Nothing But the Truth (24 page)

This early in the morning, I am the lone living soul among twenty bronze sculptures. My stomach churns when I reach the couple entwined until eternity in
The Kiss
. So I veer off to Rodin’s masterpiece, gravel crunching beneath my sneakers.

Hundreds of roiling figures are climbing, crawling, desperate to stay away from
The Gates of Hell.
Above it all, a miniature version of
The Thinker
sits, staring down as if he’s debating whether to suck me into Hell. On the upper right side, I see the Damned Women, trying to wrench themselves off the sculpture.

But I know their fate, and I don’t want to be one of them.

I may be a damned exasperating daughter. And a damned lazy student. And a damned jealous sister. But I’m no damned victim.

Even as I lay my hands on the cold bronze, The Gates of Hell slam shut in my head. The clanging scares away all traces of my nightmares.

So I turn on my heel and walk away.

Outside FloMo, I sit
in the cool morning air that hasn’t yet thawed in the morning sun. I don’t have long to wait for breakfast to be over and for the students to stream out of the cafeteria, eager for another day of math.

The first wave doesn’t notice me, too busy gossiping about how I got so wasted, Brian had to drive me home. (This does sort of make you wonder how accurate grocery store tabloids can possibly be.) The door opens again, and this time, Jasmine and Anne walk out, their heads together. I know they’re talking about me, but not maliciously the way Mrs. Shang would have—Aiyo!
See, this why you date good Tai wanese boy!

Jasmine spots me first and rushes to my side. “Patty.”

“You OK?” asks Anne.

“You bet,” I say way too brightly. The way they look at each other, I know they doubt it. But honestly, I feel only a minor fracture in my heart. OK, the minor fracture becomes a major break when Stu staggers out. I tell myself it’s because I’m not prepared for Katie, Ms. Afterglow herself, to be chirping up at him.

To be honest, I’ve seen hungover before, but Stu looks like a walking victim of alcohol poisoning. If this were Boy
Wonder, he’d be hugging the toilet with “stomach flu” for hours. I almost feel sorry for Stu. Almost.

Katie’s so busy talking to her audience of one—herself—that she nearly runs into the Asian Mafia before she notices me.

“If I were you, I’d hurry on along to class, girls,” she says like a prim and proper lady.

I step out of the shadows. In an amazing transformation seen only once before in the Western world, demure Asian girl inflates into The Dragon Woman. And I bite out those words every teenager who has ever been lectured dreads. And let me assure the world, I have been lectured. So I say, “If I were you…”

Greetings and welcome to the inaugural season of a new lecture series in an exciting format, melding monologue with martial arts. While this is our lecturer’s virgin tour, she has a lifetime of pent-up material. The producers expect this series to be standing room only, appealing mostly to girls who are fed up with being walked on. So please, sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

“If I were you?”
I repeat in mock disbelief. “Try, you wish you were me.” The Kung Fu Queen stares down the annoying puffball wonder. “But if you were me, you never would have hooked up with someone else’s boyfriend. You never would have made snide little comments like you were bet ter than everyone else. The truth is, you’re nothing but a
big-haired silicone Barbie who needs her Daddy to buy every thing for her. Except love. That, you have to steal.”

Hi-yah, White Girl!

The Kung Fu Queen bows to her fallen opponent. “If I were you, I’d hurry on to class like a good girl.”

And then, I turn to Stu, who pales. Smart boy. But if he were really smart, he would have kept his hands to himself.

“Pa… Patty,” he stutters.

I hold up one hand. “Save it. You’re going to tell me you were drunk. That you made a mistake. News flash: you did.” I cock my head at him, pun fully intended, thank you very much. “I was gone for one night. You couldn’t wait for me for a day?” I shake my head in disgust. “When I walk away from you, take a good look at my hapa ass. Because you’ll never have it.”

With that, I stalk off for math class. Jasmine follows me on one side, Anne on the other. Against my better judgment, I turn around to take one last look at Stu and Katie, who are both shell-shocked that the quiet, obedient Asian girl has actually stuck up for herself.

Oh, silly me, I forgot the coup de grace. So I tell them, loud and proud, “I deserve better than you.”

30
Writer’s Block

A
untie Lu and I
settle into a comfortable routine for the next few days like I’ve lived with her my whole life. We do yoga together in the morning. Or, I should say, she does yoga in the morning, and I stay in downward dog. Then she drops me off at Stanford on her way to her art studio. After my TA session in the afternoon, I walk home, help Auntie Lu with dinner and work on my problem sets for a couple of hours while she sketches. A part of me wonders what I’m missing in dorm life. I know I miss hanging out with Jasmine at night. And dropping in on Brian. And weirdly, I miss Anne, my Asian Mafia gal pal who I’ll take over any China Doll.

But mostly I’m happy to spend time with Auntie Lu. In a way, I think it’s like living with Mama had things been different. While it’s strange to be part of a real-world “what if” game—as in, what if Dad hadn’t calcified Mama’s heart; would she be as open as Auntie Lu? What if Mama didn’t bear the burden of being the sole breadwinner; would she surround herself with only beautiful things?—I’m loving getting to know Auntie Lu as a proxy mom.

Besides, dorm life is just a couple years off, and I can wait. There are some perks to being away from the dorm, like not having to see Katie and Stu more than I have to in class. She pretty much stays out of my Hi-Yah! way. So I suppose this means that Malibu Barbie isn’t as dumb as I thought she was. And Stu? Let’s just say we’re both still stewing on what happened, or didn’t happen, between us.

Auntie Lu and I are nearly finished space-clearing her home.
Nearly.
You don’t get rid of thirteen years’ worth of clutter overnight. Or even over a week. But the house is more or less clean enough to start feng shui–ing without any more dire consequences. In hindsight, I should have consulted a feng shui book before I began on Auntie Lu. All the masters warn about space-clearing too quickly; hence, my deluge in not-so-fun discoveries about Mama and Stu.

Feng shui is all about promoting the best flow of energy inside your home. When good luck comes visiting, you want it to linger. So yesterday, we began rearranging furniture and placing it in its most auspicious positions. That meant moving the sofa in the living room to the power-wealth corner. I noticed this morning that Auntie Lu had slid the bamboo plant (a sign of abundance) into the relationship area. I’m guessing that with the mysterious Victor coming home today, she wants to reinforce their love life. Naysayers can snicker all they want about feng shui being a crock of cow dung. But thousands of years of practice in China can’t be all wrong. All I can say is that I’m sleeping better now that my feet aren’t pointing at the door in the death position. (I made Auntie Lu help me move the sofa bed so I’m facing west.)

While Auntie Lu is doing some last-minute cleaning for Victor’s return, I’m out on the patio, supposedly writing my
Truth Statement. What I’m really doing is coloring. There are 5,880 squares on each sheet of graph paper. Half of them are now filled in with black pen. As far as checkerboards go, it’s a nice grid. Only I don’t think Mrs. Meyers is going to be as impressed as I am.

The problem is, I don’t know how to begin. Or where.

“That’s a heavy sigh,” says Auntie Lu, carrying out a tray with soy crackers and iced tea. She glances down at my gridlocked page. Instead of launching into a lecture, Auntie Lu says “Oh” like she’s been trapped inside one of those squares before, too. “Writer’s block, huh?”

“I don’t know what my teacher wants!”

“Maybe that’s the point. Don’t think about pleasing her. Write about yourself,” says Auntie Lu. She sets down the tray carefully.

“How can I do that without bringing in Mama and the whole Dad mess?”

Auntie Lu’s jade bracelets clink together as she pours the iced tea and hands me a glass. “I don’t think you can avoid it. Your story starts with them.” She takes a long drink of her tea. “But it doesn’t have to end with them.”

Confusion say: Ah, so, Auntie Lu. You not make no sense.

But then, she does. My hand dips to my belly button. Belly-button Grandmother’s predictions, and the reason why I came to Stanford in the first place. How the very suggestion of me ending up with a white guy cemented my destiny at math camp. Only an Asian guy broke my heart.

I start to write. Just like Mama when she’s hunkered down with some panicking procrastinator’s tax form on April 14, I mumble an absentminded “uh-huh” when Auntie Lu says she’s going to space-clear the hallway closet. (That’s in the
relationship corner of her front hall.) I smile to myself and keep on writing.

The sun is fading
when Auntie Lu calls me inside to help with dinner. My head is still fogged in with words and thoughts. I’m hardly aware of the Chinese broccoli I’m washing until Auntie Lu waltzes in, smelling like a field of jasmine. I blink twice. Auntie Lu is wearing a curve-fitting, hoochie-mama red dress. And a full face of makeup.

“Oh, my God! Auntie Lu, you’re hot!” I say.

She just bustles around the kitchen doing absolutely nothing: lifting random pots, moving napkins, adjusting the saltshaker. I bump her with my hip on her second circuit around the kitchen island. “You’re ner vous about seeing Victor.”

Auntie Lu grins the way Janie and Laura, Jasmine and Anne and I do when we talk about the boys we like. She shrugs helplessly.

“Auntie Lu’s in lo-ooove.” I sound like Abe when he teases me. And now I know why he does it incessantly. It’s so much fun to make Auntie Lu blush.

“Yeah,” says a deep voice from the hall. “Lucky me.”

Victor walks in. For the first time, the real reason why Mama cut off ties to Auntie Lu is transparently clear. Her boyfriend is at least fifteen years older, completely bald and has a large nose that could only be described as beakish. And he’s as black as my emergency cell phone that I wish I can use now to call Mama: “Don’t be a bigot!”

I’m forgotten the instant Victor drops his leather bag onto the ground and sweeps Auntie Lu into his arms. As discreetly as I can, I try to tiptoe out of the kitchen.

“Hang on,” says Victor, stopping my escape. He keeps one arm around Auntie Lu like he can’t bear to be apart from her for another millisecond and holds one out to me. “You must be my niece.”

“Nice to meet you, Victor.”

“Uncle Vic,” he corrects and hugs me hard like he’s pouring a straight shot of love, cellared for eight years, into me. Auntie Lu’s eyes are shining, looking at me like I’m the daughter she’s never had.

“Well, ladies, I thank you for going through this effort, but we can just put all this away,” says Uncle Vic, already scooping the half-cut vegetables into a Ziploc bag. Auntie Lu looks relieved. She may have an artist’s soul, but my aunt could not find her way out of a wok. “We’re going out to dinner.”

We end up at
the same Japanese restaurant where I came with Stu and crowd, the night of my first kiss. Better known as The Night of the Livid Mama.

Tonight, Auntie Lu and Uncle Vic are playing a fast game of verbal Ping-Pong. She keeps asking him about his expedition to Africa, where he’s been part of a team photographing AIDS/HIV victims. He keeps trying to change the conversation to hear about Auntie Lu’s art, what she’s been painting, what the gallery sold and all that. It’s funny in a cute way how they’d rather hear about each other than talk about themselves.

I’m basking in their conversation when in through the
noren
walks Stu and what must be his parents. Of all the res taurants in Palo Alto, why does he have to eat here? Stu sees me at the same time, and gets an awkward-awful expression
like he wants to talk to me and run away from me all at once. I’m pretty sure I’m wearing the same look since Uncle Vic breaks off in mid-sentence to ask if I’m OK.

I’ve got to hand it to Stu. He comes straight over to me.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

Compared to the conversation at my table about capturing heartbreak and hope on film and canvas, Stu and I sound like complete idiots.

I rally myself enough to make Janie’s mother proud by remembering my manners and introducing everyone. Upon hearing Stu’s name, Auntie Lu sniffs the way Mama does, her nose wrinkling. Uncle Vic’s been home for all of an hour and a half, yet somehow he knows what went down between me and Stu. His brows lower like now he wants to have a “talk” with the young man in some macho, fatherly display of protection.

But I don’t need to be protected by anyone but myself. I tell my two would-be bodyguards, “Excuse me for a moment,” and ask Stu, “Could you go outside for a second?”