Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua [59]
Thirty-five years later, Katrin and I were still close. The two of us were the most alike of the four sisters, at least on the surface. She and I both had two Harvard degrees (actually, she had three, because of her M.D./Ph.D.), we both married Jewish men, we both went into academics like our father, and we both had two children.
A few months before Lulu chopped off her hair, I got a call from Katrin, who taught and ran a lab out at Stanford. It was the worst call I have ever received in my life.
She was sobbing. She told me that she had been diagnosed with a rare, almost certainly fatal leukemia.
Impossible, I thought confusedly. Leukemia striking my family—my lucky family—for a second time?
But it was true. Katrin had been feeling exhausted, nauseated, and short of breath for several months. When she finally saw a doctor, the results of the blood tests were unmistakable. In a cruel coincidence, the leukemia she had was caused by the very kind of cell mutation she was studying in her lab.
“I’m probably not going to live very long,” she said, crying. “What’s going to happen to Jake? And Ella won’t even know me.” Katrin’s son was ten, her daughter barely one. “You have to make sure she knows who I was.You have to promise me, Amy. I better get some pictures—” And she broke off.
I was in shock. I just couldn’t believe it. An image of Katrin at ten flashed into my head, and it was impossible to put that together with the word leukemia. How could this be happening to Katrin—Katrin? And my parents! How could they take this—it would kill them.
“Exactly what did the doctors say, Katrin?” I heard myself asking in a strangely confident voice. I had snapped into my big-sister, can-do, invulnerable mode.
But Katrin didn’t answer. She said she had to get off the phone and would call me again.
Ten minutes later, I got an e-mail from her. It said: “Amy, it’s really really bad. Sorry! I’ll need chemotherapy then bone marrow transplant if possible, then more chemo, and low chance of survival.”
Being a scientist, she of course was right.
26
Rebellion, Part 2
I took Lulu to a salon the day after she cut her hair. We didn’t speak much in the car. I was tense and had a lot on my mind.
“What happened?” the hairdresser asked.
“She cut it,” I explained. I had nothing to hide. “Is there anything you can do to make it look better while it grows out?”
“Wow—you did a real job on yourself, honey,” the woman said to Lulu, eyeing her curiously. “What made you do this?”
“Oh, it was an act of adolescent self-destruction aimed primarily at my mother,” I thought Lulu might say. She certainly had the vocabulary and the psychological self-awareness to do so.
But instead, Lulu said in a pleasant voice, “I was trying to layer it. But I really messed up.”
Later, back home, I said, “Lulu, you know that Mommy loves you, and everything I do, I do for you, for your future.”
My own voice sounded artificial to me, and Lulu must have thought so too, because her response was, “That’s great,” in a flat, apathetic tone.
Jed’s fiftieth birthday came up. I organized a huge surprise party, inviting old friends from his childhood and every part of his life. I asked everyone to bring a funny story about Jed. Weeks in advance, I asked Sophia and Lulu each to write her own toast.
“It can’t just be tossed off,” I ordered. “It has to be meaningful. And it can’t be clichéd.”
Sophia got right on it. As usual, she didn’t consult me or ask my advice on a single word. By contrast, Lulu said, “I don’t want to give a toast.”
“You have to give a toast,” I replied.
“No one my age gives toasts,” Lulu said.
“That’s because they’re from bad families,” I retorted.
“Do you know how crazy you sound?” Lulu asked. “They’re not from ‘bad’ families. What’s a ‘bad’ family?”
“Lulu, you are so ungrateful. When I was your age, I worked nonstop. I built a treehouse for my sisters because my father asked me to. I obeyed everything he said, and that’s why I know how to use a chainsaw.