Fresh Off the Boat Read online

  So she’s not the cutest guy at Montclair Academy, but at least she’s someone who knows I’m alive.

  Isobel wanted to know everything about taking a class over at the boys’ school. There really wasn’t a lot to tell. I explained that I never saw anyone other than the guys who were in our class, and with the exception of Claude they were all unexceptional (read: not cute), to her great disappointment.

  “How’s that boy?” Isobel asked. She called Claude “that boy who broke my mirror” but had recently shortened it to simply “that boy.”

  “Flunking.”

  “Is an idiot?”

  “Isobel, just because he isn’t good in math doesn’t mean he’s stupid,” I protested, feeling a little insulted. Isobel was in advanced trigonometry. She was in the accelerated honors math/science program. Her father was a member of the Engineering Department at Stanford.

  “Geometry is trop facile. It’s just logic and theorem.”

  She handed me a DVD she’d burned on her iMac of an underground cult alternate ending of the first Spider-Man movie some Internet freak spliced together that was only available online. “This one is buggin’. Tobey’s got his shirt off in all the added scenes!”

  “Awesome!” I said, grateful for the present.

  “Come shopping on Polk Street?” she asked, hopping on her Vespa. “There’s new stuff at Trash and Vaudeville.”

  “Can’t,” I said. “I have to help my mom at the cafeteria.” School let out at three, and just that morning my parents broke the news that from now on I was expected to help cover the six o’clock dinner rush. We had started to close a little later on weeknights to take advantage of the mall food court closing at five.

  “Tant pis. Next time.” She kissed me on both cheeks, something I was still getting used to, and drove off down the hill, waving. “A bientôt, chérie!”

  “Au revoir!” I chéried back, blowing multiple kisses to the wind.

  “Those two are such freaks,” I heard Georgia say behind my back. I refused to turn around, because I didn’t want her to know I had heard, and I didn’t want to hear Whitney agree with her. I was too embarrassed because I believed they were right.

  WWW.WELOVECLAUDECALIGARI.COM

  Heads up people! Sighted at Rock and Bowl on Wednesday night, C.C. himself with a big group. Was that Stacey Bennett with another hickey? Did Tuna and Trish hook up over malted milk shakes? Who cares? Is this site called welovetuna.com? Nooo. We hear C.C. scored a big 240! Not just a great lacrosse forward but the guy to beat on the lanes, too! Our sources tell us he has a new girlfriend, as yet undisclosed. Maybe it’s one of the Gros girls in his geometry class? Has Monty gone coed? Hell, no! But a few lucky gals are being shipped over for math class. Talk about higher education! So keep your eyes peeled, chiquitas! And check out the latest pics from the Montclair vs. Warrington game! Hubba-hubba, hottie!

  7

  The Reality of Another Weekend at Home

  ON THE RIGHT-HAND TV screen, a blond, overweight woman in a tight-fitting bustier was arguing with her interior designer, a hyperkinetic gay man who was insisting she allow him to sew silk-screened portraits of her on her couch pillows; on the center screen, former celebrities were bickering over who had eaten the last of the yogurt in the fridge; and on the left screen, a real-estate mogul with a really bad comb-over was chewing out a group of sullen aspiring MBAs.

  Our living room was home to three television monitors and VCRs—the better to tape reality shows with. As part of Dad’s import-export business, he exported VCR tapes of the latest American reality shows to Filipino video stores. Filipinos can’t get enough of the reality craze, and since local stations were so behind they were broadcasting only the second season of Survivor there was a thriving black market for newer, smuggled American reality-television shows. I know, because I used to be a rabid consumer of the same. The video store at the megamall would always call the minute the latest episode of The Bachelor or American Idol arrived from the airport.

  I never thought that I would be on the other end of the supply chain. My cousin Norbert owned one of the biggest video store chains in Manila, and Dad knew a friend who knew a friend who was a pilot on Philippine Airlines. Captain Punsalang could easily smuggle the tapes into the country, and a thriving cottage industry was born in our living room. I was the best taper in the family, meaning I could watch three different shows at once and expertly pause the VCRs when the commercials came on to create a seamless product. In fact, I was too good. We got a request from Norbert saying that his customers actually wanted us to keep the commercials in. It turned out people were just as fascinated by the latest advertising campaigns as by the shows themselves. Filipinos had just discovered rotisserie barbecues.

  One thing about Filipinos—we love trends. When the ballroom-dancing craze swept the nation, everyone from eighty-year-old grandmothers to second-graders learned how to foxtrot, cha-cha, and tango. My friend Con-con’s mother left her dad for her twenty-two-year-old ballroom dancing teacher. When pashminas were in vogue, we swathed ourselves in those woolly wraps in every color—regardless of the outside temperature. You would walk around the city on a typically hot and humid day, and you’d see all the women from Forbes Park and Dasmariñas wearing pashminas and fanning themselves silly.

  I taped reality shows almost every night. From the Real World to Fear Factor, I watched them all. I had my favorites—the new show where twenty grossly overweight people tried to lose weight and were kicked out if they were caught eating chocolate cake was a stunner, and the one where international mail-order brides competed for old geezers with wrinkles and liver spots was another (my money was on the Russian to go all the way and win the big prize: marriage and citizenship to a seventy-year-old who owned an aboveground pool company).

  Mom and Dad had no stomach for these shows. They liked “quality” programming, like 60 Minutes, 20/20, and Primetime Live. Anything hosted by Diane Sawyer was fine by them—even if it was sensationalist dreck like yet another special on Princess Di (“Diana’s Secret Heartache Finally Revealed!”).

  The other month when Diane Sawyer reported on the rash of “identity thefts,” Dad was convinced he was a victim of the crime when Blockbuster video called to ask him about a tape he had returned. The store had called because Mr. Arambullo had returned a tape containing sitcoms rather than Bruce Almighty. “Identity theft! Identity theft!” Dad had yelled. “I never borrowed Bruce Almighty! Someone’s using my card!”

  “They must be some pretty honest thieves, Dad,” I pointed out, “since they actually tried to return the movie. And paid for it.” Still, Dad couldn’t be talked out of it. He even nailed our mailbox shut in accordance with Diane Sawyer’s advice. So now we had to pick up our mail from underneath our doormat.

  Brittany was too young to work the VCR controls, so it was left up to me to make sure we had enough reel in the tapes, that they were labeled correctly, and then packed up in the brown cardboard boxes for Captain Punsalang to take on his next trip home.

  The real-estate mogul fired the toothy blond stripper turned “marketing manager.” Damn! There went five bucks to Isobel.

  “Tama na, time for dinner,” Dad said, patting my shoulder. I waited until the closing credits rolled and joined my family at the table.

  We rarely ate in restaurants anymore. McDonald’s was a treat reserved for Sundays after church. Our greatest ambition in life was to eat at Outback Steakhouse. On the very, very rare occasions we did go out to eat in a real restaurant (on birthdays, holidays, or their anniversary) to Sizzler, Chili’s, or Applebee’s, Mom would pick at her food, turn up her nose, and say, “Ugh. I can make this better at home,” almost as if she were insulted. She was usually right, but I was so happy to be filling my plate with thirty shrimp from Red Lobster that I didn’t care. Sometimes I would even argue with her. “No, you can’t! You put sugar in the spaghetti, Mom! They don’t do that at the Olive Garden!”

  Dad was setting the table, so I helped him lay
out the place mats, napkins, silverware, plates, salad bowls, and water glasses. Mom brought out a garlicky-smelling vegetable pinakbet full of okra and bitter melon; a platter of dark, smoky strips of beef tapa, fluffy white rice, a very salty fish sauce called patis; and the precious bagoong, which we were happy to find at an Asian market. Dinner was by far the highlight of each day, even if it was far from how it used to be. In Manila, we had a majestic round table in the formal dining room that could seat twelve people. Uniformed maids stood behind our chairs and fanned us with banana leaves. In the middle of our table here was a lazy Susan Mom had bought in Chinatown. I liked to spin it past Brittany and pretend she would never get anything to eat, just to make her cry.

  “How was school today?” Mom asked, as she layered my plate with vegetables, meat, and rice.

  “Okay,” I mumbled. “I got an A on my English essay.”

  Whenever my parents asked about school, I told them about my teachers. The sad thing about my life was that I’ve realized the only reason school is in any way tolerable is because of my teachers. Unlike my classmates, who avoid me—except for Isobel, who isn’t too popular herself—all the teachers like me. But then, what’s not to like? I’m practically the cliché of the perfect student—quiet, diligent, respectful. They all marvel over my “beautiful” handwriting. In Manila, each convent school teaches its students a signature style of calligraphy. “This is a work of art,” Mrs. Malloney, our art history teacher said, when I first handed in a written test. I was proud of it until I saw Whitney’s blotted notebook. Everything was written in scrawled chicken-scratch-like block letters, like a five-year-old’s.

  “Another A? That’s great. Congratulations!” Mom said, beaming at me.

  “Um, Mom? Do you think I could get that new jacket we saw at the mall the other day?” I asked, pleading silently with my eyes, even though I knew the answer already. But the weather was starting to get really cold, and I was desperate to lose the 49ers jacket.

  “What jacket?” Dad asked.

  “It’s nothing.” I shrugged. “Just a black jacket.” A plain black wool jacket that would render me invisible, that is, one that would make me look like everyone else at school, at least on the outside. I was so tired of wearing the puffy football jacket inside out.

  “What’s wrong with that violet trench coat we had made?” Mom asked. “You never wear it anymore.”

  “How much is this new coat?” Dad said.

  I hated this part. “Not too bad. Not more than a hundred dollars. It’s, like, seventy-five.”

  Dad looked down at his plate. Mom said nothing.

  “Please? Please?”

  “Iha, you know we would love to be able to say yes, but there’s just no money for things like that anymore.” Mom sighed.

  “Maybe next year?” Dad asked, smiling hopefully.

  “Okay,” I mumbled. I shouldn’t even have tried. “I never get anything anymore,” I muttered to myself.

  Brittany shot me a sympathetic look from across the table. She was only five years old, but she already knew the deal.

  After the air cleared a little from the heaviness of my disappointment, Mom and Dad talked about how the cafeteria was doing. Mom told us about how the old biddies in Housewares had begun to order the more expensive daily specials instead of their usual tuna salad half sandwiches, and Dad regaled us with funny stories about the Indian guys next door to his office who owned a limousine business and chauffeured visiting celebrities around town, like the Rock, Carmen Electra, and Carrot Top.

  Mom and Dad both worried about our other relatives who were also immigrating. One of my uncles, a cardiologist in Manila, was planning to scheme for an American green card by posing as a migrant farmworker, since a recent U.S. government act had granted field-workers full asylum. Another cousin had a Canadian resident visa but lived and worked illegally in Detroit as a mechanic since his job wasn’t part of NAFTA.

  Hearing them talk like this, it always seemed to me that everyone in Manila was desperate to leave. Some of our relatives were even moving to Australia, since it had an easier immigration process than the States. Canada was also a popular destination because once you were approved, you were eligible for citizenship in three short years. But my parents were optimists, dreamers, idealists. They wanted the big one—the jackpot: America. They didn’t want to settle for anything less. My cousins in Toronto swore up and down that their adopted land was tops. “We have digital cable, Starbucks, and the original Club Monaco. Michael J. Fox, Peter Jennings, and Mike Myers are all Canadian. Canada—it’s just as good!” But we didn’t believe them.

  At the end of the meal, while Mom served fried bananas with sugar and poured coffee, Dad opened up discussion on his favorite topic. Also known as “WHAT THE ARAMBULLO FAMILY WOULD DO IF WE EVER WON THE LOTTERY.” Dad loved to fantasize about what our life would be like if we ever hit lotto (he pronounced it “ladda” in an attempt at an American accent). He continued to buy a lottery ticket every day and never failed to check the numbers in the newspapers in the mornings. If the jackpot was over fifty million dollars, he upped his ante to five.

  “I think I’ll buy a car. A Denali. What do you think, Mom? Or should we get a Lexus again? Or maybe a Beamer this time?”

  He sipped his coffee and a faraway look of happiness settled in his eyes. “What about you, girls? What would you do, Brit?”

  “I would go to Disneyland every day!” Brittany chirped. It was her dream to visit the furry-costumed oversize mice and the shellacked princesses. Every Halloween since she was two years old, my little sister has dressed up as a Disney movie princess, from Cinderella to Belle to Mulan. Nothing made her happier than wearing a tiara. I predicted nothing but heartache in her teenage years.

  Whenever my family had this conversation, I always volunteered the same intense, feverish wish. If we ever won the lottery, I would drop out of school. If we ever won the lottery, I would never go back to Grosvernor ever again. I could do whatever I wanted. We would be millionaires, so I wouldn’t even need an education.

  Mom never participated in these discussions. She didn’t approve. I had a feeling she thought they were silly.

  “What would you do, Mom?” Brittany and I asked, badgering her like we always did to tell us her heart’s desire. “Tell us what you would do if we won lotto!”

  “Ah, who knows? Why think of it? We’ll never win.”

  “Don’t say that!” the three of us chorused, scandalized. Dad looked hurt. It was pure blasphemy. Brittany and I always believed everything our father told us. He would make it come true, he would. Dad would find a way. Someday we’d be rich again, and live happily ever after. Dad would buy his Lexus, Brittany would ride It’s a Small World till she puked, I would be excused from having to attend high school, and Mom—Mom would get to do whatever it was she never told us she wanted to do.

  The next evening I was still dreaming of my new life as an Olsen twin as I popped in the tapes for the night’s batch of reality TV programming. How jealous everyone would be of my new Miss Sixty jeans, Tommy Hilfiger tops, and Puma sneakers. Claude would finally ask me out. I would get a cuter handbag than Trish’s. And I’d drive a Mini when I was sixteen, a jaunty red one, like the one Alexandra Arleghetti, the president of the junior class, drove.

  “V, phone for you,” Mom called from the kitchen, where she was chopping pork back for the longanisas. To make a little more money on the side, Mom sold her homemade pork sausages to the few Filipino friends she had made at church. Her longanisas were in great demand. They were salty and sweet, and the perfect accompaniment to a “healthy” Filipino breakfast. Heart attack on a plate, Dad called it.

  “For me?” I asked. It must be a mistake. Nobody ever called me at home. Peaches did once, and we talked long-distance for hours. But it was so expensive that she was grounded for two months afterward. I never even used my cell phone. What was the point? No one ever needed to speak to me so bad. The only people who called me on it were my parents
, to find out what time I was getting to the cafeteria from school.

  I quickly checked the TVs and ran to the kitchen. Mom sat in front of a large, frozen slab of pork fat, kneading and warming it up so she could chop it into small pieces. It was hard work, and her hands alternately froze from the cold or turned red from the effort of running a knife through the thick skin. The pork fat felt like dry ice to the touch—so cold it burned. It caused blisters and frostbite. After chopping, she added it into a huge plastic basin of ground meat. It was so punishingly hard to mix that only Dad was strong enough to do it. Mom and I took turns mixing at first, but we didn’t have the strength. Afterward, Mom pushed the combination into a meat grinder and stuffed it into sausage casings. Dad had done a day’s worth of market research by visiting all the Filipino supermarkets to come up with the right price: $5 a tray. Which worked out to a profit of about fifty-five cents for each package.

  I gave Mom a quick squeeze on her shoulder and picked up the phone dangling from the hook. “Hello?”

  “Bonsoir!” rang the cheery voice of Isobel.

  “Hey, what’s up?” I said, trying to sound casual as I ran back to the living room with the extralong cord. Isobel and I always hung out at school, but she spent every weekend with her French friends sneaking out to swanky North Beach bars and martini lounges because they all had fake IDs. Veronique Delay and Leslie Foucault, who Isobel knew in Paris, were enrolled at the Lycée Français. Isobel didn’t go there because her parents thought the French school was too insular, plus, it didn’t have as extensive a math program as Gros.

  “Rien. Leslie and Veronique didn’t want to go clubbing,” she explained.

  “Too bad,” I sympathized. But I was happy to merit her attention on a Saturday night for once.

  “I’m ennui. What are you doing?”

  “Taping reality shows.” I explained about Dad’s business. I wasn’t shy about telling Isobel the truth about my life. She told me her family lived in ritzy St. Francis Woods, but she said their house was the smallest one there and filled with old, dusty, overstuffed furniture.