Girl in Translation

by Jean Kwok

  For the Chinese New Year, the factory was closed because no Chinese would work on this day. I was even allowed to stay home from school. Ma made us the traditional yellow steamed pastries and a vegetarian monk’s meal for lunch, and for the night she’d bought us a roasted chicken from Chinatown. Anything that happened on this day was symbolic of the entire year to come, and so we were extremely careful, making sure we didn’t break or drop anything.

  The next day was the opening of the year, and Ma and I prepared the religious ceremonies to honor the dead. We always celebrated the important holidays first at home and then later at temple. Ma had found one in Chinatown. How many times had my hands laid the small squares of sacred paper into the required patterns over the years: first silver, then gold, then the two rectangular pieces laid horizontally.

  Then we set food and wine in front of all five altars in the kitchen, lit incense and bowed to them with stacks of the sacred papers in our hands. We included a set to bring good luck for Ma and me: a promise to the gods that if we made it through this coming year safely, we would offer them roast pork next year. The kitchen was hazy with incense and the smoke crept into our clothes and hair. Ma invoked each of the gods by name, our most vital ancestors, and then our own dead, which meant all of the grandparents on both sides of my family, and Pa. When Ma chanted the prayers for her parents and Pa, she said, “Drink another cup, loved ones,” and she poured an extra cup of wine on the floor in front of the ancestor altar.

  When she was finally finished, Ma and I took the sacred papers and rice wine downstairs. The backyard of the building was overgrown with weeds and trees that stuck up through the two-foot-high layer of garbage covering the ground. A few days earlier, Ma and I had made a clearing in the trash in preparation. A thin layer of ice covered the ground now. We would burn the papers here.

  Ma lit the first papers and dropped them in a metal bucket she’d bought in Chinatown. Then she took the flask and swung a chain of glistening rice wine three times counterclockwise around the bucket. The fire leaped under the alcohol. The wine ensured that the petty spirits hidden in the heavens would not be able to steal these gifts from their intended recipients. As she stirred the papers with a long metal stick, the heat radiating outward from the bottom of the bucket first melted the ice underneath it and then dried the concrete in a widening circle. I pictured the sacred gold and silver paper transforming into heavy gold and silver bars in the heavens, the colored papers into the finest silks. The more we burned, the more money our gods and loved ones would have to spend in the heavens, and the more material they would have to clothe themselves. The burning released the essence of the paper from its ashes and created it anew in the spirit world.

  The trees were veiled by a haze of gray smoke and a funnel of ash, and partly burned wisps of gold and silver swirled upward into the skies, carrying our offerings to the heavens. Tiny flakes of ash clung to my face and hair.

  Ma, her head bowed in prayer, was standing alone at the border of where the earth met concrete in our backyard, and I caught a trace of her words. Merciful Kuan Yin, beloved relatives, please let good people come to us and allow the bad ones to walk away. I went over and linked my arm through hers. I thought, Pa, I wish you were here to help us. Please help me perfect my English so I can take care of us. Ma pressed my hand gently and we prayed together for our future.

  The following Sunday, Ma and I had just returned from buying our weekly groceries in Chinatown when I noticed that the lights were on inside Mr. Al’s shop. He also had a large sign in his window that said “Clearance—Everything Must Go.” I looked through the door and saw Mr. Al moving some of his things around inside.

  Ma shifted her shopping bags to one hand so she could find her keys. “We shouldn’t bother him. He looks busy.”

  At that moment, Mr. Al caught sight of us. He came and unlocked his door. “Come in.”

  “No, thank you,” I said. “We have to put food in refrigerator. But why you here on Sunday?”

  “I have a lot of things I have to do. Need to sort out which things I want to get rid of, which ones I want to take with me.”

  I was aghast. “You are going somewhere?” Mr. Al waved to us whenever he saw us. He was our friend and looked out for us. After we’d gotten to know him better, I told him about the ice-cream-buying incident at the grocery store when the owner had made us pay more than we should have paid.

  Mr. Al said, “That guy don’t have any right to rip off decent people like that.” He must have said something to the owner because the next time we came in, the owner gave me a candy necklace for free.

  “What’s wrong?” Ma asked me now. She hadn’t understood any of this.

  Mr. Al looked concerned. “Don’t you know? Sweetheart, everybody’s gradually moving out of here. This whole area’s boomed.”

  “What?” I sounded as confused as I felt.

  “Ended. No hope left. The government’s going to build some huge compicks here. All the buildings on this block and across the street are going to be broken down.”

  “When?”

  “What is happening?” Ma asked again. She was worried.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said in Chinese. I waited for Mr. Al to speak.

  He said, “Was supposed to happen next year, but it keeps getting put off. Lots of people are complaining and trying to stop it. Will probably be another ten years before it actually happens, but could be next year too. Ant no one’s going to hang around waiting to get thrown out. This is a sinking ship.” He patted me on the shoulder with his long brown hand. “You ladies are good people. You should get out while you can. Those landlords aren’t going to do nothing for us while we’re waiting. No one wants to put any more money in here. My window’s been broken in the back for months now. Business is bad, everybody’s leaving.”

  “When you going?”

  “My lease is up March first. I’m going to move near my brother back in Virginia.”

  FIVE

  In our apartment upstairs, I explained to Ma what Mr. Al had told me.

  “This proves Aunt Paula will let us move when a good apartment opens up,” Ma said, smiling. “We can’t stay here forever.”

  “But that can take a long time, Ma. And she knew the area would be broken down. Why didn’t she tell us?”

  “Maybe she didn’t want to alarm us.”

  I was thinking hard. “What this really means is that Mr. N. will never fix the heat or anything else. Ma, we need to find a new place to live.”

  She breathed in sharply. “We can’t afford it.”

  “Other people from the factory live in apartments too.”

  “Don’t forget, the rent is only a part of what we pay to Aunt Paula every month. Our debt is so great. And this apartment isn’t as expensive.”

  “Even in Chinatown? They can’t cost too much there.”

  “The really cheap apartments go from family member to family member. Nothing opens up. I’ve asked around at the factory.”

  My mind was still turning everything over. “I think it’s not even law-following for us to be living here, the building is in such bad shape. That’s probably the real reason Aunt Paula had me use a fake address for school.” I was getting reckless. “Ma, let’s run away. We can find a new job at another factory. Aunt Paula doesn’t have to know.” Back in Hong Kong, I would never have dared to talk to Ma like this, to openly argue with her about such grown-up topics, but I had never had the responsibilities there that I now did. I had never been so desperate to change our living situation.

  Ma’s eyes were intense. “And our debt to her, then? She brought us here, ah-Kim. She spent the money to cure me, for our green cards and tickets. It’s not a question of what we can get away with, it’s a question of honor.”

  “To her?” I tugged at a lock of my hair, frustrated by Ma and her integrity.

  “She’s given us housing and a job. She’s my sister and your aunt. And no matter how flawed someone else may be, that doesn’t
give us the right to be less than we are, does it? We are decent people and we repay our debts.”

  Some of my anger ebbed away. I hated being tied to Aunt Paula but I could see that Ma would have to be a different person before she could renege on something she owed. “Was Aunt Paula always like this, even when you were younger?”

  Ma hesitated. I knew she disliked speaking ill of anyone, especially family. “When we were teenagers alone in Hong Kong, Aunt Paula took care of everything. She was smart and resourceful. She trained as a gold-beater so I could finish high school.” A jeweler who works with gold. “I was supposed to be the one to marry an American Chinese, since I wasn’t good at much except for music, and some people thought I was pretty. But then I started giving music lessons and your pa gave me a job at the school. Soon after that, we were married.”

  “Was Aunt Paula angry?”

  “Well, yes she was. But she’s always been very practical, and when Uncle Bob arrived, she just married him herself.”

  “You were supposed to marry Uncle Bob?” I wasn’t sure I could take all these surprises today.

  “He went to Hong Kong to meet a number of people,” Ma said. I knew that meant he could choose from several different girls. “But an acquaintance of ours had given him my picture. In any case, Aunt Paula has been through some hard times herself.”

  The next day at the factory, Ma and I spoke to Aunt Paula in the office again.

  “Why didn’t you tell us that our entire block will be torn down?” Ma asked gently.

  Aunt Paula raised her thin eyebrows, surprised that we knew. “Because it wasn’t important. I told you it was only temporary that you would be living there. You see that you didn’t have to worry? You can’t stay there too long even if you wanted to.”

  “How much longer will it be?” Ma asked.

  “Not much,” Aunt Paula said. She scratched her cheek absentmindedly. “I’ll let you know as soon as I have any news. Now, we’d all better get back to work.” She tightened her lips. “You came close to missing the deadline on that last shipment.”

  “I know,” Ma said. “I’ll work harder.”

  “We are family, but I can’t have people saying I’m being unfair.”

  Her threat was clear and we left quickly.

  As we went past the thread-cutters’ station on the way to our workplace, I was surprised to see Matt there working alone, without either Park or his mother.

  “Where is your ma?” I asked.

  “She doesn’t feel too well sometimes,” Matt said, not slowing down. He had to cover his mother’s workload. “She kept Park home with her today so I could really get some work done.” He seemed proud. “Park isn’t a big helping hand sometimes.”

  “Can I get anything for your mother?” Ma asked. “If it’s her lungs, crushed bumblebees in salt are very effective.”

  “It’s her heart,” Matt said. His eyes were warm as he glanced up at the both of us. “And she has her own medicine, but thank you very much, Mrs. Chang.”

  Ma smiled at me as we walked on. “He’s a nicer boy than I thought.”

  I had to perfect my English. Not only did I write down and look up the words I didn’t know in my textbooks, I started with the A’ s in my dictionary and tried to memorize all the words. I made a copy of the list and stuck it to the inside of the bathroom door. I had learned the phonetic alphabet in Hong Kong and that made it easier for me to figure out how the words were pronounced, even though I still often made mistakes. Our class went to the public library once a week and I always took out a stack of books, starting with the embarrassingly thin ones for little kids. I slowly worked my way up in age. I took these books with me to the factory and read them on the subway. Almost all of my homework was done either on the subway or at the factory. For the bigger projects, I caught up on Sundays.

  By the time report cards were given out at the beginning of February, I wasn’t doing well but I was passing most subjects. I’d taken the national reading and math tests with the other kids but I didn’t know what the results were yet. On my report card, I got a few Satisfactories for Science and Math, a few Unsatisfactories, and the rest were all Fairs. In the comments section, Mr. Bogart wrote, “Kimberly must learn to apply herself with more effort. Please come see me at the PTA meeting. Submit dental note!” How were we supposed to pay for a dentist? I didn’t know what a PTA meeting was, but I wasn’t about to let Ma see any of this. I let her believe that we got report cards only once a year, at the end. I forged her signature, which was easy since I’d been signing her name since the beginning.

  The ice across the inside of the windowpanes in our apartment slowly dissolved and I could see through to the outside world again.

  At the end of February, the class bully started staring at me in class. His name was Luke and he’d been left back a few times so he was a head taller than the rest of us. He had a barrel of a chest covered loosely by the same stained gray top that he wore every day. His nostrils were flared like a bull’s, and even Mr. Bogart seemed to have given up on him, leaving him alone most of the time. I saw Luke shove the other kids around. If a kid dared to fight back, Luke became doubly vicious. His main weapon was his legs and he liked knocking people to the ground and kicking them. There was a rumor that once a kid had rammed him in the stomach with his head and Luke had pulled a knife and cut him. He also used a lot of words I didn’t know, like cock and mother finger.

  I asked Annette if she knew what cock meant.

  “Everyone knows that.” Her smile was confident. “It means poop.”

  Annette had recently told me that she was going to a private school called Harrison Prep next year. I would go to a public junior high school, of course. How would I manage without her?

  We said good-bye to Mr. Al. A large moving van had taken away most of his inventory, although he’d saved a few folding chairs and a single mattress for us.

  “Thank you, Mr. Al,” I said. I was thrilled to have my own place to sleep again.

  “Mmm sai,” he said, trying to say “You’re welcome” in Cantonese.

  “Your Chinese is very good,” I lied. Luckily, I knew exactly what I’d taught him, so I could usually guess what he was trying to say.

  “You beautiful ladies take care of yourselves,” he said, and he gave us each in turn a big hug. He smelled like tobacco.

  “May you have the strength and health of a dragon,” Ma said softly in Chinese. She looked in her shopping bag and pulled out a short wooden sword she’d bought from the kung fu store in Chinatown. She gave it to him.

  His broad face shone with pleasure as he ran his finger over the carvings on the handle.

  “She say, ‘Good health,’” I said, not knowing how to translate it further. “You supposed to lay that under pillow.”

  “What? And waste a good weapon?”

  “It takes away worry and bad dream.”

  “All right, then. If you say so.” He grinned at us as he walked away to the subway, waving his sword like a ninja.

  I felt sad when I saw Mr. Al’s empty store downstairs. Up in our apartment, I took a look at his building, pulling up the garbage bags over the kitchen window.

  I wanted to see the sleeping black woman and baby in the apartment above his store. The mother wasn’t there but I could make out the baby, bigger now, alone in an old mesh playpen. He was hanging on to the sides. He had his mouth wide open, crying, but no one came.

  I had always liked toy cars more than dolls and I had no interest in real babies at all, but I wished I could pick him up and comfort him.

  Through all of March and into April, I continued to feel the bully Luke’s eyes on me but I pretended I didn’t notice anything. He had started grabbing girls by their hair and kissing them whenever Mr. Bogart wasn’t looking. Finally, one lunch period I was crossing the cafeteria, holding my tray, and passed the table where he was sitting with some other boys. He stuck out his foot. I stepped over it and kept going. The rubber legs of his chair screeched again
st the floor as he pushed himself away from the table and stood up.

  “Hey, Chinese girl.”

  I didn’t look around. I had just set my tray down at my usual spot across the table from Annette when I felt his hand on my shoulder. On reflex, I lowered my shoulder and turned at the same time, so that his hand fell off.

  “Wow, that’s kung fu,” one of Luke’s friends said.

  “You know karate?” Luke asked, with real interest.

  “No,” I said. That was the truth.

  “She does,” his skinny friend said.

  “I want to try out your moves. Let’s fight after school.” Luke said this as if he were inviting me to play at his house. Then he and his friends went back to their own table.

  Annette was staring at me from across the table. I sat down, trembling.

  “Are you crazy?” she asked, her voice pitched higher than normal. “He’ll kill you!”

  “What must I do?”

  “You gotta tell somebody. Tell Mr. Bogart.”

  I just looked at her.

  “Okay, forget that.” Annette wrinkled her forehead in thought. “My mom’s got to work today, so my housekeeper’s picking me up from school. We could tell her.”

  I thought about her housekeeper, who had looked so dry and serious. She didn’t seem like someone I could trust. If only Mrs. Avery were going to pick Annette up that day instead. “No, I don’t want you tell her.”

  “Why not?”

  “She don’t help.” I knew it was true. “And I’m not a telly-tale.”

  Annette lowered her voice to a hiss. “Look, Kimberly, I think Luke carries a knife. It’s okay to tell someone!”

  I shook my head. I was afraid of Luke but I was more afraid of grown-ups. Maybe Annette’s housekeeper would try to talk to Ma or Mr. Bogart. Everything I had hidden from Ma could come out: the forged signatures, the failed tests, the dental note, the report cards, the PTA meeting.