Tiger Babies Strike Back

by Kim Wong Keltner

  And by leaving San Francisco, I figuratively and literally left my mother.

  Mom, bring me a Popsicle kept cold by fog, a glass of milk frosted with Ocean Beach air. Out there the orange crabs are Dungeness, but the basement crawl spaces crammed with my childhood memories were dungeon-esque. But now, I had sold off my baggage and all my treasures. I gave them up for a few dollars at the Alemany Flea Market, and the rest of my stuff I dragged to the corner of Twenty-Second Avenue and Ortega where, in mere minutes, San Franciscans who’d chosen to stay stopped their cars and picked clean my former belongings—CP Shades cotton culottes, Fisher-Price wooden people, Star Wars action figures, and satin pillows with Chinese brocade.

  At the garage sales, in Cantonese, Russian, and English, my neighbors wouldn’t buy these collected bits of my life for twenty-five cents, but the siren song of the word FREE written in black Sharpie, combined with a latitude and longitude posted on Craigslist, whisked away all my mementos in seconds flat.

  San Francisco. You and I had begun our trial separation. After about a year, I still missed you. The smell of your hair (which is the salt air) and the feel of your caress across my face on a cold day were elements I still longed for. I remembered when you’d reach for me, but instead, I’d thrust my hands in my pockets, believing I didn’t need your touch.

  Back then, at least you knew I was probably just walking to one of your libraries, like a little kid pretending I was running away from home but just going to a neighbor’s house. San Francisco, Mother, Mom, you always knew where to find me—at the public library or in Golden Gate Park. You had memorized all my favorite hiding places. You knew I was always somewhere within reach, walking on your downtown sidewalks or warming myself in a well-lit place with books, either in a ticky-tacky house, an Edwardian apartment, or a store of nooks and crannies on Clement Street.

  Did I make the right decision?

  I hadn’t realized I was in a locked Chinese box until, out of desperation, I tried the door and found it unlatched. The only way I found to flee the Chinese cage of expectation, family obligations, and guilt was to physically move away. I realized that I was an adult, and it was my responsibility to improve my circumstances if I wasn’t happy.

  The only way to change myself on the inside was to start on the outside. We moved out of San Francisco, and the jolt of that upheaval unshackled me from other people’s constricting ideas of who I am. By moving, I did something no one expected I could or would ever do. Of course, I also inadvertently detonated my entire support system. There would be no more free babysitting from my parents, and no old friends to lean on if I ever felt insecure.

  Leaving my clan and all my familial connections was a very un-Chinese thing to do.

  But then again, it was a very Chinese American thing to do. All the early Chinese immigrants to San Francisco left their families and customs behind and started fresh in a new land. We are all the descendants of those who embarked on adventures toward new continents and new identities. And let’s face it, I didn’t travel across an ocean, but just three hours away by car.

  San Francisco and my mother loved me enough to let me fly away. Maybe they knew I’d instinctively behave like some kind of homing pigeon, with a scrap of paper, a note of hopeful optimism, tied to my leg.

  Maybe they knew it would be impossible for me to stay away permanently. After all, for San Franciscans, the impulse to return is always strong. We’ve been trained through experiences, written instructions, and books we’ve reread so many times that we confuse city lore with our own memories. Like homing pigeons, city natives have been thrown from the rooftops so many times, but always remember how to come back. We go from downtown to Ocean Beach, and whichever direction we fly, we look to the horizon, to the skyline, and to the corners of buildings, and we reorient ourselves back to the place we love.

  Both San Francisco and my mother take me back every time. Yeah, they take me back. Like they’ve been waiting for me with the porch light on. Like dinner’s been warming on the stove and both city and mother have just been reading in a chair, pretending they’re not staying awake for any particular reason. Just up all night, San Francisco. It’s the city that knows how . . . to feign sleep.

  If the side door isn’t open, I look for the key hidden under the rock. It’s never under the doormat because there are hardly any doormats in San Francisco. They keep getting stolen off the front stoop. But that doesn’t matter. The absence of doormats doesn’t mean that I or anyone else is any less welcome.

  Approaching San Francisco from either the Bay or Golden Gate Bridge, with the mesh blanket of quiet city lights, it sometimes looks like no people inhabit the streets at all. The grid of lit-up squares and rectangles is actually a myriad of individual apartments and houses, and as I get closer, I hope to see that one window that is my window. When I’m lost and can’t figure out which is mine, like Harold and the Purple Crayon, I draw my family home where I want it to be.

  When I arrive, I imagine that both the city and my mother see me standing there. They just look at my face, whether I’ve got my hands in my pockets or my arms are loaded with luggage. Sometimes I’ve got my backpack, or else I might have a suitcase with a broken strap and that elastic rainbow thing holding it together.

  San Francisco, you don’t even ask me any questions. Like I said, you just look at my face. I don’t know if it’s dirty or if my lipstick is smeared; you just look at me for a long moment before you say, and it’s always the same thing, “Well, you might as well come inside and have something to eat.”

  And likewise, my mom doesn’t hug me. Nor does she look disappointed, or say shame on you or I told you so. When I go to the back room, I see the bed is made, but it’s not done up for a guest. It’s my bed, but the sheets and blankets are slightly mussed like someone’s been lying down, not inside but just atop the coverlet. That slight depression on my bed is how I know someone has been waiting up. When I lay my body down and place my face gently against the pillowcase, San Francisco, it smells like you.

  24

  Flap Your Wings

  When we left San Francisco, my parents were not exactly happy for me. Actually, they were probably completely bereft. I was their baby. I was their only girl, and in the unspoken ways of Chinese culture, I was supposed to be the one who stayed behind to take care of them. Who, in the years to come, would change their adult diapers and make sure they weren’t surviving on tins of Fancy Feast? They were still completely able-bodied and sharp-minded, but the idea that the daughter they’d raised would suddenly pack up and take off must have felt like a real slap in the face.

  And as if that wasn’t enough of an insult, I’d also taken away not just their albino workhorse, but beautiful Baby Lucy, too. At the time we left, Lucy had just turned five years old and was the apple of their eyes. She was happy and silly and made them young in a way none of us had anticipated. Caring for her gave them a second chance as “parents” to do all the things they had been too busy to do with my brothers and me. As doting grandparents they took Lucy to the pumpkin patch, to the beach, and on Disneyland vacations. They spoiled her with trips to Dairy Queen and bought her stuffed animals I would’ve killed for when I was a kid.

  All of which came to an abrupt end when I pulled up our stakes and set our dinghy upon uncharted waters. I can’t remember if my parents decided officially to not speak to me, or if I was just too busy and wrecked myself to notice that I had caused them intense grief.

  And in my defense, all I can say is that I knew they were mad. And I knew they were sad. But how could I explain that I did the only thing I could to stay alive? I was completely and honestly just that desperate.

  Someone asked me if I had moved away to “get back” at my mother. At the time, my immediate reaction was, “What are you talking about?” In retrospect, perhaps it is plausible to see things that way, but that had never been my motivation.

  I was the one hurting inside, and I was the one feeling crushed, although I wasn’t q
uite aware then of how my family was part of that equation. Sometimes you just have to knock yourself out of a bad groove. Then later, you can go back and pick up the pieces, or ruminate for years about why you did what you did.

  I felt selfish, but maybe selfish is good sometimes. Maybe if Iris Chang had been less selfless, she’d still be around. Although it sounds callous, at times I really did imagine saying to my parents, “Just be glad I didn’t escape by driving off a cliff. In comparison, living three hours away doesn’t sound so bad, does it?”

  Months went by, and during that time my parents and I had the occasional, terse phone conversation. I was busy trying to get my sea legs in our new town and helping Lucy adjust to her new school. Rolf was getting acclimated to his new job, and we were still unpacking everything, unsure of our new lives.

  The truth is that I have no idea what was going through my Tiger Mom’s mind or heart when I up and left home. Was she angry and fixated on how I’d done her wrong, or were her thoughts tinged with her own regrets? Did she miss me, or just miss knowing I was there because micromanaging me gave her something to do?

  Above all else, I am sure she truly missed Lucy. But what could I do?

  When you’re on an airplane, during the instructions for an emergency landing, they always say to put on your own air mask before assisting others. You have to secure your own safety before you can help others to survive. And breaking free was securing my own oxygen supply.

  I didn’t leave San Francisco and take my daughter away from my mother to “get back” at her. A baby bird grows up and eventually leaves the nest. It was simply time for me to spread my wings, and fly away.

  25

  Who’s Biting Your Style?

  The new home we found was half a block away from the school where Lucy would start kindergarten. The school was a quaint, WPA-built structure complete with a bell at the top and students inside singing “America the Beautiful.”

  I was aware that if Lucy had gone to a San Francisco public school, she probably would have been one of the least Chinese-looking kids in her class with her brown hair and mixed facial features. I had been planning on having to navigate the waters of my child being seen as not Chinese enough. But here, having popped my head into Lucy’s kindergarten class at Nevada City Elementary, I was surprised to see that my daughter would not only be the sole nonwhite student in her class, but she was practically the only brunette. A few minutes later I was mulling over this irony in the school office while I filled out some papers for the secretary. I handed her my forms and she looked closely at my address and broke into a huge smile.

  “Oh, you will be so glad you moved here,” she said with obvious delight. “Lucy will have so much fun playing with the white kids!”

  Uh . . . what?

  No doubt my race hackles were always on alert, but really. REALLY? I stood wide-eyed and mute for a full twenty seconds.

  The secretary then went on to explain that she knew my neighbors, the Whites, whose two school-age daughters were also enrolled at the school. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Oh,” I said. “The Whites. I get it!”

  I must admit, though, it was pretty weird going from the city, where thinking about different ethnicities was always somewhat in my mind, to a small town, where racial homogeneity was the norm. There were a few nonwhites here and there, but for the most part, it didn’t look too diverse from the outside. There were all different sorts of white people—retirees and families, conservatives and liberals, rich homeowners and homeless guys loitering around downtown. There was also a contingent of alternative lifestylers in a big vegetarian, pot-growing, blond-with-dreadlocks kinda scene. So yes, there was indeed a lot of variety in the all-white population, like going to a paint store and finding everything from cream to titanium, blanc de chine, alabaster, and antique white. But nonvanilla flavors were generally not too well represented here.

  This apparent lack of diversity was especially surprising because Nevada City did once have a sizable Chinese population. Here at the foot of the Sierras, Nevada City was once known as the Queen of the Northern Mines, and it was a thriving community that sprang up after the discovery of gold in 1848 in Coloma near Sacramento. In the late 1800s, Nevada City was California’s third-largest city after San Francisco and Sacramento. Here and in the surrounding areas, hundreds of Chinese men came seeking fortune. They found work, but they also encountered discrimination, poor treatment, and outright attacks.

  The Chinese were affected also by legislation that debilitated them at every turn—a foreign miners’ tax aimed specifically at them, the Chinese Exclusion Act limiting immigration from 1882 until its repeal in the 1940s, laws forbidding marriage between races, regional taxes on wearing the Chinese hairstyle (the queue), and even taxes and legislation against carrying baskets on poles. Additionally, Chinese workers were allocated only the areas of land considered to be already stripped of gold, or fishing and shrimping areas that were believed to be depleted.

  The thrifty and tenacious Chinese, however, often did more with fewer resources. They swallowed their pride to take jobs that other workers would not deign to do. Also, they banded together for protection. Their strength in numbers and ability to survive in varied conditions were perceived by other ethnic groups as threatening. From San Francisco to Sacramento, and from Nevada City to other mining towns and rural areas in between, the Chinese population that achieved so much for the railroads, gold mines, and infrastructure for the West often was rewarded with only derision, physical violence, and murder.

  I think often of this local history as I walk the streets of Nevada City now, more than one hundred years later. I am frequently the only Asian face I see all day, maybe even all week, save for my own daughter’s. Occasionally I do see some Japanese Americans around, the surrounding area having once been home to Japanese fruit growers, but after the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, their numbers had also diminished drastically. The descendants of the original Chinese miners have mostly all moved on to bigger cities with more opportunities. I have not yet once met a single Chinese person here whose family came and stayed throughout the changing economic times.

  So what of them is left here? I live one block from the old Chinese part of town, and nearby is a plaque and a memorial fountain where vagrants hang out in the native grasses, smoking nonnative weed. The remaining buildings that were once occupied by an opium den, a laundry, a couple of shops, and a residence are now remodeled structures that house a Thai restaurant, a trinket shop, and a couple of boutiques. The stores sell sculptures of Buddhas and accentuate an Asian vibe with meditation books and paraphernalia, candles, lotions, incense, and mandala carvings. It’s all pretty blissed out, and sometimes, in the corner of the window displays are old photos of Chinese residents or opium smokers to both show what came before and to infuse the businesses with the romance of Orientalism.

  When we first arrived here we attended an idyllic, small-town Constitution Day parade, which is held every year, ostensibly to celebrate the signing of the U.S. Constitution. A nearly identical parade occurs each Mardi Gras and every other Fourth of July. The kids love it, and it is indeed fun for the whole family, and for all the town’s residents. So far, in the four years we’ve lived here, we’ve attended this main street attraction several times. Included in the festivities are middle school and high school marching bands, local businesses in a motorcade, Shriners in their tiny cars whizzing around in figure eights, and local service groups and unions strolling past and sometimes handing out candy, American flags, or plastic Mardi Gras beads.

  Amid this parade of local color is also an anemic, three-person contingent carrying a Chinese drum and brass cymbals, knocking out a little tune barely reminiscent of the clanging, heart-pounding beats at the San Francisco Chinese New Year parade. I wasn’t really expecting any Chinese representation at all, but frankly, I wonder if nothing would be better than this strange little something. Only one guy of the three is actually Asian
, and the other two have embarrassing Fu Manchu mustaches and are dressed in flashy robes. I am so undone by this paltry salute to my heritage that I am still unsure if they actually represent an official group of any kind or exist as simply an offhanded hey-how-ya-doing from the ghosts of Chinamen past. Every time I spot this small group, I wonder how I might lure a real San Francisco or Sacramento kung fu school here for the next parade to do justice to the area’s local Chinese history. But inertia being what it is, regrettably my wishful thinking dissipates as they amble past and the next attraction distracts me.

  And if you want to know if I’ve ever experienced any discrimination here, the answer is no. If asked to speculate why, I’d have to point out that there are so few Asians in town that we pose no threat in numbers. The history of prejudice and antagonism against the Chinese had everything to do with quantity. Before so many Chinese immigrated to the United States, city and town residents throughout the West showed more tolerance of their presence, however begrudging. I once saw a photo of a Chinese vegetable garden from the 1800s that was smack-dab in what is now Pacific Heights in San Francisco. However, as time went on, and the public perceived that the immigrant “celestials” were coming in droves, the Chinese were confined to only certain areas of town, and newspaper cartoons began to depict Chinese people as rats pouring off the ships in unstoppable numbers.