Chapter 9 Magnolia #2
It didn’t, of course. Remember what I said about how Iris’s kindness hurt more than her cruelty?
With every unexpected act of kindness that she doled out, she buried herself a little deeper inside my being, digging into the marrow of my bones.
Until now, what brings me the most sorrow isn’t the memory of her viciousness in those days but these moments of astonishing tenderness.
· · ·
A few months after my seventeenth birthday, about a year and a half after I moved to LA, Mama visited for a couple of weeks.
“Papa would’ve liked to come too,” she said, “but the clinic’s gaining traction and he’s been so busy.”
I nodded, slightly disappointed, but not too much because, let’s face it, Iris and I never really had much of a relationship with our dad.
My fondest memories of him were from when I was a toddler.
Him picking me up and swinging me onto his shoulders while I shrieked with laughter.
I remembered the tacky, slightly sticky feel of his gelled hair under my fingers, and afterward, when he put me down, my hands smelled of his hair gel for the rest of the day.
I refused to wash my hands for the longest time, lifting them to my face every few minutes to smell them.
And that was the only quality memory I had of him.
Mama was dismayed by the state of our apartment; neither Iris nor I were big cleaners, so the first couple of days Mama was here, all she did was clean and nag me and Iris into doing the same.
We complained, but by the end of it, the apartment was less grimy, at least. Then she took us to shop for “proper clothes,” and that night, during dinner, she gave us her usual talk about making sure we were looking for the “right kind of boys.” I was used to listening to this, of course, but Iris kept rolling her eyes and sighing and generally looking pissed.
“Iris,” Mama finally said, “I know you think you’re invincible right now, but trust me, one day, you’ll look back and regret that you wasted your best years.”
“I’m wasting my best years by not looking for a good husband?” Iris snapped. “Mom, I’m barely twenty. Marriage is the last thing on my mind. And Magnolia is only seventeen, that’s still a minor, Mom. So maybe you can lay off the ‘find yourself a rich husband’ talk?”
“You are becoming too Americanized. Didn’t I tell you both, before sending you here, that you should focus on making friends with other Chinese-Indo kids?
There’s a reason why we chose LA and PCC.
Goodness me, do you know how lucky you are to be here?
There must be hundreds of Chinese-Indos in PCC alone.
So many of my friends’ children went there, and they stuck together with other Chinese-Indos so they didn’t become like…
brainwashed American hooligans. I could give my friends a call and find out if they know of anyone’s kids going here right now. I could put you in touch with them.”
I felt a little guilty when Mama said this, because while it was true that there were plenty of other Chinese-Indonesians at PCC, I never really bothered to get to know them aside from the occasional polite hi when we passed one another on campus.
I knew it was what was expected of us, but I also just really wanted to immerse myself in LA, not find a tiny corner of Indonesia here.
“Sure,” Iris said, “yeah, let me do the opposite of broadening my horizons and only stick to befriending other Chindos so I can be the perfect little Chindo girl who never has a single opinion of her own. Great advice, Mom.”
Mama put down her fork and sighed. “You think you know better than your elders what’s good for you. You have no idea what it’s like to not have enough money to buy food or keep the electricity on.”
“Here we go again,” Iris muttered. “Here comes the sob story.”
“Stupid child,” Mama hissed. For a moment, I tensed, wondering if they were about to launch into one of their many shouting matches.
But then Mama released her breath and turned to me.
Evidently she’d given up on Iris. Her gaze drilled into mine.
“You need to listen to me, Magnolia. Learn from my mistakes.”
I nodded. “Okay, Mama.”
That mollified her a little. Behind her, Iris rolled her eyes again.
But all I cared about was that Mama’s face had softened, and she reached out and tucked my hair behind my ear.
“Sweet Magnolia. You understand I’m telling you this for your own good, right?
I just want you to live the best possible life.
Not like me, spending years studying only to have all that time go down the drain.
The clinic’s doing well, but it sure as hell isn’t because of me.
We had to hire two more doctors to cover the growing number of patients.
Both of them male doctors, of course.” She snorted bitterly.
“Did I mention I had to give my office to one of them?”
My heart twisted at the thought of Mama losing her office in her very own clinic. I looked down at my plate of delicious Indonesian food that Mama had cooked. Suddenly, I didn’t feel much like eating any of it.
“Your papa said, ‘Might as well give him your office. It’s not like you’re getting any patients.
’ And it’s true. I don’t have patients to speak of.
And I’m not the exception to the rule. My best friend went to law school.
Is she practicing law now? Of course not.
She’s doing the work of a paralegal while her husband takes on high-profile cases.
It’s just the way of the world, sweetheart. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Have you met any good boys here? Anyone with potential? You know, your cousin Ryan found his wife at PCC. Like I said before, plenty of Chinese-Indo kids from really good families here.”
“Really, Mom?” Iris said again. “Can I just remind you once again that Magnolia is only seventeen? Are you expecting her to get married next year?”
Mama glowered at her. “Auntie Shireen’s Bella just got engaged to Jackson Citra, and she’s only eighteen. And now she’s set to marry a billionaire. Are you so jealous of your sister that you don’t want that for her?”
“I’m not jealous of her,” Iris spat.
I wanted to cover my ears and hide. Instead, I blurted out, “I’ve made some really good friends.”
“Oh?” Mama said.
“Some guy who creeps on younger girls does not count as a friend,” Iris muttered.
“What guy?” Mama said.
Oh god. The last thing I wanted to do was tell Mama about James.
Even though he hadn’t done anything wrong or been creepy or anything, I felt guilty about hanging out with him and having a crush on him.
He wasn’t someone my parents would approve of—he was neither Chinese-Indonesian nor did he come from money.
He was ambitious; he majored in engineering and was very bright, but Mama had made it clear that there was nothing admirable about having to struggle to get to the top.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. I searched my mind for a way to deflect from James. “People from badminton and class, and one of them even lives in our complex.”
“Great, the weird neighbor,” Iris said.
“What weird neighbor?”
I glared at Iris, but she pretended not to see.
At least we were no longer on the topic of boys.
“This white girl who’s like a million years older than her,” she said.
At the mention of “girl,” Mama visibly relaxed.
It was the whole reason why I’d brought up Ellery: girls were safe, platonic, didn’t threaten Mama’s ambitions of finding us good, rich husbands.
“Ellery is nineteen. Well, twenty now. We’re good friends.”
Mama frowned, spearing a piece of beef rendang. “You’re friends with a twenty-year-old girl? That’s interesting. I hope she’s not teaching you yang ngga-ngga. You know these Americans, they get very funny ideas sometimes.”
“Ngga-ngga” meant “improper.” I thought of Ellery and her girlfriend Trish and quickly focused on my plate of food so that Mama wouldn’t see my cheeks turning red. “No. She’s a really good person.”
“You should invite her to lunch here,” Mama said. “I would like to meet your friends.”
“God,” Iris groaned. “Do we have to?”
“I would like to meet your friends too, Iris,” Mama said.
“Over my dead body.”
My mind raced, turning over the thought of Ellery here, in our little apartment, with Mama and Iris.
Prodding at the image and finding a million ways it could go wrong.
But despite all of my concerns, at the end of the day, I was surprised to find that I did want Ellery to come here.
I wanted to show Mama this part of my life, to present Ellery to her and say, “Look, Mama, isn’t she marvelous?
Isn’t she just the most wonderful person you’ve ever met?
” I wanted Mama to smile and say, “I understand now.”
I wasn’t even sure what I wanted her to understand; I hardly understood it myself, this part of me that lurked in dark corners, quietly waiting for the light to reveal its thrashing self to the world.
· · ·
“She’s cooking spaghetti with meat sauce for us,” I said to Ellery as she drove us home from school.
“Aww, I was hoping she’d cook some Indonesian food.”
“Something exotic?” I said.
“Yeah-huh!”
“Nothing more exotic than spaghetti with meat sauce. Her exact words were: ‘What do white people eat?’ ”
Ellery cackled. “She did not say that.”
“She did. She was so sincere about it too. She was like, ‘Sandwiches? Chicken? Oh, I know. Spaghetti!’ ”
“Tulip, that is so adorable. I love your mom already.”
I grimaced. “No, no, lower your expectations. She might be mean to you, I don’t know. And if you don’t like the spaghetti, don’t tell her.”
Ellery rolled her eyes. “Duh. I’m not gonna tell your mom, ‘This tastes like shit, Mrs. Tulip.’ ”
“Don’t call her Mrs. Tulip. Call her…uh…”
“What’s her name?”
“You mustn’t call her by her name, that is disrespectful as hell. Call her Mrs. Chen. No, wait, Auntie Chen.”