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Dept. of English
Humanities Building
SUNY at Stony Brook
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5350
Site Designed by Melissa Bishop/DoIT Last Modified 03/10/2003 09:30:29 AM EST
© Carol Wong
Carol Wong
Kwan's Restaurant is busy on the Saturday I meet my mother for lunch. When she called me a few days ago I promptly scheduled it in my daybook, another chore on my "To Do" list for the day. Years ago I would never have thought of going for lunch with my mother, and she would never have asked me. But since I moved out a year ago, perhaps she's feeling restless, not having anyone around to direct her constant criticisms at. My father certainly stopped listening to her years ago. My girlfriends often go for coffee or Sunday brunch with their mothers and aunts, so surely this is a normal thing for adults to do.
She is already seated at a corner table when I arrive. "Sorry," I say, even though I know I'm not late. She's early. "Have you been waiting long?"
She shakes her head, begins pouring Chinese tea in my cup, though she knows I prefer coffee. I notice we're sitting in the non-smoking section, despite the fact that she knows I smoke. "New sweater?" I ask, pointing to the purple pullover she's wearing. It clashes with the blue pants she has on, but I won't say anything. Unless she starts in first.
"K-Mart," she says proudly. "Fourteen ninety-nine." My mother is always proud when she finds a low price. She thinks the clothes I wear are too expensive, a waste of hard-earned money. I spend too much money on how I look, she has always said.
I give her my polite smile -- the kind reserved for old high school classmates when I run into them on campus, the ones who recognize my face, but don't know my name.
"What do you feel like having?" I ask my mother as I flip through the menu. It feels strange to ask -- during suppers at home she would usually inform us of what we were going to eat. There was never any consultation involved.
"Combination number three," she says, pointing at the $8.95 lunch specials. "The barbecued pork one."
"I think I'm going to have the chicken combo," I say.
"Shouldn't have the chicken, Jennifer. They make very greasy here, too much oil," she says with authority, grimacing. "Not good for you skin," she adds, rubbing her cheeks.
"I'm having the chicken," I say firmly, trying to remain pleasant and fighting the flush rising to my cheeks. My mother pours more tea for us both.
After we order, my mother and I sit in awkward silence for a few moments. I suspect she has summoned me here to tell me something, some news. There must be some purpose to this. Why else would she ask me out to lunch? We've never done this kind of thing, just the two of us. Usually my father is with us too, and there's a reason, some news, like when I told them Martin and I were engaged. I remember how my mother's face froze, her chopsticks in midair, a dumpling caught precariously between them, threatening to fall. My mother has always dreamed that I would marry an upper-class, young Chinese man, preferably a law or medical student. When Martin and I made the announcement, my father had the decency to say congratulations, and wish us well. But my mother remained silent. I'm sure she'll be happy with what I am about to tell her.
"Well," I start, "I guess you should know. Martin and I split up last month." I watch her face for signs of pleasure, for a smile to tug at her lips.
"Split up?"
"Yes, Mom. We're no longer together."
"Aii-ya," she says sharply, "why not? What he do to you?" Her eyes narrow accusingly.
She's sure he's done something despicable.
"It was a while in coming, believe me."
"What he do?" she demands.
"He didn't do anything, it was me. It just didn't work out." There is absolutely no way I could explain it in words that she would understand.
"What you do, then?" she barks.
"Nothing," I say. "I don't know."
"What he say? What reason?" My mother is always so full of questions, ready to assign blame.
What he said was that I withdrew, that I pushed him away. He said things about building walls and hiding. She wouldn't understand that language, in Chinese or English. "Mom, please." I'm looking down, talking to the cup of tea in my hands. The waiter comes by to serve the first course, punctuating the silence and my thoughts. I am grateful for the soup placed in front of us, if for nothing else but the diversion it provides. My mother slurps loudly from her china soup spoon.
"I'm student teaching now," I tell her, changing subjects and trying to brighten. "A grade three class at Cloverdale." I figure I should update her on the other parts of my life, that a mother should know these kinds of things.
"You teaching?" my mother asks, surprised. She often has to repeat what I say, to make sure she is understanding properly. "Already?"
"It's only for six weeks. Like work experience," I explain. She nods, and I know she's remembering my work experience week at high school, when I answered phones and filed folders at an accountant's office for a week, instead of going to class. She was so proud of me that week. She liked the image of me going to work in a shiny office building, armed with my typing skills and phone manners, at such a young age.
"How you like?" she asks.
I want to tell her about how scared I am, how unsure I am every morning, how I feel so young compared to all the other teachers in the staffroom, how I wish I still had Martin to lean on during this time and tell him all my worries. But instead I say, "Oh, it's great. I'm learning a lot, it's a wonderful experience."
"Good experience," she repeats, struggling with the latter word.
"Yes," I confirm.
"Good, good," she says, pleased at last. "How you like the soup?" she asks, and I wonder if maybe that's what she was asking about in the first place.
I nod, tell her it's fine, and look out the window at the shoppers bustling through Chinatown. "Should cut you hair," she tells me, holding a hand level to her jawline. "Like that. Susie Hsu cut like that last week, make her look real nice. Yeah!" she says to my rolling eyes and tired sigh. My mother has said for years that I have too much hair, that no one can see my face because of it, that my long hair is a sign of vanity. "Better to cut short, you know," she says.
The main course is served and I devour the greasy chicken on my plate, not looking up to see my mother's frown until I am finished.
*****
It's recess and Vincent Tang, the painfully shy boy who sits next to my desk, is back before the bell rings. He stands away from the desk, hesitant to approach me, though I know he wants to. He wears a brown sweater and grey corduroy pants with the hem let out. His jet black bangs hang a little crookedly in his eyes. I try to greet him with a warm smile, one that won't scare him, but he looks down at his tattered sneakers.
"Everything okay, Vincent?" I ask him.
"Yes," he says, barely audible.
"Did you have a snack already?"
"Uh huh."
"You don't want to play outside anymore?"
"No." He looks around the room, at the chalkboard covered with my handwriting from the morning lesson.
"Do you want to clean the boards for me?"
He nods, still not looking up, but I can see a smile forming, the new adult teeth protruding. I hand him the chamois and watch him meticulously wipe the boards, using the small stepladder to get to the corners up at the top, eager to please me. He doesn't miss a single inch. Afterwards the chalkboard gleams, an emerald green.
"Thank you very much," I say, patting him gently on the arm. "You did a really good job." My hand lingers on his elbow, and I feel the acrylic of his thin sweater. He must be cold, I think, he needs something warmer for this weather. Doesn't his mother give him anything warm to wear? Doesn't she know how cold it is this time of year?
The bell rings and the other pupils ramble back in from recess, breathless from playing games outside. They squeak their shoes and rubber boots, rudely brushing by Vincent on their way to the coat room.
*****
We have art class on Friday afternoons. This week, the class is making pictures of flower bouquets. I demonstrate how to make the symmetrical "vase" by folding a piece of construction paper in half and cutting on one side; when you unfold it, you have your vase. "Just like the butterflies we made last week," I remind the class. We cut little flower blooms out of different colours of tissue paper: pink, purple, red, blue, yellow. We wrap each bloom around the eraser end of a pencil, put a tiny drop of glue on it, and press it on the background piece of paper with the pencil, so the edges are free. The flowers can overlap this way, and create a three-dimensional effect.
I thought of this assignment last night as I lay in bed, brainstorming for arts and crafts projects. This is my weak teaching area; I'm better at the grammar, spelling and arithmetic. The arts and crafts require an inventiveness that I don't really have. As a child, I was never good at pictures. I have always been unsure of how things are supposed to look.
I circle the room, watching the kids work, their bouquets coming to life. Bits of tissue paper stray from their desks and find their way onto the floor, covering it like lost petals. But Vincent wears a puzzled look on his face. His vase looks strange, oddly shaped, more like a butterfly than a vase. He's only glued a few flowers on, and they're spaced far apart. He knows his picture doesn't look right, that it doesn't look like the others.
I suddenly realize that such a simple sight as flowers in a vase is probably alien to Vincent. I remember my own childhood, growing up in our tiny townhouse, the only Chinese family in the complex. We had a few plants, but never vases of fresh flowers. Our house was decorated with Chinese scrolls or painted silk fans with pictures of peacocks or dragons on them. My mother never had the urge to buy a bouquet of carnations or daisies that would only die within the week. She liked her beautiful things to last.
Vincent glances over at the other kids' pictures, trying to copy theirs, but not sure how. His neighbour, Jimmy, even points at Vincent's picture and sneers, wrinkling his chubby, freckled face. "What's that supposed to be?" he snickers.
"Jimmy, he can make his however he wants," I say firmly. But I can't resist going over to Vincent's desk to try and help him anyway. I show him how to overlap the paper flowers, starting close to the vase and working your way out.
By the time the 3:00 bell rings, Vincent's picture looks almost like everyone else's; except for the oddly-shaped vase cutout, this could be any other classmate's picture. This pleases him; which pleases me. His picture isn't different anymore.
When I staple the pictures on the wall the next day, I put Vincent's right in the middle, just as if it were any other's picture. I figure this is what he would want.
*****
We have a break in the cold weather one day and the sun comes out. On my way back from the staffroom at lunch I see Vincent sitting under a tree by himself. He's eating fried rice out of a plastic container. He doesn't look up at the other kids across the field, where they've gathered in a group on a big rock like a flock of birds, feeding on their peanut butter sandwiches and homemade cookies.
"Fried rice, huh?" I ask him as I stop by the tree.
Vincent looks up at me. "Yeah," he says, shrugging. "My mom makes it for me."
"It looks yummy."
"It's okay," Vincent says. "I have Kool-Aid," he says, holding up his drinking box for proof. Kool-Aid is a treat.
"Cool," I say.
"Kool-Aid," he corrects. We both laugh, but for different reasons. "Wanna see something?" he asks me, sitting up.
"Sure," I say. He gets up and scoots over to the other side of the tree, begins inspecting the ground, looking for something. I watch him, mystified. I can't see anything on the ground but dirt. Suddenly he plucks something off the ground, places it in his palm and comes over to show me.
It's a wood bug. "Look," he says, gently squeezing the ends of the bug together so that it forms a round ball.
"Wow, neat."
He rolls it around in his palm, demonstrating. Then he gently unrolls the bug again, and it resumes crawling on his hand, back to life.
Vincent smiles and looks directly at me, something he rarely does. He rolls the wood bug into a ball again and offers it to me to try. It is a present, a toy he's lending me, entrusting me with it.
*****
I run into Mrs. Carter, the teacher whom I am replacing during my practicum, in the women's staff washroom.
"You did very well this morning," she compliments me, referring to the morning grammar lesson she supervised and evaluated. We'll be having a meeting later on in the day, so we know not to get into it here. So she asks me generally, "How are things going for you?"
"Oh, all right," I say, expecting the conversation to end there.
"Interesting group of kids, isn't it?" she says, as we smile at each other in the mirror. "I mean, some of those kids can be quite difficult, but you seem to have a way with them," she tells me.
"Really?" I ask, genuinely surprised. "Like who?"
"Oh, I don't know. Jamie, and Andy, for instance. They were getting a little mouthy before you started, but they seem to really like you," she says brightly as she combs her short, dark curly hair. Mrs. Carter is in her mid-thirties, but she has the figure of a twenty-year old. It's the slight creases around her eyes and mouth, accentuated by her dry makeup, that hint at her age. She reminds me of Martin's mother, who I met last summer when she came out here from Edmonton to visit him.
Mrs. Carter laughs then. "But then again, it's only your third week. Wait till they start to get comfortable with you!" she winks.
I turn on the tap to wash my hands. "What about Vincent? I mean, has he always been so shy?" I try to sound casual.
She nods. "Yeah. Such a sweetie, eh?. It's so hard for him to interact with the other kids."
"I don't understand it," I say. "He speaks English pretty well, it's not like he has a problem communicating. I just wish the other kids would... give him a chance." The washroom is out of paper towels, so I have to shake my hands dry.
"Yes, well, I've noticed that the kids in this part of town tend to stick to their own. It's that much harder if you're different, and he's so shy," she says sadly. "It's too bad."
She turns to me then, a serious, concerned look on her face. "Dear, I noticed you were giving him quite a bit of attention this morning," she says. I recall the morning in my head; I didn't call on Vincent during the lesson, I had simply gone over to his desk a few times to help him with the exercise, to check that he understood how to do it. But I can sense an accusation lurking behind Mrs. Carter's eyes.
"I just know that he has a bit of trouble with the grammar sometimes, so I wanted to make sure he understood," I reply lightly. My hands feel chilled from the water, have turned cold in the air.
Mrs. Carter nods. "Oh, I see," she says gently. "And did he?"
"Yes, I think so," I say.
*****
Martin calls to ask how I'm doing. It's been two weeks since I've heard his voice. "I'm fine," I say. Then quickly, "How 'bout you? How's your thesis coming?"
"Oh, I'm trudging along. You know me!"
And it's true. I know him better than anyone. So we laugh like old friends, but there's a fakeness to it.
I can picture him in his apartment, sprawled on the throw pillows on his hardwood floors. "Well, I'm going home for Christmas next week," he says.
"Already? What about exams?" I ask. Christmas is still more than three weeks away.
"I only have one, on the sixth. I'm going to fly home the next day and maybe work on my thesis a little bit while I'm over there with my folks."
"Oh. Well, that'll be a nice break for you," I say, remembering how he had complained all semester that he needed a holiday. "When are you planning on coming back?" I ask, my throat suddenly dry.
"Probably not until the fourth of January or so. I guess I'll be gone for almost a month," he says. Suddenly it strikes me what this call is really about. A month is a long time, and he wants me to talk him out of it, to give him a reason to stay. And I want to, because who knows who he could meet while he's in Edmonton? There won't be any reminders there, only memories and a phone that's not ringing.
"Well, I'm sure that'll be a nice break, then," I repeat. The hum of his cordless phone fills in the silence.
"So how's the practicum going?" he finally asks.
"Oh, pretty good. I'm still nervous, but it gets better every day."
"Hon, are you okay?" he asks me suddenly, the Hon instantly causing a lump to form in my throat. Like magic, he seems to have been able to detect my emotions. He's amazing, I think. No, I'm not okay, I want to tell him, but I can't. What would be the point now?
"Of course. Why do you ask?"
"I don't know. I mean, I know you've probably been busy, but you haven't called once," he says. "I'm just wondering -- what's going on between us."
"What's going on?" I repeat coldly, as if it's a ridiculous question. He seems to have forgotten who broke up with whom. "It's not up to me." My tone of voice stings both of us.
"It's always been up to you," he says quietly. "Do you wanna go talk somewhere? Go for coffee, or--"
"Look, I can't right now, Martin, I've got a lot to do, I have tests to mark..." I say, even though I want more than anything to hear his voice, smell his hair, press against him. And when we hang up I feel angry, as if he's failed me, but I know he hasn't.
*****
I'm walking from the staff parking lot to the schoolyard one bright, cold morning when it happens. At the gate, a few of the kids in my class are taunting someone. I know who it is before I even see them; I've predicted this scene -- or variations of it -- many times. I've imagined what I would say, what I would do, but I can feel the pit of my stomach sinking, tightening.
"Hyong mee mong fong," they say in mock-Chinese. I take a few steps over and see a couple of older boys pulling their eyelids upward, making nasal sounds that are supposed to sound like Chinese, in between hoots of laughter. "Gow cow long ding fong!" they scream, and a few other kids nearby hear them and can't help but giggle. I feel as if I'm in a familiar dream. Or a memory.
I know what I have to do, as a teacher and an adult, but I have to fight an impulse to linger by my car and pretend I don't hear them at all. That may even be what Vincent would want. But I keep walking towards them anyway.
When the kids see me coming they stop and look up at me, scared but transfixed. Vincent is looking down at his sneakers, trying to walk past me. And he almost does, but at the last second I grab him by the shoulders and whirl him around so everyone can see his contorted face.
"How can you kids do this?" I demand, my sharp voice piercing the air, louder than I've heard it in a long time. I've had to discipline the kids a few times but on those occasions it was minor, easy. This time I've startled them, and I feel a sense of satisfaction grow inside me.
"No, tell me, I want to know! Andy, why do you say those things to him?"
Andy, the biggest of them, cowers in shame as I loom over him. Or perhaps it is only an appearance of shame -- I remember how easily children can shrug off remorse. Many of them don't really know what shame is. But Vincent and I do, I think, growing angrier. I feel furious, disgusted with these kids, ashamed to be their teacher, ashamed to be part of a world that can be so cruel to Vincent, one that can let him down so much. "I have never been so disappointed in you kids," I say. "You should all be ashamed of yourselves."
I turn to Vincent. "Come on, Vincent," I say, putting a hand on his back to lead him away. But he resists when I start walking. "Come on," I repeat, but he doesn't move. I didn't expect this. Shock falls over me in a cold wave. I try to look in his face, but he won't let me. I've done him a favour, doesn't he realize that? I think desperately to myself, this is a gift, Vincent, a wood bug. You don't even know it. I crouch down so that my face is level to his, forcing him to see me. The other kids seem to fade away, there is no more schoolyard, there is no more Andy, there is only Vincent and I and the roaring in my ears and the sound of my voice stating the truth. "You don't deserve to be treated this way," I tell him.
But there is only humiliation on his face, big, hot, salty tears of it. And confusion. There is nothing left to do, so I stand up, covering Vincent in my shadow.
*****
On the weekend I meet my mother for lunch at Kwan's again. This time I make sure I get there first so we can get a smoking table. I've just lit up a menthol when my mother arrives, a shopping bag in her hands.
"Hmmph!" she snorts as she sees me puffing away, just as I knew she would. She takes her seat across from me, waving the smoke away in big, exaggerated hand movements, even forcing out a cough. A few years ago she would have ordered me in a loud voice to promptly put it out. "Can-sah," she used to say to me, simply and heavily, as if the one menacing word was enough to make me stop, it needed no explanation. Now that I've moved out, though, she has to dramatize her disapproval, express it in ways not as blunt or loud but still just as obvious. She still has that impulse.
But I also still have the impulse to defy her, so I take visibly deep drags of the cigarette, exhaling nonchalantly, right in her direction. "Aii! Smoking so ugly," she says. "No one like girl who smoke." Her lips form a thin, tense line.
"And no one likes people who nag," I say dryly.
"Hmmph!" she snorts. "Why so angry?" She pouts as if hurt, but I'm sure she's not. I look away, shaking my head, wondering why I agree to these lunch rituals in the first place.
"Here," she says, opening her shopping bag, trying to make peace. "I bring these for you." She pulls out a red cotton cardigan, holds it up with an approving smile, nodding. "You wear, uh? Red very nice colour on you. You, too much black."
Bleck, she says, like a spit of disgust. I do tend to wear a lot of black -- it's flattering, and it goes with everything I have. It's practical. However, my mother believes it makes me look like a negative person. "You wear dark clothes too long, make you dark inside," she's said more than once. So she's often trying to encourage me to wear bright colours. But when I went over to my parents' house for Thanksgiving dinner a few months ago, wearing a new purple suit and a nervous Martin on my arm, she looked me up and down, not smiling. "That purple too bright," she'd said. "Look like big grape!" And she laughed at her own joke.
"Mom, I don't need another sweater."
"You try, uh? Just try," she says, forcing it into my reluctant hands. I remember how Martin used to say I looked really good in red, and how he once bought me a long, slinky, red dress. It fit perfectly, but I didn't like the brightness of it, the daring it involved. A few times he had suggested that I wear it, but I never had the courage. I wonder if he took my refusal to wear it as a mean, ungrateful gesture or some other such silly thing. But I was a good deal too grateful, that was the problem.
My mother and I chat awkwardly over lunch, about superficial things: my mother discusses how her garden is doing, I tell her about the suit I'm sewing at home on my roommate's sewing machine.
"Is not black, is it?" she asks.
"No," I lie. "It's blue."
"Good. See? Should wear more colours like that," she says. "Bright. Very beau-ti-ful." She says the last word slowly, to get it right.
Over tea and coffee and more cigarettes for me she finally asks how my student teaching is going. "You class okay? They nice to you?" she asks me gently, as if I were a child myself, one of the nervous students instead of the nervous teacher.
"Yes, Mom," I say, annoyed. "They're fine. Actually, they're great. Really great."
"Any Chinese kid in you class?"
This is always something that is of great interest to my mother. Whether it's a new class or a new job or any kind of new endeavour of mine, she always wants to know if there are any other Chinese people in it.
"Yeah," I retort. "So?"
"Nothing, just wondering," she says. "Boy or girl?"
"Boy."
"What his name?"
"Vincent."
"Ohhh, Vincent," she repeats, as if this means something to her. "Must be very smart, uh?" She winks at me knowingly. "Most Chinese are very smart," she tells me.
My anger erupts then. "Mom, why do you always assume stuff like that? Why do you always have to say that shit? He's just a little boy, for Chris'sake!"
"Aii!" she recoils, glancing around the restaurant to see if people have turned to stare. I feel out of breath. For once she is the self-conscious one.
*****
From the staffroom window I watch the children play during lunch hour. I watch as the kids play dodge-ball or tether-ball or Red Rover, and ignore Vincent. I watch as he stands to the side of these games, and no one bothers to invite him into them.
Occasionally they will let him play hide-and-seek with them, but he has to be "it." And if he catches someone, they make up some rule so that he is still "it" for the next round, they invent some lie like, The home base for girls is this rock, it's the boys who have to touch the railing. Didn't you know that? I watch him grow more and more confused with each of these games, with their ever-changing rules, constructed so that he always loses. But he doesn't think he's losing, because he gets to play with them. Sometimes they will invite him to play one game, but then tell him he can't play with them the next. Am I their friend? he must be wondering, Do they like me now? Will I get to play in the next game?
I know he must think these things as he stands on the edge of the playground, shivering in his windbreaker, waiting for his turn. He doesn't realize that he has always been a part of their games.
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