The Cooked Seed (46 page)

I was distressed to discover that sixteen-year-old Lauryann viewed things differently. She described herself as sweet, cheerful, and obedient
on the outside and miserable on the inside. Some of this she attributed to her never having gotten over my divorce. The separation from her birth father had left her with persistent feelings of abandonment. I had shared my perspective with Lauryann many times: that my marriage to her father had been ill-fated, that we were unsuited to one another, and that the best thing to come of it had been our daughter, herself. But this was not the story she seemed to need, and she continued to suffer.

To compensate for her loss and to help her build a bridge, I took her to China so that she could bond with Qigu’s parents. For fifteen years, we made the trip across the Pacific Ocean religiously. Yet Lauryann didn’t heal. As close as my relationship was with my daughter, I missed the signals that she was in great mental pain. Because she did not want to hurt my feelings, she always showed her pleasant side.

The explosion came when Lauryann returned from a leadership camp. She told me that she had shared with her fellow campers her deepest emotions, that she had broken down and cried out her pain for the first time.

I was surprised. “What pain?”

“The pain of being abandoned,” she replied.

It was then that I realized that all the talks I’d had with her over the years had not worked. I saw her revelation as an accusation that I had been selfish and cruel to choose divorce. I couldn’t help but feel that Qigu was the problem. He had quit paying child support, but he hadn’t stopped influencing Lauryann. On the rare occasions when he actually made an effort to see his daughter, he tried to convince her that
I
was the irresponsible parent. He provoked in Lauryann “the grass is greener on the other side of the hill” syndrome. When I let Lauryann visit him in China during the summers, Qigu showered her with affection and gifts. He bought her an iPod when it was “cool.” He put her up in a five-star hotel in Beijing that was paid for by one of his admirers. He invited her to exotic banquets and parties where she met with his students, fellow artists, collectors, and critics.

Lauryann realized that she had missed many good times with Qigu. Although she challenged him, criticizing his laziness and bad habits, she took comfort in him. She later admitted that she had fantasized living a different life with Qigu.

Lauryann’s feelings of inadequacy disturbed me. I was upset when she told me that “Qigu’s side of the story made sense.” I had worked hard to control the damage caused by the divorce, but a few days with Qigu, and Lauryann was pushed into a pit of self-pity and self-loathing.

“Instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you ought to feel grateful that you escaped the mess of our marriage,” I said, raising my voice. “Why can’t you see the truth as I see it? Why can’t you take life as it is and deal with it the way I do? When I came to America …”

“Don’t start, Mom, please! I already know your next line. You didn’t speak English, and you had no money and knew nobody … I am aware of what you’ve gone through, but Mom, what I’m experiencing is different—a pain of a different kind and nature. I don’t think you understand. I don’t think you want to understand. I am not supposed to feel this way, I know. I keep reminding myself that I have everything, that I am in good health, that I don’t have leukemia, or HIV, that I am not deformed, my body doesn’t have anything malfunctioning. I have been telling myself to snap out of this sad state, or whatever it is that causes this freaking mental pain. I have been telling myself that I am not broken. Yet I feel broken inside!”

I watched Lauryann and felt terrified.

“Mom, I wish I could understand why I am so needy, so insecure, and so dependent on validation from others. I’ve told myself that this is not who I am. I get sucked into this black hole, and it’s driving me crazy. I am sick of pretending to be perfect. I just want to quit! I have been throwing myself into a steel wall repeatedly thinking that the wall will change into a wall of flowers. I don’t know if you’d ever accept me as who I am. I looked at that YouTube video of a kid who committed suicide and thought,
Well, at least he got to end his suffering.
”

If I had to pinpoint a moment when I felt that I rose to the challenge as a mother, I would say this was it. I could feel the leap taking place, transforming me from a Chinese mother with limited tools to an American mother blessed and empowered by love and the understanding of the art of loving. The information and the knowledge were there, from what I had learned in my own life and from others, but the transformation hadn’t occurred until now. I could hear the grand sound of the imaginary click. I couldn’t change the past or transform Qigu into a
more attentive father. But I could resist the urge to blame him and instead speak to my own role in my daughter’s life. I would catch the chance my mother never had, a chance to truly connect with my child. There was no hesitation or fear. There was no
what if, perhaps,
or
maybe later
, but a sense of certainty.

“A mother’s love can contaminate, poison, harm, and destroy as well as empower and protect,” I began.

A little surprised, Lauryann pushed away the blankets that wrapped around her bare shoulders. She sat on the sofa and leaned forward toward me.

I told Lauryann that I had never been cruel in my life, but that I had done a cruel thing to my mother after I came to America. “In retrospect, I still wonder if the cost was not too great,” I said. It was an act of liberation, a necessity on my part. Like pulling off the strips of cloth that bound the feet of so many Chinese women, I had to make the cut myself. “American education had changed my character. I felt strong enough to speak in my own voice, the voice of my honest self for the first time, to my mother, the person I loved most in the world, and the person who knew me the least.”

I began writing letters to destroy my mother’s perfect image of me. I had become disgusted with my own dishonesty. I was so sick of my mother pretending not to see my flaws. I wrote to tell her that I had never been perfect. Her model child, her flagship, had never existed. I had stolen from her. I had sold my father’s books to buy a piece of candy. I had lied to my mother as an adult. I told her that everything was fine while I was in trouble and having an affair. I was depressed because I was unable to get out of my troubles. It didn’t occur to me that I had altered my own reality.

“My mother didn’t want to hear the news that Qigu and I were divorced,” I continued. “But I kept reporting what I wanted her to hear. I was determined to penetrate her, to break her down, to force her to accept me as I was. I told my mother how I was not making it in America, that I was working as a maid and a cleaning hand at construction sites, that I was not able to get a normal job that would lead to US citizenship. I wanted her to like the me who was trying her best to achieve her full potential. I needed her support and approval.

“But she wouldn’t give it to me. She refused to accept the flawed me. She was disgusted with the real me. She shut her eyes and turned her head. My father said that she used to wait for my letters. She looked forward to the sound of the postman’s bell the moment she woke up. But now she was scared. She refused to open my letters. She said, ‘No!’ when my father offered to read them to her.

“When I visited China, I revealed the worst news. I showed my mother the scar, told her about the rape, and I described my failed suicide attempt in the past.”

The image of my mother covering her ears with her hands stuck with me. Her eyes shut tightly. Her frame was shaking as she pleaded, “No more. Please. No more.”

I remembered continuing, spilling the hurtful words, crying and sobbing at the same time.

“You are killing your mother,” my father said. “She doesn’t deserve it.”

Outside the widows, the sun began to set. Darkness descended and turned the trees into patterns of black paper cuts. “Not until I had you did I start to understand my mother,” I said to Lauryann. “My mother lived to protect me even as she spoke the hurtful words, ‘Shame on you.’ Her philosophy that love can’t hurt backfired. I did everything I could to defeat her purpose.
It’s not the rice but too little firewood that causes the rice to be half cooked
, the Chinese saying goes. My mother didn’t have sufficient firewood. She died not knowing the real me. If there is regret, this is it. I loved her so much. I wanted her to know me, but she never allowed me access. I appreciate the chance you are giving me now. I want to get to know you, the real you. It means everything to me.”

Tears welled up in Lauryann’s eyes. She reached out to hold my hands.

I continued, “The moment I smashed the mirror in which my mother saw the perfect me, she experienced an internal crash. I was sure. But she held her composure and sat straight-faced. That’s the way she fought. She held on to her belief silently day after day, month after month, and year after year. She must have felt that she deserved to be punished, that she hadn’t raised me right. She once told me that she considered
her life a failure because she never got to be the schoolteacher she wanted to be. She was a teacher who never got to hold a class. I was her only chance to show the world that she was not the ‘Teacher Idiot.’ I was her pride, her creation, her only work of art. I was her integrity and dignity. My success would be the proof that she hadn’t wasted her life. I was the embodiment of her worth. Yet I couldn’t let her have that.

“Now that she is dead, and now that I understand her love, I hate myself for making her suffer. I live with the misery that I let my mother down. I want you to be free of such dreadful remorse. I want you to know that I don’t desire a perfect child. Because that wouldn’t be the real you. It’d be impossible. It’d be fake. One can go to the trophy store and buy a wall of awards and banners. You’d fool everyone but yourself. I love the real you, the one who keeps hitting the steel wall and hoping that it will turn into a wall of flowers. I believe that you
are
perfect. Your bravery and courage to be the real you makes you the perfect child. You have been pleasing me, and you have my acceptance and approval.”

“Of all my flaws, doubts, and confusion?” Lauryann said, wiping first her tears away and then mine.

“Of all your flaws, doubts, and confusion.” I smiled, pulling her toward me, and hugged her the way I did when she was a little girl.

Lauryann’s PSAT scores were considered low in comparison to other kids from Asian-American families. A few years before, I had researched the tests with the same zeal I had when applying for my US visa a quarter century before. What I discovered was that college admissions offices, especially at the elite colleges, would compare Lauryann’s scores with other Asian-American applicants’. Although Lauryann was one of the best students at her public high school, her test scores might hold her back.

Brave as Lauryann masked herself to be, fear and nervousness crippled her ability to perform to the best of her ability during tests.

Lloyd encouraged Lauryann. “Fear is the best motivation,” he said. “I stopped chewing my fingernails. See? I used to chew them until they bled. The marines set me straight. The drill instructor saw me and said, ‘Stop it, you maggot!’ And I stopped. You must learn to stare fear in the eye and say the same thing.”

“Yeah, stop it, you maggot. Like that would work for me,” Lauryann replied. “It’s not a magic wand.”

An SAT score below 2200 meant that Lauryann would have less of a chance to be accepted to an elite college. Within the Asian-American community, the racial glass ceiling was an unspoken yet known reality. Chinese-American families accepted what they couldn’t change and worked all the harder.

Like other Chinese parents, I kept repeating this to Lauryann: “America will grab you and offer you the best if you prove yourself to be gold-medal material. It’s all about what you can do for America.”

I suggested that Lauryann consider herself a second-class citizen. “It’s better that you’re taught the truth. If America honored race-blind competition, the nation’s elite colleges would be filled with the hardworking Asians. Have you heard of the American saying ‘You don’t stand a Chinaman’s chance’? Chinaman, that’s who you are.”