Hello Kitty Must Die (17 page)

Move on, Counsel.

Unfortunately, the rules of California evidence do not apply to Chinese family dinners. Or to Chinese parents eager to marry off their offspring.

On Sunday evening, my parents picked me up at my office. They were afraid that I was going to sneak off somewhere, which was exactly what I had planned to do. Their surprise arrival foiled my escape plans. So I ended up in the family car headed for San Bruno with a Snickers bar in my purse.

Just in case.

“In and out. I’m not staying a minute longer, Dad.”

“Don’t be rude, Fiona.”

Because Hello Kitty is never rude.

“Dad, I’m not being rude. I’m just telling you flat out what I’ve decided. I’m not marrying Don. And dinner is not going to change that.”

“Just see his house first.”

That actually works in Jane Austen’s world. Lizzie Bennett doesn’t realize how much she’s in love with Mr. Darcy until she sees how grand Pemberly is. All of a sudden, she discovers how much she loves him when she sees the size of his estate. And not a moment before. Funny, love is. Even in Jane Austen’s time.

But unlike Lizzie, I work for my living. I slave away for Jack Betner so I don’t have to marry someone like Don to have three meals and a roof over my head. I probably make more money than Don. And estates here in America are not entailed.

God bless America. All of America, even San Bruno. Less power to the penis.

San Bruno is a Bay Area suburb with a population of about forty thousand. The city’s highlights include San Francisco International Airport, Golden Gate National Cemetery, and thousands of one-and two-storied houses. Don had a two-story stucco home, in which the ground floor had been converted into a garage. So finding parking would never be an issue for the master and mistress of the house. But it was not Pemberly.

“What do you think, Fiona?” asked Don’s father.

“It’s a very nice house,” I replied flatly.

“Wait until you see the inside.”

Oh joy.

Home Depot and IKEA, not Ethan Allen, furnished the inside of Don’s new house. The resulting décor was American suburbia mixed with a touch of old Asia with an altar dedicated to Don’s ancestors. Black and white photographs of his great-grandfather and grandfather stood in gilded frames on the mantle, accompanied by incense burners and plates of fruit. Plates of oranges, apples, bananas, pears. That’s what the spirits of Chinese ancestors eat. And the smoke from the incense.

Bon appétit.

A set of free weights and a bench press sat in a corner of the living room. A weight bar leaned against the wall, looking out of place in the otherwise unremarkable space.

“Who lifts weights?” I asked.

“I do,” replied Don.

I stared at his blubbery arms, arms that wiggled and jiggled like Jell-O when he moved them. If Don lifted weights, then I was a champion bodybuilder.

“Well, I’m just starting to,” Don admitted sheepishly.

Really.

“I want to look good, you know, for stuff,” he continued.

For our wedding.

I opened my mouth, ready to set Don straight again for the millionth time, but my father spoke first.

“Keeping fit is important, Don. You should encourage Fiona here to work out. All she does is sit in front of a computer all day. Not good for her. She needs to look good too,” my father said.

“Dad, I look fine. And sitting in front of the computer is what I call working.”

“You work too much.”

“That’s what lawyers do, Dad.”

“I think it’s so impressive that you are a lawyer,” said Don.

“Uh, thanks.”

“You should still be healthy, Fiona,” my father insisted.

“Why? It’s not like I have to look good in a wedding dress.”

Oh darn. I went and kicked the proverbial pink elephant in the living room. And it farted. Loud.

Now everyone had to acknowledge it or suffocate in its fart.

“Fiona, look around. It’s such a lovely house. You will be so happy here,” my father said.

“No, I won’t. Because I don’t love Don here. Sorry, dude. Nothing personal.”

“Uh, I need to go and check on the cornish hens,” Don replied. He looked at his father and lowered his head.

“Fiona, don’t be rude. Don is a good boy,” reiterated my father.

“That’s right. My boy will make a wonderful husband and father,” Don’s father said.

“Good. Marry him off to another girl. I don’t want a husband, and I hate children. They just suck the life out of you. No thank you.”

“Fiona, how can you say that? Children make a family,” my mother said.

“My idea of a family is Pepito. Get used to it. He can be your grandson.”

I hate children.

Even when I was one myself, I hated all the other kids. Children are always dirty, with sticky hands, runny noses, and ugly outfits. Children shit in their pants, pick their noses, eat their snot, and throw up their chocolate brownies. And they cry and whine for their mothers all the time. When I see children crying, I just want to shove logs of turd into their open mouths. That would teach them to shut up.

Or do what they do in Russian hospitals.

In the southern Ural town of Yekaterinburg, Russia, the hospital staff devised a simple, yet ingenious, way of dealing with crying infants. They gagged them, taping shut their screaming pie holes. Problem solved.

People started accusing the hospital of child abuse, even though the babies started it. Children get away with abuse all the time.

I already have Jack to abuse me. I don’t need children.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Fiona. Don, don’t listen to her. She loves children,” my father said quickly.

I ignored him.

“Pepito is great. When I get sick of him, I can just shove him into his cage with his seed and water tray. I can’t exactly do that with children now, can I?”

“Who’s Pepito?” asked Don’s father.

“Nobody. It’s her parakeet,” my mother said.

“Oh.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m still not marrying Don. I thought I should tell you all in person.”

And I did. Don, his father, his mother, his grandmother, his aunt, and his little sister, who kept giving me sad looks. Probably because I was telling them all that I didn’t want to live in that lovely house in San Bruno.

“But Don said you had a great time crabbing with him,” said Don’s father.

“I didn’t. It sucked. It was cold, boring, and disgusting. And his friend died.” No one seemed to remember that Carl drowned.

“But the crabs Don caught were delicious.”

“I wouldn’t know, sir. I didn’t have any.”

“Oh, Don cooked them for his mother. My boy can cook.”

“Then you marry him.”

“Fiona! Don’t be rude,” chastized my father.

“Oh no, it’s okay. I understand now,” said Don’s father. “You’re jealous because he didn’t save the crabs for you.”

“I hate crab. I didn’t want to eat his stupid crabs.”

“It’s okay. He’ll make you crab another time.”

“No, it’s not okay. You’re not listening. I don’t want to eat his crabs. I don’t want to marry him!”

Asked and answered, asked and answered! Objection, your honor. Someone, anyone. I wanted to scream.

Don walked back into the living room and announced that dinner was ready. A full course Chinese dinner, family style, prepared by Don’s father. Cornish hen, Chinese broccoli, beef stir fry, sauteed shrimp, vegetable medley, pan-roasted sea bass. And of course, steamed white rice. A meal is never a meal without steamed white rice.

“See what wonderful things Don can cook? Isn’t Don great?” said Don’s mother.

“Don, did you cook all this by yourself?” I asked.

“Well, my dad helped me a little.”

While you were probably busy eating in the kitchen. A little, my ass.

I stuffed my mouth with Chinese broccoli before I spat out anything rude, keeping my eyes on my bowl. I started counting the grains of rice I picked up with my chopsticks, trying to remain civil like a good Hello Kitty.

“Fiona can’t cook at all,” said my father.

“I’m sure she can learn,” said Don’s mother.

“No, I hate cooking. About as much as I hate children.”

“I didn’t know how to cook when I married Don’s father. But I learned. You just have to be willing to learn. Eating out all the time is very expensive and unhealthy.”

I said nothing and continued eating.

“Your dad says you help out at the laundromat, right?” continued Don’s mother. “That’s wonderful. You know how to do laundry.”

“I take the tickets and work the cash register while I chit-chat with the customers. I don’t do laundry.”

I break up marriages, sow discord, and amuse myself with the pain and anguish of fighting couples, lady.

“Don’t worry. Don has a really nice washer and dryer in the basement. You won’t have to lug clothes to the laudromat.”

I looked at Don who was busy peeling apart his cornish hen. I wanted to reach over and smack his doughy, fat face. To tear the cornish hen from his fingers and bash his head with it. So that he would say something, anything.

But Don just munched away, licking his greasy fingers. He kept his head down to avoid any eye contact with me, confirming all my fears. He was not going to stand up to his parents. Nutless twit. Either that or he too was trapped. Perhaps he too did not want to be ostracized for disobeying his parents. Maybe we weren’t that different after all.

“This house is perfect for starting a family,” said Don’s mother.

I said nothing and chewed my vegetables. I thought about the Snickers in my purse, wondering if it had melted.

“The schools here are great and it’s a pretty safe neighborhood,” she continued.

“Who cares? I’m done with school.”

“For the children, Fiona.”

“I’m not having kids. Not with Don.”

“Children are wonderful. They make the family.”

“No they are not. They ruin your life.”

They eat you out of Dior shoes and Gucci handbags. Then they grow up and have more leeches and parasites of their own which they’ll dump on you any given night with no notice so they can make more of those creatures. And spend their time shopping at Target and eating at Applebee’s. Unless, of course, they turn out to be the next Ted Bundy or Jack Unteweger, ridding society of excess women. Then people will just throw eggs at your door and blame you for birthing the little monster.

No thank you.

“Fiona doesn’t mean that,” said my father. He laughed nervously and said, “Don’t listen to her. She says no when she means yes.”

The classic defense of rapists.

I rolled my eyes, tired of repeating the same things over and over again. When no one bothered to listen at all. Not even once.

As soon as dinner ended, I stood up, impatient to leave. My parents pretended not to notice me stamping my foot on Don’s beige carpet.

“Did you like your dinner, Fiona?” Don’s father asked.

“Yes, it was delicious. Thank you.” It was.

“See, Don is wonderful, isn’t he?”

Not again.

“I’m sure you think so, sir. Thanks for dinner, but I really have to get back to work now.”

“Okay, I’ll let you two say goodnight alone.” Don’s father winked at me, and his mother started giggling. They stepped onto the front porch with my parents, leaving me alone with Don.

Fiona and Don, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n -g.

“Good night, Don. Thanks for dinner. You’re very nice. But I’m not marrying you. I’m sure you’ll find someone more suitable.”

There, I had said it as clearly and directly as I could. There could be no more further misunderstandings or miscommunications.

He nodded and smiled. “So you want to come over next Saturday?”

“What?”

“Next Saturday. For dinner again.”

“No. No dinner. Not next Saturday. Not ever. Good-bye, Don.”

Without waiting for him to respond, I marched out the front door and got into the back of my parents’ car.

“Let’s go home.”

“Did you guys kiss?” asked my mother.

“No. I told him I wasn’t going to see him anymore. No dinners. No wedding. No kiss.”

And that was that.

“I
T’S NOT SO MUCH ABOUT
standing up for yourself, Fi. It’s about giving them what they’re asking for. ‘You just need the will to do what the other guy wouldn’t,’” said Sean, quoting Keyser Söze.
The Usual Suspects
was Sean’s favorite movie, followed by
American Psycho
and
A Clockwork Orange
.

Sean always knew how to deal with bullies, on and off the playground. Again, thanks to his old man. Give them what they’re asking for. Like how he gave Stephanie what she asked for.

And Evan, who all the kids in Sean’s old neighborhood had dubbed Evan the Terrible, learned what Keyser meant. Courtesy of Sean himself.

Two heads taller than any kid on the block, Evan rained terror on every child with a little help from Buddy, his oversized German Shepherd. His parents, too busy working when they weren’t partaking in some good old-fashioned domestic violence, ignored their son’s foibles. Evan patrolled the neighborhood, taking lunch money, giving wedgies, thumping heads against the curb while Buddy chased the bloodied victim up a tree, over a fence, or worse.

Sean became Evan’s favorite target. So he decided that Evan and Buddy had to go. He waited for them on his front porch every day after school, accompanied by a spray bottle filled with lighter fluid, his Zippo, and his father’s baseball bat.

“Home court advantage,” Sean told me afterwards.

One day, Sean got his wish. Within fifteen minutes, the stench of burnt dog filled the air while Evan lay on the ground with a broken collar bone and a cracked skull. Sean retrieved Buddy’s scorched dog tags and gave them to me after we became friends. After I thumped Jeremy good and proper.

“Remember, Fi. No fear. Just do what the other guy would never do.”

Sean did what Evan could never do.

The problem is that bullies grow up. They leave the playground, school, and neighborhood, and become attending physicians, senior partners, vice presidents, and general managers. Instead of giving you pink belly or thumping your lunch, they force you to work overtime, change your schedule around, call you incompetent, threaten to fire you, put you down in front of your colleagues, impose impossible deadlines and wait for you to fail. They become people you can’t set on fire or pummel with a crow bar.