by Angela Huang
“She looks just like you!”
My father and I have the same eyes. They are large and double-lidded, a sign of beauty in Asian culture. My father claps me on the back. I look away.
My father picks his nose while he drives. He picks his nose chronically, but there are usually more square feet be- tween us so that I can ignore it. I picked up the habit when I was younger, before training myself not to.
“Don’t pick your nose,” I say in Chinese.
His right hand, the nose-picking one, jerks back onto the steering wheel. He keeps his eyes on the road; we’ve per- formed this routine before. We continue driving in silence.
I bring a friend home in the seventh grade. My father brings us a bowl of watermelon that he has sliced into cubes. “Hi. Okay, eat this, okay?”
His English is viscous with his Chinese accent. The “okay” is a verbal tic – a common phrase in Chinese that trans- lates poorly. My friend isn’t sure what to do with the customary offering. I seize the fruit bowl.
“Thanks, dad! We’re going to go upstairs now! Bye!”
I pull my friend away. What will happen when I take a significant other home?
My father’s teeth protrude, which causes his mouth to flare out. I inherit these teeth. I beg to get braces in the eighth grade. He tells me I am too thin. My father grew up in communist China, where eating an egg was a luxury reserved for birthdays. I announce my diet to the family. I bleach my hair blonde like the white girls I see in fashion magazines. My father doesn’t understand why I do it.
“You don’t look like my daughter anymore,” he complains.
I’ve succeeded.
“You treat me like an eight-year-old. I’m twenty now. I’ve grown up. You need to stop baby-ing me!”
I don’t speak much of my father tongue: I have the linguistic control of a Chinese kindergartener. My staccatoed Chinese monologue crescendos into English. My father lingers in the doorway.
“Speak in Chinese!”
My father doesn’t speak my native English.
“Whatever.”
“Eat more.”
My father pours more rice into my bowl. His chopsticks clang against porcelain. He chews with his mouth open. His noises reverberate within the house. I fork the food into my mouth. I make a show of eating with my mouth closed.
My father thinks I should not be a businesswoman.
“It’s too much stress. I want you to be happy, not stressed. It’s unhealthy for a woman to have too much ambition.” “Dad, that’s –,” I pull out my phone to Google Translate, “–sexist.”
“That’s an American idea. One day, when you’re older, you’ll realize.”
My father drove me thirty minutes each way to piano lessons. He disciplined my hands with a chopstick whenever I sabotaged a sonata.
My father FaceTimes me sometimes. His face overwhelms my phone screen: he is holding his phone too close to his face. I lower the volume so that the voice coming out of my earbuds isn’t deafening.
“You should be more like Annie. Annie’s Chinese is good, and she always helps her family with the chores.”
My father is lecturing me again. This is how we converse: he in Confucian nags, I in grunts. Today, the target of his sermon is my filial duty.
“Well, I’m sorry I’m not Annie.”
He asks if I am eating well. I am. He asks if I am sleeping well. At least eight hours a night. He asks if I have been exercising. Not as much as I’d like to. He clucks at me. I glance at the phone screen: four minutes and twenty sec- onds. Longer than usual.
My father takes me shopping.
“I would not buy you these clothes if you went to community college. But you are my Ivy League girl!”
He swells with pride. I swallow mine. He means it out of love, I tell myself.
“Thank you.”
I stop before leaving my father at airport security.
“Bye bye, An An (my Chinese name).” He pauses. “I love you.”
“Bye Baba. Love you too.”
My father has never told me he loves me in Chinese. He reserves the term for English. Likewise, I call him “baba,” not “dad.” They mean the same thing, anyway.