“Listen to your aunt and uncle better than you listen to us,” my fake mom said stiffly.
And that’s all they said to me. It was as if a week of disappointment and not-talking about the whole incident had suddenly turned them into robots from a sci-fi movie. At JFK, I was expecting someone to have a moment of true realization: We love our only daughter, Iris, and we just can’t bear to send her away! Instead, there was no goodbye hug or heartfelt apology. They were almost acting as if they were relieved to be sending me far, far away.
This lack of concern at the airport could undoubtedly prove that they are not my real parents. How does my fake dad even know if this is my real uncle??! For all I know, the lawyer making the overseas introductions could have made a horrible mistake and found the wrong person. Isn’t Wang one of the most popular surnames in the United States?
I check my list of Asia’s Richest carefully, then take a photo of it with my iPhone for safekeeping. I feel a gigantic, fizzling rush of adrenaline, like I’m a detective who is on her way to solve an incredibly important personal life mystery.
When the flight attendant comes around with water, I beam at her and hand her my empty soda can and the crumpled-up napkin. My list is safely stored on my iPhone.
Despite being sent a billion miles away from everyone I know, I do want to look my best and make a semi-good impression. For the first time, out of nervousness, I can’t focus on an in-flight movie. I flip open one of the five fashion magazines that I bought at the airport. But I’m too anxious to concentrate on a quiz in Allure about first-date makeup. Who cares about eye shadow when I’m about to become a bazillionaire heiress?!
I also don’t know what my father told my uncle about me.
Already I’m imagining scenarios where they think I’m some horrible, spoiled teenager who is some combination of a McDonald’s cheeseburger and suburban shopping mall.
I love plane rides because it means there’s possibly new adventures and glamorous people waiting when you land. I not-so-secretly love being suspended in air with nothing but movies and magazines and free cookies. It’s also impossible to get work done in these ridiculous cramped seating spaces, so no one expects you to study or read anything serious while flying. I suddenly remember that my mom stuffed a pillow-size GED preparation book into my luggage, but I won’t think about it now.
GEDs aren’t for geniuses who have figured out how to find their birth parents by reading Forbes magazine.
As I fiddle with my earphones, I can’t help but nervously apply my lip gloss and mascara and shimmery blue eyeliner over and over again.
“Why wearing so much makeup?” a voice says.
I flush and turn to a disapproving Chinese lady sitting in the aisle across from me. She’s a bit older than my mom, wearing a gorgeous peacock-print silk scarf. Blushing furiously, I check my makeup in my compact. No one has ever criticized my makeup before! Not even my mom, who always approves, and thinks that unmade-up women are just lazy. What if I shouldn’t arrive in Beijing with a full face of makeup? What would my uncle and aunt and cousin think if I arrived looking like one of the Kardashians?
“Is there something wrong?” I ask hesitantly.
The woman shakes her head sternly at me. “Too young! Too much makeup!” she says again. But she has a full face of powdery white foundation and garish Santa Claus lips, so she shouldn’t be complaining. But maybe teenage girls don’t wear a lot of makeup in Beijing. What if everyone is boring, uncolorful, and plain-faced? I desperately want to fit in.
That’s always been one of my biggest problems.
I have wanted to match others since my first day of kindergarten. I’ve always wanted to be liked. If I’m not included, well-thought-of, and accepted by others, then who am I? What happens if not one single person likes me in Beijing? Will I simply disappear?
Nervously I excuse myself to go to the bathroom.
Rummaging into my purse for my makeup-remover wipes, I suddenly realize that I’ve forgotten to pack them. I splash cold water on my face, but mascara leaks all around my eyelids, leaving splotchy streaks. Horrified, I continue to stare at myself in the mirror. Time freezes, like someone has pressed pause on an especially terrifying horror movie. I don’t know how long. I don’t recognize the girl staring back at me. I’m paralyzed by her anguished expression. Her feral Tiger features. Her uneven mascara stripes. I want to scream.
I grab toilet paper and rub my face until someone raps on the door.
“There’s someone in here!” I shout.
Honestly, people are so impatient. I’ve only been in the bathroom for less than twenty-five minutes!
“There’s a line,” the voice calls, rapping again.
“Someone is in here!” I shout back.
Don’t they know I’m having a personal emergency?
Seriously, what if I was having nonstop diarrhea?
It could very possibly happen, since everyone knows that air travel is full of germs and airplane food leads to salmonella.
But the constant rapping on the door makes me flustered.
I swivel too fast in the very cramped bathroom, and clang! I somehow knock the contents of my purse—a tube of MAC lip gloss, mascara, iPhone, passport, toothbrush, tweezers, and wallet—into the toilet bowl. I freeze. If food drops on the floor, there’s a three-second rule, but what happens if all your personal belongings fall into a public toilet?! How long until it’s considered too hazardous to retrieve them? Twenty seconds? A minute? Two minutes and thirty seconds?
What do I do???!!!!
Should I flush it all away?
Shuddering, I let out a wail and decide to try to save my iPhone with its life-changing list. My destiny is on that phone. But it’s drenched with blue chemical water and I don’t even want to touch it.
The knocking on the door escalates.
“Are you … okay?” the voice asks. “Do you need assistance?”
I exhale loudly. How many more hours to Beijing? Can I somehow ask them to stop the plane? Does a toilet blockage constitute an international emergency?
“I’m fine!!!” I mumble-shout.
The cramped plane bathroom makes me claustrophobic and dizzy.
I touch my forehead and tell myself not to panic. For a second, I think my forehead is expanding horizontally, and looking a bit like Penelope Xu’s, top 30 billionaire. Upon closer inspection, the girl in the airplane mirror looks extremely hungover. A messy doppelgänger of the usual super-confident, put-together, and highly optimistic Iris Wang. I don’t even recognize myself. I stare closer at my reflection. That’s when I see it: new hairs, long and spidery-looking. Tiger whiskers.
Groaning, I tell myself that I’m just overexhausted, overheated, and probably hallucinating. It’s just shitty PMS and not my Tiger curse, which seems to be spiraling out of control lately.
Reaching into the toilet bowl, I pluck the remaining items out. Like a present for someone you don’t care about, I clumsily wrap them in a wad of extra-flimsy airplane tissue paper. Surely my iPhone and personal items will be dry by the time we land in Beijing.
11
Chauffeur
Nervously I collect my luggage and trudge to the waiting area.
There’s an overriding smell of fast food, stale airplane air, and imploding excitement. It feels like I’m on a giant cruise ship.