Nothing but the truth: (and a few white lies) Read online

  At this point, I know better than to gasp in disbelief or contort my face into a disgusted expression. Audience interaction like this usually means an unwanted and often-prolonged jaunt into Ingrate Land.

  Still, Mama sniffs indignantly, as if to say, Can you believe how much I have suffered in my life? Trust me, I can. I stare down at my hands clenched tightly on my lap. Honestly, what's unbelievable is that I'm not hunchbacked with guilt from the number of times she's told me and Abe how easy her life would have been if she had only married her Taiwanese suitor. Not our white guy of a dad. As if we chose our father, not she.

  Mama breathes in sharply. She must be smelling my exasperation polluting the air.

  "You think you too good to eat ground-up cockroach?" Mama scowls at me. "If you starving, you hold your hand out for cockroach. You say, please don't grind up. I eat whole."

  I catch Teenage Tourist Girl looking like she's going to projectile vomit. She shrieks, "Gross!" while staring at me with her mouth misshapened with disgust like I am a Teenage Tourist Girl from some primitive civilization. For the first time since this miserable day started, I am glad that the all-school dance is tonight because it means that no one I know, especially Mark, can waltz in and witness just one more moment in the Patty Ho Hall of Mothering Shame.

  Mama finally recalls the purpose of her lecture, which is not to reminisce unhappily about long-ago hard times so much as to give me a hard time for my in-her-face too cushy of a life. She shakes her head like it's a saltshaker full of

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  self-pity: "I would have given everything to attend math camp if I had the opportunity."

  The coup de grace, like always, gets delivered in a tone of deep disappointment: "You are so lucky."

  When this lecture is delivered in the comfort of our own home, my shriveled-up shitake mushroom of a heart usually gets a good rehydration when I cry on my bed. One that I am so lucky not to have to share with a sister the way Mama did growing up.

  Here in the restaurant, the bad part of me (OK, the ungrateful daughter in me) wants to say, "If I'm so lucky, then why did Daddy leave me here with you?"

  But of course, I keep my mouth shut.

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  3 * The Truth About Banana Splits

  Any mention of the "H" word -- homework -- usually stops all of Mama's lectures in their tracks. So as soon as I step through the front door, painted cherry red last summer to flag down some good luck to our house, I plaster a serene expression on my face. Instead of saying, Thanks for another anti-pep talk, Mama like I want to, I force my mouth to say, "I've got a report I have to write by Monday."

  If my brain weren't whirring with worry, I'd give thanks, cry hallelujah, weep tears of gratitude for my ability to procrastinate. My laziness has saved me from hours of lecturing.

  I can't run up the rosy carpeted stairs to my bedroom fast enough. I've had it with Mama and her quack of a fortuneteller and her warped idea of summer fun being equating while trolling for some "nice" Taiwanese boy. All I want is a nice soccer boy named Mark.

  I jerk open my bedroom door even as every brain cell is screeching, Don't do it! What lies ahead of me is a blank computer screen. Suddenly, I wonder if I shouldn't suffer Mama's lecture. You know, I could just focus on her moving mouth

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  and fill in other words like a badly dubbed foreign flick. Who am I kidding? There's no time to play the subtitles game with Mama tonight. I've got to write an entire fiction about myself.

  What I haven't told Mama, what I've been trying to pretend all year that I've got under control, is that the essay is due Monday, thirty-six hours away, and I haven't had the guts to jot down a single word.

  On the first day of the year, Mrs. Meyers announced to our Honors English class, "In three years, you'll be applying to colleges and your competition isn't the person sitting next to you."

  You could have heard every one of our brain cells churning as we all thought, It's not? We stared at Mrs. Meyers, willing her to tell us who was. Tiny, dark, and handsome, she simply smiled her Sphinx smile at us as if she hadn't caused shock waves to course through the class. Rumor had it that Mrs. Meyers was too smart to be a high school teacher. Rumor also had it that her husband was some computer guru who had hit it rich in the Silicon Valley. Why someone would willingly subject herself to this hellhole, better known as High School, was beyond me. But there I was, watching her like a kid at a magic show, completely transfixed.

  "The young people you will be competing with to get into Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, any of the top-tier universities," Mrs. Meyers said in her lilting, perfectly cadenced King's English, "aren't the students in Twin Harbor. They're the ones at the private schools in Seattle: University Prep, Seattle Academy, Bush. Lakeside had triple the admittance

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  rate to those universities compared to Lincoln." She crossed her thin arms. "Triple."

  Was it my imagination or did I just hear the morale in our class splinter into tiny slivers? Next to me, my best friend, Janie, shot me a can-you-believe-this-crap look as she silently bid her spot at Brown good-bye.

  But Mrs. Meyers was just getting started. "You can bet that each of those students has been practicing writing essays since second grade. They know how to write beautifully crafted sentences and smart, articulate paragraphs. They will write compelling college essays, ones that will prove that they are intelligent. Accomplished. Would thrive in any Ivy League."

  "So we shouldn't even bother to apply, is that it?" asked Anne Wong, a new transfer student from the Land of Bizarre. Both her parents are engineers, so maybe that explains her intensity. Or not.

  "But," said Mrs. Meyers, holding one finger up, "the one thing those students haven't been taught is to write about..."

  We waited as Mrs. Meyers, looking almost dreamy, now fixed her coffee-colored eyes out the windows. What was she thinking of while we were sweating it out? How far she had come from her hometown in India? Why she was wasting her time with a bunch of Waspy kids?

  Finally, Anne blurted what we were all thinking: "What?"

  Mrs. Meyers stepped to the clean chalkboard. Slowly, she picked up a piece of chalk and scrawled one word: Truth.

  "What does that mean?" Anne muttered even as she copied it down into her notebook. I couldn't help cringing. Why did Anne have to be such a good, studious, brainy Asian student?

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  "It means that Cole's going to write about what a dork he is," called out Mark, his enormous brown eyes crinkling at the sides as he grinned. Looking altogether quite adorable, I might add. Jordan, his freckle-faced soccer buddy, cackled along with him.

  "It means," said Mrs. Meyers, perching on the edge of her desk and swinging one leg like a young girl, "that this year, all of you are going to write the Truth about yourself. What matters to you. What you believe in."

  Mark and Jordan stared at her, joking forgotten. For all of us, the realization sank in that the rumors about Mrs. Meyers were true. Not a single one of us was going to escape her scrutiny, which meant that we'd actually have to work in this class.

  Mrs. Meyers stopped moving her leg and leaned ever so slightly toward us, her voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial tone. "Because you cannot begin to write any personal statement, answer any college essay, until you know who you are. And that is what freshman year is all about -- self-discovery." She laughed lightly and ran one hand through her short, dark hair, a dime-sized diamond winking at us. "The Truth, and nothing but the Truth. And, by the way, half of your grade at the end of the year will be based on what you write."

  So here I am in a bedroom that looks like Christmas gone Chinese with a green shag carpet and five sprigs of lucky bamboo jammed into a vase, oxblood red for fortune, of course. With three weeks left to go of freshman year, all I've

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  got is my name in the center of an otherwise empty page on the screen.

  I lean against my chair and look up for divine intervention.

  There is
n't so much as a single crack in the ceiling for me to draw some inspiration from. Nothing but smooth white surface, drywall covering up all the family secrets in our home, like Where's my father? Why did he really leave us?

  Tapping my foot on the floor impatiently, I wonder how exactly I'm supposed to write the Truth when I don't even know those basic facts about my life. Besides, what's the point of writing a Truth Statement when half the time people embellish the Truth to make themselves feel better (I am so a 34B, and don't let Abe convince you otherwise).

  I sigh. The sad truth is, my computer screen is still blank. And I still have no idea where to start.

  Since my belly button was enough of a portal to divine my future, perhaps it would be a source of deep insight. I touch my belly button. But all I can think about is how Belly-button Grandmother's prediction is sending me to math camp. Math camp?!? Look, if I'm going to end up with a white guy anyhow, couldn't it pretty please be Mark? For a moment, I indulge in my favorite fantasy of him finally falling down at my feet, struck with the epiphany that I am the love of his life.

  A toilet flushes downstairs, and with it goes my dream.

  The reality is, Mark and his blond pom-pom are dancing their night away at the Spring Fling. Me? I'm sitting my night away with my computer for a date, and Mama's expectations and Belly-button Grandmother's predictions as chaperones.

  There's nothing to do but write. So I close my eyes like I can't face that truth, and start to type.

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  The Truth as I Know It By Patty Ho

  Truth: I am Patricia Yi-Phen Ho. Patty to my friends; Patty-cake to the one aunt on my mothers side who calls us once a year, and Pattypus to my enemy, Steve Kosanko, a short, stocky bully who's hated me since fourth grade. He's right in a way. I may not look half-duck, half-beaver, but I don't look wholly anything either. Not quite white, not all yellow.

  My last name practically begs for a bad joke and, trust me, I've heard them all. Yo Ho Ho: preschool circle time. Mrs. Mannion chuckled along with the rest of the kids and then pretended that she hadn't. Heigh Ho! Heigh Ho! : circa third grade, chanted to me on the way to gym before I Red-Rovered all over everyone and was put into a time-out. And of course, Ho, present day, as called out by Steve Kosanko, aforementioned racist pig, as in Yo, whore. Given my dateless status, a bit ironic, no?

  Truth: I am a fourteen-year-old stick-thin giant who is imprisoned in the house of midgets. My mother barely squeaks over five feet tall, and calling my big brother Abe big is a misnomer when I'm a good five inches taller than him. I have to assume that my height comes from my father, but he's a short story in our home. It goes something like this: Once upon a time, Stanley Peter Johnson transferred from Berkeley to study at the University of Taipei for a year. He conquered, he came, and he left with a couple of made-in-Taiwan souvenirs: my mom and Abe. Apparently, his American Dream didn't include a mixed-race family of four. So for my second birthday, he gave me a good-bye kiss and vanished. End of story.

  Truth: I live in Twin Harbor, which was named one of the most picturesque cities in America. There are only 1.53 percent Asians here. Is there a connection between those two facts, I want to know. In any case, my house may as well be up at the North Pole, blanketed in white, because there are nothing but white people as far as my eyes can see. (To be totally accurate, since I am an accountants daughter, in my high school of five

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  hundred kids, there are two African-Americans, four whole + two half Asians, one Latino, and one Native American. Tell me that I don't live in perpetual whiteout.)

  Truth: I believe in the 80/20 rule. Two of the cross-country team qualified for Regionals; the rest of us eight were their private pit crew-slash-cheering squad. Six of the biology class understood DNA; the rest of us were tangled in a double helix of confusion. Abe got eighty percent of the Mama-looking genes in our family; I got the dregs. There is no mistaking whose son Abe is with his jet-black hair, high cheekbones, and flat rice cake of a butt. Take a look at any Ho family picture and guess which one doesn't look like the others? Hint: the gawky girl with brownish hair and large eyes with a natural eye fold that Korean girls have surgically created. Its as if God cruised through one of those Chinese fast-food buffets and bought Abe the full meal deal so he can pass for Mamas beloved son. When it came to my turn, all that was left was one of those soggy egg rolls that doesn't qualify as real Chinese food.

  But it is also true that I can pass. I can pass biology (miraculously), notes in class (well), and plates of food (perfectly). I cannot pass out (Why be out of control when I'm never in control in my prison cell of a home?) or pass a basketball (which bombs the theory that all tall kids can be basketball stars).

  But I cannot pass for white or Asian.

  So I am not a banana, yellow on the outside and white on the inside. And I'm not an egg, a white kid who gets off on all things Asian. I suppose that makes me a banana split or scrambled eggs. Too bad they both make me gag.

  The final, absolute truth is this: I have visited an old woman to predict my future. I know as certainly as I know my zodiac signs, both Western (Cancer) and Eastern (tiger), that Belly-button Grandmothers predictions will change my life.

  Not her prediction about my having three kids. To that, Mama said, Don't worry. I help you, already picturing herself as a proud Amah even

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  though Belly-button Grandmother had offered a free psychic family reduction session within thirty days of our visit.

  Not the one that I would be a successful businesswoman when I grow up, which, frankly, takes a load off my mind since I haven't been able to find a summer job.

  Not even her prediction that I d get into a huge accident when I am fifteen, which gives me six weeks of health left in my life.

  What will change my lame life as I know it is Belly-button Grandmother's conviction that I will end up with a white guy.

  And that is the truth.

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  4 * Tonic Soup

  The morning after Mama hijacked me to visit Belly-button Grandmother, I wake up to a stench. Burnt leather with a touch of white pepper. I hide my head under my pillow and hope that this isn't another one of Mama's misguided attempts to cook meatloaf or hamburgers. Sometimes it's better for the world at large if we stick to what we do best, me with my English classes and Mama with her Chinese cooking.

  By the way Mama's banging around the kitchen, it's obviously time to get up. Pots clatter and clash; Mama's Wok-and-Roll Band. I swing my legs off my bed and slouch on the edge, trying to gather up the energy to move, but I'm tired from my late night True Confession to my computer.

  When I glance over to my desk, what little energy I have leaches out of me, drop by drop, and I've been awake for all of two minutes. I'm no neat freak: my clothes are crammed in my closet in no particular order; my bathroom drawers are cluttered with makeup I'm not supposed to wear. But I can't breathe if my desk is a mess. Strange, I know. But books belong in the bookshelf over in the corner, not stacked up on

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  the ground. Pencils sharpened to needle points should line one drawer, instead of lying like stumpy logs carried downstream by a trickle of ideas. My college-ruled and graph paper should fill up my bottom shelf, not carpet my floor.

  I try not to breathe too deeply because the stink is stronger than ever. Whatever Mama is brewing cannot possibly be edible. I walk on top of my discarded thoughts, feeling the paper crumple under my bony, bare feet. To tell the truth, I'm tempted to leave my used-up paper where it is because it looks a heck of a lot better as flooring than my lime green shag carpet. When carpet texture becomes hip twice in a lifetime, that usually means it's time to be replaced. But the likelihood of that happening in a house where napkins get ripped in half so that a package can go farther is close to nil.

  See, I can do math.

  Minus the math camp.

  Irritated because I just remembered my summer that I was trying so hard to forget, I grab my pencils and stab them o
ne by one into the electric sharpener. Just as I bend down for an armful of books, my bedroom door flings open and knocks the stack right onto my foot.

  "Ouch!"

  Obviously, concern for other human beings isn't a requirement for Harvard. Abe, his usually combed hair now suffering from a serious case of bed-head, just sniffs the air and groans, "God, what is that?"

  "Rise and barf!" I manage to say in a chipper voice, even as my foot throbs. I rub it hard to dull the pain. "Mama's new way to wake us up in the morning."

  My humor is lost on Abe. He looks pale. He's also not tossing a ball between his hands -- baseball, basketball, tennis

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  ball, you name it -- which means that Boy Wonder is really feeling bad. So Mr. Harvard went partying behind Mama's back again, I think to myself.

  If I had parties to go to, I'd hit Abe up for his tricks on sneaking out of the house. So far, that's one mystery I'm not destined to solve in this life.

  Downstairs in our tiny kitchen, Mama acts like the reek of whatever's bubbling in the pot doesn't bother her nose. But since her super-smeller can sniff out the smallest smidgen of white pepper in chicken broth, I know she's faking it. Even through my pinched nose, there's no escaping this pungent odor.

  Abe stumbles to the back door, fanning it open and closed in a hopeless attempt to clear the air. His eyes are shut, nose wrinkled. I wonder if he's going to throw up, because he's looking about as green as my bedroom carpet.

  "This is for Mei-Mei," announces Mama, ladling a murky brown liquid into a large bowl.

  "I'm not eating that," I tell her.

  "Belly-button Grandmother say you need Tonic Soup."