Bone

Author: (USA) Wu Huiming, translated by Lu Wei
Translator: Lu Wei / Country:
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: After Anna jumped off the building, Mom's life was completely disrupted. She believed she would never forget this. "Children are easier to raise than parents, and wives are easier to be than husbands," she cried. "Everything is upside down, everything is wrong." Mom wanted to live with this feeling, and we all did for a while, living with that ghost, living with guilt, until things got unbearable. That way, we were all split apart: For me, time was like it had broken, divided into before and after Anna jumped. I didn’t want to be like before, I wanted to live a new life, just like saying the person who was there, the person who couldn’t save Anna, wasn’t me. We all went through this, then returned to ourselves, to our old selves. I had to believe it was Anna’s own choice. Anna became a silent part of our lives. We didn’t talk about her. There was nothing left to say. I always thought Nina was doing right, because she escaped the daily, every-second confrontation. She escaped from that fear, and for me, that was freedom. But this time in New York, I saw something different. I saw Nina still suffering. I smelled a sour smell instantly. Leon peeled an orange for me and gave me a piece. I took a bite, and the strong sourness spread in my mouth immediately. I justified it with "This isn’t China." I reminded them "We’re in America." But some parents took it seriously, raising their voices and saying, "We are always Chinese first." I couldn’t argue with them in Chinese. Experience told me it was right to stop the argument, or I would lose all my authority. Every time I walked into their narrow apartment, I felt particularly heavy-hearted. I always remembered we used to live in places like that too. The sewing machine was next to the TV, bowls were stacked on the table, and the rolled-up blanket was pushed to one side of the sofa. Everywhere were cardboard boxes, which were repurposed as stools, tables, or desks for homework. At the dinner table, parents always talked about money, about things they didn’t understand and couldn’t comprehend. The messy room, the dull life—everything clearly told me that their daily lives had nothing beyond making a living and raising children, and everything was so hard. I realized something even harder: parents actually needed more help than students. They worked so hard but had no idea what they were doing. Their excessive politeness and irrelevant flattery always made me nervous. "You’re really Chinese. You’re really smart. You should run for Miss Chinatown." I tried to tell them I couldn’t take full responsibility for educating their children. But they always insisted on their beliefs: "You’re the teacher, if they don’t listen, hit them until they learn." They’d stuff oranges into my schoolbag and then ask for my help. All they wanted was time—a minute, a call to the tax collector, a letter to the unemployment office. What’s an extra hour of work? I wasn’t like this before. I hate queuing: Social Security Administration,, Immigration Office. What I hate is translating for Mom and Leon. I had to be responsible for every English word I said. I went through a phase of hating everything, when every English word felt like a curse. But I think I’ve passed that stage now. Then another word came to my mind: escape. What did Leon want to find? What did Anna want? I saw Mason standing at the door of Mom’s room, gesturing at me. He handed me a large cup filled with hot water. I went in, asked Mom if she wanted it, but she didn’t answer, so I put it on her vanity table and sat at the foot of her bed waiting. Mason came in and sat next to me. Mom said she felt very nervous. It was as if she wanted to choose an English word to express an alien feeling, hoping it would distance herself from that emotion. It doesn’t matter. Mom pronounced the word in three separate syllables, extending the emotions of anger, disappointment, and sadness that were constantly churning within her. Mason thought the word sounded like the French "Couwoisier," the name of a red wine, and said drinking some might do her good. I said I needed more alcohol. Then Mom asked where Nina was. She said, "I want all my daughters at home." Mom also told Rosa Wong that she also worked at Tommy’s factory, sitting right next to Mom. We’ve known the Wongs since they moved here from Peru the second time. They lived in a Victorian apartment building at the corner of Jones and Pacific streets, just two blocks away from Salmon Alley. But what mattered to us was life outside Chinatown. When Rosa first started at the factory, she didn’t know how to thread a Singer sewing machine, but Tommy still hired her, and even sent Mom to teach her sewing. Those old, worn-out rumors started again: Tommy hired a pretty but clueless sewing machine operator. The other women workers didn’t trust Rosa because she was half-Spanish, but Mom fell for her pretty eyes and lively, rhythmic tone, and even taught Rosa all the tricks she used to fool Tommy—what he’d check when inspecting their work (e.g., zippers) and what he never looked at (e.g., pleats)—whenever she called us to the factory to iron seams or turn belts, she always made us do Rosa’s share too. Mom and Rosa were like sisters. They worked side by side and jokingly said they spent more time sewing than sleeping, and their closeness went far beyond their relationships with their husbands. But they also competed in secret. Mom envied Rosa’s sunny apartment outside Chinatown, her creamy skin, long eyelashes, and musical laugh, but what Mom envied most were her two sons: Aurelio and Osvaldo. Rosa wanted to be as fast at sewing as Mom. She wanted to know the secret of how the stitches made a dress after just looking at a pattern sample. She envied Mom’s thin eyebrows and small feet. She hoped Tommy would like her as much as he liked Mom. (Rosa was new, so she was still outside the rumor circle and didn’t know about Mom and Tommy.) But Rosa hoped for was a daughter. She often came to Salmon Alley to visit us. She and Mom stayed up late drawing dress patterns, talking about Miss Cai, and cooking for festivals. Rosa taught us to knit and crocheted a lace scarf for each of us; we affectionately called her "Auntie." Though they lived just three blocks away, Rosa’s husband, Luciano, often drove his black Monte Carlo to pick her up in the narrow Salmon Alley—it looked like a boat. People said he bought it with cash. The women always had something to say. It was impossible to find a parking spot. Where did he get the money? Did he think he was some big shot sitting in a black car? Luciano Wong swept into Chinatown like a thunderstorm. We liked seeing him in his embroidered shirt and his Sun Yat-sen-style mustache. Nina liked his Ricardo Carato-style hairstyle. Tall frame, broad shoulders, loud voice, he was the tallest on Portsmouth Square. He was often surrounded by a group of people listening to him talk about his next big idea. He always had plans to make big money, but it seemed he was always short a thousand dollars and needed one more person. Luciano and Leon were the same kind of people. Leon called him "big brother." He always tried to teach Luciano all the Spanish words he’d learned from his time on the ship: young girls, gay men, trilbies, merengue. He boasted about having traveled alone to South America—Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Cape Town, even the Chinatown in Lima. Wasn’t he even give his little daughter a Spanish name? (Nina was shocked.) Leon wanted to be Luciano’s last business partner, hoping to have the honor of giving him a thousand dollars to help him achieve his dream of making big money. Leon never stopped talking about Luciano. He repeated everything he’d heard from Luciano at the square at dinner time. Paul Lin parked for him, and Luciano gave him a twenty-dollar tip. Luciano bought a pair of snake-skin shoes at Foley’s. Luciano had a Rolex gold watch. Luciano would soon buy a new Cadillac. One night Mom said Leon was jealous of Luciano, but Leon insisted he wasn’t. He didn’t want what Luciano had; he wanted Luciano’s secret to success, his good luck. That same night, Mom told Leon she wanted to leave the factory. Mom also told Leon she’d been talking to Rosa about her plans—to find a job outside Chinatown. Mom encouraged Leon to talk to Luciano about going into business together. The next day Leon went to negotiate with Luciano, proposing a 50-50 profit split. The Wongs and the Liang families. Luciano liked the sound of these two characters. Their names together sounded like a pair of chopsticks, and they would rely on them to make a living. For weeks, they met at a local Chinese diner, then read classified ads in the China Times, the Chronicle, and the Examiner. Luciano drove his new car around the city with Leon, showing him shoe repair shops, restaurants, and the bowling lanes at. They tried to bargain with others in the projection room of a movie theater, hoping to buy it. Seeing the Feng brothers’ large machines churn out buckets of ice cream, they started negotiating with the Feng brothers again. They even went to a place in to learn how to use a photo printer. I’d never seen Leon so happy: He woke up early every morning, put on his double-breasted blue suit, and tied a red tie. Red was Leon’s lucky color. He polished his shoes until they shone like Luciano’s. Before the female workers from the factory arrived, Leon stood at the alley entrance waiting for Luciano. On the day they finally settled on a laundry, Leon bought a whole duck and a pound of roasted pork—Mom’s favorite, and ours too—and a strawberry cake. The next morning Mom took out their savings from the bank.