Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
As far back as she could recall, Joan had suspected her parents did not like her.
This feeling had been more puzzling to young Joan than upsetting—she couldn’t figure out why .
She was female, always a liability, but she’d come after three boys, so it wasn’t as if she’d compounded some great disappointment.
Joan believed she did most things well or at least serviceably; she was certainly better at school than her brothers.
Alfred had been closest to her academically, but then Alfred had impregnated his girlfriend.
The girl’s father had sworn he’d kill Alfred if he refused his responsibility, and it was rumored the family had connections with Triad gangs in Hong Kong and California.
Had someone threatened to kill Joan, she knew Wen-Bao and Mei would not have reacted with sympathy.
They would have said it was a problem she’d brought upon herself, and then slammed the door to keep her from infecting the rest of them.
Growing up, Joan had never regarded herself as in need of careful handling; she was not like her brothers, who were treated as a precious resource, investments to nurture and grow.
She had not been sent to any form of schooling until she was nine.
Her clothes were shabby, castoffs from older relatives, while Mei visited the tailor each season for new coats and dresses.
The day after Joan stabbed Milton was Sunday. As per routine, Joan called her parents. She informed them of the dissolution of her marriage. Following this, there was such a long stretch of quiet she thought they might have been disconnected. “Hello?” Joan asked.
There came on the line the sound of heavy breathing. “You can’t get divorced,” Mei said.
“I am.”
“That’s impossible. No one gets divorced. What does your husband say?”
“He wants it too.”
“You can take these things back.”
“Milton hit me,” Joan said plaintively. She omitted that she had stabbed him; while compulsively drawn to honesty, she felt this detail would not accurately reflect their circumstances.
“We have a wedding banquet planned for November,” Mei said.
Joan and Milton had already had their wedding, but that was the American one; the “real” celebration was to take place in Taiwan.
Joan knew her parents were anticipating the red envelopes filled with cash, gifted by relatives and friends, which would go toward a new car for Wen-Bao.
Joan wiped her palms, which were beginning to sweat, against her jeans. “The banquet won’t happen.”
“Yes, it will. We’ve already told our friends.”
“Well, I’m sure Milton’s already told his parents. So I’m telling you, it’s off.”
This was not only the most direct but also the most disobedient Joan had been with her parents.
Joan could not recall having ever said no to Mei and Wen-Bao—she must have done it at some point, but not in recent memory.
Joan suspected that no matter how much Milton might smack her around, her parents still would have proceeded with the banquet; it was only the idea of Milton’s parents not playing along, and inflicting upon Mei and Wen-Bao an even greater face loss, that gave them pause.
Mei’s voice returned on the line. “So much trouble you’ve caused. You should feel such shame. I want you to say it. That you are ashamed. That you are a disappointment.”
“I am a disappointment,” Joan murmured. This was something she’d done since a child: whenever Mei was unhappy, Joan apologized and atoned.
Mei’s approval had always mattered greatly to Joan; at night she would lie awake and consider how she might please her mother, conjuring up elaborate fantasies of discovering valuable jewels on her walk home from school.
As an adult in California, however, Joan found the psychic force of Mei’s rage blunted by distance; as she evaluated her situation an ocean away from Taiwan, Joan realized she was not disappointed.
She had extricated herself from an unsatisfactory marriage; she had taken charge and left a mean-spirited man who likely would have only become meaner.
When she thought about things this way, why—Joan was quite pleased!
“I don’t understand what we could have done. To deserve such a bad daughter. When you called, I thought you might be saying you were pregnant.”
“I certainly hope not,” Joan blurted. Mei gasped and hung up.
Joan stared at the receiver and waited for the harsh clang of a broken connection.
As was her routine when her mother hung up on her, she called the house again.
She did this even though Mei never answered, and indeed the phone rang and rang.
The following Sunday, Joan called her parents at the usual hour, to no response.
She tried again the next weekend, and the weekend after that.
She didn’t yet know it, but Joan would not speak to her parents for another two years.