Chemistry

by Weike Wang

My father’s is the classic immigrant story. He is the first in his family to go to high school and college and graduate school and America. He is the first to become an engineer. Extraordinary, some people have said when he speaks now of how he got here. Through hard work, he says, and the learning of advanced math. Amazing, others have said. But such progress he’s made in one generation that to progress beyond him, I feel as if I must leave America and colonize the moon.

What my mother lacks in vision, she makes up for in hindsight.

Books that he likes: Heart of Darkness, The Stranger, The Trial. Books that I like: none of the ones that he likes.

I could use dough. To buy the things that I want. Like pizza.

One thing he says: If you could be an emotion, it would be spite. One thing I say: If you could be an animal, it would be a sloth. But I only say that out of spite. ·

Married women in China keep their last names. My mother finds the Western tradition of changing it old-fashioned: Why bother with gender equality in the first place?

The optimist sees the glass half full. The pessimist sees the glass half empty. The chemist sees the glass completely full, half in liquid state and half in gaseous, both of which are probably poisonous.

Your father, as a boy, carried his youngest sister on his back to see the doctor. The doctor was many miles away. The sister was dying of consumption. He ran on dirt roads, as fast as he could. But before they could get to the doctor, the sister died. Still he carried her to the doctor’s. When I hear this story, I am stunned. But why had he never mentioned the sister before? Why am I learning about her just now? If I knew about her earlier, maybe I would have understood him more. The need to succeed, to be fearless. But it is the Chinese way to not explain any of that, to keep your deepest feelings inside and then build a wall that can be seen from the moon.