Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir

  She had also said that I had to be stronger than a man to make a man believe I was better. She told me many times, over many years, that I should never let anyone look down on me, and that I should never look down on anyone, either. I should refuse to let someone tell me who I was and who I could be. When she was married to “that bad man,” she had had no choice but to “just take it.” But I had a choice. I should not be afraid to stand up for my own mind. Although she thought my husband was a good man, she made him buy me a 24k gold bracelet. Gold was the currency of refugees. She informed my husband, with good humor, that his wife now had the means to leave him if he ever mistreated her. The bracelet was worth about $200, so I would not have gotten far, but we knew what she meant.

  If my father had disagreed with a woman’s right to choose, he would have had to endure my mother’s arguments throughout the years: “So are you saying I was wrong and that bad man was right? Are you saying everything was my fault and I made you commit adultery? Are you saying you are better than me and you should decide my fate?”

  His fear of God would have been overshadowed by his fear of my mother’s anger. But he would not have voted entirely out of fear of either her or retribution from God. The fact is, he had always stood up for her—against her abusive husband, against his disapproving family, and against the selfishness of their daughter for not lifting a finger to help lighten her mother’s burden. He would have acknowledged his responsibility in their affair and that their love and passion were mutual. They had pledged to be together through better or worse. There would have been no argument. They would have voted for better.

  [ QUIRK ]

  Reliable Witness

  [From the journal]

  AUSTIN, TEXAS, NOVEMBER 2008. I realize over and over again that my journal writing is like a witness to the moments I’ve lived. When I read what I’ve noted, thought about, the words come as a surprise, something I would have forgotten, and often don’t even remember thinking. So to read them, I recapture them. Being present is the necessity of recording consciousness. I think of each moment as gone, and they are like little deaths, millions of little deaths before physical death. Writing is the witness to myself about myself. Whatever others say of me or how they interpret me is a simulacrum of their own devising.

  I imagine an enterprising graduate student in Asian studies who has a premise, a theory, and uses the archive selectively to prove her/his point. I have never read an analysis of my work or me that reads as accurate. It’s because they start off on the wrong path, have created the map and thereby see only those points and conclusions. There is no symbolic immortality to be had in giving one’s archives to a library. It’s perpetual misinterpretation. Who I was will have been missing since before I stepped off Earth’s floor.

  Interlude

  * * *

  I AM THE AUTHOR OF THIS NOVEL

  I am the author of this novel, which is told by a first-person narrator, who is not me, as one particular reviewer suggested is the case. For one thing, I am not half-Alsatian, half-Cherokee. My mother is from Lichtenstein, my father from China. And I have not been married four times, only twice. I have sons not daughters, cats not dogs, a house on the seaside not the lakeside. And I do not smoke or take Ecstasy.

  But in a deeper sense, the story itself is me, because its circular narrative drive, historical themes, and mythical imagery embody my patterns of thought and my obsessions with the past. But I am not the first-person narrator. I am the author who determined the voice of the narrator, which, by extension, is the voice of the entire narrative. By voice, I am not talking about voice quality—melodious, hoarse, foreign-accented, and so forth. Voice has more to do with a character’s subconscious running over her conscious self, and her observations as that happens. The narrator unfolds the story naturally and seamlessly—however, to make that appear so, I have to use contrivance in an artful way, which is more difficult than the result would suggest. The voice also has to do with how much she recognizes herself as the story progresses. It is a cliché to have a narrator be completely oblivious to what the plot will turn on.

  So, by voice, I mean more the mind of the character and her identity, how she perceives herself in the world she inhabits, and not what kind of job she has or how much money she makes or whether she is beautiful—although, in the case of this story, physical attributes do form a subtle narrative motif, especially when beauty around her is destroyed by an earthquake—the “Big One” everybody knew was coming but denied—which simultaneously marred her face, left it askew, because of plastic surgery with a shaky knife. It takes only a jiggle. The main point is: her mind is not my mind, and her identity is not my identity—except in that larger and deeper sense of understanding the difference between internal versus external identity—experienced especially among women of a certain era who subverted their identity to receive admiration in exchange for being cooperative and who then found themselves stuck in a Jell-O mold they had to wiggle their way out of. Similarly, our narrator is forced to struggle out of sticky situations due to her unexamined thoughts, beliefs, emotions, morality, and psyche as they relate to unorthodox sexual preferences. Where she is perhaps like me at a conceptual level is her confusion between intentions and rationale, which are issues I have wrestled over, and which I’ve embedded into my last two novels—that is, the self-governance and judgment of one’s own morality when it comes to strong sexual desires for characters who have no morality or critical thinking.

  As the author of seven novels, two off-Broadway plays, and six children’s books, I have found that all stories have some degree of moral and political subtext—however, I don’t take as my mantle Orwell’s mission for why he writes, or, rather, wrote. If I wrote stories about the economics of war or apathy during repression, I might take on a more political angle and be consumed with that throughout the writing of the novel. But politics is not my oeuvre—and I am well aware that the heavy geopolitical themes are what committees for big literary prizes look for, as well as subjugation of mind by mass culture, which my novel touches upon. For some reason, the awards committees also like stories involving ships in the nineteenth century, with authentic descriptions of rigging, rust, wood rot, and such. We authors, however, must make a deliberate choice on what to write, based in part on what we wish to research. So, no despotism, no ships. In this novel, there is subtle moral interplay with the narrator’s personal trauma as a child, her awareness of her former Alsatian beauty, her aberrant sexual desires, her secret ambitions to be an icon, and her racist attitudes. There is also her aggressive disregard of fashion, which ironically sets off a fashion trend, which she embraces a bit too willingly by justifying its benefit to society who wrongly look for identity in brand identity. Unlike me, the narrator can be a bit odd and self-unaware, but as a literary author, I know that it is essential to make a first-person narrator likeable, yet flawed. Thus, despite her compassion for Nepalese women, she remains unaware of her racist attitude toward white people, an attitude I certainly do not share. I felt, however, that it was critical for a literary novel to gently expose racism in good people, and that self-unawareness may be tied to moral intention that has been transformed by selfish justification over perverse sexual addictions. As should be apparent by now, there is a massive amount of crafting done to weave these curious intricacies, dark themes, and psychological complexities. It would be absurd for anyone to deconstruct strands into a checklist comparison chart to prove the author is the first-person narrator, as one particular reviewer has done. In one sense, I should be flattered that I created a story that felt so authentic he believed that to be the case. Had I put the story in third-person, there likely would have been no confusion.

  At the same time, there is a point to be made about universal epiphanies, those moments when readers become the character, when they realize—“Omigod! Yes!”—and they cry or laugh or sing. In this novel, there is quite a bit of that. One reader reported to me that she cried fourteen times and quit psycho
therapy. Osmotic identification with the story shows how anyone, not just the author, can become the character. We are the character because we are immersed in the story’s emotions, yet we know that we are not the character. I have never worked as a geologist in Lhasa, for example, nor have I started a cashmere-weaving cooperative in Nepal. My role was to originate the first-person narrator and all the rest—the narrative, the voice, the themes, the minor characters, their flaws, the trickiness of morals—they are all my invention, and at a higher conceptual level, the kind of stories I tell and the characters I choose do say something about the kind of person I am. From a conceptual point of view you might even say I am the narrative consciousness. Some have called it that, but that can lead to misremembering the term as narrator. And just to be clear, since I introduced a term potentially confusing to some reviewers, the first-person fictional consciousness is not me, unless you think my doppelgänger should get credit as a separate entity. And now, in just raising the rhetorical question, she evidently thinks she should be acknowledged.

  So let me rephrase: I am the author of a novel told by a doppelgänger in possession of my thoughts, who inserts her subconscious into my subconscious, which is rather like being unaware that someone has deftly slipped her hands into mine. My hands are not the ones tapping the keyboard, although I still believe they are, and these words you are reading are entirely hers, which I still believe are mine.

  * * *

  CHAPTER NINE

  * * *

  HOW I LEARNED TO READ

  In the fall of 1958, when I was six years old, a striking young woman came to our rented duplex apartment on Fifty-First Street in Oakland to discuss a serious matter with my mother and father. She and my parents sat in the living room, my parents on the tweed sofa and the lady in a matching armchair. My older brother, Peter, and I had just returned from school—he was in the third grade and I in the first. I was surprised to see my father there, since he should have been at work. Were we in trouble? It didn’t seem so, since my parents were all smiles. The woman greeted me. I recognized her as the lady in nice clothes who had recently taken me out of the classroom and brought me into a small room to do puzzles.

  My father told me to go outside and play with Peter. A little while later, I saw my parents standing at the door saying good-bye to the woman. When I came back in the house, my mother and father looked excited and happy. “We have good news,” they said. The lady had just told them that I had done well on a test, especially in numbers. “She said you have what it takes to become a doctor—just like Peter.” Peter was a genius. He could do anything. Later, as they continued to discuss my future, they added that I should choose to be a brain surgeon, because the brain was the most important part of the body, and that’s why brain surgeons were the smartest and the most respected.

  I remember being happy, yet confused, mostly because I had suddenly changed in their eyes into a much more pleasing child, one who made them proud, and not angry, as my mother often was with me. I had, in fact, been distressed that she always found fault in me, pointing out that I had not practiced the piano a full hour, or that I had not answered quickly enough when called, or that my hair was messy, or that I had not washed my hands, or that I forgot my sweater, or that I had not finished my rice, on and on. It was true that I was good with numbers. I knew how to count how many times my mother spoke sharply to me. Sometimes I would get through almost the whole day and think that maybe nothing bad would happen, only to find she was upset with me for some little thing, like not getting ready for bed fast enough. Looking back, her irritation may have had to do with her exhaustion in going to nursing school, and later, working part time while dealing with three active children. She was also often irritated with my father. But at six, I was sensitive to how my parents treated my brothers and me, and I had concluded that my mother simply did not like me anymore.

  Now a miracle had happened. I was going to be a respected doctor. The pressure of expectations was immediate. I could never be as smart as Peter. How hard would I have to study to keep up? What would I do as a doctor? I had met a few of them. One particular doctor attended our church, and whenever my parents saw him, they made a point of greeting him with excessive praise. They would call us kids over. “This is Dr. Cheu,” my father would say. “He’s very important, respected by everyone. It’s a great honor he’s here because he’s a very busy man.” My brothers and I fell mute before such a god. There were other doctors I met at the hospital where my parents took me whenever I had a high fever or a sore throat. Back in those days, doctors never smiled and they did not welcome questions. My parents were always deferential. The doctor would make a pronouncement. “She has tonsillitis again.” My parents would look guilty, as if their carelessness or lack of hygiene had caused this to happen. “She needs to have her tonsils removed,” the doctor said one day. The next time I saw a doctor, he was wearing a mask, looking down at me, where I lay on a table in the operating room. Someone put a pouch near my nose, which blew cool air that smelled strong. And then I was waking up in excruciating pain, in a strange room with other crying kids. A nurse took away my doll and my throat hurt too much to protest. So that’s what I thought of doctors when I was six. They were the harbinger of pain.

  I had also met theologians at the divinity school where my father received his degree and was ordained as a minister. These men were also called “Doctor,” but they were much friendlier than the ones in the hospital, and also much older—white haired and dressed in black robes. My father greeted them with familiarity, respect, and religious praise. We also knew two women who were called doctor, one being a friend of my mother from her Shanghai days, the other being much younger, the cousin or niece of a friend from China. The older woman and younger woman did not know each other, but by coincidence they both had doctorate degrees in physics. Even more unusual, they had both been raised in China as boys to compensate for their parents’ disappointment that they were not. Out of habit, my mother said, they continued to wear men’s clothes and kept their hair cut short. It was more comfortable, my mother explained. Neither of them ever married. We were taught to respect these women, but we were allowed to call them “Auntie,” instead of “Doctor.” My younger brother made the mistake of calling the older one “Uncle.” Fortunately, my parents and the woman took this with good humor, and so my brothers and I continued to call her “Uncle” until we were older and required to be respectful. So those were the models for my future as a doctor: taciturn men, old sages in black robes, and mannish women.

  Just because I was going to be a doctor, that didn’t mean I no longer had to practice the piano, my parents told me. They still expected me to become a concert pianist. I could do both, my mother explained: be a doctor five days a week and play concerts on the weekends. At age six, the choices had been made. It was final. I had been sentenced to an immigrant parent’s dream.

  I recently found the house on Fifty-First Street in an online real estate listing. It was as I remembered it: a two-flat clapboard building painted in delicious Girl Scout–cookie colors of mint green and chocolate brown trim. It was the fifth home I had had since birth. Sudden change and upheaval were the norm for my parents, as they were for anyone who had gone through a world war, a civil war, and a love affair.

  Our family lived in the downstairs flat—my parents, brothers Peter and John, and me. My mother’s half brother, my uncle Joe, his wife, and four children lived upstairs. They had emigrated the year before from China and had gone from fabulous wealth, prestige, and privilege to being just another poor immigrant family, unaccustomed to being treated as illiterates suitable for only menial labor. During their first two years, they depended on my parents to help them adjust to an English-speaking world. I can imagine the horrors my mother laid out to her young sister-in-law, a testament to her own suffering: You think the American dream is better than the life you had in China? No such thing. When I came here, I learned the hard way. I had to clean not only my own house but a
lso the house of a messy old lady who dribbled food everywhere. She paid me twenty-five cents an hour to break my back. Today we just get by. I have no money to buy luxuries. I watch every penny. I write down everything I spend. One dollar fourteen cents for groceries—write that down. Ten cents for Popsicles—write that down. One dollar for gas—write that down. You have to wear the same clothes you brought from China until they fall off your shoulders in shreds.

  My mother probably spelled out her humiliations, which she took as far worse than poverty. They treat you like you’re dumb. Even if I speak English, people say they do not understand me. If you don’t like it, they say, go back to China. You think it’s easy here in America? You have to swallow a lot of bitterness and thank people for giving it to you. That’s how you survive. Those were the sorts of things I heard my mother say over the years. She was proud to have endured so many hardships over the years. Her skin was tough. Her eyes saw the situation clearly. Her sister-in-law was still naive and tears would follow.

  The door on the right side of the duplex went into our flat, and the one on the left went to the flat upstairs. There was a small patch of lawn in front and the rest of the landscaping was easy-care concrete, which only required yanking out a few weeds that grew in the cracks. The bay window of our living room faced the street. But the rest of the flat lay in the shadow of a building that was only about ten feet way. A dank-smelling gutter and strip of grass was all that separated us from our neighbors. Remembering this now, I’m puzzled why my mother chose to live downstairs, where we were not only deprived of sunlight but also subjected to the thumps and stomps of our busy relatives above us. Perhaps my mother did not want to worry that her three children might acquire brain damage from falling down a steep flight of stairs, which we had done multiple times in the last two houses and always with dramatic bloody effect. Or maybe she wanted easy access to the shed next to the concrete patio, where she did the laundry. She had a washing machine; the dryer would come later. Once, for fun, we helped her hand crank the wash through the wringer and hang it on a tree-shaped web of clotheslines. Then it was no longer fun. In China, she had had servants who cooked, cleaned, drove the car, and did the laundry. I did not know about her pampered life at the time. She never talked about her past. She must have reminded herself many times that her children would become successful and make up for the deprivations she suffered. Her daughter would become a neurosurgeon and would make enough money to take care of her in her old age.