Girl in Translation

by Jean Kwok

  There were some kids who were less well-off, though. One boy suddenly disappeared from school and no one knew where he’d gone. Another girl was picked up by her mother in the middle of the day once and her mother looked like she had been beaten up. Mr. Bogart didn’t blink an eye at this. He seemed used to it. Fights often broke out after school, and I’d seen a boy walking away with a cut above his eye that dripped blood. Mostly boys fought boys but sometimes it was girls and girls, or mixed.

  The other boys and girls had just emerged from hating each other into a state of awkward interest, teasing and rude remarks. They were busy with cooties: catching them, getting rid of them and inoculating themselves against them. The transmission of cooties was an excuse for the boys to hit one another as hard as they could and to touch the girls. I had no idea what cooties were and often ended up as the recipient of all the cooties in the class. I’d been taught not to touch another person without permission, so it was hard for me to get rid of the cooties in my possession. Cooties were the one thing that transcended racial lines.

  I’d never been a sickly child, but that winter, I had one flu or cold after another. My nose was rubbed so raw that a constant layer of peeling skin and small chapped cuts formed under my nostrils. We didn’t have a doctor because we couldn’t afford one. When I was trembling with fever, I lay in bed. Ma made rice with large slices of ginger in it. She wrapped the hot rice in a handkerchief and I had to hold it to my head until the rice cooled, so that it could soak up the germs. She boiled Coca-Cola with lemons and I had to drink it warm.

  She went to the medicine shop in Chinatown and at great expense brought home many things I had to eat, all of which tasted terrible: deer antlers, crushed crickets, octopus tentacles, human-shaped roots. She stewed them in an earthen crock and cooked an entire pot down to a concentrated cupful. Even though I protested that these things only made me sicker, I still had to drink every drop.

  I usually had to go to school even when I was ill, because the apartment was so bitterly cold that Ma was afraid to leave me there. Sometimes, the classroom swam before me, my face burning with fever, my nose dripping.

  I’d hoped Mr. Bogart would start praising me once he saw that science and math were my best subjects, but he didn’t. He seemed to assume that girls couldn’t do these subjects, and often had a half-smile that suggested a girl would be incompetent whenever she went to the board to write down an answer. Then he would make a comment about “the fairer sex,” which I thought had something to do with being more honest. I enjoyed proving him wrong. Even though he cut down my grades for any deviation from the path he’d taught, I understood everything perfectly once I could see it written down, and I could learn those subjects faster than anyone else in the class.

  But I was failing other subjects even with Annette’s help: Physical Sciences, Social Studies, Language Arts, everything that had too much to do with words. I relied on my ability to read and I had Ma scoop out my ears with an earwax spoon so that I could listen better. Ma also gave me $2.99 to buy a paperback Webster’s dictionary. This cost us almost two hundred finished skirts, since we were paid 1.5 cents per skirt. For years, I calculated whether or not something was expensive by how many skirts it cost. In those days, the subway was 100 skirts just to get to the factory and back, a package of gum cost 7 skirts, a hot dog was 50 skirts, a new toy could range from 300 to 2,000 skirts. I even measured friendship in skirts. I learned you had to buy Christmas and birthday presents for friends, which cost at least a few hundred skirts each. It was a good thing I only had Annette as a friend.

  I used that dictionary for years. The cover fell apart, was taped together again and again until it became irreparable, then the top pages started rolling up and falling off as well. I kept using that dictionary even when I’d lost the entire pronunciation guide and most of the A’s.

  I told Ma we weren’t allowed to keep our tests or homework here, which was why I couldn’t show anything to her, but promised her I was doing just fine. I said the teacher had recognized what a good student I was. These were lies that hurt me every time I said them. It seemed that Mr. Bogart went out of his way to choose assignments that were practically impossible for me, although now I think that he was simply thoughtless: write a page describing your bedroom and the emotional significance of objects in it (as if I had my own room filled with treasured toys); make a poster about a book you’ve read (with what materials?); make a collage about the Reagan administration using pictures from old magazines (Ma bought a Chinese newspaper only once in a while). I did my best but he didn’t understand. Halfhearted attempt, he wrote. Incomplete. Careless. A pictorial collage should not by definition include Chinese text.

  I wasn’t the only child in the class who had trouble with Mr. Bogart’s assignments. He seemed unable to understand the abilities or interests of the sixth-graders he actually taught. Many of the other kids just shrugged when he criticized them or gave them failing grades. They had already given up. But I had just come from being the star at my old school, where I’d won prizes in Chinese and math in interschool competitions. I would have given anything to do well in school again because I didn’t know how else I would be able to help Ma and me escape from the factory. Mr. Bogart must have realized I was smart, but he seemed to dislike me anyway. Perhaps he thought I was arrogant or mocking him with my formal “sirs” and standing when spoken to. It was so much a part of my upbringing, I found it hard to stop. Or perhaps it was the opposite; perhaps I seemed uncultured in my cheap, ill-fitting clothes, low class. Either way, there didn’t seem to be much I could do.

  Mr. Bogart didn’t mind the white kids as much, and I might have thought he was simply a racist, had it not been for Tyrone Marshall, who was black. Tall and soft-spoken, Tyrone was incredibly smart. He had the highest test scores in every subject except math, where I beat him. He didn’t show off, but when he got called on, he was never wrong. One of his book reports, on which he’d gotten an A+, was hung on the wall. I memorized a line from it because it had impressed me, even though I couldn’t understand all of the words: “This book takes us into an arena of fierce controversy.” His skin was a matte dark brown, like chocolate dusted in cocoa, and he had thick lashes that curled violently away from his eyes. Mr. Bogart loved him and so did I.

  When Mr. Bogart lectured about how wonderful Tyrone was, and by implication, what a sorry bunch of underachievers the rest of us were, Tyrone would sink ever lower in his seat.

  “You were born in the get dough, were you not, Tyrone?” Mr. Bogart asked, pacing back and forth before the blackboard.

  Tyrone nodded.

  “Were your parents college graduates?”

  Tyrone shook his head.

  “What does your father do?”

  His voice barely audible, Tyrone responded, “He’s in jail.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She’s a saleslady.” A dull red burning was visible through Tyrone’s skin, lighting it up from the inside. He was miserable. Much as I understood that feeling of embarrassment, I wanted to be in his place too.

  “And YET . . .” Mr. Bogart addressed the rest of us dramatically. “And YET this boy has the highest national test scores this school has ever seen.”

  Tyrone looked down.

  “Tyrone, I know you are modern by nature but you must set an example.” Then Mr. Bogart continued his speech. “And YET Tyrone reads Langson Hughes and William Golden. I ask you—what is the difference between a Tyrone Marshall and the rest of you? DETERMINATION. DRIVE.” And so he went on.

  All of this made Tyrone a complete outcast with the other kids. I wanted to tell him that I had been like him in Hong Kong, that I knew what it was to be admired and hated at the same time, that I knew it simply amounted to being alone. I wanted to tell him I thought he had beautiful eyes. Like so many things I wanted to say, I never did. What I did do was this: when Annette gave me candy, which happened often, I sometimes hid some in Tyrone’s desk. I knew he wouldn’t tell anyone.
A slow, shy smile spread over his face whenever he found it; then he’d look around surreptitiously. I’d quickly look down and I think he never caught me, but I don’t know for sure.

  Miss Kumar, the black teacher who taught the other sixth-grade class, had colorful posters and guinea pigs in her room, and when her door was closed, I would pause on the way to the girls’ room and hear her class laughing. She was tall and elegant, with her long hair always neatly coiled at the top of her head. Mr. Bogart’s classroom was barren. We didn’t have pets and there were only a few decorations in our room, mainly consisting of signs with block letters: REQUIREMENTS OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP. CHRISTMAS IS FOR CHARITY.

  Mei Mei had been my friend in Hong Kong. She’d been both smart and very pretty, with black curly hair and pink cheeks. I was always ranked number one in all of our classes and she was number two. In Hong Kong, the students were seated in the order of their ranking, so Mei Mei sat right behind me every year. She lived in our apartment building as well and we played together often. I gave her little presents like stickers, and I thought she was my best friend. When I told her we were leaving for the U.S., however, I saw envy in her eyes but no sadness. In fact, she started spending time with another girl right away. I think she was happy that she would finally be number one.

  My friendship with Annette felt very different. She was always giving me whatever she had: candy, drawings, information. Annette told me her little brother was a pain and I should be grateful I was an only child. When kids chanted, “XYZ PDQ,” and I tried to figure out what the following letters should be—RST? MNO?—Annette informed me that it meant, inexplicably, that your fly was open.

  Annette was shocked that no one had ever told me about “the birds and the bees.” And then, rather than help to enlighten me as usual, she giggled like mad, which made it especially intriguing. Clearly the phrase had a meaning beyond the obvious. I tried the school library, but the encyclopedia there only offered information on each species alone, nothing about them in tandem. When I asked Ma, she was genuinely mystified but she told me that it must not be something I needed to know if the teacher hadn’t taught it in class.

  I learned that Annette used Clairol All-Natural Wheat Shampoo to wash her hair and when I told her I used soap, she let me know that that was gross. The fact that we drank hot boiled water at home was weird. She asked me what I did after school, and when I answered that I was usually working at the factory, she went home and asked her father about it. The next day, she told me that that had been a silly thing to say since kids didn’t work in factories in America. Annette’s friendship was the best thing that had happened to me in America and I was grateful to her for teaching me many things, but that day, I began to understand that there was a part of my life that should remain hidden.

  FOUR

  We were assigned to work in pairs to build a diorama depicting “some of the basic skills of conflict resolution.” Of course, Annette and I decided to work together, and this meant I had to go to her house one day. Ma didn’t want me to socialize too much, but any sort of school assignment was sacrosanct, and so I was given permission to go.

  After school, Annette’s mother was waiting for us in a car. Her gaze was direct and kind, and her wavy hair was streaked with gray. There was a small boy with straggly blond hair already strapped into the seat next to hers. He was absorbed in a comic book. Annette climbed into the backseat and I followed. I’d thought a great deal about getting through this meeting correctly, and as soon as Annette was done leaning forward to kiss her mom, I held out my hand for her mother to shake.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Avery?” I asked.

  She twisted around and looked momentarily surprised, but then grasped my hand firmly. Her hands were extremely large for a woman’s, almost as big as a man’s, and they engulfed mine in warmth. She smiled, so I could see the wrinkles around her eyes deepen. “How do you do, Kimberly? It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  As I sat back in my seat, feeling satisfied that I had managed to get through at least one occasion according to the rules of etiquette we’d been taught back home, Annette was already tugging on the boy’s jacket.

  “Let me see that,” she said.

  “Get your own,” he said, not looking up.

  “Mom!” she said. “He’s not sharing!” She tried to pull the comic book from his hands, but her little brother wrenched it back and then scrunched his wiry body next to the window where Annette couldn’t reach him.

  “Stop fighting and let me drive,” said Mrs. Avery.

  It went on like that until we turned onto a beautiful, tree-lined street. The ride hadn’t taken long and I’d never imagined that Brooklyn could look like this, especially such a short distance from the school. There was no graffiti anywhere, no housing projects or construction pits. The cobblestone street was lined with low, elegant houses and gardens. Mrs. Avery parked by a three-story house with some kind of stone structure in the front garden. It looked like a well. When I peered in, however, I saw that it was actually a fountain with water spouting from the center, filled with live goldfish and carp. Not long after that, I dreamed of Mrs. Avery giving me an extra goldfish from her fountain in a plastic bag, perhaps a baby that had just been born. I would take it home and keep it alive in one of our rice bowls. Surely, a goldfish couldn’t be too expensive to keep, since it didn’t eat much.

  Annette and her brother had already run to the top of the stone staircase that led to the main door. Annette grabbed the comic book. Mrs. Avery and I caught up to them and Annette’s brother wailed, “Mom!”

  Mrs. Avery said, “Just give me a minute, okay, honey?” and she managed to get her keys in the lock.

  As the front door swung open, I saw a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, sparkling with light like leaves caught in the rain. When we went in, we stood in an entryway with a polished table and a crystal bowl filled with fresh fruit. I wondered how they kept the roaches away from such an uncovered bowl. The smell of lemon cleanser and cookies mingled into a clean and delicious scent, and a thick carpet formed a walkway of flowers into the house.

  “We’re home,” Mrs. Avery called. I looked down the hallway but instead of seeing a person, I saw a dog racing toward us. The white chow chow hurled itself upon Annette. A large gray tiger cat with a white-tipped tail had climbed down the staircase and was rubbing itself against her brother’s leg.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Mrs. Avery said. “I know they can be over woman if you’re not used to animals but they won’t hot you.”

  Annette’s brother had the cat in his arms and was rubbing his cheek against its thick fur. Annette was giggling like a maniac because the dog was licking her entire face. I couldn’t believe that Mrs. Avery allowed this. Weren’t animals filled with both germs and a great desire to bite you?

  Mrs. Avery bent down to my eye level. “What you have to do,” she said, “is ex-T your hand like this.” She stretched her hand out to the cat. “Come, Tommy. They like to come up to you and smell you, and then you’ll be great friends.”

  I dared to ask a question. I glanced at Annette, who was now sitting on the floor still in her coat and galoshes, bumping her head into the dog’s chest. “They have . . . ?” I didn’t know what to call them and then pretended I was scratching myself.

  “Oh!” Mrs. Avery said. “No, they don’t have any feet. See this?” The cat named Tommy had approached and was sniffing her hand. She put her finger under the thin collar he was wearing. “This keeps all the feet away.”

  I must have looked confused because then she pretended she was scratching herself under her arms like a monkey. I’d never seen an adult, let alone a lady, do anything so undignified before.

  “No scratch,” she said. She took her hands away. “All okay.”

  The little brother had already disappeared into the kitchen and we followed him. I was introduced to the housekeeper, an angular white woman wrinkled like a piece of beef jerky.

  I said, “How do you do,” and shook he
r hand.

  She cocked her head to one side and said, “Aren’t you something.” She made us a snack. It was Ritz crackers, which I’d tasted in Hong Kong, but then she took a block of pale yellow cheese from the refrigerator. She used a metal slicer, which I’d never seen before, and carved thin bits of cheese to put on the crackers. I remembered that taste for a long time: the strange, alien sharpness of the cheese against the buttery crispness of the crackers.

  The little brother piled a few crackers in his hands, grabbed the comic book out from under Annette’s arm, and raced toward the staircase in the entryway.

  “No crumbs on the carpet!” Mrs. Avery yelled after him.

  Annette’s face started to turn blotchy. “Mom! He took—”

  “Stop it, Annette. You’ll have time to read it later, and now you have company.” Mrs. Avery turned to me. “Kimberly, you’ll soon see, it’s just a disaster around here.”

  Annette turned her concentration to her snack and when we were finished, we headed upstairs to her room. As we passed the living room, I saw a black grand piano and next to it, the dog stretched itself out on the large sectional sofa, which shimmered with gold and red stripes. Even from a distance, I could tell the plump cushions were fuzzy with a matted layer of animal hair.