Listen to the Squawking Chicken: When Mother Knows Best, What's a Daughter To Do? A Memoir (Sort Of) (15 page)

We bought our house without ever stepping foot inside it, not even once. All that mattered was that it had the blessing of the Squawking Chicken.

Feng shui doesn’t stop with the purchasing of a home. It’s also how you arrange the furniture, the settings, the small details that seem insignificant but could be critical to how the home receives and grows your luck. For example, you should never set up your home so that you’re facing a mirror as soon as you enter. Terrible luck. Mirrors are luck bouncers. You must be very careful where you position them. A mirror at the foot of the bed is also a problem. It will lead to
marital strife and possible collapse. This is a feng shui basic. Another feng shui basic is that the foot of your bed should never face the bedroom door. Because that’s how they wheel out a dead body—feet first. It’d be like sleeping in your coffin every night. There should also be no obstacles at the front of your house. Like a tree, or a lamppost. Those are luck blockers. How can luck come inside when it has to fight natural and man-made obstacles? Luck will just go next door, where it’s easier to gain entry.

Basic feng shui principles for your home are now widely accessible online and at bookstores. But advanced feng shui is not so simple. This is what a feng shui master is for. Ma had a friend whose niece moved into a new house and suddenly became very sick. They discovered a tumor in her leg. After exhausting all medical options, they decided to bring in a feng shui master to assess the home. For the most part, the house was okay. The location was not a problem. There were no furniture placement issues. All the basics checked out. Turns out it was the fireplace. It was the source of all the problems. Something was up with the fireplace. The feng shui master recommended that the fireplace be sealed as soon as possible. He said that it was life-or-death. So they sealed the fireplace. Over eight weeks, her tumor started to shrink. The doctors were baffled but optimistic. They now had options for treatment. This happened as Christmas was
approaching. The family was in good spirits. They wanted to have a festive Christmas after the stress of what they were going through. So they decided to unseal the fireplace, just for the holidays. It was a decision they would regret. In January her condition worsened. The cancer eventually metastasized to her lungs. She died that summer.

I will always remember Ma telling me afterward that no house is perfect. Every lucky house has an unlucky spot, and every unlucky house has a very lucky spot. We have yet to discover the lucky or unlucky spots in our new house. They will reveal themselves over time. What I can tell you, however, is that the Squawking Chicken will be there looking out for them. She has practically moved in. She is trying to make decisions on every furniture purchase and paint color and landscaping choice. She’s even asserting herself about how we clean. The other day after sneezing a few times she was getting on me about how our air ducts need to be suctioned. Guess what happened when I protested?

Feng Shui Blackmail, of course.

“You think luck wants to come to a house that’s dusty and messy? You think luck wants to hang out with you in your slum? You don’t think luck has other options?” There’s your incentive to keep your place tidy and not to clutter the entranceway.

It might sound restrictive, all these feng shui and
fortune-telling requirements. I have friends who roll their eyes about what I can and cannot do, and when I should and shouldn’t do it. A couple of years ago, the almanac predicted that Jacek, who was born under the sign of the Rabbit, could encounter some risk in a Rabbit-unfriendly year. The Squawking Chicken gave him a red string with a charm in the shape of a dog tied to the end of it and instructed him to keep it in the car. One of his buddies teased him about how it looked. Jacek, being the seasoned feng shui believer that he now is, laughed it off and kept it there anyway. At best it’s a minor embarrassment to have to hang a cutesy animal charm from your wallet, or around your neck, or in your vehicle, or to scramble to find a papaya to eat before a live television event. At worst it’s a slight inconvenience to have your blood taken, or seal a fireplace, or not hang that painting from that wall so that your friends will be impressed by your taste. But the Squawking Chicken would ask you if it’s worth it.

Is it worth looking pretty at a party with your new bangs if it means you might not get that promotion? Is it worth having a show-off kitchen in a house that might threaten your marriage? For Ma, feng shui and fortune-telling advice is never such a hindrance that it becomes a difficult choice. You can’t buy good luck with a million dollars, but bad luck might cost you that much. If eating a papaya every day might help me avoid that, why would I not eat the papaya?

When Ma was in the hospital battling POEMS, I asked her once whether or not she thought her life would have been different if she’d started practicing feng shui earlier. If she’d had someone to tell her about the hot water, the eye drops and the papayas, if she’d had someone giving her feng shui fortune-telling tips, would she have been betrayed so many times? Would she have been so often disappointed? Would she have had to endure so much sadness? In comparison, by the grace of her feng shui wisdom, I’ve had it so easy.

“You were born an Ox,” Ma said. “You will never have it easy. An Ox is born to work and work hard. I’m just trying to help you work harder without distractions. Your life path as an Ox will be steady, so long as you can work. But I am a Tiger. The Tiger’s life path is not steady. It is the Tiger’s destiny to rise high, higher than anyone else. Over and over again. But with every high there is a fall. And a Tiger’s falls go lower than most. That is the risk and the reward of being a Tiger. Feng shui and fortune-telling ensure that my highs last longer than my lows. But it can never eliminate the lows.”

Ma was in bad shape at the time, a shriveled wretch in her hospital bed. It was hard to imagine that any high would be worth this low and all her previous lows. I pointed this out to her.

“CHOY!”

Even in her condition, the Squawking Chicken could still squawk when she had to.
Choy
is a Cantonese expression. It’s spitting without actually spitting. It’s a reaction to something blasphemous. Ma used to shout it in my face at dinner if I said I hated the food.
Choy! Don’t let the fates hear you say you don’t want the food. They might take it away.

“Well,
look
at you,” I said to Ma. “You’re wearing a diaper. You look like a corpse. Your life sucks right now. Your life has sucked over and over again. Where is the high that can balance out those lows?”

She rolled her eyes in disgust, not unlike all those times I’d cut bangs. “What the hell do you think you are? Every Tiger has a roar. You are my roar. Now don’t be so stupid. Otherwise you are just wasting my roar.”

The Squawking Chicken is terrible with names when meeting new people. Any names. Chinese names, English names, it doesn’t matter, she barely remembers. Or she barely bothers to remember, I’m still not sure I know which. So instead of calling people by their actual names, she gives them Chinese nicknames, usually based on their physical attributes. This is her gift. She’s able to identify exactly the characteristic that defines a person and then just applies this label to them for life.

Her dentist’s assistant with the long eyelashes is Feather Face, because it always looks like there are two fans coming down from her forehead whenever she blinks. The man who lives two doors down with the paunch is Food Stealer because that’s probably where he hoards it. My friend Margot is tall. She’s simply Tall Girl. My other friend Kate is Flame
Top. She has red hair. Ma’s nicknames are always a good indication of whether or not she likes a person. This was especially true when she started meeting my boyfriends.

I met Alan in college. We were friends for a while before we started dating. When we first met, I wasn’t attracted to him at all. There were other guys in my life. There were other interests. Over time, however, we ended up hanging out more frequently. And the more time we spent together, Alan told me that he wanted to take our relationship to the next level. He confessed that he’d always been into me, and, well, I guess I was flattered. Transitioning from friendship to romance with Alan felt comfortable and easy, with no drama.

Alan was a good student. He also maintained a job at the same time. So he had his own car, his own money, and he was responsible and motivated. He came from a nice family. His parents were reasonably well-off, kind and generous. They were fond of me. They were supportive of our relationship. I’m telling you this because you’d think this would be a good enough résumé to bring home to your mother.

The Squawking Chicken met Alan for the first time when he dropped me off at home for a holiday long weekend. I invited him inside to say hello. Alan was a self-conscious person, rather particular about his appearance. He spent a lot of time tucking his T-shirts in just so. He wore
boots under his jeans and made sure the pant legs were even on both sides. I used to tease him that he was so fastidious he’d even practice standing in front of the mirror, checking which side looked better when he leaned. Two hours later, I’d see him doing the preferred lean when we’d be out somewhere. The preferred lean came out for the Squawking Chicken. He was totally posing, there in the foyer, in a leather jacket and jeans, legs slightly spread apart, favoring one side, hands in his pockets. On the surface she was neither impressed nor unimpressed. It was a short, unremarkable conversation. She wasn’t rude but she made no attempt to prolong it. Picking up on her cues, I motioned to Alan that it was time to go. When I came back inside after walking him to the car, I asked her what she thought of him.

“Why are you dating a Triangle-Head?”

Alan wasn’t exactly George Clooney in the hair department, it’s true. But he did the best he could. There was no comb-over situation or anything, but he did style it so that the thickest parts gathered near the front, peaking into a point above the middle of his forehead. It was fine, it wasn’t a thing at all. At least not to me. The Squawking Chicken, however, decided that Alan was a pirate. His triangle of hair made it look like he was wearing a pirate’s hat. So she insisted on calling him Triangle-Head, adding often that if he’d had an earring, he’d be perfect for the part. And from
then on, during our yearlong relationship, she’d refer to him exclusively as Triangle-Head. We’d be at a family dinner and I’d leave at the end to go out with him and, as I was putting on my shoes, she’d tell everyone, loudly enough for me to hear, that “Elaine is going out with that Triangle-Head again, guard your ships!”

Finally, I confronted her. As I was getting ready to go out with Alan one night, I overheard Ma saying to Dad, “That Triangle-Head is coming to pick her up later.” It just didn’t make sense. In the past she’d criticized my boyfriends for being losers, for not having a “future,” for lacking potential, for being lazy, for partying too much, for being perverted. (That last one was John—for the record, John was not a pervert. He just had a really sexy smile and it worked for him a lot of the time. John was a stud. And the Squawking Chicken could smell it on him right away. Because he knew how to work it on the girls.)

Alan was none of these things. Alan had a job. Alan was working toward a career in architecture. Alan had friends and an active social life but he wasn’t excessive about hitting the club scene. And Alan definitely wasn’t a pervert. So I asked Ma why she kept shitting on him. So he didn’t have great hair, whatever. Was that the only thing she could hold against him?

“Your Triangle-Head is self-centered. I can tell by the way he stands. He stands like a pirate pretending to be a cowboy. Too much ego. He’s not for you. You’ll see.”

The Squawking Chicken was trying to tell me that Alan was a poser. That he was too busy trying to be something else, he didn’t know what he really was. (Who does, at twenty?) She had no time for him. And Alan had no time for her either. He knew that Ma wasn’t warming to him; perhaps he sensed that she could
see
him. Rather than trying to change her mind, he shrugged it off. And occasionally he’d drop a subtle hint that it was her problem and not his. I could hear Ma’s voice in my head whenever he’d behave this way.
If he’s too proud to respect your parents, how much does he respect you?

Alan and I lasted a year. He didn’t want it to end, but eventually I just didn’t want to spend time with him anymore. Where once his vanity was quirky, it later became a turnoff. Where once his posing and contrivances were cute, they soon became embarrassing. I can’t say for sure whether or not I stopped wanting to be with him because I didn’t want to be with him or because Ma didn’t want me to be with him. Although she’d probably take credit, as she always does, for my eventual realization that Alan was, indeed, not for me, she wasn’t exactly relieved when she found out we’d
broken up. Instead, she seemed to
still
be irritated: “I don’t understand how you could stay with a Triangle-Head for so long.”

Looking back . . . me either. It’s not like Alan was horrible or anything. He wasn’t mean, he wasn’t neglectful, I have no reason to resent him. But I also don’t have a reason to remember him. He had an okay sense of humor, but he wasn’t exceptionally funny. He was nice, but not extraordinarily kind. He was smart enough, but not exactly a genius. He was interesting enough, but I’d never say he was charismatic. And, well, as bitchy as this sounds, I wasn’t even all that attracted to him. The Squawking Chicken was right. It was a whole year wasted—and on a relationship that I can’t actually defend, a relationship that I never really wanted to fight for, a boyfriend I wish I could erase from my dating résumé so that I could have that time back and spend it with someone more sensitive or intelligent or creative or even someone hotter. Someone who’s more than just a shrug in my memories. Someone I wouldn’t be embarrassed to admit to having been with.

Ma tried to warn me early on about this. As soon as I started developing feelings for boys, she tried to warn me about how those feelings would look to the rest of the world. From the very beginning of my romantic journey, she
cautioned me to be more discriminating about whom I chose to love.

My first love was Thomas. Thomas is the oldest son of my godmother, Mrs. Lai. (I call her “Auntie” Lai.) Thomas is five years older than his younger brother, Peter, who is a year older than I am. When we were younger, like any little sister, I was Peter’s main target and he was always looking for ways to make fun of me. I was thirteen when I fell in love with Thomas. He was nineteen. He’d just graduated from high school. He was allowed to drive. He had a perm. He was beautiful. And he had a really pretty girlfriend so I kept my crush to myself. But in my daydreams, I imagined that Thomas and I would one day end up together. How could we not? Our families were so close. And he just needed to see me as a woman, which would happen as soon as my hair grew past my shoulders. I expected it to be long enough by the end of the summer, before I went back to Canada to begin the school year.

It was a weekend in July. Thomas’s parents were hosting a barbecue at their place. I jealously watched Thomas and his girlfriend all night. One minute he was teasing her, the next minute he was feeding her sausages. It was infuriating. I was in a terrible mood. Ma was even worse. She and my stepfather had gotten into a fight about something and decided to
go home. I had to leave with them. When we got back to our house, it went nuclear. Ma was screaming, my stepfather was pleading and I was sulking downstairs because I couldn’t spy on Thomas anymore. Then I heard Ma dragging out her suitcases and yelling at me to start packing. She was threatening to leave. She called her friend Alice, the travel agent, to book a flight back to Canada.

I panicked. If we left, Thomas would never fall for me. Ma was killing my epic romance. Without thinking, I took off on my bike. I peddled frantically back to Thomas’s house. It had cleared out by then. Thomas was in the yard, having just come back from seeing his girlfriend off at the bus stop. He smiled at me. That was my sign. I declared myself.

“Thomas, I have to go. I don’t know when I’ll be back, if ever. And I want you to know that I love you. And that one day we will be together.”

Thomas was very kind. He gently let me down. He told me I was too young for him but that one day I would make someone very happy. What I heard was
one day you will make
me
very happy
. I rode home, daydreaming about our future life together, scheming about how I could convince Auntie Lai to adopt me. Ma and my stepfather had resolved their argument by the time I got back. Auntie Lai had invited them over for
siu yeh,
a midnight snack, common in our culture, especially on weekends. I was going to see Thomas again!

Peter started laughing as soon as we walked in the door. His mother shouted at him to stop it, but she was giggling too. And Uncle Lai. And Sandra, Peter and Thomas’s sister. Everyone was laughing except for Thomas. At first I was confused. But I quickly realized that Thomas was smiling at me . . . pityingly. And then that I was the joke. Because Peter, that fucker, had overheard my profession of love. And, of course, he had to broadcast it to the world. He’d just finished broadcasting it to his own family, now he was about to broadcast it to mine. It was mortifying. And it was about to get worse.

Ma was overcome. She doubled over. She wept, she thought it was so funny. God, I was so mad. And I was terrified. Because by now I knew what she would do. I knew it would never end for me. I knew that instead of being Thomas’s girlfriend, by the end of the summer I would be the Squawking Chicken’s favorite joke. She joked about it the next day at mah-jong. She joked about it at Grandmother’s. She joked about it until I got on the plane back to Canada. She joked about it even though I begged her, desperately, not to talk about it anymore. I begged her to stop embarrassing me. I begged her to stop telling everyone about how I threw myself at Thomas without thinking through my feelings.

“Oh, is that what you did?”

It is, indeed, what I did.

“Well, the next time you decide to do something like that, you better make sure you’re okay with the world knowing about it. And if you’re not, that’s your problem, not mine.”

In hindsight, I don’t mind that everyone knew about my overwrought adolescent crush on Thomas. In that case, I have age as an excuse for my misguided ardor; naiveté was to blame for my angsty lack of awareness. But what’s my excuse for Alan? What’s my excuse for all the others?

We all have relationships we regret. Most of us rationalize that regret as a learning experience. Most of us understand that those learning experiences help us avoid future regret. The Squawking Chicken’s perspective on regret and relationships, specifically
my
relationships, is not so generous. The way she sees it, if it looks like poison to begin with, why would you need to swallow it just to see if it’s really poison? Because by the time you swallow it, it might be too late. Some poisonous relationships leave more than simple regret; they will alter your course forever. Where my love life was concerned, she made herself the human hazard sign on the bottle—a romantic roadblock determined to redirect my heart in the right direction using every resource at her disposal.

When I was fifteen, I met an older boy, Kwun, who lived in our Hong Kong neighborhood. My friend Candy had been hanging out with a crew of kids and she introduced me
to Kwun when I came back for the summer holiday. He was a bad boy. I was instantly attracted. One night he wanted to go to the movies alone. So I told Ma that I was meeting up with Candy and took off on my bike. Instead Kwun and I held hands in the theater and kissed. When I came home that night, on time, she asked me where I’d been. The movies.
Who were you with?
Candy. Even when the words were coming out of my mouth, I knew that she knew—and I knew I was fucked.