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Why You No?
🕑 Added 2024-07-25 00:36:30 +0000 UTCMing-Zhu, or Mindy as she was called in the United States, was a hard worker to say the least. As a single mom and a registered nurse, she usually had her hands full with one thing or another at almost any given time. She worked anywhere from ten to sixteen hour days at the hospital, choosing to go in as early as she possibly could in order to make sure she still made it home during the afternoon so that she could spend what little free time she could with her daughter Kimberly. Kimberly was the only child between Mindy and her ex boyfriend Jeihong, AKA Jerry and to the great joy and relief of her mother was nothing like him. Mindy liked to think that she had simply cloned herself without him in hopes that she could grow up to be as pretty as she was when she wasn’t covered in slime, muck, sweat, or just looking exhausted.
(1)
It was Mindy’s mother Chyou that had set the two up and insisted that they begin dating, as it was apparently incredibly important that she marry a Chinese man to keep their family from becoming a bunch of fat hillbillies after moving to San Francisco from Wuhan, China. It turned out however that Jerry was a bit of a fuccboi and really only hung around Mindy because she was hot and she supplied him with the money he needed to buy drugs. Chyou never saw it however, insisting that he was a good boy and that her daughter simply didn’t appreciate him or all the hard work that he did. It was only after Mindy got pregnant and had her baby out of wedlock that Granny Chyou began to have doubts, and only after Jerry was allowed to stay with them long enough to steal and sell her priceless Ming china set that she believed her daughter. Mindy was relieved to finally be free of the money-sucking leech and his constant bullshit but knew she had to move away from her overbearing dragon lady of a mother if she was ever going to get anywhere in life.
The problem wasn’t just the lack of support from her mom with Jerry, but the constant lectures and shouting matches over one thing or another. It had been going on ever since she was a little girl. While Mindy’s first memories of her mother were all good ones, they took a sharp turn the moment Mindy made the mistake of trying to hear her friend’s heartbeat with a stethoscope in sight of their parents. It was just harmless fun at first, but soon Chyou was gushing about how her daughter had always had a very scientific mind and that she was incredibly smart and compassionate. Next came the books. Loads of books. Book after book that Chyou insisted Mindy read for every birthday, Christmas, and New Year. At first, they were novels about women who worked in hospitals looking for their calling or savant-like kids becoming medical professionals, but those rapidly turned into outright medical journals or biographies on female doctors. Mindy’s excitement for playing doctor was immediately extinguished, but because her mother insisted that she was going to grow up to be a rich doctor one day, Mindy was rarely allowed to do anything else but study medicine in some way, shape, or form.
The years spent under the constant hovering of her mother turned Mindy into something of a rebel. She would claim to be spending extra time in the library studying and taking part in some kind of club activity for school when really she was having sex or going to the mall or just doing whatever she could to get away from Chyou’s constant screaming about “WHY YOU NO DOCTAH?!” for as long as she could. At one point when she was 16, Mindy managed to type up a convincing enough letter on her friend’s computer to fool Chyou into believing that the school was holding a special medical camp for aspiring medical students for a whole week one summer. Chyou not only gave Mindy the $100 she needed to go, but made sure that she was at the school bright and early so she didn’t miss the bus. Conveniently, it was too early for the supposed trip to start, so Mindy was able to convince her mom to go home before she became suspicious that there were no kids or staff at the school outside of the sports team kids getting dropped off for summer practice. Afterward, Mindy just spent a week at her friend’s house and made up how great camp was when she came home. Her mom never suspected a thing.
Ironically, Mindy still grew up to work in the medical field as an adult. Having been forced through years of unwanted medical training, it had become the thing she was best at and the easiest choice for a career. Chyou still griped that she was “only” an RN and still unmarried, but Mindy had everything she needed: Her job, her daughter, and finally, her freedom. She chose to raise Kimberly as a normal American girl instead of trying to train her to act like a rebellious Chinese kid being whipped into shape via classical techniques like screaming and getting hit with bamboo sticks. Sure, Kimberly had no clearly defined path in life, but she was only 12 years old, Mindy thought. She believed a kid should be able to choose who they want to be in life by getting to live it, not by having their parent’s wishes shoved down their throat until they CAN’T be anything else.
Something she was concerned she would have to remind her mother of during their visit over the weekend at Granny Chyou’s house.
“Alright Kimmy, remember: when we get to grandma’s house, make sure to take your shoes off at the door and try not to make a mess, okay? Granny Chyou is really tough about that stuff.” Mindy warned.
“Yeah, I know.” Kimberly chirped casually as she walked up the concrete walkway to her grandmother’s house.
The pair rang the doorbell and before too long, the scowling face of Mindy’s mother appeared just in time to melt into a sweet smile.
“Kimmy! My sweet baby, hi!! You come in okay? Granny Chyou have lots of things for you.” Chyou said enthusiastically, barely acknowledging Mindy at all.
That’s the way it had always been. First, Mindy was a failure for not being a doctor, then she was a failure and a whore for getting pregnant. Then it became all about loving on little Kimmy while telling Mindy what a bad mother she was.
“You no feed her enough. She too skinny.” She would say, but if Mindy took that advice it became “Hachahhhhhh…You let her eat so much junk…she going to get fat.”
“Mom.” Mindy would defend, frustration seeping out of every pore. “You’re fat. How are you going to sit here and bitch at me for my daughter’s weight when you are twice my size?”
The argument was a common one, and even as Kimberly explored her grandmother’s very Asian-themed house, the two mothers bickered about their respective parenting hangups.
“I just say she can go and play outside too. Get exercise. But not be too skinny.” Chyou said dismissively, feigning aloofness while Mindy was practically fuming.
“But YOU’RE the one who insists on giving her all those treats when she comes over! Plus, you never exercise and practically live off of takeout. So don’t try to sit there and play the nasty dragon lady like you’ve never done anything wrong in your life. If anyone’s a bad example, it’s you!” Mindy snapped, approaching her breaking point.
She fully expected Chyou to roll her eyes and walk away or start yelling at her for being a failure of a daughter…Which she did. But the way she had done it had taken Mindy aback.
(2)
“You think I try to be this way, huh?!? I like YOU until you start pretending you doctah! You make me like this okay? Now I fat mom like you one day! You see. One day you just like me because Kimmy do something that make you undastan! You curse me like this! One day you know and you turn into dragon too!” Chyou yelled as she waddled angrily down the hall before locking herself in her bedroom.
The act of running away and isolating herself in her bedroom was hardly an uncommon practice for Chyou, but it left Mindy sitting alone in the living room with what she was just told. It wasn’t the fact that Chyou had blamed Mindy for the way she’d aged or the comments about her parenting that bothered her. It was the insinuation- or rather, the outright accusation- that Chyou had only become who she did because of Mindy playing with a stethoscope when she was 8 years old.
Frustrated and alone, Mindy just sat in the living room and watched tv while she waited for her daughter to come back in or her mom to come out so she could justify leaving. Ideally, the trip was meant to give Mindy some time to get to know and bond with her grandmother a bit, but with Chyou pouting in her room and Kimberly carelessly wandering around the backyard swinging sticks, that didn’t seem like it was going to happen. Mindy waited through three episodes of Law and Order SVU before deciding to look into the backyard and check on her daughter only to not be able to see where she was. Getting up, Mindy walked outside, craning her neck around large, forest-like bushes and stone statue decorations designed to make California look as much like Wuhan as possible. As she made her way around the spacious yard, she heard the plinking of what sounded like piano keys coming from the guest house and moved to investigate. As Mindy peeked inside the smaller, but still decorated house, she smiled as she saw Kimberly sitting on the little stool where she herself would get music lessons from her mom back when they still hot along. Chyou was a fairly good pianist when she was younger and had tried to pass some of that on to Mindy, but it never stuck. Even so, it warmed her heart to see her daughter playing around on the old, dusty baby grand piano from her childhood.
(3)
But then, something happened. Mindy could feel a visceral shift occurring in her as she watched and listened to her daughter piece out the keys to “Mary Had A Little Lamb” by ear. Fascinated, Mindy couldn’t help but feel amazed and impressed by her daughter’s ability to pick up music as quickly as she was without ever having been taught or trained. She imagined that if Kimberly were to ever actually get any real instruction on how to play, she might end up pretty good at it.
…Maybe REALLY good.
…Maybe even famous.
A world of unrealized potential sat in front of Mindy as visions of grandeur and success flooded her mind. Fantasies played out in elaborate fashion as Mindy saw herself seated in the front of a crowd where thousands had gathered into an amphitheater just to hear her daughter play the piano. Kimberly would be no more than 14; a savant, they would say. A gifted child to whom all others would be envious of, selling out show after show with her own brilliantly composed music. Then, to roaring applause, Kimberly would get up and pick up one of the hundreds of red roses being tossed at her feet and smell it before taking a perfectly elegant bow. She would then stand up and hold the rose out to her mother, the woman who made her dream come true, and dedicate the show to her before tossing the rose her way.
Mindy was shaken from her reverie when she felt a hand on her shoulder and nearly jumped out of her skin.
“OH HOLY SHIT!! MOM!!!!!!” Mindy shrieked in terrified indignation upon seeing Chyou standing behind her, cackling at the reaction.
“What, you forget I live here, Ming-Zhu? You scare easy!” Chyou laughed.
By now Kimberly had turned around in surprise, watching the older women as they laughed and yelled at each other, unsure of what to do. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to have been in the guest house in the first place and she knew it, but it didn’t seem like anything bad was happening.
“Ummm…Am I in trouble?” Kimberly asked quizzically.
The two older women looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“No. Your mom just find her feeling. She see you play now she want to be good mom for you.” Chyou said, smiling knowingly at Mindy.
“No, baby. You’re not in trouble. Grandma just scared me is all.” Mindy said, trying to shrug off what her mom had said about her.
Upon their return home, Kimberly went off to play outside with her friends while Mindy paced around the living room. She wanted to give her daughter some space but didn’t want to ignore the massive opportunity sitting right in front of her. Mindy held onto her self-control, bouncing her leg irritatedly as time continued to pass. Finally, she broke down and grabbed her phone, searching the internet for deals on a keyboard for her daughter…Just in case she wanted to practice sometime.
A month went by with Mindy happily returning to normal life at home with her daughter. Kimberly was a smart kid and enjoyed hanging out with Mindy when the day wound down either watching movies or playing video games together, but after the visit to Granny Chyou’s house, Mindy couldn’t help but feel that she really was doing a bad job of providing structure and productive skill-building opportunities for her daughter. Without going to overboard, Mindy began imposing a few household chores on her daughter in order to help her learn responsibility and to take pride in a job well done as opposed to just spending all of her time playing and doing nothing for her future. Kimberly didn’t love it, but she understood and even agreed that she could have been doing more to help around the house.
From there, the two of them enjoyed a more mature relationship with each other, learning to work together and build new skills to keep their home in order. That is…Until the day there was a knock at the door.
Mindy nearly jumped up off the couch in the middle of Camp Cretaceous in order to get to the door, leaving Kimberly confused and feeling slightly nervous.
“Iiiiit’s heeeeeere~!” Mindy sang as she hauled a long cardboard box into the living room.
“…Uhh…What IS that?” Kimberly asked unenthusiastically.
“It’s a present for you! Surprise!” Mindy cheered.
“Oh…” The preteen said, unamused and beginning to dread the contents of the box and what it meant for her. “…What is it though?”
Mindy happily hummed to herself as she grabbed a pair of scissors from the kitchen. “You’ll see!”
About twenty minutes later, Kimberly was called into the room where a large and very expensive-looking keyboard sat against the wall with a chair in front of it.
“Surprise!” Mindy cheered.
Kimberly stared at the keyboard. It was a nice keyboard, she thought, remembering the incident at her grandmother’s house. Even so, she was only playing on it because she was bored and not because she actually knew anything about the music.
“Oh…Thanks…I guess..” Kimberly said dryly.
“Oh come on, try it out!” Mindy beamed happily. “I saw how much you loved the piano at grandma’s house and decided to get you one of your own to practice on!”
At that, Kimberly sat down in the chair feeling both nervous and repulsed by the keyboard. The knowledge that she only received such a gift because her mom saw her near a piano once and decided it was her new favorite thing heavily dampening her enthusiasm to even touch the thing.
“Go on. Play!” Mindy said, smiling expectantly.
(4)
Kimberly just sat there. She had no idea how to play the piano at all. The only reason she got as far as she did last time was because she sat there hunting for each sound by ear until it was arguably passable as a first attempt. Now with the spotlight on her and her mother pressuring her to do something impressive, Kimberly felt a crushing amount of nervous energy.
“I…don’t know how…” She said anemically.
Mindy looked upward and sighed briefly, centering herself and controlling her expectations.
“I just want you to try, baby. That’s all. Just…play around. It’s your new toy.” Mindy said sweetly.
“…Okay…” Kimberly said somberly, poking randomly at keys only to become even more anxious when no sound came out of them.
A twinge of irritation slipped into Mindy’s features. She got up and walked over to the keyboard, making a small show of pressing the “on” button before sitting back down.
“Play.” She said.
Kimberly once again returned to sour, disheveled plunking, growing more and more miserable as she realized that nothing she was doing sounded even remotely like music. She attempted to play her own rendition of Mary Had A Little Lamb, but even then she couldn’t find the right keys. She was only able to leave after Mindy had reached the limits of her patience and got up in a huff.
“Five hundred fucking dollars for that.” She grumbled, shaking her head.
“I’m…Sorry…I just don’t know how..” Kimberly sobbed from her chair.
Mindy’s expression softened for a moment at the sight of her crying daughter before a lightbulb went off in her head. As she moved to comfort her little girl, she could feel her pants tightening as they rose higher on her waist. She felt the trickle of hair flowing up her neck but was unable to tear her mind away from the situation at hand.
“I know, baby. It was dumb of me to think you’d be able to just play me a symphony on your first try with no practice.” She said.
Kimberly looked up at her mom and once again felt comfortable near her.
“That’s why I’m going to be hiring a teacher for you! With private lessons, you’ll grow up to be a famous musician in no time!”
Kimberly’s jaw dropped, but she said nothing.
It had taken a week or two for Mindy to find a piano instructor that would be able to teach Kimberly twice a week and still have a prestigious enough background to meet Mindy’s qualifications. Mark was a nice enough man in his early 40s and had been teaching kids music for years. He and Kimberly immediately got along despite the fact that Kimberly was clearly not interested in learning. Still, he was able to eventually convince her to give some basic drills a try and learn which key was which, bringing her out of her shell a little in the process.
Mindy would come out periodically to check on her daughter’s progress, often times sitting down or even just standing the entire lesson as she watched Kimberly work. Over the last ten or so days, Mindy had begun to notice that her body was changing in ways that didn’t quite make sense. For one thing, she had begun to gain weight at a rapid pace. She wasn’t especially big by any means but she’d noticed a drastic increase in the size of her thighs and especially her breasts, growing from a large B cup to a droopy DD in just over a week. Her hair had become shorter as well, resting just past her shoulders whereas before it had fallen halfway down her back.
(5)
As strange as it was, Mindy couldn’t really keep herself occupied with her appearance at all. Every time she became bothered that the scale had risen another few pounds or that her hair seemed to be shortening instead of growing, her mind suddenly shifted to Kimberly and whether or not she was making decent enough progress with her music skills.
“Kimmie!” She shouted up the stairs “You don’t want to be late!”
The night of Kimberly’s first recital had her stomach in knots and her mother buzzing around like she was on fire. In truth, Kimberly not only wished she could be as late as humanly possible, that was only secondary to her forlorn hope that she would somehow get out of doing it entirely.
Even if she was getting better at it, Kimberly had absolutely no love for the piano whatsoever. She had no idea why her mom had suddenly become so hell-bent on making her become a famous piano player, but it had absolutely devastated their relationship. Where once Kimberly and Mindy were the best of pals, now they were constantly on opposite ends of the house whenever it wasn’t time for a piano lesson. Or recital. Or song. Or extra practice that Mindy demanded Kimberly do simply because she had arbitrarily decided that Kimberly was slacking off. Otherwise, Kimberly did virtually everything she could to stay away from Mindy whenever possible.
Tonight, unfortunately, was not one of those nights.
Kimberly came downstairs wearing the same simple black dress as Mindy wore, albeit with the addition of some winged eyeliner and sans plunging neckline.
(6)
“Kimmie, stop looking so upset. This is your big chance! You never know, there might be a talent scout in the crowd. He could see you and hear you play and boom! Next thing you know you will be the new Taylor Swift and we live in a mansion. You just have to do well tonight.” Mindy gushed.
“Mooom…I hate this. I don’t wanna go… And besides. Taylor Swift plays guitar, not the piano.” Kimberly complained.
“Beethoven then. Let’s go. And smile.” Mindy said from a small stool by the door as she pulled on a pair of flashy, if not gaudy gold heels.
She had felt her hair creeping higher and higher up her neck and past her even as it happened, but Mindy was far too excited for her big night to worry about how she looked. What mattered was that her daughter was presentable for the recital.
(7)
The recital came and went in a blur of nerves and mishaps. Overcome with anxiety, Kimberly had thrown up in the green room while waiting for her turn to go onstage. Mindy had gotten into an argument about who had the more impressive child with a white woman that Kimberly recognized from the school PTA with the two of them almost coming to blows over it. When Kimberly was finally called to go on, she sat down at the piano and played what was probably the best she’d ever played in her life. But no matter how well she did in comparison to her previous efforts, the performance was still littered with sour notes and missed keys that Kimberly hadn’t really tried all that hard to fix. Part of her had hoped that she was awful enough that her mom would just give up on her crazy dream of forcing her to become a famous musician who would one day pay for all her stuff and bring her some kind of secondhand glory.
She did not get her wish.
When the recital was over, the kids all went out to meet their parents in the lobby. Each of them was being praised up and down by their families as the groups all chatted amongst themselves talking about how wonderful their child did and how proud of them they were. Kimberly wandered out into the busy room and saw her mother standing alone in the middle of the lobby looking strange. As the girl approached, she saw rivulets of water streaming down her mother’s face and began to smile, believing that Mindy was so proud of her daughter that it brought her to tears. Kimberly ran to her mom and hugged her. Originally, she’d wanted absolutely anything that could result in not having to learn the piano or go to recitals anymore, but upon seeing the emotion on her mother’s face, her heart swelled with pride and happiness. In that moment, she realized what this had meant to her mom and decided to redouble her efforts and actually do her best to make Mindy proud.
“Get off of me. Let’s go.” Mindy snapped harshly, instantly breaking Kimberly of any hopeful feelings she had regarding the encounter.
“Wha..?” She mumbled, stunned.
“We go now. Kimmie, go to the car. We talk there. I don’ want to be see here anymore.”
Kimberly was dumbfounded. “Why are you talking like that..?”
“NOW!” Mindy snapped.
When the pair got to the car, Kimberly was made to sit in the back seat as opposed to the front where she’d ridden earlier.
“I never feel so embarrassed in my whole life.” Mindy said, instantly bringing her daughter to tears. “I see all parents with their children and they so proud but my daughter does not even try. I hear you play and it…SO BAD. What I spend all this money on, hunh?? HUNH??? You don’ practice! You don’ care!”
Just below the surface, Mindy was a storm of conflict. She was furious and embarrassed but didn’t actually know why. She knew Kimberly didn’t like playing the piano. It was obvious, but even so, she couldn’t let go of the idea that Kimberly had a glorious and prosperous future just sitting in front of her if only she could be made to care enough to take it. Even worse, Mindy’s own reactions to her daughter’s performance were upsetting her. She knew she was acting like her mother but for the life of her couldn’t stop. There was….something satisfying about laying into her daughter for not applying herself the way she could have.
It was a guilty thought at first. Mindy shook her head, trying to eliminate the feeling, but the barrier had been broken already. It returned over and over. The feeling of power and dominance. Of rightness. Mindy groaned euphorically as she felt her breasts ached with pleasure, straining against her top. Her belly softened and grew as she drove, filling with warmth as her wavey hair straightened out, giving the illusion of being longer as it’s natural fullness eroded. It felt good. Too good, in fact. She didn’t want to upset her daughter any more than she already had, but something inside of her was screaming for more. Besides, she thought, Kimmy really hadn’t been practicing the way she should have been. Because of that, she’d wasted her own time, her mom’s time, Mr. Mark’s time, the whole audience’s time, and loads of money on lessons and equipment. The words almost flew out on their own.
“You embarrass me.” Mindy said, her body on the edge of an orgasm just hearing how much she sounded like her mother. “I buy you everything. You no care. I tell you practice, you no practice. I tell you play, you no play. Well I tell you now when we go home, you practice. All night until you good. You play until you have fyu-chah. I not mean, Kimmy. You think I mean but I only help you.”
Kimberly could only sit quietly with her tears in shame, meanwhile Mindy was glowing with erotic warmth…and dissipating guilt.
In the months that followed, any desire that Kimberly’s had to learn to play the piano had been completely shattered by the constant admonishments from her mother. Mindy, or Ming-Zhu had completely given up the use of her “English name” in favor of the Chinese one she’d been born with and had begun to happily, if not spitefully embrace her reputation as a ‘dragon lady’. Mr. Mark had been fired after the recital and replaced with Mr. Hong, who was later replaced by Miss Shannon who was later replaced by Miss Kelly, each of them being terminated the moment Ming-Zhu wasn’t pleased with her daughter’s performance at any given moment. Even visits from Granny Chyou were no respite as the two older women now got along famously, even beginning to look more like sisters separated by an age gap than mother and daughter.
“I told you one day you undastand. I was like you too until you want to be doctah. Now you know I only try to help.” Chyou said grimly as she watched her granddaughter lifelessly play the baby grand piano she’d sent over from her guest house.
Despite her hatred of the damned thing, Kimberly had become quite good at playing the piano and was moving on to more complex pieces that would impress anyone but her mom and grandmother who were together pushing for more and more intricate and difficult symphonic works, some of which took upwards of an hour at a time to play. Most times she ended up dissociating through the majority of it as she’d played each piece so many times that there were no longer what the general public would consider ‘mistakes’ in her playing. The real mistakes according to her mom were the choices in music difficulty or the unwillingness to practice for just another couple hours in order to truly be magnificent. No matter what Kimberly did, she could always count on Ming-Zhu to be there, hovering over her with a judgmental scowl on her face, demanding more and more from her as if SHE were the one possessed.
Instead of despairing on the bench and hating the keys themselves, Kimberly simply started finding new ways to have fun, many of which included sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to just wander around or go to the local park. It was dangerous to be a 13-year-old girl alone at night, sure, but to Kimberly it was the only time she really felt free outside of school. Even there, her friendships were limited to only the other Asian kids or advanced students. Ming-Zhu had also doubled down on Kimberly’s schoolwork, effectively forcing her into as many advanced classes and early college programs as possible so that she could gloat to the other neighborhood parents that her child was better than theirs.
(8)
As Kimberly grew better and better, Ming-Zhu became worse and worse, seemingly delighting in pushing her daughter further and further away in some mad quest to force her to be famous. Granny Chyou was especially supportive of her daughter, seemingly the only person to see Ming-Zhu’s transformation as irregular.
“See? I tell you from the start. Chinese mom all end up like us one day. You do to me like Kimmy do to you. I find this when I clean out the garage, look.” Chyou said, handing Ming-Zhu an old photograph.
The photograph was of an almost unrecognizable Chinese girl with long, flowing hair standing in a field of flowers. It was faded and grainy with the girl’s hippie flower crown giving the date away as somewhere in the late 1960s.
(9)
“Hayahhh……This is you?” Ming-Zhu asked, surprised at how beautiful her mom used to look.
“Mmhm. But look again. This one….Two year lat’a. After you change me.” Chyou said, handing Ming-Zhu another photo of slightly better quality.
This time the person in the photo looked much more like Chyou, but already impossibly old for only 2 years after the previous one. She looked more traditional and very Chinese in fashion, ditching her blue jeans and tank top for a matronly dress and jade pendants. Her hair had shortened significantly and looked no longer than Ming-Zhu’s had become.
(10)
“I had no idea…I do this to you?” Ming-Zhu said, sorrow and guilt welling up in her voice.
Chyou nodded matter-of-factly.
“Mmhm. But you no worry. I get used to it like you. When I see you when you little I say to myself “she could be doctah of she try.” But noooo. Ming-Zhu don’t want to try. You want to play with your friends or ride a skateboard instead of learn so I have to MAKE you. You still no doctah but you good nurse so I happy. But like I always tell you, now you have Kimmy and she make you Chinese mom like me.”
“Dragon lady.” Ming-Zhu nodded.
“Hah! Yeah. They say tiger mom when I first change. No one notice but mom who go through it. Not just Chinese either. White lady with short hair like PTA mom have it too. They can tell. Be glad you turn into dragon lady and not Karen, huh?” Chyou beamed.
Ming-Zhu smiled but still sighed deeply.
“Mama…I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to be mean old lady. I miss Kimmy. My baby used to love me. Now she hate me because I fat old mean lady. I don’t know what to do.”
Chyou smiled warmly, understanding filling her eyes. She looked at her daughter, clearly aged prematurely far beyond her actual years. She sat with her voluminous belly pouring onto her lap in a teal Chinese style dress with her formerly long and beautiful hair barely grazing the bottom of her chin.
“You just wait. One day, Kimmy will have a baby and find out curse for herself. Then she undastan and you be friends again. Just like my Ming-Zhu find me again too. I know you don’t want to be mean or fat or old…but it feel good, huh? Like you don’t want to stop be mean, even if it make you old. I am old grandma tiger mom now. Just like you fat dragon lady. You just do what feel normal and right and soon you only feel good. Then you don’t mind be big fat grandma one day.”
Ming-Zhu rolled her eyes, but smiled. “Okay, Mama. But you come visit too. We spend more time together, promise?”
The older woman looked at her daughter and smiled, seeing how similar the two had become after all.
(11)
“I promise.”
Epilogue:
The crowd had erupted in applause as Kimberly turned towards the audience and bowed. At only 17 years old she was already an accomplished pianist and selling out shows at the local amphitheater. She smiled, certain that after this performance even her psychotic mother would have nothing to bitch about.
“As if.” She thought, only causing her smile to grow wider.
Kimberly knew that Ming-Zhu would always be her harshest critic, finding absolutely anything and everything wrong with her playing and screech at her about it later. Tonight however, unlike other nights, Kimberly had a plan of attack or at very least a way to defend herself. After talking at length with her secret boyfriend Josh about the treatment her mom leveled against her daily, she had realized that for all her bullshit, Ming-Zhu didn’t have a leg to stand on when it came to talking about musical ability or success. But that was for later. For now, she simply wanted to bathe in the applause and recognition she knew she sorely deserved.
(12)
“You only play easy things! How you find agent if you only play easy song, huhh??” Ming-Zhu raged, slapping her concert program on the table over and over for emphasis before waddling over to the other side of the room for a snack.
“Maybe I don’t WANT an agent, mom! And maybe, I don’t even want to play the piano!” Kimberly shouted, setting up her gambit.
Ming-Zhu turned and stared at her daughter, outwardly angry, but internally glowing at the conflict. The past few years had seen the Asian woman take her mother’s words to heart, fully embracing and accepting the identity of a fat, bitchy dragon lady. Her body too had reflected the changes. Beneath her aged, double-chinned face was a round, apple-shaped body draped in Chinese dresses and decorated with tacky pearls or jade amulets befitting a 60-year-old woman. Ming-Zhu’s pretty face was constantly twisted into a nasty scowl and every step she took caused her jowls and belly to wobble ferociously while her flabby, cellulite-covered arms reached for more food every few minutes.
(13)
As much as she originally fought against her mother, Ming-Zhu had never fully appreciated or even thought about how it must have felt to be on the other end of their arguments. Now she relished it. The feeling of getting to loose all her frustrations at someone for any small thing, stuffing herself with Chinese dishes and knowing that it only served to make her more unbearable while she glowed on the brink of an almost everpresent orgasm….It was intoxicating. And she always wanted more.
“Oh??? This what I mean! I don’t care if you want to play, I say play! You need to work for your fu-cha so you can have house like me!” Ming-Zhu yelled.
Kimberly refused to back down. She grinned as her mother walked right into her trap. “Except that I don’t WANT to be like you! You’re old, you’re nasty, you’re fucking HUGE…Why would I want that? I don’t! Just like I don’t want to play the piano again. Ever. I refuse. This was my last concert, and you can’t MAKE me play another!!” She screamed.
“Hah! You will play because I tell you! You just ungrateful. I buy you everything and you don’t appreciate me. I buy you keyboard and you cry. I buy you lesson and you pout! I spend aaaaalll my time and money for you and you get mad to me! I say practice, Kimmy. It good for you, but you don’t practice! Why?!” Ming-Zhu shouted back.
“BECAUSE I HATE IT!!!” Kimberly shrilled.
“NO!! WHY YOU HATE IT SO MUCH?! WHY YOU NO CARE!? WHY YOU DON’T JUST DO WHAT I SAY?!?!
I BUY YOU LESSON, I BUY YOU TEACHER, I BUY YOU PIANO! WHY IT NO WORK, KIMMY!?
WHY YOU NO MUSICIAN?!?!?!” Ming-Zhu shrieked, ready to throw something at her daughter for her insolence.
Kimberly threw her arms up, refusing to lose another shouting match. “WHY I NO MUSICIAN? BECAUSE I NEVER FUCKING WANTED TO BE ONE!! HOW ABOUT WHY YOU NO DOCTAH, HUHHH?? HOW’S THAT PH.D COMING, MOM?! OR DID GRANDMA CHYOU NOT YELL AT YOU ENOUGH?? MAYBE YOU COULD HAVE DONE IT, BUT YOU WERE JUST LAZY AND UNGRATEFUL!! MAYBE YOU’RE JUST TAKING OUT YOUR INADEQUACIES ON ME! MAAAYBE YOU ARE THE FAILURE. NOT ME!!!”
Ming-Zhu glared at her daughter, but said nothing as the teenager walked to her room only to come back out with a suitcase full of clothes.
“Kimmy. You don’t undastan. I not always like this. You do this to me, not me. One day you have a baby of your own and you begin to undastan. You turn out just like me even if you fight it.” Ming-Zhu said, her shaking, angry voice masking her real and very hurt feelings.
“I’m leaving,” Kimberly said calmly. “I no longer want to live here with you, nor will I put up with any more of your bullshit. I love you, I will miss you, but I need to go.”
“Where you going to live, huh? You buy a house already?” The older woman interrogated.
“I will be staying with my boyfriend. He lives across town and has a job.” Kimberly said, walking towards the door.
“Oh, and he’s white.” She said, ignoring the immediate deluge of fury that attempted to follow her out the door.
Even as she yelled, Mindy watched as her daughter climbed into her friend’s car and drove away into the night, proud and thankful that she just might find a way to escape the curse.
“Good girl.” She said, the cloud of anger suddenly lifted for the moment.
Epilogue, Part 2:
“Be careful, boys!” Kim called out from the sidewalk as she watched her son play with the other neighborhood kids.
She’d become a mother young, having her first baby at 18 years old, but that was kind of to be expected when she moved in with her boyfriend at 17. Now, almost 11 years later, she considered her decision to leave one of the best in her life.
Kim and Josh were still happily married with two kids: Justin and Scott. Initially, she had had reservations about having children of her own given her family history, but after much prompting from Josh and her own biological clock ticking down to an alarm, she relented. Kim considered herself a cool mom, being a parent still in her 20s and retaining her slim body and good looks. After leaving her mom’s house, Kim had taken to more edgy, alt fashions and had gotten a tattoo of a dragon on one arm and a gothic fairy on the other, each of them attracting lots of attention. She was under no illusions that she wasn’t the hot, neighborhood goth that all the dads and teenagers drooled over, but she also liked it that way.
(14)
As she watched her boys run around in the street, yelling and having a great time, she began to notice her eldest son Justin calling all the kids together to convince them to play a game that he’d made up involving a combination of dodgeball rules with playing cards and buckets.
It was ingenious really, she thought. They set out four buckets with red and black markers on them, then had to go to either side of the street to get a playing card. If they put a card in the bucket that matched the card’s suit on the opposite end of the field, it was a point, but if they got hit with a dodgeball, they dropped the card.
Kim’s heart caught in her chest as her breasts began to ache in her shirt. She watched as her son held court, imagining him up on a podium giving speeches as a teenager or a senator as an adult. She imagined him running debate clubs and heading school programs that would lead him to a career in politics. With a fluttering in her stomach and a sort of static itch on her arms, she even allowed herself to imagine her son as the first half-Asian president of the United States and how good that would be for Chinese/American relations.
“Justin!! Scooott!” She called giddily. “Time to come in!”
The boys began to pout and complain that they had just started their game, but Kimberly knew that her idea was worth giving up an hour of dodgeball. She was already online ordering books on law to get the both of them started early.
“Can we please just stay out a little longer?” Justin griped.
“Nope. Sorry, but mom’s got a better idea.” Kim said, smiling as her hips pulled pleasurably outward.
(15)
