The Year of the Three Sisters

by Andrea Cheng

  In the morning, Fan has an email message saying that her grandfather is better. He is eating more now and gaining strength. Her mother says Fan shouldn’t worry, just study. But Fan still looks upset.

  “Mama is not telling me truth,” Fan says.

  “How do you know?”

  “I know,” Fan says. But when I ask her how she knows, she just shakes her head. Then she shows me that she got her first A in English on the poetry unit. “I like it,” she says, showing me a Chinese poem about a swallow, which she translated and then analyzed for her essay. She tells me how when she was little and she was staying in the countryside with her grandparents, she used to cry at night because she missed her mom. “Grandmother Po Po sings me this swallow song.”

  I read the words:

  A little swallow

  wears beautiful feathers.

  Every spring

  it will come back.

  I ask the swallow,

  Why do you come here?

  Spring is the most beautiful

  at home,

  the swallow says.

  Fan hands me her essay.

  Migrants in China are like the swallow. Every spring, if they can save enough money, they go home for the spring festival (Chinese New Year). When I was in Beijing with my parents, we try to go home to the countryside like the swallow in spring. Sometimes we go, but sometimes we don’t have enough money for so many train tickets. Then we get the train tickets with no seat and I sleep standing against Baba’s legs. The train is so crowded like matches in a box. Everybody standing up tall to reach the air. I am small and hard to breathe. But I don’t complain because Grandmother Po Po and Grandfather Gong Gong wait for me. In my head, I sing the swallow song.

  When we get to the station is very muddy in spring because much rain. Mama scolds me if I step in the puddle. But then I see Grandmother Po Po and Grandfather Gong Gong and I know a train ride and mud are not important. Gong Gong smiles so beautiful and I know I come home.

  Fan says she wrote her essay in Chinese first and then translated it into English. “Andee’s mother says it’s better to write in English first, but then I lose the meaning,” Fan says. “First Chinese, then I translate.”

  “Maybe you should try writing directly in English,” I say. “I think it will be a lot faster.”

  “No,” Fan says, with that stubborn look on her face that I’ve seen often lately.

  I reread the swallow poem. “Are you still homesick?”

  Fan nods. “My whole life I am homesick. In Beijing I am homesick because I miss the countryside. In the countryside, I am homesick because I miss friends in Beijing. And in America, I am homesick for my family.”

  “Why didn’t your grandparents go with you to Beijing?” I ask.

  Fan shakes her head. “Grandfather Gong Gong and Grandmother Po Po are farmers. They are not happy in a big city.”

  “How old were you when you left the countryside to live with your parents?”

  “Eight,” she says.

  “Maybe you should tell Andee more about your life,” I say.

  “She is not patient,” Fan says.

  “If she was patient, you would not be in America.”

  Fan sits on the sofa with the history book the entire afternoon. I sit in the armchair and read The Diary of Anne Frank. It’s funny how her situation and mine have nothing in common, but still I feel a lot like Anne. She writes about feeling irritated at people in the small attic hideout, especially her mom, often for no real reason. Lately I’ve been feeling like that too. Yesterday Mom asked me to wash Kaylee’s face and take her out of her highchair, and I rolled my eyes.

  I like the way The Diary of Anne Frank is written, but there is so much she leaves out. How do people know who is Jewish and who isn’t? I look up and see my reflection in the window. Of course everyone knows I am Asian right away. It’s the first thing they notice. In some ways, that’s easier than if part of who you are is hidden. I wonder how Andee feels. People notice right away that’s she’s not white, but they have no idea what she is.

  I look over at Fan. She has a wide forehead and thick eyebrows. I wonder if in China, people can tell she’s a migrant. And if they can tell, do they treat her differently, like at the hotel where she works? I know that migrants are not legal in the cities. That’s why they’re not allowed to go to the public schools. I wonder if everywhere they go, they feel like they should hide who they are. Is that even possible? Can people tell just by looking at their faces that they are poor farmers who don’t belong? I want to talk to Fan about what it’s really like to be a migrant in Beijing, but she is trying to study.

  Chapter Eleven

  Thanksgiving

  Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. I love dinner at Auntie Linda’s and playing old games like Twister in Camille’s basement with all the other Chinese families. Plus, this year, Grandma is here from California and is staying until Christmas!

  “She’s going to help me make a Lego helicopter,” Ken says.

  “Me too,” Kaylee says.

  Ken glares at Kaylee. “She didn’t say that.”

  Usually Grandma and I do a sewing project together. Last year, we sewed a dress for Kaylee. I wonder what we should make this year. A girl in my class has a shirt I really like that ties in the back, but I think it would be too complicated to make.

  Ken wants to make a beanbag toss game, so he and Dad go to get the plywood. Grandma and I decide to sew the beanbags out of fabric scraps. We use the sewing machine to make square pockets, which we fill with kidney beans. The whole time we are sewing, Fan is sitting on the sofa with the ancient and medieval history book, reading the chapter out loud. There are many words she pronounces wrong, like “Graeco-Roman,” “Phoenicians,” and “disarray,” and I wonder if she knows their meanings. Suddenly she looks up. “I think this book is wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This book is ancient history. But only one chapter about China. I think China has a long ancient history.” Fan shows me with her hands.

  “Maybe you should ask the teacher about that.”

  She looks surprised. “How can I ask the teacher? I am a student.”

  “I think you should ask the teacher why there is so little about China.”

  Fan looks at me like I’m crazy and turns back to her textbook.

  The weather has turned warmer again, and when we go to Camille’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, everyone is outside. We set the game up in the backyard, divide into teams, and start tossing the beanbags into the holes. I ask Fan if she wants to play, but she shakes her head. Instead she sits on the porch steps with the textbook open on her lap. Auntie Linda sits down next to Fan and talks to her a mile a minute in Chinese. I don’t know exactly what she’s saying, but it’s something about too much studying. She sets the book on the porch table and tells Fan not to pick it up until it’s time to go home.

  I remember when I was younger, we were all together for Thanksgiving and I wanted to read instead of playing with the other kids. Auntie Linda took my book and set it by the front door. At first I was mad and embarrassed, but then I found that playing Twister was actually really fun. It occurs to me suddenly that Fan might be studying to avoid doing something else. But what? Is she afraid of talking in English? Or could it be that she is she afraid to make friends in America?

  The neighbor’s dog keeps trying to catch the beanbags. Finally he intercepts my toss and carries the beanbag away underneath their porch. The only one small enough to get it is Kaylee. She comes out with the beanbag in her mouth like the dog, and Fan, Camille, Ken, and I laugh until our stomachs ache.

  After dinner, Fan says that she used to play a game in China with small bags filled with rice. We sit in Camille’s basement and sew the little pouches. When we’re done, Fan shows us how to play. You have to try to pick up the small rice bags one at a time until you have them all, kind of like jacks. Camille has big hands, but she is clumsy and the bags keep dro
pping. We end up tossing the bags to each other like in a game of hot potato.

  When it’s time to go home, Fan says this is the most fun she’s had since she’s been in America. “I don’t think about study or Gong Gong or anything.” She buckles her seatbelt. “I feel used to America now—a little.”

  “I think it takes time to get used to things.”

  Fan nods. “Sometimes I worry too much.”

  “About what?”

  Fan is concentrating hard to answer. “When I speak English, I feel different, not like a Chinese girl.”

  I think about that for a few seconds. “Camille speaks English and Chinese, and she seems like . . . that’s just part of who she is.”

  Fan nods. “You are right. Two languages is better.” Then, as we’re pulling out of the driveway, she says, “When Andee comes back, we can teach her the rice bag game.”

  Friday we take Fan to her final volleyball tournament against two other high schools. Fenwick wins the first game but loses the second. There is a girl on Central’s team who serves just as hard as Fan, and the Fenwick girls have trouble returning her balls. Fenwick ends up taking second place. The coach congratulates everybody and says they had a good season. “We hope all of you sophomores and juniors come back and play with us again.”

  “I cannot play volleyball next year,” Fan says to me.

  “Maybe you can find a team in China.”

  “No,” Fan says. “Next year I will work at the hotel.”

  On Saturday a card arrives in the mail from Andee. On the front she has pasted a snowflake. I open the note:

  Dear Anna,

  In this snowy place, I have time to think about things. I miss you and Fan. I hope you are having a nice Thanksgiving break.

  Love,

  Andee

  Underneath she drew her face with a ski cap and curly hair sticking out. All around her are snowflakes.

  The picture reminds me of all the paper fortune cookies Andee made for me when I went to China, with their tiny drawings and short messages. I loved opening them at night in our hotel room and feeling connected to home. Andee writes that being in the snowy mountains gives her time to think, but I wish I knew what she has been thinking.

  Over break, I finish Anne Frank. We studied the Holocaust in fifth grade, and I’ve already read Number the Stars, but this book is much sadder to me because the diary is real. Eight months after Anne Frank wrote the last entry, she and her sister died. I look at her face on the cover, with her dark eyes and slight smile. Despite everything that was happening, Anne was cheerful and hopeful most of the time.

  I ask Fan if she wants to go with me to the library, but she wants to study as usual, so I go by myself. The sun is shining though the air is cool. I zip my sweatshirt and pull up the hood. The leaves on the ground rustle as I walk. In fourth grade, Camille and Laura and I used to bury ourselves in big piles of leaves and gather buckeyes in our pockets. I wish they were walking with me now.

  When I get to the library, I browse around all the new kids’ books, but nothing looks interesting. What do I really feel like reading?

  There is a photography exhibit in the display case called “Children Around the World.” One is of a boy looking very worried, with no shirt on, squinting into the sun. New York City, it says. Another is of an Asian girl peeling potatoes with her grandfather at a table outside in Ho Chi Minh City. I look at all the pictures, wondering if there might be one of migrant kids in China, but there isn’t. Then I ask the librarian if they have any books about Chinese migrants. “Do you mean immigrants?” she asks. I shake my head. “I mean migrants inside China.” She looks it up on the computer and there are two, she says, in the stacks. I sit down at the table to wait.

  One book, called From Somewhere to Nowhere, is full of photographs. On the cover it has a picture of a woman with a kerchief on her head, looking down and away from the camera. First I think she is Mom’s age, but then I see that she is actually much younger, maybe even a teenager. The other book, Factory Girls, is about two teenage girls who left their homes in the countryside to work in factories in the city. I check the books out, put them in my backpack, and head home.

  Before we go to bed, Fan and I look at the photo book together. Fan is quiet, staring at each picture for a minute before turning the page. There is one of a baby squatting on the ground while his mother pushes coal in a wheelbarrow. Another shows young women on an assembly line. Fan stops at a picture of a man shoveling rubble into a cart. “Like my Baba,” she says. Then she turns to me. “The pictures in the book are sad. But migrants are not always sad.” She shows me another picture of a family headed home for Spring Festival. The man is carrying lots of packages and he has a wide smile on his face as he hurries toward his relatives. “Sometimes sad and sometimes happy,” Fan says. “Like me, too.”

  “Are you sad at Andee’s house?”

  Fan thinks before replying. “I will try more.” She closes the book. “Are you sad or happy?”

  “I’m lonely at school without Camille,” I say. “And without Andee. But I like Hideat and I like Mr. Freeman’s class.”

  Fan nods. “Without friends is sad.” She moves her hand over the cover of the book. “Thank you for this book about migrants in China. It makes me remember.” Fan hesitates. “In Beijing I am not a Beijing person. I am always a migrant.”

  “Do you wish you were a Beijing person?”

  Fan looks frustrated by my question. “I can never be a Beijing person. I do not talk like a Beijing person and I do not look like a Beijing person.” She looks down. “America it is different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In America, they don’t know what is a migrant. They only know Chinese. But if I have this book, I can explain my life.”

  On Sunday, Fan gets an email from her mother. She says Little Monkey did well on his first report card so they are proud of him. Fan smiles. “I know my brother is so smart,” she says. “But he is also lazy.”

  We spend the afternoon making more rice bags out of scraps. Fan wants to make a set for Andee. “She likes this material?” Fan asks, pointing to blue fabric with yellow dots. “Or this?” She holds up black material with small orange candy corn all over it.

  “The yellow dots,” I say, remembering that Andee loved a polka-dotted dress I once made for Kaylee.

  Before bed, Fan goes down to check her email since it is morning in China. I sit at my desk and make a card for Andee. On the front, I glue snippets of fabric. Inside I write:

  Dear Andee,

  Thank you for the card. The little drawing reminds me of last year and all the fun we had together. I wonder what you have been thinking.

  Love, Anna

  On Sunday evening, Andee and her mom come to get Fan. “The snow was great this year,” Andee’s mom says. “And I finally got off the bunny slope.” She explains to Fan that the bunny slope is for beginners.

  “I thought you can ski very well,” Fan says.

  Andee’s mom shakes her head. “Not at all. Little by little, I am making some progress. I grew up in Alabama, and there’s no snow there.”

  Andee’s mom and my mom go into the kitchen to have a cup of tea, and for the first time in a while, Andee doesn’t seem in a hurry to leave. Fan gives her the rice bags and we show her how to play. Kaylee keeps coming and saying she wants to play too, but of course she can’t catch the rice bags. We end up juggling them, which she thinks is really funny. Maow Maow watches from the corner and pounces each time we drop a bag.

  Before they leave, I give Andee the card. She runs her fingers over the fabric, unfolds the paper, and lets her eyes move over the words. “Thanks,” she says. “I love the way you arranged the fabric scraps.” She folds the card carefully and puts it into her pocket.

  Fan asks if she can borrow the photo book. “I want to show Andee,” she says.

  Later that evening, I start reading the book about the factory girls. The beginning is about a teenager who leaves her home
in the countryside to join her sister, who is working in an electronics factory. She works on an assembly line for thirteen hours each day and sleeps in a factory dormitory with eleven other factory girls. They become good friends, but they also fight a lot. Then, when one of them leaves to work in a different factory, everyone forgets about her. I cannot imagine sleeping in a crowded stuffy room, and then waking up to work for so many hours assembling parts of alarm clocks, calculators, phones, and computers. I glance at the clock on my shelf. I wonder if it was made in China. I want to talk to Mr. Freeman about this book.

  Just as I’m about to go to bed, the phone rings. “Do you want to stay after school tomorrow?” Andee asks. “To plan some CAT projects?”

  Chapter Twelve

  The Spring Bud School

  Mr. Freeman is straightening out his desk. “Hello, Anna. Do you have a CAT meeting today?”

  “It’s not really a meeting. Just Andee and me. We’re trying to do some planning.”

  “I remember her from last year,” he says. “The dynamic duo. I have a meeting at the high school, so I’ll leave you to your work.”