Nothing but the truth: (and a few white lies)

by Justina Chen Headley

  Guess what? Mama lectures me enough to qualify as a college professor. As soon as that thought pops into my head, I'm ashamed and try to blot it out by blurting aloud: "Your English is so good!"

  For the second time in a minute, I'm horrified at myself. I

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  hate it when the old fogies back at home look astonished that I don't speak with an accent. One time at the grocery store, a fat grandma type at the register said, "Why, I barely detect any Chinese in your words." Funny, I wanted to snap back at her, I detect a lot of ignorance in yours.

  But Auntie Lu looks pleased instead of offended. "Thank you," she says and blows a piece of lint off the shadow box in her hands. "Your mother didn't have the luxury of studying English the way I got to. She was too busy taking care of you and Abe. And working. Always working. I'm not sure how she found the time to study for her CPA."

  Auntie Lu opens the box where the tiny purple shoes are pinned onto a piece of taupe suede, specimens from a society that seems so far removed from me.

  "Your great-great-grandmother was one tough lady. Once when she must have been about ninety years old, she rode the train by herself to our house in Taipei. Step, step, step, she walked until she made it to our front door. She kept pointing to these shoes." Auntie Lu frees the lotus shoes from the shadow box and traces the delicate, purple embroidery. "Plum blossoms, see? They bloom even in adversity."

  Gently, Auntie Lu unfurls my fist to nest the shoes in my open palm, the delicate shoes almost weightless. "Even in the middle of the winter with snow on their branches, they bloom."

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  25 * Walking Tall

  I'm bedded down for the night on the musty-smelling, pull-out couch in Auntie Lu's office. It's not like I need to be well rested for tomorrow's flight back home. In fact, it'll be a godsend if I'm so tired that I fall asleep next to Mama on the plane so I don't have to feel her disappointment pricking me. The sound of the sisters gossiping in the living room, catching up on which cousins back in Taiwan have gotten married, divorced and fat, is like the pattering of rain at home. Talk, talk, talk, laugh. Talk, talk, talk, aiyo!

  I throw off the covers, drowning in the downpour of my thoughts. All I know is, I have to stay at math camp. I barely take three steps from the sofa bed, and my hip bumps into Auntie Lu's desk, an enormous antique Chinese scholar's table. Holding my bruised hip, I pace toward the door, and trip on a stack of books on the floor. I suppose most people would find Auntie Lu's home office comfortable. But let me be the first to say, this room is a living feng shui hell. How can I think of a way out of my own mess when I can't even walk through Auntie Lu's?

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  I hop up and down, holding my throbbing big toe, and wiggle it gingerly before I put my weight back on it. I limp to the bed and groan, as unladylike a sound as you can make. And I realize, I am no little lady who has to wait for her fate.

  Before I chicken out, I creep down the stairs and see the sisters on the couch, their heads bowed close together as one nods and the other speaks. I'm trembling so badly that I place a hand on the tansu chest to steady myself. If I thought running into a security guard was scary, it's nothing compared to confronting Mama. I brush the hair out of my face and tuck the stray strands behind my ears. Seriously, I doubt I can do it, talk to Mama. Coward, I yell at myself even as I turn back up the stairs. And then, I see the lotus shoes, the ones with the plum blossoms, glowing silvery-purple under the special lights mounted over the tansu.

  Plum blossoms blooming right now in adversity.

  My big toe still hurts. I hobble toward the living room, unable to fathom how my great-great-grandmother with her two crippled feet could have walked anywhere, much less a couple miles from the train station to Mama's old home. Step, step, step.

  I look down at my big feet that are three times the size of hers. My big feet that could crush any China Doll shoe. My big feet that aren't maimed or bound.

  "I really want to go back to math camp," I announce as soon as I step inside the living room. Now that I'm saying my speech aloud, I realize I have a better chance of acing my still-to-be-worked-on Truth Statement than convincing Mama to let me stay.

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  Mama's eyebrows are stitched together in a perma-frown. She's back to doing her foo dog impression, only I'm the one she's trying to scare away.

  "You just want have fun," Mama says, her lips twisting at the "F" word.

  What's wrong with having fun? My irritation ignites like dry grass, but I catch Auntie Lu looking steadily at me like she's reminding me to stay with my rational, logical speech instead of engaging in this endless loop of accusation.

  Quietly, I say, "Mama, I've always brought home great report cards. You can trust me."

  "You not trust me," counters Mama, sitting up tall and straight. "I tell you, best thing is you go to good college. Get good job. Take care of self. Then find Good One and marry."

  This is not going the way I had rehearsed upstairs in Auntie Lu's office, but I grasp onto Mama's flowchart for my life. "I'm trying to get into a good college. Last year, a third of the math campers got into Stanford."

  Studying Mama the way meteorologists must scrutinize the slightest change in winds and clouds to predict storms, I notice the lines around her mouth relax almost imperceptibly.

  "And you've already paid for camp. There are no refunds," I say, inching closer to the sisters on the couch. "It would be a waste of three thousand dollars if I don't finish."

  Hunh. I hear it, a faint sound bordering on thoughtful. Before it can build to Mama's normal battle cry I speed through the last part of my speech: "What if I stayed here with Auntie Lu for the rest of camp? I can walk to school, and I can get a job and pay Auntie Lu." I can't help the pleading, wheedling tone in my voice when Mama's face remains stoic: "Or Auntie Lu, I can help you out around the house if you want."

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  Usually, at home, I welcome this rare, wordless respite of Mama's silence. It's one less chance of some criticism flinging out of her mouth. Funny, now that she's playing the Inscrutable Asian, all I want to do is shake her: Say something!

  Saved by Auntie Lu, who beams and claps like my idea is a true gift, not a ploy to stay at camp. "That's a wonderful idea, Patty." She turns to Mama. "Mei-Li, she's right. It would be a waste if she didn't finish camp. And I'll watch over her. She can help me organize things. You were just saying I needed to space-clear."

  I doubt that Mama put it in those polite, politically correct terms. She probably said something like, "Your house is disgrace! Bad luck everywhere! No wonder no husband. No children."

  I hate to admit it, but I agree. If Auntie Lu's office is any indication, her entire home needs desperate and immediate space-clearing.

  Mama's lips remain squeezed tight, and I resign myself to the rest of the summer enduring Abe's teasing that I couldn't hack it for a week on my own. My stomach lurches. Oh, God, and there are the gloating China Dolls to face down. But then, miracle of miracles, Mama says to me, "You work hard."

  I nearly trip over my feet, I'm so stunned.

  I, Patty Ho, have scored the first-ever victory for myself in Ho family history.

  "You not make me worry." And then Mama bites her lip the way I do when I'm uncertain. Or when I want to check my emotions into the coatroom of my heart. "You call me."

  "I will," I promise.

  Maybe it's the contrast of Mama's tense face against the portraits of happy people behind her back. Suddenly, I can

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  imagine how worried she must have been since she hadn't heard from me. After all those articles she's clipped for me since I was eight or nine, the ones about the missing kids, the raped girls, the teens who were left for dead, I should have known what kind of nightmares were keeping her up at night. Just like mine. If I had been a good girl -- or at least a considerate one -- I would have returned Mama's phone calls right away. Two minutes of my time and Mama wouldn't have felt like she had to fly out to check up on me.

>   "Go to class. Do homework," Mama continues, listing her terms and conditions. What shocks me now is the slightest of smiles that creases Mama's lips, like she thinks she's the victor. "You stay."

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  26 * The Return of the Kung Fu Queen

  First thing the next morning, we drop Mama off at her seminar in Mountain View, about fifteen minutes from Auntie Lu's home. Tall men in crisp shirts and women in heels are descending on the Intuit headquarters, as eager for the training seminar on the new software product as my math camp buddies are for problem sets. Mama looks so fragile clutching her briefcase half the size of her body that I want to go in with her, carry some of her burden.

  "Don't worry about your mama," says Auntie Lu, giving me a quick smile. "She'll set them straight about who's the boss in five minutes."

  "You mean, two minutes." I grin back at Auntie as I scoot into the front seat, taking Mama's place.

  But when Auntie Lu pulls into the parking lot at Stanford, she looks surprised that I'm not bounding out of her mini-Cooper, all eager excitement to be back at math camp. The car is idling, and so is my butt. It's not exactly as if my daddy longlegs can't unfurl themselves out her matchbox-sized car (although I have had more comfortable rides, say

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  on a unicycle circa sixth grade, PE class). Pure dread and nervous perspiration glue me to the leather seat.

  "Everybody has been embarrassed by their mom at one point or another," says Auntie Lu, encouragingly.

  My eyebrows jump so high, I become a plastic surgeon's poster girl for face-lifts. Embarrassing is watching Mama bargain with a salesperson as if we were in some outdoor market in Hong Kong, not in a clothing store in Seattle. All-out public humiliation is getting tongue-lashed in front of everyone at SUMaC, including my first would-be boyfriend.

  "Not everyone has been yanked out of summer camp by their mother."

  Auntie Lu just shrugs. "Who cares what people think? In art, a little controversy is always a good thing." She brushes the bangs out of my face and taps my hand that's gripping my knee. "Coming back is what you want, isn't it?"

  It is. The last thing Mrs. Meyers said to me at the end of the year about running through doors echoes in my ears so loudly, she could have been squeezed into this car with us. I square my shoulders, at least as much as I can while wedged into this bento box of a car, and open the door wide.

  "Thanks for the ride," I tell Auntie Lu as I wriggle out.

  "Aiyo, Patty!" For a second, she sounds unnervingly like my mother. I lean back in the car just in time to see Auntie Lu's smile plummet into a frown. She wails, "Your shirt is soaking wet! You can't have a triumphant return looking like that."

  The T-shirt I borrowed from Janie for the camp clings to my back. I reach behind, thinking I could air it dry, but the cotton is drenched through on my back and, glancing down, under my arms. Auntie Lu does have a point there. It's one

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  thing to towel sweat off your forehead and another to look like a saturated towelette.

  Auntie Lu digs in the backseat where she stashed extra yoga clothes. "A-ha!" she cries victoriously, and waves an orange tank top with a keyhole opening in the front. "Change into this."

  "I can't wear that! You're like five sizes smaller than me."

  "Come on, just put it on. No one will see you, it's so early."

  Years of surreptitious surveillance to make sure no one is in the near vicinity when I step out with perennially mismatched Mama works to my advantage now. I do a swift, expert 360 scan through the windshield and rearview window. Auntie Lu's right, not a soul in sight. Not in the street behind us. Not on the pathway to our side. So I whip off my damp T-shirt, toss it onto the floor and slip into her baby-sized tank. As I get out of the car, I groan. The tank top is skimpier than anything I've ever worn. Worse, it rides up my midriff, a couple of inches over my belly button. Mama would have had a coronary at my exposing so much skin, but Auntie Lu says, "You look hot."

  Before I can ask if she has anything else in the backseat, a chorus of "Patty!" rings out. Then I hear a familiar condescending snicker, "Get some clothes on, Ho."

  Katie of the Big Hair is leading a marching band of SUMaCers toward Math Corner. Miss Manners-in-Training looks positively scandalized that anyone could be wearing an itty bitty top the size of a bra. Let's get real, from my side view, I could pass as a preadolescent boy, which Abe constantly points out to flat as a pattycake me. So I'm not sure what the Big Deal is, when it's obviously not my boobs.

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  It's a binary decision: either I can melt into a sweat puddle of embarrassment or I can pretend that I don't care that I'm half-naked. The latter is more palatable. I've already eaten my fill of shame. So I shimmy my shoulders and hips like I'm my very own welcome home banner.

  Jasmine hoots, "Woo hoo!"

  I stop my futile yank-and-tug when Stu eyes my abs like he's spotted nirvana.

  "Now, that's a triumphant return," says Auntie Lu approvingly and drives off. I stare after her cherry red car in wonder. Is attitude truly the only thing separating embarrassment from triumph? That a little sass could turn you from a social zero to social hero?

  There's got to be something to that, I think, when I run over to join the group, screaming, "I'm back!" Stu wraps his big, strong, trustable arms around me. And when I peek over his shoulder to smile at Jasmine, I notice that Katie looks deflated, a cream puff without her fluff. Hi-yah, White Girl! The Kung Fu Queen is back in town.

  ''My turn, Jasmine tells Stu and throws her arm around me like we're the inaugural members of the Kung Fu Kick-Ass Club. I never thought I'd be happy to see Building 380 or look forward to three straight hours of math. But I practically skip up the stairs, under the archway and into the classroom, dragging Jasmine along with me. It doesn't hurt when I peek over my shoulder to see Stu, watching me with a half-smile like he's never known anyone quite like me before.

  As Jasmine and I start down the back row where we usually sit, Anne hurtles past us. Her head is down, all math

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  business. But then Anne slides a proud look at me. "I knew you'd figure out a way back."

  I watch Anne continue by herself to the front of the classroom, where she claims her regular spot, first row, three chairs in. I'm not sure who's more stunned: Jasmine that I'm leading us to the head of the class or Anne that I'm sitting next to her. But they both go with the Patty flow, somehow knowing that I'm on the cusp of an amazing revelation: being part of an all-girl Asian Mafia isn't a bad thing. It just took me a long time to realize that there's something rice-porridge-moe comforting in not needing to translate any weird Chinesey things, like Mama going ballistic because I was out with a guy when I should have been home with a book.

  "So, do you think the Potluck Mamas are already talking about how I came this close to being a Stanford math camp dropout?" I ask Anne.

  Anne looks at me admiringly and gives me a no-biggie shrug. "Who cares what they say? You're going to be a potluck urban legend. Buildering and boys. What's next?"

  Now, that's an epitaph I could live with. So I open the notebook Janie gave to me way back before math camp started and write:

  Patty Ho Truth Theorem Four

  Given: Patty Ho is a potluck urban legend.

  No proof necessary. Its a given!

  This morning, Professor Drake lectures us about Group Theory, which just so happens to be what my Research Project team is studying. It's actually a fairly straightforward

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  concept. In math-ese, a Group is a Set with binary operations that satisfy certain axioms. Sounds scary, but it's not. In Patty Ho-ese, think of a "Set" of people: me. Anne. Jasmine. What makes us a Group is that we're bonded together.

  Patty + Anne + Jasmine = Asian Mafia Girls = people's assumption that we're obedient, smart Asian girls who know all the answers in every class.

  Patty + Anne + Jasmine = Kung Fu Kick Ass Club = we are strong separately, but we are hi-yah! strong togethe
r.

  Stu passes me a note: "Can you come to the party tonight?"

  That's when I remember the math camp shindig tonight. I wish I could go. I really do, but I shake my head, and catch his disappointed frown. I promised Mama I'd be back at Auntie Lu's for dinner. Besides, her permission for me to stay at math camp definitely did not include going to any parties, sanctioned by the professors or not.

  So I write: "What happens to Stanford men under the full sun in the Quad? Find out after class."

  I watch while Stu's mouth turns up in a sexy smile after he's read my note. He checks his watch like he's counting down the milliseconds. And only then do I tune all my brain cells back into Professor Drake. Almost all of them, anyway. I catch Stu's eye and wink at him.

  As I stand in the middle of the Quad, I decide that when I'm in Stu's arms, it doesn't matter whether we're kissing under the moon or sun -- full, half or otherwise. It all feels good.

  I tilt my head up to study Stu's face. "So you feel different yet?"

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  "Hmmm," he says, furrowing his eyebrows like he's thinking hard. "Maybe we better try it again."

  I lean in for another kiss, not caring that bikes are whizzing past us or that a tour group is approaching on their way to MemChu. That's when I realize what happens to Stanford men and women who kiss in the Quad in broad daylight. They look like a Stanford couple.

  "You sure your mom's not lurking somewhere?" he asks against my cheek.

  I wish he hadn't said that. Mama's not waiting for me, but Jasmine is. We're supposed to go run the Dish in fifteen minutes. If Janie and Laura could only see me now, they'd be laughing themselves silly, calling me a hypocrite. It's always bugged me how they could cancel plans with me on a whim whenever a boyfriend came on the scene. Our shopping dates? Homework sessions? Poof! Those vanished with this inevitable excuse: "«Insert current boyfriend's name here» and I are getting together. We'll go «insert girlfriend activity here» another time, OK? You understand, right?"