Then my father got a perfect 1600 on the SATs. Back then, this score signaled academic virtuosity. That 1600 was his ticket out of poverty and out of Malaysia. His older sister, who’d married well, loaned him the money to apply to colleges in the United States. He got into every single school, and every college offered him a full ride.
My father, who had spent his lifetime immersed in tropical heat, was intimidated by the brochures the Ivy League sent him, filled with images of students swaddled in scarves and coats amid frosted old buildings or auburn leaves. In contrast, the image on the brochure for one prestigious Californian school featured students wearing tank tops and shorts, playing Frisbee on a green lawn. That’s why he chose it.
“You could have been an East Coast girl in another world,” he often said. “You are only a California girl because of that damn Frisbee.”
After graduation, my father’s job took him around the world for several years before he returned to Malaysia to settle down. He met my mother at the bank; she was the teller. She was pretty and charming, and he was twenty-six—ancient, really. His mother kept telling him he needed to find someone. They dated for all of two months before they got married.
Then I was born. That year, Malaysia’s king clubbed a caddie to death for laughing at a bad putt and suffered no consequences. That violence and corruption scared my father. We are ethnically Chinese—one of the ethnic and religious minority groups that face discrimination in Malaysia. When my father was a kid, his uncle, mother, and eldest sister were living in Kuala Lumpur when a race riot broke out, and hundreds of Chinese people were massacred. His sister left her office barely in time to find a safe house in a Chinese neighborhood, where the family hid for days—a friend with connections with the police had to bring them food so they wouldn’t go hungry. Outside, children on school buses were slaughtered on their way to class.
My father knew America’s freedoms and luxuries. And he knew that my future was constrained in Malaysia. He knew my job and education prospects would eventually be limited if we stayed—that I’d likely have to go abroad in order to follow in his ambitious footsteps. Why not now?
And so we moved into a beautiful home in San Jose with a deck and a pool, near good schools (though we lied about our address so I could attend the best). My father bought us a Ford station wagon; my mother purchased matching Talbots sweater sets. My parents decorated our new house with our old Malaysian furniture, but they bought me a wrought-iron, American queen bed. It was fitting for a girl they named Stephanie, wasn’t it? They chose the name because it means “the one who wears the crown.”
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On Saturdays, my parents took advantage of our comfortable suburban neighborhood. They took me to The Tech Museum of Innovation or the Children’s Discovery Museum or Happy Hollow Park; my mother spent lots of time interrogating the other PTA moms, researching the most educational activities in our area. When we’d exhausted our options, we’d host a barbecue by the pool in our backyard for our fellow Malaysian expat friends and their children. My mother made honey-grilled chicken and always saved the drumsticks for me.
Saturdays were for fun. Sundays were for penance.
On Sundays, we went to church. My father wore a tie, my mother and I wore matching floral dresses with giant globular shoulder puffs, and we sang “Shout to the Lord” with our all-white congregation. Then we went to New Tung Kee, the Chinese-Vietnamese equivalent of a diner, and I’d order No. 1: combination rice stick noodle soup. Once we got home, my mother would sit me down in front of a yellow spiral-bound notebook with my handwriting on the front: Diary (GERNAL). One Sunday, she wrote this prompt:
Please write about your time at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. What did you do? What did you see? Make your journal as interesting as possible, starting from the morning and ending in the evening. Write neatly!
It took me more than an hour to complete my assignment, even though I only needed to fill one page. I was six years old and kept getting distracted—playing with our beaded place mats, poking the little felt llamas and tomatoes on the Peruvian arpillera on our wall, drawing elaborate comics on the opposite page. But eventually I dragged my attention to the prompt.
Hiya, folks! I wrote. This was a departure. Usually I started each entry with Dear Diary, but today I was feeling voicey.
On Saturday I went to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. First, we had to get in line so we could get some tickets. First we went on the Cave Train ride. It was not so scary. We were going through a time machine when we saw cave men dancing, fishing, washing and fighting bears. Then I went on a Ferris Wheel. It was quite tall so my mom had to go with me on it.
Hmm, I thought. I’d better add some excitement. Something to show Mommy how much I loved the adventure she went through all the trouble to take me on.
Then I played two frog games. I finished one frog and got a prize! Then I went on a thing called trampoline thing. I did a flip on it! Then I did it again! The lady there said I did it very good. Well I had quite a fun time!
To cap it all off, I thought I should draw attention to my saucy little address. I noted: Hey! Did ya know the beginning here is different? I just did that for fun. Love, Stephanie.
I looked over everything, and it seemed pretty good. I called my mother over. She sat in her chair and placed the notebook in front of her, holding a red pen. I assumed my proper place—standing at attention to her left, hands folded in front of me—and watched as she began the edit. She dotted my work with fierce red X’s, circles, and strikethroughs. Each progressive pen mark was a punch to the chest, until I was barely breathing. Oh no. I’m so dumb. Oh no.
At the end of the entry, my mother sighed. She wrote an assessment at the bottom of the page:
There can only be one “first.” You are still writing too much “Then.” Then I went on a ferris wheel. Then I played two frog games. Try to use other words. And I did it well. Very well. Not good!
Then she slapped a large grade at the top: C-minus. She turned to me. “The last two entries, I already told you to write then less. I told you to be more interesting. Are you slow? And what are you talking about here at the end, about whatever you did for fun? I don’t get it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, but she was already reaching into her drawer, so I stuck out my hand. She raised the plastic ruler above her head and brought it down on my open palm: thwack. I didn’t cry. If she saw any tears, she’d call me pathetic and do it again. She closed the notebook. “You’ll redo this entry tomorrow.”
The point of this journal was to improve my writing skills, but it was also to preserve my well-curated childhood. She hoped that as an adult, I would flip through this notebook fondly, letting it fill me with sentimental memories. But as I read through it now, it appears her mission miscarried. I have no recollection of the Santa Cruz trip, or this lion dance, or that trip to the beach in Mendocino. The only thing I remember vividly is that clear plastic ruler on my palm.
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