Tiger Babies Strike Back Read Online Free Page B

Chinese concrete. It’s a hardened mixture of filial piety, birth order, and saving face.
    Even as I know I stand on the shoulders of many Chinese who came before me and suffered, I want the feeling of not being beholden 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to someone else’s standards and comparisons, susceptible to their praise and disappointment.
    I want to be seen as myself.
    And what is that self?
    I, Marshmallow. I want to embrace vulnerability as a strength, not a weakness. If you’re steel, or a watertight box, what’s not getting in? Your baby’s love. Her whispered secrets.
    One night, when Lucy was almost asleep, she tugged me on the sleeve and quietly asked, “Mommy, are narwhals up at night?”
    I was taken aback by her question. I hadn’t known that she knew what narwhals were, nor did I even realize she was still awake. I was glad I had lingered at her bedside and had not immediately jumped up and run off to finish the dishes or brush my teeth. If I had been in too much of a rush I would have missed her sleepy, faraway imaginings of undersea life.
    â€œYes,” I replied. “At least some of them are awake at night.”
    Our children are awake more than we know. And not just at night, but in life. Lucy’s wakefulness opens my eyes to my relationship with my own parents. Since she is paying such close attention to everything I do, I am constantly reexamining my interactions with my own mom and dad, and it ain’t always pretty.
    I am a grown woman with a child of my own, but every time I return home from visiting my parents, I feel like I’ve gnawed off my own paw to escape the metal teeth of a spring-loaded trap. I scrape away at my own flesh and walk with a spiritual limp for a few days. I don’t mean to hurt anyone by saying that. It is simply true. After spending too much time with my parents, it’s like I have temporarily forgotten who I am, like I’ve received a blow to the head with a blunt instrument that is my family. Many adults are reduced to a regressed self in the company of their parents, but how many emotional body slams can we take before ending up with permanent dain bramage ?
    One physical reason for the headaches that develop during my visits is that there is always a lot of noise at my parents’ house. A childhood friend of mine loves to imitate the way my mom used to say my name. My mother called me “Kimi,” but it came out more like “Kimmaaaaaaay!”
    My friend would jump out of her skin whenever she would hear it. I was accustomed to my mom’s yelling, but even so, it did rattle my nerves. My mom, to this day, still continues to talk really loudly. Maybe it’s because she grew up in a household with so many kids that you had to shout in order to be heard at all. Nonetheless, the tone and volume of her voice do add a drill sergeant quality to our relationship.
    I remember once in high school, my mom was telling me something mundane, but she was hollering at such excessive volume that my hair was practically blowing in the breeze created by the force of her breath. I was right in front of her, but she might as well have been shouting across a stadium.
    I couldn’t take it anymore and said, “Stop screaming at me!”
    She bellowed back, “This is my natural speaking voice!”
    Adding further to the noise of the household, even if the volume of my mom’s voice doesn’t get to me: the constant squabbling and bickering among my family members, which wear me down to a nub, then continue to keep me on edge for hours afterward. I have an aunt who is constantly bragging to my mom about my cousins’ careers. My mom once fought back by asking if my aunt’s eldest daughter, who was then about fifty, had a boyfriend yet.
    â€œ No, not yet . . .” my aunt replied in a sweet yet seething sing-songy voice.
    Later, in the car, I complained to my husband about how