The following emerged out of a challenge to write 2 stories without the use of violence. One was required to be a comedy, the other, a fictional biography.
This is obviously the fictional biography. I must hone my comedic writing skills before attempting the latter half of the challenge.
In any case, away we go!
There is no obvious place to start in the story of Tang, but one might muse the beginning is as good a place as any.
"I never really knew my birth parents," mused Tang in her 2006 Time Person of the Year interview, "I mean, I guess I'm like any adoptive child in a way, but I've always felt like my life has been more of a struggle than your average child.
And struggle she did.
Born at the age of 3, coincidentally on the same day as her birthday, Tang spent a mere few hours in the arms of her mother, Mildred Clag.
To this day, Mildred does not regret her decision to let go of Tang.
"Yeah, she 'ad it comin'," Mildred croaked at this author, her breath rife with the stench of thousands of cigarettes and days-old whiskey, "Lookin' at me with them big eyes, screaming 'er little 'ead off. I thought to myself, 'Ay, why should she get to mooch off me?'", so I tossed 'er out the window."
Mildred's partner at the time, however not Tang's biological father, expressed his delight at his now-ex on-again-off-again de-facto partner's choice. A short, feeble man, one might question his ability to even hold a child, let alone raise one as his own. "I knew that girl would be trouble. About as much trouble as her mother, if not worse. Her father was a questionable fellow."
The man in question, Henry Lump, has been under the radar for several years now - disappearing not long after the birth of his daughter. Tang states that she has never met the man, nor had any contact with him, but a knowing glint in her eye leaves many unconvinced she tells the truth. Henry was (and presumably still is) a bad, bad man. Notorious for peddling shabby second-hand wigs, Henry was the sole cause of the red plague - the widespread lice plague that took the lives of over 2 billion people.
"Do I ever wish things were different?" Tang ponders, "No. If daddy... Err, Henry... hadn't have started that plague, someone else surely would have. I guess that makes him a hero, right? He's a pretty fantastic man. I mean, I guess he would be. If I knew him. Which I don't."
After being thrown from the 6th story window of the hospital, the freshly-born toddler that was Tang miraculously survived. A recycling bin full of shredded paper was coincidentally situated beneath the window, and broke the youngster's fall. However, buried in shredded paper, her cries were muffled, so passers-by could not hear the child in distress.
"I guess it was character building," Tang says of her childhood, "I spent years in that dumpster. It's a wonder it was never emptied, otherwise I might have been killed!'
Character-building or no, her upbringing was far from ideal. All she learned, she pieced together using the paper shreds that formed her home. After deciphering the contents, she often chose to eat the paper for sustenance.
This cycle continued for many years, each winter growing more testing as her warm, shredded paper blanket gradually grew thinner and thinner, until, on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, she found herself swallowing her last scrap of shelter.
Tang recalls how her predicament affected her, "It was then I knew things had to change. That dumpster had once been my home, but as the shredded paper walls slowly came down, I began to realise that there was indeed a life outside the dumpster. I had learned so much from all the papers I had eaten over the years, and I wanted to make something of myself."
With that, Tang showed great courage and leapt from the dumpster, only to fall down a manhole, and into the sewers.
"I immediately thought I'd made the biggest mistake of my life, but that experience bettered me in so many ways. It opened up a whole new world to me."
The sewers were a cold and unforgiving place.
"The first living creature I remember ever interacting with was the mutated sewer rat I nearly landed on. He was about as big as a puppy. I named him Monty."
Monty and Tang were, for the most part, the best things to ever happen to one another. They were both wayward souls, shunned by their parents - Tang, for being a baby; Monty, for being grossly oversized and also having somehow been lobbed from a sixth-story window by his mother upon her giving birth to him. They were made for each other, and the two became the best of friends.
"Monty was a great pal. He showed me the ways of the sewers. I sometimes even forgot he was a rodent! There were mornings I woke up with him in my arms, and I thought it could be true love. But fate can be cruel. Monty was taken from me far too early."
A freak flash flood that swept through the sewers mere months after Tang's arrival took Monty's life. Tang and Monty were swept from their home (a makeshift abode consisting of discarded cardboard and paper - true to Tang's roots), and miles downstream. Once again, Tang miraculously survived, being able to grab a hold of a branch overhead before she could be swept out to sea. Monty, however, due to his lack of opposable thumbs, was not as lucky.
"I watched him drift out to sea. It was heartbreaking. It took me hours to climb up that branch and get my feel on solid ground, but I did. I did it for Monty. I was crying the entire time."
Once again lost in life, Tang wandered the city for days trying to give her life some meaning. She tried to make friends with the city rodents, but they were nowhere near as accommodating as the sewer rodents had been. Soon to give up hope, Tang stumbled across a small, Chinese restaurant, and it was here that she managed to turn her life around.
Cold, wet, and without a friend in the world, Tang approached the warming glow of the restaurant, and hovered at the window while looking in.
Having never seen real food before, confusion reigned, and Tang found herself vaguely frightened. However, her highly-developed rodentesque curiosity got the better of her, and she soon scurried inside.
"At that point of my life, that restaurant was a scary place. All I'd known was a dumpster and the sewers - I'd never been around other people before."
After sniffing around, and tasting the various napkins on display, Tang found herself ushered towards a seat by an elderly Chinese lady, who identified herself as Ming Po. Ming soon discovered Tang's utter lack of social etiquette, and spirited her away through a secret door in the wall, before taking her under her wing, and teaching her to be a proper lady.
"Bless Ming's cotton socks," Tang snorts, "Teaching me to be a lady didn't work. But she was the closest thing I had to a mother, so I love her all the same."
Ming and Tang spent many long days in the cramped room, as Ming attempted to school Tang. As Tang would tell you, Ming is a competent teacher, but even the most competent teacher will struggle where the student is unwilling to learn."
"Tang is special girl," Ming smiles as she recalls their time spent together, "She no want to learn. She want food. All food. I tell her, no! Paper no food! But she no understand. She eat paper. She no eat chicken. She no eat beef. She eat paper. Ming try teach Tang, but Tang no listen."
They both look fondly upon their days at the restaurant, and Tang attributes a lot of her success to Ming. Even now, at high-profile events, Ming can always be spied on Tang's arm, or hovering nearby. It's no wonder - it was in her restaurant that Tang found her footing and made something of herself, and all it took was for Ming to let Tang spread her proverbial wings.
"I guess I never knew what I was capable of. That is, until that fateful day in the restaurant."
Ming and Tang had sat themselves down for a new day's worth of failed teachings, when the two heard a commotion coming from the kitchen.
"Ming has always been a very timid woman," recalls Tang, "Even the slightest noise in the restaurant, if she didn't know where it was coming from, would set her trembling. That day, she hid under the table. I felt like I had to protect her."
Tang's memory becomes very vague from the moment she stepped through the kitchen. Though unsure of the events that unfolded, she woke up several days later in hospital.
"I have no idea how Ming managed to carry me all the way to the hospital, and she won't tell me what happened in the restaurant, I think I fought off the bad guys. Had, you know, like, an adrenaline rush? Shit's so cash."
"I can tell you secret?" Ming confides, when asked about that day in the kitchen, "Tang slip and hit head. Bleed everywhere. No baddies. Tell Tang Ming carry her to hospital-" she pauses to giggle quietly, "-Ming make Tang walk. But shh."
Tang spent many days recovering in hospital from, what she still believes, was a severe bludgeoning. Her concussed haze gave her much time to think, and unlocked many parts of her brain that had previous been inaccessible to her. She found herself full of unprecedented knowledge, and was soon able to heal her wounds by the power of her own thought.
"It was at the moment, as I felt my skull reforming, that I knew I was special. I knew it was the key to all I'd ever wanted out of life."
To Be Continued
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