Pangs of Love

Pangs of Love
by David Wong Louie

Each night, like most Americans, my mother watches hours of TV. She loves Lucy and Carol Burnett, then switches to cable for the Chinese channel, but always concludes the broadcast day with the local news and Johnny Carson. She doesn't understand what Johnny says, but when the studio audience laughs, she laughs too, as if invisible wires run between her and the set.

My mother has lived in this country for forty years and, through what must be a monumental act of will, has managed not to learn English. This does no one any good, though I suppose when it comes to TV her linguistic shortcomings can't be anything but a positive evolutionary adaptation; dumb to the prattle that fills the airwaves, maybe her brain will wither proportionately less than the average American's.

I am thirty-five years old, and for the past nine months have lived with my mother in a federally subsidized highrise in the lower reaches of Chinatown. After my father died, my siblings convened a secret meeting during which they unanimously elected me our mother's new apartment mate. They moved her things from Long Island, carpeted her floors, bought prints for the walls, imported me for company, then returned to their lives. I work for a midsize corporation that manufactures synthetic flavors and fragrances. We are the soul of hundreds of household products: the tobacco taste in low-tar cigarettes, the pine forests in aerosol cans, the minty pizzazz of toothpastes. We have sprays that simulate the smell of new cars; in fact, we have honed the olfactory art to a level of sophistication that enables us to distinguish between makes and models. Our mission is to make the chemical world, an otherwise noxious, foul-tasting, polysyllabic ocean of consumer dread, a cozier place for the deserving noses and tastebuds of America.

My mother's in her pajamas, her hair in a net that seems to scar her forehead. I'm sitting up with her, putting in time. I flip through the day's paper, Johnny in the background carrying on a three-way with Ed and Doc, when my mother's laugh starts revving like a siren. I shoot her a look -- fat-lipped, pellet-eyed -- that says, What business do you have laughing, Mrs. Pang? My mother's a sweet, blockish woman whom people generally like. She's chatty with her friends in her loud Cantonese voice and keeps her cabinets and refrigerator jammed tight with food, turning her kitchen into a mini grocery store -- she's prepared for a long famine or a state of siege. Now, feeling the stab of my glare, she holds in her laughter, hand over mouth schoolgirl-style, hiding those gold caps that liven up her smiles, eyes moist and shifty dancing.

I roll my eyes the way Johnny does and return to the paper. The world's going through its usual contortions: bigger wars, emptier stomachs, more roofless lives; so many unhappy, complicated acres. As a responsible citizen of the planet, I slip into my doom swoon, a mild but satisfying funk over the state of the world. But then she starts again. Fist on cheek blocking my view of her gold mine. Her round shoulders quivering with joy. I click my tongue to let her know she has spoiled my dark mood. She turns toward me, sees the sour expression hanging on my face like dough, points at the screen where Johnny's in a turban the size of a prize pumpkin, then waves me off, swatting at flies. Ed's "ho-ho-ho" erupts from the box, the siren in her throat winds up, and all I see is the dark cave of her mouth.

What I need is a spray that smells of mankind's worst fears, something on the order of canned Hiroshima, a mist of organic putrefaction, that I'll spritz whenever the audience laughs. That'll teach her.

I stumble over my own meanness. Some son I am. What does she know about such things anyway? It's fair to say she's as innocent as a child. Her mind isn't cluttered with worries that extend beyond food and family. When she talks about the Japanese raids on her village back home, for instance, it's as a personal matter; the larger geopolitical landscape escapes her. She blinks her weary eyes. She's fighting sleep, hanging on to Johnny for one more guest before turning in. Suddenly, I have the urge to wrap my arms around her solid bulk and protect her, only she'd think I'm crazy, as I would if she did the same to me. "Go to bed," I say. "I'm not tired yet," she says. I cup my hands over my face, my fingers stinking of toilet-tissue lilacs and roses, and think things that should never enter a son's mind: a bomb explodes over the Empire State, forty blocks due north on a straight line from where we are seated, and glass shatters, and she's thrown back, the net on her hair, her pajamas, her beaded slippers on fire, and she hasn't a clue how such a thing can happen in this world. And I imagine I'll never see her again.

I fetch the newspaper, go to the couch where my mother's seated, and splash-land down beside her. I'm all set to translate the headlines, to wake her up to the world, when I stop, my tongue suddenly lead. I don't have the words for this task. Once I went to school, my Chinese vocabulary stopped growing; in conversation with my mother I'm a linguistic dwarf. When I talk Chinese, I'm at best a precocious five-year-old, and what five-year-old chats about the military budget? Still, I'm determined and gather my courage. "What's that?" I ask, pointing at the dim photo on the front page. An Afghan guerrilla, eyes to sky, on the lookout for planes, crouches near the twisted body of a government soldier; in the desolate background there's a tank, busted up in pieces. My mother pulls on the glasses she bought at the drugstore and takes a closer look. "A monkey?" she says. I finger the body. She gives up. "That's a dead person," I say, pulling the paper away. "People are dying everywhere."

"You think I don't know. Your father just died." Her voice is quivering, but combative.

I realize I'm on shaky ground. "This man's killed by another man," I say. I'm supposed to talk about freedom, about self-determination, but with my vocabulary that's a task equal to digging a grave without a shovel. "People are killing people and all you worry about is your next bowl of rice."

"You don't need to eat?" she snaps. "Fine, don't eat. It costs money to put food on the table."

She keeps talking this way, but I tune her out, giving my all to Johnny. That guy from the San Diego Zoo's on, and with him is the fleshy pink offspring of an endangered species of wild boar. It knocks over Johnny's coffee, and Johnny jumps. The audience roars; I laugh too, but it's forced, a forgery; my mother's still sore and just sits there, holding herself in like a bronze Buddha.