The Woo-Woo Read online

  And while I shovelled food into my mouth, Beautiful One was refusing all sustenance, afraid that eating would poison her. Yet her impending death made her even more obsessed with her looks, as if her beauty could be preserved by suddenly dying.

  “You know I’m pretty, right?” she often repeated, shrilled, and obsessed, during her manic episodes. “Everyone thinks I’m twenty years younger than I am!”

  My mother was too preoccupied with Beautiful One’s intensifying madness to stop my eating (it seemed that they screamed about suicide on speakerphone for four to six hours every day). I promised myself that I would stop binge eating and become productive again by September, once school began.

  Then one day, C.C. called, which surprised me, because I thought our acquaintanceship had an end-of-semester expiry date, like a carton of fat-free milk. It was a relief when she (someone “normal”) phoned, as I could not bear to listen to anyone, even if they were very convincing, cry about becoming a ghost.

  “What are you up to, my favourite freak?” C.C. drawled, lazy and glamorous at the same time. I had forgotten how direct C.C. could be. I envied her easy charm—how people seemed to want to be around her even if she wasn’t always very nice.

  “Want to go to Europe next week?” she said.

  “Why?” I said, instantly suspicious. “What’s in Europe?”

  “I don’t know, like, countries, I guess. There’s going to be food. Plural.”

  “There’s food plural in Canada,” I pointed out. “It’s a First World country.”

  “There’s going to be different food,” she promised me. “Lots of different food. Oh, for Christ’s sake, just come. I don’t care if you eat the entire time we’re there.”

  C.C. had a venture-capitalist uncle who wanted to pay for a month in Europe—she was a year above me and had already finished her degree at the University of Billion Chinese, and this was a graduation present for his dearest niece. I was surprised that she wanted to take me, but I guessed that she was bored and wanted a summer project.

  I did not want to think of Beautiful One and be reminded of the wedding anymore, and I couldn’t afford to be choosy, so I decided that I had nothing to lose. C.C. had unwittingly offered me a timely break from the chaotic aftermath of the wedding. Was it selfish of me to want to leave? It would be a real vacation away from the Woo-Woo.

  “You have to find a new hobby,” I instructed my mother, when I told her I was leaving for Europe. “I’m not available anymore. You can try the Chinese community centre. Lots of great old people there. They’d love to listen to you talk about dying.”

  She and I fought about the trip, about me terminating my summer employment as her weak-headed, fucked-up offspring. She argued about how Europe was the most intensely haunted locale in the world, how London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Paris were practically unlivable because of all the unfortunate people slaughtered in their convoluted wars.

  “You know the ghosts are all angry there!” she protested weakly. “Don’t you know Canada is safest? Why are you leaving a country with very little wars? You’ll end up like a dead bitch in a Dumpster,” she cried in warning, saying anything to make me stay with her, anything to frighten me. “Something fucked is going to happen, and I know it’s going to happen to you. You can’t leave the house! You’re too weak in the head! I’ll pay you five hundred dollars if you stay! One thousand? Two thousand? What about the ghosts, Lindsay?”

  For once, I did not have to listen to her, for I did not need her money. C.C. was offering free four-star hotel accommodations and fine dining. And this financial freedom gave me a quasi-rebellious power. One that forced my mother to gawk at me, speechless.

  “I’ll buy you a souvenir!” I yelled at her, pleased to escape her neurosis and ecstatic that I wouldn’t have to worry about Beautiful One anymore.

  In Paris, a member of the Moroccan royal family had lent C.C. one of their dusty, unused apartments. It was almost three weeks of glorious, unimaginable fun: bottomless beer, boys, butter-filled cakes, and crepes.

  But then I received a cryptic email (the only family news and lecture) from my father, who assumed that I was an avid reader of the Vancouver Sun. It seemed that some overachieving distant relative was always in the news, because we were Asian. Otherwise, no one would have cared if a second cousin was “up and coming,” or if a grand-uncle’s Chinese opera fundraiser for BC’s children’s hospital was “a screeching success.” This was 2008, and ethnic newcomers usually took turns on the front page with epic world disasters and local hit and runs.

  If my father had bothered to contact me, it meant that the Poteau had vanished, or there was some exciting news about his sister-in-law.

  July 1, 2008

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  L:

  Don’t mention to people that it’s your aunt who

  tied up traffic for hours, a lot of people missed the

  firework and other important things and they will

  curse you. Keep quiet.

  Mommy is very upset. We will DISCUSS when you come home

  Have you finished Rhode essay yet? I don’t think you’ll get MFA so don’t be hopeful because you will be flipping burger.

  I’ve already paid your VISA. Don’t worry so much, relax. Enjoy Paris. But don’t eat too much because you will get FATTER. L Mommy say you like to binge on sweet things such as cake and pie which is disgusting.

  Say thankyou and hello to your friend. Don’t chew with mouth open.

  Confucius Gentleman Engineering Ltd

  My mother was still hurt and miserable at my absence. And I ignored my father’s customary digs about my random and assorted graduate school applications because I did not yet know what I wanted to do after my final year of college. Since I earned straight As in university, my father did not antagonize me as much as before. I had finally succeeded in becoming someone he could brag about, and my reward was still sarcasm but mixed with sly pride and sometimes a generous financial aid package. After all, the new and academically improved Lindsay had been selected to represent UBC on their shortlist for the Rhodes Scholarship. (I didn’t know what the hell a Rhodes Scholarship was until I received the invitational email from the committee and sat through the four-hour information session, but I wanted to take advantage of any beautiful moneymaking opportunities that came my way.)

  I sent back a pithy, fast-tempered reply: What the fuck???!!!!!!!!!

  It seemed that all our problems stemmed from my mother’s side, whose family crest should have featured a bottle of home-brewed rice wine (drinking) and a deck of cards (gambling) stacked inside an orange life preserver (an affinity for suicide). If my father knew how to cook, he always joked, he might have considered leaving her. But truthfully, my mother, who did not know how to pay bills or use the internet, would fall apart without him. My father was a traditionalist, and I think he saw himself as a martyr. I can only guess what our lives would have been like if he had ever decided to buy someone younger and better-looking from a catalogue in China. Yet despite his frequent mocking, I think he might have secretly loved his wife. Although emotionally distant and frequently absent from home, my father never officially abandoned us and continued to manage our finances.

  I wanted to ignore his email, and I think I would have. But this was about Beautiful One, who had, until the wedding, been the person I had looked up to most. And I thought that if this Woo-Woo emergency could happen to her, it could easily happen to me. It went against every fibre and disgusting instinct of my being not to deny what was in front of me, but I fought through my fat, unequivocal terror and reread his email, long after I had replied.

  While waiting to hear from my father, I Googled the news.

  BEYOND THE CALL: VANCOUVER POLICE MAGAZINE

  Just past noon, police saw a woman who was visibly distraught standing on the sidewalk mid-span on the bridge. When they approached her, she climbed over the railing. She p
erched precariously on three parallel cables, reaching up and behind her to hold on with one free hand. There was nothing beneath her. If she released her grip, she would fall to her certain death.

  VANCOUVER (NEWS1130)—The Ironworkers Memorial Bridge remains closed in both directions to a police incident that started just after 1 pm. And it’s impacting traffic in Vancouver, North Vancouver and West Vancouver.

  TransLink is rerouting buses that normally head over the bridge to instead provide access to Seabus and using Lions Gate Bridge. SeaBus is now at full capacity. With drivers forced to use the 3 lanes of the Lions Gate Bridge, traffic along Georgia St. through downtown Vancouver is gridlocked.

  Was Beautiful One the distraught woman on the bridge on Canada Day? This could not be true: Beautiful One was not allowed to be Woo-Woo on one of the major bridges in BC. We just didn’t flaunt our mental infection that way. But then again, Beautiful One was an exhibitionist, the family would say.

  There were conflicting anecdotes from bloggers and commentators. And the newspapers couldn’t decide if the bridge had been closed for six or eight hours (I averaged seven), and then decided that most of it was bullshit and inflated speculation anyway.

  I saw the pictures, she was standing in the middle of the bridge, not on the side ready to jump. She obviously was looking for attention. Someone who is serious about committing suicide would not pick a busy bridge in a big city on Canada day. The police should have tackled her … or shot her with a tranquilizer. Some one should figure out the economic cost of her actions and send her a bill. But then again what’s the point she probably can’t afford it anyway. Now our tax dollars are going to pay for a selfish, idiotic, attention whore’s medical bills.

  We actually felt sorry for the jumper, we were sitting back and relaxing on the side of the road for 8 and a half hours, we pulled up some chairs and were just watching the road rage. I have awesome pictures of her swinging on the cable. What made us mad was when the police told us that she tried the same thing earlier in the morning and they released her!! What is that all about?

  I chewed my nails and gulped down three beers for breakfast. Suicide usually left me unfazed, but the fact that it was national news made it more tangible and less like an episode in a parallel universe. It was as if my secret life, inescapable, had collided headfirst with the normalcy of a European vacation for college girls. I could no longer pretend that I had not been born of heart-quaking generational tragedy.

  The Woo-Woo’s Chosen did not have mental breakdowns in public, especially on public holidays. This was certainly new. We always went quietly back to our houses, put on our frumpy pastel housecoats, and then went hopelessly, incurably insane. As if by hiding our sickness, slamming it away, we could pretend that it did not exist outside of our family’s private sphere and Hongcouver’s closed-door Chinese community. What was once secret to me seemed suddenly explosive: shameful and filthy. I shuddered with this knowledge. I could not bear to think of Beautiful One, who I felt symbolized my very sanity, alone and crazed and desperate, preparing for a final jump.

  I shut off my laptop while C.C., in last night’s clubbing clothes, rose from the mtarba, the living room’s Moroccan silk couch, and asked me what the hell was wrong.

  “I don’t talk about myself with strangers,” I snapped at my only friend, who had taken a chance on me, invited me on vacation, painstakingly civilized me in girlhood matters, like personal hygiene and socially correct politeness. Understandably, she looked quite taken aback.

  Because C.C. insisted that there was no mental illness in her family, I had latched onto her like a confused tick. I wore her hand-me-downs and adopted her opinions, her pragmatic rich-person politics, in the hope of appearing “normal.” I was determined to become C.C., if not a lesser, more invisible version, by the end of my European escape. In my mind then, any person who wasn’t afraid of ghosts and travelled beyond the local shopping mall was sane. But communicating with my family had suddenly turned me into my father. Like him, I became unflinchingly nasty when overwhelmed and burdened by family drama. Surrounded by Moroccan luxury in a Parisian flat, I suddenly resented C.C. for her seemingly perfect life.

  “Why the hell are you asking me this question for?” I snarled in humiliation. “Guess you have nothing else to think about.”

  Ignoring C.C.’s attempts to talk to me, I escaped to the fancy outdoor café downstairs, where I ate six crepes, two hot fudge sundaes in flimsy champagne flutes, and three girlishly pink gelatos, and sampled every stifled fruit pastry, meringue tart, and slice of caramelized praline pie that was offered (at least fifteen or sixteen delicacies in one piggish sitting). C.C. had followed me to the café, but I ignored her. I ate obsessively, because I couldn’t stop, and I wasn’t the one who was paying.

  But everything that pooled and clamped onto my tongue tasted wrong and disloyal. No matter how much I ate, I did not feel like myself, and there was a queasiness, which could only be caused by the Woo-Woo and made me feel as if I were waiting to skydive off a crashing mini plane with no parachute.

  I knew that Beautiful One was the distraught woman on the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge, the Canada Day bridge jumper, and I didn’t know if she was dead. And here I had genuinely thought that I could delay the Woo-Woo by hiding out in a delusional fairy tale, pretending to be a carefree McPrincess who shopped, dined in sit-down restaurants, and had a rich friend. Someone who did not have to worry about a family member who may have died a nine-hour time difference away. Someone who did not have to worry about becoming insane. For I had been retreating into a fluorescent fantasy where I would not have to deal with the lunacy and acid-inducing heartbreak that was my family.

  “Lindsay?” C.C. asked, looking worried, as she picked at her sludgy gelato.

  And I was immediately ashamed that I told her to fuck off. This was right before I puked on the café’s sidewalk, sick splashing over our pedicured feet.

  “Have a great life,” I told her sadly, knowing that I could not pretend to be her anymore. “Sorry you wasted time and money on me.”

  Finally, back home on the mountain three days later, my father asked me if I had absorbed the entire European continent’s annual supply of butter.

  “Your face will make Buddha jealous,” he said, forgetting that he was supposed to be nice to me because I was now his second-favourite kid, right after the dog. “I just knew we should have sent you reminder not to eat every day. Only eat every second day. But I see you have no fucking control.”

  “Shut up,” I said, angry and fed up. All I wanted was a dozen supersized cheeseburgers from McDonald’s, which I had truly missed in Europe. C.C. had never taken me to the fast-food chain, choosing four-star restaurants and touristy cafés instead. I did not want another passive-aggressive fight with my father. “If you want to complain about me, you’re supposed to address them to the dog.”

  “But you just make Daddy so mad,” he said, sighing. “You always do something so retarded that I cannot understand.”

  “How’s Beautiful One?” I asked, grateful to change the subject. It was convenient for me that someone in our extended family was insane—it put my father in a very good mood.

  “That fucker,” my mother said.

  Then she went to bed with an unrefrigerated six-pack of beer, and no one could get her to do anything else. So shocked was my mother at the bridge incident, because she could not fathom losing her favourite sister, that she was acting distant and more brittle than usual. When I arrived home from Paris, it seemed like she would be spending the next few days with the bedroom door closed.

  “Is Mom, like, really, really upset?” I said, peering around the kitchen, which was dirtier than usual and stacked with old newspapers and last week’s garbage.

  “How the fuck should I know?” my father said, shrugging. “All she do is sleeping and screaming on the phone for twenty-four hours.”

  Neither my father nor I understood how to properly decipher emotions. And my mother’s scr
eaming was not foreign behaviour.

  “But I have to tell you that it serve Beautiful One right.” And my father narrated, gleefully, what he knew. Early on Canada Day, she had gone missing. The entire family had split up into small search parties around ten a.m., eager to scour Burnaby’s Central Park in case she had been viciously murdered on one of her nocturnal jogs. While I was becoming “a beast” (obese) in Europe, he explained, she had taken to late-night runs in the park every night for hours and hours. Sometimes, she stayed out all night and came home, ecstatic and transformed, at seven or eight in the morning.

  My father said that the family had brought heavy-duty garbage bags in case they found her chopped up parts—they all felt it was better to be prepared. But then, when an apologetic police officer phoned in the late afternoon, they had all been relieved and ordered the largest, most economical Domino’s pizza party combo to watch the news like everyone else in Hongcouver. You had to admit, the family said, it was exciting that there was a close relative on the local news. One rich uncle, who felt constantly bored by suburban life, had found this incident to be the most fun that he had all year.

  Beautiful One, crazed and blubbering histrionic tears, obviously beyond family intervention, was now locked up in the psychiatric ward at Burnaby Hospital. Newspapers and radio talk shows had reported rabidly on BC’s best bridge jumper.

  “It serve your auntie right,” my father repeated cheerfully, and then went to watch TV, like nothing had happened. I think he felt validated that, for once, my mother’s family had to acknowledge their illness, and being generally insensitive, he took the opportunity to gloat openly about Beautiful One’s downfall.