Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (23 page)
Read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother Online
Authors: Amy Chua
Tags: #Asian American Studies, #Social Science, #Mothers, #Chinese American women, #General, #United States, #Mothers and daughters - China, #Personal Memoirs, #Mothers - United States, #China, #Cultural Heritage, #Biography & Autobiography, #Mothers and daughters, #Ethnic Studies, #Chua; Amy, #Mothers and daughters - United States, #Biography
By contrast, when two medical interns—one was Asian, the other Nigerian—came to introduce themselves to Katrin, I was overwhelmed with indignation and rage. It was as if they were playing doctor. They had no answers to any of our questions, they twice referred to the wrong kind of leukemia, and Katrin ended up having to explain to them the protocol they needed to follow that night. All I could think was, Students? My sister’s life is in the hands of medical students?
But Katrin’s reaction was totally different. “I can’t believe that the last time I was in this building, I was one of them,” she said thoughtfully after the interns left, just a hint of sadness in her voice. “Or and I had just met.”
The initial few weeks of chemo went smoothly. As we’d seen with Florence, the effects of chemo are cumulative, and in the first several days Katrin said she felt terrific—in fact, more energetic than she’d felt in months because they were giving her regular blood transfusions to counter her anemia. She spent her time writing scientific papers (one of which was published by
Cell
while she was in the hospital), supervising her lab at Stanford long-distance, and buying books, toys, and winter clothes for Jake and Ella over the Internet.
Cell
while she was in the hospital), supervising her lab at Stanford long-distance, and buying books, toys, and winter clothes for Jake and Ella over the Internet.
Even after Katrin started feeling the effects of the chemo, she never complained, not about the Hickman line inserted into her chest that carried chemical toxins straight from a drip to her major veins (“Not bad, but I still can’t look at it”); or the shivering fevers she’d suddenly get; or the hundreds of injections, pills, and needle pricks she had to endure. All the while, Katrin sent me funny e-mails that sometimes made me laugh aloud. “Yay!” she wrote once. “Starting to feel SICK. Chemo is working . . . all according to plan.” And another time: “I am looking forward to the phlebotomist visiting me this a.m. This is what I am reduced to.” The phlebotomist was the person who drew her blood and told her what her blood counts were. And: “Able to drink clear fluids again. Going to try chicken broth.Yum.”
I came to realize that when I didn’t hear back from Katrin—when she didn’t answer my calls or return my e-mails—she was either violently ill, swollen up with hives because of an allergic reaction to a platelet transfusion (something that happened regularly), or sedated with painkillers to blunt some horrible new affliction. Her updates, though, were always light-hearted. To my daily “How was last night?” e-mails, she’d respond, “You don’t want to know,” “Not too bad but not great at all,” or “Alas, another fever.”
I also realized something else: Katrin was determined to live for the sake of her children. Growing up, she’d always been the most focused of the four sisters, the one with the most concentration. Now she devoted every bit of her intellect and creativity to the task of battling her leukemia. Trained as a doctor, she was completely on top of her own disease, double-checking dosages, reviewing her cytogenetic reports, researching clinical trials on the Internet. She loved her doctors—she was medically sophisticated enough to appreciate their experience, acuity, and good judgment—and they loved her. So did all the nurses and young interns. Once, an M.D./Ph.D. student doing a rotation recognized her name—Dr. Katrin Chua of Stanford, author of two papers published in the prestigious scientific journal
Nature
!—and asked her in awe for some professional advice. Meanwhile, to stay in shape, Katrin forced herself to walk around for twenty minutes twice a day, wheeling around the IV stand she was hooked up to.
Nature
!—and asked her in awe for some professional advice. Meanwhile, to stay in shape, Katrin forced herself to walk around for twenty minutes twice a day, wheeling around the IV stand she was hooked up to.
I was in Boston a lot during the fall and winter of 2008. Every weekend, our whole family would go up—sometimes we’d make the two-hour drive to Boston immediately after Lulu and I got back from our four-hour trip to Miss Tanaka. Katrin didn’t care at all about having visitors herself—and after the chemo killed off her immune system, visitors were discouraged—but she was worried about Jake and Ella, and it made her happy when we spent time with them. Sophia adored her baby cousin Ella, and Lulu and Jake were best friends. They had similar personalities and looked so much alike, people often thought they were siblings.
Of course, we were all holding our breath for one thing: to see whether Katrin made it into remission. On Day 20, they took the critical biopsy. Another week passed before we got the results. They weren’t good—not at all. Katrin had lost her hair, her skin was peeling, and she had every conceivable gastroenterological complication, but she was not in remission. Her doctor told her she’d need another round of chemo. “It’s not the end of the world,” he said, trying to sound upbeat. But we’d done our research, and we all knew that if the next round didn’t work, the odds of Katrin having a successful transplant were effectively zero. It was her last chance.
28
The Sack of Rice
Sophia, age sixteen
I came home from work one evening to find a carpet of raw rice on the kitchen floor. I was tired and tense. I’d just taught, then met with students for four hours, and I was thinking about driving to Boston after dinner. A big burlap sack lay in shreds, there were rags and plastic bags all over, and Coco and Pushkin were barking up a storm outside. I knew exactly what had happened.
At that moment Sophia came into the kitchen with a broom, a distraught look on her face.
I exploded at her. “Sophia, you did it again! You left the pantry door open, didn’t you? How many times have I told you the dogs would get into the rice? The entire fifty-pound bag is gone—the dogs are probably going to die now.You
never listen
. You always say, ‘Oh I’m so sorry, I’ll never do that again—I’m so terrible—kill me now,’ but you
never change
. The only thing you care about is staying out of trouble. You have no concern for anyone else. I’m sick of you not listening—sick of it!”
never listen
. You always say, ‘Oh I’m so sorry, I’ll never do that again—I’m so terrible—kill me now,’ but you
never change
. The only thing you care about is staying out of trouble. You have no concern for anyone else. I’m sick of you not listening—sick of it!”
Jed has always accused me of a tendency to use disproportionate force, attaching huge moral opprobrium to the smallest of oversights. But Sophia’s strategy was usually just to take it and wait for the tempest to pass.
This time, however, Sophia exploded back. “Mommy! I’ll clean it up, okay? You’re acting like I just robbed a bank. Do you know what a good daughter I am? Everyone else I know parties all the time, and they drink and do drugs. And do you know what I do? Every day I run straight home from school. I
run
. Do you know how weird that is? I suddenly thought the other day, ‘Why am I doing this? Why am I running home?’ To practice more piano! You’re always talking about gratitude, but you should be grateful to
me.
Don’t take out your frustrations on me just because you can’t control Lulu.”
run
. Do you know how weird that is? I suddenly thought the other day, ‘Why am I doing this? Why am I running home?’ To practice more piano! You’re always talking about gratitude, but you should be grateful to
me.
Don’t take out your frustrations on me just because you can’t control Lulu.”
Sophia was completely right. She’d made me proud and my life so easy for sixteen years. But sometimes when I know I’m wrong and dislike myself, something inside me hardens and pushes me to go even further. So I said, “I never asked you to run home—that’s stupid. You must look ridiculous. And if you want to do drugs, go ahead. Maybe you can meet a nice guy in Rehab.”
“The dynamic in this household is ridiculous,” Sophia protested. “I do all the work, and I do everything you say, and I make one mistake and you scream at me. Lulu doesn’t do anything you say. She talks back to you and throws things.You bribe her with presents. What kind of ‘Chinese mother’ are you?”
Sophia really nailed that one. This might be a good time to raise an important point about Chinese parenting and birth order. Or maybe just birth order. I have a student named Stephanie, who recently told me a funny story. An eldest child and the daughter of Korean immigrants, Stephanie told me that when she was in high school (straight As, math whiz, concert pianist), her mother used to threaten her, “If you don’t do X, I won’t take you to school.” And this prospect would strike terror in Stephanie’s heart—miss school! So she would do whatever her mother asked, desperately hoping she wasn’t too late. By contrast, when her mother threatened Stephanie’s younger sister with the same thing, her sister responded, “
Awesome
. I’d love to stay home. I hate school.”
Awesome
. I’d love to stay home. I hate school.”
There are lots of exceptions of course, but this pattern—model first kid, rebellious second—is definitely one I’ve noticed in many families, especially immigrant families. I just thought I could beat it in Lulu’s case through sheer will and hard work.
“As you know, Sophia, I’m having trouble with Lulu,” I conceded. “What worked with you isn’t working with her. It’s a mess.”
“Oh . . . don’t worry, Ma,” Sophia said, her voice suddenly kind. “It’s just a stage. It’s awful to be thirteen—I was miserable. But things will get better.”
I hadn’t even known that Sophia was miserable at thirteen. Come to think of it, my mother hadn’t known I was miserable at thirteen either. Like most Asian immigrant households, we didn’t have heart-to-heart “talks” in my family. My mother never told me about adolescence and especially not about the gross seven-letter word that starts with
p-u
and ends with
y
and is what happens to adolescents. We absolutely never talked about the Facts of Life—just trying to imagine that conversation retroactively sends shivers up my spine.
p-u
and ends with
y
and is what happens to adolescents. We absolutely never talked about the Facts of Life—just trying to imagine that conversation retroactively sends shivers up my spine.
“Sophia,” I said, “you’re just like I was in my family: the oldest, the one that everyone counts on and no one has to worry about. It’s an honor to play that role. The problem is that Western culture doesn’t see it that way. In Disney movies, the ‘good daughter’ always has to have a breakdown and realize that life is not all about following rules and winning prizes, and then take off her clothes and run into the ocean or something like that. But that’s just Disney’s way of appealing to all the people who never win any prizes. Winning prizes gives you opportunities, and that’s freedom—not running into the ocean.”
I was deeply moved by my oration. All the same, I felt a pang. An image of Sophia racing home from school, arms full of books, flashed into my head, and I almost couldn’t take it. “Give me the broom,” I said. “You need time to practice piano. I’ll clean this up.”
29
Despair
My sister Michelle and I were both tested to see if either of us could be Katrin’s bone marrow donor. Siblings have the best chance of being a perfect match—about one in three—and I felt strangely hopeful that my blood would come through. But I was wrong. Neither Michelle nor I was a match for Katrin. The irony was that we were perfect matches for each other, but neither of us could help Katrin. This meant that Katrin now had to try to find a donor through the national bone marrow registries. To our dismay, we learned that once siblings had failed to match, the odds of finding a donor decreased dramatically, especially for people of Asian and African descent. The Internet is filled with appeals from dying patients desperately searching for a bone marrow match. And even if there was a match out there, the process could take months—months that Katrin might not have.
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