by Zoë S. Roy
She was interrupted by a knock on her door, followed quickly by another. Eileen’s voice rose. “Nina, can you join us?”
Relieved to be called away from what was bothering her, Nina opened the door. Eileen beckoned her to follow. Downstairs, in the living room, on the table in front of them, was a cake lit up by a multitude of candles. The overhead light went off, and the candles flickered. With wide smiles on their faces, the couple sang, “Happy birthday to you!”
I’m twenty-one years old! Nina counted. She had forgotten her own birthday. She was not even sure of the last time it had been celebrated. Her memories of birthdays had been erased by the Cultural Revolution. Such celebrations had been criticized and abandoned because they were considered part of a bourgeois lifestyle. Staring at the flames dancing on the wicks of the cake’s candles, Nina found her eyes blurred by tears. They are celebrating my birthday!
“Make your wish,” Eileen reminded her.
I wish I could go to university. She blew out the flame. The illusion of candlelight remained in her head like a star guiding her path. She suddenly realized that going to university was what she really wanted to do, despite the fact that educated people are targeted in the Cultural Revolution and the horror of that reality still lived somewhere deep inside her. Now, she fervently hoped that getting a better education in this free world would help her find answers to her questions about China and the Cultural Revolution that had shaped her life.
“What did you used to do to celebrate a birthday?” Eileen asked, her tone revealing her curiosity.
“My mom used to cook some noodles with fried eggs for me,” Nina replied. Joyful memories crossed her mind. “Sometimes we went out for a meal and ice cream.”
“Food seems to be part of birthday celebrations everywhere,” Eileen said with a chuckle.
Sweet cake and pleasant chat erased, for now, Nina’s gloomy feelings about her shadowy slowly passed as the aim of going to university became clearer to her.
Nina befriended Carol. From her, she learned about various colleges and universities, and also admission procedures. She was delighted to know that there was no family background check required for any applicants. In China, candidates with undesirable family backgrounds, such as landowners, the wealthy, anti-revolutionaries, and rightists, would not be accepted to universities.
One Saturday, Carol took Nina to visit Bowdoin College where Nina had dreamed of pursuing her higher education. When she drove along Federal Street, Carol pointed at a beautiful two-storey Colonial-style building, which Carol told her had been built in 1806. It was painted white, had large windows adorned with black shutters, and a red brick chimney on its roof. “Have you heard about this house?”
The sign read: “Harriet Beecher Stowe House.” Nina shook her head. “What about it? It looks like an inn.”
“It is now. But it was the house in which Stowe lived and completed a well-known novel,” Carol said with an elated tone. “Have you heard about her?”
“No. I know about Mark Twain and Jack London. What’s her novel about?” Nina asked, her eyes fixed on the house. She wondered if this woman’s book was something like Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. Those novels were banned during the Cultural Revolution, but young people enjoyed reading them secretly. Nina had read many foreign novels translated into Chinese.
“It’s called Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
“Oh!” Surprised, Nina said, “I’ve read it before! It’s about a slave in the South, who finally escapes to the North. I didn’t remember the name of the author.”
“Wow! Did you read it in China?” Carol glanced at Nina.
“Yes. A Chinese version.”
“I read it when I was in in the eighth grade,” Carol said.
“Have you ever heard about the war epic, Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Dream of Red Chamber?” Nina wondered whether these Chinese classical novels were known to Americans.
“No,” Carol replied as she parked the car. “But I did read A Many-Splendoured Thing by Han Suyin and The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. Their books are about China.”
“I don’t know anything about those books.” Nina sighed, realizing the red door of China had been closed too tightly for too long. She got out of the car and she and Carol headed over to the campus. “Is it expensive to study here?” she asked.
“A private college is usually much more expensive than a state university,” Carol explained, her ponytail swaying as she walked. “That’s why I’m going to Lewiston-Auburn College, part of the University of Southern Maine. The tuition is considerably less.” Carol paused in front of a building. “Look. The Admissions Office is in there. If you need any information, you can go inside to ask.”
The campus visit helped Nina form a clear picture of her future in which there would be new mountains to climb and new rivers and lakes to cross. Some days it would be sunny, other days cloudy or rainy. But she was ready. She felt challenged and excited and she could hardly wait.
The next day at lunch, Nina sat with Jasmine, who asked, “Do you go to church?”
“Yes, on Sunday. You?”
“Of course. I’m rich because I have God in my life,” Jasmine said, her face lighting up.
Nina asked, “Have you heard of Uncle Tom’s Cabin?”
“Definitely. It’s about my people, but I don’t know how much she understood us.” Jasmine shrugged her shoulders. “She didn’t walk in our shoes.”
“Do you mean the author?” Nina asked.
Jasmine nodded, and then opened her lunch box.
“Well, how about Lincoln then?” Nina said. “He wasn’t black, but he helped abolish slavery.”
“Lincoln’s grandma was black,” Jasmine said as she started to pull out her food and then line it up on the table in front of her.
“Are you sure?” Nina was puzzled; she had not known that. She decided to add Lincoln’s biography to her reading list.
“I’m positive.” A proud look on her face, Jasmine added, “Did you know that Jesus was black too?”
Nina was astonished. “Really?”
“I know what I’m talking about.” Jasmine unwrapped a fish cake, then picked it up with her fork and placed it into Nina’s container. “Try it.”
Nina chewed the fish cake and nodded. “This tastes really good.”
“I made them myself,” Jasmine said. “Hey, aren’t you in high school?” Before Nina could answer, Jasmine asked, “Can you find some math tests for my son? He’ll be in grade ten in September. I think he should work on his math this summer.” Jasmine moved her head from left to right as though she were shaking something off. “It’s no good if you don’t have education. You can’t get a job without education. And without a job, you can’t survive in this world.”
“Sure! I’ll find some tests for your son to practise on. He’ll be fine if he practises. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a Ph.D. you know.”
“But he was murdered,” Jasmine said. “I wish he were still alive. God bless him,” Jasmine sighed, her hands closing her lunchbox. “Time for work.”
Nina followed her out of the lounge and back to the conveyer. After the foreman’s hand flicked the switch, the assembly line moved again. Nina was now close to picking out unwanted potatoes as fast as Jasmine could. At the end of the humming belt, the machine packed tons of bags of Humpty Dumpty potato chips. Nina pictured the smiling egg-shaped face on the pack, its hat off and hand waving. Then, she envisioned a group of students entering a two-storey building that looked like the one at Bowdoin College.
Could I be one of them? she wondered.
5.
FRANKLIN’S FISH AND CHIPS
THE SUMMER DREW to a close, and Nina resumed her high-school courses as a full-time student in September. In order to save money for college, she found a part-time job as a kitchen helper in Franklin’s Fish and Chips restaurant.
She reached the establishment just before four-thirty p.m. A tall man her age was in the kitchen. A young boss, she thought. “Are you Mr. Franklin?”
“No,” the young man answered. “I’m his assistant. Call me Bob. Meet Reno.” Bob pointed to another young man who was bending over to pick out some sacks in a corner. Piles of stuff, Nina thought. It’s a busy restaurant.
“They’re potatoes, carrots, and onions,” Bob said, “Your job is to peel and cut them. When you have nothing to do, you can help Reno wash dishes, okay?”
Reno pulled a couple of sacks to the floor and placed them between the cutting table and dishwasher. He raised his head and pointed at the kitchen utensils hanging on the wall hooks. “Get a peeler over there,” he said. “There are stools under the table.” He placed several large bowls on the table, and then added, “Let’s do potatoes first. Once they are peeled, please put them in the bowls.” He sat on the stool that Nina had passed to him and said, “You can sit down, too.”
Nina gripped a vegetable peeler in her hand. She picked up yet another potato. Boring! She remembered the word Carol had used about the job at the potato chip plant.
As soon as they had filled one of the bowls with peeled potatoes, Reno began to slice them with a machine that was at the other end of the table. Nina continued with the carrots. An hour later, the boss, Kent Franklin, a rotund, middle-aged man, arrived and started to cook with Bob. Soon, the delicious aromas of fried fish and French fries spread throughout the kitchen.
Nina thought the bowls filled to the brim with potatoes and sliced carrots looked like blooming white-and-orange flowers. Meanwhile, dirty dishes and cutlery started piling up in a mound next to the dishwasher. Reno filled the dishwasher then switched it on. Nina took over his job of chopping the vegetables. The pungent smell of onion rings made her weep like a mourner at a grave surrounded by flowers.
The waitress placed order slips on the ledge of the kitchen window adjacent to the dining hall. Kent prepared the orders one after another, never missing a beat. The boss works harder than us, Nina thought.
Nina enjoyed her break and the bits of fish and chips that Kent handed to her and to Reno. Who says there’s no free meal? I’m getting one now! She smiled at her thought.
“Fish and chips are much cheaper in my country,” Reno mumbled as he chewed the food. “How about in your country?” he asked Nina.
“I have never seen such a meal before,” Nina replied. “Which country do you come from?”
“Can you guess?” Reno grinned, a small piece of onion dropping from the corner of his mouth.
“Mexico?”
“You’re wrong!” He seemed upset. “I am from Cuba!”
“Ha! Chairman Castro.”
“You know something.” With this thick eyebrows raised, he looked pleased. “You’re Chinese, right? Mao Zedong.”
“Right, but I hate Mao and Castro.”
“What?” Reno pursed his lips. “Why?”
“Both are dictators.”
“Maybe Castro is better than Mao!” He raised his tone. “I love my country.”
“Then why did you come to America?”
“We’re poor back home.” His voice lowered. “I want to make some money.”
Puzzled, Nina had not understood, or had never considered the idea that not everybody from a communist country hated a dictatorship the way she did. Which is more attractive in the States? she asked herself. Freedom or money?
In the last hour of their shift, Reno shifted the stack of plates in and out of the dishwasher. Nina selected unclean ones and used a knife to scrape cheese bits off the plates. As she worked, the words of Karl Marx, which she had memorized in her grade ten Political Studies class, rang in her head: “The capitalist mode of production is this repetition of an ongoing process, which is the process of becoming itself.” Her teacher had said that workers, exploited by capitalists, had to work at simple and repetitive jobs. Am I being exploited by Kent, who works even harder than I? If Karl Marx didn’t work as a labourer, how did he make a living? Did he exploit others? She was perplexed.
The kitchen closed at eleven p.m. Nina’s hands ached from peeling vegetables and holding hot dishes. However, compared with the work she used to do on the military farm, this work was easy. According to Mao’s article, “The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountain,” everyone was supposed to work hard like the old man who wanted to move a mountain. Once I worked like that old man moving a mountain from one place to another, she thought.
Many times, at the end of the day on the farm, after long hours of transplanting seedlings in the rice paddies, Nina had been unable to straighten her back. Her head would spin and her neck and back were stiff and sore. Sometimes after carrying bundles of wheat stalks with a shoulder pole, back and forth, between the field and the barn, she had felt as though she had become a sack of bones and flesh without a spine. Hunger and thirst had clung to her. It had seemed that in order to get rid of her hunger pangs, she would have to eat an entire pig and swallow all the water from the nearby pond.
Mao’s hero was an old fogey, she smirked, and I was a young fool then.
Bob handled the knife playfully as if it were a toy. A round cabbage soon turned into a heap of shredded ingredients for coleslaw.
“Why don’t you use this?” Nina pointed at the food processor.
“I need to keep myself busy. Besides, cutting is a kind of art form.” Bob extended his long arm around Kent’s squat neck. “If you wish, I can shave your head with my knife,” Bob said to his boss jokingly.
Kent nodded with difficulty since he was in a clinch under Bob’s arm. He giggled like a child. “Do what you wish, as long as you please my customers.”
Kent isn’t only the boss, but also Bob’s buddy, Nina thought.
“Ha!” Reno joined in. “You Americans always say, ‘Customers are God.’ Tomorrow, I’ll be your God if I eat here. Right?”
“Yes,” Kent and Bob answered concurrently. “We have a saying that customers are always right,” Bob added.
“Do you like the president of your country?” Nina took the opportunity to ask a question that had been on her mind for a while.
“Nixon?” Bob asked, and his hand flicked out. “No, I don’t like him.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like the Vietnam War. He sent young men to be slaughtered there,” Bob replied, loosening his arm from Kent’s shoulder. He turned to Reno. “What do you think?”
“I’m not interested in politics.”
“Me neither. Let’s work to make money,” said Bob. “Tonight, my girlfriend and I are going to the movies. We are going to see The Vampire Lovers.”
“Sounds interesting. Nina, do you like going to the movies?” Reno asked eagerly.
“No, I’m too busy,” Nina replied, aware that Reno had hoped to ask her to join him.
The next evening, during their break, Bob grabbed three onions and juggled them, his face lighting up and shining under the lights. “Catch them!” Suddenly, he threw one to Kent who was resting in a chair. Kent ducked, but his hand caught the onion. But before Kent could stand up, Bob swung his long leg over Kent’s outstretched arm as if he were jumping over a hurdle. Everybody laughed.
Nina visualized Bob throwing his knife bravely at a burglar. She could not help asking, “What would you do if a robber wanted your wallet?”
“Me?” Bob pointed his finger at his chest. “Of course, I’d give it away and run as fast as I can.”
“What?” Nina had expected that bold Bob would confront the thug. “You’re a coward, then,” she said, stifling her laughter.
“Coward? Do you mean I should take a chance by resisting a mugger? No way. My life is worth more than my wallet.
Surprised by Bob’s answer, Nina had nothing to say. In China, she had heard many stories in school about fearless y
outh fighting to protect public property whenever they encountered theft. The schoolchildren were asked to learn from such heroes who had sacrificed their health and lives. Ruminating on Bob’s easy surrender, Nina realized life was much more significant than any property or heroism. Money seems to be more important in the States than in China, but life is a priority over here, Nina thought.
One afternoon, after writing out a cheque, Nina went to the living room where Eileen was reading various newspapers. “Do you have a minute?”
“Yes, sweetie. Do you need my help?” Eileen laid the paper aside.
“It’s been a year since I came to live here. I’d like to pay rent from now on.” Nina put the cheque into Eileen’s hand. “It’s a hundred and fifty dollars.”
“I don’t want to take this,” Eileen said, and withdrew her hand. “You can continue staying with us.” She patted the couch. “Come sit here. You need to save that money for college.”
“It’s very kind of you,” Nina said. “I don’t know what to do to pay you back for all your kindness,” she added, as she sat next to her. She wondered if she would be able to do the same for others one day.
“You remind me of my boy,” Eileen said, then told Nina that her son had worked in the evenings to save money for college, but then joined the army after high school. Admiring his father, a veteran from the Korean War, the boy had intended to go to battle for America. His sister had objected, but could do nothing to stop him as military service was compulsory at that time. “I’ve felt a little bit better about his death since I heard your story, Nina. He did something worthy. I think that he fought to stop communism from spreading all over the world, and that was important.”
“I should read about the Korean War,” Nina responded. As a schoolgirl, she had learned that the American imperialists had invaded Korea, so Mao had dispatched the Chinese army to resist the invaders.
“I should read some history books, too. One is never too old to learn.”
