Year of the Tiger

First workshop piece. I had no idea what I wanted to do. Thankfully, my best friend is of Chinese decent. She was the inspiration for this piece.

            Being alive is much harder than being dead. It was never my intention to end up lying prostrate in a hospital bed, a heart monitor proving my otherwise invisible continued existence. I’m certain that I was resting on some third-class white cotton sheets that had probably been vomited on by countless before me, and the walls were probably covered in some God-awful flowery pattern, or a solid pastel color that all the doctors think calms the patients. I envisioned spending today in the company of all my mother’s irritating friends, listening to them gossip about who’s child did the best on what test, who’s going back home when, or which neighborhood hussy offered what sort of food to somebody else’s husband. In any other situation, I’d have openly admitted that hearing them all bicker back and forth in Mandarin was the worst minute of my life every time it happened, but today wasn’t just any normal day. Today was Chinese New Year.

            Stop. Rewind. 1985, Year of the Ox: my birth year. The Chinese say that when your year comes around, you’ll either be extremely lucky or extremely not. Mother the Dog was already in her late thirties when I came around, making Year of the Ox my first extremely lucky year. Fast forward a bit, normal childhood. Fried Rice, birthday party, Mahjong, hot pot, elementary school. 1997, Year of the Ox again, this time not so lucky. I don’t know how it happened. We followed the ambulance carrying Baba all the way from the house. He was in the OR and the ER for an eternity, I fell asleep. He was healthy, strong Baba. He always came home happy, we ate as a family, and he snored at night. Thinning, almost balding gray hair, and thick glasses I used to take while he was sleeping and wear around the house until I got nauseous. He was an Ox, too. The illness took us all by surprise, left him laying there, thin as wire, gray beyond his years, reduced to a shivering, hacking frame of bone. Two weeks later he had moved to an urn on our mantle, and the Dog had become the stereotypical crazy Chinese parent.

            Early 2010, my third Year of the Ox. I was graduating shortly after the turn of the year; it was to become Year of the Tiger. I had recently proposed to my college sweetheart, a Rabbit who was two years behind me. Mother’s constant flow of barking about it was irritating to say the least, but I was her only son and knew that she only wanted Rabbit to live up to her expectations. I had gotten a job offer in New York, and would be leaving Florida a few short months after graduation. Rabbit was going to transfer to a college there, we would move in together. Dog was not thrilled.

            Everything was going fine, and I allowed myself to assume that this year was going to be a lucky year. Fast forward again, February 13^th, Year of the Ox. Tomorrow is the end. It was also Valentine’s Day. Rabbit and I were going to spend the day together today, so that we could both attend the obligatory celebrations that Dog was whining about. Dog was high-strung since Baba died, and I’d learned to live with her nagging, although sometimes I thought that Dog was actually more of a Goat or a Dragon.

            That morning, I got up and bade Baba good morning as I always did, staring at his black lacquer case. The Dog had recently offered him a meal of fish, chicken and pork again, and it made the house smell like the market. Baba’s anniversary. I escaped. My first clue should have been the car. When I got inside, it refused to start. One, two, three tries, it finally roared to life. I rolled away, first stop, grocery store. Dog needed me to pick up some things for tomorrow’s hot pot, we would be providing meat. I wanted to cook a meal with Rabbit, so I added Dog’s request to the end of my list. I couldn’t wait to move out, I wasn’t cut out for being the pack Ox. I didn’t take orders well. My mind drifted, Rabbit, Ox, Dog, Tiger, and Cupid. A horn blasted and I slammed on the breaks just soon enough to skid to a halt, just past the stop sign. A car raged past, the driver yelling. My mind was speaking in Chinese, ordering me around in a voice that was slightly reminiscent of Dog’s. Oxen aren’t flighty, pay attention to road. Even when I wasn’t around her she was in my head.

            After that scare I watched the road more closely and made it to the store without a hitch. I got everything on my list, but forgot Dog’s meat and had to double back to pick it up. Why can’t you be good son? Ask for meat and you forget! Lucy Ai-yee’s son never forgets. That used to really get to me when I was in middle school. Somebody else’s son or daughter was always doing better than me, and Dog would make sure to rub it in. Why I not in top two percent? Her English was horrible, and she’d lived here for twenty-five years. She’d much rather speak Mandarin and pretend to be an ignorant immigrant. Dog believed that she could get more from people if she played the “poor, bad-English speaking older Chinese woman”. I hated translating, and doing her taxes, and organizing her files, and doing all the chores in the house while she watched her soaps.

            I dropped Dog’s meat off at the house and carted the rest of the groceries to Rabbit’s apartment. I wasn’t in the mood to suffer my mother. Of course, I should have known that she would call me home again before my scheduled dinner with Rabbit. I argued, it was raining now and she had a car, she could go get whatever she needed on her own. Why you talk to your mother like that? Lucy Ai-yee’s son always respectful, never speak to mother like that! I never speak to my mama or baba like that! That was always the case, I always had it so much better than she did, or so she claimed. I knew I wouldn’t win the argument; I never did, so I kissed Rabbit on the cheek, I’ll be right back style, and went outside to hop into my Toyota.

            Dog probably just wanted me not to spend the day with Rabbit. She might have been confused on how to switch the TV to the DVD player again, or where a certain receipt had gone. I stopped at all the stop signs and red lights this time; the earlier scare was still with me. I was about five blocks away from the house, my gas petal stuck. I became a comet shooting into the oncoming stars, unable to slow down the car. All I could do was veer. I ended up smashed against a tree, tasting metal when I wished I was tasting pork. It got strange after that.

            It was pitch black and I could hear humming an old Chinese tune, Dog dishing out piles of rice. Why you not eat more? You eat too much, need to thin down! Eat more meat! Drink more tea! Rabbit was waiting, she got me a present. I wanted to open it, and I wanted to give her the generic heart-shaped box that had become a national symbol in America. It was so ordinary that it was exciting. Rabbit was talking nonsense, something about head trauma, the pork would be ready in an hour, and we would need to keep him in the ICU for the next twelve hours. Her image floated around the black pool that was my mind, Dog and Goat circled around, fading in and out.

            I heard Dog again, conversing with Rabbit. At first I thought she must be angry, but the snippets of words I caught sounded curiously like worry, even fear. Hospitals, Baba, raining outside, Toyota and the news. Rabbit mentioned a recall, and it sounded as if she might be explaining it to Dog. How typical. The world went silent again, and there was no way for me to tell how long I spent, drifting there with no sound and no sight. I briefly heard the systematic beeping of a distant machine, it sounded peaceful, a far-off, constant blip representing my body’s continued time among the mostly living. Silence again. Boring black.

            I thought back, Baba died during my year, and I had been decently lucky up until now, maybe I was meant to have an unlucky year. Dying would definitely rank in the unlucky column. As odd as it was, this silence was the real killer. I’d almost give anything to hear the parents cackle over their games, or argue about who has the best recipe for dumplings. I thought I heard Baba humming again, but it sounded different, higher. I hadn’t heard that song in almost twelve years. It was Baba’s favorite. It faded, his image rippled and disbanded, Dog’s taking his place. I saw most of my life after Baba’s death play out. Test after test, none of them were good enough, high-school graduation, acceptance into college. Why you not become doctor?

            At half past forever, I opened my eyes. At least, I think I did. It was dark and hard to tell, but I was fairly sure that I saw dark shapes, reflected moonlight onto a white-walled hospital room, a flimsy blue curtain drawn along my one side. A sliver of yellow light crept into the otherwise darkened room from the heavy wooden door, closed for privacy. Rabbit had fallen asleep sitting in a chair, and Dog was lying on a bench beneath the window that was there more for the visitors than it was the invalids confined to the beds. My everything was sore, but I could move, and I believe that I was even breathing. On the table next to my bed there were odd shapes, things that for my newly regained life I could not recognize. I reached out and one of them clattered to the floor, waking Dog from her sleep. She was getting on in years, but snapped out of her dreams and up off that bench so fast you’d have thought she was twenty again. She noticed me in the bed and began a completely inaudible stream of Mandarin. The rain that played part in my ending up in this bed was now pouring from Dog, and Rabbit had awoken.

            They sobbed, I heard words like safe, praying, Baba, hospital, Ox. I tried to speak through her arms, more difficult than it sounds. I didn’t really know what had happened or where I was, but I remembered everything up to that point. Rabbit informed me that it was Sunday night, not yet midnight. Dog, apparently calming herself now, wiped the river from her eyes, and picked up the fallen object off the floor. Everyone pray, everyone send cards and New Year decorations, she explained. I had knocked over a small red paper lantern that Lucy Ai-yee had made.  Her daughter had made me a card with a painted koi fish, and there were pictures the younger children had drawn of tigers. Then I remembered that it was Chinese New Year, the end of Year of the Ox.

            It was Dog who had been humming Baba’s favorite tune, Dog who had been sitting beside me while I was stuck in between consciousness and coma.

            “Xing nián kuài lè,” Mother smiled.                        

            Happy New Year.