by Anchee Min
The Greek Goddess Helena spoke with a thick accent, too. She told the class that she had just celebrated her twentieth birthday. “Happy birthday” was about the only English we understood from her. She threw up her arms and tried to interrupt the Italian. They got into a fight. Eventually they quit speaking English and went with their native tongues.
People started to drift away. Comrade Lenin excused himself to get coffee while Ali Baba took his smoke break. A Frenchman said to a Korean girl who sat in front of him, “I love you! I love you! I love you!” like a parrot. A Hispanic woman wrapped in a bright-colored shawl started a heated conversation with a black man dressed in yellow patterned cloth like an African tribal chief. She told him that the trick to mastering English was to sing it, and she was sure it was something he would do well since he was from Africa.
The black man in the yellow patterned cloth explained that he was not from an African tribe. He had been born in Germany and grew up in France. The woman ignored him and kept going on about singing English until he started to yell at her in French. A Polish man with a thick beard told an Egyptian man who had an even bigger beard, “English is ah … aard vark!”
I was appointed to partner with a short Asian man named Suzuki. We were supposed to figure out where the other was from.
“Japan?” I said, and he nodded.
“China?” he said, and I nodded, and that was it. We sat in silence and wasted our time waiting for the others to finish.
During the last week of the class, the teacher came out of her sneezing spell. She smiled warmly for the first time and took control of the class. “We’re going to play a game called Pass on the Story,” she announced. She whispered into the ear of a student who repeated the story to the next student.
When it was my turn, I listened with full concentration, but I had a hard time understanding the accent of the Greek Goddess Helena. I did my best to guess. The only word I understood was ox.
I was supposed to pass on the story to Michelangelo. Since I didn’t get the full story, I decided to add my own version. I whispered into Michelangelo’s ear a story about China’s national hero, known as the People’s Ox.
“He died pulling his rickety cart toward Communism,” I said into his ear.
Michelangelo nodded as if he understood, and then he turned to the student next to him.
After the circle was completed, our teacher announced that her original story was lost.
{ Chapter 7 }
I was excited about an ad I found in a free newspaper. The description read, “No skill necessary.” With the help of my dictionary and Takisha, I came to understand that the job was to be part of an “experimental drug trial.”
Takisha said that she wouldn’t do it if she were me. “You will be used as a human guinea pig, a human rat—know what I mean? The drug will do damage to your vital organs.”
“But it pays a hundred and eighty dollars per week!” I argued.
“Oh, money, Anchee, so you sell yourself! That’s absolutely a bad idea!”
Anything that would help me pay my debt is a good idea, I thought.
Taking the subway to the northwest side of Chicago, I located the address I’d found in the newspaper. I didn’t call ahead because I didn’t want to reveal that I didn’t speak English.
I was received by a middle-aged lady. She sat among stacks of papers piled high against her wall. After I filled out her form with my name and address, she read from a piece of paper, which I assumed was about the drug. The lady had a high-pitched child’s voice. I nodded at the end of her sentences. I replied “Okay” to her “Okay?”
After she finished, she pulled out a box from an overhead shelf and presented me with a package filled with bottled pills. She told me when to take the pills and provided me with a booklet of forms on which I was to record my daily dosage of the drug.
“We’ll be in touch.” She smiled. “You’ll receive the payment in the mail.”
I got up and bowed slightly. “Thank you and good-bye.”
“Wait, Miss Min, I need you to sign the contract here.”
“No need, no need,” I said quickly as I began to collect my stuff.
“I am afraid you have to, Miss Min.”
“What is it?”
“It’s the conditions and terms.”
“I’ll sign.”
“You must read it first.”
“I don’t read English. I’ll sign. I sign now.”
The lady withdrew the paper. She stared at me suspiciously. It was too late when I realized my mistake. Before I could get out the door, the lady jumped from her desk. She grabbed my arm and took away the package of bottles.
“Please,” I begged. “I need the money.”
The lady pointed at the door. “Leave, now.”
Kate was my next-door neighbor at the dorm. Her beauty reminded me of Esmeralda. With her makeup on, she looked like a cover girl out of a fashion magazine. When she spoke to Takisha in the hallway, I listened. Although I could understand very little, I enjoyed their conversation. I got busy with my dictionary as they talked.
Kate had the brightest eyes and a worry-free smile. Her manner was trusting and childlike. She didn’t look like she had suffered any hardship in life. Kate was a little taller than Takisha and me. She loved to say to me, “Let’s hang out, Anchee.”
My dictionary showed me the meaning of hang and out, but not “hang out.” So I asked Kate to explain what it meant. Like Takisha, Kate was not bothered that I was a language cripple. She didn’t mind explaining and repeating until I got the meaning.
“Where … are … you … going?” she would say to me, for example. When I failed to understand, she would pick up my dictionary, locate the page, and point out the word for me. She introduced me to other people in the dorm. Now I was fluent in “My name is Anchee, spelled ‘An-Qi,’ and I am from China.”
I noticed that Kate and others never said, “How do you do?”
Instead they greeted each other with “What’s up, dude?” I told Kate that I couldn’t find “What’s up, dude?” in my dictionary, or in English 900 Sentences.
She laughed. “It’s a silly expression, a fun way of saying the same thing.”
From then on I changed my greeting from “How do you do?” to “What’s up, dude?”
Takisha was unhappy about my visiting Kate. She tried to convince me that something was wrong with Kate. “She is rich,” Takisha said. “Her parents must have a lot of money, or she wouldn’t be able to afford a room all to herself.” The other evidence of Kate being rich, according to Takisha, was that she owned a TV.
I wanted to explain to Takisha that I hung out with Kate because it gave me a chance to practice English. I knew how boring I was to Kate. It was like trying to have a conversation with a baby. I wouldn’t want to spend time with anyone who spoke infant Chinese. I felt guilty about taking advantage of Kate. Takisha voiced her thoughts and views, but she was not interested in anything I had to say. My baby English didn’t help either. In a way, Kate had become my best friend in the dorm.
I asked Kate, “What does ‘goof around’ mean?” She laughed and told me that it meant to have a good time.
I asked, “What are you supposed to do when you goof around?”
Kate laughed again and said, “Nothing!”
I took notes and wrote down the phrases I learned from Kate.
“You are funny, Anchee Min, do you know that?” Kate said.
“What does ‘funny’ mean?”
The afternoon turned into evening. I sat in Kate’s room looking up words in my dictionary while she worked on her homework. I asked Kate what a real American classroom looked like and if she, by any chance, could show me.
“That’s easy,” Kate said. “Come with me to my business-marketing class tomorrow morning.”
I became excited. “Are you sure I wouldn’t be intruding? Will I upset your professor since I am not a student?”
“Nobody will notice you,” K
ate replied. “It’s a lecture. It takes place in a hall with hundreds of people.”
“Lecture? Will I get caught for not speaking English?”
“Well, pretend you do speak English.”
I followed Kate to the cafeteria because I was curious about what kind of food she ate. She sat down with a plate of what she called “salad.” This was the first salad I’d seen that was not made of potatoes. To a mainland Chinese, salad meant Russian food, which was basically potato. Kate told me that Americans didn’t have a strict rule about what constituted a salad. “It could be a mix of lettuce with chopped cucumbers, carrots, onions and nuts, leafy greens, and, of course, potatoes. Basically, anything you want.”
I couldn’t help but laugh when I watched Kate eat. She chewed like a rabbit as she ate the raw leaves. “Are there salads in Chinese food?” Kate asked.
“No,” I replied. “In China it’s dangerous to eat raw greens. One can get diseases like malaria.”
“So you cook everything?”
“Yes, mostly.”
“Here, please share my salad.” Kate gave me a fork. “This will be your first American experience. I insist.”
In order to speed up learning English, I bought a used nine-inch TV set. The only shows I could follow were Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. I had never seen anything like them in China. I fell in love with the gentle Mr. Rogers. Every day I would learn new phrases from him; for example, he would say “Good to go” as he finished tying his shoes. TV commercials became my lessons, too. My favorites were McDonald’s and 1-800-Empire Carpet. Later I would get sick of them. I found myself improving so much so quickly that I decided to withdraw from the English tutorial class to save money.
An hour hanging out with Kate proved to be the most effective. I felt like I was walking out of the darkness and into the light. I began to understand bits of people’s conversations. I also found myself less afraid. I saw a young man by the elevator. I remembered that he was Kate’s friend Steve. When I returned to Kate, I told her, “I saw Steve in the refrigerator.”
It took Kate a moment to realize what I meant. “Oh, you mean you saw Steve in the elevator?” The similar ending sounds -rator and -vator confused me. When Steve came to visit the next time, Kate joked, “Hey, Steve, what were you doing in the refrigerator? My friend Anchee saw you there. Yep, she saw you in the refrigerator. What do you mean, no? Wait, hey, Anchee, is this the guy you saw in the refrigerator?”
I didn’t realize the trouble I’d created until I heard a loud banging on the door. I was with Kate in her room. Kate got up and opened her door. It was Takisha, and she was visibly upset. She refused to step in when Kate invited her. Takisha leaned against the door frame and said to me, “What are you doing here, Miss Anchee? Let me remind you that you have your own room and your own roommate.”
I smiled and said, “I am hanging out with Kate.”
“I can see that,” Takisha said.
“I am practicing English,” I told Takisha.
“It’s time to return to your own room,” Takisha responded.
I said good-bye to Kate and followed Takisha back to our room. Locking the door, Takisha motioned for me to sit down on my bed. “We have to talk,” she said. She went to sit on her bed facing me.
“Thank you for coming back with me,” Takisha began.
“You are welcome.”
“May I have your attention?” Takisha asked. “Full attention, understand? I want you to listen.”
“Attention, yes. You talk, me listen.”
“I am going to share with you a piece of American history, which I don’t think you are aware of,” Takisha said. “Know what I mean?”
I nodded. “Know what you mean.”
Takisha wrote down the word slave for me to look up in my dictionary. She waited patiently until I located the word.
“I’d like you to understand that we, the black people of America, used to be slaves.”
“My dictionary says slave means proletarians,” I responded.
“That’s right! Slaves are proletarians!”
“Unite the world’s proletarians!” I recited. “It’s Mao’s slogan.”
“Mao who?”
“Mao Zedong, the founding father of the Communist Party of China.”
I was shocked that Takisha had no idea who Mao was. I asked if she knew a famous African black who claimed to be the leader of the black slaves of the world, and who came to China in the late 1960s to study guerrilla warfare. Takisha shook her head.
I got busy with my dictionary. It took a long time to find the words I needed. Takisha looked restless. “The black slave leader wanted to meet Mao in person but was refused,” I finally told Takisha. “In China, Mao was God. Mao was ‘the reddest sun in the universe.’ We worshipped Mao. A quarter of the population on earth. See what I mean? Over a billion people! How could anybody, like that African black, schedule a meeting with God?”
“So what happened?”
“Well, the black slave leader took the initiative,” I continued. “To demonstrate his affection for Mao, he pinned a Mao button on his bare chest, took a picture of his bleeding chest and sent the picture to China’s authorities.”
“Did it work?”
“You bet!”
“But it’s terrible!” Takisha cried.
“I couldn’t pin a Mao button on my bare chest,” I said, “although I loved Mao, too! Anyway, the Communist Party officials liked the story so much that they insisted it be told at schools across the nation. That was how I learned about it. The story convinced us that our leader Chairman Mao was popular in the world.”
“Did the black guy get to meet Mao in the end?”
“It was said that Mao was so moved that he received the black slave leader inside his home in the Forbidden City.”
Takisha had a hard time making me understand that there were differences between African blacks and American blacks.
“You all fight for the same freedom, don’t you? In China, we consider all blacks our comrades in arms. We were afraid of whites and considered them enemies until recently. There were a few exceptions of course. One was the American journalist named Edgar Snow, and the other a Canadian Communist physician, Norman Bethune. Both of them came to China and devoted their lives to our revolution.”
I asked Takisha to identify America’s friends and foes. “Mao had said that such identification was critical to winning a revolution.” I waited for Takisha’s response, but she blinked her eyes and gave me a confused look.
“For example, China is friends with North Korea, Albania, and Vietnam,” I said. “Russia used to be our friend, but since the Russians betrayed us, we dropped them.”
Takisha said that the only famous black leader she knew and admired was Dr. Martin Luther King.
“I know Martin Luther King!” I said.
Takisha became excited. “Tell me, please, how did you know our King?”
“He was in China’s school textbooks,” I replied.
“Chinese school textbooks? Are you kidding me?”
“Mao wrote an article supporting Dr. Martin Luther King after he was murdered. Mao protested on behalf of the world’s proletarians. Mao said that Dr. King’s death showed that American society was an evil one.”
“It is,” Takisha echoed.
“Believe it or not, Takisha, I grew up shouting, ‘Down with American imperialism!’ but I didn’t know where America was located.”
“That’s weird,” Takisha said, looking at me.
“What does weird mean?”
“Well, weird means … ‘weird.’ ” Takisha laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry—I was just teasing you. Weird is kind of like strange, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“You are welcome.” Takisha smiled. “Anyway …”
“What does anyway mean?”
“Oh, shoot, not again.”
Daylight faded and the room became dark. I sat upright and listened to Takisha. I wai
ted for her to stop. I wanted to ask Takisha if Dr. King had achieved his dream.
Takisha told me that her ancestors were slaves. I was confused by the tenses of Takisha’s sentences.
Did the re sound in they’re mean “are” or “were”?
While Takisha paused to catch her breath, I interrupted. “Are you a slave?”
“I am not a slave, but—”
I waited.
“Well, it’s too complicated to explain.”
“Try, Takisha, would you? I want to learn.”
“I can’t talk to you,” Takisha said. Strangely, her voice sounded tear-filled.
“I am sorry, I mean no offense, Takisha. Talk to me, and educate me.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“I shall understand if you talk to me. I’ll write the words down. My dictionary is good. I can comprehend you.”
“Listen, you’d never understand what it is like to be owned. You were never owned and never will be.”
I knew what it was like to be owned. In fact, I didn’t know what it was like not to be owned. The Communist Party of China and Mao never declared their ownership, yet every person in China knew that one never owned oneself. One was not allowed to do what one liked. Disobeying Mao and the Party meant hell and punishment.
Takisha was too provoked to come out of her own world. Words flowed out of her mouth like water from a broken pipe. I concluded that Takisha might not be a slave, but her family members in Alabama might be. It would explain the anger Takisha had. She couldn’t bear that I hung out with a white person like Kate. If being friends with Kate hurt Takisha, I was willing to stop. What I couldn’t understand was the fact that Takisha was a medical student at this university.
Takisha told me that she was granted a “full scholarship” to study to be a doctor. I asked her who offered the scholarship, and she replied, “The government.”
I asked who ran the government, whites or blacks.
“People of all colors,” was Takisha’s reply.
I found myself thinking: I’d love to be a slave so that I could be given a full scholarship to study to become a medical doctor.
