As soon as a few strangers turn into many, their “otherness” becomes more apparent and, simultaneously, more abhorrent. Their strangeness cannot be absorbed or diluted by a majority, so a group once considered innocuous enough is then viewed as a potential threat. The same trend occurred in mining areas as well. A handful of Chinese in the camps was one thing, but once there were more than could be counted, their foreign customs added to the overall rancor among miners who were all competing for the scant gold that was getting harder and harder to find. This dynamic set off a domino effect of discrimination and abuse. It is apparent even today in modern suburban communities when urban Chinese move to surrounding areas and form new shopping areas or pockets of residences. Even if Asians are the only group moving in to revitalize an area, it isn’t long before they are targeted for derision even if it was solely their gumption and sweat equity that made the old, run-down sections of town safe, lively, or even vaguely palatable and therefore valuable to the local real estate market and businesses.
But now in Nevada City, despite the history of abuse toward Chinese in the past, there are definitely not enough of us here to pose any kind of imposition to the greater whole. We are in no danger of developing into a majority; rather, we are easily diluted into the creamy hue of eggshell white. I have always felt accepted and welcomed here and have known no hostility from my fellow townspeople. If more Asians or Asian Americans did happen to move to the area, who knows what might ensue. Perhaps when faced with the onslaught of more numerous or less-Americanized strangers, folks might offer me olive branch statements such as “But you’re different,” or “You’re not like them,” or “You’re white anyway.” In college, none of these statements ever actually reassured me the way they were intended. Thus, even those of us who are fully Americanized are still subjected, however infrequently, to these occasional, qualifying statements. And we always recognize that slow, sinking feeling, that knowledge that in other people’s eyes, we are always intrinsically different.
If you don’t really get what I’m talking about, think back to that movie Pretty Woman. It’s just like when Richard Gere says to Julia Roberts, “I’ve never treated you like a prostitute.” When he walks away, she gets teary, as if she can’t believe he just said that. Then she says to herself, “You just did.” That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Even if a Chinese American’s thoughts of racial difference are temporarily not in the forefront of her thoughts, anyone—a stranger, a friend, or a mogul you’ve recently fellated in the penthouse of a five-star hotel—might at any time unleash an unexpected bon mot to bring home the reality that your race always means something to somebody.
But back to downtown Nevada City.
I remember the first time we ate at the Chinese restaurant on Broad Street. The owner came to our table and asked, “What are you doing here? Visiting from out of town?”
This was not the first time that a proprietor of a Chinese restaurant had come out from the kitchen to inquire about where we’d come from or why we were there. It happened several times when Rolf and I traveled the Southwest, years before we had Lucy. Here in California, though, I hadn’t thought a Chinese face would be so unique.
“We just moved from San Francisco,” I said. “We live two blocks away now.”
The Chinese man grimaced and looked at us in disbelief. He said, “Why would anyone leave San Francisco?”
Rolf and I looked at each other. It was our first week here and we were still reeling from our whirlwind move, wondering indeed if we had made a mistake. Rolf said, “Um, I’m feeling a little fragile about that right now. Could we not talk about that and just order our food?”
For the first weeks, months, and year, we walked through town and tried to get the feel of the place. Nevada City’s old buildings compose the most comprehensive group of existing Gold Rush–era structures in the West. Within the population, there are families who have been here for many generations. But who knows? Maybe you’re not considered a local until you’ve lived here for twenty years. The checkers at the grocery store only really started talking to me after we’d lived here for three years. I have never before lived in a small town so I have always been aware to mind my p’s and q’s. I didn’t want to come here and declare anything about myself. I wanted to see what might come to me on its own. And so it was with the Chinese thing, too. I wanted to absorb whatever I found here, and not step on anyone’s toes. But, hey, I do have to leave the confines of my house sometimes, and when you walk among the people, toes do get accidentally stepped on.
There’s a guy who runs a fancy Chinese trinket shop in town. At first I thought it was a little odd that he’s never been very friendly to me. I can’t tell if he’s just cranky, or if he’s being vigilant because he thinks my kid is going to knock something over. We are always very careful and respectful when we enter his shop, which is filled to the brim with Asian knickknacks like Quan Yin statuettes, fancy teapots, silk pillows, feng shui handbooks, and various doodads adorned with the faces and lithe figures of Asian ladies. The owner’s eyes follow me each time I’m there, as if he fears I’m gonna shoplift something really expensive. You’d think that I’d be that store’s target audience, its ultimate consumer, but no. He scowls at me like I’m some toothless meth addict asking to use his bathroom.
And similarly, there’s a scholarly gentleman who runs the local museum with Chinese artifacts. He wants no part of me either. We toured the historic building where he educates visitors cheerfully, and after talking with him, I did send him a couple of e-mails on topics he seemed interested in. I was appropriately respectful of his knowledge and his position. But there was no love connection there either. I initially thought he’d be delighted to talk to someone who was familiar with the Chinese Historical Society in San Francisco and other organizations he mentioned. However, any time I seemed a little too informed about the Square and Circle Club (a service organization of Chinese women that my mother once belonged to), or a Chinese American artist, or the famous photos of Chinatown by Arnold Genthe, he just got more irritable. I guess he was the one used to doing the teaching, and he was a little peeved that I wasn’t a completely unformed vessel.
So I’ve been thinking about these two gents for some time now. Maybe there can only be a couple of scholars on Asian culture around here, and these two guys have already divvied up the territory. They both deal in a certain romanticism about the area’s Chinese history. The museum shows enlarged photos of Chinese residents from the late 1800s wearing silk finery, elaborate hairstyles, and old-fashioned shoes. The foreign charm and exotic details are very attractive. Likewise, the trinket shop wholly commodifies the Chinese past with decorations that play up the allure of Asian calm. In both cases, I am being sold a bill of goods here, except ironically, I am the goods.
To borrow a line from the movie Swingers, I guess we Asian Americans are “so money we don’t even know how money we are.” Chinese culture and what our faces represent apparently bring in the big bucks. But I’m not exactly sure how I feel about Asian-themed objects being so popular. I am conflicted. As a Chinese person, I feel objectified and a little embarrassed when I see a placemat or a coffee mug decorated with the winking face of an Asian woman. However, simultaneously, my American side might be attracted to the innocent romance of a 1930s Shanghai girl in a pretty cheongsam. It’s definitely weird to see something for sale that has a picture on it that is not me per se, but simultaneously represents me. In stores, I never see shirts or stationery whose sole decoration is the face of a random white person, or any other race for that matter. In contrast, I was in a boutique with Lucy and she tugged on my sleeve with honest confusion and asked, “Why does that apron have a picture of Auntie Angie on it?” We both stared in disbelief because the silk-screened image did, in fact, bear an uncanny resemblance to my sister-in-law. “I don’t know” was all I managed to say.
And thus, when you are Chinese American, even shopping is complicated.
Whether I am at the tri
nket shop or the museum, both of which seem to share the purpose of bringing Chinese culture to the public, there doesn’t seem to be any room for a real Chinese person who can dispel the romanticism and mystique. In the selling of Oriental illusion, is my very presence a fly in the soy milk?
I’m not yet ready to make any further waves, so for now I’ll just stay out of that particular store as well as that gallery of artifacts. I understand why I might make those men feel uncomfortable. Clearly, they think I am biting their style.
But fellow citizens, really. Dare we ask, who bit whose style first?
26
Welcome to What I Didn’t Know
One thing nobody tells you about motherhood is that you will be surrounded all the time. Someone is always touching you, talking to you, grabbing at your clothes, or otherwise obliterating your personal space. Your hands are always busy making something, rearranging and fixing an object or favorite item, or cleaning clothes, toys, or household items. And while you are trying to apply laserlike focus to the tasks at hand, your child or spouse is grabbing at your rump or sundry lady parts, and you just want to tell everyone to please, please, just stop. Please. Just. Stop. Touching. Me.
Everyone is supposedly being playful and just wanting to be lovey-dovey, but how can you think about hot glue guns, Twizzlers, soccer cleats, feeling feminine, the overdue property tax, sex, camping gear for the overnight field trip, and making a stuffed angel hedgehog with wings out of napkins all at the same time?
And then you have to feel guilty for being crabby. And even feeling guilty feels like just one more thing you gotta do. Of course, meanwhile, you aren’t even looking after your own basic needs, and you might suddenly notice that for the past hour you have been starving. I often discover that my stomach is rumbling, and I recall that before I had a kid, I used to frequently eat hot meals. Now I vaguely remember what those tasted like. Remember the mom in A Christmas Story? In the voice-over, Ralphie says, “My mother had not had a hot meal for herself in fifteen years.” I always chuckled a little at that line until I became that line. For many years now I’ve made my daughter’s dinner, then served the adult meal for my husband and me, but by the time I’m about to sit down, someone needs milk or water, and since I’m already the one who isn’t eating yet, I am the one who ends up getting the drink, and then a fork is dropped or a drink is spilled, and by the time I settle down to take my first bite, the kid is done eating and wants something else, or suddenly has to poop. As I’m chewing that first mouthful of food, it is somewhat less appetizing knowing that any second now, someone will be yelling, “I NEED TO BE WIPED!”
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Every single meal, of every single day, for the past nine years.
And I wish I was joking. But all you other moms out there know that I am not. As I ruminate on this daily situation, I have come to the realization that what I really want to say to my own mother is, “Sorry. I had no idea that this is what your life was like for decades.”
Before I had my daughter I never realized I would never go to the bathroom alone ever again. When she was a tiny infant, I used to strap her into the vibrating bouncy chair so she couldn’t hurt herself while I was otherwise occupied for a couple of minutes. Later, when she was at the crawling stage, I locked the door with both of us inside so she couldn’t scramble away and fall down the stairs. And from toddler age till now she has just wanted to be at my side at all times. It’s wonderful that someone wants to accompany me for every bodily function I have, but it got old about seven years ago. Now she says, “Would you like some company?” which is really nice and polite, but frankly the answer is no.
I was reasonably prepared for the idea that an infant or toddler needs her mother to be physically close most of the time, but I am taken by surprise that the seven- to nine-year-old girl needs and wants her mom still, maybe even more. Kids want to sleep in a heap, like puppies. I want to sleep and not be kicked in the head. I would really appreciate some quiet any time of the day, but my kid likes to chatter constantly about kittens and mice and hamsters and which would I like better, a drawing of Russian or Chinese or Native American hedgehogs in Atlantis or an underground science fair where they grow magic blueberries that make them disappear and never grow old or die and always have chocolate caramel sundae parfaits for dinner and wear diapers that never smell bad?
She strings the sentences all together perhaps because she believes that as soon as she stops talking I will stop looking at her. That sounds logical. But here’s the thing. She already gets tons of attention. She is an only child who lives with both her parents, and we are together all the time. And yet. Even for her, consistent attention is still not enough. When I see my daughter doing her version of “Egyptian tap dancing” complete with booty shakes and arm wiggling, I remember how desperately I also attempted to keep my own mother’s gaze upon me. If she closed the door to go to the bathroom, it felt like the sun had suddenly been obscured by a dark cloud.
But enough already! Every mother I know has at one time or another waited hours to pee only to finally sit down and have a kid bang on the door like the house is on fire. When you waddle over to open the door with your pants still at your knees, it turns out the emergency is just that the kid couldn’t peel a glitter sticker off its backing. So is it any wonder we want to drink wine all night?
And as the kid gets older, she is getting more and more curious about bodies. During the infant and toddler years, I took speed showers and barely spent time drying myself off or moisturizing. But I thought that after eight years I might get to take a somewhat normal shower. But no. I might be two days without bathing, and when I finally get in and feel the first three seconds of hot water awakening my skin, I think maybe I can finally relax for a minute. But then the curtain is yanked wide open for another urgent bit of news, “I CAN’T GET MY KINDLE TO WORK!” I am standing there naked as my daughter gapes at my body, wet boobs and all. Then my husband might stroll on in and say, “Ooh, what’s going on in here?”
Please. Please, all of you. Please. Just. Get. Out.
When you are a mom, often it feels like the only time to yourself is when you are in the car. In your head, you hope that no one will want to go to the grocery store with you. You want to buy tampons in peace and not have to answer a barrage of questions like “Are those the thingies you stick in your butt?” or “Why do mommies have to wear diapers inside their underwear, anyway?”
Kids want to know everything. They want to touch, feel, and smell anything and everything about you. Some small person is always asking invasive questions about your deep, furrowed wrinkles (“Why do you have stripes on your forehead?”), your blubber (“That feels like pudding!”), or your breasts (“They kinda look like cupcakes, and that makes me hungry!”).
Um, yeah.
So yes, Mom. I do apologize. I now know why you were so cranky. You were only as grumpy as I am now. We were all making you insane and I hadn’t realized that mothers are like Rodney Dangerfield. Mothers don’t get any respect.
As I look back, I recall that my own mom also wanted to be left alone. When I was younger, I couldn’t imagine why she didn’t want us crawling all over her with sticky hands, grabbing her face, and stepping all over her feet with our hard shoes. Our flailing limbs were constantly accidentally bonking her in the eyeball, side of the head, and anywhere else within our reach.
Ugh. Sorry, Mom. My bad. I get it now.
27
Dragon Lady Versus Pearl Concubine
I never applied for membership to the Hot Mess Club, but one day I suddenly realized I belonged. Somehow I already knew the exclusive address, and surprisingly, there was a reserved parking space right out front, just for me. Seemingly overnight there was a heap of crazy yelling from the kitchen and her name was Kim Wong Keltner.
I think every mother has asked herself at some point, Why am I the one who has to do everything? The quick answer is, because everyone has to do everything. What else is there to do, sit in the mush pot a
ll day? For me, performing all the little tasks of every day is its own reward, a daily way of saying, “I’m grateful I have all my limbs.”
It does feel exhausting sometimes though. However, I don’t ever want to be like my friend Ann’s mother. Every Sunday night she served a beautiful dinner that took all day to prepare, but when it came time to eat, she sat down at the table and sobbed uncontrollably into her hands. Meanwhile, the whole family ate in silence and pretended not to notice.
Ugh. For everybody. Note to self: Don’t wanna cry at the dinner table no matter how exquisite the beef bourguignon.
When we first moved out of San Francisco, I was blown apart inside. Except for four years of college just over the bridge in Berkeley, I had never lived anywhere else but the city. If I was no longer a San Franciscan, I wasn’t sure who or what to be. As a result, I defaulted to history’s tried and true position for females, Nurturing Wife and Mother.
While my husband hit the ground running with his new job and my daughter began kindergarten, I made breakfast and careful lunches for them and had fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies waiting in the afternoon while dinner simmered on the stove. Since my daughter is sans siblings, frequently we hosted playdates, which also kept me busy preparing snacks and helping to set up elaborate stuffed animal tea parties and whatnot. I scurried around in a flowered apron with hot-pink trim, picking up toys and fetching glasses of milk.
As a kid I was always envious of the TV characters whose moms were home all day baking, ready with a hug and a pitcher of lemonade. And now I was that mom, and I found that the housewife role wasn’t half bad.
For many months, in my delirium of having left my old life, I poured all my energy into being a good wife, a nurturing mother, and the fun mom to my daughter’s little friends. Since I wasn’t working a “regular” job, I had time to just enjoy the kids’ company. In addition, we hosted big dinner parties where the parents came. Everyone played Ping-Pong and we stuffed our faces while our children enthusiastically turned the house upside down.
Tiger Babies Strike Back Page 13
