Listen to the Squawking Chicken: When Mother Knows Best, What's a Daughter To Do? A Memoir (Sort Of) (22 page)

Ma claims that this was brought to her attention by other calligraphy students who saw Mrs. Kam staying late after the sessions. A few weeks later, the calligraphy master presented Mrs. Kam’s calligraphy as one of the feature pieces in his galley show, even though, as some sniped, she didn’t have the best technique. Well, that was enough for Ma to brand Mrs. Kam a home wrecker. She started distancing herself from Mrs. Kam, again without warning. Mrs. Kam tried to figure out why the Squawking Chicken wouldn’t talk to her anymore, but when Ma refused to engage, Mrs. Kam not only gave up, she also managed to convince everyone else to side with her and they did because she carried so much favor with the calligraphy teacher. Ma once again had to go look for a new group of friends, declaring that this group was beneath her.

Mrs. Kam was followed by Mrs. Seto. Mrs. Seto preceded someone else I can’t remember. Nowadays, whenever I’m introduced to the flavor-of-the-month friend, I make a bet with myself about how long this one will last. Will it be right on the eighteen-month mark? How close will she get to the two-year mark? But as easy as it was for the Squawking Chicken to walk away from her friends, it’s not like it was super hard for them to let her go either. By expecting
them to be perfect, she set them up to fail. In not forgiving them when they failed, she protected herself from further disappointment. At the same time, though, without trust, why would anyone want to stick around? And when they inevitably walked away? The Squawking Chicken’s explanation for it was because “they’re jealous.”

Sometimes they were. And sometimes they were just annoyed.

Not only is the Squawking Chicken impatient, judgmental and unforgiving, she’s also a chronic boaster. My parents bought a home in a new development in Toronto in 1991. They were in their forties. They had worked hard to be able to afford a big house—four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, a big yard, a big basement and an open kitchen. They upgraded all the materials, choosing marble countertops, ceramic tile, hardwood floors and a custom, curved offset staircase that was the centerpiece of the first floor as soon as you walked in the front door. Ma loved her house. She was so proud of the house. She was proud of what it represented—Dad’s success and their tenacity. When we first moved in, we had people over all the time. And whenever they’d come over, she’d give them every single detail—with dollar figures. It was the ultimate in braggadocious. The Chinese are a boastful culture to begin with. (See the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.) We are very good at
showing off in your face with an explosion. The Squawking Chicken’s voice already sounds like an explosion, so when the debris that’s blasting in your ears is all about the best this and the best that and how much it costs to be the best, well, I’m her daughter and I can understand why someone would become a hater.

There were about fifty people invited to my parents’ housewarming party. I was eighteen at the time, acutely sensitive to what other people thought and therefore very sensitive to Ma’s over-the-top behavior. Ma didn’t wait long before ushering people through the house, touring them through all the highlights. When she came to the staircase, she walked almost all the way up to the top while her audience stood at the bottom, and then slowly and theatrically made her way down, her red nails trailing along the bannister, explaining in Cantonese: “This staircase was custom designed. No one else on the block has a staircase like ours. The wood was imported from Italy. It took them an additional two weeks to construct it beyond the deadline. But we understood, because we paid them fifty thousand dollars extra to make it happen.”

I could swear I saw half the people there rolling their eyes. I mean it was a nice staircase but it wasn’t a scene from a movie, you know? Later on, when everyone left, I told Ma that she shouldn’t be so boastful, that it might turn people off
if she talked about money that way. Her response: “Why you so embarrassing your dad? Your daddy work hard. Your daddy buy a big house. Be proud of your daddy!”

I’ve learned to live with the Squawking Chicken’s boasting. As my career has progressed, I’ve also become a reluctant accomplice in it. My phone will ring. Ma’s on the other end, overly enthusiastic. That’s the first sign she’s not alone. “Hi Elaine! I watched you on the TV just like you asked me to!” (I did not ask her to.) “I’m here with all the aunties playing mah-jong. What a pretty dress you wore today! But tell the makeup artist not to go so heavy on your eyebrows next time, okay? Bye!” So she is at mah-jong. And she made a point of stopping the game to turn on the television, just in time to see me reporting on television. The excuse was that I asked her to. The truth is that she wanted to show off the fact that her daughter is on national television to all her friends.

If my picture is in a magazine or a newspaper, she’ll buy enough copies to pass around at dim sum. If I’m heading to L.A. for the Oscars, she’ll somehow work the conversation around to that. If Mrs. Jiang’s daughter is getting married in France, Ma will let everyone know that I’m covering the royal wedding in England. The Squawking Chicken is a classic conversation hijacker.

Her rationale for the boasting and the showing is always
the same: people shouldn’t be so insecure, just like I shouldn’t have been “so embarrassing” about my daddy. As long as the intent behind her words is not to hurt or to put down, she sees nothing wrong with being overtly proud of her daughter and her husband’s accomplishments. If they were her “true friends,” they’d be happy for her instead of being resentful. The fact that they choose to be insulted by her boasting is more a reflection on their lack of confidence and not her lack of tact. And to be fair, Ma is genuinely happy for people when they boast back. It doesn’t offend her. She has the self-assurance to not draw comparisons and be jealous. So I don’t totally disagree with her assessment about people’s insecurities. But the problem is that those who are put off by the Squawking Chicken’s boasting haven’t been given any background to soften the blow of it. They don’t know where she came from. They don’t know about her difficult childhood, her irresponsible parents, the way she had to fight for everything she’s achieved. She hasn’t trusted them to share that information. Without the courtesy of disclosure, of sharing, all they have is the boasting at face value. In the gap between disclosure and boasting grows disdain.

I can appreciate the Squawking Chicken’s need to boast. I know where it comes from. But I can also understand why her friends, now ex-friends, would be put off by it, because they don’t know.

And so Ma’s revolving door of friends has only further cemented her belief in her motto: “You only need one true friend.” The more friends she breaks up with, the more wary she becomes of mine. When I try to tell her that my friends aren’t like that, she always brings it back to Sally.

Sally and the Squawking Chicken went to school together in Yuen Long. The Squawking Chicken dropped out for family obligations. Sally was sent to study overseas. They kept in touch through letters and phone calls. Sally was already installed in Canada when Ma immigrated with Dad. Sally helped Ma find a job as a waitress. Ma thought she and Sally were blood sisters. Ma agreed to be godmother to Sally’s son. Sally and her husband, Don, scrounged and saved for years to open their own restaurant and in 1989, they leased a property in a small town about an hour outside Toronto. They asked Dad to go into business with them. (We were on holiday with Sally and Don when my parents decided to have sex in the same room as me and ruin my life.) Sally and Don looked after the kitchen and the staff. Dad managed the accounts. We all had to pitch in. I spent weekends there bussing tables and packing takeout orders. Whenever Ma came to visit from Hong Kong—to renew her Canadian passport, attend a wedding—she would get to work as the hostess and put on an apron if it got really busy. Together, Sally, Don and my parents ran a thriving small business. The restaurant was a
community favorite. Though it closed down in 2008 after nineteen years, people in the neighborhood still remember the quality and variety of the food. We weren’t just serving chicken balls and egg rolls, we also mixed it up with some traditional, delicious Chinese dishes. But it couldn’t last forever.

Don went back to Hong Kong in 2000 for several weeks, leaving Sally solely in charge of the restaurant. Returning home was a sort of pilgrimage. When he left China, he had been a poor farm boy, kind of awkward, and no one really expected much of him. When he returned, he was a successful entrepreneur. Don wanted people to see what he had made of himself. Don wanted people to know he didn’t end up a loser. But even though Don had changed his circumstances, he still felt like the gangly kid who was made fun of at school. At some point during his trip, Don met a woman who flattered him with compliments—about his business, about his wealth, about his intelligence. I’ll say this about Don—no one worked harder, but he wasn’t blowing anyone away with his smarts. Don is the guy, though, who needs to believe that he’s the brains behind the operation. As his wife, Sally let him believe the glory, even though she was the one who held it all together, always cleaning up his messes. Now along came a woman who knew exactly what to say to him. Don was done. He fell in love. He wanted to leave Sally.

Sally begged him to reconsider. She promised she would forgive him. She just wanted him to come home. The problem for Don, however, was that the business was half in Sally’s name. Ma urged Sally to use this as a negotiating card and to never give up her half of the restaurant. When Don came home, Ma told Dad to watch the accounts, to make sure Don wasn’t taking money from the business to keep his other woman happy. Don carried on with his mistress for over a year, all while trying to convince Sally to sell, so that he could take his share and start his new life with his new woman. Sally didn’t want to sell. The restaurant was her soul. She didn’t know what she would do with herself if she wasn’t working. So she compromised. She told Don that he could go back to Hong Kong and see his lover as much as he wanted. And when he was in Canada, he could call her long distance and keep up the relationship, so long as they could still share a home, still share a life. Who wouldn’t take that deal?

After Sally worked out the arrangement with Don, she stopped communicating with the Squawking Chicken. Maybe she didn’t want to face Ma’s disapproval while feeling the shame of her own compromise. Or maybe she was much happier this way and had no time for Ma’s judgment. Whatever the real reason, Ma never found out the answer. Because
after forty years of friendship, Sally just dropped out. And right when Ma needed her most.

Ma’s kidneys had shut down a few years before and she was awaiting a transplant. In 2002 she finally got the call. Sally didn’t make contact. Ma’s transplant came and went, Sally didn’t visit, she didn’t call. Ma felt completely abandoned by her friend, someone she’d known most of her life. From then onward, Dad continued to look after the books, to make sure the finances were legit, but Ma never went to the restaurant again. And when the opportunity came up in 2008 to finally sell their share of the business, Dad got out of it quickly. We don’t know what happened to Sally and Don, whether or not they’re still together, what they decided to do next. And where the restaurant used to be, there’s now a Taco Bell. That could very well be a metaphor for Ma’s attitude about friendship: fast food, fast friends.

The Squawking Chicken’s disenchantment with her own friends has colored the way she sees me interacting with mine. She is constantly paranoid that the same will happen to me. She counsels caution over caring, protection over sharing. She’ll use everything at her disposal to manipulate me into choosing Me over my Friends.

Ma’s been betrayed and disappointed so much in her life, by so many different kinds of friends. In her experience, friendship has only resulted in bitterness and inconvenience,
a lot of wasted emotion. Therefore, friendship in the Squawking Chicken’s mind is not worth the self-sacrifice.

My own experience with friendship has been profoundly the opposite. I have more than “one true friend.” In fact, I have many great friends. They are wonderful, interesting people who bring wisdom and color into my life. They are accepting and forgiving of me. I am grateful and faithful to them. And I keep trying. Every day I try to be a good friend. I learned how to be good at friendship from the Squawking Chicken. Inadvertently, in being such a shitty friend, she taught me how to be a better one. She showed me the overwhelming loneliness that can result from refusing to share, from the fear of being open, from being too afraid to trust. So I chose instead to believe in the power of friendship. To believe that for every friend who fails you, there will be one who won’t. And before long, you look around, and suddenly the ones who are still standing become your soldiers for life. Sometimes I think that it’s one of the best gifts the Squawking Chicken has ever given me, albeit accidentally. She may not have intended it to turn out this way, but her inability to forge lasting friendships ended up helping me forge some of the most meaningful relationships I’ll ever have. And I often wonder whether or not it was part of a larger purpose. Every hurt and regret Ma has ever accumulated ended up as a plus in my column. For every time she was ever put down, I
would rise later. Every time she started over was every advantage I’ve ever had. Every friend who ever left meant more friends for me.

A part of me believes that Ma took her losses so that I could have my wins. That for all the times the odds were so heavily stacked against her, she accepted them so that in turn, hopefully, they’d be stacked in my favor. Ma’s always told me that good fortune comes in waves—there is a crest and there is a fall. Like in life, without darkness there would be no light. But what if she was the one eating all the falls, swallowing all the dips, welcoming all the darkness, so that I could ride one long wave all the way to shore? What if that’s the deal she made with the gods of feng shui and fortune-telling? That she would sacrifice herself so that I could soar instead?