
“What took you so long?” Theresa says as we get into Nellie’s car.
“Sorry,” I say.
Though Mom’s fit cost me a good ten minutes already, Theresa has no intention of making up for lost time. She refuses to exceed the speed limit, even by a mile an hour. She leaves twice the necessary distance between her and the car in front and makes complete stops at every stop sign, looking to the left, then to the right before proceeding.
At 7:59, Theresa pulls up in front of St. Elizabeth’s. I wait for her to say good-bye so I can jet out of the car. Instead, she looks at her lap. I am antsy with impatience.
“I’m sorry I got mad,” she said.
“That’s okay,” I say. I am eager to end this conversation so I can leave.
Then Theresa pulls a bright green pendant from underneath her blouse. It is hanging on a long red string around her neck. The pendant bears the image of Gwun Yum, the goddess of mercy and compassion. In most Chinese households, Gwun Yum is a more popular deity than the Buddha and second only to the three fat old men who represent happiness, prosperity, and longevity.
“My great-grandmother gave this to me right before she passed away,” Theresa says. “She said that Gwun Yum would guide and protect me.” She takes off the necklace and puts it on me. She tucks the pendant under my blouse, carefully positioning it over my heart.
