Girl in Translation

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.”

“It’s her heart,” Matt said. His eyes were warm as he glanced up at the both of us. “And she has her own medicine, but thank you very much, Mrs. Chang.”

Ma smiled at me as we walked on. “He’s a nicer boy than I thought.”

I had to perfect my English. Not only did I write down and look up the words I didn’t know in my textbooks, I started with the A’ s in my dictionary and tried to memorize all the words. I made a copy of the list and stuck it to the inside of the bathroom door. I had learned the phonetic alphabet in Hong Kong and that made it easier for me to figure out how the words were pronounced, even though I still often made mistakes. Our class went to the public library once a week and I always took out a stack of books, starting with the embarrassingly thin ones for little kids. I slowly worked my way up in age. I took these books with me to the factory and read them on the subway. Almost all of my homework was done either on the subway or at the factory. For the bigger projects, I caught up on Sundays.

By the time report cards were given out at the begi

The ice across the inside of the windowpanes in our apartment slowly dissolved and I could see through to the outside world again.

At the end of February, the class bully started staring at me in class. His name was Luke and he’d been left back a few times so he was a head taller than the rest of us. He had a barrel of a chest covered loosely by the same stained gray top that he wore every day. His nostrils were flared like a bull’s, and even Mr. Bogart seemed to have given up on him, leaving him alone most of the time. I saw Luke shove the other kids around. If a kid dared to fight back, Luke became doubly vicious. His main weapon was his legs and he liked knocking people to the ground and kicking them. There was a rumor that once a kid had rammed him in the stomach with his head and Luke had pulled a knife and cut him. He also used a lot of words I didn’t know, like cock and mother finger.

I asked A

“Everyone knows that.” Her smile was confident. “It means poop.”

A

We said good-bye to Mr. Al. A large moving van had taken away most of his inventory, although he’d saved a few folding chairs and a single mattress for us.

“Thank you, Mr. Al,” I said. I was thrilled to have my own place to sleep again.

“Mmm sai,” he said, trying to say “You’re welcome” in Cantonese.

“Your Chinese is very good,” I lied. Luckily, I knew exactly what I’d taught him, so I could usually guess what he was trying to say.

“You beautiful ladies take care of yourselves,” he said, and he gave us each in turn a big hug. He smelled like tobacco.

“May you have the strength and health of a dragon,” Ma said softly in Chinese. She looked in her shopping bag and pulled out a short wooden sword she’d bought from the kung fu store in Chinatown. She gave it to him.

His broad face shone with pleasure as he ran his finger over the carvings on the handle.

“She say, ‘Good health,’” I said, not knowing how to translate it further. “You supposed to lay that under pillow.”

“What? And waste a good weapon?”

“It takes away worry and bad dream.”

“All right, then. If you say so.” He gri

I felt sad when I saw Mr. Al’s empty store downstairs. Up in our apartment, I took a look at his building, pulling up the garbage bags over the kitchen window.

I wanted to see the sleeping black woman and baby in the apartment above his store. The mother wasn’t there but I could make out the baby, bigger now, alone in an old mesh playpen. He was hanging on to the sides. He had his mouth wide open, crying, but no one came.

I had always liked toy cars more than dolls and I had no interest in real babies at all, but I wished I could pick him up and comfort him.

Through all of March and into April, I continued to feel the bully Luke’s eyes on me but I pretended I didn’t notice anything. He had started grabbing girls by their hair and kissing them whenever Mr. Bogart wasn’t looking. Finally, one lunch period I was crossing the cafeteria, holding my tray, and passed the table where he was sitting with some other boys. He stuck out his foot. I stepped over it and kept going. The rubber legs of his chair screeched against the floor as he pushed himself away from the table and stood up.

“Hey, Chinese girl.”

I didn’t look around. I had just set my tray down at my usual spot across the table from A

“Wow, that’s kung fu,” one of Luke’s friends said.

“You know karate?” Luke asked, with real interest.

“No,” I said. That was the truth.

“She does,” his ski

“I want to try out your moves. Let’s fight after school.” Luke said this as if he were inviting me to play at his house. Then he and his friends went back to their own table.

A

“Are you crazy?” she asked, her voice pitched higher than normal. “He’ll kill you!”

“What must I do?”

“You gotta tell somebody. Tell Mr. Bogart.”

I just looked at her.

“Okay, forget that.” A