Chemistry

by Weike Wang

A Chinese proverb: Outside of sky there is sky, outside of people there are people. It is the idea of infinity and also that there will always be someone better than you.

In college, I took some writing classes and for one semester thought, If this wasn’t so blatantly impractical, I would go into writing. An ideal world: money falls from the sky and into my lap for each word that I write. A one-dollar flat rate. A twenty for a real zinger.

I am an only child, and so is Eric. This is not a deal breaker, but it does make me fear for our future.

Maybe this is why I ask, What is the worst thing your parents have ever said to you? What is the worst thing you have ever seen them do? He is taken aback. He thinks for a long time. When he comes up empty-handed I say, There must have been a moment when you realized the meanness of a parent, and the look he gives me is the one that says this is not a competition, our upbringings, this is not up for discussion. So I shut up.

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.

Genetics aside, I don’t see myself having kids. Not one? Eric asks. If I had one, I would want to have two, and if I had two, I would want to have zero.

I find it interesting how often beauty is shown to make the objects around it feel worse. This proverb is said and re-said on the day of my parents’ wedding.

The worst dreams I have are when I am falling. I am tipping back in a chair and suddenly I am going backward, toward a ground that does not exist. Falling feels like someone has taken my heart and dribbled with it. I get no thrills from roller coasters.

Why is your trajectory so straight? Why is your family so nice? It seems unfair how easy everything comes to you. In your last life you must have been a dung beetle. Or someone who gave up his life for someone else. Perhaps a pregnant woman crossing the street. Do you remember? Then I part his autumn hair and bring my voice down to a whisper. Please stop, just for a little while, and let me catch up. How do you expect me to marry you if you never let me catch up?

When I say this to the shrink, she says, Stand in front of a mirror. Your reflection is a way to deal with episodes of anger. But I’m not angry. Oh yes, you are.

I don’t remember ever seeing my parents hold hands, or hug, or kiss. I wonder if this is why when I hear affectionate words, I want to jump off tall buildings despite a crippling fear of heights. The shrink says, It would be impossible if they never did those things because you’re here.

It is a strange sensation to not be entirely at home in either language. I am more comfortable in English, but Eric says that he can still tell I am not a native speaker—Your idioms are always a little off and you say close for everything. Close the lights, the TV, the oven. You say close when you really mean turn off.

All comedies end in marriage. All tragedies end in death. But what about everything else in between? Life happens in the middle, I heard someone very smart say.

Some advice on happiness: the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others. The shrink adds, And if you can’t do that, then fake it.

In college, I had a Chinese roommate who called her parents every Sunday. In college, I had a Chinese roommate who cried for two hours every Sunday. To prevent this from happening I lie.

What J. K. Rowling said during a commencement speech: There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. I realize that I am no good at this wheel taking. There is fear and guilt.

Somewhere, there is probably a Chinese proverb about this—parents are parents, and to people who are not their children, they are people.

I am the girl who followed you and I know what happens to those girls. They are never happy and then they carry that unhappiness everywhere.

If you take everything back to first principles, you will never have to memorize anything again.

Growing up, I have perfect vision until high school. Then things start to get blurry. I like this blurriness. There are some things I would rather not see.

Buy this, not that. Who pays for rent? Who pays for food? Just stop, the two of you. What did she just say? Did you hear her? Who does she think she is? Little princess. Little empress. Parents can’t even talk anymore without the child chiming in.

Before I can read names, I think every boy in America is named Ben and every girl is named Jen. My elementary school alone has seven and six of each. To reduce my confusion, I number them, Ben One, Ben Two, and Ben Three. Something I notice about this new culture: the common first names, yet the emphasis on being an individual.

Not my thing? I shout. Who does chemistry think he is, God? If I want it to be my thing, it will be my thing. I will make it my thing. Everyone is a genius, said Einstein. But he also said, A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of thirty will never do so.

I once had a math teacher who made me play a game. The teacher is my father and the game involves a deck of cards.

What’s so complicated about your life? he asks. You have no fiscal responsibilities, no taxes, no mortgage, no nine-to-five job, no job whatsoever except to learn and be a student. Do not boast, he says, that your life is complicated. Do not boast, period.

When I get into the best college in America, he is cutting radishes for dinner. I have just found out ten minutes ago. I am elated. He puts down the knife to shake my hand and then goes back to cutting radishes.

Do you think I am doing better? I don’t always know if you think I am doing better. So I have practiced some phrases. Almost, but not quite. Nice try. Way to go. Don’t be so hard on yourself. These words sound foreign to me, but I am now a roulette wheel of positivity.

Who is going to do this when I’m gone? he asks while closing a cabinet behind me. It is not as kindhearted in tone as before. It is more abrupt. And vertigo inducing. He has started to say things that he knows and I know but we have never really said aloud. Isn’t it obvious why you’re like this? You didn’t have a real childhood, so now you are lashing out. But at night, there is still cuddling.

What the shrink says about hobbies: You should find some. Do you have any? You should find some. What the lab mate says about hobbies: You can never do science as a hobby. Once you give up science, you give it up completely. What my father says about hobbies: Growing a seasonal vegetable garden is essential.

Like a homeless person, he says. But we are homeless. Get it? The mark of a poor comedian is not making the other person laugh. The mark of a worse comedian is asking if the other person got it.

The moment we’re back in our old apartment, he asks the first question again. Say yes. I want to. He asks the second question. Come with me. I want to. Then say yes. Isn’t it enough that I want to?

I am twelve and unhappy. I am perpetually unhappy that year because for eight months, my mother hides knives under my father’s pillow and I must put them back.

How I feel about it now is the same as I did then. Not great. Pretty awful. Studies have shown that in times of intense duress humans can develop superhuman strength and lift cars. I report no such abilities.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

The breaking of bonds requires energy. This is a fundamental law of thermodynamics.

I am dizzy, light-headed, my vision so blurred that I cannot see anything except a smear of flashing lights. That too is how I feel when waiting in the driveway for my father. Once he sees me, he frowns. Once we are inside, he throws things.

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one. Not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

Bears give birth in hibernation. I imagine that to suddenly wake up a mother must feel bizarre, but there are no instances of the mother bear leaving her cubs from shock. It is possible that my mother had moments of shock when raising me. How did I get here? What am I doing? A daughter, you say? You must be mistaken.

What I like about Gattaca is that it is not what you think when you think of sci-fi. There are very few special effects. There is a man in lab doing work day in and day out. He waits for the centrifuge to be done. He pipettes something into vials. The movie is set in the far future and yet nothing about the science is flashy. The movie is timeless in this way.

Eventually he says he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. In Chinese, he couldn’t get his personality across, or his humor. He felt limited. Who cares about your humor? How do you think my mother feels right now, trying to get to know you? That is not my problem. If she lives here, she is expected to speak the language.

Immediately, he apologizes. Immediately, I put the stapler down. But I can’t forgive him. That thing you said, I have heard from other people as well. So I don’t need to hear it from you. Who am I really trying to forgive? That thing he says I have also thought as well. I have probably even said it.

In spoken Chinese, everything is gender neutral. There is no she or he. The more I think about this now, the more I like this about the language. Man or woman? Does it matter? A person. Mao once said that women hold up half the sky.

Many times, she lifted up my chin and said, You must be better than the man you marry. You must succeed beyond him. I cannot fail her too.

··· An equation. happiness = reality – expectations If reality > expectations, then you are happy. If reality < expectations, then you are not. Hence the lower your expectations, the happier you will be.

Why does she deserve this kind of loyalty? She doesn’t. But she does because she is my mother.

But something about the way she tells her story frustrates me. Perhaps it is the broadness of her smile or how casually she dismisses them. And my mother is quiet like a lot of Asian mothers. And my father is strict like a lot of Asian fathers. And we are unhappy like a lot of Asian families. I prevailed above all that, she makes excruciatingly clear. I am a chef and not a sheep. It was the Chinese roommate who first said to me, We are our own worst propagators of those clichés. We are constantly throwing each other under the bus.

He said, You look pretty in a qipao. You are prettier than manganese. But the challenge is to be both smart and pretty, so I push his compliments away because I think believing them will mean that I have compromised.

At some point my mother, probably to comfort me, tells me that there is no good marriage without constant fighting. Fighting is how a husband and wife talk. One time, my father accuses her of running off to be with another man. She laughs at this. Who would I go with? she says. Who would want to be with me in the long run? The shrink says that whenever I go back into the past, I see only the bad. But isn’t that obvious? There is so much bad.

During one of her good moods, she buys me a refrigerator magnet from a convenience store. The magnet says BEST DAUGHTER, she tells me, and I nod. I can’t bring myself to tell her that it says BEST DOGSITTER. At first glance the two words are very close. At second, practically indistinguishable. Two Shanghainese words: Ma zi. Ah zi. One means sock and the other means shoe. I could never get them straight and my mother found this funny.

I have brief windows of clarity when I see that happiness is not just achievement but made up of many other things.