Nothing But the Truth (16 page)

“It’s not funny,” I tell her.

“Are you kidding?” she says and does a great imitation of an out-of-shape security guard, juggling a donut, as he chases me. I can’t help laughing. My night, as Jasmine replays it, sounds like an action flick with me in the Kung Fu Queen starring role. Not the supporting one I usually play in Janie’s dating adventures or Laura’s environmental protesting ones.

“So where were you?” I ask, a note of suspicion in my voice.

“I hid in one of the stained glass windows.”

“You did not.” My eyes widen. “That’s, like, two stories up.”

“No kidding. God, it was small, three feet tall, max. Anyway, as soon as Fat Man was gone, I climbed down and walked around. But you were long gone.” Jasmine props herself up on an elbow and spots her backpack. “Oh, good, you have it. I was worried that you didn’t.”

What about me? Wasn’t she more worried about me than her backpack?

As if Jasmine was eavesdropping on my thoughts, she says, “I knew that you would be OK.”

“How did you know that?”

“Because you’re smart.”

It’s a vote of confidence I’m not used to hearing. I’m so drained, too tired to even put on my pajamas, that I crawl into bed with my clothes on.

“Wait a second. What are you doing wearing Brian’s sweatshirt?” Jasmine demands.

“I was in his room just now, almost getting thrown out of camp, remember?”

“So… what else did you and Brian talk about for, what, two hours?”

But my conversation with Brian is tucked safely behind my Great Wall of Chinese Secrets, and no one, not even a buildering nutcase, is going to scale my defenses to retrieve it. For some reason, I want to keep it to myself—that Brian believed in me, Patty Ho.

“His fiancée.” I tell the half-truth with a perfectly straight face. It is somewhat true.

Jasmine’s questions come fast now. “What? How do you know? What does she look like?”

“She’s really beautiful, Chinese, from Hawaii.”

I would have thought that that would send Jasmine reeling into a new world of could-have-beens, but no. Her voice is flat. “Oh, he’s one of those.”

“One of what?”

“A white guy with an Asian Woman Fetish,” she says. I can almost see her crossing him off her tick list. Just like that. Not because he’s taken, but because of his label. “You know, those freaks who are only attracted to Asian women. Like we’re exotic, sex-crazed and subservient.” She snorts. “Or like we’re interchangeable, every one of us, all the same.”

Here’s the thing: I don’t know Brian’s dating history, whether he’s only gone out with Asian women or if he’s country-hopped. What he is or isn’t doesn’t change how I hug Brian’s words to myself. I’m the best of both worlds. And, I think, there’s nothing wrong with that.

22
Color Theory

W
hen I wake up,
I’m not in the mood to be told anything, least of all anything about math. But it’s Monday, and it’s back to math lectures and problem-solving.

The only problem my brain can handle on two-and-a-half hours of sleep is what to eat for breakfast. Maybe spilling my guts has emptied me out, because I’m starving. I glance at the door, finding more pink sticky notes with messages that Mama called and a new one that Abe wants me to call him right away. I know I should call—at least get back to Abe—but I head out the door instead. The last two things in the world that I want to do right now are to listen to Abe complaining about how Mama’s nagging could qualify as a new Olympic event (welcome to my life, O Honored Son) and to listen to Mama’s billion and five questions about whether I’ve met any nice Taiwanese boys and why I haven’t called and if I’ve seen Auntie Lu yet. Answers: no, because, and no.

So the only message I pluck off the door is the one from Jasmine to meet her in the cafeteria. I make my solo trek
across the street to the FloMo dining room, telling myself that I’ll call Mama and Abe later.

Not to be paranoid, but everyone stops talking the second I step into the cafeteria. People look at me like I’m a problem set they’re trying to solve, but they’re having a hard time reconciling the variables. When Anne breaks off her conversation with Harry at the über-math jock table to study me, I know she knows. What I don’t know is whether she’s told her mother. Acid churns in my stomach. The way the kids are gossiping about me this morning, Mrs. Shang clearly needs to brush up on her pass-the-bad-news skills.

Robotically, I microwave some oatmeal, a poor substitute for the rice porridge that I normally eat at home, pre–Tonic Soup days. As I carry my plastic tray into the dining room, I try to look as blasé as possible, as if I’m used to kids talking about me, rather than flying under the radar the way I usually do at school.

Anne sidles up to me. “What our moms don’t know won’t hurt them.”

I almost drop my tray but tighten my grip on it, looking at Anne closely. Something is different about her.

“Your hair,” I say.

Anne flushes, her hands brushing over her short hair. “I cut it off. My mom’s gonna kill me.”

“I like it.” And I really do. It’s amazing what hacking off a couple of inches does for her face. Her face with brown eye shadow and barely there lipstick. “You look great.”

Then I spot Jasmine, holding court at her usual table, which doesn’t include Brian. He’s nowhere in sight, probably sleeping off his late-night counseling session with me. I’m
relieved. I didn’t want to face him now that he knows more about me than even Janie and Laura do.

My stomach tenses for what’s coming next. Jasmine doesn’t disappoint, announcing, “Here she is. The woman of the early morning hour.”

Before I can self-combust into flames, before I can tell her to shut her mouth up—as if I were capable of doing that—the table starts clapping, like I’m some mascot of the math camp.

Stu drags out the empty chair next to him. “Have a seat, you badass.”

And my badass, hapa butt parks it next to him, feeling right at home.

“Some adventure last night.” His admiring look is a dead ringer for the way Mama had looked at Abe as soon as she opened his admittance package.

I catch Jasmine’s eye. She grins at me, her partner in climb. Jasmine was right. Design-your-own-flavor is infinitely more tasty than being a vanilla-bland good girl. So color me cool, I smile back at Stu and toss my hair in a good imitation of Jasmine.

“Yeah,” I say and shrug. If you’ve been chased by one security guard, you’ve been chased by them all.

Kids from other camps drop by our table, hoping their summers will get an infusion of fun through osmosis with the Kung Fu Queens. I know I’ve reached a new social strata when Katie, who has treated me like I’m less socially acceptable than a Wal-Mart-clothes-shopper, suggests that we grab dinner off-campus tonight. By the time breakfast is over, it’s agreed. Our Research Project group is cutting out for some sushi.

Somehow, we talk Brian
into driv ing us to a sushi spot in downtown Palo Alto, just a few minutes off campus. After all, we need to get some Research Project planning in; so why not over dinner somewhere where we won’t be interrupted? Interestingly, Jasmine invites herself along, making me wonder if she’s breaking her no-lusting-after-white-guys-with-Asian-Women-Fetishes rule. With Katie practically sitting in Stu’s lap in the backseat of Brian’s car, I only wish that he had a no-dating-white-girls rule.

The restaurant is tucked in a quiet side street off the main drag of boutiques and bookstores. There’s no sign over the door, just a
noren,
a narrow piece of blue fabric with a subtle chrysanthemum pattern. Inside, the place is about as big as a dorm room, crammed with a couple of tables, a compact sushi bar at one end and woodblock prints too small for the large, blank walls. A step up from a joint, it’s an ex-pat hangout packed with Japanese businessmen. In Mama-ese, this is a good one.

The sushi chef behind the bar calls out,
“Shamasei!”

“It’s crowded,” says Katie, self-consciously tucking her hair behind her ear and shuffling closer to Brian.

What she means is that it’s crowded with people who look different from her. I’m so used to computing the Asian-to-white person ratio wherever I go, that I know instantly what’s making Katie squirm. She’s the only white girl in the restaurant.

Welcome to my life in reverse at high school.

I can’t really blame Katie for feeling like raw fish out of the water in this sushi restaurant. I’ve always felt like an
imposter when my family ate at Chinese restaurants, like the waitstaff was looking down at me for not speaking their language. A tall, stupid
gweilo,
a white ghost, I can hear them think in their heads.

The hostess looks like one of the China Dolls, all grown up. She takes tiny mincing steps toward us in her silvery pink kimono. After bowing, she starts talking in rapid Japanese, either assuming or hoping that one of us will understand. Stu smiles at the woman and says, “I’m sorry. We don’t speak Japanese,” but doesn’t look embarrassed for not knowing the language.

Katie asks me, “What did she say?”

After years of translating Mama-ese, I can guess that the hostess wants us to stand right where we are until one of the tables leaves. But Jasmine overhears Katie’s question and answers back in Idiot-ese: “As if she would know. She’s Taiwanese, not Japanese. Different language.”

“Oh, excuse me, Obi-Wan Kenobi,” says Katie. She turns her attention to the woodblock print of Mount Fuji as if she’s never seen a mountain before. I feel bad that we didn’t take her to a place like Benihana, the Americanized Japanese restaurant equivalent to the Chinese Egg Foo Yung ones we make fun of at home.

“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” says Katie, uncomfortably.

“Why?” asks Jasmine, all combative Warrior Woman. In Jasmine-ese, this means there ain’t no way she’s leaving a restaurant just because the white girl is feeling like the model minority for once.

We wait for another few minutes before a group of Japanese businessmen finish the last of their sake and leave, bowing and ogling Malibu Barbie on their way out.

“Just ignore them,” I want to tell Katie, but the door closes on the businessmen and my opportunity. The hostess herds us to the table and brings us the menu, a list of sushi and sashimi typed on a plain piece of paper.

Katie won’t even touch the oil-stained paper. “So classy.”

My pity vanishes at her prissy act, like she’s never eaten at a dive before. Like she hasn’t been eating dorm food—meals made with mystery meats—for the past week.

“Isn’t there anything cooked here?” Katie’s plaintive voice carries to the hostess, who scurries over, dismayed that something is wrong. Change the setting and it could have been Mama rushing over to make sure her precious potluck guests are more comfortable than her own children at home. I want to slide down in my seat, ashamed to be seen with Katie. All week now, we’ve heard about how wealthy her neuro surgeon father is, her BMW at home, their ranch in Montana, their first-class tickets to Hawaii every February. But now her true colors come through. It’s not patrician blue blood; it’s redneck hick.

“There’s probably tempura,” offers Brian hopefully.

“Deep fried, no thanks.” Katie shudders, oh so delicately, even though just this morning she stuffed her face with an all-American, deep-fried donut.

Even as Brian plays the helpful restaurant counselor for Katie, Stu catches my eye and rolls his own subtly. There’s no mistaking our telepathic exchange:
Isn’t this “oh-what-disgusting-things-are-the-natives-eating” just plain offensive?

I bite my tongue, glancing at Jasmine, who I’m expecting to erupt like Mount St. Hell-Am-I-Offended any second now, but she’s too busy scoping out the businessmen to notice a twit like Katie.

The hostess brings a pot of hot tea over to our table. Without thinking, I start pouring everyone a cup.

“That’s so Asian woman of you,” says Katie. White Girl is back in her superior element, scandalized in a pseudo-feminist way when I know for a fact she’s been irritated all week that none of the guys hold the doors open for her. None of them do the “after you” thing to let her in line first.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asks Jasmine, bristling.

“If it means she’s yin-yang perfect, then you’re right,” Stu says. He takes the teapot from me and fills the only empty cup left at the table—mine.

The fact is, Malibu Barbie over there may be blond and beautiful and act all proper, but she has nothing over an Asian woman like me who can talk her way out of getting thrown out of camp.

“Thank you,” I say to Stu.

Brian winks at me just as I grin at Katie like she’s paid me the greatest compliment. And I truly think she has.

23
Yellow Fever