Girl in Translation

I headed up the stairs.

I thought about the Averys’ warm, animal-hair-covered house often. I dreamed of staying in A

But when A

It was always easy to see who had a green card and who was illegal on payday. The illegals all got paid in cash, in Uncle Bob’s office. The others had their piecework converted to an hourly wage and that amount was given in check form. We received a check but we also had to go to the office. Each payday, Uncle Bob would limp heavily into our workstation and escort us into the manager’s office, where he would cash our check and divide up the money in front of our eyes.

“I want to make sure everything is absolutely clear,” Uncle Bob said, sounding resigned. He wrote the different amounts on a pad of paper and put the green bills into separate piles. “So, this is for your medicine, when you were sick in Hong Kong. This is for the plane tickets, this is for the visas, this is the interest over the full amount, this is for the rent-no interest on that, of course-this is for the water, gas and electricity, and this is for you.” And then he handed us the smallest pile with a sigh.

The first time this happened, I had been shocked by how little money was left for us. Luckily, we didn’t have a phone, or we would have had to pay for that as well. I hadn’t known that we were repaying anything else and I hadn’t realized how much Ma’s tuberculosis treatment and the immigration expenses had been. So this was a part of the reason we couldn’t afford a better apartment, although I wished Aunt Paula had given us more time to repay our debts to her. Uncle Bob took their share every week, and we paid our rent and everything else in installments.

One day, Ma tried to talk to Uncle Bob about the apartment too. “Ah-Kim is always sick. The apartment is too cold. When will another one be available?”

He looked at me and my perpetually red nose. His face was not unkind. “That’s hard to say. Aunt Paula takes care of all that stuff. But come on, let me buy you an iced tea. Have you ever had one?”

Uncle Bob took us to the soda machine and bought me my first American iced tea while a few kids looked on with awe. It was so cold and lemony, better than any drink I’d ever tasted.

“Thank you, Big Brother Bob,” Ma said. “Will you keep watch for a new place for us?”

“Hmm? Oh, sure, sure,” he said.

In preparation for Christmas, the school was hung with lights and cutout snowflakes and we all sang songs in assembly. I knew A

If A

The last day of school before Christmas vacation, I saw A

“Kimberly!” she shrieked. “What’s that?!”

I thrust it into her hands. “For you.”

“Hi, Kim,” Mrs. Avery called from inside the car.

A

I was just getting over another cold and I wiped my nose with a bit of toilet paper while I tried to figure out what she meant. Why would a plant make music? Only much later did I realize that A

Mrs. Avery’s voice interrupted us. “What a lovely plant, A

“Yeah, thanks,” A

When I opened it, I saw it was a little panda clip-on bear, similar to the other stuffed animals she had clipped to her book bag. It had soft brown eyes and neat black ears that were politely folded down; its paws had tiny claws on them that held on to your finger. I had longed for such a bear without even knowing it, although I think Ma felt a bit disappointed that we’d gotten such a tiny present in return.

On that last day of school before Christmas vacation, Ma surprised me. Instead of leaving for the factory in the morning as she always did, she walked to school with me.

“You’ll be late,” I said.

“Aunt Paula is usually collecting rent today,” Ma answered. “And I have a bit of time before the shipment goes out.”

“You can’t be sure she’ll be gone.” I had seen Aunt Paula correcting the other workers for small faults like being late. Sometimes, she fired them on the spot.

“I know.” Although I was trying to catch her eye, Ma looked only at my school, now appearing in the distance.

“Ma.” I pulled on her thin coat. Ma was risking her job and our survival. I was sure that Aunt Paula would fire us too if she got angry enough. In the freezing morning air, puffs of white rose from my mouth. “What are you doing?”

She didn’t answer me, but I saw she had looped through her arm a small plastic bag with a take-out container in it. Could this have something to do with my problems with Mr. Bogart? Was she going to throw food at him? With each step, the sidewalk pounded against the rubber of my boots in time with the frightened thud of my heart.

When we arrived at school, I tried to say good-bye to her at the door, but she walked right past the guard and followed me into the school basement, where I had to line up. Mr. Bogart was standing against the wall, talking to the other sixth-grade teacher, Miss Kumar. Ma marched up to them and I trailed behind her, wishing I had the power to make us both disappear.

“Yes?” Mr. Bogart said, drawing the sides of his mouth down into a frown.

“Merry X-y-masy,” Ma said in English. Her voice shook. She placed the take-out container in Mr. Bogart’s hands.

He raised his eyebrows and then slowly flipped open the cover of the container to reveal a large soy sauce drumstick inside. It was worse than I had expected. For Ma, this was a luxury that we could rarely afford ourselves, but to give Mr. Bogart something as common as a drumstick…

His expression was caught between disdain and something else I couldn’t identify-could it have been surprise, or even gratitude? I waited for some sarcastic comment, but because of the unusual nature of the gift or Miss Kumar’s presence, Mr. Bogart seemed stu

Miss Kumar, on the other hand, was smiling openly. “And Nick, you always say you never get any appreciation,” she said. She turned to Ma. “Kimberly seems to be settling in just fine, Mrs. Chang.”