In that third week of November, I started school. Ma and I had a hard time finding it because it was many blocks away, beyond the area we had explored so far. This new neighborhood was cleaner than the vacant lots and empty storefronts that I had seen closer to our apartment. Aunt Paula had explained with pride that my official address would be different from the one where I actually lived. I should use this other address whenever anyone asked me.
“Why?” I’d asked.
“This is another of Mr. N.’s buildings. It’s one you wouldn’t be able to afford to live in, but using this address will allow you to go to a better school. Don’t you want that?”
“What’s the problem with the one I would go to normally?”
“Nothing!” Aunt Paula shook her head, clearly frustrated by my lack of gratitude for what she had done for me. “Go see if your ma needs you.”
Now, trying to find this better school, Ma and I walked across several big avenues and then past a number of governmental buildings with statues in front of them. Most of the people on the street were still black, but I saw more whites and lighter shades of black people, possibly Hispanics or other nationalities I couldn’t identify yet. I was shivering in my thin jacket. Ma had bought me the warmest one she could find in Hong Kong, but it was still made of acrylic, not wool.
We passed an apartment complex and a park. Finally, we found the school. It was a square concrete building with a large school yard and a flagpole waving the American flag. It was obvious I was late-the yard was empty of people-and we rushed up a broad flight of stairs and pushed open the heavy wooden door.
A black woman in a police uniform sat behind a desk, reading a book. She wore a tag that said “Security.”
We showed her the letter from the school. “Go downda hall, two fights up, classroom’s firsdur left,” she said, pointing. Then she picked up her book again.
I understood only that I had to go that way and so I started slowly down the long hallway. I saw Ma hesitate, unsure whether she was allowed to follow me. She glanced at the security guard, but Ma couldn’t say anything in English. I kept going, and at the staircase, I looked back to see Ma in the distance, a thin, uncertain figure, still standing by the guard’s desk. I hadn’t wished her good luck for her first day at the factory. I hadn’t even said good-bye. I wanted to run back and beg her to take me with her, but instead, I turned and made my way up the stairs.
After a bit of searching, I found the classroom and knocked weakly on the door.
A deep, muffled voice came from behind the door. “You’re late! Come in.”
I pushed it open. The teacher was a man. I learned later his name was Mr. Bogart. He was extremely tall, so that his forehead was level with the top of the blackboard, with a raspberry nose and a head bald as an egg. His green eyes seemed unnaturally light to me in his wide face and his stomach stuck out from under his shirt. He was writing English words on the blackboard, from left to right.
“Our new student eye-prezoom?” He gave a strange smile that made his lips disappear, then he looked at his watch and his lips reappeared. “You’re very late. What’s your exsu?”
I knew I had to answer so I guessed. “Kim Chang.”
He stared at me for a second. “I know what your name is,” he said, enunciating each word. “What’s your exshus?”
A few of the kids snickered. I took a quick look around: almost all black with two or three white kids. No other Chinese at all, no help in sight.
“Can’t you speak English? They said that you did.” This came out as a kind of grumbled whine. Who was he talking about? He took a breath. “Why are you late?”
This, I understood. “I sorry, sir,” I said. “We not find school.”
He frowned, then nodded and waved at an empty desk. “Go sit down. There.”
I sat down in the seat he had indicated, next to a chubby white girl with frizzy hair that stuck out in all directions. My fingers were shaking so much that I fumbled with my pencil case. It opened and everything in it clattered on the floor. Now most of the class laughed and I scrambled to pick up my things. I was so flushed I could feel the heat not only in my face but in my neck and chest. The white girl also bent down and picked up a pen and a pencil sharpener for me.
Mr. Bogart continued writing on the blackboard. I sat up straight and folded my hands behind my back to listen even though I couldn’t follow it at all.
He glanced at me. “Why are you see something that?”
“I sorry, sir,” I said, but I had no idea what I’d done wrong this time. I looked around at the other students. Most of them were sprawled in their chairs. Some had sunk so low that they were practically lying down, some were leaning on their elbows, a few were chewing gum. In Hong Kong, students must fold their hands behind their backs when the teacher is talking, to show respect. Slowly, I loosened my arms and placed my hands on the desk in front of me.
Shaking his head, Mr. Bogart turned back to the blackboard.
Our class went to the school cafeteria for lunch. I had never seen children behave the way these Americans did. They seemed to be hanging from the beams on the ceilings, shrieking. The lunchroom ladies roamed from table to table, yelling instructions no one heard. I had followed the other children and slid a tray across a long counter. Different ladies asked me questions and when I only nodded, they plopped foil-covered packages on my plate. I wound up with this: minced meat in the form of a saucer, potatoes that were not round but had been crushed into a pastelike substance, a sauce similar to soy sauce but less dark and salty, a roll and milk. I had hardly ever drunk cow’s milk before and it gave me a stomachache. The rest of the food was interesting, although there was no rice, so I felt as if I hadn’t really eaten.
After lunch, Mr. Bogart gave out sheets of paper with a drawing of a map.
“This is a pop quick,” he said. “Fill in allde captal see T’s.”
The other kids groaned but many of them started writing. I looked at my piece of paper and then, in desperation, glanced at the white girl’s sheet to try to see what we were supposed to do. Suddenly, the sheet of paper slid out from under my fingers. Mr. Bogart was standing next to me with my test in his hands.
“No cheap pen!” he said. His nose and cheeks were flushed as if he were getting a rash. “You a hero!”
“I sorry, sir-” I began. I knew he wasn’t calling me a hero, like Superman. What had he said? Although I’d had basic English classes in school in Hong Kong, my old teacher’s accent did not in any way resemble what I now heard in Brooklyn.
“ ‘I’mmm,’ ” he said, pressing his lips together. “ ‘ I’m sorry.’ ”
“I’m sorry,” I said. My English mistakes clearly annoyed him, although I wasn’t sure why.
Mr. Bogart wrote a large “0” on my paper and gave it back to me. I felt as if the zero were fluorescent, blinking in neon to the rest of the class. What would Ma say? I’d never gotten a zero before, and now everyone thought I was a cheat too. My only hope was to impress Mr. Bogart with my industry when we cleaned the classrooms after school. If I’d lost any claim to intelligence here, I could at least show him I was a hard worker.
But when the last bell finally rang, all of the other kids ran out of the room. No one stayed behind to mop and sweep the floors, put up the chairs or clean the blackboards.
Mr. Bogart saw me hesitating and asked, “Can I help you?”
I didn’t answer and hurried from the classroom.
Ma was waiting for me outside. I was so happy to see her that when I took her hand, my eyes became hot.
“What is it?” she said, turning my face to her. “Did the other children tease you?”
“No.” I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. “It’s nothing.”
Ma looked at me intently. “Did some child hit you?”
“No, Ma,” I said. I didn’t want to worry her when there was so little she could do. “Everything is different here, that’s all.”
“I know,” she said, still looking concerned. “What did you do today?”
“I don’t remember.”
Ma sighed, then gave up and started teaching me how to get to the factory by myself. She went through a long list of things for me to be careful of: strange men, homeless people, pickpockets, touching the dirty railing, standing too close to the edge of the platform, etc.
Once we passed the entrance of the subway, the roar of an incoming train blocked out her words. Behind the grimy windows, we could see the walls of the tunnels speed by in a blur. There was so much noise that Ma and I could speak little on the subway ride there. There were two boys about my age sitting across from us. As the taller one got up, a bulky knife fell out of his pocket. It was sheathed in leather, the black handle grooved to fit a large hand. I pretended I wasn’t looking and willed myself to be invisible. The other boy gestured, the first one picked it up, and then they left the train. I peeked at Ma and she had her eyes closed. I huddled closer to her and concentrated on learning the stops and transfers so I wouldn’t get lost by myself.
When we got out of the train station, Ma turned to me and said, “I wish you didn’t have to take the subway by yourself.”
That was the first time. Going to the factory after school would become something so automatic that sometimes, even when I needed to go someplace else years later, I would find myself on the trains to the factory by accident, as if that were the place to which all roads led.
Chinatown looked very much like Hong Kong, although the streets were less cramped. The fish store was piled high with sea bass and baskets of crabs; grocery store shelves were stocked with canned papayas, lichee nuts and star fruit; peddlers on the street sold fried tofu and rice gruel. I felt like skipping beside Ma as we passed restaurants with soy sauce chickens hanging in the window and jewelry stores that glittered with yellow gold. I could understand everyone without any effort: “No, I want your best winter melons,” one woman said; “That’s much too expensive,” said a man in a puffy jacket.
Ma brought us to a doorway that led to a freight elevator. We took the elevator upstairs and exited. When Ma pushed open the metal door of the factory, the heat rushed out and wrapped itself around me like a fist. The air was thick and tasted of metal. I was deafened by the roar of a hundred Singer sewing machines. Dark heads were bent over each one. No one looked up; they only fed reams of cloth through the machines, racing from piece to piece without pausing to cut off the connecting thread. Almost all the seamstresses had their hair up, although some strands had escaped and were plastered to the sides of their necks and cheeks by the sweat. They wore air filters over their mouths. There was a film of dirty red dust on the filters, the color of meat exposed to air for too long.
The factory took up the entire floor of a massive industrial building on Canal Street. It was a cavernous hall bulging with exposed beams and rusting bolts covered in ever-thickening layers of filth. There were mountains of fabric on the floor next to the workers, enormous carts piled high with half-finished pieces, long metal racks hung with the pressed and finished clothes. Ten-year-old boys rushed across the floor dragging carts and racks from section to section. The fluorescent light swirled down to us through the clouds of fabric dust, bathing the tops of the women’s heads in a halo of white light.
“There’s Aunt Paula,” Ma said. “She was out collecting rent earlier.”
Aunt Paula strode across the factory floor with a load of red fabric in her arms, distributing work to the seamstresses. The ones to whom she gave the bigger loads seemed grateful, nodding repeatedly to show their thanks.
Now she had seen us and she came over.
“There you are,” she said. “The factory is impressive, isn’t it?”
“Older sister, can I talk to you?”
I could see this wasn’t the response she wanted. Her face seemed to tighten, and then she said, “Let’s go to the office.”
Although no one dared to stare openly, the workers’ eyes followed us as we walked with Aunt Paula to Uncle Bob’s office at the front of the factory. We passed women using machines I had never seen before to hem pants and sew on buttons. Everyone worked at a frantic pace.
Through the window of the office door, we could see Uncle Bob sitting behind a desk. His walking stick leaned against the wall next to him. We entered and Aunt Paula closed the door behind us.
“First day, eh?” Uncle Bob said.
Before we had a chance to reply, Aunt Paula spoke. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have much time,” she said. “I can’t let the other workers think I’m showing you any favoritism, just because you’re family.”
Ma said, “Of course not. I know you’re both very busy and you haven’t seen the apartment we’re in, but it is not very clean.” Ma meant that it was below acceptable living standards. “And I don’t believe it is a safe place for ah-Kim.”
“Oh, little sister, don’t worry,” Aunt Paula said, with such warmth and reassurance in her voice that I believed her despite myself. “It is only temporary. There was no place else available that you would be able to afford, not with the many expenses you have. But Mr. N. has many buildings, and as soon as another place opens up that you can pay for, we will move you there.”
Ma visibly relaxed, and I could feel myself beginning to smile again.
“Now, come,” Aunt Paula continued, “we’d better all get back to work before the employees think we’re having a family party in here.”
“Good luck,” Uncle Bob called as we left.
Aunt Paula walked us to our workstation, passing an enormous table I hadn’t seen earlier. A combination of very old ladies and young children were crowded around it, clipping all the extraneous threads off the sewn garments. This seemed to be the easiest job.
“They enter at this table as children and they leave from it as grandmas,” Aunt Paula said with a wink. “The circle of factory life.”
From there, we walked into an enormous cloud of steam. I could hardly see but I realized that this was where most of the heat was coming from. Four massive steaming stations were connected to a central boiler that made a loud hissing sound every few minutes as air escaped from it. One man stood in front of each station, placing garments on the surface of the steamers, then slamming the lid shut, expelling huge gusts of steam. Each man had a large sawhorse where he piled the pressed pieces for “finishing,” which was Ma’s job. The piles were already growing.
Finally, we reached our work area at the back of the factory. It was larger than our entire apartment. There was a long table and a towering stack of pressed clothing, which we were to hang, sort, belt or sash, tag and then bag in a sheath of plastic. Aunt Paula left us with the warning that the shipment was going out in a few days, and Ma and I were expected to get everything done on time.
Ma hurried to start hanging up the pants and she asked me to sort by size an enormous rack filled with pants already on hangers. She gave me an air filter as well, a rectangular piece of white cloth tied behind the ears, but we were next to the steamer section. The heat was stifling. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe and took it off after a few minutes. Ma didn’t wear hers either.
I spotted a wrinkled piece of Chinese newspaper in the industrial trash can and stealthily took it. It gave me heart to see the familiar characters. I spread it out on an empty stool next to me as I began my sorting.
After less than an hour in the factory, my pores were clotted with fabric dust. A net of red strands spread themselves across my arms so that when I tried to sweep myself clean with my hand, I created rolls of grime that tugged against the fine hairs on my skin. Ma constantly wiped off the table where she was working, but within a few minutes, a layer would descend, thick enough for me to draw stick figures in if I’d had the time. Even the ground was slick with dust, and whenever I walked, the motion displaced rolls of filth that tumbled and floated by my feet, lost.
Something mingled with the stink of polyester in my nostrils. I turned around. A boy was standing next to me. He was about my size, dressed in an old white T-shirt, but there was a tension in his shoulders and arms that told me he was a fighter. His eyebrows were thick, crossing his face in one line, and underneath them, his eyes were a surprising golden brown. He was munching on a roasted pork bun. The crisp crust glistened and I could almost taste the sweet and luscious meat in my mouth.
“You can still read Chinese,” he said, cocking his head at the newspaper.
I nodded. I didn’t mention that it was all I could read.
“I forgot everything. We’ve already been in America for five years.” He was showing off now. “You must be smart, reading and all.” This wasn’t a compliment, it was a question.
I decided to be honest. “I used to be.”
He thought about this a second. “Eat a bite?”
I hesitated. It isn’t Chinese to eat from someone else’s food. No kid in Hong Kong had ever offered any to me.
The boy waved the bun under my nose. “Come on,” he said. He ripped off a clean piece and held it out.
“Thanks,” I said, and popped it in my mouth. It was as delicious as it had smelled.
“You can’t tell though.” He spoke with his mouth full. “I swiped it from Dog Flea Mama’s station.”
I stared at him, confused and appalled. “Who?” I’d already swallowed my part of the theft.
“The Sergeant.” A sergeant is any cruel person in a position of authority.
I must have still looked confused.
He sighed. “Dog. Flea. Mama. You must have seen her.” Then he scratched himself on the neck, a perfect imitation of Aunt Paula’s habit.
I gasped. “That’s my aunt!”
“Ay yah!” His eyes were wide.
Then I started to laugh and he did too.
“I don’t normally take things, you know. I just like bothering her. Come find me at the thread-cutters’ when you take a break. My name’s Matt,” he said.
When Ma urged me to take a break later, I edged up to the thread-cutters’ counter. The tiny old ladies and kids were busy examining the garments in their hands, snipping off the excess threads with special scissors that spring back open after each cut. Some of the children were as young as five years old. I spotted Matt working with fast hands next to a younger boy in glasses. A woman who must have been their mother sat next to the smaller boy. She wore large rose-tinted glasses that barely covered the enormous bags under her eyes.
When the mother saw me, she squinted through her thick lenses.
“Are you a boy or a girl?” she asked. Matt stifled a laugh.
I knew I looked like a boy, completely flat-chested, with my hair cut short by Ma because of the Hong Kong heat. I wished I could disappear.
The other boy next to Mrs. Wu was slight, with glasses that dangled from his protruding ears. He didn’t look up. He only kept working on the same skirt. As I watched, he turned it over again and again, looking for threads he had missed. On the table next to him was a toy motorcycle with a color picture of an American Indian printed on the gas tank. It looked worn, as if it had been chewed upon.
“Hello,” I said to him.
When the boy didn’t respond, Matt leaned over and gently waved his hand in front of the boy’s face. He made some gestures with his hand that looked like a kind of sign language. The boy looked up and then immediately turned his gaze downward again. In that brief glance, I saw that his eyes seemed unfocused behind the glasses.
“Park doesn’t hear so well,” Mrs. Wu said.
“Ma, I’m taking a break,” Matt said, and he jumped off his stool. He turned to Park and made a few more gestures. I thought probably he was asking if Park wanted to come with us.
When Park didn’t react at all, Matt turned to me and said, “He’s shy.”
“Don’t be too long,” Mrs. Wu said. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done.”
Some of the other kids gravitated to us when they saw that we were free, and we all moved toward the soda machine by the entrance. It cost twenty cents per bottle and I learned later that few people actually purchased from it because of the expense, but the idea of getting a cold soda in the sweltering factory was so attractive that the soda machine was a popular hangout anyway.
I suspected that most of the other kids were at the factory for the same reasons I was. They weren’t officially employed by the factory, but there was no place else for them to go, and their parents needed their help. As Ma had explained earlier, all employees were secretly paid by the piece; this meant that the work the children did was essential to the family income. When I was in high school, I learned that piece payment was illegal, but those rules were for white people, not for us.
Leaning against the humming soda machine, I could see Matt was the leader of the factory kids. They seemed to range in age from about four to teens. To save money, Ma made many of my clothes herself, even though she couldn’t do it very well, so I had on a home-sewn shirt while the other kids were wearing cool T-shirts with English sayings like “Remember to Vote.” They interspersed their Chinese with English to show off how Americanized they were and everyone apparently knew I was fresh off the boat. There was some whispering when they found out Dog Flea Mama was my aunt, but Matt seemed to have taken me under his wing and no one dared tease me. Despite the hard work, I was relieved to be among Chinese kids again.
After ten minutes, though, everyone started wandering back to the work they knew awaited them if they ever wanted to leave. I returned to Ma and resumed work but I was exhausted. I’d been there for three hours. I kept waiting for Ma to say it was time to go home. Instead, she pulled out a container of rice cooked with carrots and a bit of ham: we would have dinner at the finisher’s table. I couldn’t complain. She’d been there much longer than I had. We ate standing up and as fast as we could so we could get enough work done to stay on schedule. That first night, we left at nine o’clock. Later, I discovered that this was considered early.
The next morning, I stayed in the tiny bathroom a long time.
“Kim,” Ma said. “We’ll be late for school.”
I reluctantly opened the door, clutching my thin towel. “I don’t feel well.”
She looked concerned and placed her hand on my forehead. “What is it?”
“I have a stomachache,” I said. “I think I should stay home today.”
Ma studied me, then smiled. “Silly girl, why are you talking the big words?” She was asking why I was lying. “You have to go to school.” Ma believed in the absolute sanctity of education.
“I can’t,” I said. My eyes started tearing up again, even though I tried to hide it by rubbing my face with the towel.
“Are the other children mean to you?” she asked kindly.
“It’s not the kids,” I said. I stared at the splintered threshold of the bathroom. “It’s the teacher.”
Now she looked skeptical. Teachers are highly respected in Hong Kong. “What are you talking about?”
I told her the whole story, the way Mr. Bogart had corrected my accent yesterday, the way he’d been angry at the things I hadn’t understood, that he’d thought I’d been cheating and given me a zero. I couldn’t stop them now, I let the tears brim over but kept myself from breaking into full sobs.
When I was finished, Ma was silent. She had to work her mouth a moment before she was able to speak. Then she said haltingly, “Maybe I could talk to him and tell him what a good student you are.”
For a moment, my heart caught flight but then I pictured Ma talking to Mr. Bogart with the few English words she knew. It would only make him despise me more. “No, Ma, I will try harder.”
“I am sure that if you work the way you always do, he will give you another chance.” She reached out and pulled me to her. She laid her cheek against the top of my head.
I was surprised and grateful Ma hadn’t automatically taken the teacher’s side against me. Leaning against her, I closed my eyes and pretended for just a moment that everything would be all right.
After my talk with Ma about Mr. Bogart, I did what any sensible kid would: I started playing hooky. Ma had no choice but to leave me to walk to school alone because she had to get to the factory as early as possible in order to have any hope of finishing our work on time. She couldn’t afford the luxury of escorting me again.
“Are you sure you know the way?” Ma asked. “Do you have your token for the subway after school?”
Ma was afraid to leave me alone but now that I’d done it before, the route to school was actually simple. The distance was long but it required few turns. We arrived at her subway station first. Ma hesitated at the entrance, but I nodded as confidently as I could, then headed off in the direction of the school. As soon as she was out of sight, I ducked around the corner and circled home.
Despite the cold, I was sweating. What if I ran into Mr. Bogart or one of the kids from my class recognized me? I’d never done anything similar before. Like any good Chinese girl, I’d always followed the rules and been glad to be praised by the teachers. But the only alternative was going into Mr. Bogart’s classroom again. I was learning about desperation.
It was with a sick feeling that I pulled open the heavy door to our building and entered into that dark mouth. I huddled in the dirty living room, still in my jacket, with the weak sun’s rays clogged in the murky windows. I hadn’t ever really been alone before. I felt a bit safer sitting in the center of the mattress where I could at least see any roaches coming before they got to me. Anything could materialize in the emptiness beyond the shadowy doorway. When the garbage bags covering the windows in the kitchen rustled, I thought about how easy it would be for a burglar to rip off the tape and step inside. I would jump out of the window on the street side if someone broke in. If I hung from the windowsill by my fingers before dropping, I would probably live. That became my solution for all the contingencies that flashed across my mind: if the stove caught on fire, if a ghost appeared in the bathroom, if a rat attacked, if Ma walked through the door looking for something she’d forgotten.
The apartment air felt damp and raw. It was November of what would turn out to be one of the most bitter winters in New York ’s history. To keep myself from becoming too chilled and scared, I flicked on the small television. Its busy chatter brought me into the world of dishes and lemon-scented sprays. There were a lot of shows about hospitals: doctors kissing nurses, nurses kissing patients; there were films about cowboys and Indians; shows with people sitting in squares with flashing lights. In particular, the commercials mystified me: “Raise your arms to be sure,” the voice boomed, showing men and women thrusting their arms into the air. Why should you do this? Was it something to do with the Liberty Goddess?
“Triple your vocabulary in thirty days,” the authoritative male voice promised. “Impess your friends. Show your boss who’s boss.” I sat up straighter. I imagined myself going back to class, using words even Mr. Bogart didn’t know. Then came a commercial for alphabet soup, the concept of which fascinated me, as all things in letter form did. I realized it was almost lunchtime and I was hungry.
I braved the darkened kitchen to peek into the small refrigerator. Ma wasn’t used to having one and it was mostly empty. I found only a few small pieces of leftover chicken, the bones protruding from under the fatty skin, some yellowing vegetables with cold rice, and a shallow container of oyster sauce. I didn’t dare touch anything. I’d been taught that everything had to be thoroughly heated. The kids in a commercial I’d just seen were eating cheese sandwiches with apples and milk, but there was no bread here, let alone anything to put on it. I was afraid even to get a glass of water by myself; back home, I’d gotten such bad diarrhea from drinking unboiled tap water that I’d almost died. Ma had always made a warm snack for me when we came home from school together: steamed mackerel in black beans, roasted pork skins, winter melon soup, fried rice with scallions.
My stomach rumbled as I continued to watch TV. Gleaming toy kitchens, bouncing balls large enough for kids to sit on, kids eating cookies in tree houses. There was a commercial with a family at a long table laden with food. I longed for the room in the background of that table. It was so clean there you could have lain down on the floor. In our apartment, I didn’t dare to touch much. Even after our rigorous cleaning, everything seemed shrouded with the dust of dead insects and mice. I indulged in one of my favorite fantasies, that Pa had stayed alive. If he were here, maybe we wouldn’t have had to work at the factory at all. Maybe he’d have been able to get a regular job and help us build up a life like those people on TV.
Even with the television, the day stretched out long and gray through the empty hours, and I kept thinking about Ma working alone at the factory. I could see her neat hands moving slowly over the pressed clothes. I imagined how tired she must be but I couldn’t go to join her yet because I had to pretend to be at school. I jumped when a mouse ran across the floorboards and disappeared into the kitchen. I kept the broom by me, for both intruders and roaches, and when roaches started scurrying across the wall by the mattress, I made noise with the broom to keep them at a distance, careful not to squash them. This was partly due to my Buddhist training to care for all life, but it was mostly because I didn’t want to see them smeared across the wall.
Out of boredom, I started looking through Ma’s things. In her suitcase, I found a square piece of cardboard carefully bound with twine. I could tell it was an old 78 rpm record, the kind that played only one song per side. It must have held great emotional value for her. There was no other reason for her to keep it; we didn’t even have a record player here. I opened the case carefully, expecting something from a Chinese opera, and was surprised to find an Italian one instead. I read the label: it was Caruso singing Cavaradossi’s aria “E lucevan le stelle,” from Tosca. A photograph fluttered to the floor. Then I remembered:
Our apartment in Hong Kong, the ceiling fan humming as I lay on the sofa, Ma playing a record for me before bedtime. That had been our nightly routine, one song and then bed. Usually she chose Chinese music, but this one night she had put on a man singing with sorrow in another language, the words escaping him in gasps of regret. She had turned away then. When I could see her face again, she had composed herself and showed me no more of her feelings.
I had gone to bed that night, and many nights since, thinking about Ma’s life and the grief that connected her to that music. I knew her parents had been landowners and intellectuals, and for that, they’d been unfairly sentenced to death during the Cultural Revolution. Before they died, they had spent all the wealth they had left to get Ma and Aunt Paula out of China and into Hong Kong before it was too late. And then Ma’s true love, my pa, had been taken from her far too young, only in his early forties, going to bed with a headache one evening to die of a massive stroke later that night.
I picked up the photograph that had fallen from the record album. It was the one Ma had framed and kept on the piano in our living room in Hong Kong. Like many people in Hong Kong then, we didn’t have a camera because it was too expensive, and so this was the only photo I’d seen of the three of us. Despite the stiffness of the pose, the three heads were slightly inclined toward one another, like a true family. Ma looked lovely, with her small neat features and pale skin stretched tight over her bones, and Pa was the perfect accompaniment: dark luminous eyes, handsome and sculpted, like a movie star. I looked at the size of his hands, one of which was tenderly-it seemed to me-cupping the child’s elbow, my elbow. That was a heroic hand, a hand that would take over a heavy plow, a hand to save you from demons and muggers. And me, balanced on Pa’s knee, about two years old, and peering curiously at the camera. I was wearing a sailor’s outfit and my hand was raised to my forehead in a military salute, no doubt the photographer’s idea. Lucky child: had I really been so cute, had I ever been so happy?
A few characters had been scrawled on the back. Our names and the date. I knew it wasn’t Ma’s handwriting, so it had to be his. I ran my finger over the impressions the pen had made in the thick paper. This was my pa, his hand had written these words.
This was all I had to take the place of memory. However, no matter how great my loss, Ma’s was even greater. She had actually known and loved him, and his death had left her alone to raise and support me. I carefully put the record and the photograph back. I wanted more than ever to be by Ma’s side, helping her in any way I could.
Finally, I could leave for the factory. I passed by a street cart with a sign that said “Hot Dogs.” The vendor was selling thin sausages in rolls with yellow sauce on top. It looked and smelled delicious, but I had only a subway token and a dime for emergency phone calls in my pocket. On the subway, I felt as if everyone was staring at me: that kid didn’t go to school today. I saw other kids with backpacks going into the train station and I hoped I wouldn’t see anyone who recognized me. A policeman stood by the token booth, a gun slung from his belt, and he stared at me as I put my token in the slot.
“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.