The Cooked Seed

The Cooked Seed by Anchee Min Read Free Book Online

Book: The Cooked Seed by Anchee Min Read Free Book Online
Authors: Anchee Min
Tags: Biographies & Memoirs, Professionals & Academics, Memoirs, Culinary
called code B-14 on your passport. Do not try to lie, because the consuls are trained lie detectors. They can see through you.”
    When people learned that I did not speak any English, they said, “You must have eaten a lion’s gut! How dare you plan to fool the consul?”
    There was no way I’d be able to impress the consul, but it would be suicidal if I told the truth: “Hello, I’d like to go to America because I want to escape my misery in China.” An American consul in his or her right mind would never issue a visa to a desperate person like me. Would it be better to say, “I’d like to go to America for an education. It might serve to reverse my ill fortune in China”?
    Answering the question of how I would survive in the United States would be hard without speaking English. I couldn’t afford to be honest and tell the consul that I had memorized the speech.
    Why rob myself of my one chance? If the consul were in my shoes, would he not be lying himself? I was not hurting anyone. I had to overcome my guilt. My mother hadn’t raised me to be a liar. She would rather die than tell a lie. She would be disappointed and ashamed that her daughter would choose to lie. She would threaten to disown me. What would happen if I gave up? I would end up living the life my mother led. I felt that this would be worse than getting caught lying.
    What if the consul interrupted me? What if he asked a question? I wouldn’t be able to understand him and wouldn’t know how to respond. I decided that I would recite my self-introduction so fast that it would be difficult for the consul to interrupt me.
    I began to drill myself after work. Everyone was irritable around home. My father had collapsed at work due to internal stomach bleeding. He had recently been transferred from the printing shop to a position as an instructor of astronomy at the Shanghai Children’s Center. In gratitude to his new Party boss, my father worked long hours and was exhausted. He was rushed to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. The news sent our family into a panic.
    The surgery removed five sixths of my father’s stomach. Then he underwent chemotherapy. We took turns caring for him. I studied
English 900 Sentences
with a flashlight under his hospital bed. My mother had never been good at caring for her own illnesses, but now she had to learnto care for her husband. My sisters and brother were in their twenties and worked as laborers in factories where their prospects for the future were dim. I worried that I would have to leave home soon. Traditionally, female children were not supposed to remain at home if there was only one room. Once my brother was married, I would have no place to go.
    While my father’s discouragement brought me despair, my mother predicted that I would achieve my heart’s desire just by believing.
    “How?” I yelled. “Don’t you think I am too old to be told a fairy tale?”
    The government’s rule forced me to resign from my current job before I applied for a passport. My father was crushed after learning that I was jobless. He was sure that I had made a critical mistake and ruined my life. I wanted to cry when I looked at my father’s ghostly pale face. The chemotherapy had drained the life from him. He was hairless and bone thin. He looked at me with great fear in his eyes.
    Never in my life had I been as terrified as I was the day I left for the US Consulate. I shook so hard that I was unable to say to my parents, “Wish me good luck!” My father and mother leaned on each other’s shoulders for support. They were in their early fifties and had lost most of their teeth. There was not a hint that my mother had once been a great beauty. Both of them watched me nervously and were unable to say a word.
    “May I borrow your clothes?” I asked my mother.
    “Why?” She was puzzled.
    I wanted to tell her how scared I was.
    “Why do you want to borrow an old lady’s clothes?” my mother asked.

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