Dumpling Days

by Grace Lin

  I couldn’t ask Audrey Chiang. I didn’t know if it was because she thought I was a Twinkie, but she was not very friendly. She wasn’t exactly mean, though, either. She wasn’t making fun of me or whispering bad things. It was more like she looked at me as if I were a red light in a traffic jam.

  I tried not to think about her. Think bamboo, I told myself as I painted. Bamboo. And slowly, as the class went on, my brush began to get the message. Even though I still made more mistake marks than good ones, my paintings were starting to get better. My bamboo stopped looking like gray hot dogs sprouting fat fingers and began to look a bit like bamboo. I let out a deep breath. Maybe my special art skill hadn’t left me. But it was really hard to make it come out. At least I was getting better, though.

  Audrey’s paintings were getting better, too. The lumpy gray cotton balls she had been painting were now bamboo stalks arching across the paper. I had to admit her paintings were good. She obviously knew it, too, because her face was no longer scowling but had a look of smug contentment. She reminded me of Lissy when Mom let her choose her TV show.

  The teacher walked by and stopped between us.

  “Good! Good!” he said to me. “This is a nice line here.”

  “Isn’t that the line you helped her with?” Audrey shot out. Before I could shake my head—because it wasn’t the line he had helped me with!—she said, “And everything is one shade. You said our paintings should have variations of gray.”

  “Ah, yes,” the teacher said to me as my eyes burned at Audrey. “Remember, even though we are using only black, the painting should have shade variations. It gives the bamboo more depth. Like here.”

  He was pointing at parts of Audrey’s paintings, and even though I was looking, I wasn’t paying attention. Inside, I was seething like a teapot about to whistle. Anger was bubbling inside me, and I clamped my mouth tightly to keep it from exploding. As I watched Audrey’s face settle back into self-satisfaction, all I wanted to do was slap her. Why had she done that? Why would she point out what was wrong with my painting? “How do you make sure you stay the best in your class, then?” she had asked me. This must be the way she made sure she stayed the best in the class.

  I rubbed my paintbrush in the ink violently. Blackness splattered on my fingers, staining me with evil-looking freckles. All my worries and fears about my art talent dissolved with my anger. Audrey Chiang wanted to be the best? Well, I had a special art skill. I’d make it come out, and I’d be just as good as she was. No, I would be better.

  I took out another sheet of paper to start a new bamboo painting. Think bamboo, I told myself. The teacher had said that bamboo means “to wish.” I gripped my paintbrush. With this bamboo, I thought with eyes narrowing, I wish to be better than Audrey Chiang.

  Chapter 14

  LISSY WASN’T LIKING HER CLASS, EITHER. “WE SPEND most of the time just mixing ink,” Lissy said as we walked back to our grandparents’ place. She didn’t use ink from a bottle like I did; she had to use the inkstone and ink stick—wetting the stick with water and grinding it into the stone to make a dark charcoal color. “It’s complete misery!”

  Dad laughed when he saw our glum faces. “It’s not so bad, is it?” he asked.

  Ki-Ki laughed, too, even though nothing was funny. Ki-Ki wasn’t minding her classes. She liked cutting paper and didn’t even mind that tiny bits of paper fell off her like snowflakes when she left class. I rolled my eyes at her. I liked how Lissy was miserable better. I was glad someone else felt like I did, especially when Lissy threw herself on the couch and sprawled her arms dramatically. “Yes, it is!” Lissy said, closing her eyes as if she couldn’t bear to see the world. “I can’t believe I’m spending my summer rubbing a stone!”

  Mom and Grandma followed us into the room.

  “You aren’t going to be spending the whole summer mixing ink,” Mom said. “In fact, Grandma has a surprise for you today that I know you’ll like.”

  “Birthday present.” Grandma nodded.

  “Lissy’s birthday was in June,” Ki-Ki said.

  “A late birthday present,” Mom said. “It’s something many girls do here when they are teenagers, though usually an older teenager than you. But since we’re in Taiwan now, I said it was okay….”

  “What is it?” Lissy interrupted. She stopped flailing on the couch and sat up, excited.

  “Grandma’s going to take you to get photos done,” Mom said.

  “Photos?” I said. “Dad could take them right here.”

  “No, no,” Mom said. “These are special photos. They dress you up like a movie star or a princess or a bride and do your hair and makeup. Girls here love it.”

  Lissy was starting to get excited, especially when Mom mentioned makeup. Mom never let Lissy wear makeup at home.

  “So it’s like a model shoot?” Lissy said. “Will I be in a magazine or something?”

  “No, but we’ll get you an album of your photos for you to keep,” Mom said.

  “Just Lissy?” I asked. I wanted to get dressed up like a princess. “Can I do it, too?”

  “Me, too!” Ki-Ki said. I didn’t think Ki-Ki really knew what we were talking about, but she never wanted to be left out.

  “This time, just Lissy,” Mom said. “It’s her late birthday present from Grandma. And anyway, like I said, even Lissy is a little young for it. But you can come watch if you want. Then you can see if you want it done the next time we come to Taiwan.”

  The next time we come to Taiwan? I thought. So far, this first time hadn’t been that much fun. I hoped the next time would be when I was much, much older.

  And watching didn’t sound like that much fun, either. Dad was going to go to the store, so I thought maybe I’d go with him and Ki-Ki to buy Lucky Charms instead, but Lissy said, “You’re going to come with me, right, Pacy?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’ll probably be boring for me.”

  “You should come!” she said. “It won’t be bad!”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged.

  “Please,” Lissy said. “It’ll be more fun if you come.”

  I was astonished. Lissy never wanted me to go anywhere with her in New Hartford. She was always embarrassed to be seen with me or Ki-Ki or Mom. And now she was saying it would be more fun if I went with her?

  Lissy saw my amazement, came up close to me, and said in a low voice, “I don’t want to go by myself.”

  Suddenly, I understood. Lissy felt like I did! She didn’t say it, exactly, but I knew she meant that the crushing crowds, the flying Taiwanese words, and the depressing painting classes made her feel uneasy and nervous, too. A warm feeling wrapped around me, and I felt like reaching toward her with a hug. Instead, I nodded.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll come.”

  Lissy looked relieved. And I felt good. One of my teachers in New Hartford had taught me the saying “Misery loves company,” and I realized that was true of a lot of things, not just misery. Sometimes, sisters loved company, too—at least they liked it in Taiwan.

  Chapter 15

  THE PHOTO STUDIO WAS ON THE TENTH FLOOR OF AN old building. It wasn’t so old that it didn’t have an elevator, but the elevator felt rickety. I was glad when we got to the right floor. But as we went through the glass doors, I saw that everything was shiny and new and polished like it had all just come out of a magazine.

  “Ni hao, Ni hao,” a woman at the desk said. That meant “hello”—I knew enough Chinese to know that. Grandma spoke to her for a little while and then pointed at Lissy. The woman smiled and then beckoned Lissy to follow her to another room. Lissy followed the woman, and then we followed Lissy, like a parade.

  In the other room were a counter and a whole wall lined with mirrors. The counter was covered with all kinds of makeup—little tubes of pink and red lipstick, black and gray pencils, beige powders, and tubs of shimmery brown and blue eye shadow. It was as if someone had bought everything in the cosmetics aisle in our local pharmacy. Bright lightbulbs
framed the mirror, and another wall was hidden by racks of hanging clothes, silky and colorful. It was just like a dressing room for a movie star. Lissy’s face lit up as brightly as the lightbulbs.

  The woman said something to Lissy, who looked at Mom to translate. “She said you should pick your clothes first,” Mom told Lissy. “You can choose three different dresses.”

  That was fun. We all started looking at the dresses, pushing through them as if we were trying to make waves in water. There were hundreds of pretty dresses, but Lissy was picky. “How about this one?” Mom would say. “This one?” Grandma would say. “No,” Lissy would always reply, shaking her head.

  Finally, Lissy chose two dresses and had only one more left to decide on. I thought Lissy had horrible taste in clothes. One dress was black with sequins sewn in the shape of a bow around the waist. The black skirt looked like it was made out of layers of nets and stuck out like an upside-down dandelion. Her other dress was red with rows of lace that made her look like a cross between a fire engine and a cake. I would’ve chosen one of the flowing chiffon dresses that had little diamonds sewn into it or at least the pink silk one with birds embroidered all over the top.

  “Let Grandma choose your last dress,” Mom said. “She’s the one who’s giving this to you.”

  Lissy nodded, and Grandma chose a Chinese dress the color of a blue butterfly. It was long and shiny and had a golden feathery pattern all over it. I could tell Lissy was disappointed, but she tried to hide it.

  Now that Lissy was done choosing her dresses, another woman came in and had Lissy sit in the chair in front of the mirror. The woman looked at Lissy’s dresses, took Lissy’s chin in her hand, and then said something in Taiwanese to Grandma. Mom answered.

  “What?” Lissy asked.

  “She just wanted to know what kind of makeup you wanted,” Mom said. “I told her the natural look.”

  Mom might have said the natural look, but what the woman was doing to Lissy was not looking that natural. The woman was brushing a beige color all over Lissy’s face like she was painting a wall. Another woman appeared and began brushing and pulling and twisting at Lissy’s hair. Lissy loved it. Ever since Lissy turned thirteen a year ago and said that she was officially a teenager because teen was at the end of her age, she rarely smiled. I guess she thought she was too old to show that she was happy. But now the corners of her mouth kept creeping up, and her cheeks, the parts that hadn’t been painted beige, were blushing pink.

  One of the women motioned for Lissy to close her eyes, and I was expecting her to put some eye shadow or something like that on Lissy, but she didn’t. Instead, she measured Lissy’s eyes with her fingers and then cut tiny slices out of a piece of clear sticker paper. Then she peeled the backing from her tiny shapes and carefully stuck them on Lissy’s eyelids. What were those for?

  Then the woman started smearing brown powder that looked like hot-cocoa mix on Lissy’s eyelids, covering the stickers. She layered on more and more powder, some silvery, some charcoal gray, all the way up to Lissy’s eyebrows. Those she plucked into clean arches, which made Lissy give a little squeal with each pull. Ouch! Now I was glad I wasn’t getting my photos done, too.

  “Okay,” she said to Lissy. She wasn’t finished, but she meant that Lissy could open her eyes now.

  “Eye folds!” Lissy said when she looked at herself. I was mesmerized. Our eyes were one of the biggest differences between us and our classmates in New Hartford. My friends Becky and Charlotte both had creases on their eyelids that made their eyes look round and big. My eyelids were smooth and heavy, which made my eyes look small. And slanted—the way they looked when the boys at school used to pull the corners of their eyes to make fun of me for being Asian. “Can you even see out of your eyes?” a boy once asked me.

  But now Lissy’s eyes looked big and round, almost like Becky’s—though coated with a lot of makeup. I guess the woman needed to put that much on to hide the stickers. It was strange to see Lissy like that. With one woman dabbing pink onto Lissy’s lips and another adding fake curls to the top of Lissy’s head, Lissy wasn’t looking much like Lissy anymore.

  When Lissy came out of the dressing room in her black dress, her face looked like a mask of paint, and her hair was like a curled poodle on her head. She was smiling, though.

  “I feel like a movie star!” Lissy said.

  “You look like a movie star,” Grandma said to her, and Lissy glowed like Christmas lights. But I didn’t think she looked that good.

  “They put too much makeup on you,” I told her.

  “In photograph, will look natural,” the woman said. I guess she understood some English. I felt a little bad then. I didn’t want her to think that I thought she did a bad job.

  A man with a camera as large as a shoe box came into the room then to take Lissy to another room, where all the sets were.

  “Better alone,” he said to me in his broken English when I moved to follow them. “Person nervous when other people and bad photo. Alone, more relax.”

  That meant Mom, Grandma, and I stayed in the dressing room while Lissy got her photos done. That was boring. We could hear the clicking and snapping of the camera and the man’s instructions. “Just small smile,” he kept saying to her. “No big smile.” I thought that should’ve been easy for her, but I guess this whole thing was making Lissy happy in a way that was unusual.

  As Mom and Grandma talked, I looked at all the tubs of makeup and brushes and bottles that the women had used on Lissy. You needed a lot of stuff to look like a movie star. Some of the tubs on the counter reminded me of my ink and brushes in painting class. I wondered if Audrey Chiang thought she looked like a movie star. Probably not—she was full of herself, but she wasn’t stupid.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t really know if I was pretty. I knew I didn’t look like a movie star, but I did hope I was pretty. I didn’t put my hair in barrettes anymore—I was too old for that. And Mom was letting me grow my hair long, and it was already a little past my shoulders. I wondered if I should grow it as long as Eva, that girl in my painting class, had grown hers. Her hair looked nice, though it probably took forever to comb. But even if I had really long hair like Eva’s, I knew I’d never be really pretty, like my friend Charlotte in New Hartford was. Charlotte had wavy golden hair and blue eyes. Last year at my birthday party, Charlotte had said I wouldn’t make a cute couple with Sam Mercer, the boy I liked in school. He had brown eyes and sand-colored hair. She had said I didn’t match him, because I was Chinese. “It’s hard to match you in a cute couple,” she had said. “You don’t fit anyone else.”

  I pulled up my eyelids to make my eyes bigger. If I had eye folds, would I be easier to match with Sam Mercer? In the fairy tale, Snow White had black hair, but she wasn’t Chinese. Was it just my eyes that made me Asian? Being here in Taiwan, where I didn’t know what the foods were, where I couldn’t read the signs or even ask questions—I didn’t feel Asian at all. Maybe eye folds would help me match who I was on the inside.

  Chapter 16

  LISSY WOULD HAVE TO WAIT TWO WEEKS BEFORE SHE could see her photos and then a week after that before she would get the album to keep.

  “That’s so long!” she said. I agreed. We’d be getting her album right before we left, and that was a long time from now, even though the days were passing a little faster.

  But at least for now we were going to get a break from our classes. We were going to visit Taichung, where Dad’s family lived, for about a week and stay with Big Uncle, Dad’s oldest brother. Taichung was in the middle of Taiwan. It even meant “middle of Taiwan.” “Zhong means ‘middle,’ ” Dad said, “and bei means ‘north’—bei is where the pei of Taipei comes from. Zhong is where the chung of Taichung comes from. So Taipei means ‘north of Taiwan’ and Taichung means ‘middle of Taiwan.’ ”

  Dad said we were taking the special bullet train that would get us there faster than the regular train. “They didn’t have that when I was young,” he
said. I wondered if it was called a bullet train because it went faster than a speeding bullet—like Superman!

  The train station was a huge building that I couldn’t really look at because there were so many people. Ghost Month wasn’t scaring many people from traveling, either, no matter what Dad’s friend had said. Mom said we weren’t going for very long, but she, Lissy, and Dad had rolling suitcases and Ki-Ki and I had heavy backpacks. Mom also carried a big shopping bag full of presents and her purse, and Lissy had another bag of gifts.

  Around Dad’s neck was what we thought was the worst piece of extra luggage—a brand-new camera that he’d bought at a store down the street from our grandparents’ place. It was supposed to take especially good photos, but, to us, it just took an especially long time to use. “Let me take a picture,” Dad would say in the middle of whatever we were doing, and we would have to stand there forever while he figured out which buttons to press. Sometimes my face would get sore from holding the smile as he stood there trying to hit the right button for the right setting. I wondered if the camera was Japanese, like that toilet was.

  Dad found out where we were supposed to be, and after more elbowing and squeezing, we found ourselves waiting on a platform. Lots of other people were waiting, too. I let my backpack drop to the ground, and Lissy sat on the suitcase she had been rolling behind her.

  “I have to go to the bathroom!” Ki-Ki said.

  “Really? Now?” Mom sighed.

  Dad looked at the big clock. “There’s time,” he said. “You can go.”

  “Me, too!” I said. I didn’t really have to go, but I thought it would be better to go with Mom to the bathroom than to try to go by myself later. I didn’t want to push the wrong button again.