Tiger Babies Strike Back (17 page)

During those weeks of driving back and forth I did wonder to myself if we were insane to uproot ourselves. We alternated between giddy excitement and cold sweats. I would wake up in the middle of the night and for a few seconds think,
God, I had a horrifying dream that we moved out of San Francisco
. The next day I might think,
Thank goodness we didn't do something stupid
, and then I'd change my mind and say to Rolf, “Why not? People move all the time. We can do it!”

The idea of leaving my hometown and my entire life as I knew it up to that point might sound impulsive, and I admit that it was. The thing I may not have emphasized, though, is the heavy, intense feeling of dread I felt every minute of every day. People could argue that there is crime everywhere, and most car accidents happen within a mile of home wherever you are. Also, it's more likely you'll slip in your own bathtub than get mugged at gunpoint. The general consensus is that you can't let fear rule your life.

But fear was definitely getting the better of me. And it wasn't just because I was a hypersensitive mom with a toddler. I was that, true, but in the last three years, danger seemed to be escalating all around us. Parents at the schools where Rolf worked were choking and shooting each other, a girl was killed three blocks from our home in a case of mistaken identity, and a kid we knew was mauled to death by his family's pet pit bull. In our neighborhood, residents were being robbed by criminals posing as service workers. So doom felt very, very close. In my anxious state, I spent hours in my own home planning and visualizing how I would kill an intruder by throwing stuffed animals at his head to distract him long enough to grab a paring knife to stab him in the eye socket. Then I would tie him to a chair and make him watch
Baby Einstein
and
Teletubbies
so in his last moments on earth he would feel totally nutty. Like me. At least someone would then finally know my pain.

But unlike me, at least the intruder I killed would get to have a good night's sleep. I was too busy to sleep. We had about a month to sell our house, buy a house, procure a job for my husband, and find a new school for Lucy. We spent more days driving back and forth the three hours between San Francisco and Nevada City so that Rolf could go to job interviews. We'd park in the grocery store parking lot and he would change his clothes in the car with his butt hanging out the window, but we didn't have anywhere else to go.

Our Nevada County realtor was confused by our need-it-done-yesterday city slicker ways, but nonetheless, he showed us all the properties we'd downloaded from real estate websites the night before. We drove around and checked out all the possible schools Lucy might attend. The days ticked by. In San Francisco, the school year would be starting in two weeks. And we were still scrambling to get everything in place.

Looking back to that hectic, gut-wrenching time period, I guess it's not too surprising that Rolf's appendix would burst. Ugh. Who had time to drop everything and have surgery? It's possible that yes, he could have died, but that little extended vacay in the emergency room was highly inconvenient. I remember him lying on the gurney as I put a pen in his hand to sign papers like he was a dying octogenarian and I was Anna Nicole Smith. I remember thinking,
Don't die now, baby; we're in the middle of escrow!
Rolf doesn't remember much from his hospital stay. As my mom, who is prone to malapropisms, would say, “It was all just a blurb.”

After more lost sleep, and one fewer organ later, it was time to bust a move. Something inside me had snapped. We had to leave. I felt so beholden to an enormous, abstract responsibility in my hometown—to family members, to frenemies, to Chinese neighbors who expected me to talk or act differently. Strangers appeared hostile, and every corner of the city seemed overcrowded and outlandishly expensive. Affording an education for Lucy seemed out of reach, and we were already treading water in debt.

I was ready to jettison our escape pod. Of course, the financials for a home loan took longer to come through than we expected. Rolf couldn't give notice at his San Francisco job because we wouldn't be able to get a loan if he was unemployed or even just newly employed. And we were in a pickle because we really didn't have any money to buy a new house until we sold the old house, and that hadn't happened yet. Our Bay Area, Asian American mortgage broker was working overtime for us, and in his good-natured exasperation he said to me, “Why are you moving to the middle of nowhere? Aren't there, like, no Asians up there? What are you going to do, open up a Panda Express?”

Oh, you're hilarious, Ted.

“For your information, they already have a Panda Express, thank you very much.”

The only way to break out of the locked Chinese box was to leave San Francisco. I truly believed that there wasn't any room for a “new” kind of me to grow in my hometown. My world had shrunk, or I had painted myself into a corner. Any way you wanted to say it, I was stuck in the mud, and whichever way I tried to maneuver, I just sank deeper.

Sometimes you have to break down a door with all your might. What remains of the crash is a splintered, bloody mess. But at least you're still alive and kickin'. And that's how I felt then. Like I had to leave to stay alive.

So screw me and the Subaru I rode out on. Life in San Francisco ended with a creaking sound. An aching, wet, wooden pier down at the wharf, or maybe China Basin, was groaning. A ship was moored beside it, and the planks pulled against the weight of the vessel as it tried to accelerate away.
SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!
The ropes were giving way, breaking, whipping up as they did. The wooden pier felt its xylophone skeleton being pulled apart, then fell back into a slump, causing a small but significant tidal wave.

The boat that got away was being paddled by human hands. Ours. Mine. We were away. The skyline receded, and the familiar red neon letters faded away, the ones that spelled out
PORT OF SAN FRANCISCO
. We floated away on the Bay, and then under the Golden Gate Bridge to the open waters of the Pacific. The gentle lapping of the ocean and our breathing, our panting from exhaustion, were the only noises, and seagulls.

We risked everything to leave.

And oh, the creaking. I still hear it in my dreams, and in my waking life, too. I detect the faint sounds of the moaning wooden pier as the tide rushes in and out. The moorings did not hold. I loosened the bonds myself and threw my body against the feeling of something constricting me. Before I knew it, restraints that I imagined were made of silk finally snapped. The braided strands had never been even a little bit frayed, but the next moment I found myself on the floor, broken free. Free to go.

As the song goes, “San Francisco, here is your wanderin' one / Saying I'll wander no more.” But I had never wandered, never strayed even once. I got up and left the only place I ever knew. My city. A lot of people belong to her and she to them, and they came from near and far. Sayonara.

And yet. And yet. Still I hear those plaintive cries, the moans and whispers. They say, “Come back. Come back. Please, daughter. Please, friend. Come back, honey.”

And all night, in the brightest moonlight, it still keeps me awake, night after night in Nevada City.

As I write this right now, I've just had to stop and pause because Lucy is showing me her latest book,
The Mice Go On, Volume 26
. She has been working on these books that she has stapled together for about a year now, and this is the latest adventure. The series is about a mouse named Squeak and all the calamities from which he escapes. For instance, once a water bottle floods his mouse hole; another time a cat attacks him and his friends; and another time a mousetrap almost captures him in its clutches. The pages are filled with mishaps, foiled plans, and harebrained schemes that always end up working out just fine. No matter what chaos takes place, every volume of
The Mice Go On
concludes in the very same, satisfying way. It's very simple. The last page of every book is blank except for one sentence, “And everything was
OK
.”

And so it was for us. We left San Francisco and moved to Nevada City. We found a new job for Rolf and a new school for Lucy. We lasted long enough in the city to not get flattened in the crosswalk or disfigured by a deranged bull mastiff. We were pretty wobbly at first, but like a mother mouse in one of my daughter's homemade books, I just kept telling myself that everything would be okay.

22

Even after I left my hometown, or maybe because of this drastic change, I remained fascinated with the life trajectories of Asian Americans who don't want to follow the routes their parents delineate for them. Some have gone ahead and gotten that medical degree or passed the bar exam, but they know in their hearts that they don't want to practice medicine or law. Others of us have followed the path of our dreams even though our parents have warned us that it only leads to the poorhouse. I suppose we are all struggling to escape what is expected of us.

I think of Yoda saying to Luke Skywalker, “Luminous beings are we,” and that reminds me of the fluidity of ideas and feelings, and of how we don't have to pigeonhole ourselves, even though we might consider our bodies and personalities as already set in stone.

We can be a lot of things and feel a lot of ways. But who says we can't change if we want to? One day we can be more generous than usual, or less hidden, or less controlling, and more accepting. I think there are unexplored parts of every person's heart. Let's go spelunking.

To want another life other than the one you currently have can be an elusive pursuit. You can't capture it under glass, this mysterious thing that moves in and around us, hiding and revealing itself to us in its own sweet time. Our ambitions and desires for change are constantly in alternating modes, either stirring us into a frenzy or half hibernating in the dark. Our ambition is alive in a cave, in the sunlight, in the air. While we go about our business, this unknowable thing skips around. We feel weak from it sometimes, to have a sense of it flitting around—from me, to you, to other people we see on the street, or through everybody, within anybody else filled with a desperate desire for “something else.”

Being a Chinese American today is to have your spirit in a stream, with those glimmering, shimmering particles too infinitesimal to scoop out, like gold flecks in river water. An American in a Chinese body is always panning for gold. You become part of the water, or else the gold becomes part of you as you cup your hands together and bring a drink of that rushing water to your lips. No matter if you speak English, Cantonese, or Mandarin, there's always a sweetness on the tongue, but also a thirst that can't be quenched.

In life, the not-knowing of never trying is worse than the knowing of doing and failing. As you try different ways of being, and eliminate what doesn't work for you, your desires are constantly changing shape, like water. Your aspirations can drip maddeningly off the storm drain or wash clean a window so you can see better. Sometimes water floods, or merely moistens, or can carry you back or forward like a tidal wash, or might crash down and bring destruction like a wave at Mavericks. As we swim with or against the currents, we go in and out like specks. Water can wash, or it can drown.

You might have a sensation that there's somewhere else you're supposed to be. In New York, Shanghai, San Francisco, Beijing, Hong Kong, or Los Angeles, your body in space, whether you are surrounded by many other Asians or if you are the only one around for miles, you feel a heat that doesn't burn, like a slow pouring of liquid on your skin. It doesn't stain, but can penetrate and coat you invisibly, like a protection or salve. There is always a yearning that time cannot wrestle to the ground.

Sometimes what we want or think we want feels like a barren branch, but slowly, like right before a rain, plump little birds come and perch one by one. And then there are those tiny birds that travel in clouds, and they can look like a swarm of bees from a distance.