Why would that happen to your hand, Joan-na? Are you the undead?
Humor was a coping mechanism, said the brochures, but they never mentioned how long after a death in the family was it appropriate to start using the word dead. When I still couldn’t hang up on my mother, she told me to count to three with her and at three, we ended the call at the same time.
Afterward, the nurse next to me, who had been sitting next to me the whole time, said that she didn’t know that I spoke Chinese. I apologized out of reflex and when she looked confused, I apologized for confusing her.
No, it’s cool that you do, she said.
There were times my classmates would ask me to translate some dumb English phrase into Chinese just to prove to them that I could, then after hearing me speak Chinese, just to say that I sounded foreign.
I waited for the nurse to do that, but of course she didn’t, since she was a good person and a good nurse, and we were both adults.
* * *
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MY MOTHER’S WORRIES HADN’T been unfounded. As a child, I was at medium to high risk of not maturing—many trips to the counselor’s office, a persistent lack of friends.
My first counselor in Scranton asked if I had thoughts of hurting myself. You do not smile, she said, and if you do not smile, how is anyone going to know what’s going on in that big head?
The Joker smiles a lot, I replied.
The Joker isn’t real, she said.
That I often answered questions strangely was a reason I was sent to her office in the first place.
Concerns, concerning, and teachers wrote in my report cards that while my academic performance was excellent, they didn’t know much about me, and my personality was a mystery. Compared with other kids, I was too quiet and shy. Why didn’t I ever speak up? Or participate in group discussion? Or have anything else to add?
Because I had only a limited amount to say. Better to distill our words down to a single point, I thought, hence why I’ve always admired bullet-pointed handouts and needles.
But when I said that last part about needles, a second counselor thought I was using recreational drugs. He began to call out specific drugs, asking which ones I’d used, an entire alphabet I was unaware of. I could only say that his list would make a great children’s book, cautionary but educational.
Counselor Three of Bay City suspected that I would find myself later. College was the best years of my life, he said. He had joined a fraternity and met his wife. These things can happen to you too. But a sorority, he clarified, and a husband.
Counselor Three’s office was covered with insignias of our state school, his alma mater. The insignia was a green helmet, like the kind worn during battle in ancient Greece. Our state school was behind in academic anything but was sports champion every year. Counselor Three played no sports though continued to be an overzealous fan.
About the sorority and husband, I said, I’ll have to see. But as my brother had, so would I choose a fancy college far away from where I had been raised and in a state that I’d never lived.
At eighteen, I was dropped off at Harvard, and within a few months my parents had sold most of their things and left the country. The speed and style of their exit would remind me of those old cartoons, the final line. That’s all, folks!
I had been prepared, told on and off again that eventually my brother and I would have to look after each other and be on our own. But was I a child of immigrants anymore, if technically they had returned?
Back in Shanghai, my parents would finally become upper middle class. All of China was rebuilding and all of China needed waterproof tarp. When my father visited me last spring, he said that the next time he was in town, which he hoped would be soon should this new client go through, he would allot more time for me and even park his rental car. In spring, he hadn’t parked. Hospital parking was $17.99 an hour, and if he couldn’t stay the entire hour, then the price per minute was exorbitant. So, he left his rental car running with its flashers on and in direct line of sight from the atrium table where we sat.
Do you need money? he asked, and I said I didn’t, but still he pushed a crisp, brand-new one-hundred-dollar bill into my hand. Next time you’ll tell me all about it, he said. The it could be whatever—your day, your work, your life. Just as when I was in college and would get a two-minute phone call from him, from a train or airplane gate where he was about to board—next time you’ll tell me all about college, and I’ll tell you all about my trip.
Not much about college to tell. Harvard was intense but some parts were fun. Each spring there were outdoor concerts and barbecues. A large banquet table ran down the entire length of the yard and was filled with hot dogs and every kind of condiment. Each fall there were football games, one in particular against a rival school in not-so-far-from-Greenwich, Connecticut, with which we had a history. My brother had gone to Yale, and for months prior to the big game, each year, he would ask if I wanted to come. He and his alumni finance friends had bought out two rows of VIP seats and all-new school gear.
Did I go?
No, never. As neither team was good, the tailgate started at 7:00 a.m., and I could study more or less around the clock. I went from library to classroom and only returned to the dorm to sleep. I wasn’t close with any of my roommates, and once the rest of them decided to be in a suite, I became a floater.
Studying so much had its consequences. It caused me to wonder, for instance, if I might be a genius. Prior to medicine, I’d entertained the idea of going into higher math, which was math above the boring numbers and calculations. Higher math did away with all that, was purely symbols and proofs and style. Proofs were like puzzles. But a simple one-page proof took me nearly a week to understand. I wasn’t a genius in the end, but a girl could still hope.
Better not to be one, said my brother, who was much more gifted in math and could’ve gone into higher math had he not so badly wanted to be rich. Sure, some geniuses solve the unsolvable problems and win unwinnable prizes, but they still forage for mushrooms for the rest of their days.
My brother had a point. It was much nicer and safer to buy mushrooms from a store.
Fang was what future employers would call a “diamond in the rough,” possessing true grit but also someone whom they knew they could groom.
I was what some would call properly “lopsided,” or the opposite of well rounded, and being a girl lopsided in science and math was supposedly good.
My childhood dreams consisted of stone castles made only out of turrets and colorful fluttering flags, me flying high above them, over moats and green pastures filled with white specks of sheep. Once I finished college and the yearlong marches through physics, chemistry, biology, and math, these dreams stopped. Then, as new doctors, we were warned that medical training would flatten us. The learning curve was relentless, akin to drinking from a fire hydrant or the fattening of ducks to make foie gras. I’d never tasted foie gras before nor did I want to be a duck, so the open fire hydrant analogy it was. A person sits eye level with the barrel and grapples it. She is pounded in the face by knowledge while her facial features are erased.
* * *
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