Dumpling Days

by Grace Lin

  “I don’t have a name chop,” Eva said.

  “It’s okay,” the teacher said. “I have some you can use.”

  “But then our paintings will have your name on it!” Audrey sputtered.

  “No, you won’t use this chop, the one with my name,” the teacher said. “I have others.”

  And he reached over and untied a small roll of cloth. Inside lay three more chops. The figures on top were beautiful, bigger, and more intricately carved than my tiger. One chop was made out of red stone with gray flecks in it, and the top had a carving of two fish swimming on a wave of water. Another was a creamy ivory color with a bamboo carving, and the one with the lotus flower was gray with muted orange and brown shining through.

  “These are my chops for different moods,” he said. “Sometimes I add another mark with my name to add to the mood of the painting. I have some at home I will bring for you to choose from. You can borrow them for your painting if you don’t have your own. In the future, maybe you can add your own to it.”

  “What do these say?” I asked. These must be chops like the one Dad’s friend had that said “never too tired for knowledge.” It reminded me that we hadn’t gotten ours carved yet. I’d have to remind Mom.

  “This one,” the teacher said, stroking the red stone seal with the carved fish, “says ‘this moment will last in my memory.’ The gray one says ‘spring opens the heart to happiness,’ and the bamboo says ‘fulfilling wish.’ The ones you can borrow, which I will bring, will be more simple, better for you. ”

  “What will those, the ones we can use, say?” a square-headed boy asked—for some reason I thought his name was Alex, but I wasn’t sure.

  “ ‘Joy,’ ‘love,’ ‘harmony,’ ” he said, “that kind of thing. Simple, but it will still look very nice. But when you choose, make sure it matches the mood of your painting. Every detail in your painting is important.”

  We all went back to our desks. I guessed the simple chops would be okay. Lots of people had nodded when Eva said she didn’t have a chop, so most of the class was probably going to use the teacher’s chops. But I’d rather have my own. I wondered if I could get mine carved in time for the exhibit. But what would I have carved? It was driving me crazy that I couldn’t decide.

  Or maybe it was Audrey Chiang who was driving me crazy. I’m sure she would get something like “forever the best” carved on her name chop with plans to decorate it with the winning class ribbon. As she took out her paper, I watched her as she carefully looked around the room at each of the students. There were lots of good painters in our class, but there was no one who I could say was the best. Eva painted bamboo really well and that boy Rex could paint nice flying birds. And I was pretty good, too.

  But I could almost see Audrey calculating how to be the best. I was calculating, too. How was I going to beat her? I was not going to let Audrey Chiang win the ribbon in our class. I had a special art talent, and it was not going to let her win. At least, I hoped not.

  Chapter 27

  DAYS WERE MELTING AWAY. DAD HAD LEFT, AND NOW we had only ten days left in Taiwan. Today we were going to the photography studio so Lissy could choose her photos for the album, and tomorrow I had to choose which painting I wanted for the exhibit. Mom had said I had to use the teacher’s chop because she didn’t have time to get our chops carved. “Later,” she’d promised. “I’ll get your chops carved later.”

  Maybe there wasn’t any time because everyone was planning for Grandma’s birthday party. Aunt Bea had already chosen the restaurant for the party, and Auntie Jin had sent out the invitations before we even arrived in Taiwan. And Uncle Flower, Shogun, Julian, and their father had been and were still practicing “a secret!” Uncle Flower had said.

  “What has Grandpa done for the party?” I asked.

  “He’s too busy working to do anything for the party,” Auntie Jin said, laughing. “He’s paying for it!”

  Mom felt bad that everyone else had done so much work for the party already, so she said she would order the cakes. “We can stop by the bakery on the way back from the photo studio,” she said.

  Lissy was eager to see her photos. She tried to hide it, but I could tell by the way she tapped her foot on the subway. I was curious, too.

  We were kind of taken aback when the woman and the photographer pushed Lissy in front of a computer. But we quickly figured out what was going on. Lissy was supposed to click a little box on the screen if that was a photo she wanted in her album. We all peered at the monitor.

  “Who’s that?” Ki-Ki asked.

  “Me!” Lissy said, giving Ki-Ki a don’t-be-dumb look.

  “No, it’s not!” Ki-Ki said. “They mixed your photos up with someone else’s. We’ve got the wrong set.”

  “No, we don’t,” Lissy said, sighing in annoyance. “They’re my pictures.”

  I didn’t blame Ki-Ki for thinking they weren’t Lissy’s photos. The girl onscreen had luminous eyes and glowing skin that looked as soft as a freshly laundered bedsheet. Her hair was glossy and smooth like black embroidery floss, and her pink lips formed a delicate doll smile. The girl in the photo was glowing and plastic-looking, like an actress or a movie star. She did not look like Lissy.

  And even when we knew it was Lissy, it was still hard to believe. When I looked closely, I could see a small resemblance—the nose, the teeth, the way she held the fan. But it felt like we were looking at a stranger.

  “I think they made you taller on the computer,” I told her. I couldn’t exactly tell what they did, but she sure looked different. “Or something.”

  Lissy didn’t seem to be bothered. She swung her legs as she clicked and scrolled and asked us over and over again which picture we liked better.

  “This one with the umbrella?” she’d ask us. “Or the close-up in the rainbow room?”

  “I like them both the same,” I said. Which was true, because I didn’t like either of them.

  “Okay, both, then,” Lissy said happily. “Mom, there’s a little box I can click if I want a poster made. Can I get a poster made?”

  A poster! I didn’t know if I wanted to see a big-size version of these photos, but Mom said, “Okay, but only one.”

  I shrugged.

  Soon, Ki-Ki and I got bored of watching Lissy go through her pictures. We left her and Mom at the computer and sat in the waiting area, flipping through magazines. They were all in Chinese, so I couldn’t understand them.

  “Look,” Ki-Ki said, stopping at a page. “This is the same dress Lissy is wearing in her photos.”

  It wasn’t exactly the same dress, but it was close. But what was weird was how much the model in the magazine looked like Lissy did in her photos. I looked at Lissy at the computer, squinting into the screen with her hair tangled at the ends and her dirty feet in flip-flops. There was no way she looked like a movie star or a model in real life. But if I didn’t know her, her photos might have made me think so. If they could make Lissy look like a hairspray model, they could make anyone look like one. I started to flip through the pages of the magazine again and realized—they were all fake! All these fashion models were probably photographed like Lissy, lots of makeup, fake eyes, and lighting and computer changes. It was all a big lie.

  I went back over to Lissy. She was almost done.

  “You know you don’t really look like those photos,” I said to her.

  “I know,” Lissy said. “But it’s fun. Like a story or a movie. You don’t have to be mean about it.”

  “No,” I said. “I meant you don’t look like those photos, and it’s good. I think you look a lot better in real life.”

  “Oh,” Lissy said. She didn’t say anything else, but a little pleased smile curved on her lips. I’d never really said nice things to Lissy before, but for some reason I felt like this was important. Because it was true. I did think she looked better in real life. She didn’t look like someone fake. In real life, she looked like Lissy—someone who was sometimes nice, sometimes mean, but alw
ays my sister. Just being herself was much better looking than one of those models pretending in the magazine.

  But that meant Lissy kind of was a beautiful thought, then, I realized in surprise. Her Chinese name was right about her. I would never have believed it.

  Chapter 28

  AFTER THE PHOTO STUDIO, WE WENT TO THE BAKERY so Mom could order the cakes for Grandma’s birthday party. As soon as we entered, a warm, buttery smell filled our noses. We kept taking deep breaths with our eyes closed, trying to eat the smell.

  But maybe we didn’t need to try to eat the smell, because it looked like there were free samples all over the bakery for us to taste. There were rows of trays full of all kinds of cakes and breads and cookies. A lot of things I had never seen before, but everything looked good. Crowded together were round yellow buns with sandy sugar tops, sunshine-colored egg tarts like the ones we had eaten at dim sum, and even bread in the shape of pig heads!

  One row was filled with small rectangle cakes—the shape of toy wooden blocks. Each one was wrapped in plastic and was a golden, toasted color. I thought they were all exactly the same until I noticed that the sample plates in front of them showed different colored fillings. Mom’s eyes lit up when she saw them.

  “Pineapple cakes!” she said. “I love these!”

  “Are they all pineapple?” I asked.

  Mom looked down the aisle. “They make them in many different flavors now,” she said. She went to the stack of empty boxes at the side and handed one to each of us. “You can each fill a box with them to bring home.”

  That was exciting. Lissy, Ki-Ki, and I rushed over to try the samples. But as Lissy reached for a chunk of cake with a nut-colored filling, I suddenly got worried.

  “They are samples, right?” I said, tugging at her arm. “They aren’t food left out for ghosts, are they?”

  Lissy’s arm froze with her hand hovering over the plate, and we looked at each other. But then a teenage boy passed us, casually took one of the cake pieces, and popped it into his mouth. We grinned. They were samples!

  Lissy, Ki-Ki, and I tried every single one. There were cherry, walnut, pineapple, lychee, and egg. The egg-flavored one was kind of peculiar. There were also a couple of cakes that we couldn’t tell what the flavors were. There was one with a darkish purple filling and another with an orange filling that didn’t taste like orange at all. We agreed that the pineapple ones were the best, with their thin, buttery crust and sweet, firm pineapple filling. I guess that’s why they were the original ones.

  We could put fourteen cakes in each box, so filling it was a hard decision for me. Lissy put every flavor in her box, even the weird egg one. Ki-Ki just put in all pineapple. I decided to put in mostly pineapple but a couple of the cherry- and walnut-flavored ones, too.

  It took us so long to choose our cakes that Mom was waiting for us by the time we had finished. She had talked to the woman at the counter for a while, ordering cakes for the party.

  “Did you get pineapple cakes for Grandma’s party, too?” Lissy asked as we left. The big bakery bag that held our cakes knocked against her knees.

  “No,” Mom said. “I ordered special cakes for the party. Peach buns—remember, like the ones we had with soup dumplings? And turtle cakes.”

  “Turtle cakes? Not made of turtles, right?” I asked. I didn’t think so, but I had to make sure.

  “No, it’s just a cake that looks like a turtle shell,” Mom said. “Turtles mean longevity, too, just like the peaches. It’s because turtles are known for living such a long time.”

  We rode the subway home. It was crowded but not as busy as the first time we rode it. This time Mom let us each scan in our subway token as we went in. The tokens were round, purple, plastic discs that reminded me of toy money. When we got off the subway, we were supposed to drop them into a machine.

  The subway car came, and Lissy and I squeezed onto a seat with the bakery bag in our laps. Mom held Ki-Ki’s hand with one hand and a silver pole with the other, her bag on her shoulder. Crowds of people pressed into one another, and I watched a group of girls giggling and a man trying to read a book as the train swayed. I was getting used to not knowing what people were saying. But not being able to understand Chinese meant that all I did was look at things. And eat—I did that, too.

  I remembered the samples I had eaten at the bakery and how I had wondered if they had been for hungry ghosts. I knew they hadn’t been, but a small part of me still worried. What if I had eaten food meant for a hungry ghost?

  As I sat silently with all the passengers casually ignoring me, I realized that I was like a ghost myself. Everything here—the crowds of people who tried to walk through me, the signs I couldn’t read, the words I couldn’t say, and even the art I couldn’t paint—made me feel like I was invisible. Sometimes I felt like I was disappearing. Just like a ghost.

  The subway lurched, and the doors opened. Mom and Ki-Ki pushed against me as people rushed out. As the man with the book staggered past us, I saw his thin hand reach into Mom’s bag! Faster than my mouth could open, a blue change purse from Mom’s bag vanished behind his book.

  “Mom!” I said, pointing. Lissy saw it, too. “Mom! Mom! Your purse!”

  But it was too late. The crowd of people had already thrust him out of the subway, and he was gone.

  “He stole something from your bag!” Lissy said, her words running into each other.

  Mom’s eyes and mouth opened, each making round circles of panic. She quickly opened her bag and started to look through it.

  “It was a little blue purse,” I said, “in the front pocket.”

  “My blue purse?” Mom said, and she was still for a moment. Then she started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” we all asked. It didn’t seem funny to us at all. Mom had just been robbed!

  “That purse had tissues in it!” she said, laughing harder. “Tissues for the bathroom! He stole tissues!”

  We all started to laugh then. We laughed so hard that everyone in the subway car looked at us. But we couldn’t help it; it was so funny! I wondered what the thief would do when he opened Mom’s change purse and just found tissues.

  The subway car started moving again, and Mom and Ki-Ki tilted forward. When they swayed back, Mom had stopped laughing.

  “I always thought they only pickpocketed tourists,” Mom said, more to herself than to us. “I guess they can tell that I am not from here anymore.”

  Mom’s face looked kind of sad. I hadn’t thought about Mom not being from Taiwan anymore. It was probably weird coming back to Taiwan, the place that used to be her home but wasn’t anymore. She was really from America now, just like us. And we were all just like visiting ghosts.

  Chapter 29

  IT WAS FRIDAY. WE HAD NINE DAYS LEFT IN TAIWAN. IT was the last day of painting class and the day I had to choose which painting I wanted in the exhibit. The actual exhibit wasn’t until next week, but we had to hand them in so they could be mounted.

  “Does it have to be mounted?” Rex, the boy who sat next to Eva, asked.

  “Yes,” the teacher said, almost astonished that someone would ask that. “It’s very important. Do you see how when your paint dries, your paper is wrinkled?”

  We nodded. I had noticed that. It was a pain. I was always trying to smooth out my finished pictures.

  “When we glue it onto silk, when we mount it in our special way,” he said, “the painting becomes flat again and the silk makes a border. A painting is not considered finished unless there is a border around it.”

  “Our paintings will be mounted on silk?” I asked. That sounded really fancy!

  “Yes,” the teacher said again. “Mounting a painting is important. The Chinese word for the mounting silk is ming zhi—that means ‘life paper.’ Mounting your painting brings it to life. That is how a painting is finished.”

  I was used to the way the teacher spoke now. I didn’t mind so much that he repeated himself or didn’t really answer the questions we ask
ed. Ever since he had shown us how to make a painting, I respected him a lot. He was a real artist.

  I was an artist, too, at least sometimes, when my talent decided to work. But even then, I wasn’t as good as he was. So far I had a couple of paintings that I thought were okay, but I kept hoping I’d paint an even better one. I wondered which one of her paintings Audrey was going to choose. She had one with red flowers growing out of old, weathered branches that looked almost like the teacher had done it. I didn’t paint flowers as well, I think, because I missed those classes when we went to Taichung.

  But I could paint nice birds. I mixed up some carmine-red paint with some white and it made a brilliant pink. It was the same color as those awful pink dresses Mom had made us wear on the plane to Taiwan. I remembered how I had imagined Lissy, Ki-Ki, and I had been bright pink birds and how grumpy I was that we had to come. It seemed such a long time ago. And we would be flying back home soon.

  I started to paint three pink birds. One for me, one for Lissy, and one for Ki-Ki. Not bad, but the birds were just floating in the air. They’d be better on a branch or something. Oops, I should have painted a branch first. I took out another sheet of paper. I sighed. It was annoying that I couldn’t erase or cover my marks.

  I painted an arching bamboo. Was there enough room for the birds? Well, Ki-Ki was small. I felt like I was squeezing both Ki-Ki the bird and my art talent at the same time. C’mon! There! Three birds on a bamboo. A warm, happy feeling filled me, like I had swallowed a bowl of delicious soup.

  I leaned back to get a better look at my painting. Yes, this was my best one. I was sure of it. My art talent had been stubborn, but it had appeared this time. I looked over at Audrey, who was looking at my painting fiercely, as if I had written insults on it. Ha! That meant it was good.