Girl in Translation

by Jean Kwok

  “Oh.” I hesitated. “I am busy. Maybe another time, okay?”

  She gave me her warm smile. “Next time, then.”

  I knew there would be no next time, but felt pleased by her invitation. It allowed me to imagine that I could have been one of the other kids, for a moment.

  We had a big Physical Science test in two weeks, covering topics like mass, force and acceleration, and everyone else seemed scared. I was actually relieved to have a subject that involved so much math, but I saw some of the other kids huddled around the lockers after school one day, trying to do their homework and complaining that they didn’t understand a thing.

  “I flunked the last test,” I heard Sheryl saying to her friends. “I’m going to get grounded if it happens again.”

  “This one’s going to be even harder,” Curt said. “Everyone will fail and then they’ll have to throw away the results.”

  At that moment, Sheryl caught sight of me. Her tone was dry. “Not everyone.”

  I ducked my head and kept on walking, but I could feel them watching me.

  On the day of the test, our desks were arranged in rows. This time, I was sitting behind Tammy, and Curt was in the next row, directly across from me. Our teacher, Mrs. Reynolds, was walking around the room, passing out the tests.

  Tammy turned around and spoke to me. “Do you have an extra pencil? My point just broke.”

  I nodded and gestured at the one I’d placed on my desk.

  As she reached out to take it, a small piece of folded yellow paper fluttered from her sleeve to the floor. I automatically bent down and picked it up, but by the time I straightened up, Tammy had already turned back around in her seat. Could this be a note for me? I didn’t pass notes in class but I’d seen others do it with friends, shaking with suppressed laughter. Feeling flattered and curious, I was beginning to open the note when Mrs. Reynolds came up from behind and took it from my hand.

  She finished unfolding it and I watched with horror, sure it said something private. Mrs. Reynolds studied it through her round brown glasses. “I hadn’t expected this of you, Kimberly.”

  Tammy was staring straight ahead, as if she hadn’t done anything at all. Mrs. Reynolds’s lips were compressed in a thin line of disapproval and she held the note up for me to read. I could barely make it out but realized it was filled with what looked like scribbled definitions for Newton’s Laws, plus formulas for things like velocity and speed.

  I figured out what had happened. My face flamed. I would never cheat, even in subjects where I had trouble. That wasn’t the way Ma had brought me up. How little everyone here knew me, to even think I could do such a thing. Tammy turned her head now, behind Mrs. Reynolds’s back, pleading with her eyes for me not to tell on her.

  “That is not mine,” I said.

  “Please come with me.” Mrs. Reynolds gestured for the assistant teacher to take over the class. She left the room and I followed her, feeling the eyes of the entire class upon me. I felt nauseated as we went down the hallway to the office of the director of the science and math department, Dr. Copeland.

  Dr. Copeland looked up as Mrs. Reynolds knocked on her open door. The director was so thin as to be gaunt, with old scars etched into both sides of her face, as if she’d once been in an accident of some kind. Mrs. Reynolds shut the door behind us, then explained what had happened. She handed over the incriminating piece of paper. I clasped my shaking hands together.

  “We take cheating very seriously here,” Dr. Copeland said in a deceptively mild voice, but her eyes blazed into mine. “Students have been expelled for it.”

  “I wasn’t,” I said, my fear making my voice tremble.

  “Mrs. Reynolds found this in your hand.”

  “I just pick it up.”

  Her face was white with tension. “I’d like to believe you, Kimberly, especially since you’re such a good student, but if it’s not yours, then why would you do that? It’s hard to argue with the fact that you had a cheat sheet for the test in your possession.”

  I thought about the desperate look in Tammy’s eyes and couldn’t say anything. My face and neck were flushed with embarrassment and anger, mostly at myself. I couldn’t believe I had gotten myself into so much trouble. What was going to happen to me?

  At my silence, Dr. Copeland continued. “Whether you created the note or someone else did that for you is not the point.”

  My panic was so great by now I could only take shallow breaths. I knew I could be expelled when I was completely innocent. Why couldn’t I open my mouth to tell them the truth? My emotions were all jumbled up inside and I felt paralyzed. I was still in a state of shock at the cheating accusation itself. And in part, I was so stunned Tammy would cheat that I couldn’t bring myself to accuse her. How could I have thought that it had been a personal note for me? I burned with shame at wanting so much to be liked, to belong to a circle of friends, that I had picked up something during a test. What would Ma say if I not only got kicked out, but for cheating!

  Both women were staring at me, waiting for my answer.

  There was a knock on the door. Mrs. Reynolds cracked it open. “Yes?”

  To my surprise, I heard Curt’s voice. “The assistant teacher gave me permission to come here. I have something to say.”

  After he entered the office, Curt spoke in a clear voice. “I saw Kimberly pick up that piece of paper.”

  Dr. Copeland tapped her cheek with one finger. “And it was just lying there?”

  Curt swallowed. He didn’t know what I’d already told them. “I didn’t see anything else. Only her picking it up.”

  “So, Kimberly, either you were very foolish or you were picking up something you had dropped yourself. Or your friend is covering up for you.”

  My eyes shot to Curt’s. “He is not my friend,” I said, before I could censor myself.

  Curt had a wry smile on his face. “She’s right. We’ve hardly ever spoken to each other before.”

  I saw Dr. Copeland glance at Mrs. Reynolds, who gave a slight nod. Mrs. Reynolds was agreeing that Curt and I weren’t friends.

  “So the question is, were you picking up something dropped by someone else or by yourself?” Dr. Copeland said.

  “It is not my penmanship,” I said.

  “The writing is so small, it’s hard to tell.”

  The time had come for honesty. “I am too smart to cheat,” I said, feeling my face grow warm at my own arrogance. No good Chinese girl would say such a thing about herself. “It is under me.”

  Dr. Copeland pulled one corner of her mouth back in a half-smile. “You mean it’s beneath you. All right, the two of you may return to the class and take the test. Mrs. Reynolds and I are going to discuss this further.”

  EIGHT

  As soon as Curt and I were out of their hearing range, I turned to him and asked, “Why did you do that for me?”

  He shrugged. “Because I did see you. And I heard Sheryl give Tammy the idea.”

  “You mean, to put the note in her sleeve?”

  “Yeah.”

  I looked at him for a long moment. “Thank you.”

  He grinned. “I’d hate to see you get kicked out since I always cheat off of your tests.”

  I stopped short. “What?”

  He gave me a playful punch. “Just kidding.”

  When we entered the classroom, all the kids looked up from their tests in progress, their curiosity plain across their faces. Tammy’s eyes were swimming in tears. I angrily wondered if the tears were from guilt or having to work through the test without her cheat sheet. I was sure everyone else thought I was a cheater, and felt grateful that Curt had come and walked back with me, as indirect proof of my innocence. I took the test with even more care than normal because I knew the school’s final judgment of the situation would depend partly on how I performed without any notes. The assistant teacher kept a keen eye on me. After a short while, Mrs. Reynolds came back and resumed her seat at the front of the room as if nothing had h
appened.

  When the bell rang, everyone got up and handed in their papers. Mrs. Reynolds said, “Kim and Curt, you have ten more minutes since you started late, but no more than that.” Her tone was hard to read, but I was afraid I had lost the respect of a teacher I liked a great deal.

  When our time was up, she took our papers and silently handed us late passes for our next class, which had already begun. So it wasn’t until lunch that Tammy was able to catch up with me.

  She slipped in next to me on the lunch line and squeezed my arm. Since she hadn’t been called to the office, she knew I hadn’t told on her. I stared at her hand on my blazer sleeve, torn between fury, confusion and the desire to forget the whole incident. She didn’t say a word, and then moved away again.

  The next day, I found a card she’d slid into my locker that said, “I’m so sorry! Thank you!!!!” I wondered if she might feel closer to me now. I had hoped we were developing a friendship. Would we really become close now? But after that, she avoided me.

  I was hardly able to eat or sleep until our Physical Science class the next day. I didn’t dare tell Ma or Annette about this. The whole experience made me feel ill and I was not at all sure I had handled it right. Most of all, I was embarrassed and disgusted at myself for thinking Tammy might pass me a note. Would I be summoned to the office again, or simply get a letter at home telling me I’d been expelled?

  The class came at last and Mrs. Reynolds solemnly handed back everyone’s tests. She’d graded them faster than usual. I saw Mrs. Reynolds give Tammy a hard look when she returned her test. She knew as well as I did who had been sitting in front of me. By craning my neck, I could see Tammy had failed. I felt sorry for her, but vindicated as well.

  Mrs. Reynolds laid my test on my desk. I’d gotten a 96. She bent down and whispered, “We’re going to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder with a smile, and I saw that she, at least, was convinced of my innocence. I glanced at the other students surreptitiously and saw most of the class watching us. The knot in my stomach began to loosen.

  I only hoped that Dr. Copeland didn’t have any remaining doubts either.

  It was also in the eighth grade that we finally got a phone at home. I knew the monthly payments pained Ma, but I was too ashamed to be the one omission in the stapled school telephone directory everyone received. It seemed to be a public declaration of poverty that came too close to showing everyone the truth about the way we really lived. Ma had finally agreed to the phone, persuaded by the argument that I needed it to discuss homework.

  But most things hadn’t changed, they’d simply become routine. I grew into the space that Ma’s foreignness left vacant. She hadn’t learned any more English, so I took over everything that required any kind of interaction with the world outside of Chinatown. I pored over our income tax forms every year, using the documents the factory provided for us. I read the fine print repeatedly, hoping I was doing it right. If Ma needed to buy something at a store or to make a complaint or a return, I had to do it for her. The worst was when Ma wanted to bargain, the way she had in Hong Kong, and I had to translate for her.

  “Tell him we’ll only pay two dollars,” Ma said to me at the American fish store near our apartment.

  “Ma, you can’t do this here!”

  “Just say it!”

  I gave the fishmonger an apologetic smile. I was only thirteen. “Two dollars?”

  He was not amused. “Two dollars and fifty cents.”

  Later, Ma scolded me for not having had the right attitude. She was sure that if I’d been firmer, we would have gotten a discount.

  At school, I still kept mostly to myself. In the middle of winter, some kids started coming to school with tanned cheeks and white rings around their eyes from their ski goggles, exultant about places like Snowbird in Utah and Vallery in France. There was a rage for a certain brand of ski jacket, tight and short, with a high collar around the neck, and soon most kids in my homeroom class were wearing one. I heard the jackets cost at least 20,000 skirts each.

  More of the girls in class also started wearing makeup to school, or applying it in the restrooms or at their lockers. This interested me more than the ski jackets. It seemed to have a magical quality that would somehow make you more normal. Once, in the girls’ bathroom, Annette had pulled out what she called a cover-up stick and rubbed it over the surface of a pimple she had on her chin. I couldn’t believe it. The pimple hardly showed afterward. I immediately thought about using it to cover my nose, sometimes raw from the colds I got.

  “Take it,” Annette said. “The color’s too dark for me anyway.”

  Moments like this showed me that despite my constant evasions, Annette understood my situation in a way that no one else at school could even begin to, but I still couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. And even as kind-hearted as she was, there was no way she had any idea exactly how poor we really were.

  Now that I was older, I wasn’t as sick all the time, although a runny nose often plagued me. What worried me more was when sometimes Ma became ill. Whenever she coughed, I worried she would have a relapse of tuberculosis, though fortunately it never happened. Our living conditions didn’t change but with time, I stopped allowing myself to be conscious of my own unhappiness.

  At home, Ma and I kept hoping for the wrecking ball to appear outside our building, forcing Aunt Paula to move us to a new apartment, but it never did. Ma had asked her one last time about when we’d be able to move, and Aunt Paula allowed her black face to be seen for a moment.

  “If you’re really so unhappy there, no one is stopping you from making other choices.”

  After that, Ma didn’t dare to ask again. We were still paying Aunt Paula back and it was clear that she simply did not care to move us. As far as she was concerned, it was most convenient and best to leave us where we were. And the truth is, caught up in the vortex of work and school, we had become too exhausted to fight against the roaches and mice, our frozen limbs, the stuffed animal clothing, and life in front of the open oven. We had been forced into acceptance. Sunday was our only free day, but it was packed: we did all our grocery shopping then, but also had to catch up on factory work, my schoolwork, and prepare for any Chinese holidays. Our one bright spot was when we went to the Shaolin temple in Chinatown. It was on the second floor of a building in the Lower East Side and was my sanctuary.

  It was run by true Chinese nuns, complete with shaved heads and black robes, and they always served free and delicious vegetarian food: fried noodles with tofu, rice and thin, ruffle-edged black mushrooms called cloud ears. When the nuns handed me my food, I could feel how present they were in every gesture of kindness. After lighting incense and bowing to the enormous triple Buddhas in the main room, we would pay our respects to our dead, and most especially to Pa. I felt at peace in the temple, as if we had never left Hong Kong. As if there were forces of compassion that were watching over Ma and me.

  I couldn’t get away from the factory much. Once in a long while, when we had a bit of time before the next shipment went out, I lied to Ma and snuck off with Annette for a few hours in the afternoon.

  On one of those days, Annette tried to convince me to go with her to a movie. I had never been to one in this country and I hesitated for a moment, wondering if it was even possible.

  Misunderstanding my hesitation, Annette tried adding more incentive. “I’ll bring my makeup and we can put it on before the movie. Don’t worry, we’ll wash it off afterwards.”

  I made up an excuse for Ma, and Annette and I went to see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom at a theater close to her house. I worried about what it would cost, and if I would have enough, but when we got to the ticket window, Annette insisted on paying. I protested but secretly felt relieved. I didn’t have any spending money of my own. The money in my pocket was change I had borrowed from the grocery budget, which I would have had to make up for in skirts.

  We were early for the film, and
the theater was huge, half empty and cavernous, with lights set into the floor, as there had been on the airplane from Hong Kong. I inhaled the smell of popcorn and butter, and then Annette rushed me into the ladies’ room, where, grinning, she pulled out a pink plastic makeup case. It looked new. She sifted through small packages with different colors of powder and explained the set had been a gift from her cousin.

  “You have great cheekbones,” Annette said, putting more blush on me and giggling.

  “You too.” I wasn’t sure what made a cheekbone “great” but that seemed irrelevant.

  When we were done, I peered in the mirror and was amazed at how different I looked. Heavily shadowed eyes, tons of blush and lipstick: hardly an inch of my skin had been left its original color. It would be very American to look like this all the time. I touched my great cheekbones with my fingers.

  A woman leaving the bathroom smiled at us as she left. “You look lovely, girls.”

  We felt beautiful. Then we sat in the dark for a few hours watching the film, which I didn’t follow at all. I kept feeling the velvet of my seat with my hand and imagining the glow of my face. Indiana Jones did seem very heroic. The movie was similar to martial arts films I had seen on television in Hong Kong, only less comprehensible, with too many villains, tribal people, and children needing to be rescued. But it was so exciting. When the film was over, Annette and I went back to the bathroom to scrub our faces. She wasn’t allowed to wear any makeup either. I didn’t mind. Now we had a secret together, a happy one.

  When school let out for the summer, Annette went off to a camp at a college upstate and I returned full-time to the factory. I needed to lighten Ma’s burden as much as I could, and any extra work I did meant more income. That was the summer I learned exactly the pattern in which my bra would get soaked by sweat: first the band below the breasts would begin to get wet; then the sweat would slowly move upward. It traveled more quickly under the arms and in the center of the back, then would rise between the breasts to soak the cups and finally the straps. The entire thing was wet within half an hour of work.