by Anchee Min
I wrote thirty-three farewell letters to my friends, colleagues, and relatives. I didn’t mail them, because there was still a risk that I would get caught and be deported back to China. I told my sister to hold on to my letters until she received word from me in America saying that I had made it.
No one on the film set where I worked knew that I would be leaving the country. Things could go wrong at the last minute. The crew boss might get angry with me and report on me and ruin everything. I had lived long enough to know that I was only an ant everyone could step on. I kept my mouth shut and followed orders. This will soon be behind me, I thought triumphantly.
The day I departed for America, my family accompanied me to the Shanghai airport. My father’s worry was written all over his face. He had been imagining my deportation and was so tense that he was unable to hug me or say good-bye. My mother quietly embraced me, as did my sisters and brother. I held a one-way ticket. I tried not to think about how long it would be before I could see my family again. I worried about my mother’s health and my father’s recovery from cancer.
The sound of the airplane taking off would remain a permanent memory. The noise was deafening, but it was great music to my ears. Before entering the departure building, I waved good-bye to my family for the last time.
I had been waiting almost an hour in the small brown room when the translator again appeared. She wore a solemn expression as she walked briskly toward me. I could now see clearly that she was not Chinese. Her hair was dark, but it was not black. She had deep-set eyes and a large mouth. I could feel my blood freezing in my veins. Whatever the translator conveyed would decide my fate. She carried a stack of documents. Among them must have been my passport and my I-20 papers.
“Miss Min, follow me, please,” she said in Chinese, as she opened the door.
I did my best not to collapse. The translator took me back to the officer who had sent me to the questioning room. I watched them exchange words. The translator pulled a page out of the stack of her papers and showed it to the officer. She pointed out something to him on the paper. The officer examined the spot and then nodded. They exchanged more words. The officer bent down and quickly wrote something on the page. They waved at each other as they parted. The translator returned to me.
“Ni tai jin zhang la!” she said to me in Chinese.
I understood. It meant “You’re too nervous!” But what did she mean?
She repeated the phrase, and I heard “You’re too nervous” again.
I begged her to explain, for I was too disoriented to understand.
“This means we have decided to let you go,” she smiled.
“Do you mean I get to go to Chicago? Is that what you just said? Am I understanding you correctly? Do you mean that there will be no deportation for me?”
She nodded. “No deportation, Miss Min. Congratulations.”
I choked with joy. I locked my arms with my hands so that I wouldn’t throw myself at the floor to kowtow to the lady.
I asked her what had happened. The translator let me know that she had found a clause in my papers that my school had a plan to place me in an intensive language program at the University of Illinois if upon arrival my English was found to be insufficient. I would be given six months to bring my English up to level and pass an entrance test. If I failed to improve, the school was responsible for reporting me to immigration, which meant my deportation.
Six months! I had only asked for three!
{ Chapter 6 }
I had never met my cousin, my aunt’s son. I was told by my aunt that he would pick me up from the airport in Chicago. I held the paper with his name on it above my head as I exited the terminal. We met but were unable to communicate. I spoke Mandarin and he Cantonese. He was kind enough to allow me to temporarily stay at his student apartment. I promised my aunt that I’d leave as soon as possible.
The foreign-student adviser at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago was upset. I had lied about my “language skills” on the application form. In the “Please describe the level of your English” section, I had marked “Excellent.” I confessed that I was guilty, and that I was willing to accept the punishment.
I was sent to the intensive tutorial class held at the University of Illinois Circle Campus. The program cost five hundred dollars. I already felt the weight of my debt and regretted having to borrow more from my aunt. It was painful for me to pay for the university’s dormitory. I would have preferred to live on the streets.
I was given a tour of the school and the city of Chicago. I tried to read the street signs and memorize bus numbers and routes. But all I could hear was the soundtrack of a Chinese opera as I bent my head back to admire the Sears Tower.
When asked what type of roommate I’d prefer, I had replied, “Anyone who speaks English, and who doesn’t mind my silence.”
This was how I met Takisha, my first American friend.
The dorm room was way too luxurious for me. My first thought after entering the room was: I need to look elsewhere for a cheaper place to live.
Chicago’s winter was brutal, but the room was heated. It had a window facing a tree. The hallway was freshly painted, and the shared bathrooms were spacious. That hot water was available twenty-four hours a day was incredible. I felt like a princess, because for the first time in my life I would get to sleep on a mattress. Each roommate had her own desk and closet. I was tormented by the amount I was paying for this. I found myself checking out the garbage Dumpster every time I walked by. I didn’t need a mattress. I’d be fine sleeping on concrete.
I heard laughter and a loud knock on the door followed by the sound of a key turning. The door opened and a dark-skinned person entered.
An African freedom fighter, I thought. Takisha looked exactly like the girl I grew up seeing on a Communist propaganda poster calling for the Proletarians of the World to Unite.
Takisha enthralled me. She was a breathing sculpture with chocolate-colored skin and large, fig-shaped eyes. She had a wide nose and pink lips. She had the whitest teeth I had ever seen. Her hair was a ball of frizzy curls in the shape of a tall cake. She was about my height, five foot five.
I realized that Takisha was a cripple. She limped from side to side as she walked. It amazed me that she didn’t act like a handicapped person. In China cripples would act timid and scared because they would be subjected to disrespect and vicious bullying. Takisha laughed loudly and freely.
I didn’t expect Takisha to treat me like an old friend, which made me feel wonderful and grateful.
“I am Takisha,” she said, opening her arms. “I am eighteen, and I am from Alabama.”
My English escaped me. All I could do was smile.
“Oh, gosh, is it A.Q., An-Qu, or An-Qui?” Takisha giggled. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Forgive me if I don’t pronounce your name correctly.”
I tried to figure out what she was saying. I took out my dictionary and said to her, “English. Help.”
“Where are you from?” Takisha asked, gesturing with her arms. “East, west, south, or north?”
I opened my English 900 Sentences book. “I name are … my name is …”
“I see, so you don’t speak English.” Takisha smiled broadly. “It’s okay. No problem. Now follow me. Where … are … you … from? Where, watch my mouth, wh … ere …” She pointed her hand at me. “Don’t look at your book. Look at me. Now tell me your home. Home. Do you understand? Home? Papa, mama, milk, dog. Do you understand what I mean?”
“No understand—”
“Hey, listen carefully!” Takisha pointed at herself. “Home Alabama.”
I pointed at her. “Your home.”
“That’s right! My home, Alabama. Now tell me yours. Your home.”
“Home? Do you mean h-o-m-e?”
Takisha laughed. “I mean your motherland—”
Yes, I knew the word motherland. It was one of the few slogans in English taught in China in 1972 during the visit of the American president
Nixon. “I love my motherland” was taught along with “Long live Chairman Mao,” “Long live the Communist Party of China,” and “Albania is a great socialist country.”
“Motherland is China,” I said.
“Oh, you talk!”
“China, Papa, Mama, is China.”
“You’re from China! How wonderful! I want you to tell me all about China.”
“Me English poor.”
“You’ll learn.”
Takisha wanted to know how I had enjoyed America so far. I wished that I could have told her that I enjoyed air-conditioned rooms. I loved the flow of warm water from the faucet, I enjoyed sitting on a toilet, and of course the big moving room—the elevator. I loved the American city nights with the streets and buildings all ablaze. I couldn’t imagine the cost of electricity, though. Most of all I enjoyed Takisha, the way she accepted me without reservation.
Takisha wanted to know what had brought me to America, and what life was like for me in China. With the help of my dictionary, I composed and wrote down my answer: “It was like you are hung, your neck bone is breaking, but death doesn’t arrive.”
“What?” Takisha frowned.
Takisha wrote words for me to look up in my dictionary. This was how I discovered that she was studying to become a doctor. I asked what motivated her to study medicine. She replied that she wanted to find a cure for her mother, who was severely diabetic.
“My mother is in bad shape,” Takisha said. “You know what ‘bad shape’ means? Her doctor wants to cut off her legs. I said no way. I will not let anybody cut off my mother’s legs. ‘You will keep your legs,’ I told my mother. ‘I will be your doctor.’ ”
As I looked for words to express my admiration, I heard a ringing sound and saw that the room had a telephone. Takisha picked up the phone. “Excuse me, it’s my mother!”
“My roommate IQ is from China,” I heard Takisha say. “Hey, IQ, my mother says hello to you. Hey, wait a minute. Oops, her name is not IQ. It’s A.Q. A … An … Qui … Oh, never mind, I’m sorry. How do I pronounce your name again? Ah-Choo? Ah-Chi? Ann? What? Oh, I see, An like Ann. Chee like cheese. Ann-Cheese. That should do it. I got it. Ann-Cheese, without the ‘s’! Did I get it right this time? What? A-n. Not A-n-n. An-c-hee. Oh, one more try. Okay, Anchee. Is it Anchee? Yes, I got it! Anchee!”
I turned to my English 900 Sentences while Takisha continued on the phone. It was hard to concentrate with the noise. I left the room and went to sit on the floor in the hallway. I buried myself in the book for hours on end. What confused me the most about English was its sentence structure, which was completely different from Chinese. For example, “You are not a thief,” a policeman might ask. “You didn’t steal, did you?”
In English, one would answer, “No, I didn’t.” But in Chinese, you must answer yes, meaning, “You are correct, I didn’t steal.” But it would be wrong in English if I said, “Yes, I didn’t steal.”
I also had great difficulty with on, in, the, am, was, are, and were. I could never figure out where and when to use them. Have been, has been, and had been also gave me trouble.
“Good night, Ann Chee,” Takisha said, turning the light off on her side. I covered my lamp with my jacket and the room was instantly dark and quiet. I was tired and wished that I could go to sleep, but I knew I couldn’t waste any time.
The next morning, the sound of a door slamming jolted me awake. It was followed by Takisha’s loud voice: “Oh, I am soooooo sorry!”
This would be my alarm clock from now on. Takisha had a habit of slamming the door and then saying, “Oh, I am soooooo sorry!”
It was still dark outside after Takisha took her shower. She was drying herself with a towel in front of me. She didn’t seem to be concerned about revealing her naked body in front of a stranger.
I left the dorm as soon as Takisha did. The day’s task I had set for myself was to go to downtown Chicago. I planned to look for a job waitressing or dishwashing. I would knock on the doors of Chinese restaurants.
The tall buildings in Chicago were fantastic in my eyes. I didn’t feel real walking between them. I was reminded how far I had come from home, that my feet were truly on American soil. I remembered the news clip depicting America’s poor as I walked past the Chicago city hall, where a small group of people was picketing. It was as if I had stepped into the same TV scene, except it was not black-and-white.
I was surprised by how fancy the post office was. A large American flag hung above its entrance. I wanted to take a picture of myself under that flag and mail it home. My parents were worried about me. My letter to them would take three weeks to arrive in China.
I found a sign that read CHINESE RESTAURANT on Michigan Avenue and let myself in.
A lady greeted me asking, “How many?”
I put on my best smile and replied politely in Chinese, “Do you need a waitress or a dishwasher?”
The lady looked disappointed. She shook her head and waved me away.
I tried another restaurant and received the same response. I kept on. The begging part was the most difficult. I told myself that I must learn to get used to it.
I went as far as my legs could carry me. By the end of the day, I was tired and starving. I had visited every Chinese restaurant in downtown Chicago, but without luck. The one Chinese carry-out-only restaurant owner who had a help-wanted sign in his window said to me, “No English, no job.”
On the sidewalk I was blocked by a fat lady who looked like a wrestler. She wore a dirty, grease-covered, brown knee-length coat. Holding a cardboard sign, she approached me. A strong scent of cheap perfume came from her messy orange hair. She spoke to me, but I couldn’t understand.
“Sorry me no English,” I apologized.
She flashed the sign in front of my face and stuck out her hand. “Spare some change?”
I took out my dictionary and looked up the words on her sign, HUNGRY & HOMELESS.
I said to her, “Yes English, yes job!”
The students in my English class came from all over the world. Since I had trouble pronouncing and memorizing their names, I tried to memorize their faces. It was not easy because black people looked alike, as did the whites and Hispanics. My classmates told me that they had a similar problem—to them Oriental people all looked the same.
A man from Italy with dark wavy hair sat on my right, and a beautiful high-nosed girl on my left was from Greece. With a lot of hand motions and make-believe words, we tried to communicate. Unfortunately, nobody understood anybody.
Our teachers were Americans. One was heavyset with curly blonde hair and the other slender with short dark-brown hair. I made it easier for myself by calling one Light Head and the other Dark Head. I secretly gave names to my classmates. I called the Italian man Michelangelo and the Greek girl Goddess Helena. I called another Middle Eastern–looking man Ali Baba, and a Russian Comrade Lenin.
What fascinated me was not the way the teachers taught, but what they taught. For example, the textbook featured a world that seemed unreal to me. It described an American small town where all the residents could vote and the people decided whether to give permission to a developer to build a shopping mall near the town square. Besides the town’s mayor, there were also other elected officials.
Where I came from, everyone was considered “a bolt on the Communist machine.” Unless you wanted to be arrested and spend the rest of your life in a prison or labor camp, you wouldn’t ever voice your opinion against the authorities. I asked if the world described in the textbook was an accurate reflection of American reality. The teacher, Dark Head, turned to me and said, “Pretty much.”
I didn’t want to be too hard on my teachers, but I did want my money’s worth. I was unsatisfied by the speed of the teaching. The teachers didn’t press for results and allowed the class to run at its own pace. They assigned little homework, and only a few students turned in the work that was assigned. The teachers were okay with that, as if they didn’t care. I seemed to be the o
nly one who really drilled at the grammar.
Miss Light Head suffered a cold for several days. She carried a box that looked as if it had toilet paper in it. She called it “tissues.” She kept sneezing. It made me want to laugh when I saw her cover her nose with toilet paper.
Each time she would blow her nose she would say two words: “Excuse me.” I wondered why. There was nothing to be excused for—you couldn’t help it when you sneezed.
In China, in order to ask to be excused, you had to commit a crime, such as wipe your behind with newsprint that had Mao’s portrait on it, as my mother had once done accidentally. My mother didn’t mean disrespect. She wasn’t plotting an anti-Mao event. She was simply out of toilet paper and used the newspaper instead. It was hard to avoid Mao, whose portrait was printed on every page.
I found “excuse me” very useful. It was almost like saying hello. You would say it not only when you sneezed, but also when you entered a building, joined a line, walked past someone, or stepped off a train. I started to practice saying “Excuse me.”
Then I couldn’t stop saying it. “Excuse me,” I said to the man who opened the door for me. “Excuse me,” I said to the school janitor. People gave me the friendliest looks when I said “Excuse me.” I loved saying “Excuse me.”
I didn’t mind Miss Light Head’s “excuse me,” but I did mind that she let the students do the teaching. She seemed exhausted by her sneezing and excuse me’s. She sat in front of her desk, and the language cripples took over the class. I didn’t pay to listen to the cripples!
Michelangelo loved to express himself in class. He had a thick Italian accent and would take forever to complete one sentence. Although I enjoyed his good looks, I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying. What he said didn’t sound like English to me.