by Jean Kwok
“Of course not. It’s just that this is a very competitive school and I could have helped you choose a school possibly more suited to Kimberly.”
“Do you know Harrison Prep?” I asked.
“Of course. I had to do a lot of research before figuring out where Nelson should go. Harrison Prep is a famous, beautiful school. But it is also very difficult to gain admission, and it is extremely expensive.”
“Yes,” Ma said. Like me, she didn’t say more. I think we were both waiting to see Aunt Paula’s true face. We wanted to know what she would say to help or discourage us, before she knew the truth.
Aunt Paula laughed. “Little sister, I am surprised you let Kimberly hold on to her hope when you must suspect how much this school costs! You should throw that application form away! Even Nelson couldn’t get accepted there. And it is much too late anyway.”
I finally spoke. “It’s not an application form. It’s a letter of acceptance with a full scholarship. My principal told us today.”
Aunt Paula stared. A flush crept up her neck and the dark mole on her lip trembled. “You’re going to Harrison Prep? The two of you did this behind my back?” Her voice was furious.
I heard Ma gasp as I clutched the envelope to my chest. Aunt Paula’s sudden open anger caught both of us by surprise.
“Older sister,” Ma said quietly, “what strangeness are you speaking?”
Aunt Paula put her hand to her hair to calm herself. Her fingers were shaking with emotion. “I am just surprised that something so important was done without asking me.”
“It happened quickly and we didn’t think it would be successful.” Ma tried to placate her. “We are grateful to you, for everything you’ve done.”
Aunt Paula had recovered herself. “Of course, I am glad for this opportunity for Kimberly. And to think, I worried that the two of you would be a burden to me here.”
“We can take care of ourselves,” I said, meeting her eyes.
Aunt Paula studied me as if she’d never really looked at me before. “I can see that.”
Later, when we were back at our finishing station, Ma and I didn’t speak openly about what had happened. I knew Ma didn’t want to admit Aunt Paula’s weaknesses to me. But I had understood what happened anyway. For just a moment, Aunt Paula had flipped her polite face over and we had seen the black face underneath. We would be allowed to work and not cause any trouble for her, but she didn’t want us to be any more successful than she was. And I wasn’t supposed to do better than Nelson. In other words, Aunt Paula wouldn’t mind if we stayed at the factory and that apartment all our lives.
That summer, Annette sent me postcards. She always addressed them to “Miss Kimberly Chang” and she signed off with “Yours Truly, Miss Annette Avery.” I’d given her my real address because I didn’t want these letters to have to go through Aunt Paula and I figured that even if Annette looked it up on a map, she was too innocent to know what sort of neighborhood I lived in anyway. From camp, she wrote:I am so bored here! There is no one fun and all of the
activities are dumb. The only thing I like is swimming.
When it gets hot, the water is cool in the lake. They
make us sing stupid songs and play stupid games. I
wish I was back in NY with you!
I’d never seen a lake and I’d never been swimming. Like many people in Hong Kong in those days, Ma and I hadn’t had the money to do such things. Often, when I was working, I pictured being at that cool lake with Annette. Summer in the factory was one long rush of heat amid the deafening roar of the fans. It was impossible to hear one another over the noise and so the summer became a wordless time for us. The windows remained hermetically sealed, probably to deter any inspectors who might look in, and the huge industrial fans were the only relief we had.
Each fan was tall and black like a sarcophagus, swathed in dust. Thick strands of filth hung off each part of the wire hood, swaying in the wind until they broke off to splatter against my face or worse, the piece of clothing I was working on. The air they blew was a sweltering wind, merely redistributing heat from the steamers and scorching motors of the machines to our own wet bodies and back again, yet we were glad of them because there was nothing else. During our breaks, we were too hot to play, and Matt and I stood with arms outstretched in front of the fans, our hair streaming out behind us, pretending we could fly.
The factory dust became worse than usual because we were bathed in sweat and the fabric fibers clung to us. My bare shoulders and neck were streaked where I’d wiped the dust off with my fingers.
Despite the expense, Ma bought me a few stamps so I could write back to Annette, because Ma thought it was educational for me to write in English. I wrote this:Sorry it is boring there! New York City is
relaxing. I enjoy it to rest and read books.
Songs and games are greatly stupid. I hope
you come back soon. Maybe my mother and
me will go trip soon.
From Florida, Annette wrote:Your so lucky you get to relax in NY! Well, my
grandmother’s house is pretty neat. Yesterday, we had a
barbeque and I got to eat my hot dog while I was
sitting in the pool! Where are you going? I hope you
have a great time! Don’t forget about your best friend
when your gone!!!
She also sent me a postcard with a picture of a castle and the words “The Magic Kingdom” printed on it.
I answered:I had a hot dog one time and I liked it very greatly.
Only I not like the yellow sauce. Ma and me maybe not
go trip now because it is too nice in New York City.
When I go trip in future, I will buy you a present. What
you like? Thank you for a beautiful postcard. I like it
very much. Your grandmother belong to your mother’s
side or your father’s side? I hope she has good health.
Every night, when I got home from the factory, I reread Annette’s letters. I longed for a story of my own to tell, about a trip to New Jersey perhaps or Atlantic City, where some of the sewing ladies went. If I were rich, I would buy Annette and Ma many presents, from places all over America.
In our apartment, the roaches and mice had returned with a vengeance and we couldn’t leave anything unsealed even for a moment, not even the toothpaste, or we would return to find a roach licking it, with its long waving antennae. We took off all the garbage bags from the windows in the kitchen. The sunlight streamed in from the back for the first time. I looked for the woman and baby in the apartment next door but their room was empty. Even the bed was gone. As soon as the weather became warm enough, Ma took out her violin almost every Sunday evening. I would clean up after dinner while she played, sometimes only for a few minutes, because we usually had so much work from the factory to finish at home.
I said to her once, “Ma, you don’t have to play for me every week. You have so many other things to do.”
“I play for myself too,” she’d answered. “Without my violin, I’d forget who I was.”
Finally, the heat got so bad that Ma bought us a small fan and we set it in front of our mattresses. After work, we both caught our breath in front of that fan, sitting on the mattresses on the floor, our backs resting against the wall. Slowly, two yellowish human-shaped stains developed against the cracked paint: a small one for me and a larger one for Ma. Those stains are probably still there in that apartment, and I’ve dreamed about them, about our skin cells, our droplets of oil and sweat, sunk into that porous wall, bits of us that will never escape.
One Sunday afternoon near the end of the summer, Annette appeared at my apartment. Ma and I were buttoning up some jackets we had brought home from the factory. I jumped at a loud noise. It was so unfamiliar, it took me a moment before I recognized it as the doorbell.
“Who can that be?” Ma said.
I ran to the front window as Ma said behind me, “Kimberly, stop! They’ll see you
!”
I was already peering down and saw Annette’s round face framed by her halo of hair, turned up toward us. My knees buckled. I ducked down and hid myself below the window. I hoped she hadn’t seen me. I’d caught a glimpse of their car on the street with a short man inside, probably Mr. Avery.
The doorbell rang again, then again. Ma and I stared at each other, not daring to whisper, as if the factory inspectors were at our door. Finally, the ringing stopped and I heard the car drive away.
“I think they’re gone,” I said.
“Don’t look yet,” Ma said.
We waited another ten minutes before I dared to check that Annette and her father had left.
A few days later, I got another letter from Annette:You are going to be very disappointed! Because I actually
came to your house, just to say hi! But you weren’t there.
I thought I saw a face in the window but no such luck.
Hey, what’s your phone number? How come I still don’t
have it? See you very soon . . . at our new school!!!!
In preparation for Harrison, Ma bought me some new clothes. I had to get a dark blue blazer to conform to the dress code, but it was hard to find one we could afford. Finally, in a discount store, we bought a navy blue one for $4.99. It was made of scratchy polyester and the sleeves were so long they covered my hands. The shoulders were padded and protruded into the air past my own, but at least it vaguely resembled the ones I thought the other kids had been wearing. We got a white shirt and a dark blue skirt at Woolworth’s.
When I had the entire outfit on, I looked in the mirror and I saw a small Chinese girl with short hair, her torso and arms engulfed by a boxy blazer. A cheap shirt peeked out from under the blazer and below that, a stiff skirt jutted out above skinny calves. The skirt had large rhinestones around the waistband because we hadn’t been able to find a plain one. I wore my brown Chinese slippers, the only shoes I had that could go with a skirt. The entire outfit was uncomfortable. I felt lost in the contours of someone I didn’t recognize.
I was as ready as I ever would be to start Harrison Prep.
Now that I was a student, I could take a private bus to Harrison that stopped close to my old elementary school. I stood there in my ill-fitting clothes, and when the bus pulled up, I didn’t recognize it for what it was. It was sleek and gray, with a white board showing the number 8 in the front window. Inside, the seats were arranged around the perimeter instead of in rows. The bus was half full, with about seven other kids of different ages already on board, all of them white, all in blazers. I slid into the closest seat, next to an older boy who was so tall he stretched his legs out into the middle of the bus.
We made another stop in what looked like Annette’s area, and three more white kids got on. Their parents waved as we drove away. Annette was going to school with her mother today, but after this, she would be on my bus too. Although I’d been in the U.S. for almost a year now, I had never seen so many white people in one place before. I didn’t want to stare, but their coloring was so interesting. The boy next to me had hair that was the pale yellow-orange of boiled octopus. His skin was as light as Annette’s but blotched. A girl who had gotten on the bus at Annette’s stop was sitting diagonally across from me. She had dark brown hair and eyes, very much like a Chinese person, only everything was lighter and her hair was flipped back from both sides of her face. Some of the other kids made a lot of noise welcoming one another back from the summer and chatting about their new classes.
We pulled into a large parking lot already filled with other buses like ours, all showing different numbers in the front window. There must have been at least nine buses there, and more kept coming in. Most were empty but a few had just opened their doors and kids were getting out.
I followed the other kids past the parking lot for normal cars. I didn’t see Annette or her mother. A father hurried by me, asking his child, “Are you sure you know where your classes are?” I went by a small group of older students laughing together outside the main building. Everyone I saw was white. I had studied the Harrison map carefully and I found Milton Hall, which was covered in vines, with no problems. My homeroom and most of my classes were there. As I walked up the steps, I felt so nervous, I could take only shallow breaths. Two girls who looked like they could be my age went into the building before me.
Just inside the door to my classroom stood a small huddle of boys and girls who seemed to be inspecting everyone who entered. I found out later they’d all gone to Harrison Elementary School together. A few of the girls had bracelets with sparkly shapes hanging from them and several of them were already wearing eye shadow and lip gloss.
When I went past them, one boy with hair as red as sugared ginger whistled and said distinctly, “Nice skirt.” There was a burst of giggling from the group.
I pretended I hadn’t heard and hurriedly sat down in a seat against the wall, but I wanted to keep walking, through the wall and into the distance. I resolved to remove the rhinestones from my skirt that night and I quietly picked at them with my fingernails as I watched the rest of the kids come in.
Although at first glance all of the blazers had looked the same to me, I could now tell that they were quite different from one another. Some of the girls had blazers that were shorter and more fitted than those of the boys. I was glad to see that many of their blazers had padded shoulders too, like mine did, although my blazer was much longer and wider than theirs. I had received a written description of the dress code at home (blazer required, no denim, no short skirts, no sweatshirts). Now I saw that quite a range of clothing was allowed within those rules. One girl, a part of the group of kids who had laughed at me, had on a tan skirt that ended a bit above her knee. Below that, she wore what looked like woolen tubes or footless, slouchy socks over a pair of short boots. A tall boy with a lion’s mane of sandy hair was playing around, arm wrestling with the ginger-haired one, and when the tawny boy’s blazer fell open, I saw that the T-shirt he had on underneath was spattered with paint.
I spotted the girl with the long brown hair from my bus sitting near the back. Like many of the other girls, she was wearing a headband to keep her fluffy hair in place. At that point, the homeroom teacher came in. She would also be our math teacher. She was blond and thin, moving with the quickness of a bird. She took attendance and gave us our schedules, then explained a lot of practical things like where our lockers were. I was thrilled at the idea of having a clean place where I could keep my own belongings.
I’d known Annette wouldn’t be in my homeroom but I still missed her. I followed the other kids when we traveled together from room to room, trying to stay away from that group of kids and especially the mean ginger-haired boy. Our Social Studies teacher was Mr. Scoggins, a heavyset man in a suit and tie. He told us in his deep voice that we would need to keep up with the news in his class. We would also be simulating buying stocks on the stock market, following our stocks’ ups and downs in the coming weeks to see if we earned or lost money. I bit my lip, wondering where I would get access to a newspaper for the stock prices.
In our classes, I didn’t volunteer to give any answers yet. By now, I could understand most of what the teachers said, although the effort of listening so hard in English was tiring. I was exhausted by the time I met Annette at the cafeteria at lunchtime.
Annette hugged me and the metal of her braces gleamed. “I’m so glad to see you!” she said. “Everyone here is so weird.”
She hadn’t gotten much browner over the summer although the density of her freckles seemed to have increased, making her look darker if you squinted from a distance. She’d become taller and a bit thinner but the buttons on the shirt around her stomach still strained against the fabric. Her hair had grown as well, and instead of balling out around her head, it now jutted out like a pyramid behind her neck. To my surprise, she took a tray and got into line with me for the hot food.
“Do you have free lunch too?” I asked.
She giggled. “Silly. Everyone eats at the cafeteria here, it’s a part of the tuition.”
There was an extensive salad bar with all kinds of items I’d never had before, like olives and Swiss cheese. The main dish that day was sweet-and-sour pork over steamed rice, but it tasted as foreign as everything else. The rice was hard and tasteless, and the pork had only been painted red on the outside instead of actually being grilled in cha-siu sauce. But I felt happy again, sitting there next to Annette.
After lunch, we had Life Science, which I enjoyed because we were being introduced to subjects like scientific notation and cell structure, which I hadn’t studied in Hong Kong. At the end of the class, the teacher wrote a challenge question on the board:The E. coli genome is 4.8 million base pairs compared to a human genome of 6 billion base pairs. How many times larger is the human genome than that of E. coli?
“At home, think about how you would approach this,” the teacher said. “Anyone already have an idea?”
No one stirred.
Slowly, I raised my hand and at the teacher’s nod, said, “It is 1.25 x 103, sir.” I almost bit my tongue for allowing the “sir” to slip out again.
Without looking at his attendance list, he smiled and said, “Ah, you must be Kimberly Chang.”
Scanning the faces I passed throughout the day, I saw that I wasn’t the only minority in the school, but I was one of only a handful. Everyone else in my homeroom was white but I had seen an Indian girl and an older black boy in the hallways.
The last subject of the day was gym, and I was glad I’d remembered to bring my sneakers from home. At my elementary school, gym had been a time for the kids to fool around, to hide behind other people when the ball came your way. At Harrison Prep, gym was a serious business. We would have it several times a week, we were told, and I could already see it was going to pose a problem for me. Ma had taught me never to do anything that could be considered either unladylike or dangerous: a lesson passed down from her own formal upbringing. “Unladylike” meant anything that allowed your knees to be parted from each other or that could cause a skirt to flip up. Whether you were even wearing one or not was irrelevant, it was the idea that counted. “Dangerous” covered most other categories of motion. I had often been in trouble with Ma because of my carelessness with the skirt issue and my penchant for running too fast. Standing in that gym, I felt guilty toward Ma before we even began to move.