Sour Heart Read online

  “His dad used to beat the lights out of him,” my father said.

  “The teachers too,” Ling shu shu said with his mouth full of cake.

  “Didn’t people say he got into a bare-knuckle fight with a PLA soldier when he was still in middle school?” Peng a-yi asked from the kitchen where she was washing out the container she had used to bring her delicious cold noodles with scallion and so much raw garlic and chili seeds that for an hour after eating them, I felt like the clouds in my head had parted and everything was crystal clear.

  “Oh, there were some stories,” my uncle said and then turned his focus to me as if we were having a private conversation and everyone else was eavesdropping. “Annie, you had to see this guy to believe it. He really knew how to get into trouble. Even as a kid he knew how to make people afraid of him. So he walks through the crowd and looks me in the eye with the most evil, twisted smile on his face and he goes, Let’s see if he’s a boy or a girl. There’s only one way to find out.

  “I’m all of six years old at this point. I have no idea what he meant by ‘there’s only one way to find out’ but my gut told me I did not want to know. I’m thinking I’m done for and in my head I keep hearing your grandmother’s voice: Do you have to be interested in everything? Can’t anything be off-limits to you? Suddenly, your mother appears—out of nowhere! Annie, I’m not exaggerating—you have to listen to your qin jiu jiu—your mom here had a smile that could melt the coldest of hearts. So she gets in front of me and flashes a smile at the crowd and says, Does no one have a sense of humor anymore? And then the weirdest thing happens. The crowd just sort of melts away. People stop shouting and the kids holding up rocks put them down by their feet and shuffle away. Even Twitch, he starts scratching his head and mumbling about how he has to get up early the next morning because there was talk of a fresh restock of eggs at the distribution center and his mother wanted him to be in line by four A.M.”

  “That really happened?” I asked, glancing in my mother’s direction. “Mommy? Did you really save qin jiu jiu?”

  “What can I say? He’s my baby brother.”

  The partygoers raised their cups and cheered. “To boys who wanna be girls!” Chen shu shu shouted.

  “To beautiful girls who save the day and become beautiful women!” said Wang shu shu, who always found a way to sit next to my mother at parties when the night really got going and he had switched from Heineken to Johnnie Walker. Sometimes he’d announce to the whole party that my father had it made. This guy, Wang shu shu would slur, must be doing something the rest of you fools haven’t figured out yet.

  I knew my mother was hoping to be the last toast of the night but Wang shu shu’s toast was too long and convoluted and no one was able to repeat it word for word. “To beautiful girls…” people said and then trailed off.

  “And to Annie!” my uncle added, raising his glass higher than anyone. “Happy birthday to our princess!” It was the first time anyone had ever toasted me and I noticed everyone raised their glass except my mother. There would surely be hell to pay. It would come back later during some argument that had nothing to do with this, but the memory of how she was robbed of an important moment because of me would most certainly be the thing that would push her over the edge.

  “All right,” my mother said, putting a stop to the clapping and the birthday wishes. “Let’s test out this karaoke machine.”

  My brother went to help my uncle set up the machine, pulling out several shiny round laser discs. “Who wants to go first?”

  “Let’s hear a duet from husband and wife,” Peng a-yi suggested.

  “Fine idea,” Chen shu shu agreed. “Annie, now pay close attention. I’m going to quiz you on who was the better singer afterward.” The guy wouldn’t let it go. He wanted to send me to my deathbed.

  My parents huddled over the song list for a while. “A love song,” my father said, “for lovers!”

  “Never say that again,” my mother said, but she was pleased. She had often accused my father of being developmentally challenged when it came to romance. “You can’t get your wife of sixteen years some flowers? You don’t know how to put music on before dinner? You’ve never heard of candlelight? When we go into a store and I say, Oh, I love this dress so much, it’s my dream dress, you don’t think to take a mental note to come back the next weekend to buy it and surprise me with it? I know, I know, I know,” she’d say before my father had a chance to say anything. “You work, you study nights and weekends to get more work, you do everything to put food on the table. Well, that’s the bare minimum a man is supposed to do, so don’t give me that crap. You think you’re entitled to this life, but you have to earn it.”

  My father was useless at charming my mother except when he struck gold and found that sweet spot between his fourth and fifth drink at parties and was suddenly in possession of the kind of confidence that made my mother respect him but not so much that she felt threatened by him; it was then and only then that he remembered to pull out her chair before she sat down and was coordinated enough to twirl her like they were ballroom dancers. He pretended one time to be Gene Kelly at the end of a long party full of lingering guests who didn’t want to go home. He followed the last few out into the street and waved at them under his umbrella as they drove off into the night. He folded his umbrella and twirled it in a half circle. “I’m singing in the rain,” he belted, tapping his feet, showing us moves we had never seen his body make until that moment. “You’re my Debbie Reynolds but even more stunning,” he serenaded my mother, refusing to come inside. “I’m bringing Hollywood home, honey.”

  Sammy had to drag my father back inside and peel his wet clothes off him. “Go get a towel,” he told me, “and a hair dryer unless you want Dad to die of pneumonia.”

  I always suspected it was that very possibility—that my father could die making a fool of himself—that had pleased my mother the most that night.

  Now my father was considerably less cute to my mother but that was why the drinking was so crucial—so he could obliterate the growing record of debts that had piled up between them and be free to enjoy himself for once. “This is dedicated to Annie,” my father said into the microphone as the music began. “Happy birthday, my dear daughter. May you one day give your father and mother the pleasure of singing this song at your wedding.”

  “Up in the trees the birds have become pairs,” my mother sang, delicately pressing her forefinger and thumb together like a Beijing opera star.

  “Green waters,” my father sang, stepping up to my mother and cupping her cheek, then gesturing at some far-off place, “clear mountains carry little [_____]”

  They took turns singing to each other and turning to us at the end of each line. It was a Chinese that was somewhere between the Chinese I understood and used with my parents and a Chinese that I only heard during the big CCTV Chinese New Year’s all-day gala when all the big pop stars and movie stars and famous singers from the past got together to entertain the country. “It’s our Oscars,” my mother explained. “Except it’s bigger than the Oscars and more interesting in every way.” This year, she took a day off work to watch the show morning till night, pointing out her favorites. “That’s my favorite singer, and her, too, and also him. He’s the most talented movie star of the last twenty years. No one’s funnier than her. He’s an incredible game-show host. There’s another great singing pair. The person on the left, yes, she’s my favorite entertainer.”

  “How many favorites do you have?” Sammy asked.

  “All of them. I love all the great entertainers our country has produced.”

  “Damn,” Sammy said. “Proud much?”

  “Very,” my mother answered.

  “From this day on, we won’t accept [_____ _____] suffering.” My mother’s eyes were closed as she sang—she didn’t need to look at the lyrics on the screen.

  My father, on the other hand, staggered closer and closer to the TV. “Husband and wife are going home together.”


  “You work the fields and I’ll weave the cloth.”

  “I’ll bring back the water and you’ll flower the soil.”

  “[_____ _____] may be broken, can [____] wind [____] rain.”

  “As long as a husband and wife love each other, even suffering is sweet.”

  “You and I are like [____ ___] birds.”

  My mother started singing the last line, “[_____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____]!” and my father joined in halfway through. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was so entranced by their voices mingling together, without strife, or because the words were new to me, but I didn’t understand the ending.

  “Hao ting!” the guests cheered. “Zai lai yi ge,” they begged. “Chang de xiang ge xing!”

  “Who sang it better?” Chen shu shu asked me. “Annie, isn’t your mother a natural? A great talent?”

  Wang shu shu agreed vigorously, taking the opportunity to congratulate my mother, touching her with too much obvious pleasure on his face. “We have a real-life star among us!”

  “Hardly,” my mother said, her face plump and shiny with joy. “My notes were way off. I’m rusty, and don’t get me started on Guoqiang’s timing.”

  “I’m telling you, Annie,” my uncle said. “Producers were trying to break our door down. But your grandmother said no.”

  “She practically locked me in the house like I was a prisoner,” my mother added.

  “A shame,” Chen shu shu said. “They should’ve have cast you in the movie.”

  “Well,” my uncle said. “A-Ling would have been a year old, but yeah.”

  “Sammy,” I whispered into his ear. “Did you understand it?”

  “Barely. I just know it’s some old song about a goddess who falls in love with a mortal.”

  My father overheard Sammy. “No mere mortal! The most honest, hardworking man for miles around. He sold himself into indentured servitude to pay off his family’s debt. He meets a woman one day not knowing she’s the youngest daughter of a great and mighty god. And you know what, son? She doesn’t want to go back up there. To heaven. No, she wants to come down to ren jian. The human world. Where we’re all condemned to. But she doesn’t see it that way. To her, our world is a kind of paradise. That’s where her man is! And she wants to be with her man.” He started singing the woman’s part, “Ni wo hao bi yuan yang niao.”

  “What’s what?” I asked.

  “She says, You and I are like the mandarin ducks.”

  “Huh?” Sammy said. “Chinese ducks?”

  “Mandarin ducks, son! They are always together. Where there’s one there’s another next to it. I challenge you to find me a solitary mandarin duck hanging out.”

  “That’s okay, I’m good,” Sammy said, though my father was no longer listening.

  “Can’t do it! Not possible! You can only find mandarin ducks in pairs. That’s how they are! When one duck dies, the other drops dead right away!”

  “It’s quite disturbing,” my mother said.

  My father was smashing his words together. All the adults were. “So this goddess decides she wants to be with her man. That’s right. Her man is so important to her that she’d give up her immortality—her life in the realm of the gods—to be part of this world right here with all its misery and indignity. To be one of us.”

  My mother looked like she was far away. “These old folk songs romanticize love too much.”

  “How the hell else would love be portrayed if not romantic?” Chen shu shu objected. Xiao Ming a-yi took the drink out of his hand and said, “No more.” Chen shu shu barely registered her presence.

  My mother continued as if she hadn’t heard Chen shu shu. “She gave up paradise—her birthright to paradise—for a man.”

  “And for the human world,” my uncle added, sensing my mother was about to cry. “There’s no better world than the human world—isn’t that right, everyone?” He raised his glass and cried, “To the human world!” and we all cried after him, “The human world! The human world! The human world!”

  August 1966

  My uncle was furious my grandmother had made him destroy his booger house. He asked my grandmother if she would like it if he ordered her to break all of her bowls and rip her best shirt to shreds.

  No, I would not, she said. But that’s because it’s not your place to tell your mother such things.

  So I can’t say anything? But you get to say whatever you want to me?

  If I tell you to bend your head down to my feet and lick the dirt from my shoes, then you must do it. If I tell you to go out into the jungle and catch with your bare hands a serpent that is capable of laying golden eggs, then I better not see you again until you’ve brought back those eggs. If I tell you to cut off strips of your skin to make a pair of leather gloves to keep me warm, you should already be sharpening your knife and searching for the warmest part of your body to hack off. But as my son, you cannot so much as tell me what I should make for dinner on any given night. Do you understand me?

  My uncle felt sick to think he was condemned to such a servile position simply because he was born a son to my grandmother and he would remain her son for the rest of his life. It infuriated him how my grandmother was so cavalier and unapologetic in the way she ordered him around, how she assumed that his only task was to obey her, how she so readily refused him his own personhood and volition.

  I’ll put it right back up, he said, after Teacher Liu left. Tonight, I’ll pick my nose dry and put them all right back up. And if you stop me, I’ll tell everyone she was here. Let’s see how you like it when they destroy your things.

  I’ll pick every last booger off the wall and stuff them right back into your nose. And if you tell a soul she was here, I’ll strangle you myself and leave your lifeless body out in the street with my handprints on your neck so no one will dare come near this family.

  You don’t scare me, my uncle said. And you don’t own me. I’ll run away. You’ll wake up one morning and I’ll be gone and you won’t know how to find me.

  Is that right? Do you mean it, Chunguang? Do you stand by what you say? That I don’t own you?

  Yes, I do, he said in between loud sniffling. You don’t own me and I hate you and won’t do anything you tell me to do. You think you can bully me. You can’t. I’m free. I’m my own person.

  I ask you again. Do you stand by what you say? That you want to be free from me? That you won’t be bound to me?

  Yes, my uncle said. I already said yes, didn’t I?

  Then give me those socks, my grandmother said, pointing at his feet. You won’t be needing those since I knitted them for you.

  Fine, my uncle said.

  And your shirt, and your pants, and come to think of it, all of your clothes.

  So my uncle took off his shirt and his pants and his undershirt and stood there in his underwear.

  Don’t be shy around your mother. If you are going to be free, don’t half-ass it. Give back everything I ever gave you and you’re free. Just like that. You’re no longer my son. I’m no longer your mother. I don’t owe you anything. You don’t owe me anything. Come on. Take those off as well.

  Fine, my uncle said. Take it. All of these clothes are garbage anyway.

  Don’t you dare stand there as if this is still your home. Since you are no longer my child and I am no longer your mother, you won’t be living here anymore either. Is that clear? You can’t very well say you won’t listen to your mother and still allow yourself to eat food I bought and prepared, and sleep in the bed I paid for with money I earned, and tuck yourself in blankets I sewed for you. Now, if you want to be truly free, then be truly free. Live outside where the pigeons can peck you to death while you sleep, and if not to death, at least they will take your penis and your ass and your mouth and your fingers and your toes, and when that happens, you won’t be coming back here. You go and find the other kids who don’t need their mothers. You go and do what they do and see how many years you have left. I can tell you now
you won’t need all your fingers to count them. But go see for yourself. You are free now just as I am now free from you. I’m no longer responsible for you and you no longer have to listen to me. This is the agreement you insisted on. I won’t be opening this door to you anymore. So scram. Get the hell out of here. Consider yourself unwelcome. You have nothing to do with me and I have nothing to do with you. This house is no longer your home. Get your ass out of here. Goodbye.

  June 1996

  After my birthday karaoke reignited my mother’s starlet ambitions, her bid for attention moved its target from just me to the whole world.

  “Why do you think I made that film?” my mother said one night around the dinner table. “It wasn’t just so I could talk about it. I wanted people to see it. It was an incendiary object. I wanted it to break glass, to shatter old ideologies and open up new [_____­_____­].” More and more she used words I didn’t understand. “The irony, right? You have to have bourgeois upbringing and education to know what a cancer it is on the people.”

  “Well, where is it?” my brother asked.

  “The film?” my mother said.

  “Yeah, can we watch it or what?”

  “We don’t know where the copies are,” my father said. “Or if there are even any left. We had to destroy the tape. We gave a copy to Ling and he’s in Kuala Lumpur, the last I heard. And then some went to these Norwegian student filmmakers who we haven’t heard from since Tiananmen.”

  “It’s all going down the drain. Things are [_______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______] over there,” my uncle said. “You guys have mostly been here this whole time so you don’t know but…” He trailed off and stood up. “All right. Off to work.” He was still working the night shift at the restaurant my dad’s friend owned, so we had gotten into the habit of eating dinner on the weekends extra early.

  “Already?” my mom asked. “Stay for a song. Just one?” My mother now started and ended every day with song, cradling a microphone whether it was plugged in or not, serenading us with love songs from her favorite singer, Teresa Teng, the angelic Taiwanese pop star who had been Jackie Chan’s lover for a minute in the late seventies. “We used to bootleg her tapes,” my mother said. “Everyone said I looked like I could be her sister.”