Tiger Babies Strike Back (22 page)

When we first moved out of San Francisco, I was blown apart inside. Except for four years of college just over the bridge in Berkeley, I had never lived anywhere else but the city. If I was no longer a San Franciscan, I wasn't sure who or what to be. As a result, I defaulted to history's tried and true position for females, Nurturing Wife and Mother.

While my husband hit the ground running with his new job and my daughter began kindergarten, I made breakfast and careful lunches for them and had fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies waiting in the afternoon while dinner simmered on the stove. Since my daughter is sans siblings, frequently we hosted playdates, which also kept me busy preparing snacks and helping to set up elaborate stuffed animal tea parties and whatnot. I scurried around in a flowered apron with hot-pink trim, picking up toys and fetching glasses of milk.

As a kid I was always envious of the TV characters whose moms were home all day baking, ready with a hug and a pitcher of lemonade. And now I was that mom, and I found that the housewife role wasn't half bad.

For many months, in my delirium of having left my old life, I poured all my energy into being a good wife, a nurturing mother, and the fun mom to my daughter's little friends. Since I wasn't working a “regular” job, I had time to just enjoy the kids' company. In addition, we hosted big dinner parties where the parents came. Everyone played Ping-Pong and we stuffed our faces while our children enthusiastically turned the house upside down.

Week after week, month after month, I took it upon myself to take care of kids, prepare hors d'oeuvres, assemble lasagnas, bake brownies, mix salsas, and marinate veggies and meat for the barbecue. Every one of our friends is a hardworking, harried parent, and I was glad to offer snacks, relaxation, and a little pampering as if it was some higher calling.

I wanted to see how far I could push the servitude thing. I figured, hey, why do anything halfway? Chinese people are superior in everything, so I could be a better homemaker than even Carol Brady on TV. For me it was a novelty, and ironic, to behave in this way. Anyone who really knew me at all would know I wasn't a pushover or diminutive flower in any aspect of life, so this Asian-Female-at-Your-Service kind of thing was an interesting experiment.

Mind you, no one was asking me to act this way. No one was forcing me into this role. It just sort of began as a way to fill up time and not feel hysterical over having left everything I ever knew. But then again, I kept thinking of that Talking Heads song, and the lyrics, “. . . Well, how did I get here? Letting the days go by . . .”

And how
did
I get there? My meals got more and more elaborate. I was sweating eggplant and letting cheesecakes “breathe.” And even though I knew I was acting nuts, I would blow a gasket if someone said they couldn't make it to dinner because they had a previous engagement. In my head, I sulked and thought,
How
dare
they not come over here and have the
most exquisite
time of their lives?!

But then at some point, I remembered what Ann had told me about her mother sobbing uncontrollably at the dinner table.
Oh, that's how that happens
, I realized. The martyr thing apparently just sneaks up on you. I didn't want to go to that wretched place, but I was making myself crazy trying to be a perfect wife and mom. No one forced me to strive for this ideal. I just started to automatically go there. If dinner and homemaking were something good, I could make them better. I could make things fantastic for everybody else, each and every day. I had fallen into the pursuit of perfection and didn't even know I was descending through a trapdoor that would leave me feeling ignored and, frankly, bored.

I had unknowingly, but most definitely, slipped over to a version of the Dark Side. Maybe it wasn't Tiger Mom Dark Side, but for sure it was Martha Stewart Dark Side, which was certainly related. It was the territory of Making Everything Right and to My Specifications, which should have at least made me suspicious. But instead, the persona of Control Freak was rather easy to slip into.

What now, genius?

I turned my thoughts to Chinese history. I remembered the story of Emperor Guangxu's sweet Pearl Concubine. I recalled the legend of how Empress Dowager Cixi, Guangxu's Tiger Mom, had the Pearl Concubine killed by ordering her to be thrown down a well. I asked myself if it mattered whether the Pearl Concubine was forcibly pushed to her death, or if she fell in by herself. Maybe she jumped in or was simply not paying attention and slipped carelessly. The reasons and the details of the Pearl Concubine's demise are lost to Qing Dynasty lore, but the end result is all we know: she perished.

I didn't want to lose myself in the classic feminine trap of endless people pleasing. I didn't realize how easy it was to absorb what society as a whole expected of a woman, to start acting accordingly, then to keep doing it because it did attract a certain amount of approval. I wanted to jab myself in the eye with a chopstick because I had turned into a maid. And worst of all, I had done it to myself.

Femininity and vulnerability are endlessly compelling and alluring. The legend of the Pearl Concubine was so fascinating because she represents the fantasy of the ultimate submissive Asian girl. There is a great painting by Zhong-Yang Huang of the Pearl being carried away by eunuchs. They are intent on throwing her down the well behind the Ningxi Palace in the Forbidden City. On the side of the painting, just out of full view, you can see Empress Dowager Cixi giving the execution order, and just below is the hand of her nephew, Emperor Guangxu, who is the Pearl Concubine's lover. She is his beloved and his only happiness in life, but as she desperately reaches for him, he does not save her. He was the emperor of China for heaven's sake. But he didn't do a damn thing to disobey history's most notorious Tiger Mother. The Pearl Concubine got tossed down the well like yesterday's garbage.

I recall this bit of Chinese history to remind myself that servitude can bring satisfaction, but it's also a bottomless pit. If you aren't careful, it can be the wishing well that you throw yourself down, and no one will climb in to save you. The sides are slippery. While you try to get a foothold as a woman, and as a mother, you might find yourself in that pit of despair and not know how to pull yourself out.

So before you get there, you have to stop yourself. You have one life to live, and it is yours.

By then I knew I'd never be a Tiger Mom, but it hadn't occurred to me that I was susceptible to the drowned-girl-in-a-well scenario. Realistically, the modern-day equivalent would be to drown oneself over a period of years in bottomless vodka cocktails, but I won't be doing that either.

I am a marshmallow Peep. I will not be “toughening up” anytime soon. However, nor will I be crying at the dinner table if the food isn't perfect or because I've burdened myself with endless people pleasing. From now on, I'll be who I am and relinquish control of all the things I can't possibly manipulate into seamless perfection.

The Hot Mess Club just isn't for me. I hereby tender my resignation.

28

Growing up as an Asian American person, you are often called on to explain or defend your race. Even if you are too young to have the confidence or vocabulary to stand up for yourself, situations arise that make you feel crummy, and that uneasy feeling can linger from early childhood up through adulthood.

By nine years old, my daughter has already encountered disparaging comments about Chinese people. She has witnessed games and scenarios played out by kids younger than she and overheard phrases such as “Look at my Chinese hat. I'm a funny Chinaman!” and “I'm a Chinese girl,” accompanied by mincing steps and the stretching sideways of the eyelids to make slanty eyes. My daughter told me about these incidences that transpired on the playground and after school. The words were not necessarily directed at her, but hearing them and seeing other kids laugh made her feel lousy. She is proud to be Chinese, and hence, she was confused as to why these imitations of Chinese people were deemed so hilarious.

How do I prevent my kid from internalizing shame for something that is not her fault? I am not proud to have done so, but when I was younger, I myself occasionally laughed along with hurtful comments or remained silent to avoid being targeted next for derision. But my daughter is just a kid. How is she supposed to feel, and what should I say to her?

I don't want to lecture her about Chinese American history or make her feel worse than she already does, but I also don't want to ignore her feelings either. I want to validate that she is right to question mimicry and jokes that mock others. I sometimes suggest phrases she might say, such as “It's not okay to make fun of people,” but I know that at her age and with her nonconfrontational personality, she would rather keep quiet. Also, I know that little kids make fun of everybody and anybody, and I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill.

Nonetheless, if I don't say something, who will? I could initiate the whole teacher conference thing and drag in the alleged offenders, but have you ever been involved in one of these kinds of meetings with multiple parents, kids, and teachers? The sessions quickly devolve into a he said–she said squabble, with parents often getting apoplectic, and kids even defending their tormentors. It can be a pretty big mess, so one must carefully consider if the offending joke, gesture, or glance is really worth hauling in all the involved parties who are just going to end up fuming and blaming one another.

Instead, Lucy and I usually just talk to each other in private. And although my husband definitely has the right to be included, sometimes I don't tell him of every little disturbance because he will feel the most outraged of us all. I don't need him stomping his gigantic, steaming-mad self up some unsuspecting parent's driveway like an albino Incredible Hulk only to get his head blown off with a shotgun.

But, yes, we talk. Not in a big, family meeting kind of way, but just as we're walking to school, or making lunch, or whenever an in-between time allows us a few quiet moments. I don't want to act so riled up or hurt that Lucy actually just stops telling me stuff. If I were a kid, that's precisely what I would do. I'd feel so bummed already, and if I knew that my parent would be further upset by what I had to say, I'd just stop talking. So with that in mind, I don't fly into a rage, even if that's what I'm feeling. Our talks about teasing, and particularly about race, are hard to have. But I want to keep having them. In emotional housekeeping, sometimes the hardest work of all is to not sweep things under the carpet.

A little while ago, my daughter was sitting in the bathtub and I was brushing my teeth when she started to tell me about a play that students in an older grade performed at her school. It was about the history of California, and Lucy said she hated the part where a Chinese gold miner got beaten up. Her initial description was that the “Chinese” kid got beat up and everyone laughed, which made her really angry.

“Was it really a Chinese kid?”

“No, a blond boy dressed up like he was Chinese.”

“And what do you mean he was beaten up?”

“It was supposed to be pretend,” she said, starting to get upset. “But it was mean.”

“Well, yes, Chinese miners up here did get beaten up a lot, and it was unfair and mean. It is true that that did happen . . .”

“But everybody didn't have to laugh!” she exclaimed, and then burst into tears.

Oh. I hadn't really anticipated having a conversation about discrimination, racism, and violence against Chinese people when she was still so young, but here we were. Meanwhile, I was thinking of all the regular parent things, like getting her out of the bathtub, drying her hair, clipping her fingernails, putting her to bed, transferring the laundry into the dryer, and so on.

But then something distracted me, like the phone rang or something. We somehow dropped the subject, I got her out of the tub, and we resumed our bedtime routine. Shortly thereafter, Rolf came upstairs to read to her, and I went downstairs to finish the dishes.