Girl in Translation

“Are you Communie?” Ma asked herself in English.

The book made it clear that there was only one correct answer: “No!”

Whatever A

Having spoken to A

She held her head high on her slender neck and her eyes blazed. “My girl would never cheat.”

“They are worried because they think I might have, before.”

“If you’re as straight as an arrow, you’ll have to beg for a living,” Ma said with a sigh. She was quoting a Cantonese expression about the dangers of being too honest. “Do you want me to talk to that teacher?”

“No, Ma.” I didn’t mention the language barrier. “No one can convince her that I’m i

A week before my big oral examination, A

I constantly had to lie to Ma when I did social things with A

This time, I stayed a bit behind A

After we’d been to all of the perfume ladies, we circled the glossy white counters, picking up the test bottles and spraying each one on a new spot. It became hard to find an exposed piece of our bodies that hadn’t been sprayed: we started with our wrists, moved up our arms, then did our necks and collarbones and chests as well. A

When I showed up at the factory a few hours later, though, Matt looked up from the steamers. Then he started convulsing with laughter while he waved his hand in front of his nose.

I was aghast. Despite the enormous clouds of steam, he could still smell me.

I doubled back to the bathroom and scrubbed off as much as I could but it was impossible to remove it all. When I approached Ma at our workstation, she said, “Ay yah, ah-Kim! What have you done?”

“A

“Some! You must have taken a bath in it!” Luckily, Ma didn’t pursue it any further.

But that night, as I bent over my books, I could still smell the lingering perfume on my clothes and wrists, and I felt surrounded by the warmth of A

I’d gotten my working papers and Mr. Jamali gave me extra hours at the library. I was actually paid for this time since my work was beyond what I was required to do for my scholarship. I made sure I only filled up some of my free time slots during the day so I could help Ma at the factory as much as possible after school. I had opened a bank account in Ma’s name and we put everything extra there for college.

I had mostly lost my interest in makeup. It wasn’t that my looks didn’t concern me, because they did, but I just couldn’t fathom ever being popular or beautiful. I didn’t understand how that all worked. No matter what colors A

All I wanted was to have a break from the exhausting cycle of my life, to flee from the constant anxiety that haunted me: fear of my teachers, fear at every assignment, fear of Aunt Paula, fear that we’d never escape. In the library one day, I picked up Car and Driver instead. Paging through the photos of glossy convertibles, I felt something open up in my head. Car and motorcycle magazines became my escape. I wanted just to ride a Corvette into the wild night and not have to fill out the income taxes for Ma, not have to be responsible for everything that was in English. I was always afraid I had done something wrong and an inspector would appear at our door, demanding answers to questions I didn’t even understand.

One day at the library, I was leafing through an old copy of Cycle that Mr. Jamali had given me. An article about a particular motorcycle caught my eye. I didn’t understand at first why this model seemed so familiar but then I recognized the Indian head on the gas tank. It matched the toy replica Park always kept with him.

Later that afternoon at the factory, I looked for Park. He’d wandered away from his mother again, as he often did, but as long as he didn’t cause anyone else any trouble, people tended to ignore him. He was standing next to one of the sewing machine ladies, staring at the spi

“Scares me to death,” the sewing lady said to the one sitting next to her, never pausing in her work. Each piece of clothing was a blur as it raced through her machine. “Wish he’d find someone else to watch.”

“As long as it’s not me.” The other lady laughed.

“Glad I don’t have a boy like that. He has the white disease.” She was calling Park retarded. I felt a

It was more to startle them than anything else that I called, “Park, I have an article on your motorcycle.”

To my surprise, he turned around with an eager look on his face. Both sewing ladies froze.

“Here,” I said.

He grabbed the magazine, brought it inches away from his face and turned it around and around, rotating it around the picture of the bike.

I gently pried the article out of his hands and read him the begi

“The 1934 Indian Chief is a true classic, featuring Indian’s famous headdress logo on the gas tank. The company’s enormous factory in Springfield was called the Wigwam…”

When I finished reading, both Park and the ladies were staring at me. Whispering to each other, the ladies turned back to their sewing. I handed the magazine to Park.

“Matt can read you the rest later.” I waited to see if he would respond.

A slow smile started in the corner of his mouth. It took time to cross his face, as if he wasn’t used to smiling much. He looked almost handsome, and very much like Matt.