Bitter Melon (9 page)

“Why weren’t you with your teacher? Why weren’t you with the other kids?” Mom asks.

Theresa looks up at me, her eyes wide with alarm.

“Well,” I say, “like Theresa said, I had already left. I was worried about you, so I rushed out the door.”

“But how did you get home?”

“I just …” I can’t say that I walked. It is too far. But would the bus still run in a time like this? “I just found a way,” I say, aware of how lame I sound.

“Aiyah! Gracie!” Nellie fans the air in front of Mom’s face, as if to slap some sense into her. “Who cares how she got home? The important thing is she’s here! See what a good daughter she is? She risked her own life to return home and make sure you were okay!”

“Theresa is the true hero,” Mom says. “Not only did she figure out how to get us all together, she helped sweep the floor of all
the broken dishes and bowls. Right now my kitchen is littered with broken things. We better head home soon to clean up.”

“No!” Nellie holds out both arms as if stopping an oncoming bus. “Stay with us tonight. You can go home tomorrow.”

“I can’t be a burden,” Mom says.

“You’re not a burden. We need you too. Daddy’s in Hong Kong and Ben is at MIT, so we need the company.” By “Daddy” Nellie means Theresa’s dad, her husband.

That night we eat cold leftover
chow mein
and
chow fun
from Nellie’s fridge. Mom and Nellie are stuffing themselves past the point of fullness. Even a dangerous crisis cannot erase their aversion to wasting food. Theresa warns everyone not to overuse the flashlight.

After dinner, Mom gets the guest bedroom and I get to sleep in Theresa’s room. Minus the lack of street lighting, everything in Theresa’s room looks the same. Her giant New Kids on the Block poster still hangs on the back of her door. Her rainbow comforter still drapes her full-size bed, and her stuffed Hello Kitty and Care Bears still sit on her pillows, like magic animals on clouds.

As Theresa and I get ready for bed, Theresa is quiet and does not look at me at all. She turns her back to me as she changes into her long white cotton nightgown. I change into Nellie’s orange polyester pajamas with dark pink flowers. Her waistband sags around my hips. I wonder if Theresa is mad at
me, but I lack the courage to find out for sure. All I can think is
mm ho yee see
. I don’t know if there is a perfect English translation. It’s what people say when they feel embarrassed about imposing, or when someone does them a big favor and they can’t reciprocate.

Theresa crawls into bed and flips her rainbow comforter over her. I hesitate, unsure if she wants me near her. But Theresa stays on one side of the bed and says, “Aren’t you getting in?” Relieved, I crawl in next to her.

As I look out the window, I expect to see the streetlights filter through the blinds, painting streaks on Theresa’s white walls. Instead, all I see is pitch-black. I realize then that in the city, it’s never really perfectly dark. We think it’s black when, in fact, we can see our hands in front of our faces, and the shadows of light gray cast upon darker gray. In this cloak of darkness, I muster what little courage I have and turn to face Theresa. “Thanks,” I say.

“It’s okay,” she replies.

“Sorry,” I add. I choke back the urge to cry.

“It’s okay,” Theresa says. I immerse myself in the luxury of her forgiveness.

“This upcoming competition,” Theresa says, “maybe you should think about quitting after that one. Or tell Auntie Gracie that you’re competing in speech and sell her on it. I don’t think I can take this anymore.”

I wonder if that was why Theresa continued our lie, not so much to protect me but to protect my mother from heartbreak.

The following day, Mom and I finally go back to our apartment. In the living room, our fifteen-inch television has tumbled facedown onto the floor, its glass splintered in every direction. The white Gwun Yum statue has also fallen and has broken in two. Now that it is broken, I can see that it is hollow inside. Popo’s photo has also fallen facedown. There is shattered glass everywhere. Mom runs to the picture and picks it up. There is a big harsh diagonal scratch across Popo’s face. The scratch pains me. It looks as if a knife has slashed her face. Mom is crouched over and kneeling as she clutches the photo, oblivious to the broken glass all around her.

“How do we remedy this, Fei Ting?” she says. “This is my only picture of her, no negatives, no copies.”

I have no answer for her. Not putting it up isn’t an option, but displaying the big scratch also seems offensive. Instead, I avoid the issue. “Don’t move,” I say. I get a broom and begin sweeping away the glass so she won’t get hurt. Mom stays frozen like a large round boulder. The photo in her hands has become a part of the boulder, like a piece of quartz embedded in stone. Even her tears are frozen. They are vibrating just under her eyelids, but no sobs come forth. I continue sweeping
around her in a circle, like a satellite revolving around the earth.

I turn over the broken television.

“I worked so hard to buy that TV,” Mom says.

It is thirteen years old. It’s black-and-white, even though everyone else has color. But to Mom, it’s still money. She mourns every grain of rice that is not eaten. She cringes at every pair of panty hose that runs, scorning its owner for her carelessness. She stoops into gutters to pick up pennies, as if each penny were a nugget of gold. Quietly, I shuttle the TV away, to remove this assault from Mom’s field of vision.

In the kitchen, our cabinets and drawers are all open. The porcelain bowls, plates, and cups, and ivory chopsticks have spilled onto the linoleum floor. After cleaning the living room, I begin stacking our dining ware, separating out the broken pieces. Once that is organized, I sweep those floors as well. Mom is still hunched over in the living room.

After cleaning up the kitchen, I proceed to the bathroom and then to the bedroom. As I clean, I notice how this work wears down the body and saps the spirit. It seems endless, relentless. I want to take a break, stop for today and continue tomorrow, but I can’t. The punishment is cleansing, proof to Mom that I am not lazy or incompetent. I remind myself that this is how Mom must feel, day after day. No time for rest, no time for fun.

Once I am done with the bedroom, I go back to the living room to tend to Mom. I peel her hooked fingers from the photo frame, remove the remaining shards, and place it back on the
mantelpiece in the shrine, ignoring the big streak across Popo’s face. Then I help Mom up from the floor and draw her a hot bath.

We go over to Theresa and Nellie’s for dinner, but afterwards, we return home. Mom’s stomach is worse than ever. She is so hunched over that she is nearly crawling up the stairs to our apartment.

Once we’re inside, I wrap Mom in blankets on the couch and make her a pot of loose-leaf oolong tea. Since we now have no television, I bring out my plastic childhood record player, another relic Mom has refused to throw away or donate. Under my desk, I find the stack of records Mom brought over from Hong Kong. She has Elvis; the Beatles; Peter, Paul and Mary; and several Canto-pop records from the sixties and seventies. I play one of the Canto-pop records. The music sounds like Western music with Cantonese lyrics. The singer’s voice is smooth and sweet, not nasally as in the Peking operas. I sit next to Mom, and the two of us scan the room. There is a giant crack running from one corner of the ceiling to the other.

Mom heaves a deep, sad sigh. “Look at all these cracks,” she says. “I can work so hard to make everything perfect, to put everything in order, yet in one moment, all that can be wrenched away from me. It is a mockery of my efforts. That is how cruel nature can be.”

I smart with indignation. I just spent hours cleaning up, but all she can focus on is everything I can’t fix, as if I haven’t done anything at all.

Then Mom rises from the couch to survey the apartment. Immediately, I tense up. She will find some flaw with my cleaning. It will never measure up to her standards. But instead, Mom nods and smiles. “Good girl. The apartment looks so nice now, almost as if the earthquake had never struck.”

This is the first time she has ever complimented me.

“As long as I have you, they can take everything away from me—my TV, my picture, my dishes, even my home!” Mom says. “To hell with them all! When you become a successful doctor, we can get all these things back!” She releases a big belch, as if punctuating her declaration. To an outsider, that would sound comic. But I know that passing gas is a sign that Mom’s stomach is recovering. I can give back to her what others have taken away: money, health, and dignity. All this time I have seen her expectations as pressure, when really they were the sign that she believed in me.

Mom returns to the sagging couch and sighs. “I am so old and broken, Fei Ting, just like this apartment.”

“That’s not true,” I say.

“Yes it is,” she says. “I’m also getting fat.”

“No you’re not.”

“You just don’t notice, because you’re around me every day. But I’ve had these pants for over twenty years and they don’t fit me like they used to. Also, my hair is turning white.”

“But your skin is so beautiful,” I say. “Not one wrinkle in sight.”

“You think so?” Mom says ruefully.

Never before has Mom cared about my opinion. In the past, she has always rushed past me in the race to get things done, arguing that I’m not competent enough to help. But this time, I get to show her that I, too, can take care of things. That is why she is talking to me in this new way, like a friend rather than a mother.

I will make sure that I am different too. My first competition will be my last. Once speech class is over, I will redirect my attention, with a more penetrating focus. I will right all the wrongs, wipe the slate clean.

I take my backpack to the bedroom and pull out my UC application. As I proofread it, I recall Ms. Taylor’s advice to apply to all the UCs, to expand my options. I look at the list of schools: UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, et cetera. Only Berkeley has an
X
next to it. Ms. Taylor’s suggestion, if only a flicker of temptation, is now snuffed out, a charred match floating in a puddle of gutter water. I fold my application neatly, place it inside the envelope, and seal it. I walk my UC application and my San Francisco State application, which I filled out last week, to the mailbox down the street, risking being caught outdoors should an aftershock strike.

When I return to the apartment, Mom is hunched over in the kitchen, sorting through the trash. She lifts a porcelain bowl, the one with the red-and-gold dragons, from the trash bag. It is cracked and missing a huge piece. “This was a wedding present,” Mom says. “This was the life we were supposed to have.” Then she gasps and drops the half bowl onto the floor. It shatters. A
bead of blood forms on Mom’s thumb. I run to the bathroom to get the first-aid kit. Then I clean Mom’s finger and bandage it.

“Those pieces are sharp. You shouldn’t touch them,” I say. I shuttle Mom off to the bedroom. Then I help her get into her pajamas and into bed.

Afterward, I begin to return to the kitchen, where Mom dropped the bowl, but I stop myself halfway. My bones ache. I’ve done enough today. I can always clean this up tomorrow. I return to the bedroom and climb into bed.