Nothing But the Truth (5 page)

“You’re kidding!” Scandalized, Sharon’s eyes widen at this Revenge of the Wallflower moment: how the Queen Bee of the Proud Crowd wouldn’t budge out of her chair for the first hour because the Statewide Spelling Bee Champ was buzzing around the dance floor in the same dress.

While Janie and Sharon dissect the matching red dresses—such a winter color for a spring dance, no?—I’m fuming because I wanted to go to the Spring Fling. Badly. So what if the only shopping scenario I could imagine was Mama scouring the sales racks until she found a sea-foam green dress marked down seventy percent because no one could look remotely human in it.

I don’t realize I’ve sighed until Sharon puts one perfectly manicured hand on top of mine.

“You’ll go to dances one day, too,” Sharon tells me firmly. “These high school boys might not appreciate your unique looks, but trust me, someday, someone will.”

“Uh-huh,” I say, trying not to dwell on how her words make it sound like I’m going to need a miracle for “someone” to appreciate my “unique looks” someday in the way off, very distant future.

“And really, it’s not like you missed anything big,” says Janie.

I doubt that very much, but say brightly, “There’s always Homecoming next year. I think I’m allowed to go to dances now.”

“That’s great!” Sharon pushes away her half-full plate like a couple of naked spinach leaves could stuff her and squeezes my hand. “Watch out, Lincoln High.”

“Just Taiwanese guys.”

“But your mother married a white man,” says Sharon, who exchanges a bewildered look with Janie. Their eyebrows lift like a double set of parentheses fencing in their not-so-private thoughts: Mrs. Ho is
so
Chinese. I decide I better keep math camp to myself because that would confirm that I’m
so
Chinese, too.

“Yeah,” chimes in Janie. “So how come you can’t date white guys? What’s with that?”

I shake my head like the answer is a mystery to me, too, when the truth is so clear, it could be lit up with a blinking, neon sign. The only mistake Mama ever admits to is marrying my white guy of a dad. So the chances of me dating a white guy are the same as me squirming out of math camp:
zero. But how do I explain that to a girl who dishes with her mother about boys and birth control?

“So, who does that leave?” asks Janie. Her smile gleams with possibility. “Dylan Nguyen.”

Dylan Nguyen is a ju nior with such a bad case of acne, he makes my complexion look flawless. But Sharon nods like this makes perfect sense, like this is the inevitable, logical solution. Like dating a white guy is totally out of the realm of my possibility. After all, canaries of a feather flock together.

Newsflash: this canary wants to fly solo.

“He’s Vietnamese,” I tell them.

They exchange befuddled looks again and Sharon mumbles something about splitting hairs. What they don’t know is that Mama can parse the finest strand of hair into a thousand clearly delineated pieces.

After I go for
a long, hard run, I return to a House Ho that still stinks of Tonic Soup. Really, one does wonder whether that soup is Mama’s attempt to keep boys away from me. As if my “unique looks” really merit that extreme mea sure.

“You finish homework?” Mama asks by way of greeting me, her fingers still click-click-clicking on her ten-key calculator while she scans a ledger, not sparing me a glance. Files are spread all over the dining table, an avalanche of accounts. It must be quarterly reporting time for her clients.

“Just about,” I say and hurry into the kitchen to fix dinner before she finds out that my homework accounting isn’t reconciling. Homework to do does not equal homework done.

Safe in my bedroom after stir-frying noodles for everyone, and yes, guzzling down bowl two of Tonic Soup, I flop on
my bed only to have my head hit a book instead of my pillow. Lifting up, I slide out Mama’s favorite read, Gavin de Becker’s
Protecting the Gift.
The same woman who comparison shops for every thing had run to the bookstore to pay full price for this hardback book after the author, a security guru, talked on
Oprah
about the creeps and crazies who prey on women and children. I interpret this light bedtime read as permission to whack a geek where it counts if he tries to seduce me with an equation at math camp.

Ironically, the book about protecting yourself looks battle-worn, wearing Mama’s sticky notes like bandages. I set it gently on my bedside table and wander to my desk. The call of geometry can’t be denied any longer—procrastinated again, can you stand it?

At midnight, I escape math and tiptoe downstairs to make some tea to settle my upset stomach.

Two doses of Mama’s Tonic Soup + (Sharon’s grilled cheese sandwich + my lactose intolerance) = gastronomical mistake of peptic proportions.

The dining room lights are on, which isn’t weird given that Mama is a late-to-bed, early-to-riser who thinks sleep is for the weak, not for the weary. What
is
weird is Mama using a huge pile of spreadsheets as a pillow, one hand on her big calculator and the other grazing her laptop computer. Her hangnailed fingers twitch like she’s trying to crunch numbers even in her sleep.

Part of me wants to wake Mama, lead her to her bedroom, take off her tiny slippers and tuck her in. But I know that once her eyes are open, Mama will dose herself with some exceptionally strong, highly caffeinated green tea and keep toiling until her clients’ receipts reconcile their bank statements,
not one penny misplaced. Her persistence and fiscal fluency is why clients overlook her broken English. It’s how she’s paying for Harvard. And summer camp.

Guilt, more substantial than any of her lectures could produce, bloats my heart. I pad softly to the living room and grab a pilled-up crocheted afghan, one with so many snags that Janie’s mother would have incinerated it on sight. When I drape it carefully over Mama, her thin shoulders lift in a soft sigh.

“It’s OK, Mama,” I murmur and her face relaxes. Not exactly into a smile, but close enough to approximate satisfaction.

Before I dim the light, I drink in Mama’s expression, the way I wish she’d look at me when we’re both awake.

6
Nipping

B
owl number sixteen of
Tonic Soup starts my very last day as a freshman with a kick. Call me vain, but since camouflaging my bad breath with peppermint is a matter of social-life-or-death, I opt to brush my teeth three more times. I can still taste Tonic Soup. So I gargle with Listermint. And I miss the bus. Which means that Mama is driv ing foul-mouthed me to school.

Even before my hand is on the car door, my annoyed chauffeur is
hunh
-ing at me. As much as I’m tempted to negotiate with Mama—you lay off the Tonic Soup, and I won’t need to gargle and brush for ten extra minutes—I refrain. Risking Lecture Number Four (I Do Everything for You) seems hardly worth ruining the happiest day of every freshman’s life. As of 3:05 this afternoon, we’re sophomores.

So I sit quietly, hunched down in my seat in hopes that Mama will forget about me. Fat chance of that when we approach her new client’s office, the doctor she’s visiting this morning to organize his badly disarrayed bills. An especially loud
hunh
is aimed at me. It’s raining, and my hair is going to
get soaked, but I can’t take this irradiation by irritation a moment longer. We’re just a quarter mile from school. So I tell Mama, “You can just let me off here. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

Mama glances at her watch and her lips tighten with annoyance. Heaven forbid, Ho Mei-Li is a second late to crunch numbers. Without putting up the least bit of re sis tance to my suggestion, Mama swerves into the parking lot, as she orders me, “Hurry! No late!”

Naturally, I slowpoke along on the sidewalk until I’m past glaring distance. And then I hustle to school, grumbling to myself about Torture by Tonic Soup. I’m trying to figure out a way to convince Abe that the soup builds lean muscle mass (his goal in life), when a familiar Neanderthal grunts, “Yo, Nip!”

I keep walking, head down as I’m caught in a storm of why’s. Why now? Why today, the last day of school? Ku Klux Kosanko has pretty much left me alone since Abe and his baseball buddies had a “chat” with him at the beginning of the year for harassing me.

But a car slows down, way down.

“Chopsticks, I’m talking to you,” taunts Steve Kosanko. His voice has an edge to it like I should be prostrating myself in front of him. Out of my periphery, I can see his huge forehead and a thick unibrow. “Maybe Half-breed Ho no speak English.”

No, Idiot,
I respond in my head as I walk a little faster.
It’s just that I don’t speak Stupid.

Steve’s cackle follows me. I can smell his hate the way you can always smell your yard after it’s become some dog’s personal outhouse.

Remind me again why I insisted on walking the rest of the way to school? I’d kick myself except then I’d probably trip,
and I’m determined to walk like I don’t hear Steve nipping at my heels with his racist pig comments.

“Fung, twung, wung, low hung.”

And here I thought time was supposed to mature us all. Obviously, Steve is stuck in some kind of elementary school time warp, proving that once an imbecile, always an imbecile. Another round of jeering laughter washes over me like mud. Steve’s voice deepens to a leer: “Wanna check me out, Ho? Free, looky, looky.”

I hike my backpack higher onto my shoulders as if my books and papers could shield me.
Say something,
I yell at myself.
Don’t take his crap.
But if words can’t hurt you, how can they help you?

My eyes race up and down driveways, hunting for a good escape route. The huge “Lincoln High, Home of the Patriots” sign is up ahead. But I don’t want to give Steve the satisfaction of seeing me bolt.
Just ignore him,
Mama would tell me. As if
that
ever works. Ignoring Steve just makes him madder that he can’t screw with my head.

Against my better judgment, I look over at Steve, hanging out the driver’s side window like the dog he is: a pit bull, ugly and mean. I may have x’ed Steve Kosanko out of every yearbook picture he’s ever spoiled, but I’ll never forget how mean his eyes can look. He’s shorter than I am, but outweighs me by a good fifty pounds. All muscular upper arms and skinny legs that don’t look like they can sprint. Trust me, he can. He got enough practice on me in grade school.

When I first complained about Steve, my fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Enoch, just patted me on the head and said, “He’s got a crush on you.” Right, more like he wanted to crush me. My fifth-grade teacher gave me a look like
Come on, what can
this puny kid do to you?
Well, nothing except turn school into a three-season hunting ground for Patty Ho.

But then Abe morphed into Lincoln’s all-star pitcher with a team of he-men friends. Friends who enjoyed pounding on bullies. Friends who let Steve know I was off-limits. Friends who are graduating.

Before I know what Steve’s planning, before I can dodge out of the firing line, he rears back and spits. A giant glob lands on my cheek and slides down, sluggy tears. All the voices inside me—the strident one telling me to get my ass in gear and stand up for myself, the mousy one whispering to haul my ass out of here—are speechless.

My feet are rooted into the sidewalk. I can’t move.

Then my heart hardens into a pellet of disbelief as I stare at the guy sitting in the passenger’s seat. Mark Scranton, lust object since sixth grade when he moved into my neighborhood and my heart. The guy whose voice I can pick out in the most raucous soccer game. The guy whose campaign speech I wrote.

Et tu,
Mark?

Mr. Class President won’t meet my eyes. And I won’t stop staring. Finally, Steve’s car peels down the street, leaving fart fumes. And only then do I wipe my cheek on my sleeve.

7
Changing

S
hielding my spit-stained
face behind my long hair, I speed walk to my locker. All I can think about is changing. Changing schools so I don’t have to deal with Steve Kosanko next year. Changing lives so I never have to face Mark again.

This morning, I settle for changing clothes.