Never Good Enough — Surviving and Healing from A Narcissistic Mother
The first thing that hits me is the smell. The heady aroma of coconut milk, Thai red chilis, and curry spices so thick that it makes the air feel heavy and sluggish, bringing to mind the Chinese New Year and various festive occasions.
Barring annual celebrations, Ma rarely made her famous chicken curry because it was a sweaty, sneezy, 4-hour affair, constantly watching and stirring the pot of curry lest it burns. But today is special because it’s the first time I brought Jay home to meet them.
Despite the threat of a sneezing fit, I had to venture into the kitchen and sneak a peek at the vat of hell. Ma stands tall on her stool, conducting her symphony of curry with her trusty ladle. Pa stands beside her at the sink, shirt off, making light work of the potatoes with his deft hands and slick knife skills, a trance-like efficiency from decades as a chef. His booming voice ricochets off the walls, complaining about Fatty Weng’s increasing the price of potatoes again:
“No wonder he’s fat; he’s skimming it off folks like us over some potatoes! And the price of fish too. Greedy bastard.” Pa says with a frown, shakes his head, and dives back into peeling, the chunky potato in his hand whittled down by the wrath of his sharp knife. The scowl on Ma’s face darkens at that costly reminder as she goes off on a rant at Weng’s supposed greed, then her sharp, shrill comment slices through the kitchen’s heat: “How is he still alive given how fat he is? No wonder he’s still a bachelor; even those mail-order brides in Vietnam don’t want him.”
Pa and I exchanged a worried look, for we knew the signs of her growing anger. A legitimate complaint. Then, personal attacks. And the final step: her roving, displeased, eye catching something Pa or I did, which she disapproved of. Decades of survival tactics taught us to shut up and try to melt into the background so seamlessly that she doesn’t even notice you are there.
The kitchen falls silent except for the sounds of chopping, stirring, and Ma’s increasingly loud, exasperated sighs. Pa was deathly focused on his potatoes, me trying to minimize the sounds of clinking plates as I brought the china out. That all too familiar feeling of what I now know to be anxiety emerges, its tentacles gripping and tightening around my chest while my throat constricts, my breath shallow.
As chief cook for the day, ma gets the honor of using the only fan in the kitchen, but the fan seems woefully inadequate against the might and wrath of her curry. Even in her breezy garb — a sleeveless floral blouse and black Bermuda shorts, it was helpless against the heat, the hairs at the nape of her neck plastered against her skin, slick and wet with sweat, a permanent frown plastered on her face as she stirs. Pa notices her discomfort and motions for me to switch the fan to its highest setting, but it seems to do little good in the enveloping heat of the kitchen. The fiery dish appears to have the same effect on her mood, and I know instinctively that now is the time to back out of the kitchen. Quickly. But my radar must have been rusty because she pounces on me in a flash.
“Stop standing there and do something useful, like getting the table ready!” Ma barks, her jowl jiggling from the exertion. Not satisfied with this admonishment, she yells in Hainanese, the language she uses whenever she wants to hide her ugly thoughts from guests:
“You can’t even peel a potato well. God knows you are useless. Only a fool of a man will marry you. I wonder what Jay sees in you.”
Pa keeps his head down and purses his mouth shut, lest ma’s wrath turns on him. I look at him, but my usual bulldozer of a father avoids eye contact — it’s every man for himself when ma is in one of her moods. A thousand retorts go through my mind, my chest feeling tight and hot from years of keeping my mouth shut. It’s not worth it, let it pass, it’s not worth it, let it pass, I repeat to myself, as my mind recalls an all too familiar memory. An angry reply to my mother, an hour-long beating with her trusty rattan cane, the red welts on my skin a mark of her anger transferred and dissipated with each whoosh of the cane.
She can’t beat me now, but the mark remains.
From the corner of my eye, safe in the confines of the dining room, I spy Ma giving Pa a spoonful of curry to taste. “It needs a bit more turmeric, maybe some cumin,” Pa declares as he shuffles off to the fridge for more ingredients. Ma takes a sip from the piping hot spoon and concurs, their harmonious balance built on decades of a seasoned, delicate dance in the kitchen. He dusts the vat with a sprinkle of turmeric while Ma stirs, the two of them working in symphony. Sip, dust, stir. Sip, dust, stir. Their backs to me, he wraps his left arm around ma’s waist and gives it a tender squeeze, and she smiles.
As I observed through the crack of the kitchen sliding door, I felt like the interloper in their love story. As Ma has said multiple times, giving birth to char siu (Chinese BBQ pork) is better than giving birth to me. At least char siu can be eaten. I have often wondered why they chose to have me if she hated me so much. I was certainly not the boy they hoped for, but I had the personality and audaciousness of a boy, which was unbecoming of a girl. As a girl, I was supposed to be obedient, an extension of my parents rather than an individual with thoughts and needs. I chafed and fought these so-called rules and, in return, had to pay the price for being myself.
Grandma’s method of whipping ma into submission with a metal spoke, the rivulets of blood a soothing salve for grandma’s anger, became her tool of discipline as well. But since beating a child to shreds was something she never wanted me to experience because of the pain it caused her, she replaced it with a mixture of ugly verbal tirades and her rattan cane; the relief washed over her face like an ice-cold shower after a scorching hot day with each stroke of the cane. Her constant invectives and the angry welts on my skin throughout my childhood produced a wall of silence as my only shield of protection, my trauma masquerading as cold fury until therapy decades later unraveled it all.
Jay looks at me with concern in his eyes. He may not know what she’s saying, but he senses my inner turmoil and distress whenever I am home. He slips his big, warm hand into mine and squeezes it, and I know I am safe. And loved.
