Hello Kitty Must Die (5 page)

Pepito squawked and nipped me on the upper lip. Hard.

“Stop kissing that thing. It’s dirty.”

“No, he’s not. He’s yummy.” I licked Pepito’s head.

Pepito blinked, fluffed up his feather, and scratched himself with his foot. He sneezed in my face. I kissed him on his ceres.

“Fiona, stop that. You’ll get SARS.”

Hai
, Daddy.

SARS come from infected Chinese chickens. Pepito is an American hand-fed parakeet. Born and raised in San Francisco. Pepito does not have SARS.

“You’re twenty-eight. All of your cousins are already married.”

All of my cousins are morons. They went to community college and pushed dim sum carts around for a living. One of them worked as a cashier at Radio Shack. They didn’t walk around with twenty-five hundred dollar handbags.

“You need to find a husband.”

Like I need brain cancer.

Pepito bore down on my finger and laid a solid dropping. Dark green, perfectly round, topped with a dollop of white goo. My mother called them Pepito’s doughnuts.

“See, Daddy. Pepito and I are engaged. He gave me a ring.” I wiggled my fourth finger, graced with Pepito’s fresh doughnut. Pepito hopped onto my shoulder.

“Fi, that’s disgusting. Go wash your hands. Stop acting like you are five years old. You are a lawyer. You are twenty-eight. Your mother and I have decided to help you find a husband.”

Pepito regurgitated some half-digested seeds and tried to push them into my mouth. That was his way of saying “I love you.”

I spat them out.

“No, I don’t want a husband. I like my life with you, Mom, and Pepito just fine.”

I was happy being single. I was good at being single. And God loved me way too much to inflict on me a provincial life of diapers, dining sets, and Disneyland vacations. Because I loved Jesus so much.

Not like Laurie.

Laurie Wong worked in the office next to mine in the corporate group. Same age. Chinese-American. Five foot seven. A little on the chunky side. Face like a pie. And desperate for a Chinese husband. He had to be Chinese.

When Laurie wasn’t busy billing, she was man-hunting. Asian bars, Asian professional events, Asian movie night at the Kabuki Theater, Asian Art Museum, Asian moon cake eating contest in Chinatown, Asian speed-dating, Asian dating websites, Asian matchmaking, blind dates. You name it, Laurie did it.

Too bad Chinese boys didn’t like her. Too fat. Too unpretty. Too successful. Too powerful. Too demanding. Too educated. Too Chinese.

“I don’t feel like I need to dress up that much for a date. I want someone to like me for me,” Laurie said, with her unshaven legs and raggedy ponytail.

Eddie Bauer and Hush Puppies. Her date outfit.

Too all-American.

Her only hope was to be a green card ticket.

But I didn’t want to be anyone’s green card ticket, meal ticket, cook, washing lady, housemaid, personal masseuse, baby machine, regularly-scheduled-hole in the mattress. Only to end up dead, discarded, buried in a ditch somewhere, dumped into the big, blue sea, all used up.

Boys should just stay home and fuck their mothers.

Maybe I should thank my missing hymen for saving me from serious relationships. And along with them a boat load of grief, man troubles, and probable death.

“
YOU NEED A NICE
Chinese boy,” my father said.

With a chicken thermometer for a penis and an ego the size of Texas.

No thank you.

“I’ve been asking around Chinatown. My friend has a son who...”

“Dad, you just want me to end up a headless skeleton with barnacles, washing up on shore. Your unborn grandson as fish food,” I wailed loudly.

“I didn’t tell you to go and marry a black man!”

White. Scott Peterson is white, Dad.

“Or end up with my head cut off, connected to my body by a thin sinew. My throat slashed. Slumped in a driveway.”

“That’s why I keep telling you not to date white men. They have bad tempers.”

Black. O.J. Simpson is black, Dad.

“So it’s better to float face down in the backyard pool in Cupertino like Jason Cai’s wife?”

Poor woman had to die in Cupertino.

Like Sean said, “Everyone has to die.” But the last place on earth I wanted to die was in a town like Cupertino. Asian suburbia. I would feel like such a failure, a nobody, a nameless yellow face fading into nothingness.

My father said nothing. He shuffled off.

Thank you, Jason Cai. The Asian community tried to make it the Chinese Laci Peterson case. The world disagreed. A Chinese immigrant who was not pregnant just didn’t hold the same appeal. No one was interested in a dead green card whore.

The papers claimed that Jason had fallen in love with his wife Silicon Valley style. Over email. He married his wife who was fourteen years his junior and brought her to the States from Shanghai to live the American dream.

Six weeks after their wedding, her eighty-seven pound body was found floating in their pool behind their suburban home in Cupertino.

Welcome to America.

Jason’s lawyer got him off. A few years later, he killed someone else. He must have been desperate to land himself in jail. Just like O.J.

A little while later, my father walked into my room again.

“You have a date this Saturday. Wear lipstick.”

“What? What do you mean I have a date?”

“I have already set it up.”

“I can’t, Dad. I have plans this Saturday. I’m hanging out with an old friend.”

“A man?”

“Yes, I do believe he is a man. But I’ll double-check with him when I see him. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

“Talk like a lady, Fi. Bad girl.”

My father left the room and returned a moment later.

“Okay, you have a date this Sunday. Wear lipstick.”

I tried to object, but Pepito was shoving something into my mouth. I spat it out. It was one of his doughnuts. That was his way of saying “fuck you” for spitting out his well-intentioned vomit.

Hai
.

O
N SATURDAY, SEAN’S CALL
woke me up at around eight-thirty in the morning. I had expected to have brunch, lunch, or dinner with him, but not breakfast.

“Hey Fi, you up?”

“Well, now I am,” I replied groggily.

“Good. I’m swinging by in half an hour to pick you up.”

“What? What time is it? And where are we going?”

“It’s time to get up. No need to put on makeup for me. Dress warm. We’ll be outdoors.” Sean hung up.

I rolled out of bed, brushed my teeth, and threw on a t-shirt, sweatshirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. Just as I was about to sip my hot morning tea, my cell phone rang again.

“I’m outside, Fi.”

Sean waved at me inside his shiny, black Mercedes. I got in the front passenger seat, yawned, and leaned my head back on the headrest.

“God, Sean. I wasn’t expecting you until a little later.”

“Carpe diem. Didn’t you watch that movie?”

“Well, I can’t carpe the diem until I have some breakfast in me. Can we stop off to get something to eat?”

Sean tossed a Noah’s Bagels bag at me and handed me a cup of coffee. “Here. Thought you would say that.”

An asiago bagel with sun-dried tomato smear. Still warm from the toaster oven. For the early hour, it was better than a five-course meal at Gary Danko.

“I might need that hymen after all, Sean,” I mumbled with my mouth full of bagel as Sean drove.

“Really?”

“My father is sending me on a date tomorrow night with the son of one of his Chinatown friends.”

“Ooh, who’s Prince Charming?”

“How the hell should I know? ‘You have a date on Sunday. Wear lipstick.’ That’s all he said.”

Sean laughed and nearly sprayed coffee on the steering wheel.

“You should show up wearing
only
lipstick. You’ll bag that boy in no time. I’ll be going to your wedding next Saturday.”

“Shut up. It’s not funny. That guy will probably bring his grandmother, mother, father, and the whole family.”

“Of course, they need to check out and approve his future bride. Pinch your ass. See if you are good child-bearing material.”

“No kidding. Every time my father sets me up, it’s always some fat Chinese guy who can’t speak English and needs to get a lifetime supply of Proactiv. Who is more interested in reaching level thirteen on World of Warcraft than...”

“Dating you?”

“Yes, Sean. Yes.”

“So don’t go. Tell your dad you’re dating me.” Sean winked.

“Yeah, right. First, he doesn’t like white guys. Second, he still remembers that little incident with you setting Stephanie’s head on fire. I don’t think he’ll be too thrilled about me hanging out with you.”

“So tell him not to date white guys. You didn’t tell him about today then?”

“God no. Told him I had to go into the office. What am I? Stupid?”

“Never. You’re highly cerebral and darkly twisted. My dream girl. Speaking of Stephanie, whatever happened to her after I turned her into a candle?”

It was sick, but I couldn’t help but laugh. I almost choked.

“Well, your little stunt burnt half her face, Sean. I heard she got pretty disfiguring scars from it. Her parents took her out of St. Sebastian’s. The word was that she attended high school for a year, but the kids made fun of her too much. I think she was home schooled for a while. Then she hung herself from the shower rod when she was sixteen.”

“Bitch had it coming.”

“Sean, she wasn’t that bad.”

“What? Do you have amnesia? As I recall, you had a photographic memory.”

“I still do.”

“She told everyone I was a fag because I wouldn’t kiss her. When my dad got wind of that, he beat the crap out of me for a week straight. He swore to beat the faggot out of me. Useless, as I didn’t have any in me.”

“Oh, right. I remember that.”

Stephanie had been the prettiest girl in our class. And it naturally followed that she had also been the meanest girl as well. She had believed that any guy she wanted was automatically hers.

Sean had felt differently, thanks to his mother. Beautiful, flirtatious, and inappropriately oversexed, Sean’s mother’s blatant sexuality embarrassed him at every PTA meeting. One time, Sean and I had volunteered to distribute name tags at the welcoming table. A striking, heavily made-up brunette in tight red jeans and a see-through Spandex top sauntered up to us. She wasn’t wearing a padded bra.

“So which one is your teacher, baby?” she asked Sean.

“Here you go, Mom,” he mumbled as he handed her the name tag.

“Tell me it’s that cutie there.”

“No, Mom, that’s Father O’Malley. He’s the parish priest.”

“How lovely. A man of the cloth. See you later, baby.” She walked off towards Father O’Malley, swaying her hips.

As heads turned to follow her undulating hourglass figure, Sean averted his face and cursed.

It was the first time I had heard anyone say “fuck.”

And it was then I suspected why Sean didn’t seem to care for the prettiest girls at St. Sebastian’s. They reminded him of his mother. Like Stephanie.

But Sean hated bullies more than he hated flirty women, thanks to his dad who was a mean son of a bitch. Sean’s father never came to PTA meetings. He just sent Sean to school with bruises on his back and belly. Sean showed me behind the rectory. Back then, child abuse was not as hot a media topic as it is now. Back then, Catholic priests were enjoying fun times with altar boys with impunity.

“So how are your parents, Sean?” We had driven over to Lake Merritt in Oakland. Sean was circling around for a parking spot.

“They’re dead. The old man finally drank himself to death about seven years ago. And my mother followed him a year after that. Breast cancer. She had a lump the size of a cherry tomato, but refused to see a doctor. Thought that ignoring it would make it go away. It made
her
go away in the end.”

“Oh, Sean. I’m so sorry.”

“She was just afraid to lose her tits. So she lost her life instead. Stupid. Here, you want some of this onion bagel? Taste it and tell me how good it is.” He handed me another bagel.

“What do you mean? Can’t you taste it yourself?”

“Nope, all tastes like cardboard to me. Some fat kid named Darrell, who raped his sister, shoved a pencil up my nose at juvie. Lost my sense of smell permanently.”

“Oh my God. I’m afraid to ask what happened to him.”

Sean looked up at me with a mischievous grin.

“You’re eating. I’ll tell you later.” He winked at me again.

I laughed. “Poor kid. Whatever you did to him, Sean, Darrell had it coming.”

“Yes. Yes, he did.”