Girl in Translation

by Jean Kwok

  Matt and I walked around by ourselves.

  “I didn’t know your ma liked music so much,” Matt said.

  “She was a music teacher.” I paused. “Back home. What about your parents? What do they care about?”

  “My ma’s so busy, just taking care of Park. And my pa’s gone. So I have to look after everybody.”

  I smiled. Matt always took his responsibilities so seriously. But this was the first I’d ever heard about his father.

  “You mean he’s passed away?”

  Matt nodded without meeting my eyes, then said, “Where’s your ma?”

  I turned around to look for Ma and found her lingering by a grand piano. I cocked my head in her direction, and Matt and I crossed over to her.

  “This is a handsome instrument, isn’t it?” Ma said, flipping through the sheet music that someone had left on the piano. “It must sound lovely.”

  “Try it out,” Matt said. “You’re allowed to push a few keys.”

  “Oh no,” Ma said.

  “Please.” I caught her eye. I desperately wanted her to play for Matt, to show him that we were more than what we seemed to be at the factory.

  Slowly, Ma sat down. “Your pa used to love this piece,” she said, and ran her fingers up and down the keyboard in a series of runs before she started playing Chopin’s Nocturne in A-flat.

  Matt’s mouth was slack.

  I closed my eyes, listening and remembering how it had been when we had our own piano in our apartment, how Ma’s delicate fingers had moved so gracefully over the keyboard. She played the beginning and then stopped. By then, we had attracted the attention of a salesman, despite our simple clothes.

  “Madam plays beautifully,” he said. “The piano has a wonderful tone, doesn’t it?”

  I wondered how I could turn him away politely, but Matt spoke first.

  “Yeah,” Matt said in English. “Thanks, but we’re just looking.”

  For once, someone had taken the burden off me.

  We wandered around the Tay Um See Arena, looking at the skyscrapers.

  “Oh my, I have to look up three times before I can see the top,” Ma said, laughing as she peered up at one particularly high building.

  “I can span it with my hands,” Matt said, stepping back and pretending to measure it.

  That reminded me of something I didn’t want to bring up, but I needed to know.

  “What’s going to happen to Mr. Pak?” I asked Matt. Since he lived in Chinatown and knew a lot of people from the factory, he heard most of the gossip.

  “He won’t be coming back to the factory. His skin was badly burned and his wife thinks the work is too dangerous.”

  “What will happen to him, then?”

  “She works for that jewelry factory on Centre and Canal, so I bet he’ll do that with her when he heals.”

  “What is that?”

  “Making bead bracelets and other costume jewelry. You can bring all your work home, but it pays even worse than our factory. And you need to have very fast hands.”

  I looked at Ma. Could this be a way to get out of the clothing factory?

  She shook her head. “Remember how cold it gets at home, ah-Kim?”

  I nodded. In our unheated apartment, we would never be able to string beads with a needle and thread.

  Finally, we went to see the Liberty Goddess. Ma had tried to pay for Matt’s subway tokens but he’d been too quick for her.

  “Now, we’re not going to actually get off at the Liberty Goddess,” Matt said. “That boat costs too much. What we’ll do is to take the Staten Island Ferry, which is only twenty-five cents, and you get an even better view.”

  “Perfect,” Ma said.

  We climbed aboard the large yellow ferry, which reminded me of the ferries in Kowloon Harbor, and Matt led us up to the top deck. Ma said it was so windy there that she had to go back downstairs to sit down.

  It was wonderful, standing against the railing with Matt by my side, the cool wind blowing the heat away. The ocean stretched out before us.

  “We’re going to get a first-rate look soon,” Matt said, and he left to go downstairs to get Ma. I marveled at how he could be tough yet considerate.

  I held my breath when we finally got a good view of the Liberty Goddess. She was so close and so magnificent. Ma and Matt were right next to me. Ma squeezed my hand.

  “How long we’ve dreamed of this,” she said.

  “We’re here,” I said. “We’re really in America.”

  Matt was looking thoughtful. “Doesn’t she remind you of Kuan Yin?”

  We nodded.

  Later, when Ma and I were finally back in our apartment, she said to me, “I was wrong about that Wu boy. He’s more than handsome, he’s got a human heart too.” She meant he had compassion and depth.

  I didn’t answer but I hid my face in my pillow, thinking about Matt.

  Ninth grade marked the transition to high school. Most of us had been there for seventh and eighth grade but some new students entered in ninth, and the school year began with placement tests in math and science to determine which level classes we should be in. The other students, especially the better and more competitive ones, were nervous about the tests because spots in the accelerated science and math program were limited and coveted. Although the tests were supposed to be a simple evaluation of our abilities, many kids had tutors to help them do some extra studying on their own. There was a rumor that some colleges accepted only students who had gotten into the accelerated program.

  After the dusty, physical work of the factory, the scientific world created a clear and logical paradise where I could feel safe. Just for pleasure, I had started reading library books about subjects we’d touched upon in school: amino acids, mitosis, prokaryotes, DNA forensics, karyotyping, monohybrid crosses, endothermic reactions. And mathematics was the only language I truly understood. It was pure, orderly and predictable. It gave me great satisfaction to work on mathematical puzzles and forget about my real life at the apartment and factory. So I might have been the only student who actually looked forward to the placement tests and enjoyed taking them.

  When I received my scores, they seemed impossibly high, even to me. I was overjoyed. However, after a few weeks in the accelerated science and math program, Dr. Copeland, the director of the science and math department, called me into her office. My heart thudded in my throat. I didn’t have good memories of that place.

  “Kimberly, I am concerned by your performance in your classes,” she said.

  My breath seemed to lodge in my throat. What could be wrong this time? I’d been getting close to perfect scores on every test so far. As an extra credit assignment in Biology, I’d devised a lab activity my teacher had raved about: using dehydrated juice to identify solutes, solvents, solution, concentration, and to simulate enzyme activity. “Is there a problem with my grades?”

  “To tell you the truth, you’re doing a bit too well.” Dr. Copeland stared at me with narrowed eyes to gauge my reaction.

  Now I understood. She hadn’t forgotten that incident with Tammy last year. With the fear clogging my throat, it was hard to get the words out. “I’m not a cheat.”

  “I hope not. All of your teachers seemed to be convinced of your intelligence, and I do want to believe them. However, no student your age has ever gotten the results you got on those placement tests. And you are doing extremely well in your classes, while your middle school grades were less consistent. You may or may not know this, but tests have been stolen in the past.” Her face was filled with suspicion. She leaned in closer to me. When she finally spoke, her voice was so low I could barely hear her. “I was a pretty bright student too, as smart as they come, and I couldn’t have learned as quickly and as well as you claim to be doing. If you prove me wrong, I’ll be glad—glad to have such a brilliant young girl in science—but, well . . . you understand why we need to be sure of this, I think. You will be taking a new combined placement exam, an oral one, conducted
by the entire science and math faculty. Each teacher will contribute his or her own questions.”

  I didn’t answer. I was terrified of losing everything Ma and I had worked for. What if I couldn’t understand the English well enough, since it would all be spoken? What if I happened to make a few mistakes or just did less well than usual on her test? They could wrongly decide I’d been cheating and I would have to leave the school. I stared at her but her face no longer made sense to me. It had become a blur of shapes and light.

  “I’m not out to get you, Kimberly. If you’re doing everything honestly, you have nothing to worry about.” And she turned back to her desk.

  I walked slowly out of her office. Why couldn’t I just be like everyone else?

  “You okay?” Curt was passing by, arm in arm with Sheryl.

  Sheryl turned her head, her forehead furrowed. Perhaps she was as surprised as I was that he’d spoken to me. Maybe he also remembered the last time I’d been in that office.

  “Sure,” I said. I blinked my eyes a few times. “Thanks.”

  “See you,” he said, moving away.

  NINE

  I had a few casual friends, but at some point, we always hit an invisible barrier. There was Samantha, who was something of a snob. At the school cafeteria, I once asked the lady behind the counter for a cheese croissant in my careful English and Samantha corrected me with an exaggerated French accent, “Crois san. It’s so uncultured to pronounce the t.” And nowadays, Tammy spent her time pretending I didn’t exist.

  Finally, there was boy-crazy Lucy, who said things like, “Hey, I know what. Let’s dress up in our shortest miniskirts and go shopping in the city! I went out last Friday and these guys were drooling all over me!”

  In the end, Annette was my only true friend. In ninth grade, she became political, as she put it. She started wearing buttons and tried to get people to sign petitions. With being political came a new set of friends too. They were mostly the kids who worked on the anti-racism newsletter she set up: a few of the older scholarship students, a Swedish exchange student, some of the kids with punk hair. Now she wanted me to sign petitions fighting apartheid in South Africa, and I did; she wanted me to go to feminist marches with her, and I couldn’t. She became more extreme, using her newsletter to comment on the lack of students of color at Harrison. She started calling herself a Communist. With my family’s history, how could I believe in Communism? Even more than that, though, with all the time I spent trying to appear normal, I was too conscious of the dangers of sticking your neck out.

  The younger Annette I’d known had been easily distracted, filled with different and contradictory passions that flew from one extreme to the other. That simpler Annette had been easier to handle, only really concerned with herself and her comfortable world. There was a more serious Annette emerging now, one that started asking difficult questions.

  “So how come we’re so close,” she began once, “and I’ve never been to your house?”

  “My apartment is small. You would not be very comfortable,” I said.

  “But I don’t mind.”

  “My mother care. Just wait, I will ask her if you can come, okay?” I was hoping that this would appease her until she forgot about the whole thing. It was not until several years later that Annette showed me I was wrong; she’d never forgotten.

  What Annette didn’t understand was that silence could be a great protector. I couldn’t afford to cry when there was no escape. Talking about my problems would only illuminate the lines of my unhappiness in the cold light of day, showing me, as well as her, the things I had been able to bear only because they had been half hidden in the shadows. I couldn’t expose myself like that, not even for her.

  In some ways, getting the phone had only made things worse. Once, when I was working in the library, Annette had come by to hang out and started talking about an assignment for Social Studies, a class we shared this year. She was working on a paper titled “Marx and Aristotle: The Nature of Morality.” I hadn’t had time to start mine. I didn’t even have the topic yet.

  “I tried to call you yesterday afternoon.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Why aren’t you ever home after school?”

  I tried to look innocent while I thought. “What do you mean?”

  “You never answer until so late. Where do you go?”

  “Nowhere. Sometimes it takes me a long time to get home.” Annette tightened her full lips. “Kimberly, are we or are we not best friends?”

  Miserable, I met her eyes. “Of course.”

  Her eyes were fierce. “I’m not stupid.”

  “I know.” I hesitated. “The truth is, I help my mother at work.”

  “In Chinatown? Are the stores open that late?” I’d once told Annette my mother worked there and allowed her to believe that Ma worked in a shop.

  I decided to tell her a part of the truth. “Do you remember I told you once we worked in a factory?”

  “Maybe, kind of.” Annette’s voice started to rise. “Do you really? Aren’t you too young? Isn’t that illegal?”

  “Annette. Stop it.” I looked around the library. There was only one other student seated at the other end of the room. “This is not some abstract idea in your head. This is my life. If you do something to protest, we could lose our job.” I paused and looked down at my calloused hands, then up to her eyes again to say, “We need the work.”

  “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to. But are you okay?”

  “Yes. Really. It’s not so bad,” I lied. “There is a soda machine.”

  “Oh. Great.” She sounded sarcastic. “If there’s a soda machine, you’ve got to be in heaven.”

  I started laughing. “You can even get iced tea in it.”

  She giggled too. “Now I’m really convinced.” Then she sobered up. “Thanks for telling me. You can trust me.”

  I paused and looked at her. Annette had grown taller and her freckles had faded, but she was still the girl who had been my loyal friend since our days in Mr. Bogart’s class. “There’s something else.” I hadn’t told her anything of the school suspecting me of cheating—mostly because I found the whole thing so horrible I couldn’t bear to speak of it. Now I told her the whole story, starting with what had happened last year with Tammy and ending with my approaching oral exam.

  “Kimberly, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me any of this! And why didn’t you just say it was Tammy who was really cheating?”

  “I’m actually not so smart.”

  “No, you’re just not a telly-tale, that’s all. You remember you always used to say that?”

  We both started to laugh again but I remembered where we were and shushed us.

  “You’ll be all right,” Annette said. “You can take anything they throw at you.”

  “I hope so.” I wasn’t so sure. “But they can make the test very hard.”

  Whenever we got home from the factory, Ma would cook our dinner for the next day so that we could bring it with us to work. Afterward, if it wasn’t too cold, she’d play her violin for a little bit. That was always my favorite part of the day. And then, if she didn’t have work she needed to finish from the factory, she would fight exhaustion to study as much English as she could. Now she had also started practicing for the naturalization examination. As I did whenever I was doing schoolwork, she kept a roll of toilet paper by her to crush any roaches that tried to run across the pages of her book. While she studied, I finished my own homework and worked on some books I’d borrowed from the library for my upcoming exam.

  At fourteen I couldn’t take the naturalization test myself, but I would automatically acquire U.S. citizenship if Ma passed. This was essential if I wanted to qualify for the financial aid programs at colleges. Ma had bought a cheap tape player and a study book with a cassette. After listening to the questions repeatedly, she memorized what she needed to answer by the sounds alone. I peeked in her notes and they were full of phonetic symbols like a musical score. I’m
sure she had no idea what any of the sentences meant. When I tried to explain their grammar and meaning to her, she listened politely, but I never saw anything like understanding in her eyes.

  “Are you Communie?” Ma asked herself in English.

  The book made it clear that there was only one correct answer: “No!”

  Whatever Annette called herself, I knew that if you said yes to this question, you would have trouble with your U.S. citizenship. We weren’t natural-born Americans like her. They could still throw us out.

  Having spoken to Annette about my problems at school earlier in the day, I realized that I needed to talk to Ma as well. Before we went to bed, I told her the whole story.

  She held her head high on her slender neck and her eyes blazed. “My girl would never cheat.”

  “They are worried because they think I might have, before.”

  “If you’re as straight as an arrow, you’ll have to beg for a living,” Ma said with a sigh. She was quoting a Cantonese expression about the dangers of being too honest. “Do you want me to talk to that teacher?”

  “No, Ma.” I didn’t mention the language barrier. “No one can convince her that I’m innocent except for me. I have to pass her exam.”

  A week before my big oral examination, Annette decided I needed to relax, and despite my protests that I should study in all of my free time, she insisted she was taking me to Macy’s. Since our initial bra-buying expedition two years before, Ma and I had returned there a few times to buy new underwear for me, but we always felt so uncomfortable that we got out as fast as we could. It was hard for me to see how this trip would be relaxing, but as always I let myself trust Annette.

  I constantly had to lie to Ma when I did social things with Annette, because Ma found nonschool things to be unimportant and she was afraid that something dangerous would happen to me when I was out. Plus, I knew that if I told her what we did, she would feel the need to return the favors.