Half and Half
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Rose Hsu JordanAs proof of her faith, my mother used to carry a small leatherette Bible when she went to the First ese Baptist Church every Sunday. But later, after my mother lost her faith in God, that leatherette Bible wound up wedged under a too-short table leg, a way for her to correct the imbalances of life. Its been there for over twenty years.
My mother pretends that Bible isnt there. Whenever anyone asks her what its doing there, she says, a little too loudly, "Oh, this? I fot." But I know she sees it. My mother is not the best housekeeper in the world, and after all these years that Bible is still white.
Tonight Im watg my mother sweep uhe same kit table, something she does every night after dinner. She gently pokes her broom around the table leg propped up by the Bible. I watch her, sweep after sweep, waiting for the right moment to tell her about Ted ahat were getting divorced. When I tell her, I know shes going to say, "This ot be."
And when I say that it is certainly true, that our marriage is over, I know what else she will say: "Then you must save it."
And even though I know its hopeless—theres absolutely nothio save—Im afraid if I tell her that, shell still persuade me to try.
I think its ironic that my mother wants me to fight the divorce. Seventeen years ago she was chagrined when I started dating Ted. My older sisters had dated only ese boys from church befetting married.
Ted and I met in a politics of ecology class when he leaned over and offered to pay me two dollars for the last weeks notes. I refused the money and accepted a cup of coffee instead. This was during my sed semester at UC Berkeley, where I had enrolled as a liberal arts major and later ged to fis. Ted was in his third year in pre-med, his choice, he told me, ever since he dissected a fetal pig in the sixth grade.
I have to admit that what I initially found attractive in Ted were precisely the things that made him different from my brothers and the ese boys I had dated: his brashness; the assuredness in which he asked for things and expected to get them; his opinionated manner; his angular fad lanky body; the thiess of his arms; the fact that his parents immigrated from Tarrytown, New York, not Tientsin, a.
My mother must have noticed these same differences after Ted picked me up one evening at my parents house. When I returned home, my mother was still up, watg television.
"He is Ameri," warned my mother, as if I had been too blind to notice. A waigoren."
"Im Ameri too," I said. "And its not as if Im going to marry him or something."
Mrs. Jordan also had a few words to say. Ted had casually invited me to a family piic, the annual reunion held by the polo fields in Golden Gate Park. Although we had dated only a few times in the last month—aainly had never slept together, sih of us lived at home—Ted introduced me to all his relatives as his girlfriend, which, until then, I didnt know I was.
Later, when Ted and his father went off to play volleyball with the others, his mother took my hand, aarted walking along the grass, away from the crowd. She squeezed my palm warmly but never seemed to look at me.
"Im so glad to meet you finally," Mrs. Jordan said. I wao tell her I wasnt really Teds girlfriend, but she went on. "I think its hat you and Ted are having such a lot of fun together. So I hope you wont misuand what I have to say."
And then she spoke quietly about Teds future, his o trate on his medical studies, why it would be years before he could even think about marriage. She assured me she had nothing whatsainst minorities; she and her husband, who owned a of office-supply stores, personally knew many fine people who were Oriental, Spanish, and even black. But Ted was going to be in one of those professions where he would be judged by a different standard, by patients and other doctors who might not be as uanding as the Jordans were. She said it was so unfortuhe way the rest of the world was, how unpopular the Vietnam War was.
"Mrs. Jordan, I am not Vietnamese," I said softly, even though I was on the verge of shouting. "And I have no iion of marrying your son."
When Ted drove me home that day, I told him I couldnt see him anymore. When he asked me why, I shrugged. When he pressed me, I told him what his mother had said, verbatim, without ent.
"And youre just going to sit there! Let my mother decide whats right?" he shouted, as if I were a co-spirator who had turraitor. I was touched that Ted was so upset.
"What should we do?" I asked, and I had a pained feeling I thought was the beginning of love.
In those early months, we g to each other with a rather silly desperation, because, in spite of anything my mother or Mrs. Jordan could say, there was nothing that really prevented us from seeing one another. With imagiragedy h over us, we became inseparable, two halves creating the whole: yin and yang. I was victim to his hero. I was always in danger and he was always resg me. I would fall and he would lift me up. It was exhilarating and draining. The emotional effect of saving and being saved was addig to both of us. And that, as much as anything we ever did in bed, was how we made love to each other: joined where my weaknesses needed prote.
"What should we do?" I tio ask him. And within a year of our first meeting we were living together. The month before Ted started medical school at UCSF we were married in the Episcopal church, and Mrs. Jordan sat in the front pew, g as was expected of the grooms mother. When Ted finished his residen dermatology, we bought a run-down three-story Victorian with a large garden in Ashbury Heights. Ted helped me set up a studio downstairs so I could take in work as a free-lance produ assistant fraphic artists.
Over the years, Ted decided where we went on vacation. He decided what new furniture we should buy. He decided we should wait until we moved into a better neighborhood before having children. We used to discuss some of these matters, but we both khe question would boil down to my saying, "Ted, you decide." After a while, there were no more discussions. Ted simply decided. And I hought of objeg. I preferred to ighe world around me, obsessing only over what was in front of me: my T-square, my X-acto knife, my blue pencil.
But last year Teds feelings about what he called "decision and responsibility" ged. A new patient had e to him asking what she could do about the spidery veins on her cheeks. And wheold her he could suck the red veins out and make her beautiful again, she believed him. But instead, he actally sucked a , and the left side of her smile fell down and she sued him.
After he lost the malpractice lawsuit—his first, and a big sho I now realize—he started pushio make des. Did I think we should buy an Ameri car or a Japanese car? Should we ge from whole-life to term insurance? What did I think about that didate who supported the tras? What about a family?
I thought about things, the pros and the s. But in the end I would be so fused, because I never believed there was ever any ht answer, yet there were many wrong ones. So whenever I said, "You decide," or "I dont care," or "Either way is fih me," Ted would say in his impatient voice, "No, you decide. You t have it both ways, none of the responsibility, none of the blame."
I could feel things giween us. A protective veil had been lifted and Ted now started pushing me about everything. He asked me to decide on the most trivial matters, as if he were baitialian food or Thai. One appetizer or two. Which appetizer. Credit card or cash. Visa or MasterCard.
Last month, when he was leaving for a two-day dermatology course in Los Angeles, he asked if I wao e along and then quickly, before I could say anything, he added, "Never mind, Id rather go alone."
"More time to study," I agreed.
"No, because you ever make up your mind about anything," he said.
And I protested, "But its only with things that arent important."
"Nothing is important to you, then," he said in a tone of disgust.
"Ted, if you wao go, Ill go."
And it was as if something snapped in him. "How the hell did we ever get married? Did you just say I do because the minister said repeat after me? What would you have doh your life if I had never married you? Did it ever occur to you?"
This was such a big leap in logic, between what I said and what he said, that I thought we were like two people standing apart on separate mountain peaks, recklessly leaning forward to throw sto one another, unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.
But now I realize Ted knew what he was saying all along. He wao show me the rift. Because later that evening he called from Los Angeles and said he wanted a divorce.
Ever sieds been gone, Ive been thinking, Even if I had expected it, even if I had known what I was going to do with my life, it still would have khe wind out of me.
When something that violent hits you, you t help but lose your baland fall. And after you pick yourself up, you realize you t trust anybody to save you—not your husband, not your mother, not God. So what you do to stop yourself from tilting and falling all ain?
My mother believed in Gods will for many years. It was as if she had turned on a celestial faucet and goodness kept p out. She said it was faith that kept all these good things ing our way, only I thought she said "fate," because she couldnt pronouhat "th" sound in "faith."
And later, I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow youre in trol. I found out the most I could have was hope, and with that I was not denying any possibility, good or bad. I was just saying, If there is a choice, dear God or whatever you are, heres where the odds should be placed.
I remember the day I started thinking this, it was such a revelation to me. It was the day my mother lost her faith in God. She found that things of uioned certainty could never be trusted again.
We had goo the beach, to a secluded spot south of the city near Devils Slide. My father had read in Su magazihat this was a good place to catch o perch. And although my father was not a fisherman but a pharmacists assistant who had once been a doctor in a, he believed in his nengkan, his ability to do anythi his mind to. My mother believed she had nengkan to cook anything my father had a mind to catch. It was this belief in their nengkan that had brought my parents to America. It had ehem to have seven children and buy a house in the Su district with very little money. It had givehe fideo believe their luck would never run out, that God was on their side, that the house gods had only benevolent things to report and our aors were pleased, that lifetime warranties meant our lucky streak would never break, that all the elements were in balahe right amount of wind and water.
So there we were, the nine of us: my father, my mother, my two sisters, four brothers, and myself, so fident as we walked along our first beach. We marched in single file across the cool gray sand, from oldest to you. I was in the middle, fourteen years old. We would have made quite a sight, if anyone else had been watg, nine pairs of bare feet trudging, nine pairs of shoes in hand, nine black-haired heads turoward the water to watch the waves tumbling in.
The wind<tt>?９9lｉｂ.t> was whipping the cotton trousers around my legs and I looked for some place where the sand wouldnt kito my eyes. I saere standing in the hollow of a cove. It was like a giant bowl, cracked in half, the other half washed out to sea. My mother walked toward the right, where the beach was , and we all followed. On this side, the wall of the cove curved around and protected the beach from both the rough surf and the wind. And along this wall, in its shadow, was a reef ledge that started at the edge of the bead tinued out past the cove where the waters became rough. It seemed as though a person could walk out to sea on this reef, although it looked very rocky and slippery. Oher side of the cove, the wall was more jagged, eaten away by the water. It itted with crevices, so when the waves crashed against the wall, the water spewed out of these holes like white gulleys.
Thinking back, I remember that this beach cove was a terrible place, full of wet shadows that chilled us and invisible specks that flew into our eyes and made it hard for us to see the dangers. We were all blind with the newness of this experience: a ese family trying to act like a typical Ameri family at the beach.
My mother spread out an old striped bedspread, which flapped in the wind until nine pairs of shoes weighed it down. My father assembled his long bamboo fishing pole, a pole he had made with his own two hands, remembering its design from his childhood in a. And we children sat huddled shoulder to shoulder on the bla, reag into the grocery sack full of bologna sandwiches, which we hungrily ate salted with sand from our fingers.
Then my father stood up and admired his fishing pole, its grace, its strength. Satisfied, he picked up his shoes and walked to the edge of the bead then onto the reef to the point just before it was wet. My two older sisters, Janid Ruth, jumped up from the bla and slapped their thighs to get the sand off. Then they slapped each others bad raced off down the beach shrieking. I was about to get up and chase them, but my mother oward my four brothers and reminded me: "Dangsying tamende shenti," which means "Take care of them," or literally, "Watch out for their bodies." These bodies were the anchors of my life: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Bing. I fell bato the sand, groaning as my throat grew tight, as I made the same lament: "Why?" Why did I have to care for them?
And she gave me the same answer: "Yiding."
I must. Because they were my brothers. My sisters had oaken care of me. How else could I learn responsibility? How else could I appreciate what my parents had done for me?
Matthew, Mark, and Luke were twelve, ten, and nine, old enough to keep themselves loudly amused. They had already buried Luke in a shallow grave of sand so that only his head stuck out. Now they were starting to pat together the outlines of a sand-castle wall on top of him.
But Bing was only four, easily excitable and easily bored and irritable. He didnt want to play with the other brothers because they had pushed him off to the side, admonishing him, "No, Bing, youll just wreck it."
So Bing wandered down the beach, walking stiffly like an ousted emperor, pig up shards of rod ks of driftwood and flinging them with all his might into the surf. I trailed behind, imagining tidal waves and w what I would do if one appeared. I called to Bing every now and then, "Dont go too close to the water. Youll get your feet wet." And I thought how much I seemed like my mother, always worried beyond reason inside, but at the same time talking about the danger as if it were less than it really was. The worry surrounded me, like the wall of the cove, and it made me feel everything had been sidered and was now safe.
My mother had a superstition, in fact, that children were predisposed to certain dangers oain days, all depending on their ese birthdate. It was explained in a little ese book called The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates. There, on each page, was an illustration of some terrible dahat awaited young i children. In the ers was a description written in ese, and since I couldhe characters, I could only see what the picture meant.
The same little boy appeared in each picture: climbing a broken tree limb, standing by a falling gate, slipping in a wooden tub, being carried away by a snapping dog, fleeing from a bolt of lightning. And in each of these pictures stood a man who looked as if he were wearing a lizard e. He had a big crease in his forehead, or maybe it was actually that he had two round horns. In one picture, the lizard man was standing on a curved bridge, laughing as he watched the little boy falling forward over the bridge rail, his slippered feet already in the air.
It would have been enough to think that even one of these dangers could befall a child. And even though the birthdates correspoo only one danger, my mother worried about them all. This was because she couldnt figure out how the ese dates, based on the lunar dar, translated into Ameri dates. So by taking them all into at, she had absolute faith she could prevent every one of them.
The sun had shifted and moved over the other side of the cove wall. Everything had settled into place. My mother was busy keeping sand from blowing onto the blahen shaking sand out of shoes, and tag ers of blas back down again with the now shoes. My father was still standing at the end of the reef, patiently casting out, waiting for nengkan to ma itself as a fish. I could see small figures farther down on the beach, and I could tell they were my sisters by their two dark heads and yellow pants. My brothers shrieks were mixed with those of seagulls. Bing had found ay soda bottle and was using this to dig sao the dark cove wall. And I sat on the sand, just where the shadows ended and the sunny part began.
Bing ounding the soda bottle against the rock, so I called to him, "Dont dig so hard. Youll bust a hole in the wall and fall all the way to a." And I laughed when he looked at me as though he thought what I said was true. He stood up and started walking toward the water. He put one foot tentatively on the reef, and I warned him, "Bing."
"Im gonna see Daddy," he protested.
"Stay close to the wall, then, away from the water," I said. "Stay away from the mean fish."
And I watched as he inched his way along the reef, his back hugging the bumpy cove wall. I still see him, so clearly that I almost feel I make him stay there forever.
I see him standing by the wall, safe, calling to my father, who looks over his shoulder toward Bing. How glad I am that my father is going to watch him for a while! Bing starts to walk over and then something tugs on my fathers line and hes reeling as fast as he .
Shouts erupt. Someone has thrown sand in Lukes fad hes jumped out of his sand grave and thrown himself on top of Mark, thrashing and kig. My mother shouts for me to stop them. And right after I pull Luke off Mark, I look up and see Bing walking aloo the edge of the reef. In the fusion of the fight, nobody notices. I am the only one who sees what Bing is doing.
Bing walks owo, three steps. His little body is moving so quickly, as if he spotted something wonderful by the waters edge. And I think, Hes going to fall in. Im expeg it. And just as I think this, his feet are already in the air, in a moment of balance, before he splashes into the sea and disappears without leaving so much as a ripple ier.
I sank to my knees watg that spot where he disappeared, not moving, not saying anything. I couldnt make sense of it. I was thinking, Should I run to the water and try to pull him out? Should I shout to my father? I rise on my legs fast enough? I take it all bad forbid Bing from joining my father on the ledge?
And then my sisters were back, and one of them said, "Wheres Bing?" There was silence for a few seds and then shouts and sand flying as everyone rushed past me toward the waters edge. I stood there uo move as my sisters looked by the cove wall, as my brothers scrambled to see what lay behind pieces of driftwood. My mother and father were trying to part the waves with their hands.
We were there for many hours. I remember the search boats and the su when dusk came. I had never seen a su like that: a bright e flame toug the waters edge and then fanning out, warming the sea. When it became dark, the boats turheir yellow orbs on and bounced up and down on the dark shiny water.
As I look back, it seems unnatural to think about the colors of the su and boats at a time like that. But we all had strahoughts. My father was calculating minutes, estimating the temperature of the water, readjusting his estimate of when Bing fell. My sisters were calling, "Bing! Bing!" as if he were hiding in some bushes high above the beach cliffs. My brothers sat in the car, quietly reading ic books. And when the boats turned off their yellow orbs, my mother went for a swim. She had never swum a stroke in her life, but her faith in her own nengkan vinced her that what these Ameris couldnt do, she could. She could find Bing.
And when the rescue people finally pulled her out of the water, she still had her nengkan intact. Her hair, her clothes, they were all heavy with the cold water, but she stood quietly, calm and regal as a mermaid queen who had just arrived out of the sea. The police called off the search, put us all in our car, a us home to grieve.
I had expected to be beaten to death, by my father, by my mother, by my sisters and brothers. I k was my fault. I hadnt watched him closely enough, a I saw him. But as we sat in the dark living room, I heard them, one by one whispering their regrets.
"I was selfish to want to go fishing," said my father.
"We shouldnt have gone for a walk," said Janice, while Ruth blew her aime.
"Whyd you have to throw sand in my face?" moaned Luke. "Whyd you have to make me start a fight?"
And my mother quietly admitted to me, "I told you to stop their fight. I told you to take your eyes off him."
If I had had any time at all to feel a sense of relief, it would have quickly evaporated, because my mother also said, "So now I am telling you, we must go and find him, quickly, tomorrow m." And everybodys eyes looked down. But I saw it as my punishment: to go out with my mother, back to the beach, to help her find Bings body.
Nothing prepared me for what my mother did the day. When I woke up, it was still dark and she was already dressed. O table was a thermos, a teacup, the white leatherette Bible, and the car keys.
"Is Daddy ready?" I asked.
"Daddys not ing," she said.
"Then how will we get there? Who will drive us?"
She picked up the keys and I followed her out the door to the car. I wohe whole time as we drove to the beach how she had learo drive ht. She used no map. She drove smoothly ahead, turning down Geary, then the Great Highway, signaling at all the right times, getting on the Coast Highway and easily winding the car around the sharp curves that often led inexperienced drivers off and over the cliffs.
When we arrived at the beach, she walked immediately down the dirt path and over to the end of the reef ledge, where I had seen Bing disappear. She held in her hand the white Bible. And looking out over the water, she called to God, her small voice carried up by the gulls to heaven. It began with "Dear God" and ended with "Amen," and iween she spoke in ese.
"I have always believed in your blessings," she praised God in that same tone she used for exaggerated ese pliments. "We khey would e. We did not question them. Your decisions were our decisions. You rewarded us for our faith.
"Iurn we have always tried to show our deepest respect. We went to your house. We brought you money. We sang your songs. You gave us more blessings. And now we have misplaced one of them. We were careless. This is true. We had so many good things, we couldhem in our mind all the time.
"So maybe you hid him from us to teach us a lesson, to be more careful with yifts iure. I have learhis. I have put it in my memory. And now I have e to take Bing back."
I listened quietly as my mother said these words, horrifed. And I began to cry when she added, "Five us for his bad manners. My daughter, this oanding here, will be sure to teach him better lessons of obedience before he visits you again."
After her prayer, her faith was so great that she saw him, three times, waving to her from just beyond the first wave. "Nale!"—There! And she would stand straight as a sentinel, until three times her eyesight failed her and Bing turned into a dark spot of ing seaweed.
My mother did not let her fall down. She walked back to the bead put the Bible down. She picked up the thermos and teacup and walked to the waters edge. Theold me that the night before she had reached bato her life, back when she was a girl in a, and this is what she had found.
"I remember a boy who lost his hand in a firecracker act," she said. "I saw the shreds of this boys arm, his tears, and then I heard his mothers claim that he would grow baother hand, better than the last. This mother said she would pay ba aral debt ten times over. She would use a water treatment to soothe the wrath of Chu Jung, the three-eyed god of fire. And true enough, the week this boy was riding a bicycle, both hands steering a straight course past my astonished eyes!"
And then my mother became very quiet. She spoke again in a thoughtful, respectful manner.
"An aor of ours oole water from a sacred well. Now the water is trying to steal back. We must sweeteemper of the Coiling Dragon who lives in the sea. And then we must make him loosen his coils from Bing by giving him areasure he hide."
My mother poured out tea sweetened with sugar into the teacup, and threw this into the sea. And then she opened her fist. In her palm was a ring of watery blue sapphire, a gift from her mother, who had died many years before. This ring, she told me, drew coveting stares from women and made them iive to the children they guarded so jealously. This would make the Coiling Dragon fetful of Bing. She threw the ring into the water.
But even with this, Bing did not appear right away. For an hour or so, all we saw was seaweed drifting by. And then I saw her clasp her hands to her chest, and she said in a wondrous voice, "See, its because we were watg the wrong dire." And I too saw Bing trudging wearily at the far end of the beach, his shoes hanging in his hand, his dark head bent over in exhaustion. I could feel what my mother felt. The hunger in our hearts was instantly filled. And thewo of us, before we could eveo our feet, saw him light a cigarette, grow tall, and bee a stranger.
"Ma, lets go," I said as softly as possible.
"Hes there," she said firmly. She poio the jagged wall across the water. "I see him. He is in a cave, sitting on a little step above the water. He is hungry and a little cold, but he has learned now not to plain too much."
And theood up and started walking across the sandy beach as though it were a solid paved path, and I was trying to follow behind, struggling and stumbling in the soft mounds. She marched up the steep path to where the car arked, and she wasnt evehing hard as she pulled a large iube from the trunk. To this lifesaver, she tied the fishing line from my fathers bamboo pole. She walked bad threw the tube into the sea, holding onto the pole.
"This will go where Bing is. I will bring him back," she said fiercely. I had never heard so muengkan in my mothers voice.
The tube followed her mind. It drifted out, toward the other side of the cove where it was caught by stronger waves. The line became taut and she straio hold on tight. But the line snapped and then spiraled into the water.
We both climbed toward the end of the reef to watch. The tube had now reached the other side of the cove. A big wave smashed it into the wall. The bloated tube leapt up and then it was sucked in, uhe wall and into a cavern. It popped out. Over and ain, it disappeared, emerged, glistening black, faithfully rep it had seen Bing and was going back to try to pluck him from the cave. Over and ain, it dove and popped back up agaiy but still hopeful. And then, after a dozen or so times, it was sucked into the dark recess, and when it came out, it was torn and lifeless.
At that moment, and not until that moment, did she give up. My mother had a look on her face that Ill never fet. It was one of plete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to ge fate. And it made me angry—so blindingly angry—that everything had failed us.
I know now that I had never expected to find Bing, just as I knoill never find a way to save my marriage. My mother tells me, though, that I should still try.
"Whats the point?" I say. "Theres no hope. Theres no reason to keep trying."
"Because you must," she says. "This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do."
"So what I do?"
And my mother says, "You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someoells you, then you are n." And then she walks out of the kit to let me think about this.
I think about Bing, how I knew he was in danger, how I let it happen. I think about my marriage, how I had seen the signs, really I had. But I just let it happen. And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by iion. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. You have to pay attention to what you lost. You have to undo the expectation.
My mother, she still pays attention to it. That Bible uhe table, I know she sees it. I remember seeing her write in it before she wedged it under.
I lift the table and slide the Bible out. I put the Bible oable, flipping quickly through the pages, because I know its there. On the page before the estament begins, theres a se called "Deaths," and thats where she wrote "Bing Hsu" lightly, in erasable pencil.
Half and Half Up
Two Kinds
Jing-Mei Woo
My mother believed you could be anything you wao be in America. You could open a restaurant. You could work for the gover a good retirement. You could buy a house with almost no money down. You could bee rich. You could bee instantly famous.
"Of course you be prodigy, too," my mother told me when I was nine. "You be best anything. What does Auntie Lindo know? Her daughter, she is only best tricky."
America was where all my mothers hopes lay. She had e here in 1949 after losing everything in a: her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls. But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.
We didnt immediately pick the right kind y. At first my mother thought I could be a ese Shirley Temple. Wed watch Shirleys old movies on TV as though they were training films. My mother would poke my arm and say, "Ni kan"—You watch. And I would see Shirley tapping her feet, or singing a sailor song, or pursing her lips into a very round O while saying, "Oh my goodness."
"Ni kan," said my mother as Shirleys eyes flooded with tears. "You already know how. Doalent f!"
Soon after my mot this idea about Shirley Temple, she took me to a beauty training school in the Mission distrid put me in the hands of a student who could barely hold the scissors without shaking. Instead of getting big fat curls, I emerged with an uneven mass of kly black fuzz. My mother dragged me off to the bathroom and tried to wet down my hair.
"You look like Negro ese," she lamented, as if I had dohis on purpose.
The instructor of the beauty training school had to lop off these soggy clumps to make my hair even again. "Peter Pan is very popular these days," the instructor assured my mother. I now had hair the length of a boys, with straight-across bangs that hung at a slant two inches above my eyebrows. I liked the haircut and it made me actually look forward to my future fame.
In fact, in the beginning, I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so. I pictured this prodigy part of me as many different images, trying eae on for size. I was a dainty ballerina girl standing by the curtains, waiting to hear the right music that would send me floating on my tiptoes. I was like the Christ child lifted out of the straw manger, g with holy indignity. I was derella stepping from her pumpkin carriage with sparkly usic filling the air.
In all of my imaginings, I was filled with a sehat I would soon bee perfect. My mother and father would adore me. I would be beyond reproach. I would never feel the o sulk for anything.
But sometimes the prodigy in me became impatient. "If you dont hurry up a me out of here, Im disappearing food," it warned. "And then youll always be nothing."
Every night after dinner, my mother and I would sit at the Formica kit table. She would preseests, taking her examples from stories of amazing children she had read in Ripleys Believe It or Not, ood Housekeeping, Readers Digest, and a dozen azines she kept in a pile in our bathroom. My mot these magazines from people whose houses she ed. And since she ed many houses each week, we had a great assortment. She would look through them all, searg for stories about remarkable children.
The first night she brought out a story about a three-year-old boy who khe capitals of all the states and even most of the European tries. A teacher was quoted as saying the little boy could also pronouhe names of the fn cities correctly.
"Whats the capital of Finland?" my mother asked me, looking at the magaziory.
All I knew was the capital of California, because Sacramento was the name of the street we lived on in atown. "Nairobi!" I guessed, saying the most fn word I could think of. She checked to see if that ossibly one way to pronounce " Helsinki" before showihe answer.
The tests got harder—multiplying numbers in my head, finding the queen of hearts in a deck of cards, trying to stand on my head without using my hands, predig the daily temperatures in Los Angeles, New York, and London.
One night I had to look at a page from the Bible for three minutes and the everything I could remember. "Now Jehoshaphat had riches and honor in abundand…thats all I remember, Ma," I said.
And after seeing my mothers disappointed face again, something inside of me began to die. I hated the tests, the raised hopes and failed expectations. Befoing to bed that night, I looked in the mirror above the bathroom sink and when I saw only my face staring bad that it would always be this ordinary face—I began to cry. Such a sad, ugly girl! I made highpitched noises like a crazed animal, trying to scratch out the fa the mirror.
And then I saw what seemed to be the prodigy side of me—because I had never seen that face before. I looked at my refle, blinking so I could see more clearly. The girl staring back<cite></cite> at me was angry, powerful. This girl and I were the same. I had houghts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of wonts. I wo her ge me, I promised myself. I wont be what Im not.
So now on nights when my mother presented her tests, I performed listlessly, my head propped on one arm. I preteo be bored. And I was. I got so bored I started ting the bellows of the foghorns out on the bay while my mother drilled me in other areas. The sound was f and reminded me of the cow jumping over the moon. And the day, I played a game with myself, seeing if my mother would give up on me before eight bellows. After a while I usually ted only one, maybe two bellows at most. At last she was beginning to give up hope.
Two or three months had gone by without aion of my being a prodigy again. And then one day my mother was watg The Ed Sullivan Show on TV. The TV was old and the sou sh out. Every time my mot half from the sofa to adjust the set, the sound would go ba and Ed would be talking. As soon as she sat down, Ed would go silent again. She got up, the TV broke into loud piano music. She sat down. Silence. Up and down, bad forth, quiet and loud. It was like a stiff embraceless daween her and the TV set. Finally she stood by the set with her hand on the sound dial.
She seemed entranced by the music, a little frenzied piano piece with this mesmerizing quality, sort of quick passages and then teasing lilting ones before it returo the quick playful parts.
"Ni kan," my mother said, calling me over with hurried haures, "Look here."
I could see why my mother was fasated by the music. It was being pounded out by a little ese girl, about nine years old, with a Peter Pan haircut. The girl had the sauess of a Shirley Temple. She roudly modest like a proper ese child. And she also did this fancy sweep of a curtsy, so that the fluffy skirt of her white dress cascaded slowly to the floor like the petals of a large ation.
In spite of these warning signs, I wasnt worried. Our family had no piano and we couldnt afford to buy one, let alone reams of sheet musid piano lessons. So I could be generous in my ents when my mother bad-mouthed the little girl on TV.
"Play nht, but doesnt sound good! No singing sound," plained my mother.
"What are you pig on her for?" I said carelessly. "Shes pretty good. Maybe shes not the best, but shes trying hard." I knew almost immediately I would be sorry I said that.
"Just like you," she said. "Not the best. Because you n." She gave a little huff as she let go of the sound dial and sat down on the sofa.
The little ese girl sat down also to play an encore of "Anitras Dance" by Grieg. I remember the song, because later on I had to learn how to play it.
Three days after watg The Ed Sullivan Show, my mother told me what my schedule would be for piano lessons and piano practice. She had talked to Mr. g, who lived on the first floor of our apartment building. Mr. g was a retired piano teacher and my mother had traded houseing services for weekly lessons and a piano for me to practi every day, two hours a day, from four until six.
When my mother told me this, I felt as though I had beeo hell. I whined and then kicked my foot a little when I couldnt stand it anymore.
"Why dont you like me the way I am? Im not a genius! I t play the piano. And even if I could, I wouldnt go on TV if you paid me a million dollars!" I cried.
My mother slapped me. "Who ask you be genius?" she shouted. "Only ask you be your best. For you sake. You think I want you be genius? Hnnh! What for! Who ask you!"
"So ungrateful," I heard her mutter in ese. "If she had as much talent as she has temper, she would be famous now."
Mr. g, whom I secretly niamed Old g, was very strange, always tapping his fio the silent music of an invisible orchestra. He looked a in my eyes. He had lost most of the hair on top of his head and he wore thick glasses and had eyes that always looked tired and sleepy. But he must have been youhan I thought, since he lived with his mother and was not yet married.
I met Old Lady g ond that was enough. She had this peculiar smell like a baby that had done something in its pants. And her fingers felt like a dead persons, like an old peach I once found in the back of the refrigerator; the skin just slid off the meat when I picked it up.
I soon found out why Old g had retired from teag piano. He was deaf. "Like Beethoven!" he shouted to me. "Were both listening only in our head!" And he would start to duct his frantic silent sonatas.
Our lesso like this. He would open the book and point to different things, explaining their purpose: "Key! Treble! Bass! No sharps or flats! So this is C major! Listen nolay after me!"
And then he would play the C scale a few times, a simple chord, and then, as if inspired by an old, unreachable itch, he gradually added more notes and running trills and a pounding bass until the music was really something quite grand.
I would play after him, the simple scale, the simple chord, and then I just played some nonsehat sounded like a cat running up and down on top of garbage s. Old g smiled and applauded and then said, "Very good! But now you must learn to keep time!"
So thats how I discovered that Old gs eyes were too slow to keep up with the wrong notes I laying. He went through the motions in half-time. To help me keep rhythm, he stood behind me, pushing down on my right shoulder for every beat. He balanced pennies on top of my wrists so I would keep them still as I slowly played scales and arpeggios. He had me curve my hand around an apple ahat shape when playing chords. He marched stiffly to show me how to make each finger dance up and down, staccato like an obedient little soldier.
He taught me all these things, and that was how I also learned I could be lazy a away with mistakes, lots of mistakes. If I hit the wrong notes because I hadnt practiced enough, I never corrected myself. I just kept playing in rhythm. And Old g kept dug his own private reverie.
So maybe I never really gave myself a fair ce. I did pick up the basics pretty quickly, and I might have bee a good pianist at that young age. But I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different that I learo play only the most ear-splitting preludes, the most discordant hymns.
Over the year, I practiced like this, dutifully in my own way. And then one day I heard my mother and her friend Lindo Jong both talking in a loud bragging tone of voice so others could hear. It was after church, and I was leaning against the brick wall wearing a dress with stiff white petticoats. Auntie Lindos daughter, Waverly, who was about my age, was standing farther down the wall about five feet away. We had grown up together and shared all the closeness of two sisters squabbling over crayons and dolls. In other words, for the most part, we hated each other. I thought she was snotty. Waverly Jong had gained a certain amount of fame as "atowns Littlest ese Chess Champion."
"She bring home too many trophy," lamented Auntie Lindo that Sunday. "All day she play chess. All day I have no time do nothing but dust off her winnings." She threw a scolding look at Waverly, who pretended not to see her.
"You lucky you dont have this problem," said Auntie Lindo with a sigh to my mother.
And my mother squared her shoulders and bragged: "Our problem worser than yours. If we ask Jing-mei wash dish, she hear nothing but music. Its like you t stop this natural talent."
And right then, I was determio put a stop to her foolish pride.
A few weeks later, Old g and my mother spired to have me play in a talent show which would be held in the church hall. By then, my parents had saved up enough to buy me a sedhand piano, a black Wurlitzer spi with a scarred bench. It was the showpiece of our living room.
For the talent show, I was to play a piece called "Pleading Child" from Schumanns Ses from Childhood. It was a simple, moody piece that sounded more difficult than it was. I was supposed to memorize the whole thing, playing the repeat parts twiake the piece sound longer. But I dawdled over it, playing a few bars and theing, looking up to see what notes followed. I never really listeo what I laying. I daydreamed about being somewhere else, about being someone else.
The part I liked to practice best was the fancy curtsy: right foot out, touch the rose on the carpet with a pointed foot, sweep to the side, left leg bends, look up and smile.
My parents invited all the couples from the Joy Luck Club to witness my debut. Auntie Lindo and Uihere. Waverly awo older brothers had also e. The first two rows were filled with children both younger and older than I was. The littlest ones got to go first. They recited simple nursery rhymes, squawked out tunes on miniature violins, twirled Hula Hoops, pranced in pink ballet tutus, and when they bowed or curtsied, the audi<samp>..</samp>ence would sigh in unison, "A," and then clap enthusiastically.
When my turn came, I was very fident. I remember my childish excitement. It was as if I knew, without a doubt, that the prodigy side of me really did exist. I had no fear whatsoever, no nervousness. I remember thinking to myself, This is it! This is it! I looked out over the audie my mothers blank face, my fathers yawn, Auntie Lindos stiff-lipped smile, Waverlys sulky expression. I had on a white dress layered with sheets of lace, and a pink bow in my Peter Pan haircut. As I sat down I envisioned people jumping to their feet and Ed Sullivan rushing up to introduce me to everyone on TV.
And I started to play. It was so beautiful. I was so caught up in how lovely I looked that at first I didnt worry how I would sound. So it was a surprise to me when I hit the first wrong note and I realized something didnt sound quite right. And then I hit another and another followed that. A chill started at the top of my head and began to trickle dow I couldnt stop playing, as though my hands were bewitched. I kept thinking my fingers would adjust themselves back, like a train switg to the right track. I played this strange jumble through two repeats, the sour aying with me all the way to the end.
When I stood up, I discovered my legs were shaking. Maybe I had just been nervous and the audience, like Old g, had seen me gh the right motions and had not heard anything wrong at all. I swept my right foot out, went down on my knee, looked up and smiled. The room was quiet, except for Old g, who was beaming and shouting, "Bravo! Bravo! Well done!" But then I saw my mothers face, her stri face. The audience clapped weakly, and as I walked bay chair, with my whole face quivering as I tried not to cry, I heard a little boy whisper loudly to his mother, "That was awful," and the mother whispered back, "Well, she certainly tried."
And now I realized hoeople were in the audiehe whole world it seemed. I was aware of eyes burning into my back. I felt the shame of my mother and father as they sat stiffly throughout the rest of the show.
We could have escaped during intermission. Pride and some strange sense of honor must have anchored my parents to their chairs. And so we watched it all: the eighteen-year-old boy with a fake mustache who did a magic show and juggled flaming hoops while riding a unicycle. The breasted girl with white makeup who sang from Madama Butterfly and got honorable mention. And the eleven-year-old boy who won first prize playing a tricky violin song that sounded like a busy bee.
After the show, the Hsus, the Jongs, and the St. Clairs from the Joy Luck Club came up to my mother and father.
"Lots of talented kids," Auntie Lindo sai<big></big>d vaguely, smiling broadly.
"That was somethin else," said my father, and I wondered if he was referring to me in a humorous way, or whether he even remembered what I had done.
Waverly looked at me and shrugged her shoulders. "You arent a genius like me," she said matter-of-factly. And if I had so bad, I would have pulled her braids and punched her stomach.
But my mothers expression was what devastated me: a quiet, blank look that said she had lost everything. I felt the same way, and it seemed as if everybody were now ing up, like gawkers at the se of an act, to see arts were actually missing. Whe on the bus to go home, my father was humming the busy-bee tune and my mother was silent. I kept thinking she wao wait until we got home before shouting at me. But when my father unlocked the door to our apartment, my mother walked in and theo the back, into the bedroom. No accusations. No blame. And in a way, I felt disappointed. I had been waiting for her to start shouting, so I could shout bad cry and blame her for all my misery.
I assumed my talent-show fiaseant I never had to play the piano again. But two days later, after sy mother came out of the kit and saw me watg TV.
"Four clock," she reminded me as if it were any other day. I was stunned, as though she were askio gh the talent-show tain. I wedged myself more tightly in front of the TV.
"Turn off TV," she called from the kit five minutes later.
I didnt budge. And then I decided. I didnt have to do what my mother said anymore. I wasnt her slave. This wasnt a. I had listeo her before and look what happened. She was the stupid one.
She came out from the kit and stood in the arched entryway of the living room. "Four clock," she said once again, louder.
"Im not going to play anymore," I said nonchalantly. "Why should I? Im not a genius."
She walked over and stood in front of the TV. I saw her chest was heaving up and down in an angry way.
"No!" I said, <bdi>.9９lｉｂ?</bdi>and I now felt stronger, as if my true self had finally emerged. So this was what had been inside me all along.
"No! I wont!" I screamed.
She yanked me by the arm, pulled me off the floor, snapped off the TV. She was frighteningly strong, half pulling, half carryioward the piano as I kicked the thrs under my feet. She lifted me up and onto the hard bench. I was sobbing by now, looking at her bitterly. Her chest was heaving even more and her mouth en, smiling crazily as if she were pleased I was g.
"You wao be someohat Im not!" I sobbed. "Ill never be the kind of daughter you wao be!"
"Only two kinds of daughters," she shouted in ese. "Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter live in this house. Obedient daughter!"
"Then I wish I wasnt your daughter. I wish you werent my mother," I shouted. As I said these things I got scared. It felt like worms and toads and slimy things crawling out of my chest, but it also felt good, as if this awful side of me had surfaced, at last.
"Too late ge this," said my mother shrilly.
And I could sense her anger rising to its breaking point. I wao see it spill over. And thats when I remembered the babies she had lost in a, the ones we alked about. "Then I wish Id never been born!" I shouted. "I wish I were dead! Like them."
It was as if I had said the magic words. Alakazam!—and her face went blank, her mouth closed, her arms went slack, and she backed out of the room, stunned, as if she were blowing away like a small brown leaf, thin, brittle, lifeless.
It was not the only disappoi my mother felt in me. In the years that followed, I failed her so many times, each time asserting my own will, my right to fall short of expectations. I didraight As. I didnt bee class president. I did into Stanford. I dropped out of college.
For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wao be. I could only be me.
And for all those years, we alked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible accusations afterward at the piano bench. All that remained unchecked, like a betrayal that was now unspeakable. So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped for something se that failure was iable.
And even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most: Why had she given up hope?
For after our struggle at the piano, she never mentioned my playing again. The lessons stopped. The lid to the piano was closed, shutting out the dust, my misery, and her dreams.
So she surprised me. A few years ago, she offered to give me the piano, for my thirtieth birthday. I had not played in all those years. I saw the offer as a sign of fiveness, a tremendous burden removed.
"Are you sure?" I asked shyly. "I mean, wont you and Dad miss it?"
"No, this your piano," she said firmly. "Always your piano. You only one play."
"Well, I probably t play anymore," I said. "Its been years."
"You pick up fast," said my mother, as if she khis was certain. "You have natural talent. You could been genius if you want to."
"No I couldnt."
"You just n," said my mother. And she was her angry nor sad. She said it as if to announce a fact that could never be disproved. "Take it," she said.
But I didnt at first. It was enough that she had offered it to me. And after that, every time I saw it in my parents living room, standing in front of the bay windows, it made me feel proud, as if it were a shiny trophy I had won back.
Last week I sent a tuner over to my parents apartment and had the piano reditioned, for purely seal reasons. My mother had died a few months before and I had beeing things in order for my father, a little bit at a time. I put the jewelry in special silk pouches. The sweaters she had knitted in yellow, pink, bright e—all the colors I hated—I put those in moth-proof boxes. I found some old ese silk dresses, the kind with little slits up the sides. I rubbed the old silk against my skin, then ed them in tissue and decided to take them home with me.
After I had the piano tuned, I opehe lid and touched the keys. It sounded even richer than I remembered. Really, it was a very good piano. Ihe bench were the same exercise notes with handwritten scales, the same sedhand music books with their covers held together with yelloe.
I opened up the Schumann book to the dark little piece I had played at the recital. It was on the left-hand side of the page, "Pleading Child." It looked more difficult than I remembered. I played a few bars, surprised at how easily the notes came bae.
And for the first time, or so it seemed, I noticed the pie the right-hand side. It was called "Perfectly tented." I tried to play this one as well. It had a lighter melody but the same flowing rhythm and turned out to be quite easy. "Pleading Child" was shorter but slower; "Perfectly tented" was longer, but faster. And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.
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