Bitter Melon

  EGMONT

  We bring stories to life

  First published by Egmont USA, 2011

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 806

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © Cara Chow, 2011

  All rights reserved

  www.egmontusa.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Chow, Cara

  Bitter melon / Cara Chow.

  p. cm.

  Summary: With the encouragement of one of her teachers, a Chinese American high school senior asserts herself against her demanding, old-school mother and carves out an identity for herself in late 1980s San Francisco.

  eISBN: 978-1-60684-198-3 [1. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology)—Fiction. 3. Child abuse—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Chinese Americans—Fiction. 7. San Francisco (Calif.)—History—

  20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C44639Bi 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010036630

  CPSIA tracking label information:

  Random House Production • 1745 Broadway • New York, NY 10019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  AUGUST 1989

  “Fei Ting, you are my reason for living,” Mom says to me. “You give me a purpose for my suffering.”

  Fei Ting is my Chinese name. “Fei” and “ting” mean “fly” and “stop” respectively. So to me, my name sounds like it means to stop flying, though I know that is not what Mom meant when she named me. When my mother took me to get naturalized, she was trying to come up with an American name that sounded like my Chinese name, hence Frances. I looked up the name Frances in a baby name book recently and found that in Latin, it means “free.” So my American name seems to mean the opposite of my Chinese name.

  Mom and I are in the living room of our small one-bedroom apartment. Mom is lying on our dilapidated dark green couch. She is short and slightly plump and looks as if she is wearing two small life preservers around her waist. Her hair, which is cut into a bob, is thin at the top of her head and white at the roots. Though I would never admit this to her, I am afraid of looking like her when I get older. Like her, I am thick waisted, with a long torso and short legs. Mom is very proud that I inherited her ears. However, she is less happy with my nose, which is too flat; my cheeks, which are too big; and my eyelids, which lack creases. All these characteristics, she says, I inherited from my father.

  Mom’s bouts of stomach pain have become worse since my grandmother died two months ago from stomach cancer. I am kneeling beside my mother on the cold, hard linoleum floor, massaging her abdomen in little circles, pushing up the gas from her stomach as she periodically lets out little belches. Her belches sound like Chinese syllables or exclamations, “Gnuh, gnuh,” gagging sounds that make me want to throw up. But I keep rubbing, even though my fingers and wrists are tired. When her stomach goes into spasms, it fills with air, forming a big balloon in her middle. It hurts her so badly that she has to curl forward like a shrimp when she stands or walks. The only relief for her is to lie down on her back and have me push the air out.

  I’ve been doing this for the last hour. My knees hurt from kneeling, and my back aches. I can’t stand this any longer, but I’m afraid to ask for a break.

  Mom lets out her final belch. “Gwai nui,” she says. That means “good girl,” or “obedient girl.” That also means that she’s feeling better, and I can stop. “Because you were good, Mommy feels better.” She is more relaxed and half smiling. On the outside, I ignore her praise. Yet a hidden part of me smiles.

  Once Mom’s bloating subsides, we wait at the bus stop on Balboa and 32nd, which is located in the Richmond District of San Francisco, just north of Golden Gate Park, facing the ocean. This is the foggiest part of the city. Tomorrow is the first day of school. Because of Popo’s death, Mom did not have the energy to buy school supplies. That’s why we have to go today. Just the thought of school creates a heavy stone in my chest that weighs down my whole body. It is hard to endure boring classes and to come home to a long night of tedious studying just to prepare for more tests I will have to ace.

  The icy wind whips us left and right as we wait in the fog, barely sheltered by the bus stop structure, which has once again been shattered by vandals.

  “My seams are coming apart.” That’s Mom’s way of saying that she’s exhausted and in pain. “My stomach hurts and my knees and back hurt. The cold only makes the pain worse.”

  Finally, the bus arrives. Silently, we board the bus and head to Walgreens.

  At Walgreens on Clement Street, Mom chooses my school supplies. She picks Bic ballpoint pens, even though I would prefer the Pilot rolling balls. She chooses the generic notebooks, though I secretly covet the ones with pictures of flowers or puppies. The ugly stuff is cheap. That’s why she gets it. It seems unfair that other kids get the fun school supplies. I still think in this selfish way, even after getting a senior sweater.

  Afterwards, I walk towards the 38 Geary bus stop to go home. But Mom has other plans.

  “Let’s take the Clement bus to the bank,” she says.

  “I thought we went to the bank yesterday.”

  “We did.”

  “Why are we going again?”

  “I want you to see something.”

  What does she want me to see? And why can’t she tell me what it is? I am itching with curiosity. But I know better than to ask her.

  The Clement Street bank is a bright red fake-brick building. The builders did not go out of their way to make the brick facade look real. It isn’t brick red but an orangey Chinese red. The glue holding the “bricks” together is too straight and too white. It reminds me of dentures. Despite the tacky look, this bank seems to have good business. The customers like that all the tellers are Chinese and that the building is a good luck color.

  After waiting for twenty minutes, we finally get to the head of the line and go to Minnie’s window. Minnie is Mom’s favorite teller. As her name suggests, Minnie is very petite, about five feet two and probably a size two. Her hair is cut in a stylish bob that is shorter in the back and longer in the front. Her bright red dress suit contrasts with her quiet voice and demure manner.

  “See?” Mom says to me. “Minnie is a student, yet she is working to help her family. You should be like her.”

  I blush with embarrassment. She says this every time she sees Minnie. The last time she said this, I offered to get a job, but Mom replied that work would distract from my studies.

  Minnie smiles shyly. “Good morning, Ching Tai T
ai,” she says in perfect Cantonese.

  “Listen to how beautiful her Cantonese sounds,” Mom says to me. “Not like you with your gwai lo accent.” “Gwai” means “ghost” or “devil,” but she is referring to my American accent.

  “You’re too generous,” Minnie says. “My Cantonese isn’t really that good.” Actually, that’s not true. Her Cantonese is great. It’s her English that has a slight accent, only Mom can’t hear it.

  “And see how modest she is too,” Mom adds.

  Mom then tells Minnie that she wants to see her safe-deposit box. I didn’t even know she had one. I’m not even sure what that is. Minnie escorts us into the vault.

  The air-conditioning is blowing against the back of my neck, making the hairs stand on end. The fluorescent lighting makes Mom’s pale skin look gray, as if she were dead. The walls of the vault are lined with little gray metal rectangles arranged in perfect rows and columns. They look like wall-to-wall library card catalog boxes. Each rectangle has two keyholes. Mom points to one, and Minnie sticks her key into one of the keyholes. Mom pulls a key out of her purse and inserts it in the other keyhole. Then she pulls it out and removes the lid, revealing a long box filled with shiny orange, red, pink, and turquoise silk pouches, the kind made for storing Chinese jewelry. They shimmer and glow under the lights.

  We’re supposed to be poor. Why do we have all this jewelry?

  Mom picks up the pink pouch, unsnaps the flap, and unzips the zipper. She pulls out a gold bracelet. I can tell that it’s twenty-four karats, because of its garish yellow. It’s just a few inches long. The only hint that it’s a bracelet is the S clasp. But I can’t imagine anyone’s wrist being small enough for it.

  Mom’s eyes are glowing. “Do you remember this?” she says.

  Quickly, I nod. I don’t want to upset her by letting on that I don’t remember.

  Then Mom picks up the orange pouch. She opens it and pulls out a tiny green jade O. It looks just like a normal bracelet, except it is about an inch and a half in diameter, again too small for any normal wrist.

  Mom holds up my wrist next to the jade O. “Look how much you’ve grown,” she says. Only then do I realize that this is baby jewelry, my baby jewelry.

  “I want you to see this, to remember your origin,” she says. “Your Yeh Yeh, he refused to have a red egg party for you because you were a girl.” “Yeh Yeh” falls from her lips like bitter poison. My paternal grandfather is a relative on my mother’s blacklist, along with my father. “He looked down on us because of my family situation,” Mom says. “But still, I made sure that everyone knew that you were important. Everywhere you went, you wore the gold bracelet on one wrist and the jade on the other. Both hands full of riches. No hand left naked, empty, grasping. Unfortunately, your skin was too delicate for gold. So every day I switched your gold and jade bracelets, before a rash had a chance to develop.”

  Then Mom pulls out another silk pouch, which reveals another jade bracelet, only this one is large enough to fit a five-year-old. Jade comes in different colors, but I usually see it in jewelry stores in shades of marbled green, white, and purple. The most expensive color is green, the greener the better. They say that if you’re healthy, the longer you wear it, the greener it gets. This bracelet is a brilliant green, the greenest shade I’ve ever seen, with some streaks of white.

  This one I remember. I wore that one when I was six. Because I wore my Mickey Mouse watch on my left wrist, Mom put the bracelet on my right wrist, so it wouldn’t scratch the watch. But I was right-handed. It pressed mercilessly against my wrist as I wrote or drew. When I brushed my arm against any surface—a desk, a dining table, or a monkey bar—it inevitably struck the surface, making a hard knocking sound. When Mom was nearby, I always got hit. “How many times do I have to tell you to be careful?” she screamed. “This is valuable. If you break it, I’ll make you eat it.”

  Soon I was afraid to write, draw, or play, fearful that I would break it and have to swallow the jagged pieces. When my first-grade teacher said, “What a beautiful bracelet!” I was sure she agreed with Mom that I was careless and disobedient to threaten such a treasure. I was afraid she would tell on me every time I knocked it against my desk. I began writing with my left hand to avoid trouble. When Mom caught me using my left hand, however, she hit me again. She watched me carefully from that day on, making sure that I did things only with my right hand. I had a difficult time that year, unable to reach for things with my left hand yet unable to make noise with my right.

  This sudden flood of memories makes my ears burn, as if Mom were still pinching and twisting them as she did years ago.

  “You wore this until you were seven,” Mom continues. “I knew I had to remove it before you got too big, but it looked so pretty on you that I delayed taking it off. Then, one day, it was too late.”

  We were in the kitchen. She held my arm down on the cutting board. The other hand held a hammer hovering just a foot over my wrist. The hammer was shaking. I was so scared that I forgot to cry. At the last moment, she put the hammer away and dragged me to the bathroom.

  “I got your hand and wrist all soapy, and then, finally, I was able to slide it off!”

  That was when I remembered to cry. I screamed in agony as she made several attempts to force it over my hand. It must’ve taken a half hour. Afterwards, I couldn’t move my throbbing hand for several minutes. I thought she had broken every bone in it.

  “Thank goodness!” Mom says. “At least we didn’t have to break the bracelet!”

  Mom then opens more pouches, revealing saltwater and freshwater pearl necklaces, more twenty-four-karat gold necklaces and bracelets, gold and jade pendants, and two giant gold bangles with the double happiness character and the dragon and phoenix, the symbols of marriage. The yellowness of the gold brands itself onto my eyeballs. They are so yellow that they look fake, like the gold paint that lines many a Chinese banquet hall.

  “I think you are old enough to see this now,” Mom says. “I know when you look at me, you see this haggard woman who wears outdated fashions.”

  I bow my head in shame. I cannot face her, afraid she will see confirmation of her statement in my eyes.

  “But that is not who I was supposed to be,” Mom says. “And that’s not who you are supposed to be either. If your Gong Gong hadn’t abandoned us, we would be wealthy.” Gong Gong is my mother’s father. He left my mother’s family for another woman. “If your rich father hadn’t abandoned us, we would be even wealthier,” she adds.

  Suddenly, we are no longer paupers subsisting in a dingy apartment. We are royalty, exiled from our homeland, waiting to reclaim our birthright.

  “I deserve better because I work hard and I am good,” Mom says. “You deserve better because you are my daughter. I hate God for abandoning us, for letting life be so unfair. They all make me sick, sick!”

  Mom’s eyes are bulging. She flares her teeth as she says “beng, beng,” the word for sick. She looks like a wolf defending against attack or pouncing on her prey. Yet underneath her wolf exterior, I see her shrimplike spine curled up on the sofa, her stomach a balloon filled with air, ready to burst. I see all the bad people in our family making her sick, the injustice eating away at the lining of her stomach so that no drug can cure her.

  “God won’t help us, so we must help ourselves,” my mother says. “Together we can change our lives. That’s why I work all the overtime. Overtime is one hundred fifty percent pay. Also, I have to show those devil managers that I can work harder than everyone else. That’s why every time there’s a merger, others get laid off but never me. Because I am the best! I know my health would be better if I worked less, but it’s worth the sacrifice so that you can get the best education.

  “But you have to sacrifice too. You have to work harder. This is your most important year. You must improve your grades. You only got an A-minus in chemistry and math. This year, you have a chance to redeem yourself in physics and calculus. You must ace those classes and pass t
he AP physics and calculus exams with at least a four. You must improve your SAT and get at least twelve hundred.”

  I took my SAT last year and got 1050. When Mom found out that Theresa Fong got 1350, she flipped and is now on a mission to make me keep up with her.

  Mom continues, “Ms. Costello said that because of aff—affirmation—”

  “Affirmative action,” I say.

  “—affirmation action, it’s much harder for Chinese to get into Berkeley these days. Competition is tough. Even one A-minus can cost you when hundreds of other Chinese students can get perfect As.”

  I tried telling her that so she wouldn’t be too hard on me if I didn’t get into UC Berkeley, but she never believed me until she spoke with Ms. Costello, my academic counselor. But instead of being easier on me, she’s even harder on me now than before, expecting me to jump over the ever-rising bar. Every Chinese family thinks that Berkeley is the only good college besides Harvard, Stanford, and Yale.

  “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since Popo died,” Mom says. “Your second uncle, the one who took care of Popo, had planned to be a doctor. I paid for his schooling. But he ended up becoming a businessman. He said that he liked business better than medicine. Perhaps, had he stuck with medicine, he would have seen the early signs of her illness and provided her with better care. Maybe Popo would still be alive today.” Mom stares past me as she contemplates this possibility. Her eyes grow dark, then light again as she refocuses on me.

  Mom suddenly grabs hold of my arms, as if drowning and holding on to me for life. “You know what separates the strong from the weak?” she says.

  I wait for her answer to this question, but she shakes me.

  “Do you?” she says.

  Nervously, I shake my head.

  “The strong can eat bitterness, stomach the suffering,” Mom says. “But even the strong will grow weak and sick and die. I know you think I will live forever. That’s how I felt before Popo died. But now I see the truth, that life is fragile, short, and brutal.

  “We must help each other to survive. You must get into Berkeley and get straight As. That way, you can get into medical school and become a doctor. You will make lots of money and buy us a nice house so I can quit my job and tell your father’s family to go to hell. With your medical skills, you can even cure the illness I have now. You can only accomplish this if you are focused. No distractions. No sports or other after-school activities. No socializing or running around with boys.”