Friday night, I found myself cooking shrimps swimming in butter, margarine and garlic with a dash of black pepper. Then I stirfried some noodles with slices of lean beef, bell peppers, snow peas, botchoy, carrots, young corn...and smothered all of them with my Ma's secret lo mien sauce. The lo mien sauce is made of ingredients and spices I cannot discuss here because its a secret sauce and both my Mama and GrandMa will tie me upside down and beat me with broomsticks if I reveal our family's secret recipe for lo mien sauce.
If none of you were ever threatened of being tied upside down and beaten with broomsticks, you must Qing. He never received such threats from his parents.
Anyways, I also cooked the rice perfectly and smiled at my effort when I have plated everything and served them on the dining table. I sat down and regard my sullen looking companion.
Me: (sighing) Our lives suck.
Qing: Shit. Lets just eat.
I sighed again as I watched my fiancé dump perfectly shelled and cooked shrimp on his rice. I winced when Qing sniffed and chewed like he was being paid for it. Plus the bonus...
Me: My birthday month sucks.
Qing: No. My parents suck. Both of them.
Me: Don't say that.
Qing nailed me with his eyes. I grimaced inwardly.
Me: Fine. Go on.
Qing: (going on) I hate my father. I don't care about my mother. I am disowning them first. My whole family...
Me: (careful tone) JR though...
Qing: Shit!
I placed a glass of water close to him. Qing drank and sighed tiredly.
Me: I mean, you cannot disown your nephew. What if we won't have kids, who will inherit your millions and my journals?
Qing: (frowning) You will put your journals as part of an inheritance?
Me: Why not? They are my treasured memories...
Qing: You wrote about having loose bowel movements in there. Plus you wrote a disparaging image of my dogs. Half of what's written in your journals are moments of you complaining about everything in sight.
Me: (putting down my chopsticks) Okay, first of all...you are right. All of what you said are rights. But also, don't forget, I write my fantasies and our fights there so...
Qing: So?
Me: So maybe someday, someone stupid will find my writings fascinating and make a series or movies based on my journals.
Qing sighed. He pressed fingers on his eyelids. He looks tired and stressed.
Qing: (opening his eyes) I see. Well, if ever your journals made it to the big screen, get involve in the production and make sure they will cast someone handsome to play me.
Me: You don't want to act on the movie about my journals?
Qing: No. I already lived those moments. I will die of you will make me relive them again with a camera rolling by and a director who'll shout "cut". Also a heads up, I might not watch the finished film.
Me: You sure are a supportive fiancé...not!
Qing reached for my hand. He pulled it towards him and kiss the back of it.
Qing: Thank you, Love...for everything. I love that you cook our dinner and your are distracting us from the fucked up reality we are living in.
Me: (gazing at him lovingly) It won't be so fucked up if you will find it in your heart to talk to Baba and Mama...
Qing: (letting my hand go) (romantic mood gone) No.
Me: Qing.
Qing: (scowling at me) Did Mama call you? Did you two connive again to act like a bridge between me and them?
Me: Well...
His mother did call me. Asking me to talk to her son about Qing's stubbornness issue that, breaking news, he inherited from his parents.
Qing: Stop that. She's just using you, Dayu ah. That's Mama. She is manipulative. And she married a bastard. They deserve each other.
Me: They are your parents.
Qing: Exactly. That's why I am like this...
Me: What? Properly educated who lived most of his life in luxury? Yes, that's you...
Qing: (storm on his eyes) (cold tone) I don't owe them anything. They chose to give birth to me, they raised me but that's their obligation. I am not indebted to them. They cannot guilt or order me back into that museleom. Don't let yourself be used by them. Dayu ah...stay by my side.
Me: I am by your side. I am on your side, Qing. I am Team Qing, you know that.
Qing: (picking his spoon again) Good. Stay that way and never mention them again. Lets eat. You cooked, Love...lets not waste your effort. And I don't want a fight.
I don't want a fight either...so I followed his lead and started eating as well. We finished dinner well enough and then Qing went elsewhere to do whatever after I volunteered to clean up as well. Usually the one who didn't cook cleans up but this time, I think I don't want Qing touching my kitchen wares while his mind is distracted. He might break something again.
(Your kitchen wares?)
Stop kidding yourselves, I own this kitchen. I just let Qing cook here every now and then but this place is mine and Qing knows that that's why he respect my love for this particular part of our home. I handpicked most of the things in this kitchen, I cataloged them all in my head. If something got broken or went missing, I usually replace them with the same design or brand. My OCD will accept nothing but that.
Qing's stormy mood continued all through the weekends. The hard part was both Zhu gege and JiJi are sympathetic to Qing's feelings. They understand where Qing is coming from, especially Zhu gege.
Wang Zhu: (during a video call to Qing) If Uncle knew about the reason why I beat you up fourteen years ago, he should have told us instead of letting us both stew in guilt and dash like mad people looking for that blasted thing.
Qing: (sighing) I'm sorry, gege. Truly...
Wang Zhu: Yeah, I know how sorry you are, Qing. I know.
Qing: Are you sure Uncle doesn't know anything?
Wang Zhu: (nodding) Yes. He was surprised too. He never knew that Great Grandmi's brooch went missing. Baba assumed GrandMa gave it to Auntie. He said the brooch's style won't suit Mama anyways so he was never interested in it.
Qing: I hate this...
Wang Zhu: Hey, I know you are mad. Did you and Uncle fought about it?
Me: Yes.
Wang Zhu: (frowning) You were there, Dayu ah?
Me: Yes. Unfortunately...
Wang Zhu: (grunting) Well, just how many fights do you planned to witness anyways?
Me: None. But this year sucks all around so why the hell not, right?
Qing: Right. I completely hate this year.
Me: Ah...wait...we got engaged this year. Don't completely hate it.
Qing: It happened before Lunar New Year so, I'll count it as us getting engaged last year.
Me: Oh, we are conforming to the Lunar calendar now, aren't we?
Qing: Yes we are.
He is in a mood. Anyways, I let him finish that videochat with Zhu gege and just call JiJi again. I am trying to convince Qing's sister to come to me on the dark side and maybe we can tandem in convincing Qing to come to the negotiating table again and sign a peace treaty.
But I just wasted my time with JiJi. Like I said, she is sympathetic to her brother.
JiJi: Qing was fourteen. And he has always been stupid. At fourteen, he does everything as long as it sounded like a dare. A game he played with his friends, was just that, a game. For Baba to punish Qing for a dozen of years just because of Qing's stupidity is too much. Baba is wrong.
Me: Yes. I can understand that...but Mama is worrying...
JiJi: Mama says she will take her children's side when we fight with Baba, well...she lied. She is taking Baba's side and I'll be the first to say that my Baba is a good man and a great father to me and Qing but sometimes, sometimes he really sucks at disciplining us. He is wrong this time. Qing has the rights to be angry. I am also angry at my brother but he was a teenager, he was stupid and again, I am mad at him. I am washing my hands off this issue.
Me: (sighing) I just couldn't see how I can help.
JiJi: Just stay by Qing's side. He'll be alright as long as he knows a person believes in him. You are that person, Dayu ah. And I want to thank you for sticking by my brother's side when his family are acting all dumbfucks. That includes me, of course.
Me: I love his family.
JiJi: Oh...and we love you too. Welcome to the circus, Dayu ah. The Wang family has issues.
Me: I know that and I still love you all. I love this circus.
JiJi: Yes. I know. Thank you. Take care of Qing. Don't let him be broody. Okay?
Me: I'll try.
After my phone call to JiJi, I went to the kitchen to prepare a tray of snacks and cans of beers. I took that tray to the room where dI saw Qing stewing while reading something on his tablet.
Me: (as I put down the tray on a low table) Join me for drinks.
Qing climbed off tbe bed and sat on the floor with me. With our backs against the bed frame, I handed him a can of beer. I hit play on a playlist in my cellphone and we drank while quietly listening.
When two songs ended, I smiled at Qing.
Me: On a scale of one to ten, being ten the highest, how angry are you?
Qing: Solid 8.
Me: Darn, you are angry.
Qing: (clucking his tongue) I lived in regret and guilt because of what I did. I thought my grandmother died feeling disappointed at me. I sometimes lived in fear that when my parents learned what I did, they will disown me. That there are a lot of things they can overlook but their son stealing and selling his grandmother's prized brooch will finally be the one that will break the camel's back. But look here, it was never gone all along.
Me: Like I said, you and your friends played weird games when you were teenagers.
Qing: It was supposed to be a simple dare between students in our private school. So we steal one expensive item from each other households. Jin was selected to steal from our home. All I had to do was give him a way in and we will both sell the item on a pawnshop and buy it back the next day...
Me: Why? Why did you guys think that game will be fun?
Qing: I don't know. We were fourteen. We seek thrills. We were stupid. I was stupid enough to sneak inside Yao's parents' closet and steal his father's diamond cufflinks while Yao was serving as my lookout.
Me: And Jin stole your grandmothers' pearl brooch.
That was not a question because I already heard this story before. I think that was just last week.
Jin, Qing and Yao were classmates on the same highschool with ZhiMing and other rich boys like them. One day, the cool kids on their school posted a secret challenge to the different social groups on their school.
Steal an expensive item from a home of a friend. Sell it and then buy it back. Evidences must be filed.
Rich kids. I swear, they have weird ideas to get thrills. I remember reading something about rich kids swiping their parents medicine cabinet to get drugs not meant for them. Or steal artistic items like paintings or base. But I never thought it was real or that Qing once played a game like that. I mean, my mother threatened me that she will literally feed me laxative if I'll ever touch or eat my grandmother's maintenance medicines when I was still a teenager. Or steal anything really...
But Qing and his friends and schoolmate...they stole expensive items for games. They are fucked up!
Qing: (nodding) The one my grandmother got from my Great Grandmother that she got from her mother passed down I think for almost ten generations.
Me: And you guys stole it then sell it to a pawnshop.
Qing: Yes. To succeed on the game, you have to sell the item you stole and then buy it back. Yao and I decided that the items stolen from our homes to be sold to a pawnshop. Jin, the bastard, I stole his Uncle's ceramic vase from the Tang dynasty...basically ask his uncle to ransom the vase for 100 bucks. His uncle had a laugh and approved of what we did. We thought he was cool, but he just dismissed us as rascals.
Me: But Baba and Yao's father had different reactions from Jin's uncle.
Qing: Well, you heard my fight with Baba. Yao's father somewhat learned about what we did and he alerted Baba of our antics. Yao managed to buy back the cufflinks and put it back on his parents' closet but when it was time for me to buy back the brooch...
Me: It was gone from the pawnshop.
Qing: (nodding) Along with the shop's assistant and the record that says that we sold the brooch there. We have the receipt that says we sold the brooch to them but the owner couldn't confirm it cause he didn't handle the transaction. It was handled by the missing assistant.
Me: Who we now learned Baba paid to transfer on some other province? You know what...this is such an elaborate thing...your Baba did.
Qing: I know. And in my panic in thinking that I lost the brooch, I went to Zhu Gege. We had a fight. He beat me up for my stupidity. He was so upset with me. He said, he knows I am stupid but not a thief. I said we could sue the pawnshop but Zhu gege said we have to come out clean to our family that I stole the brooch and sold it just to win a game and some bragging rights on our school.
Me: (sighing) So you two decided to just keep quiet about it.
Qing: I got scared. That's an heirloom, Dayu ah. And my friends will be inflicated. I will drag them on my shame. Zhu gege also advised me to be quiet. He promised that he will find the brooch and ever since then, we have been keeping an eye out to find it wherever we go. We contacted so many jewelers just to see if they have an idea about a pearl brooch. But we failed, over and over...
Me: Because the brooch was not missing. It was in Baba's hands all along.
Qing: (looking grim) He bought it on the pawnshop hours after we sold it. He paid the assistant to disappear. He let me squirm in anxiety that I lost the brooch my friends and I stolen. He watched me get patched up after Zhu gege beat me up but he was not angry. Mama was almost hysterical about it but Baba was just calm. I should have known he reacted strangely from that incident. (chuckling darkly) Dayu, I think my father is a psychopath.
Me: Or...he was teaching you a lesson. Like what he said during your shouting match the other day. He was teaching you a lesson.
Qing: Fuck his lessons.
I sighed and continued drinking beer with Qing. I am doing what JiJi wants me to do. Staying by her brother's side as Qing's anger boils under his skin.
But really, Qing played weird games when he was a teenager. Whats wrong with playing tag or learning how to play guitar? Why does he chose a game of stealing when he was fourteen?
I am engaged to a weird guy.