The Cooked Seed (44 page)

My friends had been sensitive and protective toward Lauryann when she was younger. Many of them told their children to be nice to Lauryann during video games. Lauryann was not to be challenged. On the surface, Lauryann accepted her status and appeared comfortable. She played along as the dummy, but underneath she was determined to surpass herself. I assured her that I was in the fight with her.

When Lauryann was about five years old, I took her with me to a book signing at a bookstore in southern Los Angeles. I sat behind stacks of my books and waited for three hours. No customer came forward. Finally, a lady appeared. She asked for my autograph.

I didn’t notice Lauryann following the lady afterward. When
Lauryann returned, she whispered in my ear, “Mommy, the lady is not a customer. She’s the cashier at the bookstore.”

I turned to look behind the counter. It was true—it was the woman I had signed an autograph for.

I said to Lauryann, “If I were as good as the author who wrote … what is your favorite book?”

“Dr. Seuss.”

“Okay, Dr. Seuss, would people show up and buy my book?”

Lauryann nodded as tears filled her eyes.

A few months into our marriage, Lloyd suffered a burst appendix. It began with a stomach cramp after dinner. Lloyd thought it had to do with stress from his job as a teacher. He took a pill to ease the pain and we went to bed early. About midnight, Lloyd woke up to an assault of pain. He did not want to disturb me, so he endured. The pain did not go away. Eventually he crawled out of bed and rolled into a ball on the floor. He forced himself to stay still and keep quiet.

At about three in the morning, he woke me. “Call 911,” he said.

Barely awake, I dialed the number.

When the ambulance arrived, a paramedic asked, “Sir, from one to ten, one being the least and ten being the worst, give me a number that describes your pain.”

“Eleven!” Lloyd said.

I met with Lloyd’s doctor in the hospital. I learned that his appendix had burst, and that the rupture had led to an infection. I felt terrible about not getting Lloyd to the hospital sooner. He had put himself through great pain to assure me a good night’s sleep.

The doctor told me that he had to open Lloyd to “clean him up.” The next day, after Lloyd’s surgery, I took Lauryann to see him. Lloyd was wrapped with tubes, with one leading to an IV bottle on a stand. Hours earlier, he had been adminstered a barium enema in preparation for an X-ray of his large intestine. He was expected to poop it out.

When the urge came, Lloyd pushed himself out of bed and dragged the tubes and the IV bottle and the stand toward the bathroom. The
electric cords and tubes got in his way. “Damn, I am not gonna make it!” he said. “I’m gonna shit all over the place!”

I quickly looked around and saw a bedpan by the window. I picked it up. As if he were an infant, I pulled and pushed Lloyd back to the bed. I threw his leg over my shoulder, rolled his body to one side, and slipped the bedpan under his butt in time to collect the gushing residue of the barium enema.

I went to the bathroom and emptied the pan in the toilet and then cleaned the pan and filled it with water. I called Lauryann for help. “Let’s clean him.”

“No!” Lloyd pulled up the sheet to cover his naked limbs.

I ignored him and turned to Lauryann. “Come on, let’s get to work!”

Lauryann shook her head like a Chinese merchant’s drum.

“Hold the sheets for me,” I instructed. “Come on.”

“I can’t,” Lauryann said.

“Why not?” I became upset. “What’s wrong?”

“I have never seen a man’s penis before,” Lauryann replied.

“That’s no problem.” I turned to Lloyd. “Excuse me, I’ve got to borrow your instrument for a second.”

Before Lloyd could protest further, I dragged Lauryann over and pulled down Lloyd’s sheet.

“Now you have seen one,” I said. “It’s not scary, right? You are in a hospital, and you are supposed to think only of helping.”

Lauryann listened and stared at the penis.

It dawned on me that my action might shock Lauryann and damage her in some unforeseen way. To apply damage control, I said, “Tell me what you see, would you?”

Lauryann paused for a second, then replied, “A bird in a sack.”

“A bird in a sack?” I tried not to laugh. “Well, that’s about right!”

Poor Lloyd.
I turned to my husband and said, “Sorry to violate you. I meant to help.”

As Lauryann held the bedpan, I wiped away Lloyd’s poop and cleaned his bottom.

Looking back, this was Lauryann’s first real-life lesson on human physiology in a hospital setting. For Lloyd, it was his first taste of a Chinese woman’s stubbornness and craziness. He had to admit that I was
effective and efficient. “Otherwise you would have slept in your own poop,” I said, “or you would have fallen in the bathroom. You would have torn open your stitches before reaching the toilet.”

The dream began with an image. I saw myself once again stuck. I was back in China at the brick factory, where we made bricks from mud. First we made the mud cakes, then dried them under the sun before sending them to be baked in the kiln. My metal cart had fallen off its track, and I couldn’t lift it back onto the track. The cart was loaded with mud cakes. It weighed over a thousand pounds. I was in a squatting position, with my lower back pressed against the metal frame. I applied all my strength, but the cart was not moving. Rain began to pour. I would be in big trouble if I failed to save this load. I would be held responsible for ruining the factory’s production goal.

It was a strange dream because I was awake. I was aware of the bed I was on, and I knew I was not in China. I could see the moonlight reflected on the wall and the curtain. I was in my house in America. Yet I couldn’t wake up from this “dream.” My memory was trapped in the old time zone while my mind watched it struggle. With my eyes open, I shouted soundless shouts and I cried tearless cries. I watched in terror and helplessness as that rain began to dissolve my mud cakes.

Roaring like a lion, I pushed the cart. It moved, slid, but it didn’t land on the track. By now the track was covered by a running river of mud.

It was then that I heard the sound of the telephone ringing. I snapped out of the dream, sat up, and reached for the phone.

It was my father on the other end. Calling from China this early in the morning sent chills down my spine.

“Anchee,” my father’s voice was grave. Immediately I sensed that something terrible had taken place.

As if reciting an ancient poem, my father said, “Your mother has fallen into a permanent sleep. She left us last night at ten o’clock.”

“Where is she?” My voice was cold and unrecognizable.

“She is sleeping.” My father broke into choking sobs. “Sleeping permanently.”

I wanted to yell at him to stop using the words “sleeping permanently”! Why couldn’t he just say she was dead?

“Where is her body?” I asked, finding it difficult to pronounce the word
body
. I wanted to reach out to her, to put my arms around her, to lie next to her. But I knew that it was too late. I did not get to say goodbye. I had missed my chance.

“The neighbors helped me. The crematorium people came, and I signed the papers. Your mother is ready for her departure from the earth. I don’t know what to do. Are you coming? Your brother and sister are coming.”

“How did she die?” I asked. “Did she know that she was going? Did she get a chance to say anything? Seventy years old is too young. Was she in pain? Was there a sign? Any struggle?”

My mother had told me that her biggest fear was to die in pain. She had witnessed both her parents die in extreme pain. She had asked me about assisted suicide in the event that her illness worsened. I had promised to help her when her time came. I would make sure that she did not suffer as her parents had. I had been gathering information and was following the work of Dr. Jack Kevorkian in the news. I had also listed Denmark and Oregon in my notebook as places to visit and investigate.

“I don’t think your mother died in pain,” my father said. “In fact, we were waiting to take her to the hospital on Monday, which is today. She had been weak, but there was no clear sign that she was ready to go.”

I found myself afraid to go to my dead mother. I was not ready to accept her death and didn’t want to face it. I wanted her alive, to be waiting for me as she always had. I had taken my mother for granted. I had always counted on the next time. All these years struggling to survive in America, I had been unable to visit her. While seeking a happier life, I had missed what really mattered. The sudden realization struck me right after my father uttered the words “permanent sleep.”

I had spent too many Thanksgivings and Christmases alone in America, working. This was the price I paid. I couldn’t take a chance on being denied a return visa. I couldn’t afford the airfare. I could only dream of our reunion. A delightful scene of happiness played over and over in my head. I always rewound and replayed my favorite part at will, the scene in which my mother is leaning over the windowsill waiting
for me. Then, one day, I magically appear. I wave at her. She doesn’t wave back, because she isn’t sure if she isn’t hallucinating it all. It is her life, and she never expected something so wonderful.

I saw myself running toward her in my American jeans, sweater, and sneakers. I run through the narrow lane, past the public yard, up the slanting staircase, through the pitch-dark hallway, and into my mother’s open arms. Again and again.

This was my Thanksgiving. This was my Christmas. The gift I gave to myself, the promise that one day I would get to see my mother anytime I liked. I would spend as much time with her as I wanted. Lauryann would give her a show. Lauryann would dance and sing American songs to her. I knew my mother would enjoy that tremendously. My singing and dancing was once her gift to her guests and friends. She used to say, “One can be poor, but one can still offer great gifts.”

Now everything ceased in “permanent sleep.”

I did not want to see my mother’s dead face. I was afraid of my own regret and remorse. It was overwhelming. I had planned to visit China and see my mother before the summer, but I had been having blackouts. I became nervous because I didn’t know their cause. I had to stop driving because the blackouts could occur at any time. I knew I was sleep deprived. To rule out the possibility of a brain tumor, my doctor insisted that I get an MRI. I had been waiting for the results.

The doctor’s office called. The MRI I had taken the week before was still being analyzed. “The results can arrive anytime,” the doctor said. “It’s important that you stay where you are so that we can take care of the problem promptly, be it a blockage or a brain tumor.”

I did not attend my mother’s burial. I saw the photos my father took. The dead person in the photo did not look like my mother. Not the way I remembered her. I tried not to count the days I did spend with my mother since I’d arrived in America. It was pitiful.

Being an immigrant meant to leave loved ones behind—part of yourself in
permanent sleep.

I loved watching Lauryann and Lloyd play chess. I got a kick out of Lauryann’s little tactics that she’d picked up from Lloyd himself. To distract Lloyd, Lauryann asked him about topics that she knew would blow his short fuse.

“I love candy,” Lauryann said. “Everybody loves candy.”

Lloyd took the bait and fumed. “Candy destroys your ability to taste and enjoy the natural flavors in food. Candy causes diabetes and cancer …” Before he was finished with his diatribe, he found his horses and bishops snatched by Lauryann.

“What about skateboard brains, Lloydee?” Lauryann asked. “Can you tell that story again? Mommy didn’t get to hear it.”

Lloyd was fooled again. “Well, I was waiting for the traffic light to change at the intersection, and I saw this young man cross the street against the red light. He was one of those typical teen assholes, you know, the type that’s so impressed with himself. He had a shaved head, sunglasses, rings and stuff all over. He pissed me off, because I thought about how I risked my life in Vietnam defending bastards like him.”

“Hey, your turn, Lloydee. By the way, what about Walmart’s shrinking T-shirt?”

“Don’t start me on that. The fabric is super thin to begin with. After I washed the only one I ever bought from Walmart, it shrank to the size of a handkerchief.”

“Checkmate!” Lauryann announced.

I showed Lloyd a Chinese poem. “Rain” was its title. The poet’s name was Du Fu, 712–770 AD, of the Tang dynasty.

Good rain knows about timing

It arrives only at Spring’s invitation

Riding the wind, it moistens the night

Nursing the soil in gentle silence

“Rain represents parental love,” I interpreted. “‘Spring’s invitation’ means the child’s readiness, and ‘gentle silence’ means getting the work done in an artful way. In other words, be strategic.”

Although I told Lauryann that her best effort was all I asked for, she knew I did not mean that she could get by with B’s and C’s. I would not forgive myself if I failed to bring out my child’s true potential. I had witnessed the unhappy result of Lloyd’s tough love with his only son.

I didn’t want to travel the same path. Ever since Lauryann’s birth, I had wanted to be the gentle rain that soaked and nurtured the earth. I wanted to be the spring itself. “Impulse control” were the words I posted on my bathroom mirror. Yet I often couldn’t help but act on an impulse. For example, when Lauryann was about three years old, a bug bit her. One side of her lip was swollen. There was no point in applying a bandage, but Lauryann insisted. She wanted her whole mouth covered with bandages. Definitely she was not ready to listen to me.

I decided to let her have her wish. I bandaged her entire mouth. An hour later, frustrated that she could no longer talk, she asked me to remove the bandages. It was then that I rubbed her nose in her foolishness.

Another example took place in Arizona. I was a guest speaker at a literary festival. I took Lauryann with me. She was about seven years old. The hotel we stayed at had an outdoor swimming pool. When Lauryann was changing into her swimsuit, I went to test the water temperature of the pool. It was freezing. I went back to tell Lauryann that it was a bad idea to go swimming. Instead of listening to me, Lauryann ran toward the water. I followed her, yelling, “Please don’t get into the water! It’s cold!”