Tiger Babies Strike Back (8 page)

As I knew him, Uncle Bill was a very downtrodden man. As far as I could tell, one of his small pleasures in life was to collect decorative hors d'oeuvres toothpicks embossed with the names of the touristy places he visited—Niagara Falls, Honolulu, Las Vegas—but when he died, the packaged souvenirs were all thrown out unused, having never been opened.

Maybe you could say Bill himself was unused and unopened. He was very shy, and he suffered when Christine had been deemed not good enough. A dud. The Chinese ladies had clucked their tongues, and that was that.

So Bill did not marry Christine.

In addition to photos of the “health camp,” in the album there were pictures of Uncle Bill at the U.S. Postal Service office where he worked, sorting big metal baskets of mail. Also, there was a snapshot of him in front of a plaque that read
WELCOME TO WAIKIKI
! In the background was a swaying palm tree, and the sky was light blue and peaceful. Bill was wearing a button-down, long-sleeved shirt, a wide black tie, a sweater vest, wool slacks, and black leather shoes, and he had a raincoat folded in his arms.

I wanted to say, “Hey, Uncle Bill, good thing ya got that raincoat. You never know when a hailstorm might strike.”

And how, you might wonder, did I come across this sad little photo album and the unused cocktail toothpicks?

Because I'm the one who threw out the detritus of his entire life. When his siblings decided it was time to move him to assisted living, my husband and I cleaned out his house. We scrubbed the urine off the floors and walls and sorted and recycled junk mail, bills, holiday cards, and vital records going back to 1952. We chiseled off decayed food from the kitchen tile and arranged for Sunset Scavenger to take away sixty-four Hefty bags full of his belongings.

There were grade-school report cards, long-expired prescription bottles, tax records from two decades ago, and a junk pile full of personal items. But this stuff hadn't been junk to him. It was his life. I tried to call around to family members to ask if they wanted to save his things, but for every person I phoned, each said the exact same thing: throw that crap out.

No one could deal with it. No one wanted old photos, cheap dishes, documents,
Living with Houseplants
, mini weenie forks, souvenir toothpicks, or any gadget ordered from late-night television ads: the coin-flushing bank, lamps that strapped onto your forehead, fake leather satchels, or Chia Pets. Throw it out. Get rid of it. Salvation Army. How the heck should I know? Why are you calling
me
? Who
is
this?

It's Kim. I'm your niece.
You
know, Larry and Irene's kid. Yeah, Number Three.

Yes, I was reduced to my birth-order number. Fine. Once they'd ascertained who the hell I was, the answer was still the same: throw that crap out.

I wanted to know more about Bill's life, but I didn't get much out of anybody. No one knew anything, or else they just said nothing. Nothing and everything was none of my freaking business so don't ask; just stuff your face with long-life noodles at the next Chinese banquet and shut the hell up, Number Three.

Well, okay then.

Uncle Bill was a Tiger Baby. A non–Carnegie Hall player. A runt. He was one of us and was stomped down by life. He lived as an invisible Chinese man. His big sis, my grandma Ruby, put the hammer down and he pretty much didn't put up a fight. She was fierce, all right. But at what cost?

As a kid, I would see my grandmother berating Uncle Bill at family dinners. He sat like a lump and took it. Chinese people have used passivity as a survival strategy for centuries, but sometimes I really wish he had stood up to her, even once. But I guess he just didn't have it in him to fight.

I think of Uncle Bill often. And as I write this I wonder, am I telling his secrets or am I keeping his spirit a little bit alive? At his funeral I couldn't bear to speak about the little, poignant things I learned about him while throwing out his life's nibbles and bits. It was freezing in Colma that day, and the few of us who were there stood in a tiny huddle. I was blubbering cuz that's what I do. My grandmother, who'd lain down the law and deemed the LUV of his life a loser, didn't even get out of the car. Of course, she was in her nineties and it was ass-cold, so I'll cut her some slack, but dang.

They lowered Bill's smallish casket into the Astroturf-lined pit and I wished, suddenly, that I had placed some of his beloved souvenir toothpicks in there with him. Maybe he could have the cocktail party in heaven that he couldn't, or simply didn't, have here.

He was never Number One. I never saw him in any holiday photo. No one would have ever called him the best or brightest of anything. He was a dim star in a packed Milky Way of high-achieving, Chinese superstars. But let me stop and say that Uncle Bill mattered. He came and went quietly without a peep, but he was just like so many of us. He may never have achieved any conventional hallmarks of greatness, and wasn't particularly good-looking, didn't excel in his profession, have children, or even drive a cool car. In fact, he didn't even have a license. But it didn't mean he didn't have wants and needs, or dreams as big as anyone else's. Who was he? He was a Tiger Cub who never spoke up, struck back, or even talked back. There are thousands of us, millions even, all alone inside ourselves.

And to further remind myself that gentle souls always matter, I keep Bill's picture on the refrigerator. No one ever asks me about it. No one has asked me who he is. And I have not pointed him out to anybody. But he is there. And I know it. Oftentimes, at potluck dinners with our neighbors, I find myself talking to someone in my kitchen but I'm looking slightly to the side, to the picture of him. My friends and I might be laughing and having a good time. We have appetizers and drinks, but we've got no cocktail toothpicks from the Grand Canyon. I stand there remembering Bill as my friend talks. Despite the fact that I barely knew him, I feel like I
did
know him. Although he was painfully shy, his DNA is linked with mine and so, even still, is an invisible frailty. His shoulders were always slumped over, but nonetheless, the memory of him somehow holds me up.

9

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I began at UC Berkeley as a double major in English literature and fine arts. Although there were thousands of Asian American students, there were just a handful in the English department then, and even fewer in the art department. But that wasn't why my social life was nonexistent. I was just naturally kind of a hermit and spent most weeknights in my apartment doing homework and watching
Jeopardy!

I still remember the time when the TV show was having “college week.” I was glued to the set because I was really hoping they'd have a contestant from UC Berkeley. One evening I fixed my usual dinner of champions, Top Ramen with the “Oriental” flavor pack, and sat down expecting some rousing entertainment provided by Alex Trebek and my fellow college-level scholars.

Now, whether there was an actual contestant from Berkeley I do not recall. The thing that sticks in my mind after all these years was that there was an Asian female participant, and she was so enamored of the white boy opponent to her left that she tanked horribly, and her demise left me seething with anger and disbelief.

I don't remember which college had to shamefully claim her as its own, but all the contestants wore sweatshirts with their school names emblazoned on the front, and in my faulty, snarktacular memory, her sweatshirt read
RICE
. Honestly, at first I thought she was cute. I had high hopes that she would prove to every TV-watching family in America that Asian women are a force to be reckoned with. She had a perky, bobbed hairdo and looked smart, which is to say, she looked Asian. At first glance, I thought she must have believed her right side was her more photogenic, because during the entire game her head was turned toward the left. However, what became quickly apparent was that she was all goo-goo eyes for the white guy on her left with whom she had chummy rapport. Between each of Alex Trebek's questions in answer form, she made chatty little comments to Lover Boy, constantly tossed her hair, and winked like she was plagued with an embarrassing facial tic.

I could accept that she was a boner, I mean a goner, for this guy. However, the thing that made her behavior completely unacceptable was that she was losing. LOSING. An Asian brainiac nerd was losing. Can you believe that? And she was not just lagging behind by a few hundred points, but rather, she had no points at all. Alex would fire off a clue, and when White Boy would hit the buzzer first and answer correctly, she consistently gave him a little high five or a fist bump as if to say, “Sweet!”

Okay, I thought. Convivial relations with the other contestants, and joshing familiarity. That's so college! Right. But after the third or fourth time it happened, and even the sixth time, I was starting to get pissed. Where was her Asian competitive instinct? Seriously, she was letting him win, and she seemed happy about it. I wanted to shout at the TV, “Hey, RICE girl! Get ahold of yourself!” After a while, even the White Guy started to look a little peeved. He gave her a look like, “Um, could you please stop touching me cuz my girlfriend back at Texas A&M is probably watching and also, uh, you're kinda creeping me out.”

Meanwhile, in my darkened, dusk-just-turned-to-night apartment with my uneaten bowl of ramen, I was furious. She was Asian, and what the hell was this? If she had been any other ethnicity, I would've just laughed and thought she was a regular-variety dope. But no. Something simmered inside me until I just couldn't take it anymore. All by myself, watching a game show in the dark, I yelled, “CRUSH HIM!”

But she did not. Crush him, that is. It seemed to me that she should have been genetically preprogrammed to demolish any opponent under academic circumstances. But no. Every time the guy answered correctly, she beamed with pride.

C'mon, woman! I'm as romantically deluded as anyone, but if I was on freaking
Jeopardy!
representing my college and the entire Asian American population, I sincerely hope I would self-censor my burning desire to rub myself all over Hunky Boy. Where were her priorities? First win a million dollars,
then
you can hump his brains out . . . LATER. Offscreen, okay? In the privacy of the network green room.

But instead, Asian Girl lost miserably, and when the competition was over, White Guy walked off the platform like she didn't even exist, and she was the one who ended up getting crushed. I wanted to feel bad for her, but I didn't. My Oriental-flavored Top Ramen was cold and so was I. I felt betrayed and disgusted. Poor RICE. What an effing idiot.

After all these years, I still remember watching that episode of
Jeopardy!
Seeing an Asian American female my own age competing against our peers gave me high hopes, but my expectations were dashed. I wanted that girl to represent the best part of me, but I ended up resenting her, that stranger. I wanted her to win above all else, as if she stood for me and every Asian person in the world. I didn't recognize her individuality, her awkwardness, or her humanity. She was just a regular girl whom I was so ready to reflect me, but since she lost, I put her out of my mind. I was eighteen and was searching for camaraderie, even on TV, I suppose.

Actually, I was looking for female friendship in real life, too. But all my friends had longtime boyfriends, and I was the perennial seventh wheel. I was everyone's sherpa, holding coats and wallets when my pals hit the dance floor or went to sweet-talk free beers from the Bear's Lair patio known as The Cage. I was the dork-ass nonblonde. The Chinese one.

Even as my white friends regaled me with tales of drunken parties where Everclear punch was mixed in gigantic plastic garbage bins, I simply regarded them with curiosity. I felt separate from them. I was glad they were having fun, but I did not consider that kind of fun to be available or right for me. My fears about embarrassing my family or, worse, getting a B on the following day's test kept me from any and all festivities.