Nothing But the Truth (19 page)

The kitchen is finally silent. I hold my breath as the sisters plod along the hall, but they don’t stop to lecture me in stereo. They head straight up the stairs. And soon, a door closes quietly behind them, locking me out.

I pluck a couple of dead, brown leaves off the bamboo squatting in a green ceramic pot to the side of the fireplace. Then I collapse onto the red sofa and pick up one of the art books heaped on the leather ottoman. The weird Dali paintings feel too close to my mixed-up mental state, so I put the coffee table book back down. Just then, a door upstairs opens and the low undertone of the sisters’ conversation seeps out. To clue into my fate I tiptoe to the Japanese
tansu
chest in the hall. The chest looks like a miniature staircase that leads to nowhere, with each successive layer shorter than the one below it. On every step is a different pair of shoes the size of my palm, all framed in matching shadow boxes. Some have tiny wedge-shaped heels. Others are flat. All are embroidered, yellowing with age and fraying on the bottom. I can’t take my eyes off of the pair stitched with purple blossoms, recognizing the shoes though I’ve never seen anything like them before.

“These were your great-great-grandmother’s,” murmurs Auntie Lu.

I rear back guiltily from the
tansu
as Auntie Lu glides down the staircase. She shoots me a glance that I can’t read, before reaching for the shadow box with the shoes I had been studying. She holds them up to the spotlight and says, “Lotus shoes.”

“They look like doll shoes.” China Doll shoes, I think to myself. Way too small for me or any normal human being for that matter.

“Dolls who had their feet broken and bound so that they wouldn’t grow bigger than three or four inches long. Like lotus flowers.”

I grimace, curling my toes in imagined pain. “Why?”

Auntie Lu snorts. “Some scholars say that women bound their feet to get a sexy walk kind of like the way women wear four-inch heels today.”

I think about life with Mama where I’ve never even gotten the Sex Talk, where no makeup is permitted and, certainly, no dating Stu is allowed. Somehow, thousands of years of foot-binding to obtain a sexy walk just doesn’t compute. Unconsciously, I glance over at Auntie Lu’s gagged girl over the fireplace.

“It was to keep girls from getting into trouble, right?” I ask. Chastity belts for feet. If you can’t walk, you’re not likely to sneak out in the middle of the night, say to kiss a secret lover in the Quad or climb up the side of a building.

Auntie Lu shrugs and holds up one hand, bending her fingers under her palm. “Imagine hobbling on top of your toes like that every day, starting when you were five.”

What a way to imprison women: cripple them so they can’t run away. “Hell on heels,” I mumble.

“That’s very clever.” Auntie Lu laughs, nodding and looking at me over the lotus shoes. “We are so lucky, aren’t we?”

We. Not “you.” Which is the way Mama would have put it:
you
so lucky. Making it sound like my being lucky is a bad thing. But the way Auntie Lu says it, we’re a team, lucky together. Except tonight is proof that I’m anything but lucky.

Who can understand why Mama does half the things she does? She never explains. Her reasons are hidden away like twisted feet tucked in gorgeous, handmade shoes.

“She thinks you’re throwing away your perfect chance for a good future,” says Auntie Lu gently. “You know, your mama turned down a fellowship at the University of Taipei in math to run off with your father.”

“She did?”

Auntie Lu nods and shoots a cautious glance up the stairs. Mama’s door is still closed. What I’ve just learned is more than anyone’s shared with me about Mama’s past—
my
history. I have hundreds more questions, but Auntie Lu’s lips are pursed, looking uncannily like Mama when she locks in her thoughts. So I’m surprised when Auntie Lu steps closer to me and whispers like the words are hard to say, harder to hear, “And then when things didn’t work out, she regretted her decision…”

Her voice trails off, but not before I follow that thought down the path of Mama’s life. How Mama regretted marrying her white guy, having children. Having me. From somewhere in the past, I remember overhearing Mama tell the potluck group: “Life lot easier with no children.”

“Out of all of us, our parents said that Mei-Li was the one who would do something great, be someone. A research scientist, an engineer,” murmurs Auntie Lu. She gently dusts off one of the shadow boxes on the
tansu.
“Professor Ho.”

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
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.”

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?

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.

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.”

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 In scrutable 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 every where! 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
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.”

26
The Return of the Kung Fu Queen