Short Reading Responses

USEFUL PHRASES FOR

IMMIGRTS

G UILT TRIED TO glance at her watch, as she sensed time was

running out, but her arms were laden with the clear, plastic

containers and turning her wrist was impossible. Normally the

bins were ridiculously overpriced, $24.99 each, while Guili knew

they could be manufactured in Shenzhen for less than a dollar, but

they were good quality, the kind with handles, and the lids stayed

on. They would protect her clothes in the coming move.

Then the girl at the register barely glanced at Cuili’s coupon be

fore announcing, “The promotion is over.”

It was particularly infuriating because the promotion was most

definitely not over. Cuili had been careful to keep track of each day.

Saturday she’d seen the coupon but had no time for errands. She’d

had the tedious dinner with Mrs. Ma but she’d needed to curry

favor with her. Mrs. Ma had been in America forever, even if she’d

never bothered to properly learn English or even Mandarin; she

still spoke the Cantonese dialect of her maiden village before she’d

been shipped over to marry some Overseas Chinese. But Mrs. Ma’s

husband was an important member of the Ma Family Association.

Guili had gritted her teeth and smiled and nodded and listened to

the old woman’s endlessly repetitive stories of her grandchildren’s

antics because it was important Guili’s husband had good relations

with the Family Associations.

2 MAY-LEE CHA! Useful Phrases for Immigrants 3

Then Sunday had been cleaning and groceries and packing boxes.

Monday was the doctor appointment and afterward Guili had

driven to three storage facilities. She’d had high hopes for the first—

and cheapest—because her American neighbor had recommended

it, but the larger units were all rented and renting two small units

was no longer cheap. She’d signed the papers at the third storage

place, which was far from the cheapest, but it was convenient and

cleanish and the man had been kind enough to take her to look at

the ;o x;8 unit that would hold all the furniture and the boxes with

out having to resort to piling boxes on the easy chair, which over

time would ruin the cushions.

Now looking back, Guili thought she’d been foolish. There was

poison for rodents in the corners of each unit, the building was old.

If she put the expensive armchair there, it could become infested.

She’d be better off selling it. Or just throwing it away. Take the loss.

Truth was, she was tired. Her neck ached. Her cough was no bet

ter. At some point didn’t the toll that work took on the body need

to be taken into account?

And today, Guili had specifically planned so well. Bringing the

bags and bags of receipts to be shredded, $0.99 per pound, confi

dentiality guaranteed, ;oo% SECURE the sign said in large, friendly

letters. The cheerfulness of American business advertisements had

been charming when she’d first arrived. None of the threats and

bullying or outlandish claims she was used to. And the guileless

ness of the clerks.

She hadn’t been able to read between the lines then. The clerks

did not try to sell her anything because their wages never went

up, they were bored and demoralized, there was no point trying to

bully the customer.

Guili had not expected it to be so difficult to run a business in

an American recession. Movies and television shows had never

shown this side. Everyone was always well-dressed and cheerful

and well-fed and successful in American films, except for the vil lains, who were also well-dressed and well-fed and successful but so comically violent and obvious, it seemed no one had anything

to fear, ever.

Why didn’t people in movies complain about taxes and insur

ance and the cost of rent? Who needed a superhero in skin-tight

circus costumes to fight aliens? The real villains were attorney’s

fees and lawsuits and competitors spreading bad “word of mouth.” Now the clerk was speaking again, something complicated, so

Guili had to listen carefully. “The computer isn’t recognizing the

coupon. There’s nothing I can do. It’s not in the system.”

“No, no, no,” Guili insisted, knowing her rights. She remem

bered the proper phrase, took a breath, and enunciated clearly, “I

would like to speak to your manager.”

“The manager’s out to lunch,” the girl said, brazen.

“I will wait then,” Guili said.

For the first time, the girl looked at her. Really looked. She was a

sullen-faced young woman, with too much makeup, trying to cover

her acne-ridden skin. She had on thick layers of clumpy, black mas cara and her nails were elaborately colored, a different design on

each finger. Guili knew this kind of girl. In China or America, they

were always the same.

The girl said, “Is that coat Prada?”

Guili inhaled sharply.

In fact, it was.

“It’s nice,” the girl said. “I remember seeing it on the cover of Vogue. Anastasia Perez is my favorite actress.”

“I am waiting over here,” Guili said, and dragged her pile of plas

tic bins over to the vacant customer service counter.

GUILI, TOO, had seen this coat on the cover of Vogue magazine.

Some thin American actress was wearing it. She hadn’t cared about

4 MAY-LEE CHAI Useful Phrases far Immigrants 5

the actress; it was the colors of the coat that caught her eye. Plaid,

green and dark blue with a fleck of red and yellow with large, old-

fashioned lapels. It looked almost exactly like a coat her mother had

made for Guili when she was fourteen. Her mother had given it to

Guili before sending her to live with a great-aunt in Tianjin while

her mother and father were being struggled against in a tedious

political campaign.

Her mother had bartered for the fabric from a neighbor who had

relatives overseas. That woman always had nicer things. She owed

Guili’s mother some kind of favor, but that wasn’t why she’d given

up the cloth. It was because Guili’s mother had traded her grand

mother’s jade earrings for it.

Guili’s mother was artistic and kindhearted and not good with

money. These were the kinds of things that got her in trouble. But

her mother knew she couldn’t wear those earrings again, not ever,

and if they were going to be investigated, people might come to the

apartment and search through all their things and find the ear

rings and take them anyway. So Guili’s mother had bartered them

for the cloth, and then she’d stayed up all night and made the coat

for Guili’s trip.

No one else had cloth like that. The ration coupons that other

mothers hoarded for their purchases of cloth would do no good.

This fabric was special.

Under other circumstances it might have caused trouble for Guili,

r but in Tianjin, a city with foreign roots, her new classmates were

both envious and impressed, and that had actually helped her. She

seemed like the kind of girl with important parents, and people had

been intimidated enough not to bully her.

Guili did not think that had been her mother’s intentions actu

ally, just good luck.

Truth be told, Guili wished her mother had kept the earrings,

found a way to hide them. They could have been traded for some

thing far more than cloth, but what could she do? Her mother was her mother.

When she saw the Vogue magazine with the coat just like the

one her mother had made her so long ago, Guili had taken it as a

sign. She’d called stores up and down the state until she’d found

one that had it.

That was more than three years ago, when the business was

doing well, when Guili and her husband had very high hopes for

AT HOME, the television was blaring in the living room. The Chi

nese news at 7. In China he couldn’t have been bothered to watch

it, but here her father-in-law couldn’t bear to miss it even a single

evening.

As Guili set the table, her mother-in-law was complaining. “And

to think that woman was bragging about her new Lexus! I told her, you know that’s a Japanese car. I wouldn’t want anything those

Japanese dwarves made:’

Anping was passive-aggressive as ever. She knew Xiaobing would

be going to Japan soon. But when Guili looked at her husband, he s didn’t respond. He wasn’t going to speak. He wouldn’t contradict

his mother.

“Why do you call the Japanese ‘dwarves,’ Nai-nai?” Little Tiger

asked.

“Because when those dwarves invaded our country—” Anping began.

“Little Tiger isn’t allowed to use that kind of language,” Guili said. She couldn’t stand it.

“Don’t call me Little Tiger anymore,” Little Tiger said. “It’s a baby name. I want to be Ted now,” he said in English.

success.

6

“Ted?”

MAY-LEE CHAI

“No, Ma. Ted.”

“That’s what I said. Ted:’

“No, it’s not like that. Ted. Ted. Ted!” he said over and over.

Anping snorted loudly.

Guili took a deep breath. When Guili first joined this family,

her in-laws still spat inside the house. After Guili had given birth,

her mother-in-law could barely write the characters for the formal

name Guili had chosen for him, Wei. Anping had written the char acter that meant strong instead of the wei that meant a precious

kind of jade. Guili was the one who’d written the name for his birth certificate to make certain it would be correct.

She wondered sometimes how her husband could have come from this woman. Xiaobing was everything his mother was not: forward-thinking, intelligent, kind. Guili did not yet want to admit that these were not qualities businessmen in America needed so much as his mother’s stubborn, ruthless pragmatism.

Anping pursed her lips as though she were sucking on a sour plum pit, weighing a new complaint. Every night it was something else. The Ranch 99 no longer carried her favorite brand of dried cuttlefish, the price of eggs was too high, the kumon in the strip mall had a waiting list.

“There’s too much competition here,” her mother-in-law said fi nally. “We’re not like these rich Overseas Chinese. You should send Little Tiger to live with Xiaobing’s former classmate’s sister. That’ll be better for him.”

Little Tiger was staring at his phone. He wasn’t listening, or he was pretending not to listen, or he’d lost the capacity to listen long ago and was living in blissful deafness and Guili had somehow not noticed.

The classmate’s sister lived in Utah. Her husband was a short

Useful Phrases far Immigrants 7

order cook. She worked as a waitress. They already owned their own

house and were saving up to buy an apartment house. “Real estate,

that’s where the real money is,” this sister said, a font of wisdom.

“Little Tiger can live with them. It’ll be good for him. Xiaobing

didn’t live with us, and he turned out fine:’

Guili hated the woman.

She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples.

Recently she had read in a magazine while waiting in the gro

cery store that disarming the enemy with a compliment could be

a good way of getting what one wanted. What Guili wanted was

quiet, one evening without her mother-in-law’s voice, louder than

the television, complaining about something new.

“I don’t mean to criticize, Nai-nai,” Guili said. “I know how you

suffered in the war.”

“Oh, you know, do you?” Anping shook her head. “I watched my

cousin starve to death. I watched her lie down to sleep and never

wake up.”

Little Tiger’s eyes widened.

“Ma,” Xiaobing said miserably.

“What? That wasn’t even suffering. That was just life. And what

could I do? I was just a girl. You could lie down and die or you could

stand up and try to fight.”

“My wife joined the Party when she was a teenager,” Guili’s

father-in-law piped up from his armchair. “In those days, the gov

ernment could put you to death for that. But your grandmother

chose to fight with Chairman Mao:’

“I was a revolutionary from the beginning,” Anping nodded.

“We peasants had to fight every day or the landlords and the capi

talists would have feasted on our bones:’

“Ma,” Xiaobing said. “We’re all capitalists now.” He winked at

Little Tiger and Little Tiger smiled.

F

8 MAY-LEE CHAI Useful Phrases for Immigrants 9

Surprised that her son had spoken up, Anping was silent for a

minute. A full minute. Guili counted the seconds.

THAT NIGHT as she lay in bed, Guili listened to the wind howling

outside, shaking the glass. The Santa Ana, the neighbors called it.

A wind so treacherous it had its own name.

Her husband snored beside her, oblivious to the weather.

Before the manager at Staples had returned from his endless

“lunch,” Guili had had to leave to pick up Little Tiger from his after-

school classes.

what she’d said to the girl at the customer service counter was

C “I’ll take a rain check!” (She had learned this term from a book that

she’d picked up at the Chinese bookstore on sale, Useful Phrases for

_

Immigrants.)

Surprisingly, the girl had liked this solution. She wrote up “a

ticket” for Guili and said she could return next week for her bins

and she could still use the same coupon and someone else at work

would have to deal with it that day.

This was a perfectly face-saving strategy and Guili would have

been proud of herself if not for the fact that a week from now she’d

be living in a completely different city in a different, cheaper part

of the state, and the whole point of the bins was getting them now.

But she took the “rain check” and left.

GUI LI TURNED over in their bed. She didn’t want to wake Xiaobing

with her restlessness, but she could find no comfortable spot on her

side of the mattress. Guili worried as she did every night that they

had missed their time.

Back when they’d first decided to xia hai, jump into the ocean

and leave their government-factory jobs and strike out on their

own, no obstacle seemed too harsh. They’d been willing to work

hard, Xiaobing crisscrossed the country, representative of the com

pany his classmates had formed. Guili kept the books, she saved

money, economixed, sacrificed; they saved and saved. They put off

having a child until nearly too late, Guili was nearly forty when she

gave birth. Fifteen years had flown by.

Now here they were in America finally, California, only to dis

cover everywhere they looked, there were Chinese who’d come

earlier, bought real estate when it was cheaper, started mindless

businesses, and made a fortune. A woman in her mother-in-law’s

geriatric taiji group had a daughter and son-in-law with three boba

shops in a strip mall on Olympic Boulevard and a son in Stanford.

They owned five houses, renting all but one. With the profit from

their rentals, they no longer had to work. Instead they leased their

business licenses to new families, new poor immigrants willing to

put in mo-hour weeks but who might never be able to pay off their

debts because the economy had changed.

Meanwhile, Guili’s and her husband’s degrees were worthless

because they weren’t from one of the few Chinese universities fa

mous in America, all their experience meaningless to the people here. She felt she’d arrived at the station only to find the train de

parted five minutes early, leaving her stranded on the border of her dreams, unable to make the cross.

WELL BEFORE dawn Xiaobing had to leave for his business trip to Japan. The shuttle picked him up from the house at 4:55. Guili had barely slept at all.

She sat on the edge of the bed as he dressed. She did not allow her feelings to overcome her.

She threw on her robe and made him some breakfast, heating the leftover xifan on the stove.

“It’s not necessary. I’m not hungry,” he said.

50 MAY-LEE CHAI Useful Phrases far Immigrants 11

“You should eat:’

But he only grabbed a banana from the kitchen counter and took

it with him as his cellphone buzzed. “Shuttle’s here;’ he said.

She let him go with a studied casualness that belied everything

she felt churning in her stomach. Her performance was an act of

courage, she decided. Not cowardice. No, not that at all.

Guili had read about Japanese businessmen. She imagined her

husband drinking half the night and becoming very ill. She imag

ined him sick, his face leaden, retching in a modern, Japanese toi

let, the kind with a seat warmer, three nozzles for wiping the shit

from the ass so one never had to so much as touch a piece of toi

let paper ever. World Journal was filled with such stories. And the

men’s trip to brothels, to bath houses with Japanese prostitutes.

She knew from how the Japanese had operated in China how they

must do business at home. But the bills were piling up. It would be important for her husband to succeed on this trip.

At breakfast, Guili looked at her husband’s empty space at the

table.

Her heart beat fast in her chest.

The TV was blaring, but this time with the Today show, her mother-in-law’s favorite, and the sound of Americans laughing cir cled in her ears.

The kitchen table, the wind against the windows, the faces of her in-laws, her father-in-law’s doughy jowls, her mother-in-law’s

knitted brows. Guili forced her eyes wide open, she refused to blink, but her chest hurt. The world was melting, the edges and the corners bending and running together.

She took a shallow breath, and it hurt her lungs. Her in-laws gazed at the television, her son stared at his phone.

Guili felt completely alone. All at once the tears came burning to her eyes. Guili picked up

her rice bowl from the table, her first instinct to keep her hands busy. She meant to carry it into the kitchen, something to do, some thing to hide the fact that she was going to cry. But as she felt the bowl in her hands, the glass cool and smooth against her skin, she felt a new urge. Facing her family, Guili raised the bowl above her head then dashed it against the floor.

The glass broke into a thousand shards.

Her father-in-law jumped in his chair. “What? What happened?” “Clumsy,” Guili said out loud, as though it had been an accident.

Secretly she felt a little shiver of delight.

All eyes were on her. They were looking at her for the first time

in a very long while.

Guili thought about all she could say while she had their attention.

But her mother-in-law spoke first.

“It’s nothing. She’s just on edge. Because of the doctor,” Anping

whispered loudly.

“What?”

But Anping didn’t answer. She went into the kitchen and re

turned with the dustpan.

Her father-in-law turned back to the television, her son to his

phone. The moment was lost.

“Nai-nai, let me get that;’ Guili said at last.

“No, no, no. Don’t bother. You’re sick. You should rest.”

“What are you talking about?”

Guili’s mother-in-law began wiping the floor in exaggerated cir

cles with a napkin, sighing like a martyr. “I wasn’t going to tell you

yet. The doctor called. She left a message. Call her back. So I did.”

“You called my doctor?”

“Her assistant. She said your test is positive:’

“She did not. You can’t say these things over the phone.” (There

was an entire chapter in the phrase book called “Know Your Rights”

12 MAY-LEE CHA! Useful Phrases for Immigrants 13

with sections on Store Clerks, School Teachers, Police, Landlords,

Doctors. Guili could hear the clear voice of the instructor from the

accompanying CD: Repeat after me. I know my rights. You cannot do

this. I know my rights.)

Her mother-in-law was nonchalant. “She mistook me for you.

We have the same voice to these Americans. She said you need to

make an appointment to come to their office.” Anping stood up and

stretched her back. “I don’t want to cause trouble. I don’t want to

argue with you. You should conserve your strength. I didn’t want

to say anything while Xiaobing was here. No point worrying him.”

Guili’s heart beat like a drum in her ears.

Guili turned her back on her mother-in-law and the blaring tele

vision and she marched past the battalion of boxes that lined the

hall and marched up the stairs to her bedroom and shut the door,

not even slamming it. She pushed a tower of three packing boxes

against it. And then she opened her closet, all the clothes yet un

packed; she’d wanted to wait till the last possible minute to prevent

wrinkling, which seemed foolish now, stupid even, laughable. She

slipped her arms around her coat, while it was still on the hanger.

She put her hand in the pocket. She stroked the sleeve. The Italian

fabric was smooth to the touch. Soft.

Guili remembered the morning that her mother had given her

the coat.

Her father was startled when he saw it. Then he was furious.

He’d marched across their apartment to the wooden box where

her mother kept their ration coupons and he’d dumped the small

slips of paper for flour and rice and cooking oil onto the table top.

“What have you done?”

And her mother had laughed, inexplicably, and said, “What are

a few coupons worth compared to our daughter?”

And in his rage, her father had raised his hand as though he meant to slap her mother.

Whether for using up the coupons or for laughing at him or for all the million other things in his life he could not control, it was hard to tell.

“Don’t hit my mother!” Guili had shouted, but her mother grabbed

her by the arms and pulled her out the door, saying, “Hush, the

neighbors.”

Guili’s father then smashed the rice bowls, one after the other. “Foolish!” he shouted, a bowl shattering against the floor. Ben dan!

Stupid egg!

Guili could hear the glass breaking through the closed door as

she and her mother walked down the stairs of the apartment build

ing together. In his rage, her father seemed to forget it was Guili’s

last morning at home.

On the walk to the long-distance bus station, the early morn

ing light clean and pure against the sidewalk, her mother had ex

plained that she’d hidden all their ration coupons for cloth in ad

vance. In order to keep him from suspecting that she’d traded the earrings. “Your father would not understand,” she said.

On an ordinary day, Guili might have said, “He’s a counter

revolutionary! All he thinks are feudal thoughts!” her usual teenage

sullenness, but this morning Guili had been too shocked to reply.

Real jade, just for some cloth. And the wool wasn’t heavy. The

coat in fact was not quite warm enough even on this spring morning.

But it was too late, and her mother was so happy, her cheeks flushed red in the wind. She looked youthful and pleased. “Remem

ber, Guili,” she whispered, “I wanted you to have something beau tiful.” Then she’d slipped her arm through Cuili’s and the two of

them had walked to the bus station together like this, arm in arm

14 MAY-LEE CHAI

like schoolgirls with no cares in the world despite the fact that ev

erything familiar and safe in their world was ending.

This feeling of hopeless hope or suspended despair or temporary

consolation amidst unknowingness, Guili thought, was the phrase

4 missing from her book. How useful it would have been to name this

feeling exactly in this new and perilous land.

— She slipped her arms into the coat sleeves; the expensive cloth—

silk, cotton, and 3 percent cashmere—felt like an embrace, like a

promise, like good luck. She’d known the love of her mother, who

was willing to sacrifice her most treasured possession just to make

Guili a coat. That love felt like the Prada. It gave Guili confidence.

And she at long last understood her father’s rage. For the unjust

nature of life.

In an hour or so, Guili knew that she would call the doctor and

find out the news herself, what the test results meant, what kind

of suffering was in store for her and how expensive it would be.

And she would use this answer, whatever it was, as an excuse to

send her in-laws back to Henan. Her husband was gone, busy; he

wouldn’t be able to fly back and intervene. Later she would claim

that she’d acted out of consideration for Anping, how Guili hadn’t

wanted to burden the old woman who, after all, already had her

aged husband to look after. How would it look if Guili had allowed

her mother-in-law to take care of her, too? Xiaobing would not be

able to fault her logic. / Guili imagined the old woman’s surprise. Outfoxed in the last

move.

And then it occurred to her, the exact useful word she needed.

Guili could hear it enunciated in her ear in the soft flat voice of the

woman who read all the English phrases on the CD. Checkmote.

FISH BOY

H EY, KID, ‘iou just gonna sit there?” The Boss was standing

in front of Xiao Yu. Xiao Yu recognixed the man’s polished

leather shoes, the cuffs of his expensive pants, his compli

cated watch, the clean white cuffs of his shirt. Out of politeness

he’d never stared the man in the face. Now Xiao Yu stood up and

stared at the man’s shoes.

“No, Uncle,” he said politely as his grandfather had instructed

him to say. “I can work, too:’

“Work?” The Boss laughed. The men in the kitchen laughed.

“The squirt wants to work, did you hear that?” The Boss put his

hand on top of Xiao Yu’s head. He could feel the sweat of the man’s

palms dripping through his hair to his scalp. “And what can you

do, Squirt?”

“I can scale fish. I know how to kill chickens. I can—”

“Whoa, whoa, listen to this! The squirt really does want to

work!” The Boss pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his

crisp white shirt and tapped one out for himself. “Fine, fine, glad

to hear you can be useful. Country kids, much better than a city

brat,” the Boss said. “A kid who’s willing to work.” He tapped one

of the men with the cleavers between the shoulder blades. “You!

Show the kid how it works with the fish. Kid wants to scale fish,

let him:’

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