Girl in Translation (10 page)

We didn’t have a Christmas tree or lights in the apartment, but Ma did her best. She bought a used paperback book of Christmas carols and we sang them together. I’d heard some of them at school, and Ma could read the music if not the English words. She provided the melody wordlessly while I sang in English loudly and off-key. She tried accompanying us with her violin, but it was much too cold and she couldn’t play with her gloves on.

I didn’t have a stocking, though on Christmas Eve, I laid one of Ma’s socks, which was bigger than mine, on the low table I did my homework on. When I woke up, there was an orange and a Chinese red envelope with two dollars in it, a fortune. I saw immediately there was no Santa Claus, only Ma, but that was enough.

A few days after the Western New Year, we found a true gift. Our regular route to the subway took us past a big building and one morning we saw some men working near its dumpster. Soon, they left and we saw what they’d thrown away: several rolls of the plush cloth used to make stuffed animals. The building must have been a toy factory.

We both stopped short, riveted by the sight of the warm material.

“Maybe if we are very fast-” Ma began.

“No, Ma. We can’t risk being late with Aunt Paula again,” I said. “We have to come back later.”

Throughout the long day at the factory, Ma kept asking me questions. “Do you think other people would take something like that? Is there trash collection today?”

The only answer I had for her was, “I don’t know.” It would be my fault if the material was gone by the time we could leave the factory that evening.

When we finally hurried out of the subway station and rushed to the toy factory, we saw that everything was still there. Ma laughed with joy at the glorious find. Yards and yards of material that could keep us warmer. Even though the cloth was fake fur, lime green and prickly, it was better than anything we had. The streets were deserted in the bitter cold but Ma and I made several trips to pull as many rolls out of the trash as we could and dragged them home.

Ma made us robes, sweaters, pants and blankets out of the toy factory cloth. She used it to cover parts of the floor and windows. She even made tablecloths out of it. We must have been a funny sight, dressed up at home as two large stuffed animals, but we didn’t have the luxury of minding. Since then, I have wondered if we would have survived the winter without that gift from the gods. The material was heavy and carpetlike, not having been intended as clothing, and when I slept under our new blankets, I woke with my limbs aching from the weight. However, at least they covered our entire bodies at once, unlike the piles of clothes we’d used in the past, and they were warm.

All of the gods leave at midnight on the night before Chinese New Year, which came at the end of January then. Every year, they return to us at a different time and from a different direction. Ma consulted the Tong Sing to find out when and where we had to go to welcome them as they returned. She rubbed a sewing needle against a magnet and then floated the needle in a bowl of water to figure out where the directions were. At four in the morning, Ma and I ventured into the deserted streets, the white clouds of our breaths drifting upward in the frosty gleam of the streetlamps. We headed southeast to greet the returning gods, our gloved hands filled with offerings of mandarin oranges and peanuts.

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.”