Nothing But the Truth (21 page)

“Encina isn’t the most patrolled place on campus. Besides,” Jasmine says with a wicked smile as she puts her hands on the wall, “you can outrun these security guards.”

There’s a big chasm between imagination and reality. Imagination: I’m a rock star. Reality: I’m going to fall off this rock and see stars. So while Torture Chamber sounds relatively less risky than, say, Hoover Tower, the reality of watching Jasmine traverse the wall, yelling pointers over her shoulder as she thinks of them (“Just find the right edges and you’re home free. God, these are tiny!”), isn’t exactly reassuring.

When she reaches a low window on the wall, Jasmine climbs gracefully back over to me. As soon as she’s a scant four feet from the ground, she lets go and drops nimbly to the dirt.

“Women make great rock climbers with our muscle-to-mass ratio,” she says, flexing her toned arms. “So you’re going to do great. Now, you’re not going to go that far up, just over, OK?”

I nearly laugh hysterically. Yeah, right. Not up, just over.

The sandstone looks miles high and endlessly long. My armpits are tide pools. Antiperspirant slogans play in my head:
Don’t let them see you sweat.
Well, it’s a little late for that. I wipe my slimy palms off on my black pants, wondering if maybe for the first time in my life, I should have used deodorant, because I can smell my fear.

Jasmine digs around in her backpack and holds out a pouch. “Here, use this chalk. It’ll absorb your sweat. Just rub it on your hands,” she says, lifting the sack higher to hesitant me. “Usually, we’ll avoid using chalk since it leaves a trail, but in this case…”

“Usually?” I squeak. There will be no usually in this experience because usually I am sane. I plunge my hands into the sack and bring them out, pancaked in chalk.

“You sure you want to do this?” Jasmine stares first at my doughy hands, and then at me uncertainly. I know that Jasmine’s offered me a way to save face, the same way I did with Mama last night, making it sound like Auntie Lu really needed me for the summer.

Back out,
I tell myself. But instead, I shake the extra chalk off my hands and turn to the Torture Chamber. Just the way Jasmine did, I raise my hands above my head. The sandstone feels warm and rough under my whitened fingertips. I don’t say a word, but lift my left foot off the ground. And then I am stuck there, a human crab clinging to vertical wall.

“Look for the edges,” says Jasmine.

“I’m looking, I’m looking.” There’s nothing and I mean nothing but rock that’s not meant to be climbed.

Jasmine sighs and taps the block to my right. “Here.”

I practically need a magnifying glass to see the one-sixteenth-inch edge she wants me to grip. There is no way that an outcropping of rock the size of a sesame seed is going to support me. No way. But I reach for it and manage to grip the sliver with three fingertips.

“Nice crimp grip! You’re a natural,” says the chipper coach.

Crimp grip? Try cramp grip. The good thing about struggling to survive is that I don’t have time to hyperventilate, not that Jasmine notices. She’s back to cheering me on to my sure death.

“OK, looking good. Get up another two feet,” she says. “And then you’re set for an easy traverse to your right.”

I reach one hand higher, and hoist myself up. Muscles I had no idea existed in my forearms tighten as I crimp grip for dear life.

“No wonder your arms look so good,” I mutter. When you’re hanging onto tiny edges sized for microscopic beings, trust me, either your arms get a good workout or you’re splat on the ground. I snicker to myself, only to whimper a moment later. I can’t see a single handhold that’s within reach. My fingers tense on the rock as my right foot nearly slips off the wall. I’m not proud of it, but I scream. A little. OK, a high-pitched, omigod-I’m-going-to-die kind of scream.

“Reach left,” says Jasmine calmly as if she hasn’t just masterminded an experiment to prove that, yes, gravity does exist. And I am her five-foot-ten lab rat. “Go back where you just came.”

Easy for her to say.

Ms. Sticky-Fingered Gecko could probably hang upside-down with one finger. But I backtrack a foot. And then suddenly, a three-inch protrusion is just above my right hand. I
cross my left leg under my right, as I claw for another hold, and a new route reveals itself. It’s so weird to always propel forward (go westward, young woman!), only to learn that backtracking is the way to make sense of what’s up ahead.

“Beautiful move,” Jasmine calls. “See, you’re a natural. Which is a good thing.”

I can’t spare any more than a word, I’m focusing so hard. “Why?”

“Because buildering on this stuff builds up your finger strength. And you’ll need that to keep Stu satisfied, hapa mama.”

“Jasmine! God!” I can’t help but laugh, and lose my tenuous grip. My right arm scrapes hard across the sandstone as I scrabble but don’t find a hold. I fall—and land solidly on my two big feet.

“You did it!” Jasmine shouts, throwing her arms around me. “Look!”

Slowly, I look up to see that I’ve crossed some of the wall. Not all of it, but a lot more than I thought I could do. And only with a scratch or two.

I survived,
I tell myself and touch the stone once. Just so I’ll remember.

“So the climbing gym’s open until eleven tonight,” says Jasmine.

“Climbing gym?” I wrench away from the wall to stare at her. “You mean, there’s an
indoor
climbing gym here?”

“Well, yeah, where do you think I got your shoes?” asks Jasmine, smiling at me lazily. “But isn’t being bad more fun?”

She has a point there. So I put my hands back on the sandstone and lift up.

27
Feng Shui

E
ndorphins and adrenaline pump
me up so much after buildering that I could run a marathon even after I reach Auntie Lu’s. No one’s home when I let myself in, which is a good thing since I probably would have blurted out that I rock—literally. Then, Mama would have asked a million questions, all the while worrying about liability and insurance while insisting that Auntie Lu MapQuest the closest hospital even though I’m perfectly fine.

More than fine, actually.

Just as I’m about to get a drink of water, I hear laughter from the patio. Curious, I look out the window. Mama’s back from her seminar after all. But she’s not multitasking, checking her voice mail while deadheading flowers, writing lists and logging onto her Blackberry. She’s just sitting with Auntie Lu. To be perfectly accurate, she’s lounging on the teak chair, looking more relaxed than I remember seeing her. The bistro table is set with a stainless steel, aerodynamic carafe that looks centuries out of place next to the tiny, matte black
teapot. In front of each sister are two teacups, one squat and the other tall.

Some of the ladies in the potluck group used to get together a couple of times a year for the Taiwanese tea ceremony, but Mama never had the time. It’s a leisurely ceremony, not as formal as its Japanese cousin but with more meaning than an English afternoon tea. The last time Mama performed the tea ceremony with me, I was too sick to go to third grade. She sniffed impatiently when I complained that we didn’t have star-shaped peanut-butter-and-strawberry-jelly sandwiches like Janie’s tea parties always had.

I could close my eyes and still see Mama’s hands preparing the tea. First, she poured hot water into the smaller teacups to warm them. Then, she topped the loose tea leaves in the teapot with water. I sniff the air now and catch the aroma of the rich, dark dragon well tea that Mama splurges on once a year or so. The kind that’s harvested in Taiwan, not China.

Out on the patio, Auntie Lu pours the first cups of tea. Immediately, she and Mama dump them out, splashing the tea on the limestone slabs under their feet. That initial cup just washes the leaves. After a minute of steeping, Auntie Lu fills the taller scenting cups, covering them with the tiny teacups. When the tea steeps long enough, both sisters raise the teacup lids and dip their heads like black swans to smell the steam. Only then do they pour the tea from the scenting cups into their drinking cups.

Looking at the two sisters, sipping, sniffing and chatting, no one would believe that only four years separate them. With her graying hair and tired eyes, Mama looks old enough
to be Auntie Lu’s mother. I can’t hear Auntie Lu’s toast. What ever she says makes Mama chuckle so hard she starts to cry.

Maybe what Mama needed was a change in scenery and circumstances, not to reinvent herself, but to reclaim her real self. Just like me.

My heart steams with guilt. As I watch Mama wipe away her tears, I wonder if I’m the one who’s aged her. I step quietly away from the window, unable to look at this China Doll Club any longer.

I retreat to Auntie
Lu’s office, but working on my problem set or my Truth Statement is next to impossible. Even more of a fantasy is any thought of relaxing in the middle of this mess. I can handle the six piles of papers on the floor. And the boxes of photographs crammed into the bookshelves. And even the randomly placed logos, business cards and letterhead that Auntie Lu designs for clients when she isn’t making her own art. But the five sticky coffee mugs, two water bottles, eight notepads, eleven pens, stray napkins and a snow drift of sticky pads on her desk? We’re talking major skin-crawling anxiety here.

There is no way in feng shui hell that I can sleep another night surrounded with this mind-vomit. I hadn’t expected to start space-clearing so soon, but diving into another person’s problem is a great cure for guilt.

The whole point of space-clearing is to get rid of clutter so that good luck can ooze into every available nook and cranny. With all the chaos in Auntie Lu’s office, luck will need to be clutching a feng shui master in one hand and a sheaf of four-leaf clovers in the other just to find its way in here.

I grab as many cups and half-crumpled napkins as I can carry and nearly drop them all when Auntie Lu speeds around the corner. She stares at my garbage collection and smiles sheepishly. “You’re just like your mom.”

Now, that’s one I don’t hear every day.

“She can’t stand a messy desk either.” Auntie Lu slips into the office and grabs a plate with cookie crumbs. “I sent her out on a walk. She works too hard.” Auntie Lu sighs, a small wisp of sadness that curls around us. “So, I take it, you’re ready to space-clear my office?”

“It’d be easier to take every thing out and start all over.”

I interpret Auntie Lu’s stricken expression as a no.

Before long, we’ve got three boxes in front of us. One for things to throw away (a battle because Auntie Lu thinks every thing can be recycled into material for her art). One to give away (ditto). And one to keep (bulging at the seams).

“What is this?” I demand, peering inside a moss green bucket. It contains a feng shui master’s nightmare: dead flowers. That’s the symbol of every thing old, decaying and rotten. No dried floral arrangements or withering wreaths are allowed in a feng shui–friendly home. “Mama would freak out if she saw this.”

Auntie Lu’s face softens. “They’re all the flowers Victor sent to me when we were first dating.” She places them carefully in the Keep pile.

“Wait a second…”

“I thought I’d make paper out of them. Letterpress our names for stationery.”

In concept, it’s romantic. In reality, it’s a concept. The kind you fantasize about, flirt with, but never actually do anything about. “You’ve been with him for how long?”

“Eight years.”

I’ve always known that living with Victor is why Auntie Lu is only a phone-call-a-year presence in my life. Mama is so hung up on them living together, unmarried, that she claims they’re a bad moral influence on me and Abe. As if we’ve never seen a TV show or read a book or know people who are shacking up without the benefit of a ring.

“Where is he right now?” I ask.

“Africa.” Auntie Lu grows animated with pride and hands me a sheaf of photographs off the top of a stack of books. “He’s part of a special team of photographers who’ve been handpicked to put a face on the AIDS crisis there.”

“I can see why,” I say, riffling through the photos. “His work is amazing.”

“He’s an amazing man.” Auntie Lu looks down at the bucket cradled in her lap and places her hand protectively on its rim. “I’ll make paper out of it someday. Really.” She glances around the room, overwhelmed since half of the stuff is on the ground and the other half, we haven’t even touched. “Maybe we shouldn’t space-clear today.”

I spot an empty picture frame on the top shelf in her closet and think quickly. “We’ll frame one petal, and you can write something mushy about him. But the rest we toss. And then you’ll have lots of room for
new
flowers.” In answer to her dubious expression, I say, “It’s the feng shui way.” I stretch up for the picture frame, which is drowning in dust. “When exactly was the last time you space-cleared?”

Auntie Lu grimaces.

“Let me guess. Never.” My hand brushes against something hidden behind the frame, but I can’t reach it. So I pull a chair over and climb up. Tucked way in the back, pushed
against the wall, is an antique Chinese document box. “What’s this?” I ask, hopping off the chair.