Nothing But the Truth (27 page)

“You be good girl,” says Mama.

“I will,” I tell her.
Mostly,
I add to myself with a wicked-flavored smile.

Grinning, I rush down the halls toward my locker, passing the se niors who are strutting like they own the halls. Clumps of freshmen dot the hallway and I make an effort to smile reassuringly at them. High school is hell enough without ghouls like Steve Kosanko and his cronies, including Mark Scran ton, lurking up ahead. I don’t break my stride, and I don’t look down at my feet.

“Yo, Half-breed,” Steve says with an ugly leer that’s fermented in the summer heat.

My stomach quakes a little, but I lift my eyes to Steve, glaring at him with my best Dragon Woman stare. The pinto-brained wonder must be astonished because he doesn’t say another word, and his henchmen part like the Red Sea. So I sail right through them and overhear Mark tell Steve, “OK, cut it out, man.” Looks like Mr. Sophomore Class President grew some balls, if not brain cells, over the summer. More power to him.

But halfway down the hall, I turn around slowly, ever so slowly, and pierce Steve Kosanko, racist pig, with another glare. I articulate every word clearly as if English isn’t his first language: “My. Name. Is. Patty. Ho.”

“Patty, there you are.”
Mrs. Meyers is practically standing guard outside her classroom, waiting for me. She’s holding a
thick, pink binder with the title
Romance by Numbers.
Anne’s novel. So she somehow finished it between all our problem sets and Harry. Even though I know I’m going to hear about it in some potluck group once it gets published—“Anne only fifteen and author! How come you not write book, too?”—I don’t feel the slightest poke of jealousy.

The classroom feels different, and it’s not just because Mrs. Meyers is teaching the new Basic Oral Communication class to clear up what the school board calls the “annoying vocal patterns of today’s youth.” I mean, not all teenagers lilt the end of our sentences so that every thing we say sounds like a question?

The chalkboard is squeaky clean the way Mrs. Meyers always leaves it. Maybe that’s how you need to approach life to make room for fresh new beginnings. Space-clear your home and your past; wipe the slate clean.

I finally figure out what’s different. There are a ton of quotes from Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe, Maya Angelou, Amy Tan, Gabriel García Márquez, Maxine Hong Kingston, Richard Wright, Julia Alvarez.

And above the chalkboard, Mrs. Meyers has hung a new sign: “Honors English Lexicon.”

My mouth drops open and she laughs, delighted like a child. “Yes, I plagiarized that idea right out of your Truth Statement.” Her eyes twinkle as she hands me a red file folder. “What you wrote was good, very good. You spent more than a summer writing it.”

Mrs. Meyers is right. I’ve waited my whole life to get the truth down onto paper. It’s still nothing like the tomes the rest of the class produced a couple of months ago. But it’s my truth. Mostly the truth, anyway.

The following is an excerpt from the only A+ ever to be given on an Honors English essay. Which was then edited into a kick-ass college essay. (Can you say, “China Dolls, please Google ‘college ac cep tance.’” Oh, sorry, gals. The founders of Google are from Stanford, too.) Which was then rewritten into a thank-you letter of sorts sent to Belly-button Grandmother, Mrs. Auntie Lu Jackson and the one and only original Dragon Lady who still presides over House Ho.

The whole truth is, I am Incomplete.

I used to think that was the world’s worst fate. Not to be wholly anything. Not to be all white or all Asian, but something in the murky in-between. Not to have a nuclear family with two perfect parents, but a broken family that periodically goes nuclear on each other.

That all changed this summer at math camp, of all places.

I have it from a trusted source that Auguste Rodin considered his opus, The Gates of Hell, to be completed, but not finished.
¹
So I figure I’m in good company to be completed (I do have all the requisite DNA strands, after all), yet a woman-in-progress. My incompleteness is something to celebrate. I mean, what do you have to look forward to once you’re completely done? Boredom and a six-feet-deep hole is my guess.

My other huge, ambitious work-in-progress is The Official Patty Ho Lexicon to Hapa Life. Incidentally, hapa used to be a derogatory term like gook, chink, nigger or spic, only now it’s cool. Kind of like my name. Ho bag is now Hosanna.
²
The truth is, labels are nothing but what we attach to ourselves and to other people, just like labels that are glued onto spaghetti
sauce jars or something. Take off the label and there’s a mystery inside (especially if that sauce came out of Auntie Lu’s kitchen). I spent a day at a naming lab and here’s the amazing thing. People actually get paid big bucks to create new names for regular old things, games to gadgets. Not that I’m going to up and change my name. So don’t worry. There’ll be no “call me Ishmael” (can you imagine going through life always known as the Moby Dick kid?) or The Girl Formerly Known as Patty Ho. But it’s mind-blowing to think that we can create our own selves, our own labels, just as neologists create words.

Fantalicious, isn’t it?

My life as I once knew it was all about wishing to be white. On every falling star, with every rub on a Buddha belly, with every touch of my own belly button, I wished I could be more like Janie or Laura or any of the millions of vanilla white girls on earth. I thought life would be easier if I could whitewash myself. So I did. It’s funny-sad how you can learn to detest yourself just because a teacher tells you not to speak your mother tongue (literally), or a friend’s mother plays Miss Western World Manners and chastises you when you so much as grunt “uh-huh” with a morsel of food in your mouth, or a racist pig hates you for the slant of your eyes.

But then, a pair of amber-colored glasses landed on my face at math camp, and the way I viewed the world completely changed. Completely, as in entirely, as in the whole dim sum cart kind of change. Jasmine, a fearless buildering nymphomaniac,
³
showed me that all I was doing was committing Patricia-cide and kill ing my inner girl. The only place that landed me was in Sibernation where I isolated myself in my own head.

The truth is, being hapa isn’t half-bad, not when I feel mostly good about myself. If I need to whitify myself to fit in, then I’m not hanging out with the right people. That’s not to say that being bicultural is any easier than being bipolar, especially when the cultures are polar opposites of each other. I still ping-pong between translating Mama-isms at home, and then practicing
social graces out in public. If I think it’s tough, imagine being one of the first-generationers who had to break the language and culture barrier. That said, in my humble opinion, being fluent in Mama-ese should fulfill all high school foreign language requirements.

Now for some earth-shattering news.

Truth: We are all hapas, in one way or another. Not necessarily half-Asian, but trust me, we are all half-something. Half-good, half-bad. Book smart, street stupid. Math guru, beach bum. Class geek, closet romantic. Student body president, school coward. Boyfriend, jerk. Couldn’t we all be in the “check all of the above” category?

Truth: We’re all Tourists. Whether it’s me feeling like one when I’m at a Chinese restaurant because I don’t speak the bo-po-mo-fo language or when I entered SUMaC as the only math-hating camp prisoner. The important thing is to remember that touring is an adventure. Before you know it, you’re hanging like one of the natives and having fun—even with math.

Truth: I am still confused about a lot of things. I don’t know if I’ll track down my father wherever he is or my daughter-disinheriting grandparents in Taiwan. I don’t know how to reconcile my mother who was kicked out of her family for being with a white guy, yet has a tough time embracing her virtual brother-in-law for being a black one. All I can say is that Mama still perplexes me, but I know she always puts my best interests first. We just don’t always agree on what those best interests are. (Can you say English major and not math?)

So I guess in the end, Belly-button Grandmother was right—my future and past can be read in my belly button. That dimple in my core is what ties me to my mother and to both of my cultures.
⁴
The black-and-white truth is, my mother’s love is tougher than any umbilical cord. So snip at it all you like, but you’ll never be able to sever it.

I’m fifteen, and I may be hyphen-thin, but I am not whisper-thin. So Belly-
button Grandmother, if the Big Accident you predicted was a broken heart, you were right. But I survived. (Thanks!) By all accounts, I’m alive and kicking.

One last thing, there’s no white guy in my love life. (Still waiting for that prediction to come true, Belly-button Grand mother. But hey, I’m glad you made it since I got to go to SUMaC!) Then again, my Kung Fu Queen soul sister, Jas mine, has a point. If you want to find the Good One who’s right for you, being the United Nations of dating is the only way to go. Hello, world!

And that is the whole yin-yang truth about me, the one and only Patricia Yi-Phen Ho.

The whole truth is, this book would still be a wishful dream without the help and support of many, many people. Above all, my heartfelt thanks go to Steven Malk, agent extraordinaire, and Alvina Ling, gifted editor. All writers should have such a team.

Every woman needs her own Kung Fu Kick-Ass Club, gal pals who are there for the good, the bad and the beautiful. My club began in second grade with original inductees Sayuri Oyama and Julie Yen. Shelli Ching could write the book on True Friendship. My StrataGem soul sisters who give to our community so generously, what would I do without you all—Hilary Benson, Cindy Daugherty, Julie Francavilla, Birgit Gaiger, Julie Kouhia, Martha Mendillo, Lauren Stolzman, Nicole Ueland and Valerie Vasey? Hugs to Sue Lim, Margaret Williams, Kerry Brown, Jen Fukutaki, Stephanie DeVaan, Dana West, and Sophia Everett for urging me to write when I only wanted to chuck my computer.

Special thanks to my beloved writer-buddies, the newest inductees in this Kick-Ass Club, most notably Janet S. Wong, whose belief heartened and humbled me from the very start. Pages of thanks wouldn’t even begin to express how much I owe her or my talented writing instructors, Janet Lee Carey, Meg Lippert and Brenda Z. Guiberson. Sarah Hager, Kathy Mikesell Hornbein and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, you were my patient sounding board while I wrote this book.

I like math. I really do. But I will be the first to say that any mathematical errors in this novel are mine alone and not those of the gurus I tapped: Al Lippert, math coach, and Lizzie Hager, MIT whiz kid. Many thanks to Dr. Rick Sommer for creating SUMaC, or Stanford University Math Camp, his bona fide, amazing math program, and for so graciously allowing me to take creative license with it for this book. I encourage kids, particularly girls, to check out SUMaC.

Yes, folks, climbing buildings is as real as math problem sets. I’ve got two Stanford dudes, Clint C and Bryan P, to thank for helping me pick Patty’s routes (not that they necessarily builder themselves—wink, wink). Thanks to Clara Jong, who made me snort over her own fortune-telling experience years ago, and to Carol O’Connell for her accounting savvy.

Most of all, I want to shower my parents, Bob and Ann Chen, with love and gratitude, and remind my incredible kids how grateful I am for every minute with them. And finally, Robert, my story begins and ends with you.

About Justina Chen

Justina Chen grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, moved to Australia for a year, and currently resides in the Pacific Northwest. No matter where she is, she can usually be found lost in a book.

Nothing but the Truth (and a few white lies)
won the 2007 Asian/Pacific American Award for Youth Literature. Her book
Girl Overboard
, featuring a gutsy snowboarder, won praise from Olympic gold medalist and fellow snowboarder Hannah Teter.
North of Beautiful
was called “A finely crafted, artfully written journey of self-discovery, self-actualization, and love” by
Booklist
in a starred review. Justina is also a cofounder of
readergirlz
, an award-winning online book community for teens. Her website is
www.justinachen.com
.

Keep reading for a sneak peek at
Return to Me
.

Please turn this page for a preview of

Return to Me

For the most part things never get built the way they were drawn.

—Maya Lin,
artist and architect

I
f you believed my so-called psychic of a grandmother, she predicted that I would almost die. Her eerie, creepy forewarning made no difference at all. I was seven. I still jumped into the murky lake. I still dropped to its mossy bottom. I still almost drowned. Moments before Dad saved me, my arms had become blurry fronds far, far in front of me, as if I had already faded into a ghost.

After that brush with death, I hated fairy tales where spindles could be murder weapons, a bride could be killed for opening a locked door, and women in my family supposedly could foresee the future. What good was a sixth sense if you couldn’t box, crate, and control your fate? If life itself could lunge unexpectedly at you, derailing your best-laid plans? Like after spring break when I practically drowned a second time—only this time, in disbelief.

“We’re moving with you,” Mom had announced without looking up from her massive, post-vacation to-do list at the kitchen table.

“You mean moving me, right?” I gulped, breathing hard as I tried desperately to safeguard my future.