Tiger Babies Strike Back (10 page)

“What for, this therapy?”

“Why you need to talk?”

Maybe you don't have the vocabulary or terminology to talk about your feelings because you've never developed the language for it. Frankly, it's easier to never even have this conversation with yourself. It is common to busy oneself with all the tasks of living rather than ask about the source of the melancholy. When there is such pressure to succeed, it seems reasonable that one's time is better spent studying or taking care of little brothers instead of moping around and pondering the meaning of existence.

However, this reflection is exactly what's missing in the life of the average Chinese American. There is no sitting around and looking at the sky. After all, where is the practical justification in that? Chinese people may value education, but it's not necessarily for its own reward. In feudal China, passing the scholarly exams was the only way to secure a financial future.

I think Chinese Americans are in a major identity crisis. After all, how do you know who you really are if up to this point in life you've been existing for the needs of all others—your parents, siblings, and grandparents? You've acted according to
their
wishes for you, to make sure someone else doesn't lose face. But what about your own face? You don't even know what it looks like.

Your hours and days have never been your own. Your reputation is not your own. Even your face is not your own. As you go through the motions of living, a lot can get accomplished through an overwhelming sense of duty, added to a fear of failure, and fear of disappointment. Unlike Americans as a whole, I don't think Chinese Americans have ever had their turn-on-tune-in-and-drop-out moment. What would happen if we did?

Most Chinese Americans don't have room to dream because so much achievement, and hence financial success, is expected of them. Not many Number One Sons or Number One Daughters are storming the gates of creative writing programs, let alone turning on, tuning in, or dropping out.

Who has time to write about his or her feelings? They're busy studying, or they're busy working, or they live in an apartment with eight other people, five of whom are their younger siblings who require care and attention. It's only the one or two kids at the bottom who will have time to entertain delusions of grandeur about their silly little aspirations; they are the ones who will have time because the older siblings will have taken the brunt of the parents' strict rules. The eldests can then resent the youngers, and we youngests will wonder what their freaking problem is.

I'm the third born and the only girl. I wasn't Number One, and I wasn't a boy. I was pretty much there to do the dishes and not get in the way. When no one is paying much attention to you, maybe that gives you room to dream. If you're not expected to talk much, that frees you up to listen to everything going on around you. No one thinks you are paying attention. If you are left alone in a room with a stack of paper and pens, and if all anyone wants is for you to not make any noise, well, I say make your own noise in your head. Then write it all down.

In Chinese culture, feelings and writing about them are considered indulgent, especially with a cultural tradition that doesn't promote carrying on like an emotional leaky faucet. If you dare to be unhappy, you're just supposed to throw yourself down a well and be done with it.

Well, forget that.

Have you seen that Catherine Zeta-Jones movie from 1999,
Entrapment
? All I remember is the ad with her beautiful derriere slithering between the trip wires as she eludes a high-tech alarm system for the heist of the century. Whether we like it or not, we gotta be like that gorgeous butt, maneuvering between the laser beams that are the lines that other people have drawn to entrap us.

And for us, what is the heist of the century? We've got to pare down and bring only what we can carry. Anyone else's antiquated ideas of who we are or what they want us to be must be left behind. To go in undetected, we'll need inner strength, poise, and trust in our own abilities. The heist, the big one to end all other jobs, is to take back our dignity, our confidence, and the way we define ourselves.

These abstract, enormously valuable treasures are buried deep inside each of us. They are already ours and are more precious than the contents of any plundered imperial Summer Palace, that Garden of Perfect Brightness.

12

There used to be this show on television called
Love, American Style
. During a jaunty little jingle, the credits rolled and showed snippets of happy-go-lucky shenanigans, like skirts blowing up and pants falling down. Tee hee. My husband says that, as a five-year-old, he used to watch the fireworks at the end of the program and feel so giddy that he was convinced that he, too, was actually in love.

For me, growing up in a Chinese household, it never occurred to me that I might someday participate in a
Love Boat
–type of romance or have a
Fantasy Island
,
Charlie's Angels
kinda life. Actually, I didn't realize until I just typed those words that Aaron Spelling is the one who ruined my worldview. No Chinese people on those shows, EVER!

The history of Chinese romance, what do you get? You get married off to a Gold Mountain man while you're in Guangzhou and he goes off to find treasure in California. So while you're standing at the altar, you're tied with a ribbon to a rooster who stands in your husband's place. Or your parents have made a deal with a matchmaker to sell you off to a family down the road when you're only three years old. Of course, these are old world stories. But things aren't that different now. Even my parents joke about my daughter, Lucy, marrying their friend Gene's grandson, Thaddeus. The older generation's utter Chineseness cannot keep them from doing this thing that seems so natural to them: matchmaking, for better and worse.

As for me, everyone always wants to know how I met my husband, Rolf. People were especially interested after I wrote
The Dim Sum of All Things
and pointed out the phenomenon of white men who only date Asians. I called them Asian Hoarders and said they were large mammals in tube socks who tempted victims into their lairs with Drakkar Noir cologne and paralyzed us with saliva like neurotoxic slime. But for the record: Rolf is not an Asian Hoarder. He never had an Asian girlfriend before me. He is, in fact, a large mammal who does own tube socks, but there is no neurotoxic slime involved.

We met in a Chaucer class at Berkeley, so you get a sense of how we're a match made in nerd heaven, complete with the sound of our eyeglasses clicking together when one of us tries to move in for a kiss. I liked him first, but he didn't think of me “that way,” so I immediately wanted to destroy him. When I grill him now, he says it wasn't like that. He says, “I just didn't know you liked me. And you were so young.” It's true that I was eighteen and he was already twenty-five, and in college that's
old
, man.

But I
liked
his old-manliness. I was attracted to his lack of interest in video games, the fact that he didn't wear stupid Bobby Hill–esque shorts, and his devotion to learning Middle English. Doesn't that just sound dreamy, ladies? Best of all, he was really kind. In a realm where jackass style was the norm, his manner, warmth, and lack of pretense stood out. By then Rolf had already been supporting himself for eight years, so compared to the other embryos at Berkeley, he was already a man, and he was refreshingly competent.

But what was this? He was so clueless it hurt. I was constantly asking him if he knew what time it was, or what he'd thought of last week's reading, and the lummox would launch into a ten-minute monologue about how fantastic “The Miller's Tale” was. Good Lord. I wouldn't have minded him droning on if he would only take his clothes off at the same time. I was patient for several weeks, maybe even the whole semester. However, when he didn't catch the clue bus after a while, I lost interest. “Wife of Bath”? Fascinating, numbskull.

That was my first year in college, but it was his last, so we didn't see each other again for a long time. About five years later, I was at a movie theater with friends when I spotted him walking down the aisle just as the lights were dimming. I know this sounds somewhat implausible, but he's actually really easy to spot. He's a tall redhead with skin so pale he practically glows in the dark. Which came in pretty handy, otherwise I might never have seen him. We said brief hellos before getting shushed, and we somehow managed to signal to each other that we'd meet out in front after the show ended.

Appropriately enough, the movie was
Singles
. When it was over, my friend Bryan and I walked out of the theater and saw Rolf in all his near-albino glory glowing there under the marquee with his friend Gerry. Rolf and I exchanged phone numbers, and after some small talk, we walked off in different directions.

Anyway, so get this miracle: he called me
two days
later, which is a world record when it comes to dating. We made a plan to go out to dinner that weekend, and a few days later when I showed up at his apartment I was happy to find that it was impeccably clean. From there we set off to walk to a nearby restaurant, and on the sidewalk in front of his place he said, “Would it be okay if I put my arm around you while we walk to the restaurant?”

My goodness. That was so wonderful and old-fashioned that I thought we were two leotard-clad midgets in a black-and-white movie embarking on a whirlwind circus romance. I said yes, and off we went.

After dinner we returned to his apartment, and I'm so glad to say that he wasn't one of those guys who shuffled his feet and waited for me to do everything. He said, “Do you want to watch TV?” and I replied, “Okay.” So then he turned on
The Simpsons
and promptly pulled me down onto the bed.

Excellent, Smithers.

In the following months, Rolf and I spent a lot of time together, having fun without a lot of money. We walked in Golden Gate Park, collected sand dollars on Ocean Beach, went on road trips, and generally just goofed around.

And as weird as it sounds, I had never just goofed around. It hadn't occurred to me that having fun was something that could come naturally. Before, “having fun” was just one more thing I had to make time for, like studying. I did not look forward to the effort it always seemed to require. But with Rolf, I discovered that having fun wasn't that bad, after all.

Previously, I had felt vague satisfaction when I was winning or achieving something, but what was this new madness? Being content by just hanging out was a freaking revelation. We swam in the American River, made yummy sandwiches, spent time reading, and watched the finest movies his noncable TV could provide. Several months into our relationship, I was sitting on the futon in Rolf's apartment, watching
Kindergarten Cop
. It was then, strangely, that I came to the slow, sinking realization that maybe I was in L.O.V.E.

What the hell is wrong with me?
I thought.
I'm sitting here watching this crappy movie, and I'm actually feeling pretty good. I am not even
doing
anything. Why do I feel not just good, but, um
, happy?

It was a very disturbing feeling. Honey Pie was in the kitchen making us milkshakes, and I felt as content as I'd ever been.

So naturally my dad tried to bust us up. He took me to a Chinese restaurant and said, “You've got to stop seeing him. He's too old.”

I said, “Aren't you eight years older than Mom?”

“That's different.”

“No, it's not.”

“Yes, it is.”

I'm not sure if what my dad meant to say was that Rolf wasn't Chinese. If he did, he didn't go there. From then on, he took the high road, which was silence. My mom, on the other hand, didn't take the high road.

The Reamer sort of lost her mind and yelled, “What are you doing? You're no better than a prostitute!”

Love you, too, Mom.