Girl in Translation (6 page)

“Hey!” he said.

I froze, ready to be arrested. But he was looking at another kid who had thrown a crumpled paper bag on the floor.

“You pick that up!” he said.

I passed through and ran down to the train platform.

THREE

Ma and I soon learned that our apartment didn’t have any heat. Hopefully, we scrubbed the radiator in the room we slept in, rubbing until we’d taken off most of the flaking paint with the dust, but it remained dead no matter how we twisted the knobs. We explored the third floor of the building and found all of the other apartments to be empty. Trash was piled up everywhere-by the doorways, in the crevices of the steps. There was a stack of half-empty boxes by one doorway, as if someone had disappeared or died in the middle of moving out. The boarded-up storefront below had a faded sign that said “Dollar Store.” We found the entrance to the backyard, which was one enormous heap of garbage, probably tossed down by residents and neighbors over the years, and the door to the basement was locked.

When Ma politely asked Aunt Paula about how the heat worked, Aunt Paula understood her real question and replied that she had already asked Mr. N. for permission to fix it. She said we wouldn’t be staying at that apartment for much longer anyway.

It was freezing during those days I played hooky in that apartment. After skipping school for almost a week, I saw my first snowfall. Flakes came slanting down from the sky and at first, the concrete sidewalk absorbed them like a sponge. I touched the window with my hands, amazed it was cold when it seemed to me that the falling rice should be warm, as if it were a soup. With time, the ground became a blanket of white and gusts of wind blew snow from the rooftops, flurries swirling in the air.

Even now, my predominant memory of that phase of my life is of the cold. Cold like the way your skin feels after you’ve been slapped, such painful tingling that you can hardly tell if it’s hot or cold. It simply registers as suffering. Cold that crept down your throat, under your toes and between your fingers, wrapped itself around your lungs and your heart. Our thin cotton blanket from Hong Kong was completely inadequate, since Hong Kong shops didn’t sell anything substantial enough for New York winters. We slept under a pile of jackets and clothes to try to stay warm. I woke up with parts of my body numb and frozen: unexpected places like my hip, where a sweater had slipped off the mound.

Slowly, a sheet of ice grew over the inside of the windows, a layer of distortion spread thick across the panes. As I stared outside, I used my blueing fingers to melt circles in it, trying to reach the clear glass underneath.

One afternoon, I pulled off a corner of the taped-on garbage bags in the kitchen so I could see what the back of our building looked like. It was a clear day. When I peered out of that opening, I looked down at the roof of a large extension built on our ground floor. That must have been where the dollar store had kept its extra merchandise. People had thrown so much trash onto that rooftop that you could hardly see its surface, but I could discern a large hole in the roof that no one had bothered to fix. A sheet of old newspaper clung to the ragged edge of the hole, flapping in the wind. When it snowed or rained, the inside of that extension must have gotten soaked.

From our kitchen window, I could also see into the apartment immediately next to ours in Mr. Al’s building, where it extended deeper than ours. That apartment was strangely close for something so separate, contained within a completely different building yet only a few feet away. I could have stuck a broom out and tapped on its window. Behind the glass, I made out the form of a sleeping black woman. I could tell her apartment had heat because she was wearing only a thin housedress. She had a few curlers in her hair. Her arm was tenderly cradled around a small blanketed form and I realized it was a baby. The rest of the mattress was strewn with tangled clothes, and above their bodies, a triangular section of plaster was missing from their wall. But I could see how much they loved each other, despite their poverty, and I longed for the simpler times Ma and I had shared.

When it became too cold for me to look any longer, I put the garbage bags back into place.

The next day, I’d just shut the factory door behind me when I saw Matt dragging a massive canvas cart piled high with mauve skirts in the direction of the hemming station. The mountain of clothing loomed over him and he had to walk backward using both skinny arms to drag the cart along. I slung my book bag over my shoulder and started heading for Ma’s and my work area in the back, but to my surprise, he called out to me in Chinese.

“Hey, help a hand?”

I went over and grabbed the back part of the cart. Even with him in the front, the floor was so slick with dust that I had to dig my feet into the ground to keep the back wheels from veering off to the side.

He cocked his head to one side to see me around the skirts. “So, had fun at school?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Funny school you got. ’Cause no other school in New York ’s open today.”

My eyes stretched wide.

“C’mon, lighten up. Any idiot could tell you were playing hooky,” he said.

“Shhhhh!” I looked around to see if anyone was listening.

He went on as if I hadn’t said anything. “I didn’t see you doing any homework.”

“You never have homework either.”

“I don’t ever do any. You, you’re a real homework-doer.”

I voiced my real fear. “Do you think my mother knows?”

“Nah, I only know because I did it myself.”

“Really?” I warmed to him.

“But I just heard a lady complaining to your ma about having to work today because it’s Turkey Day. That’s a big holiday here. Anyway, you better think of something fast.”

My mind whirled upon itself, panting and empty. “What? What?”

He thought for a moment. “Say you only found out after you got to school, then you went home and did your homework first because you got a big project due next week.”

By then, we’d reached the hemming area, which was at the front end of the factory, near the manager’s office. We released the cart and it rolled forward a foot more on its own before stuttering to a stop.

“I really owe you.” Ma had taught me that all debts had to be repaid. I turned my pockets inside out to see if there was anything I could give him, but I found only scraps of leftover toilet paper that I had used as tissues stuck to the inner lining.

“Gross,” he said. “Forget it.” He turned and went back to the seamstresses’ area.

I caught a glimpse of Aunt Paula’s tall figure in the manager’s office and hurried away. I walked down the length of the factory to the finishing station.

Ma’s hair was hidden under a kerchief and there was a mauve smudge on her right temple, where she had probably tried to wipe away the sweat beading along her hairline.

I said immediately, “Hi, there was no school today.”

Ma folded her arms. “So why didn’t you come earlier?”

“I had a big project to work on for next week.”

“What’s this project on?”

I thought fast. “Current events. I needed to watch the news.”

Ma nodded but she still seemed thoughtful. “So you happened to come to the factory at just the same time as you usually do after school?”

I paused a second too long. “I never took the trains at any other time.” Ma started looping a belt through a skirt she had in her hands. Then she said, “What were you and the Wu boy talking about just now?”

“N-nothing,” I stammered.

“You seemed surprised at something.”

“No, he just wanted me to play with him later.” I tried to laugh. “He’s always goofing off.”

“I think you should be careful with that one.”

“Yes, Ma.”

Ma put aside the skirt and sat down on a stool. She looked at me. “Don’t get too close to the other children here. Ah-Kim, you must always remember this: If you play with them, learn to talk like them, study like them, act like them-what will make you different? Nothing. And in ten or twenty years, you’ll be doing precisely what the older girls are doing, working on the sewing machines in this factory until you’re worn, and when you’re too old for that, you’ll cut thread like Mrs. Wu.”

She paused a moment, as if she were unsure if she should continue or not. “Most people never leave this life. It’s probably too late for me. My days of being a refined music teacher are over.” At my stricken look, she hastened to reassure me. “That’s all right. That’s what a parent is for, to do whatever is necessary to give her child a good life. But you, don’t forget you were the smartest student our primary school in Hong Kong had ever seen. Nothing can change how bright you are, whether your current teacher knows it or not. Most important, nobody can change who you are, except for you.” She drew me close to her for a moment. “I’m sorry I brought you to this place,” she whispered.

It was the closest Ma would ever come to expressing regret at her choice to come to America. I understood what my task was now and I laid my cheek against her shoulder. “I’m going to get us both out of here, Ma, I promise.”

I had to go back to school on Monday. Pa was dead and no one else could save Ma from this life. The image of Ma cutting thread as an old lady in the factory was unbearable. I thought back to what Aunt Paula had said in passing about my cousin Nelson, that his teacher thought he could become a good lawyer. I wasn’t sure what lawyers did exactly, but I knew they made a great deal of money; if even Nelson could become something so powerful, then so could I.

In a way, I was relieved at my decision. The hours in the apartment had been guilt-ridden and fearful. Cold, hungry and lonely. In the back of my mind, I had known that I couldn’t get away with it forever. The gods were giving me a second chance. With the turkey holiday, I had a few more days before I had to go back to school and could make up an excuse for the five days I’d missed.

I had hardly any appetite that weekend, anticipating my return to Mr. Bogart’s class. Even as I helped Ma finish the factory work, I kept seeing his face before me, the light round head that seemed so malevolent in its hairlessness. Only much later did I realize that he did have very thin hair: it was hair I hadn’t recognized as such because it was blond. I imagined not being able to understand anything, getting a zero again. I thought about my teachers in Hong Kong, how they’d always showered me with praise and prizes. I’d felt sorry for the dumb kids who fumbled with their thumbs and stuttered when they gave the wrong answers, but now I was the stupid one with a weight on my heart.

The first thing Mr. Bogart said to me after we filed into the classroom was, “Where’s your accent note?”

Luckily, I understood the word “note” and I’d known I would have to hand in something to explain my absence from school. I gave him a note I’d forged as best I could, based on my old English schoolbooks:

Dear Sirs,

Kimberly was sick. Sorry with the trouble.

Your obedient servant,

Mrs. Chang

Mr. Bogart glanced at it and then filed it away without further comment. I slid into the seat I’d had the first day.

We had a test. Since I hadn’t been to class, I had no idea what it was about. Then I saw that we’d been given tables with figures and there was text above each one. There are three different basketball teams and each has played five games… It took me a few minutes to try to understand what the word problems were asking, but then I figured out they were simply mean, median and mode problems mixed in with a few decimal problems. It was like unexpectedly running into old friends. They were doing subjects we’d covered in Hong Kong more than a year before.

However, I was still scared under Mr. Bogart’s eye. I misunderstood a sentence, then realized too late that I’d made a mistake and I had nothing to erase it with. Would he be angry if I crossed out my work? Probably. And then I wouldn’t have enough room for the new answer. I didn’t dare ask any of the other kids in case he would think I was cheating again.

My only choice was to ask Mr. Bogart himself. I stood and walked to his desk. At least I knew what I had to say because this exact situation had been covered in one of my old English lessons.

“Excuse me, sir.” I tried to enunciate clearly. “May I borrow a rubber?”

He stared at me for a moment and a low titter swept through the classroom.

One of the boys called, “Don’t your boyfriend have one?”

At this, the entire class burst into laughter. Why? I wished my hair were long enough to cover my face.

Mr. Bogart’s face was flushed. He studied me as if trying to decide whether I’d disrupted his class on purpose. “That’s enough. Silence! Kimberly, return to your seat.”

Filled with shame for something I didn’t at all understand, I hurried back to my seat. I would leave school that day and never come back.

Then the frizzy-haired girl leaned over.

“It’s called an eraser here,” she whispered. She tucked a strand of her feathery hair behind her ear and pushed a pink eraser across the gap between our desks.

In the end, that day turned out to be a good one. I knew I’d gotten all the answers right on that test, even if I wasn’t sure I’d done the equations the way they’d been taught. Later, it turned out that the way I’d carried over numbers from the tens to the hundreds column, writing them down at the bottom of the equation instead of at the top, was not the American way to do it. Mr. Bogart took off some credit for this, so I didn’t get a hundred on that test, but I’d seen enough to know that a few minor adjustments were all I required for the next time. This was a fight where I actually had a chance.

Even more important, I’d met Annette, the frizzy-haired girl. After the rubber incident, she subtly elbowed me. I glanced at her, then down at her notebook, where she’d written “Mr. Boogie” with a stick figure of Mr. Bogart, complete with a hole for a yelling mouth. I didn’t even know what a boogie was then, but I understood the intention and was delighted. Annette normally didn’t raise her hand in class-I think because she didn’t like Mr. Bogart-but she often knew the answer. Whenever he asked a question, she wrote the answer down on her notebook paper and showed it to me. Since I could read far better than I could speak, this way of communicating was ideal.