4. Dad’s Grand Plan
Stories of the Chen Clan: Part One — A Shanghai Childhood
The teenager me had no time or emotional space or life experience to grasp those words. Some fifteen years later when I was reeling in the downfall of my first marriage and doing every single pathetic thing to cling onto the wrong man, those were the words that echoed in my mind. I had turned into grandma, I thought, a morbidly insecure woman whom was impossible to love.
I had by then uprooted myself from a family, a social network, a country, a culture, and forcefully transplanted myself into the American soil. The experience of being stared at like an alien from another planet, of buying my own birthday cake and then sitting alone in front of it in my bachelor pad, of working overtime on Christmas Eve in order to block out the thoughts of family festivities unfolding behind windows of every well-lit house, of doing everything to fit into a society that at times seemed distant and reluctant to accept me as one of its own, was humbling at best, and at times soul-crushing. So when Vlad came along, lonely as me, I wrapped around him like a boa constrictor — the mission of keeping him warm soon turning into strangulation, a crime of passion. I could not blame him for wanting to leave. He signed on to be a lover, not a life boat that could transport me to the island where Normal Humans resided. I fought the ill fate of our marriage with a vengeance, calling him at work, calling his buddy when he refused to pick up, calling suicide helpline in the thick of the night and asking the tired-sounding paraplegic social worker on the other end how I could get my Vlad back. Years later when I finally walked out of the shadow that failed love affair had casted on me, I was astonished by the fog of craze I let myself be shrouded in, and for so long. I thought of grandma and felt I was many steps closer to understanding her hostility towards mom. It was her survival instinct at work. She barely lived through the loss of grandpa in the most sinister circumstances, re-emerged battered, with a heart full of holes. I had promised her the soothing salve, an ultimate cure for her pain. With me she was normal again, until my callous teenager self threatened her with Strike Two. Her life boat was changing course and the Island of Normal Humans was closing its door on her. Such is the love affair of desperate souls, always a thin thread away from destruction.
***
But such understandings came too late. The teenager me was self-absorbed and driven. School, after-school classes, friends, crushes, rushed in from all directions to demand my time. I rarely see grandma alone any more. Our interactions were limited to the dinner table when she heaped food on my plate. Without exception I refused to eat half of it. I had been paying attention to my chubby calves and plump cheeks and thought they were hideous and endlessly embarrassing. I wished grandma could see how critical it was for my survival to not eat most of the food she pushed on me. When she refused to back down — it was her last avenue to show me her love — I turned my plump cheeks away from her and avoided meeting her eyes all together.
Even Dad started to claim more attention from me. He was working less so that he could be around to monitor my progress according to his Grand Plan. I was getting more explicit messages about the Plan, not just the occasional mini-cultural immersion that I had always deemed a treat — an English Christmas carol class, a candle-lit French dinner that cost my parents two months of salary, a gift from dad’s best friend in the US, who had escaped from China via Hong Kong before the Cultural Revolution. No, no more dilly-dally, the time had come for me to buckle up and get down to some serious work. I heard Dad’s words ringing in my ears:
Child, you’ve got to get out of here, go live in a democracy where no government could turn your life upside down overnight and slaughter your loved ones and turn the survivors into suspicious psychos and still go on reining the masses.
Child, we are a lost generation already but you are our one and only hope.
Child, we don’t have the kind of overseas connections but you have the grades and the smarts to get that scholarship, that ticket to ride, and we will do everything to support you.
Child, what do you mean you don’t like math? If you are not good at it yet, work harder and you will be. If the school is not enough — of course it is not — we will take you to the special math camp after school and every weekend! The heavy tuition is not your concern.
Child, being a writer in China is a pipe dream — no job, no money, no prospects, no freedom. Why waste your talent?
I wasn’t sure I had a talent when Dad first revealed his Plan. Later it turned out I did have one — a talent of faking a talent, and the Chinese education system was my accomplice. It was clear to me from early on that I found magic and delight in words but math bored me. What was also clear was that this imbalance in interest and aptitude would have to remain a secret from the world — that included my own parents, who would otherwise be gravely disappointed. Thankfully, I soon learned that math could be studied the same way as other subjects. If I could just go over every single question in the textbook, in the supplemental practice books, in the handouts from after-school math camps, and memorize the solutions the same way I did with beautiful passages from the hands of literary greats, I’d not only pass the tests but reach the top of the class. Of course it was herculean amount of work on my end, but I hated to disappoint. I saw the seriousness and pain in Dad’s eyes when he talked about the Plan. I had the inkling that my family had indeed suffered long and hard and they deserved every bit of success of mine. The satisfied smiles on their face upon seeing my report card were seductive. Plus, I got to be the Coolest Girl, the Legend, at school. I could do this, I told myself. I could give them what they wanted.
Get JJ Chen’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
***
Except that sometimes I couldn’t. When I was sixteen, I had a nervous breakdown. I was the reigning champion in all the major and minor exams throughout high school but was once defeated by a boy who was truly gifted in mathematics. But the Second Place was not my place, period. Even my teacher sat me down after school and asked me if everything was all right. I nodded obediently, suppressing the urge to shout at her, are you all right? Is the Second Place among five hundred students not a reason for celebration? Don’t you think I can be a human once in a while?
Despite of the silent outburst, this had happened at an unfortunate time, a time I knew precisely why the Second Place was not a reason for celebration. The school had just hosted the 16th birthday ritual where parents were asked to write open letters to their children about their own life when they were sixteen. When the letters were shared at school, my dad’s was a big hit. It was beautifully written and devastating in a knife-in-the-heart way. I’ve heard his stories by then — his loss of a father and his yearning of a mother who was still toiling away at the labor camp. But dad was masterful in the details; the pain inflicted upon him as a 16-year-old was palpable under his magic pen. Once home I asked him to tell me more. He ended up sharing an old journal from that period of his life. Mad scribbles covered every page. I was stunned by the rawness of his words, the rawness that was censored beyond recognition in his public letter to me. But there in his private journal, he let loose the swearing and the cursing, vengeful thoughts towards the Party and the thugs who had committed the heinous crime, and later the resentment he felt towards grandma who had refused to direct her anger towards the Party. The desperate origin of Dad’s Grand Plan was laid bare in front of me. I said to myself I’ve got to be more serious about this. To achieve the Plan might just be the only cure for the man.
Given such a sensitive timing, the night after I took my shameful Second Place I locked myself in the bedroom. A sluice gate had opened in me and tears flowed unbridled. A few hours later, grandma convinced me to open the door and held me in her arms the same way she used to hold me in the old days. And I let her.
“Your Dad is pushing you too hard”, she said. “You are pushing yourself too hard. Rest, go to sleep, I promise you’ll feel better tomorrow.”
I sobbed heavily. “There is only one Scholarship”, I said, “one ticket to ride, and that goddamned smart-pants is going to snatch it away from me, after all I’ve done, after what you all have been through. I can’t rest, I can’t go to sleep, it will not be better tomorrow. I know it has to be a winning streak to the end, all it takes is one Second Place to ruin the Plan, ruin All of Us.” I mumbled on and on like a mad person. Parents came in as well and embraced me and grandma, also mumbling, we have faith in you, don’t worry that much, it’d all be fine. We were one big soggy wet huddle party, until I was finally exhausted and laid to bed.
***
That would not be the last time I lost control of my emotions, although at school I diligently upheld my persona of a Legend. Who would you talk to about the unthinkable pressure of always having to be the Number One? Why don’t we switch places so my parents could quit nagging me? My fellow students would say and tell me to enjoy the throne and the grand view at the top. So I talked to myself, my lonely self. I learned a way to protect myself by speaking only in English when it came to emotional matters. It went something like this:
Why are you crying, JJ?
Oh hi. Well, I don’t see a future, I mean, a real future. What if I don’t get that scholarship? And what if I do? What’s the point of living an elaborate lie? How long can I convince myself that there will indeed be happiness ahead, even though all I can see is to live through this lie that is getting more and more intricate — to graduate from some bigwig university in America with a major I don’t care about, and then to work hard like a slave for a bigwig American company that I don’t care about? Does it really make a difference that this slave position is in the US, which is my dad’s dreamland?
So what do you want to do my dear?
[A very long pause.] I have no clue. Nil. No one had ever asked me that, no one cared. It probably never mattered. I thought I’d be a writer once, maybe a journalist. But that seemed so long ago. My precious time is best used to recite math solutions. When was the last time I read a book that was not a standard test prep?
JJ, you are a good girl, listen to me, wrap your arms around you, feel the warmth, you are loved, things will work out, they just have to.
I mumbled to myself in English like this for years, long before I left China. The foreign tongue — and the resulting necessity for articulation — provided me with much needed distance, as if I was speaking about someone else’s pain, a pain that was less visceral and more susceptible to cold dissection. Plus, wasn’t I the ultimate studious person on earth? Even in my Therapy for One, I did not forget to practice the language of my future, of my inevitable life overseas.
