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“Come on, Mulan,” I say out loud. “Get it together.” Just because I’ve made a giant mess of everything else doesn’t mean I should let my new good habits fall by the wayside, too. I’m going to cook myself dinner. I open the fridge, and there’s the last straw.
The refrigerator is filled with neatly lined-up containers, all of them stocked full of fresh ingredients. It is this final reminder of Shang that breaks me. Uttering a short cry of pain and rage, I slam the fridge shut. God, he was so good for me. So, so good. And I’ve done nothing but ruin it all.
“Stop,” I say out loud to the whirling rage of self-hatred inside my head. “Stop it.”
Instead of stopping, it grows in intensity, overwhelming me. I crouch down on the floor, hugging my knees to my chest. Even just standing feels like too much right now. Everything is too much, all of it. All my life, I’ve felt pressured to hide my true self, because everything centers on the men in my life. Trying to impress them, or prove them wrong, or make sure they’re not disappointed. My father, my schoolmates, and later, my colleagues, my clients, and now the Lis. With all of them, I’ve scrambled to put on the right mask, and I’m so good at it, have done it for so long, that I didn’t even know the real me anymore.
Until Shang.
All my life, I’ve been masking—and it feels like having to suck my stomach in all the time, and it’s only with Shang that I’ve been able to let everything go and completely relax. A sob wrenches out of me as I think of how I was when I was around Shang. I was still the hardworking finance bro, responsible and intellectual and confident, and I was still the loving, filial child. But I was also something more. I was a goofball around him. I was fun, and silly, and brash. When was the last time I was brash before Shang came into my life? I’d been so uptight that my idea of risk was jaywalking across an empty road. But Shang brought out that part of me. He also brought out the selfish part of me, the one who, for once, isn’t thinking:What would Baba do?The part of me that knows exactly what it wants and isn’t afraid to go for it, no matter how irresponsible. Shang brought me back into myself, a self that I’d thought was missing. And I don’t want to lose that self again.
That realization brings me a tiny bit of peace. Sniffling, I uncurl and push myself off the floor. I go into the bathroom and splash cold water over my face again before looking in the mirror. My reflection stares back at me, and I see myself then: A very flawed person, someone who’s made so many mistakes, so many bad decisions. But also maybe someone who’s made bad decisions because of the right reasons. Someone driven by love and duty. Someone driven, period.
I force myself to go back out into the kitchen, open the fridge again, and this time, I grab a cloth bag from the cupboard and start taking things out from the fridge.
Ten minutes later, I’m back in my car. I make a phone call. “Ma, don’t bother cooking.”
When I arrive, my parents greet me with happy but confused smiles. “What are you doing here?” Ma says.
I hold up the bag of ingredients. “I’m going to make dinner for you guys.”
“Oh my,” Ba says. “I think we have some antidiarrheal tablets left from our last trip.”
“Ba!” I snap, and he laughs. “Hey, Baba, can we talk for a second?”
“Always.”
“I’ll let you two chat,” Ma says, taking the bag of groceries from me and bustling into the kitchen.
In the living room, I plop down on the sofa with a big sigh. Now that I’m actually here, seeing my dad in person, I find it hard to know where to begin. “Um, so…” I flail mentally. Baba is looking at me with so much expectation in his eyes that it’s paralyzing. Expectation. That’s it. That’s where I can start. “When I was a kid, I overheard Auntie and Ma talking, and how Ma couldn’t have any more children because of me.”
Baba’s face falls, and it looks as though he’s about to say something, but he stops himself and gestures at me to keep going.
“And Auntie said, ‘What a shame because of Mulan you had to have that awful operation. And she isn’t even a boy!’ And ever since then, I knew that I had to make it up to both of you, and I’ve been doing it my whole life. I have this intense fear of letting you and Ma down because—”
“Oh, Mulan,” Baba says. “You work so hard. You are—” His voice cracks then, and he takes a shuddering breath. “Oh, Nu er, I am sorry you heard your auntie say that. I never, not for a moment, regretted having you as my child. You are worth ten sons. Twenty!”
A weight that I didn’t even noticed was there before is suddenly lifted off my chest. “Really? You never secretly wished for a boy?”
“Hah!” Ma shouts from the doorway.
Baba and I both jump.
“Mulan, what is this rubbish?” Ma cries. “Do you really think that your baba and I would rather have had a son?”
“Ma, but Auntie—”
Ma snorts, and flaps a hand dismissively. “Oh, my sister. She’s stuck in the old ways. And do you not remember your cousins? Kenny and Keith? Such terrors they were. Within the first hour of visiting they’d broken our TV. I bet Auntie only said that because she’s jealous that she doesn’t have a daughter.”
I laugh through my tears. “Oh, Ma.”
Ma hurries over and envelops me in a fierce hug. “You are everything we wished for.”
“And more,” Ba says, reaching over and grasping my hand.
“I’m sorry I messed everything up with Wutai Gold,” I say when Ma lets go of me. “I know you really wanted to acquire them.”
“Oh, Mulan. I did want to acquire them, yes, but not for the reasons you think. I wantedyouto acquire them. I wanted you to assess them, not just purely with your mind, but with your heart and your instincts. You are so good with numbers. But what we do is so much more than numbers. Anyone can look at the numbers and make a decision to buy or not, but you want to know my secret? Why I have such a good success rate?”