An Ocean Apart, a World Away

by Lensey Namioka

  As Mrs. Harte busied herself preparing dinner, L.H. and I sat at the dining table and I asked him quietly about the attacks. “Those boys wanted you to do something, and you refused.”

  He grimaced. “They’re football players, and they’re taking an elementary mathematics course. They found it too hard for them, so they wanted me to do their homework for them.”

  “How did they happen to choose you, particularly?” I asked.

  “One of my classmates is a keen football fan,” he replied. “When he heard about the problems these boys were having, he thought I could help, since math is one of my best subjects.”

  “You mean giving them some tutoring?”

  “If it were just tutoring, I would be glad to help. But the boys didn’t want to do any of the work at all! They claimed it interfered with their football practice. They wanted me to write all their homework papers for them. When I refused, they started threatening me.”

  “I still don’t see why they picked you. There are lots of people at the university who could have helped them.”

  He sighed. “You must have noticed that bullies prefer to pick on the weak, and I look like someone easy to push around. Besides, since I’m Chinese, people won’t rush to help me when they see me attacked.” He grinned at me—a painful grin because of his swollen cheek. “Of course they didn’t expect a woman warrior from a Chinese opera to come to the rescue.”

  “They also didn’t expect you to refuse,” I said. “What will they do now? Do you think they’ll attack you again?”

  “I doubt it,” he said. “But if they do, I’ll just have to keep on refusing.”

  He might look like a weakling, the effeminate scholarly type seen in so many Chinese novels. But he was unexpectedly tough inside. Like Ailin, L.H. didn’t have to practice martial arts to be brave.

  To my surprise, I found myself enjoying the home economics class more and more. I was actually learning to cook! Well, not to cook, exactly, but to prepare vegetables for cooking. The teacher demonstrated a vegetable shredder one day, and I was amazed at how quickly it sliced the cabbage. So many Chinese dishes involved slicing things finely that this machine seemed to be the solution to preparing Chinese food.

  That was when I decided to buy a shredder and give a dinner party. At the time, I thought it would be a courageous thing to do. Later, I realized that I must have been insane.

  Since I hadn’t been invited back to eat with L.H., Y.C., and the two girls, I thought my best move would be to invite them to Mrs. Harte’s house for dinner. Following their example, I would cook a Chinese dinner after the rest of the roomers at Mrs. Harte’s boarding-house had finished eating.

  When I saw L.H. again and told him about the invitation, he raised his eyebrows and looked at me. I noticed that the latest batch of bruises had faded to yellow, and there were no fresh ones. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

  That was not the enthusiastic response I had hoped to get, but I nodded. “Yes, I am,” I said firmly.

  It was hard to cook Chinese food without soy sauce, ginger, tofu, and other Chinese ingredients. I was reluctant to ask Celia and Loretta where they had bought their supplies. Then I thought of the Peach Garden restaurant. I had gone back there once, and on my second visit the cook had prepared a meal closer to what I used to eat at home. I could ask the owners of the restaurant where they bought their supplies.

  It turned out that the owners ordered their supplies from New York City. They bought soy sauce by the gallons and rice in 100-pound sacks, and had it all shipped up to Ithaca.

  Very well, then. I would have to prepare a Chinese dinner without those ingredients. Instead, I would stir-fry the dishes—that is, cook them quickly over a hot fire. That should make the food taste more Chinese.

  I bought a vegetable shredder and three heads of cabbage, returned to Mrs. Harte’s kitchen, and went to work. Thirty sweaty minutes later, I had a mound of shredded cabbage—actually, a mountain of shredded cabbage. To stir-fry this, I would need a cooking pan the size of a laundry tub.

  I heard a snort and saw Sibyl standing by the kitchen door, trying to stifle her laughter. “What are you going to do with all this cabbage?” she asked when she could speak again.

  “I was going to stir-fry it—you know, cook it the Chinese way,” I said. “Maybe I can do it in small batches.”

  “You’ll still be doing it at midnight,” said Sibyl. “What else are we going to have?” I had also invited her to my novice dinner, but now she didn’t seem to look forward to the treat.

  What else were we going to have? That was when I realized that I hadn’t done a thing about the other parts of the dinner. I had bought a whole chicken, still undressed, a piece of pork, still unsliced, and some rice, still unwashed.

  I sat down on a kitchen chair and put my head in my hands. I had some hard thinking to do. It dawned on me that preparing a dinner was not a matter of doing one dish at a time. It was true that at home, our chef took only minutes to cook each dish, and the maids brought them to the dining table one at a time. But the preparation for all the dishes must have been done a long time in advance. In fact, I recalled that my home economics teacher had said something along these lines. I should have listened to her more carefully.

  What should I do? My guests would be arriving in about an hour, and all I had was a mound of shredded cabbage. Rice, which took the longest to cook, should have been the first to be prepared. The only rice I had been able to find in Ithaca was something used by Americans for rice pudding. What kind did the Peach Garden people serve?

  The Peach Garden! I leaped up from my chair. “Sibyl, I need your help to carry some food back!”

  The owner of the Peach Garden restaurant was willing to prepare a few dishes of Chinese food for me to take away. Having his customers eat the food at home was new to him. But after thinking it over, he smiled and agreed. In fact, he liked the idea, since it kept the tables in the restaurant free for other diners.

  Sibyl and I waited nervously while the cook busied himself in the kitchen, but in the end we were able to carry off three hot dishes and a pot of rice. Hauling the food up the hill without spilling was tricky, but we managed to make it back to Mrs. Harte’s house with minutes to spare before the guests arrived. I even had time to set the table—with chopsticks I had wheedled from the Peach Garden restaurant.

  The look of amazement on the faces of L.H., Y.C., Celia, and Loretta was comical. I didn’t know what they had expected, but it certainly wasn’t a complete Chinese dinner. Y.C., always the hungriest, was the first to sit down and help himself to some stir-fried prawns. The others followed more slowly, but it didn’t take long for them to start eating almost as heartily.

  “The Peach Garden restaurant, right?” asked Y.C. when he paused for breath. “I thought I recognized the orange-colored sauce.”

  I couldn’t hide the truth from them. “Yes, this food all came from the restaurant. I tried to make the cook cut down on the sugar for the sweet-and-sour pork, but I couldn’t do anything about the orange color.”

  “Naturally we can’t expect our wealthy young lady here to soil her hands by doing any actual cooking,” said Celia. “It’s only paupers like ourselves that have to do our own work.”

  “I really started to prepare the meal myself,” I said. “I even shredded a huge mound of cabbage. But I soon found out that cooking is much harder than I expected.”

  “Of course it’s hard!” snapped Celia. “You don’t think we learned to do it instantly, do you?”

  “Now I finally appreciate all the work you did,” I said humbly. “And I want to thank you for having invited me to eat with you.”

  “That’s nice of you to say so, Sheila,” said Loretta, who seemed touched.

  “I think we ought to thank Sheila for inviting us to this delicious dinner,” said L.H. “Whether she cooked it herself is irrelevant. It’s the kind thought that counts.”

  “I agree!” said Y.C.

  I thou
ght that on the whole the dinner was going pretty well. Then Celia asked about the ruckus in front of Mrs. Harte’s house. “I heard that you attacked some football players,” she said. “With your taste in literature, I should have known that you were a martial arts expert!”

  “I’m just a beginner,” I said. “My brother gave me some lessons.”

  “Yes, but to throw yourself at those boys, that took real belligerence!” said Celia.

  “Well, L.H. was being beaten up, and I had to do something,” I retorted. “What would you have done if you had been there?”

  That stopped her. For the rest of the meal, Celia was pretty much silent. My guests—the majority of them, anyway—ate well and thanked me warmly when they left. Maybe I would be accepted as a member of the group, after all.

  CHAPTER 9

  Winter arrived, and I began to understand why Father had warned me about the cold. I had often felt cold in Nanjing, especially in the mornings when I jumped out of bed and landed on the icy floor. But I had not been prepared for the bitter cold in Ithaca that burned my face and made my eyes ache when I trudged up the hill in the mornings.

  All around me in class I heard people discussing what they intended to do during the winter vacation. My classmates seemed totally preoccupied with the holiday of Christmas.

  I remembered that back in Nanjing, the teachers at the MacIntosh School used to put up wreaths and pictures of the Christ child in a manger, surrounded by sheep, cows, and other farm animals. We sang songs associated with the holiday, called carols. But in my family, Christmas meant little more than an exotic Western festival.

  Here in Ithaca, the streets were full of Christmas decorations. Mrs. Harte bought a cut tree, and with help from the two male tenants set it up on a stand in the living room. It was so tall that it almost touched the ceiling. I loved the fragrance of the fresh green branches. Sibyl and I helped Mrs. Harte hang tiny glass figures on the branches of the tree. I was very, very careful with them. They looked so fragile that I was sure if I dropped one on the floor, it would shatter into little pieces.

  Everyone I knew seemed to be going away during the three weeks of the winter vacation. Ellen and Maureen were going home to Cleveland and Buffalo, respectively. “I can’t do any real work at home,” complained Maureen. “I’ve got two brothers, and their idea of a good time is to provoke me into yelling at them.”

  Her mention of her brothers made me think of mine. Suddenly I longed to hear Eldest Brother’s gruff voice, telling me that I was making progress in kung fu. I even wanted to hear Second Brother’s voice, scolding me and telling me that I was an insufferable brat.

  I asked Sibyl what she intended to do during the winter break. “I’m going home to my folks in Elmira,” she said. She had left home five years earlier to lead an independent life, but she always went home during the Christmas holidays. It was a time when families got together.

  I thought I had gotten over my loneliness, but now it all came rushing back. At least the Chinese students wouldn’t be going back home. It would take too long and cost too much. They should still be around during the vacation.

  L.H. looked uncomfortable when I asked him about his plans. “There’s some talk about New York City,” he finally confessed. But he didn’t mention details.

  Two days later I learned more. I was finally invited back to the boys’ rooming house for another dinner. During the meal, Celia brought up the subject of New York City. “I have a cousin there, and he has invited us to stay with him for the holidays.” She looked around. “He’s including L.H., Y.C., and Loretta, of course.”

  The others didn’t meet my eyes. Celia continued. “Too bad my cousin doesn’t have room for another person. But I’m sure Sheila has plans to go somewhere else. She can afford to travel much farther than New York City.”

  I found it difficult to swallow another bite. The food suddenly seemed greasy and unappetizing. Before I realized it, I found myself saying, “As a matter of fact, I am planning to travel during the winter vacation. I’ve decided to visit my friend in San Francisco.”

  Two days earlier, I had received another letter from Ailin. Her days were still filled with arduous labor, but things were improving for her and her husband.

  Dear Yanyan,

  Business is so much better that James has finally decided I can take one day off each week. It’s wonderful to have a whole day in which I can do anything I want!

  How I wish you could come and visit us! I’d love to show you around San Francisco and let you see how beautiful the city is.

  What about coming during the Christmas holidays? Don’t you have a few weeks off from school?

  Ailin

  It didn’t occur to me that I might actually take Ailin at her word and go visit her. I had far too much homework to do, and San Francisco was at the very opposite end of America. I still remembered the long train ride I had taken with the Pettigrews to cross the country.

  At the dinner party with the other Chinese students, I had declared my intention of going to California because I wanted to show them that I had my own resources, and I wouldn’t be pining all by myself while the rest of them went to New York City.

  I decided to consult Mr. and Mrs. Pettigrew about the trip. They had invited me to spend Christmas Day with them, but I knew that Mrs. Pettigrew’s sister and family would be staying with them, and she would have her hands full with her houseguests.

  When she heard about my plans, Mrs. Pettigrew was horrified. “Why, you poor girl, you’d have to spend four nights by yourself on the train! And that’s just one way!”

  “I don’t mind traveling alone, Mrs. Pettigrew,” I said. In fact if I stayed in Ithaca, I would be spending most of the vacation alone, anyway.

  Mr. Pettigrew looked at me thoughtfully. “I think Sheila can do it. She’s one tough young lady,” he added with a small smile.

  It seemed news of my encounter with the football players had leaked out. The Pettigrews must have learned about it from Mrs. Harte, and their sons were soon asking me to give them all the details. The boys were entranced, but they were very disappointed when I told them I didn’t have time to give them lessons in kung fu.

  Finally, after many warnings about not speaking to strangers, the Pettigrews arranged my trip to the West Coast. They even accompanied me on the local train as far as the junction with the transcontinental train bound for San Francisco.

  Compared to the trip from the West Coast I took with the Pettigrews, this trip seemed both longer and shorter. This was winter, and the green farmland we had passed before now looked bleak and bare. Without the Pettigrews telling me about points of interest along the way, the hours and days seemed long and monotonous. The route to San Francisco was more southerly than the one from Seattle, and there were stretches of nothing but desert.

  In another sense, though, time passed more quickly for me. The long train ride gave me a chance to do a lot of homework and study for the final exams that would take place a month after the vacation ended. I was reading the Middle English of Chaucer when the train passed through Kansas, and I was practicing taking derivatives in Colorado. There were very few distractions, and I didn’t even have to make the stiff climb up to the university from Mrs. Harte’s house. In fact, I missed the exercise.

  Once we left Nevada and entered California, I became too excited at the prospect of seeing Ailin again, and I gave up trying to study. The train trip ended at the station in Oakland, a city on the east side of San Francisco Bay.

  I had written to Ailin, telling her about my time of arrival. But since my train was almost an hour late, I wasn’t sure if she would be able to meet me. When I got down to the platform with my suitcase, I looked around but didn’t see her. By the time most of the other passengers had left, I still saw no one that looked like Ailin. My heart fell. What could I do? I didn’t think I would be able to call a rickshaw to take me to her restaurant in San Francisco.

  Then I saw that there was a young lady looking anxiously
around, as if meeting a passenger. I blinked and looked again. It couldn’t be, but it was! It was Tao Ailin!

  At that moment she looked in my direction and shook her head in disbelief. “Is that really you, Yanyan?”

  We rushed together and hugged, laughing and crying at the same time. It was a while before we could say anything that made sense.

  “You look like a grown-up!” I managed to gasp. “I would never have recognized you!”

  “You’ve lost so much weight!” she said. “I can’t believe that this is the old Zhang Xueyan who loved dumplings so much!”

  It had been a year and a half since I saw Ailin off at the docks in Shanghai, but now it seemed like only yesterday. We reverted to our schoolgirl talk as we chatted and made our way to the ferry that would take us across to the city. There was so much to say to each other that I hardly noticed the view of San Francisco and the bay.

  Ailin told me about some of the dishes she was trying to cook in the restaurant. She made light of her failures, but I suspected there was a lot she wasn’t telling me. I described my mishaps in the home economics course. “Hey, maybe you should get a cabbage-shredding machine!” I said. When I told Ailin about the huge mound of cabbage I had produced, she laughed so hard some of the other passengers turned to look at us. Until this moment, I had not realized how lonely I had been all these months.

  When the ferry approached the docks, we became more serious. I looked at my old friend and saw her work-worn hands. “Are you sorry you decided to stay in America and run a restaurant?” I asked.

  “Life has been hard, but I’m not sorry,” she replied quietly. I could see that she was telling the truth. Suddenly her face brightened, and she started waving. “There’s James! He took time off to meet us, after all!”

  There was so much joy in her voice that my throat tightened with emotion.

  As we took the cable car from the ferry dock to Chinatown, I peered at the man Ailin had married. In one of her letters, she had told me that James was almost ten years older than she was. He was pleasant looking, but not outstandingly handsome. For an instant I thought of Baoshu and his striking looks.