Girl in Translation

More of the girls in class also started wearing makeup to school, or applying it in the restrooms or at their lockers. This interested me more than the ski jackets. It seemed to have a magical quality that would somehow make you more normal. Once, in the girls’ bathroom, A

“Take it,” A

Moments like this showed me that despite my constant evasions, A

Now that I was older, I wasn’t as sick all the time, although a ru

At home, Ma and I kept hoping for the wrecking ball to appear outside our building, forcing Aunt Paula to move us to a new apartment, but it never did. Ma had asked her one last time about when we’d be able to move, and Aunt Paula allowed her black face to be seen for a moment.

“If you’re really so unhappy there, no one is stopping you from making other choices.”

After that, Ma didn’t dare to ask again. We were still paying Aunt Paula back and it was clear that she simply did not care to move us. As far as she was concerned, it was most convenient and best to leave us where we were. And the truth is, caught up in the vortex of work and school, we had become too exhausted to fight against the roaches and mice, our frozen limbs, the stuffed animal clothing, and life in front of the open oven. We had been forced into acceptance. Sunday was our only free day, but it was packed: we did all our grocery shopping then, but also had to catch up on factory work, my schoolwork, and prepare for any Chinese holidays. Our one bright spot was when we went to the Shaolin temple in Chinatown. It was on the second floor of a building in the Lower East Side and was my sanctuary.

It was run by true Chinese nuns, complete with shaved heads and black robes, and they always served free and delicious vegetarian food: fried noodles with tofu, rice and thin, ruffle-edged black mushrooms called cloud ears. When the nuns handed me my food, I could feel how present they were in every gesture of kindness. After lighting incense and bowing to the enormous triple Buddhas in the main room, we would pay our respects to our dead, and most especially to Pa. I felt at peace in the temple, as if we had never left Hong Kong. As if there were forces of compassion that were watching over Ma and me.

I couldn’t get away from the factory much. Once in a long while, when we had a bit of time before the next shipment went out, I lied to Ma and snuck off with A

On one of those days, A

Misunderstanding my hesitation, A

I made up an excuse for Ma, and A

We were early for the film, and the theater was huge, half empty and cavernous, with lights set into the floor, as there had been on the airplane from Hong Kong. I inhaled the smell of popcorn and butter, and then A

“You have great cheekbones,” A

“You too.” I wasn’t sure what made a cheekbone “great” but that seemed irrelevant.

When we were done, I peered in the mirror and was amazed at how different I looked. Heavily shadowed eyes, tons of blush and lipstick: hardly an inch of my skin had been left its original color. It would be very American to look like this all the time. I touched my great cheekbones with my fingers.

A woman leaving the bathroom smiled at us as she left. “You look lovely, girls.”

We felt beautiful. Then we sat in the dark for a few hours watching the film, which I didn’t follow at all. I kept feeling the velvet of my seat with my hand and imagining the glow of my face. Indiana Jones did seem very heroic. The movie was similar to martial arts films I had seen on television in Hong Kong, only less comprehensible, with too many villains, tribal people, and children needing to be rescued. But it was so exciting. When the film was over, A

When school let out for the summer, A

My specialty in the finishing process was the bagging. This was the most physically demanding job, but I learned to do it fast. There was a tall black metal rack with an enormous roll of plastic garment bags at the top. You took a garment from the right side, hung it on the hook on the rack, then opened the plastic bag and fit it over the item. Then you had to separate the bag from the previous ones in the roll and, finally, lift the entire garment up over the rack and hook, and hang the garment on the rack to the left. It was important to be careful not to rip the bag or you would have to start all over again.

The finishing process started when we got the garments and ended after they were bagged; it included hanging, sorting, belting, tying sashes, buttoning, tagging and bagging each item. For all of this work, we were paid one and a half cents per skirt, two cents per pair of pants with a belt, and one cent for an upper garment. I was still too short for the rack so I had to stand on a chair. I timed myself with the large factory clock that hung on the opposite wall. It took Ma about thirty seconds to bag a piece, which worked out to bagging about 120 pieces an hour. It was easy to figure out that Ma was making much less than two dollars an hour.

This was no way to survive. At first, when I was doing it the slow way, separating each bag with two hands and carefully fitting it over the garments, it took me twenty seconds to bag a piece. Then I tried different tactics to refine my methods.