Chapter

11

WHEN I GET HOME, AH-MA’S already sitting at the dining room table. Instead of preparing mung beans today, though, she’s kneading a white lump of dough on a big wooden board. On the table is a bowl with a pair of chopsticks resting on its rim, a baking sheet covered in aluminum foil, and a small cup of water.

“Ah-ma, wǒ dào jiā le.” I drop my backpack on the floor and join her.

“Welcome home,” Ah-ma grunts in Taiwanese as she leans into the dough. “Guess what I’m making?”

I take a closer look at what she’s kneading, which is stickier and starchier than the dough we use for wrapping soup dumplings or potstickers. Inside the silver bowl are ground pork, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots, and I spot a bottle of sweet chili sauce on the table.

“Are you making bah-oân?” I ask.

“Yes!” She laughs, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. “Your mom’s favorite!”

Whenever we go to night markets in Taipei, Mom’s always on the lookout for these sticky meatball dumplings. Ah-ma knows how to make them with sweet potato starch and rice flour from the Chinese market. Plus, she has a special recipe to get the bah-oân dough thicker and kneadable, rather than its more traditional gooeyness that you have to spoon into individual bowls for each dumpling. Ah-ma’s way is much easier—and faster.

“What have you been up to, tsa-bóo-sun?” Ah-ma asks. “You’re a bit later coming home from school than usual.”

Uh-oh. There’s no way Ah-ma would be cool with the fact that I went to Principal Klein to ask for ESL classes for Vivian.

Not that I actually went through with it. After Marcos’s family left and Principal Klein invited me into her office, I got up from the bench and, thinking fast, told her that I was there to say thanks again for the Student of the Year award she gave me last year.

“Of course, Lily!” She beamed. “You’re a perfect example of what can happen when someone works hard to achieve excellence. Especially as someone from another country.”

Wait, I was born here, I wanted to respond.

But I bit my tongue instead and hightailed it out of there. I’d already chickened out of asking for ESL classes. I didn’t have the guts to correct Principal Klein’s mistake, either.

And I definitely don’t have the guts to tell my authority-fearing grandmother that I almost went up to the most powerful person at Pacific Park Middle to ask for a favor.

“Uh, I was working on that group project I told you about yesterday,” I lie.

Ah-ma flips the dough over and keeps working it. “That’s good. What’s the project about again? I know very little about American history.”

I’d done my reading during class, as instructed, so luckily I had enough to make my lie believable. “It’s about the women’s suffrage movement, which was when women wanted the right to vote and protested the US government to get it. They eventually won, and women’s right to vote became the Nineteenth Amendment.”

“That’s it? Women asked and the government just gave them what they wanted?” Ah-ma tsks. “How nice to be American.”

“It wasn’t as easy as that.” I pick up the chopsticks and give the stuffing a good mix. “The suffragettes had to fight pretty hard for it, with petitions and marches and other smart moves. And not all American women got to vote. It was only white women at first. African Americans, Latinas, even Asian Americans like us weren’t allowed to vote until much later. Asians couldn’t even become citizens until the 1950s.”

As I tell Ah-ma the story, my blood starts to boil. Back then, if you were a girl, things were pretty tough. If on top of that, you weren’t white, life was even more unfair.

Thank goodness things are different now. Even someone like me, born in the US from a Taiwanese family, can vote when I’m old enough.

“Humph,” Ah-ma grumbles. “Speaking up like that sounds awfully risky to me.”

I glance at Ah-ma, who avoids my eyes as she presses the dough a few more times. What is it about her and the government?

Ah-ma rolls the dough into a thick log and picks up her cleaver. “Go wash your hands, Lily, and help me,” she says.

What I really want to do is go to my room and recover from today’s nerve-racking afternoon.

But Ah-ma’s looking at me so expectantly that I head into the kitchen like the obedient granddaughter she’s trained me to be instead.

I can’t fail her, even in her bah-oân-making expectations.

When I join Ah-ma back at the dining table, she’s already cut the dough into medium-sized chunks. We each take a piece and press it onto the table to make a flat disk. Next up is scooping and putting filling on them. Then I cup the bah-oân in one hand and pinch it closed as tightly as I can with the other.

“Tell me more about your day, tsa-bóo-sun,” Ah-ma says.

I hesitate. The only thing that pops into my head that might be safe enough to share is my confusing conversation with Marcos.

But thinking about what he said about girls like me and Vivian going to Camp Rock Out makes the seed of doubt he planted take firmer root. Maybe us going to a rock-and-roll camp is a bad idea.

I guess I hesitated too long before responding, because Ah-ma stops mid-scoop and stares at me, her right eyebrow arched high. “Lily? What’s going on?”

I have to give her something. “Remember when we were talking about summer camps the other night with Auntie and Uncle?”

Ah-ma nods.

“I found one that Vivian and I want to go to. It’d teach us how to play that music we like.”

“Ah yes. They do this in the videos I see you watching on the television set.” She wiggles her head up and down, her updo jiggling.

I giggle at Ah-ma headbanging. “Yes, exactly.”

Marcos’s laugh echoes in my brain. “But I don’t think we should do it. Maybe this type of music is better for me to listen to, not to play. I mean, can you imagine someone like me onstage with a guitar, rocking out like they do? I couldn’t. It’d look . . . ridiculous.” I shake my head at the image.

Ah-ma puts down the bun in her hand and looks at me thoughtfully. “You want to play the guitar?”

I avoid her eyes and shrug my shoulders.

She reaches out and tilts my chin toward her. “Did you know that your ah-gong played the guitar?”

I stare at Ah-ma in surprise. “He did?”

Ah-ma barely ever talks about my grandfather. All I know is that he died when my dad was a baby, although I don’t know how.

I never ask Ah-ma about him, either. Every time I bring him up, Ah-ma gets quiet, and Dad changes the subject superfast, like he doesn’t want to give the memory of his father the chance to come up.

The fact that Ah-ma’s brought him up on her own feels like a special gift.

Ah-ma smiles. “Yes, one of his most treasured possessions was an acoustic guitar that a US soldier gave to him when Ah-gong was working as a translator for the American army after we got married. He’d play it every day. He’d even play a few tunes to your dad when I was pregnant.” She stares into the distance with a sad expression on her face.

My heart softens at the image of my grandfather sitting at Ah-ma’s feet and strumming sweet lullabies to her big belly. “Why are you telling me this?” I ask softly.

“I used to tease him that he looked ridiculous with a guitar in his hand, like a fake American cowboy. But he loved playing anyway. When I look back, I’m glad he kept going. It made him happy.” Ah-ma grasps my hand. “You’re a good girl, and a smart one at that. If others are doing it and it’s allowed, then no one should dare tell my tsa-bóo-sun otherwise,” she says with a huff.

“But there aren’t a lot of people like me or Vivian who play this kind of music. What if I look silly up onstage?”

“Humph. Your grandfather didn’t care about that, and you shouldn’t, either. Plus, you won’t look silly to me. That’s impossible!” She shakes her head and her updo jiggles as usual.

The tightness in my chest loosens up. Somehow, Ah-ma always knows how to say the right things to make me feel a bit better.

And the fact that my ah-gong loved to play guitar feels special. Mom and Dad listen to music a lot, but I’ve never seen them pick up an instrument.

In fact, they made it clear the other night that I should have started learning a long time ago to make it “worthwhile.” But Ah-gong did it because he liked it. And according to Ah-ma’s story, he started playing because he had a chance to, not because he had any particular goal.

I decide to listen to Ah-ma, not Marcos Alvarez. If she thinks I can rock out like Pearl Jam does, like Ah-gong did, then it’s up to me to prove her right.

“Okay, Ah-ma. I do want to go to that summer camp. I want to learn how to play the electric guitar, too.”

In an instant, my fingers start to itch, like they’re looking for guitar strings to strum.

“Good.” Ah-ma grunts, patting me on the shoulder. “There’s my Lily. So tell me more about this camp.”

I explain that registration is due in a little over a month and that friends and family can attend the performance at the end of camp.

“That sounds like a lot of fun,” Ah-ma agrees.

“But the problem is Mom and Dad don’t seem super excited about the idea of me going to a summer camp.” Then it occurs to me that I’m talking to someone who has a lot of influence over my parents. Vivian’s, too.

So I cup my sticky hands together and give her the best begging, please-please-pretty-please-with-a-cherry-on-top face I can. “Vivian and I really, really want to go to this. Ah-ma, can you help convince our parents to let us?”

Ah-ma chuckles. “Ah, you want to use me, eh?”

I grin at her teasing. “I guess . . . kind of?”

Ah-ma leans against the table. “How about this, Lily? I like the idea of you doing something that you’re passionate about. But in exchange for my help, promise me you’ll help Vivian more with her school work.”

“I already do, Ah-ma,” I say. “We spent most of last weekend at the library together, remember?”

“Do more. Look through her assignments or read to her and help her translate all those English words into Chinese. She should be doing better than she is.” Ah-ma tsks, shaking her head.

“But what if she doesn’t want my help?”

“Insist on it. You’re her biǎo jiě, remember?”

How can I forget?

I’m not sure there’s more I can do to help Vivian, though. I already got her an extra week, and Principal Klein refusing to help Marcos’s cousin means there’s no way she’s going to say yes to me.

But I nod anyway. For Camp Rock Out.

“Deal?” Ah-ma says, holding out her sticky, flour-covered hand.

I grin and grasp it with mine. “Deal.”

Phase One of Camp Rock Out sequence: initiated.