“I think I can fix it, if you give me five minutes,” I stammered. “I was just trying something. I’m sorry—”
“I don’t want you to fix it. You’re never using the internet again. You can’t use the phone for six months. You’re grounded for six months. You can’t see any friends. You can’t watch television or movies. All you are going to do from now on is study instead of wasting”—she slapped me across the face again—“your time”—she kicked my knee in so I collapsed—“on stupid bullshit!”—she kicked me in the stomach as I lay on the floor. “Give me your password right now!”
The internet was my only refuge from this. I didn’t know what I’d do if she took it away. I’d already taken to fingering our knife blades late at night, wondering how much it would hurt to slit a wrist and whether my mother would notice in the morning if I slipped one into my backpack to take to school. I once snuck out of the house to buy a copy of The National Enquirer that contained a picture of Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s dead bodies, and sometimes when everything seemed like too much, I stared at it and fantasized about suicide as a last-ditch option.
I figured I’d rather die than have my only comfort taken from me. So for the first time, I went cold and said, “No.”
“WHAT?” my mother hollered. “You disrespectful—You aren’t worth anything. You ugly, hideous monster. I don’t know why I ever gave birth to you!” She continued to land blows on me—on my body, my face, the top of my head. Then she grabbed my hair and pulled me out of my room, down the stairs, and around a corner. She threw me into the office, where my dad was sitting at the computer, fuming. He looked up.
“She won’t tell me the password,” my mother said.
Beatings from my father were rare, but ruthless. I hyperventilated, my words coming quick: “I can fix it. I don’t need to tell you the password—” But before I could finish, my father stood up, grabbed me by my shirt, and threw me. My back hit the closet wall, and I slid down to the floor. Then he picked me up and threw me to the other side of the office, up against those tall bookshelves, the ones with the naked printout behind them. He grabbed the shelves and said, “If you don’t tell me your password, I’m going to tip this over onto you. I’ll crush you.”
“No,” I begged, but then I shut up because they didn’t like no. No was talking back; no was a word I had no right to. I tried to keep my lips sealed as they leaned into me again, slaps and kicks and wrenched wrists, a mess of bloody gums and insults until it was late and we were all tired. They stood above me, in the living room now. I sobbed on the floor, drained. I silently chanted, It’s unfair. It’s unfair. I didn’t do this to be bad. I did it to protect you. It’s unfair.
And then my father went to his golf bag and brought out his driver, its round head bigger and harder than his fist. “TELL. ME. THE. PASSWORD!” he screamed, and his face was twisted and unrecognizable. He lifted the club, then swung down toward my head. I rolled out of the way. We had a rattan ottoman covered with a blue cushion with pink flowers. It gave way.
The driver got stuck in the splintered hole in the middle. I gave way, too. I gave them the password. Before I went to bed, I slipped a knife under my pillow. Just in case.
CHAPTER 3
When I close my eyes and think about my childhood in America, all I can picture are welts and white knuckles. If forced to dig for something positive, I can maybe see myself watching Sailor Moon on TV, wearing a giant T-shirt with Garfield on it, playing DDR, or eating Lunchables pizzas. Man, Lunchables pizzas were good.
But when I think about my childhood in Malaysia, my memories aren’t fragmented. Instead, I am transported, an entire sensory world unfolding before me: the sweat on my upper lip, the sound of traffic, the smells—gasoline and smoky frying pans and the woody, heady smell of jungle decay.
Because I loved Malaysia. I loved the storm drains that lined the Colonial-style row houses and shop fronts. I loved the rattan overhangs on the hawker stalls and shops and digging through the freezers for lime-vanilla ice cream bars. I loved getting into pillow fights with my cousins during monsoon season—crouching in the dark until a bolt of lightning illuminated our hiding spots and we clobbered each other’s faces off. I loved the food: rich, lard-filled black mee and funky, spicy prawn mee and crunchy, chubby Ipoh bean sprouts and silky, lukewarm Hainanese chicken—all served on robin’s-egg-blue plastic plates with bright orange chopsticks and a big icy glass of Yeo’s soybean milk or neon Kickapoo Joy Juice. I loved not having to wear my seatbelt in the back seat and loved playing computer games with my cousins all day long. I loved the language, which I can wield like a native. Its elegant conciseness (Can lah!), its phalanx of exclamations (Alamak! Aiyoyo! Aiyah! Walao eh!), the many languages it steals from (Malay: Tolong! Cantonese: Sei lor! Tamil: Podaa!), its fun, puzzling grammar (So dark! On the light one! Wah, like that ah?).
But most of all, I loved Malaysia because Malaysia loved me.
* * *
—
When I was growing up, we made a pilgrimage back to Malaysia every two years or so, sometimes for a couple of weeks during winter holidays, sometimes for a couple of months in the summer. I prepared for our trips months in advance by lying down on the dizzy-hot California blacktop during lunch, becoming inured to the feeling of glorious heat so I could run and play undeterred in the tropics.
Malaysia was relief. It was respite and safety. My parents were lighter when they were surrounded by family. They laughed, they ate, they never fought. They did not require careful intervention from me, so I was free to be a kid. My cousins and I ran off together to secret magical worlds all our own, and nobody interrupted except to feed us. We lived like kings.
And I was the king of kings, the supreme ruler, because I was heralded—celebrated!—as the favorite. Not the extra-serving-of-cake kind of favorite. I was the kind of favorite where everyone would straight up say at family gatherings, “Oh, Stephanie’s the best.” My aunts would tell their children, “Why can’t you be more like her?” I was brilliant, they said, and exquisitely well-behaved. I rarely got into trouble, and everyone bought me all the toys I wanted. And the person leading this campaign was the matriarch of our family: my dad’s aunt. We all called her Auntie.