Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua [67]
“Oh, no, Caren, I wouldn’t wish myself on anyone,” I said, shaking my head. “There’s been a lot of yelling and screaming in this house. I didn’t even think Lulu was going to play today. To tell you the truth, it’s been traumatic.”
“But you’ve given your girls so much,” Caren persisted. “A sense of their own abilities, of the value of excellence. That’s something they’ll have all their lives.”
“Maybe,” I said dubiously. “I’m just not so sure anymore.”
It was a great party, and everyone had fun. A big highlight was that Katrin and her family attended. In the five months since her release from the hospital, Katrin had slowly regained strength, although her immune system was still weak, and I panicked every time someone coughed. Katrin looked thin but pretty and almost triumphant carrying Ella.
That night, after all the guests had gone and we’d cleaned up as much as we could, I lay in bed wondering if Lulu might come and hug me the way she did after “The Little White Donkey.” It had been a long time. But she didn’t come, and I went to her bedroom instead.
“Aren’t you glad I made you play the ‘Hebrew Melody’?” I asked her.
Lulu seemed happy, but not particularly warm toward me. “Yes, Mommy,” she said. “You can take the credit.”
“Okay, I will,” I said, trying to laugh. Then I told her that I was proud of her and that she’d been brilliant. Lulu smiled and was gracious. But she seemed distracted, almost impatient for me to leave, and something in her eyes told me that my days were numbered.
31
Red Square
Two days after Lulu’s Bat Mitzvah, we left for Russia. It was a vacation I’d dreamed of for a long time. My parents had raved about St. Petersburg when I was a girl, and Jed and I wanted to take the girls somewhere we’d never visited ourselves.
We needed a vacation. Katrin had just passed through the worst danger zone of acute graft-versus-host disease. We’d basically gone ten months without a day’s break. Our first stop was Moscow. Jed had found us a convenient hotel right in the center of the city. After a short rest, we headed out for our first taste of Russia.
I tried to be goofy and easygoing, the mood my girls most like me in, refraining as best I could from making my usual critical remarks about what they were wearing or how many times they said “like.” But there was something ill-fated about that day. It took us more than an hour standing in two different lines to change money at a place that called itself a bank, and after that the museum we wanted to visit was closed.
We decided to go to Red Square, which was within walking distance of our hotel. The sheer size of the square was overwhelming. Three football fields could have fit between the gate we entered and the onion-domed St. Basil’s Cathedral at the other end. This is not a chic or charming square like the ones in Italy, I thought to myself. It’s a square designed to intimidate, and I envisioned firing squads and battalions of Stalinist guards.
Lulu and Sophia kept sniping at each other, which irritated me. Actually, what really irritated me was that they were all grown up—teenagers my size (in Sophia’s case, three inches taller), instead of cute little girls. “It goes so fast,” older friends had always said wistfully. “Before you know it, your children will be grown and gone, and you’ll be old even though you feel just like the same person you were when you were young.” I never believed my friends when they said that, because it seemed to me they were old. By squeezing out so much from every moment of every day, perhaps I imagined that I was buying myself more time. As a purely mathematical fact, people who sleep less live more.
“That’s Lenin’s Tomb behind the long white wall,” Jed told the girls, pointing. “His body is embalmed and on display. We can go see it tomorrow.” Jed then gave the girls a short tutorial on Russian history and cold war politics.
After roaming around for a bit—we encountered surprisingly few Americans,