Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok Read Free Book Online

across the wall by the mattress, I made noise with the broom to keep them at a distance, careful not to squash them. This was partly due to my Buddhist training to care for all life, but it was mostly because I didn’t want to see them smeared across the wall.
    Out of boredom, I started looking through Ma’s things. In her suitcase, I found a square piece of cardboard carefully bound with twine. I could tell it was an old 78 rpm record, the kind that played only one song per side. It must have held great emotional value for her. There was no other reason for her to keep it; we didn’t even have a record player here. I opened the case carefully, expecting something from a Chinese opera, and was surprised to find an Italian one instead. I read the label: it was Caruso singing Cavaradossi’s aria “E lucevan le stelle,” from Tosca. A photograph fluttered to the floor. Then I remembered:
    Our apartment in Hong Kong, the ceiling fan humming as I lay on the sofa, Ma playing a record for me before bedtime. That had been our nightly routine, one song and then bed. Usually she chose Chinese music, but this one night she had put on a man singing with sorrow in another language, the words escaping him in gasps of regret. She had turned away then. When I could see her face again, she had composed herself and showed me no more of her feelings.
    I had gone to bed that night, and many nights since, thinking about Ma’s life and the grief that connected her to that music. I knew her parents had been landowners and intellectuals, and for that, they’d been unfairly sentenced to death during the Cultural Revolution. Before they died, they had spent all the wealth they had left to get Ma and Aunt Paula out of China and into Hong Kong before it was too late. And then Ma’s true love, my pa, had been taken from her far too young, only in his early forties, going to bed with a headache one evening to die of a massive stroke later that night.
    I picked up the photograph that had fallen from the record album. It was the one Ma had framed and kept on the piano in our living room in Hong Kong. Like many people in Hong Kong then, we didn’t have a camera because it was too expensive, and so this was the only photo I’d seen of the three of us. Despite the stiffness of the pose, the three heads were slightly inclined toward one another, like a true family. Ma looked lovely, with her small neat features and pale skin stretched tight over her bones, and Pa was the perfect accompaniment: dark luminous eyes, handsome and sculpted, like a movie star. I looked at the size of his hands, one of which was tenderly-it seemed to me-cupping the child’s elbow, my elbow. That was a heroic hand, a hand that would take over a heavy plow, a hand to save you from demons and muggers. And me, balanced on Pa’s knee, about two years old, and peering curiously at the camera. I was wearing a sailor’s outfit and my hand was raised to my forehead in a military salute, no doubt the photographer’s idea. Lucky child: had I really been so cute, had I ever been so happy?
    A few characters had been scrawled on the back. Our names and the date. I knew it wasn’t Ma’s handwriting, so it had to be his. I ran my finger over the impressions the pen had made in the thick paper. This was my pa, his hand had written these words.
    This was all I had to take the place of memory. However, no matter how great my loss, Ma’s was even greater. She had actually known and loved him, and his death had left her alone to raise and support me. I carefully put the record and the photograph back. I wanted more than ever to be by Ma’s side, helping her in any way I could.
    Finally, I could leave for the factory. I passed by a street cart with a sign that said “Hot Dogs.” The vendor was selling thin sausages in rolls with yellow sauce on top. It looked and smelled delicious, but I had only a subway token and a dime for emergency phone calls in my pocket. On the subway, I felt as