A Tiger in the Kitchen (2 page)

In the dead of winter, in a city that’s just too far away from the sound of banana tree leaves rustling in the tropical breezes, I started to dream. In my daydream, my Tanglin ah-ma is there. She’s come to me with a piece of paper bearing her cherished recipes. When I open my eyes, it becomes clear that it’s time.

And so I decided to take a leap. I journeyed home to Singapore, finally ready after all these years to learn to cook, to learn about my family, to learn to be a woman—but intent on doing it on my own terms.

On the other side of the world were my maternal grandmother, my aunts, my mother. Patiently, they stood by with arms open—ready to welcome me into the kitchen.

CHAPTER ONE

I was born in the year of the Tiger with a lucky star over my head and a knife in my hand.

Based on the time I was born and the fact that I was a dynamic and aggressive Tiger, I was already destined to be sharp, intelligent, and incredibly ambitious. But with the additional star to guide me, I was headed for a sparkling future, one that I would sail through with ease, gathering money and a great deal of success along the way.

Instead, the moment I pushed into this world, growling and crying, I took the knife in my hand and stabbed at the star, snuffing it out. In that moment, a fighter was created—a person who knew she would have to work doubly hard to compensate for her dead lucky star, often stubbornly wandering off, heeding no one, and charting a path of her own.

This is the story that my family’s fortune-teller tells. And for years, much of it appeared to be true.

Despite the fact that I’m female, I’d always been raised to be somewhat masculine.

Before I was born, my parents chose my name: Brendan.

Because I was the firstborn of the eldest son in a traditional Chinese family in Singapore, there was plenty of hope that I would be male. A son who would carry the family name, a child in whom my father would nurture his ambitions.

Well, I’m female. So my dad, Soo Liap Tan—a practical man who ended up with two daughters—made do with what he got.

Singapore, an island city-state of almost 5 million that straddles the equator, for all its modernity remains a rather old-fashioned Asian society in some ways. Boys are valued. But while girls aren’t bad things, you generally don’t expect too much of them.

My father believes this to a certain extent, but he’s also ambitious. So when his firstborn arrived and it was a girl, he adjusted accordingly.

When I was six, he gave me a dictionary of legal terms. “You don’t have to look at it now,” he said. “But if you want to look anything up, it’s there.” I never touched it, but the message was clear. I was headed for law school. My father pressed me to read voraciously, to be good at math, and never once told me I had to clean or learn how to cook in order to be a good wife. He never let me beat him at Scrabble and raised me with all the love a Chinese parent wasn’t supposed to show. He challenged me to be outspoken, to question authority, and to always, always let creativity be my guide.

But above all, he told me stories. As much as he encouraged me to shirk my female role in society, he wanted me to know and understand my culture, my heritage, my family. He wanted me to be Chinese, to never forget from where I came.

From the time I was a child, it had been impossible to escape the tales of my ancestors. These oral history outbursts often came when I least expected them. “Dad, I landed this big interview today—” I would start, before being interrupted with his pleased response to praiseworthy things. “Yes! You are Teochew. Aiyah, don’t you know, our people are known for being pirates, smugglers, and great businessmen. [The Hong Kong billionaire] Li Ka-shing is Teochew, you know!” (I always thought Dad was exaggerating until we visited Shantou, China, many years later and I realized that the area my father’s family is from is like the Sicily of China. Some of the major triads in Asia first blossomed in Guangdong.)

Much later, when I was in my early twenties and called to tell my parents about a new boyfriend, there was a sudden silence after I mentioned his name. “Nakamura . . . ,” my dad said quietly. “My two sisters were killed by the Japanese, you know!” (I would have to tell him several times that the boyfriend was a third-generation American and could not possibly have been responsible for the Japanese occupation of Singapore during World War II.)

But the longer stories of my father’s boyhood, of his family’s hopes and dreams for all he’d become, would emerge as we huddled over late-night suppers of take-out noodles from Singapore’s hawker stands after my mother and sister, Daphne, had gone to bed. The slippery fried shrimp noodles we adored came sprinkled with chewy circles of squid. The noodles, wrapped in industrial-strength wax paper, were generally so greasy that the oil penetrated the paper, filling it with dark spots. I always looked forward to the moment when we would carefully peel back the wax paper and steam would rise, fogging up our glasses. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t see—we just grabbed our chopsticks and stabbed away at the mound. When the noodles disappeared and the toothpicks were put aside, Dad would begin. “When I was a boy, my grandfather used to hoist me onto his shoulders and lead me through his banks and factories and say, ‘All this will be yours one day.’ ” As the firstborn son of the eldest son, my father had been expected to succeed my great-grandfather. “And then the war came,” Dad would continue. “We lost all the money when he died.”

These unfulfilled dreams and childhood disappointments were threads that had raced through my father’s life for decades. We could never drive past pockets of Singapore without him sighing and murmuring, “My grandfather’s company used to have warehouses along this whole stretch, you know! Aiyah . . . you could have been born into a rich family.” Specters of this unled life fueled my father’s ambitions, leading him to plunge into a lucrative career working for a string of beverage and luxury goods distribution companies after casting aside an early dream to spend his life teaching high school mathematics at Saint Joseph’s Institution, the alma mater that had been his refuge from a tumultuous home life. The more his father—a man whose major accomplishment in life was to drink and gamble away the family money—beat him, the more my father had turned to schoolwork and idyllic Saturdays building campfires and volunteering as a Boy Scout. “I saved all my pocket money and bought my father a birthday card once, you know,” my father said late one night as we sat in the kitchen, mirroring each other with our legs propped up, still rubbing our bellies over the feast we had just had. “You know what he did? He tore up the card and slapped me for wasting money! You are so lucky your father is not like that.”

And indeed, he wasn’t. The kind of father he was was involved in showing me a world beyond the one most children would know. With insomnia as a shared affliction, we would stay up way past my bedtime, sitting in our bright living room, quietly reading. We discussed international politics, the economy, whether Liverpool or Arsenal was going to win the English Premier League that year. One afternoon, I emerged from my first-grade classroom in a weathered colonial building along busy Victoria Street near downtown Singapore to find my father’s car waiting for me just outside the gates. “Come, we’re going for lunch,” he said, whisking me into the car. I assumed we were going to a hawker center for a quick meal before he had to jet back to work. Instead, minutes later, I found myself sliding into a chair at the Western restaurant of the posh Dynasty Hotel, nervously smoothing down the starched, white tablecloth before me as I wondered why we were there. It wasn’t my birthday—or his. And I couldn’t think of any special reason that would have earned such a treat. We were simply having lunch, it turned out—an excuse to show me what it was like to eat at a nice restaurant without my mother ordering for me or family members grabbing pieces of chicken with chopsticks and filling my plate. Terrified that I might do something wrong, I ordered the item on the menu that I had eaten and understood before—a large bratwurst. I remember it being delicious, but not as delicious as the feeling of being an adult, sitting with my father, talking about school, about work, as we leisurely had lunch.

When I was nine, my father took a job in Hong Kong, commuting to Singapore for long weekends just once every three weeks. I missed him terribly. This was a man who occasionally chased me around the dining room table with a cane in hand just to get me to practice the piano. But the same man would sometimes wake me up in the mornings by standing quietly at the window, peering out very intently, until I sleepily asked, “What’s happening outside?” “OH,” he’d reply. “There’s an elephant walking down the road,” which would always prompt me to jump out of bed and run to the window for a peek. (It took me many years to figure this one out.)

When my father left for Hong Kong, I might have lost my partner in insomnia, but I gained a pen pal.
Dear Cheryl,
he wrote to the ten-year-old me.
Thank you for your two letters. I’m sorry I have not written lately. You can imagine how busy I’ve been. . . . When I next return to Singapore, can you remind me to order the
Reader’s Digest
for you? Meanwhile, I am always dreaming of the beautiful sunshine in Singapore and our swimming pool. Love, Papa.

September 20, 1984, on hotel letterhead bearing the words “Honey Lake Country Club” and “Shenzhen, China”:
Dearest Cheryl, I am now in China for the first time in my life. This evening I spent my time walking around the town to see how people live. The streets are full of bicycles as people here are too poor to afford cars. There are so many bicycles moving in the streets that you worry very much about being knocked down by a bicycle—just imagine that!! Today I visited two towns or cities—Shekou and Shenzhen, both very close to Hong Kong. These two areas are industrial areas—many factories. We are negotiating to buy three factories—a flour mill, biscuit factory, and a feed mill. I hope one day that I can bring all of you to visit China. China is famous for beautiful sceneries, and also it is a chance for you to see how poor people are. With lots of love, Papa.

Sometime the following year, on stationery from the Prince Hotel in Hong Kong:
Many thanks for your letters and postcards. When I read the letters and cards, I can feel how strongly you love me. Papa is very happy and proud. So proud and happy that I will continue to be a good papa to you and Daffy. . . . I am sad to realise that when I was in Singapore during the Chinese new year holidays I have not heard you play the PIANO
ONCE
!! What a pity! Especially when Mummy and I struggled so hard to buy you a
piano
! I’m ashamed. Cheryl, Papa and Mummy love you and want you to enjoy your life and work. Love and good luck, Papa.

Shortly after that, when my parents had bought me my first computer:
Dearest Cheryl, While the computer may do wonders for you, I still prefer to read your letters in your own handwriting. Your handwriting reflects to some extent your personality. So I hope I will not miss my dearest daughter’s handwriting. What do you think of my personality from my writing? Confusing?

April 15, 1986, a year after my parents bought me a dog, a shih tzu my sister and I named Erny:
Looking back at your letters, you keep mentioning ERNY. Shouldn’t we be tired of talking about him now—after more than 1 year? (Or less?) . . . Went to a movie “Out of Africa” last night. Do you know that it won 6 Academy Awards or “Oscars” as they call it in the movie world? The movie’s great but I think would be boring for you. It shows or rather teaches us FORTITUDE and DETERMINATION. Love, Papa.

On religion, and my growing curiosity about Catholicism:
It is not easy to understand or appreciate the Taoist religion that my family has practiced and followed for generations. (To confess, I don’t quite understand it either.) But I guess that since Mum and I embraced it when my father passed away in 1976 as a matter of duty to my father and mother . . . the Taoist faith has become a part of our lives. That does not mean that you are bound by tradition to follow the same course. Having a religion is important in life—whether it is Buddhism, Catholic, Islamic etc. We are all children of God and religion helps us to communicate better with God. So feel free to believe in the Catholic faith if it helps you to communicate with God better. . . . Well, this is a rather long letter. I love you, Daphne and Mummy & miss you all. (Ooops. I forgot Erny.) Love, Papa.

September 6, 1987:
Dearest Cheryl, Please forgive if my handwriting does not look steady. I am having a sore eye and have been applying eye lotion. . . . I have to keep the affected eye closed to allow the lotion to work. . . . Before I go on, I must be frank that I am shocked that you have not mastered the art of “paragraphing” yet—or at least not in the letters you write to me. A good and well written letter deserves at the same time proper paragraphing—it strains the eyes of the reader! Now, I have just found out the reason for my sore eye.