My nephew looks cute and round. When I inspect more closely, his body consists of several spheres. His neck is so wide yet short that his head seems almost buried in his clavicles, with a small circular head connecting to a broad, round torso, like a gourd with a disproportionately small head. I am quite sure he doesn’t know what self-mockery means at the age of six, but he always asks his barber to leave a slightly longer hair-stream in the middle of his pruned, coniferous hair. It renders him more similar to a gourd since the hair-stream resembles the curly vine on top of a gourd. His arms and legs look like the Michelin Man’s fat rolls of flesh stacking next to one another, covering his joints. Similarly, his protruding water-balloon cheeks squeeze the other facial features, enclosing his small flat nose and pink lips in the valley between the cheeks. When he smiles, two distinct dimples appear beneath his cheekbones; when he nods, his head and his blinking eyes bring all the fat into motion, cheeks flapping and earlobes bouncing. Even when he raises his forehead, I can still see his double chins shaking above where his Adam’s apple is supposed to be.
His loveliness shows beyond his chubby look. Once I visited my cousin with my grandparents during the summer. When my grandparents asked him what he liked, Nephew shouted that he loved cats and wanted one, as if he would die without it. Grandma indulged him so much that she agreed to buy him one. Nephew started laughing, showing his few pristinely white baby teeth. He also celebrated by running in the living room. He didn’t even mind when he carelessly bumped his round stomach into the edge of a square wooden stool, maybe partly because of the protection from his natural assets. Amidst Nephew’s constant shouting of “let’s go, let’s go,” my cousin drove me and Nephew to the nearby pet shop. Instinctively, Nephew chose the mirror image of himself among the cats, the most obese one in the shop. The fattest boy added the fattest Persian cat to his family. Once we opened the cage and let out the cat, Nephew jumped above the ground about three inches, which was already the highest vertical I had seen him accomplish. He grasped the cat’s neck with his plump palms, raised its innocent face to the same level as his, pulled it towards himself, and buried its face within his soft plump chest. While Nephew rubbed his face against the strip of yellow fur on top of its head, the cat fiercely scratched and ripped Nephew’s T-shirt, protesting against Nephew’s attempt to suffocate it. Although Nephew enjoyed such intimacy, Grandma couldn’t tolerate the cat’s violence, so she dragged it away from Nephew and dropped it on the ground. Hearing the poor cat moan “meow,” Nephew began crying. While sobbing, Nephew pouted his lips, “Bad Grandma! Don’t you see how innocent the little cat is? It doesn’t behave. You have to teach him. How can you just throw him away? If I don’t behave, are you also going to throw me away?” Agreeing with his argument, we all laughed. Grandpa quickly picked it up and returned it to Nephew. “Fine, but you will have to teach him.” Nephew wiped away his remaining tears, cleared his throat, and said determinedly, “Don’t worry. I will coach him into manhood.” Seeing his stern expression and frowning eyes, I couldn’t help but laugh again.
When I visited him again a year later, Nephew seemed to have become his cat’s best friend. Instead of running around alone and carelessly bumping into things, now he would pace himself slowly and frequently turn back to ensure his buddy followed. Yet the little one didn’t seem to care about Nephew’s attention, walking gracefully and only thinking about where its round furry paw should land on the next move. When Nephew saw me enter the gate, he sprinted towards me while his belly rings were shaking up and down. Meticulous about its manner, his friend followed him slowly. “Uncle, uncle. How are you doing?” Nephew greeted me enthusiastically. Stressed by school and the upcoming college applications, I sighed, “Not so well. Life’s been rough these days.” Seeing me upset, Nephew grabbed the cat from the ground, stepped on his toes, raised it to my chest, and uttered, “Don’t worry. Let kitty comfort you.” He then spread its arms out and placed them around my neck, while its fat belly almost dragged down to its feet, hanging motionlessly in the air. Recognizing me from his first day into the family, the cat extended its tongue and licked the back of my right ear. Feeling the itch from my skin and looking at Nephew’s smile, I sensed a tide of warmth flowing through my heart and began to love my nephew even more.