Girl in Translation Page 4

  The other boy next to Mrs. Wu was slight, with glasses that dangled from his protruding ears. He didn’t look up. He only kept working on the same skirt. As I watched, he turned it over again and again, looking for threads he had missed. On the table next to him was a toy motorcycle with a color picture of an American Indian printed on the gas tank. It looked worn, as if it had been chewed upon.

  “Hello,” I said to him.

  When the boy didn’t respond, Matt leaned over and gently waved his hand in front of the boy’s face. He made some gestures with his hand that looked like a kind of sign language. The boy looked up and then immediately turned his gaze downward again. In that brief glance, I saw that his eyes seemed unfocused behind the glasses.

  “Park doesn’t hear so well,” Mrs. Wu said.

  “Ma, I’m taking a break,” Matt said, and he jumped off his stool. He turned to Park and made a few more gestures. I thought probably he was asking if Park wanted to come with us.

  When Park didn’t react at all, Matt turned to me and said, “He’s shy.”

  “Don’t be too long,” Mrs. Wu said. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done.”

  Some of the other kids gravitated to us when they saw that we were free, and we all moved toward the soda machine by the entrance. It cost twenty cents per bottle and I learned later that few people actually purchased from it because of the expense, but the idea of getting a cold soda in the sweltering factory was so attractive that the soda machine was a popular hangout anyway.

  I suspected that most of the other kids were at the factory for the same reasons I was. They weren’t officially employed by the factory, but there was no place else for them to go, and their parents needed their help. As Ma had explained earlier, all employees were secretly paid by the piece; this meant that the work the children did was essential to the family income. When I was in high school, I learned that piece payment was illegal, but those rules were for white people, not for us.

  Leaning against the humming soda machine, I could see Matt was the leader of the factory kids. They seemed to range in age from about four to teens. To save money, Ma made many of my clothes herself, even though she couldn’t do it very well, so I had on a home-sewn shirt while the other kids were wearing cool T-shirts with English sayings like “Remember to Vote.” They interspersed their Chinese with English to show off how Americanized they were and everyone apparently knew I was fresh off the boat. There was some whispering when they found out Dog Flea Mama was my aunt, but Matt seemed to have taken me under his wing and no one dared tease me. Despite the hard work, I was relieved to be among Chinese kids again.

  After ten minutes, though, everyone started wandering back to the work they knew awaited them if they ever wanted to leave. I returned to Ma and resumed work but I was exhausted. I’d been there for three hours. I kept waiting for Ma to say it was time to go home. Instead, she pulled out a container of rice cooked with carrots and a bit of ham: we would have dinner at the finisher’s table. I couldn’t complain. She’d been there much longer than I had. We ate standing up and as fast as we could so we could get enough work done to stay on schedule. That first night, we left at nine o’clock. Later, I discovered that this was considered early.

  The next morning, I stayed in the tiny bathroom a long time.

  “Kim,” Ma said. “We’ll be late for school.”

  I reluctantly opened the door, clutching my thin towel. “I don’t feel well.”

  She looked concerned and placed her hand on my forehead. “What is it?”

  “I have a stomachache,” I said. “I think I should stay home today.”

  Ma studied me, then smiled. “Silly girl, why are you talking the big words?” She was asking why I was lying. “You have to go to school.” Ma believed in the absolute sanctity of education.

  “I can’t,” I said. My eyes started tearing up again, even though I tried to hide it by rubbing my face with the towel.

  “Are the other children mean to you?” she asked kindly.

  “It’s not the kids,” I said. I stared at the splintered threshold of the bathroom. “It’s the teacher.”

  Now she looked skeptical. Teachers are highly respected in Hong Kong. “What are you talking about?”

  I told her the whole story, the way Mr. Bogart had corrected my accent yesterday, the way he’d been angry at the things I hadn’t understood, that he’d thought I’d been cheating and given me a zero. I couldn’t stop them now, I let the tears brim over but kept myself from breaking into full sobs.

  When I was finished, Ma was silent. She had to work her mouth a moment before she was able to speak. Then she said haltingly, “Maybe I could talk to him and tell him what a good student you are.”

  For a moment, my heart caught flight but then I pictured Ma talking to Mr. Bogart with the few English words she knew. It would only make him despise me more. “No, Ma, I will try harder.”

  “I am sure that if you work the way you always do, he will give you another chance.” She reached out and pulled me to her. She laid her cheek against the top of my head.

  I was surprised and grateful Ma hadn’t automatically taken the teacher’s side against me. Leaning against her, I closed my eyes and pretended for just a moment that everything would be all right.

  After my talk with Ma about Mr. Bogart, I did what any sensible kid would: I started playing hooky. Ma had no choice but to leave me to walk to school alone because she had to get to the factory as early as possible in order to have any hope of finishing our work on time. She couldn’t afford the luxury of escorting me again.

  “Are you sure you know the way?” Ma asked. “Do you have your token for the subway after school?”

  Ma was afraid to leave me alone but now that I’d done it before, the route to school was actually simple. The distance was long but it required few turns. We arrived at her subway station first. Ma hesitated at the entrance, but I nodded as confidently as I could, then headed off in the direction of the school. As soon as she was out of sight, I ducked around the corner and circled home.

  Despite the cold, I was sweating. What if I ran into Mr. Bogart or one of the kids from my class recognized me? I’d never done anything similar before. Like any good Chinese girl, I’d always followed the rules and been glad to be praised by the teachers. But the only alternative was going into Mr. Bogart’s classroom again. I was learning about desperation.

  It was with a sick feeling that I pulled open the heavy door to our building and entered into that dark mouth. I huddled in the dirty living room, still in my jacket, with the weak sun’s rays clogged in the murky windows. I hadn’t ever really been alone before. I felt a bit safer sitting in the center of the mattress where I could at least see any roaches coming before they got to me. Anything could materialize in the emptiness beyond the shadowy doorway. When the garbage bags covering the windows in the kitchen rustled, I thought about how easy it would be for a burglar to rip off the tape and step inside. I would jump out of the window on the street side if someone broke in. If I hung from the windowsill by my fingers before dropping, I would probably live. That became my solution for all the contingencies that flashed across my mind: if the stove caught on fire, if a ghost appeared in the bathroom, if a rat attacked, if Ma walked through the door looking for something she’d forgotten.

  The apartment air felt damp and raw. It was November of what would turn out to be one of the most bitter winters in New York’s history. To keep myself from becoming too chilled and scared, I flicked on the small television. Its busy chatter brought me into the world of dishes and lemon-scented sprays. There were a lot of shows about hospitals: doctors kissing nurses, nurses kissing patients; there were films about cowboys and Indians; shows with people sitting in squares with flashing lights. In particular, the commercials mystified me: “Raise your arms to be sure,” the voice boomed, showing men and women thrusting their arms into the air. Why should you do this? Was it something to do with the Liberty Goddess?

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bsp; “Triple your vocabulary in thirty days,” the authoritative male voice promised. “Impess your friends. Show your boss who’s boss.” I sat up straighter. I imagined myself going back to class, using words even Mr. Bogart didn’t know. Then came a commercial for alphabet soup, the concept of which fascinated me, as all things in letter form did. I realized it was almost lunchtime and I was hungry.

  I braved the darkened kitchen to peek into the small refrigerator. Ma wasn’t used to having one and it was mostly empty. I found only a few small pieces of leftover chicken, the bones protruding from under the fatty skin, some yellowing vegetables with cold rice, and a shallow container of oyster sauce. I didn’t dare touch anything. I’d been taught that everything had to be thoroughly heated. The kids in a commercial I’d just seen were eating cheese sandwiches with apples and milk, but there was no bread here, let alone anything to put on it. I was afraid even to get a glass of water by myself; back home, I’d gotten such bad diarrhea from drinking unboiled tap water that I’d almost died. Ma had always made a warm snack for me when we came home from school together: steamed mackerel in black beans, roasted pork skins, winter melon soup, fried rice with scallions.

  My stomach rumbled as I continued to watch TV. Gleaming toy kitchens, bouncing balls large enough for kids to sit on, kids eating cookies in tree houses. There was a commercial with a family at a long table laden with food. I longed for the room in the background of that table. It was so clean there you could have lain down on the floor. In our apartment, I didn’t dare to touch much. Even after our rigorous cleaning, everything seemed shrouded with the dust of dead insects and mice. I indulged in one of my favorite fantasies, that Pa had stayed alive. If he were here, maybe we wouldn’t have had to work at the factory at all. Maybe he’d have been able to get a regular job and help us build up a life like those people on TV.

  Even with the television, the day stretched out long and gray through the empty hours, and I kept thinking about Ma working alone at the factory. I could see her neat hands moving slowly over the pressed clothes. I imagined how tired she must be but I couldn’t go to join her yet because I had to pretend to be at school. I jumped when a mouse ran across the floorboards and disappeared into the kitchen. I kept the broom by me, for both intruders and roaches, and when roaches started scurrying across the wall by the mattress, I made noise with the broom to keep them at a distance, careful not to squash them. This was partly due to my Buddhist training to care for all life, but it was mostly because I didn’t want to see them smeared across the wall.

  Out of boredom, I started looking through Ma’s things. In her suitcase, I found a square piece of cardboard carefully bound with twine. I could tell it was an old 78 rpm record, the kind that played only one song per side. It must have held great emotional value for her. There was no other reason for her to keep it; we didn’t even have a record player here. I opened the case carefully, expecting something from a Chinese opera, and was surprised to find an Italian one instead. I read the label: it was Caruso singing Cavaradossi’s aria “E lucevan le stelle,” from Tosca. A photograph fluttered to the floor. Then I remembered:

  Our apartment in Hong Kong, the ceiling fan humming as I lay on the sofa, Ma playing a record for me before bedtime. That had been our nightly routine, one song and then bed. Usually she chose Chinese music, but this one night she had put on a man singing with sorrow in another language, the words escaping him in gasps of regret. She had turned away then. When I could see her face again, she had composed herself and showed me no more of her feelings.

  I had gone to bed that night, and many nights since, thinking about Ma’s life and the grief that connected her to that music. I knew her parents had been landowners and intellectuals, and for that, they’d been unfairly sentenced to death during the Cultural Revolution. Before they died, they had spent all the wealth they had left to get Ma and Aunt Paula out of China and into Hong Kong before it was too late. And then Ma’s true love, my pa, had been taken from her far too young, only in his early forties, going to bed with a headache one evening to die of a massive stroke later that night.

  I picked up the photograph that had fallen from the record album. It was the one Ma had framed and kept on the piano in our living room in Hong Kong. Like many people in Hong Kong then, we didn’t have a camera because it was too expensive, and so this was the only photo I’d seen of the three of us. Despite the stiffness of the pose, the three heads were slightly inclined toward one another, like a true family. Ma looked lovely, with her small neat features and pale skin stretched tight over her bones, and Pa was the perfect accompaniment: dark luminous eyes, handsome and sculpted, like a movie star. I looked at the size of his hands, one of which was tenderly—it seemed to me—cupping the child’s elbow, my elbow. That was a heroic hand, a hand that would take over a heavy plow, a hand to save you from demons and muggers. And me, balanced on Pa’s knee, about two years old, and peering curiously at the camera. I was wearing a sailor’s outfit and my hand was raised to my forehead in a military salute, no doubt the photographer’s idea. Lucky child: had I really been so cute, had I ever been so happy?

  A few characters had been scrawled on the back. Our names and the date. I knew it wasn’t Ma’s handwriting, so it had to be his. I ran my finger over the impressions the pen had made in the thick paper. This was my pa, his hand had written these words.

  This was all I had to take the place of memory. However, no matter how great my loss, Ma’s was even greater. She had actually known and loved him, and his death had left her alone to raise and support me. I carefully put the record and the photograph back. I wanted more than ever to be by Ma’s side, helping her in any way I could.

  Finally, I could leave for the factory. I passed by a street cart with a sign that said “Hot Dogs.” The vendor was selling thin sausages in rolls with yellow sauce on top. It looked and smelled delicious, but I had only a subway token and a dime for emergency phone calls in my pocket. On the subway, I felt as if everyone was staring at me: that kid didn’t go to school today. I saw other kids with backpacks going into the train station and I hoped I wouldn’t see anyone who recognized me. A policeman stood by the token booth, a gun slung from his belt, and he stared at me as I put my token in the slot.

  “Hey!” he said.

  I froze, ready to be arrested. But he was looking at another kid who had thrown a crumpled paper bag on the floor.

  “You pick that up!” he said.

  I passed through and ran down to the train platform.

  THREE

  Ma and I soon learned that our apartment didn’t have any heat. Hopefully, we scrubbed the radiator in the room we slept in, rubbing until we’d taken off most of the flaking paint with the dust, but it remained dead no matter how we twisted the knobs. We explored the third floor of the building and found all of the other apartments to be empty. Trash was piled up everywhere—by the doorways, in the crevices of the steps. There was a stack of half-empty boxes by one doorway, as if someone had disappeared or died in the middle of moving out. The boarded-up storefront below had a faded sign that said “Dollar Store.” We found the entrance to the backyard, which was one enormous heap of garbage, probably tossed down by residents and neighbors over the years, and the door to the basement was locked.

  When Ma politely asked Aunt Paula about how the heat worked, Aunt Paula understood her real question and replied that she had already asked Mr. N. for permission to fix it. She said we wouldn’t be staying at that apartment for much longer anyway.

  It was freezing during those days I played hooky in that apartment. After skipping school for almost a week, I saw my first snowfall. Flakes came slanting down from the sky and at first, the concrete sidewalk absorbed them like a sponge. I touched the window with my hands, amazed it was cold when it seemed to me that the falling rice should be warm, as if it were a soup. With time, the ground became a blanket of white and gusts of wind blew snow from the rooftops, flurries swirling in the air.

  Even now, my pre
dominant memory of that phase of my life is of the cold. Cold like the way your skin feels after you’ve been slapped, such painful tingling that you can hardly tell if it’s hot or cold. It simply registers as suffering. Cold that crept down your throat, under your toes and between your fingers, wrapped itself around your lungs and your heart. Our thin cotton blanket from Hong Kong was completely inadequate, since Hong Kong shops didn’t sell anything substantial enough for New York winters. We slept under a pile of jackets and clothes to try to stay warm. I woke up with parts of my body numb and frozen: unexpected places like my hip, where a sweater had slipped off the mound.

  Slowly, a sheet of ice grew over the inside of the windows, a layer of distortion spread thick across the panes. As I stared outside, I used my blueing fingers to melt circles in it, trying to reach the clear glass underneath.

  One afternoon, I pulled off a corner of the taped-on garbage bags in the kitchen so I could see what the back of our building looked like. It was a clear day. When I peered out of that opening, I looked down at the roof of a large extension built on our ground floor. That must have been where the dollar store had kept its extra merchandise. People had thrown so much trash onto that rooftop that you could hardly see its surface, but I could discern a large hole in the roof that no one had bothered to fix. A sheet of old newspaper clung to the ragged edge of the hole, flapping in the wind. When it snowed or rained, the inside of that extension must have gotten soaked.

  From our kitchen window, I could also see into the apartment immediately next to ours in Mr. Al’s building, where it extended deeper than ours. That apartment was strangely close for something so separate, contained within a completely different building yet only a few feet away. I could have stuck a broom out and tapped on its window. Behind the glass, I made out the form of a sleeping black woman. I could tell her apartment had heat because she was wearing only a thin housedress. She had a few curlers in her hair. Her arm was tenderly cradled around a small blanketed form and I realized it was a baby. The rest of the mattress was strewn with tangled clothes, and above their bodies, a triangular section of plaster was missing from their wall. But I could see how much they loved each other, despite their poverty, and I longed for the simpler times Ma and I had shared.