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

  "Know what?" I ask.

  "Duh! They date white guys," says Anne.

  "White guys?" I blurt out. Instantly, my heart shrinks a couple of sizes as I remember my white guy who betrayed me.

  "Shhh!" The China Dolls cast anxious looks at the living room, where all the parents are sitting, blissfully ignorant of the white-guy dating that's gone on under their flat noses. No matter what generation our parents are, the most important mandate in their lives is to marry us girls off to a "good one." Good, of course, meaning a rich Taiwanese man.

  "Duh! Add two and two together." Anne scowls at me like I'm the first half-witted, part-Asian twit she's encountered in her life. "God, you really need our math camp, don't you?"

  Our math camp?

  Our ? As in hers and mine?

  That tidbit of information isn't lost on the China Dolls either. They stare at me as if my IQ jumped a full thirty points. China Doll One asks, "You're going to math camp?"

  China Doll Two whispers, "Where?"

  "Stanford," answers their mother. Mrs. Shang charges into the family room with her gossip-sensing nose twitching in the air. Everything about this woman is wide -- hips, nose and mouth.

  I can tell by the way the China Dolls tilt forward on the

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  orange sofa that their panic is mounting as they try to detect whether their mom -- she of the bionic ears -- overheard their white guy revelation. Lucky for them, Mrs. Shang is looking at me greedily. I know she wishes she could steal my one potluck-worthy accomplishment and wing it to her son who's upstairs with Abe, playing computer games. "Your mama just told us. So maybe you go to Stanford for college, right?"

  I mumble something incomprehensible about college being three years away, hoping Mrs. Shang will find something else to gossip about.

  "You kids want?" Mrs. Shang holds out her Jell-O, green this time.

  The China Dolls shake their heads, not because of their obsessive weight watching (God forbid they break the three-digit pound barrier), but because their stomachs are full of envy for me. Me, Mama's disappointment of a daughter. Me, the too-white girl who will never be part of the exclusive China Doll club. Me, the newly dubbed math wizard who hasn't stepped one big foot onto the Stanford campus. It's dizzying that all those self-help books that Janie and her mother devour are right: perception is everything.

  "How could you do this to us?" wails China Doll One as soon as their mother marches back to gossip with the adults.

  "Now all we're going to hear this summer is how you and Anne are going to get into Stanford!" cries China Doll Two.

  "It's not fair," they repeat like broken dolls.

  Stanford trumps beauty. And the only way for the China Dolls to regain their position as the reigning Empresses of The Potluck Group is to marry billionaires. Can you say,

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  "Yahoo!" Oh, sorry, girls. The founders of that company were from Stanford.

  It's funny how fast you can develop a taste for someone else's just desserts. Suddenly, I'm craving Jell-O, the greener the better. I'm ready for seconds and I haven't even started on my first serving.

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  10 * The Three Stooges

  I am such a twit. How did I get so swept up in Mama's propaganda campaign that for a couple of weeks there, I actually believed I wanted to go to the Stanford University Math Camp for "mathematically talented and motivated high school students"? After getting sick of hearing me gloat, "I'm going to SUMaC," Abe pointed out that sumac is a poison plant. A cousin to poison oak and poison ivy. Well, no kidding. With a few minutes left before I head to the airport, I am itching all over with anxiety and dread.

  "Come on, four weeks will go by fast," says Laura, lying on my red comforter cover that Mama insisted on buying for my birthday a couple of days ago so that I could start sleeping under good luck. So far, the comforter is a dud. After reading the fine print in the SUMaC materials, I realized that if my fifteenth birthday had been just a month later, I wouldn't have been old enough to attend.

  "Yeah, they'll fly by." Janie nods her head hard so that her curls spring up and down like bungee cords. "It's not like

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  we're going to be here anyway." Her manicured fingers run through my matted carpet. I know she's just trying to fluff me up, too. But sumac's yellow oil seeps into my head, and my brain develops a severe allergic reaction: Let me stay! A summer of Tonic Soup isn't so bad!

  "Hawaii and basketball camp aren't exactly in the same league as SUMaC," I say. "SUMaC" spews out of my mouth the way Steve Kosanko and Mark Scranton do: worse than disgusting, repulsive, something to be squashed immediately. I flatten the wispy strands of carpet next to my hips.

  Laura and Janie exchange a look.

  "I saw that," I say, triumphantly, pointing an index finger at each of them, my personal Pep Team. "You know it's true."

  A thump, thump, thump pounds down the hall, and Abe pokes his head into my room, spinning a basketball in one hand. Summer show-off, all he's got on his schedule is manga comics, basketball, computer games and packing.

  "Oh, my God!" he squeals dramatically, and I hate to admit it, sounding like a baritone version of Janie. "A whole month without The Three Stooges talking to each other at least five times a day. How are Laura, Curly and Ho going to survive?"

  "Don't you have some comic book to read?" I ask Abe before I slam the door on his still-smiling face. "Yuck," I say, shuddering. "Maybe math camp isn't such a nightmare compared to a summer with him."

  "Well, you can vent all about it." Janie hands me a pink journal with giant, green polka dots on it. On the first page, she has inscribed: "Patty + (insert hunkalicious math camper's name) = Summer Fling. Nothing but the Truth by Patty Ho."

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  "No way!" My smile disappears into the null set when the doorbell rings, and Mama yells up the stairs, "Anne here! Time to go!"

  The only things flinging in my summer are bodies, hurtling out of Mama's way as she barrels through the packed airport terminal like it's Sunday at a Chinese market, thronging with equally pushy shoppers. Her mission: get to the front of the line first. Who cares if it means taking out a businesswoman, harried dad and a little kid or two?

  "Watch where you're going!" snarls a lady, baring teeth that have been bleached an hour too long. She rubs the thin arm that Mama nearly dislocates. Naturally, Mama pays her about as much attention as she pays her own clothes. Not a nanosecond.

  "Sorry," I tell the woman, smiling apologetically at her. But she ignores me, teen Asian flotsam and jetsam in the wake of the Mama tidal wave.

  "Get some manners. We aren't in China," the woman mutters before stomping off as far from the rude immigrant as she can get.

  Like me, Abe hunches into himself. Disappearing is easier for him than me; he can basically hide behind my gargantuan suitcase. But you can't disguise a huge, hulking Asian elephant any more than you can me. Amazingly, Anne doesn't duck-and-hide like we do. She simply follows in Mama's footsteps, my mother who has now cut in front of an old man in a wheelchair, narrowly avoiding a collision.

  "God, what did you pack?" huffs Abe.

  "Stuff." I mentally inventory all the outfits and matching

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  shoes that Laura and Janie picked out for me to borrow and bring. Anyway, why is Abe complaining? He's been pumping iron for two years, figuring he might as well grow wider since he wasn't growing any taller. What, exactly, are those muscles for, if not to carry heavy things?

  "You pack it, you carry it." Abe drops the ancient suitcase onto the dirty airport carpet. "Anne is."

  Yeah, well, Anne considers a book a fashion accessory, and her beat-up, ripped backpack the must-have handbag of every season. So obviously all she needs is a tiny duffel bag.

  "Hurry!" Mama yells, motioning to us impatiently. She is the angry general of our regiment gone AWOL. Punishment by embarrassment awaits the poor defectors. People turn to look at her, then us. Mortified, Abe moves away from me, suddenly riveted by the
arrival and departure times at a nearby kiosk.

  I struggle with the suitcase that Mama herself used when she left Taiwan seventeen years ago. Sweating, I stumble forward.

  Thank God for stanchions because even Mama realizes that while she can bash through a line of people, she can't cut through metal and rope. A screaming toddler lies on the ground behind us, his hands and feet flailing, which is what Mama looks like she wants to do. She sighs heavily, jittery for having to stand still for once. Not a good sign.

  Her silence is golden for all of three seconds before the barrage of last-minute instructions.

  "You have airplane ticket? Registration paper?" demands Mama, staring at me like she expects me to have forgotten everything.

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  I nod and nod like I am a Patty Ho bobble head doll. "Remember, Auntie Lu lives in Palo Alto. You call if need anything. You have phone number, right?" I nod again.

  Yes, I have the phone number of Mamas only sister in America. The last time I saw Auntie Lu was when I was nine. There are only two things I remember from her visit. The first is her present, dried cuttlefish that I nearly choked to death on. And the second is her fight with Mama over a man named Victor. I woke up the next morning, thinking I had dreamed about the yelling, but Auntie Lu was gone. So I'm not sure whether Auntie Lu is a stranger I happen to be related to. Or a strange relation.

  Regardless, Auntie Lu is on my Do Not Call list. Just the thought of a Mama clone hovering over me for a month makes me vow never to contact her.

  "You have cell phone?"

  The Patty Ho bobble head nods again.

  "But no call unless emergency. Too expensive."

  Save the dime, Mama. I can already hear my summer telephone conversations with her:

  Mama: You study hard?

  Patty: Uh-huh.

  Mama: Math camp so expensive.

  Patty: Uh-huh.

  Mama: You friends with nice boy?

  Patty: (Silence)

  And then all I hear is a click on the other line. No goodbye. No I miss you. Just a dial tone of disappointment.

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  ***

  It takes all of a half-second for the destructive force of nature that is Mama to blow away any semblance of customer service. The check-in lady, a friendly grandmother in a uniform, beckons us with a warm smile and one plump hand. I almost expect her to push freshly baked chocolate chip cookies on me until Mama leads the charge to the counter.

  " Aiyo , why so slow?" demands Mama.

  The smile on the old lady's face fades, sealing in any goodwill behind now-tight lips. Say hello to the unfriendly skies, not that Mama notices.

  Is it any big surprise that the check-in lady shakes her head after I heave my suitcase on the scale? With some satisfaction, she tells Mama, "That'll be an extra seventy-five dollars."

  Two dull circles of outrage blotch Mama's cheeks. If the check-in lady knew any better, she would have gotten on the loudspeaker to announce, "Code red. Prepare for a public display of anger." I cringe, look away and pretend that I'm with the tall, Asian guy at the next station. But he doesn't notice me. Typical.

  With muscles I didn't know Mama has, she hauls the suitcase off the scale and onto the floor, and wrenches the latches open. My man-magnet outfits, Janie-chosen and Laura-approved, fling out. Sure enough, they attract attention, but not in the way any of us imagined.

  "Mommy, what is that lady doing?" asks the toddler loudly, no longer crying now that he's watching Mama, the yellow Teletubby in a live performance.

  That lady, I could have told the kid, is yanking out clothes

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  without any clear plan except to put my suitcase on an immediate Slim-Fast diet.

  "Ummm, excuse me, ma'am?" The check-in lady is hesitant now. She's probably afraid that Mama will karate chop her and stuff her headfirst into the rapidly thinning suitcase.

  She doesn't have to worry. Mama ignores her to pick on me: "Why you pack so much?"

  I reenter my reality just as my pink panties flutter to the ground. I pluck them off the carpet, and then stand there, The Statue of Lunacy with my underwear in one hand. Fortunately, Anne grabs the panties out of my paralyzed hands and crams them and whatever else she can stuff into her nearly empty duffel bag. Saved by the Geek Scout. I would say thanks, except my lips are so swollen with shame that I can't get a sound out of them.

  Which is a good thing, otherwise who knows what I would have gargled out when the guy at the next station asked in startled disbelief, "Anne?"

  I watch, openmouthed, as the Asian Adonis hugs Anne. He's one of the few boys my age who's actually taller than I am. Long bangs hang down into his eyes. In an unwrinkled, fitted white T-shirt and knee-length khaki shorts, he's more chic than any boy at my high school.

  Mama's sex-dar is on high-alert, too. She demands, just as if Anne is her daughter, not me, "Who that?"

  "This is Stu." Anne introduces us casually like we're all at a civilized English afternoon tea instead of at the airport with my luggage open for all to see. "We went to the Spring Fling together."

  Strategic information so that Mama doesn't drive straight

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  to Mrs. Shang's house to share a cup of jasmine tea and the juicy gossip that (aiyo!) Anne's been hugging a boy!

  I can't take my eyes off Stu, but I tell myself it's because I'm trying to decode their hug, and figure out how a hunk like him could possibly go to a dance with a nerd like her. Was it a friendly-good-to-see-you platonic kind of embrace or a friendly-I-want-to-feel-all-of-you one?

  Unperturbed, Anne continues, "This is Patty. She's going to math camp, too."

  "Nice to meet you," I say, shaking Stu's hand, hoping that my palm doesn't feel clammy. Inside, I'm screaming, I'm going to SUMaC! After insisting to Janie and her mom that Asian guys don't do anything for me, I am now officially eating my words as a hearty mid-morning snack.

  I've almost forgotten all about my baggage claim to idiot fame until Stu brushes his bangs out of his eyes to see me better. His face is all angular yang with stark cheekbones and a strong nose. He asks me, "You need some more room for your stuff?"

  "No, no," I manage to say, channeling confidence, poise and sophistication. An image that gets blown the second the snotty-nosed, sticky-handed toddler pokes the stuffed cups of my bra that's lying by my feet.

  The truth is, I realize while my face grows hotter and Mama hunks behind me, that no amount of extra room can hold all my excess baggage.

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  11 * Turbulence

  There are three truly awful seats on an airplane, ones to be avoided at all costs -- right over the wing (if you get sucked out, the turbofan will mangle you), wedged next to a size XXXXL person (who inevitably commandeers your space), and behind a screaming child (who will throw up, if not on you then within your smelling distance).

  Oh, lucky me. I am officially in plane purgatory with the bra-poking kid now barfing out his entire system in front of my seat. Not that I blame him. The plane jolts and lurches hard. My short life flashes before my almond eyes, and I grip one armrest, the other one taken by my aisle mate, Mr. Big Man on Airbus. I tug upward, as if I could personally keep the entire plane aloft in the air.

  "Please fasten your seat belts," says the flight attendant as if anyone would be crazy enough to be a human Ping-Pong ball inside this plane. Her smooth voice is cut off by the pilot, who sounds like a cowboy enjoying this hell of a ride. He crows, "All righty folks! I'm going to fly just a wee bit higher to see if we can catch some smoother air."

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  Yee-haw, the plane is a bucking bronco in the Not-So-OK Corral.

  "Do you mind?" Anne sighs heavily, not like she's resigned to sure doom with me, but because I'm encroaching on her personal airspace.

  Of course, I mind. Can't she tell that I'm focusing all my energy into keeping us alive? Obviously not, because Anne nudges my elbow away from her side, gently at first, but when I don't budge, with more force.

  "It
's just turbulence," says Anne, who looks annoyingly like she's not at all bothered that the plane shudders with an uncontrollable fever.

  She couldn't be more wrong.

  "Just turbulence" is how I feel when I think about Mark (which I try not to do). "Just turbulence" is knowing that the only Asian guy who's made my palms sweat is sitting somewhere behind us on the plane, knows I wear a bra so padded it could double as protective gear for linebackers, and has an undefined relationship with Geek Girl next to me. "Just turbulence" is catching Mama's eyes fill with tears before she barked one last order at me and then walked side-by-side with Abe away from me. "Just turbulence" is half-wanting to follow them back home.

  Let's be clear. "Just turbulence" is not speeding toward Mother Earth's hard embrace.

  I wait for Anne to whip out some fabulous fact about gravitational pull, wind drag and the expected time of impact. Instead, she asks, "Do you want a barf bag?" and reaches to the seat pocket in front of her. "You look pale."

  "So?" I say, too sharply.

  "O-kayyy." Anne drags out the last syllable as if it's a hoe,

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  raking through the intractable soil of my rudeness. While I'm starting to regret snapping at her, she bends her turtle-thick neck back down to her lap and opens her book, a romance with a cover of cascading hair (his) and buffed biceps (hers).

  Anne Wong, star student of Lincoln High, is engrossed in smut. Seeing Anne's nose poked in something other than a literary masterpiece is enough for me to ignore the plane's last angry bounce. Since I'm short on space with Mr. Big Man bulging into my seat, I lean over and read the words "hardened manhood" and "erect nipples." Anne's finger holds her place right above "thrust" and she lifts her eyes. "Do you mind?"